2019-12-17 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2019-12-17
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Regular Meeting of the PPS Board of Education-Dec 17, 2019

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all right good evening welcome we are sorry for our delay we had a three actually three executive sessions upstairs on three separate matters so we're sorry to have kept you waiting but we're glad to see you the board meeting of the Board of Education for December 17 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 on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our PBS TV what services website welcome again this is the last board meeting of 2019 tonight we'll hear an update on the district's dyslexia plan as well as an action to approve an amendment to Roosevelt's phase 4 master plan we will also accept the comprehensive annual financial report also referred to as the kafir' and we have a slight modification to our agenda we will address the item regarding the kafir' immediately following our business agenda at this time the board will vote on its consent agenda miss Bradshaw are there any changes to the consent agenda there were no content changes but the resolutions were reordered to put the complaint that went into executive session into the consent agenda so you have a revised copy on your at receipt and it has been posted so there's no motion needed to accept it just wanted to make sure you knew so does that mean that I won't be any discussion about it there it is 601 7 yes this is on the consent agenda so I've been well does anyone I would like it not to be on the consent you'd like to avoid from the consent agenda 6 0 1 7 is that what you're referring to the complaint or okay I don't have six or yes yes okay I also have a couple things I want to say about bad items on the consent agenda I also would like to it's actually a business agenda versus a consent agenda so I'd like the superintendent evaluation template to be a separate vote and then I have just a comment I want to make about that one of the contracts on the business agenda and I'm sorry I didn't raise this earlier but I didn't know it was gonna some of these things we're gonna be wrapped into all right what's described as a consent agenda okay so if I'm understanding you then I'm looking for a motion to approve the business agenda - six zero one five the superintendent's evaluation template and six zero one seven the complaint that we have just heard in executive session do I have a motion to move the business agenda as such director Bailey moves director broom Edwards seconds is there any discussion on that business agenda so I am going to just submit a statement for the record on resolution six zero one three and then on resolution six zero one zero it's a there's a contract for the Gunther consultancy this is a direct negotiation professional service contract that now has six amendments for a contract of a total of 2.3 and I just wanted out the initial amendment that circulated didn't have the exhibits but they along with the consultants listed in the detailed cost it's since been added and the district has also added district staff and a summary of the work product in addition to the special expertise that the Gunther group consultants bring to this work longer term a question related to contracts that I think like to have with the deputy superintendent for business and operations and the board relates to the process of when we have contracts that have multiple amendments how we pull through the relevant information
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from each of the amendments to the final one we vote on because for example in this case the sixth amendment there was information in earlier amendments that unless we'd gone back and looked at each of the amendments you wouldn't have have seen so just from a process standpoint you know how do we have our when we review something that's and it's not efficient nor good practice to continually do a new contract but if we have amendments how are we pulling those things through so that when we're voting on the sixth amendment the essential information that we probably want to see is contained with the with the last amendment that's before us talking about just the aggregate amount of the contracted work or about specific functions it's a variety of things so given a contract like this I mean I think based on the memo we receive from staff certainly provide very special expertise and have helped us in a whole host of projects over a period of time and over the period of time what has the nature of the services they've provided had have changed and so from the beginning contract I think you had mentioned for example but it pointed out that initially you actually had some people from the group staffing positions and we've evolved from that with the build-out of the finance and operation staff and that the original contract still has that piece and some of the changes are made were made over the course of almost two years when the amendments are as the amendments were made so if you only looked at the beginning contract and then the sixth amendment you'd miss some of those pieces so this is more just a bit so that board members aren't going through the last five amendments in order to find out and find relevant information and I will say that the purchasing and contracting team continues to be sort of a model partner and sharing information it's just something that so it came to light with this particular contract and then the other issue on the contracts that I wanted to raise is because of the ACH fraudulent activity we now are just posting a very brief mention essentially the vendor name a sentence description of what they provide that publicly and the overall dollar amount and I think that was wise for the district to change its practice until we have a better understanding of what happened and then we have the e CH audit but I think for some especially some of these contracts that are over a million dollars that we probably should share more information than just the sentence and I know that somebody somebody if they really want to see the contract can requested that just seems like a step that most individuals aren't going to say so in between now and the time in which we get recommendations on changes we should make based on the ECHR it the things I'm wondering if there's there's a medium point between sharing all the details of the contract and just one sentence I won't agree with that I think I think we should be sharing more information and we can do it in a way that doesn't release any confidential information or anything that endangered us I think I would just say that my understanding is the districts in the process of looking at what the risks are and I would very reluctant to share too much information until we have reached that point and so I would actually say what we're sharing now which is the minimum I agree it would be sufficient until we get a recommendation back from staff that says this is what's appropriate to share that doesn't put us at risk I don't think it's appropriate for us as a board to start asking for additional information until that risk assessment is complete all right do we have any more discussion on the business agenda itself then we'll move on to the items that have been pulled miss Bradshaw is there any public comment on the consent agenda hmm no there was some public comment but it was on one of the resolutions that have been pulled from okay all right okay the board will now vote on the consent agenda items six zero one zero through six zero one seven with the exception of six zero one seven and six zero one five all in favor please indicate by saying yes all
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opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions the business agenda is approved by a vote of 7 to 0 with student representative lateral voting yes Thank You Maxine okay so we can move on to the two items that have been pulled let's start with 6 0 1 7 discussion sure so do I have a motion to bring forward for consideration 6 0 1 7 which has been pulled from the consent agenda second I director from Edwards my instructor constan myself seconds is there any discussion on item six zero one seven all in favor please indicate by saying yes I'm sorry I'm sorry never mind I got a little ahead of myself discussion on item six zero one seven took a breath we'll do it one at a time sorry okay so the complaint before the board raises a host of issues of I think about the complaint process that really highlighted I think I'm probably the need for the board the board to take another pass at the complete process so I know for four of us we spent a fair amount of time when we first in 2017 tackling this issue and getting the complaint process compliant with state law and I think we vastly improved the complaint process I think this complaint would be highlights some additional work we need to do and and maybe it's not even changing the policy but having being more clear avenues that they're the avenues in which different completes go through and just from I think the the community standpoint that it will allow people to engage with the district in in the place in which they're most likely to get their complaint responded I had appreciated the opportunity and I just wanted I guess was you'll tell me if I'm mentoring somewhere I can't go I just want to say I appreciate the visit to Vernon the other day to visit classrooms with the superintendent and the deputy superintendent to talk chance to talk to students teachers and the principal's I saw students intensely focused on their learning and a positive interaction between students and teachers and all the classrooms it was it was a great visit my concerns that I have that still I'm going to support the superintendent's recommendation here but some kind some outstanding concerns I have with the process that and this also I think goes to just us speaking in this channels with parents and community members that there was a discussion initially about black student proficiency and we the district responded in terms of growth and there has been a lot of growth that we could point to but if you look at proficiency it's been relatively flat despite there being individual student growth which is important but they were talking about something else and we were responding in a different way so matching up and having those conversations I think we talked about this one we discussed our goals that we were focusing our goals on growth and that that required an additional conversation because most parents and community members are focused on proficiency is my student at grade level and growth is a more it's more complex and it tells us a lot more about how we can help students but it's it's somewhat of a different it's a complementary conversation but is for most parents is not in place of so I just want to recognize that also in our initial response we their district response talked about recommending action that it wasn't clear if the recommend AK recommendation recommended action was going to occur and I can see how parents sometimes may be skeptical about whether the district is going to respond so I I hope we have sort of continued engagement on things that were recommended if the district felt that's the right thing to do and recommending
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things that we follow through there also was in we did acknowledge in the response that there's under representation of students of color in some school activities including the Battle of Books and chess club and this would be another thing that as we move forward just that were reflective about participation reflecting the school community and really digging into and I see the line of inquiry happening but really digging into what what are the barriers that we we may not see to our activities both in during the school day and after after the school day the participation reflects the diversity of the school community and then the final point is the complaintant was the target of a negative chant during a school performance at a school assembly and I do think the district knowledge that by asking that the lyrics be changed that it didn't meet the district standards well what was said at the Assembly that it was done in a in a in a school district forum and I don't personally I'm sorry that that happened at a school assembly I think regardless school events should not be used in a way by any party to convey disrespect or negativity to to a parent and I think it's really unfortunate that it happened and that as a district we should be setting higher standards and I understand it wasn't scripted or knowledge or given approval by the district but it still happened at district form and I think we owe the complaint apology and then lastly I want to acknowledge the various district staff people who have spent a fair amount of time at Vernon and with the Vernon community both parents and students not just the complainant to look at ways in which we can continuously improve how we serve our students we have any further discussion on item six zero one seven the complaint that we've just heard an executive session appreciate your comments director BEM Edwards and I think it's always the intent of our complaint process to not only address the specific concerns that families are bringing forward to us but to really think deeply about what are they telling us about our school communities about our system as a whole and you know how can we address whatever the specific issues are in the broader context too and we did have some discussion about that and that's an area that we always want to want to work on because it's a big effort to to bring a complaint forward and to feel so strongly about issues in the school that you are asking for some specific redress for the school system so we want to we we it's incumbent upon us to be responsive and I to have the opportunity to see Vernon this week and a lot of joyful learning and really fun engaging activities for students there and I agree there's work to be done on bringing the school together community even more together but it was it was a joy to be there all right resolution six one seven six zero one seven to uphold the superintendent's decision on a step three appeal complaint number two zero one nine zero six all in favor to uphold that decision please indicate by saying yes yes yes I'll oppose please say no any abstentions all right the superintendent's decision is upheld by board vote of seven to zero and okay thank you very much the next item that has been pulled from the agenda is the adoption of the template for the superintendent's evaluation this was an extensive discussion that we had at our last meeting and landed on the evaluation instrument that we will use for the superintendent we're a little bit late in what would be the ideal process there because we have tied his evaluation process so closely to our own board goals which we just passed in late October so director Brendan merrimette Awards you have pulled this item so I'll leave it to you to bring forward and
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remove it yes let's move move it what is it six do I have a motion to bring forward item number six zero one five the super anti move it second all right we have director Lowry moves director Bailey sections two people signed up to thank you okay discussion just one half public public comment first we have public comment on the this item yes we do we have Steve Buell and Rene Anderson Steve Buell Rene Anderson are you here welcome the first thing I'd like to do is read just a couple of sentences from the racial equity thank you Mike from the racial educational equity policy Oh state your name for the record Anderson I'm a retired educator welcome Thank You members rouse moral support thank you so Portland Public Schools will significantly significantly change its practices in order to achieve and maintain racial equity and education educational equity means raising the achievement of all students while narrowing the gaps between the lowest and the highest performing students now my question for you have we done that are we done no I didn't think so so my concern is at the last meeting at your last board meeting it seemed that the board doesn't think that we should be very detailed in evaluating our director I'm sorry our superintendent who is the director of equity so we are the largest school district in the state of Oregon we have many racial issues and you just listed some today in our school district many and we have this racial policy that really is just a piece of paper if we are not accountable to it so we've had meetings with black educators and about 40 40-plus educators came together we broke up into four groups we talked about our top concerns in the school district and in three of those groups accountability was one of them and in each of those three groups so out of the out of four top concerns and when we talk about being accountable if we're if we're not evaluating our director of the racial equity Barberie racial equity program then we're not being accountable so we have these issues we do not have a department which you know I'm very concerned about that because it's not like everything was great and we say oh let's just downsize I'm not understanding how that happened but our superintendent is our director and Danny is his adviser and I just think that you should have a very detailed accountability in the evaluation because what is measured gets done so I just wanted to make sure that was clear and let me see let me make sure I didn't cuz you know I didn't read my notes I just talked off the cuff so I just want to know how important equity is to you thank you thank you very much all right we have board discussion on this item okay I have one thing I think I brought up at our last board meeting that I did want to add stronger language to the leadership standard the visionary leadership standard and as the
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superintendent I don't know that this is best practice but the chief equity officer no matter who that was we would expect to see some language that we would have to evaluate against progress against goals I see that we did add and I'm sorry I didn't bring this up earlier we did add strategy 1.6 makes progress on PBS's racial equity and social justice strategy with a focus on the professional development strategies in the RS our esj framework and and I know that this work is undergoing right now we've heard about that in the last couple meetings I'm just curious how we're gonna how we're gonna evaluate this making progress it's not clear to me what measures are we looking at evaluating on so I'll jump in and I don't know if the superintendent wants to to add anything to this and I really appreciate mrs. Anderson's comments and I actually feel based on the last discussion and actually the multiple discussions we've had in meetings about this that though that we have added a number of items to the evaluations to make sure we are holding the superintendent and the entire district accountable for achieving his roles first I would I would point to the to the board goals that were adopted for the district and and one of those goals around third grade reading the other around fifth grade math and very specifically you know on both of us closing achievement gaps by accelerating growth for the underserved students of color moving from 44% of underserved students of color meeting growth to 60% meeting exceeding growth by 2022 similarly that's for third grade reading similar for fifth grade math moving from 41% of underserved students of color meeting growth to 60% meeting or exceeding growth by by 2022 so very clear expectations on the superintendent in the district that we want to see growth for all of our students but with a particular focus on the students who have been failed by the district in the past and then I think so your very specific question around well what we added after the last meeting making progress on PBS's racial equity and social justice strategy so there is an adopted strategy miss ledesma sort of provided the board with some materials around that as well I think coming out of the superintendent self-evaluation that you'll be doing this spring what what I will expect to see you know obviously other board members can weigh in will be a status update on those specific items in that racial equity and social justice strategy where we've made progress where we failed to make progress where we need to focus more resources and then I think that will hopefully inform next year's evaluation template as well if we want to get more specific based on that in terms of specific areas okay so there's there's two pieces to the evaluation though one is the kind of the leadership standard and the other is that are the performance schools and the performance goals definitely have numerical targets which are great and they're they're going to show growth over time but I feel like we have a we're missing an opportunity if we don't include some language that's quantifiable and I'm not saying it has to be this but focused on a numerical target that we can measure against such as no net loss of administrators of color such as have we hired teachers of color what's that number baseline to year-end or some such other numerical target and I'm I'm not comfortable with adding that in at this point I think that that might be as we look at what occurs in the next year because I think again we're we're in December we you know are asking Guadalupe to do this evaluation in the spring and to have those specific goals I think it's it I think what we need to do is look at this in May and June and then if we want to add those things in add them in over the summer so that when we start the school year we can give him really specific targets like that I think those are good things to keep in mind but I would not support adding those at this time and I understand there's a very short runway just because of our our timeline but I would just personally like to see more targeted more a more targeted approach as would occur in every anybody's I looked at other evaluations for different different chief equity officers and and there are there's a very specific clear language I agree about the timeline I think it's really too soon but it's something that I'd like to move towards because for one thing that signals to the community that we actually care about it enough to evaluate it I think it would be definitely something to look at including next year and I would be supportive of that conversation and I think this conversation is probably very instructive to the superintendent when he responds and his self-evaluation on what does progress look like in that
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category that we're discussing now so I think you can see an appetite for a lot of detail on that right and similarly the resource management goal includes human human resources systems and that's one piece in particular the around hiring rate and retention that we should expect to see something in the evaluation and in May so just a question really into that so in 7.2 because I'm wondering actually at the end of the year are we based on this going to be asking the question that I think would answer what Michelle asked which is how did we do in terms of the recruitment selection induction compensation and separation with attention to issues of equity and diversity would we be getting you know here's the snapshot at the beginning of the year and here's the end of the year which seems like it would it's not a goal but we'd be getting data so I'm just I'm just wondering if that's that's the data point we're getting that this year it's a question I guess the way I push it an evaluation is that first we have the data that establishes kind of a baseline and then you insert some thing and you evaluate against that and that thing would be the racial equity policy does that make sense yeah so I think what we can expect this years see where we last year where we where we in in May without a numeric specific numeric evaluation this year but perhaps looking at that and future years and I think that's a good call out that specific item where which applies appropriate policies criteria processes for the recruitment blah blah blah because that's exactly where we want to be we want to hear from the superintendent about the processes that he's the strategies that he's putting in place to address the the goals that he knows we have rather than being prescriptive from the day yes and we have not established and a numerical goal for recruitment and retention of a more diverse staff across the board that doesn't mean that the superintendent can't provide that kind of data and I I would hope that that this self-evaluation would include some sort of some indication of kind of where we were where we are where we're going and how we're gonna get there but it's I mean I agree with director Lowry I think at this point it's um it's probably not reasonable to add another quantifiable metric to the evaluation I think we should sort of put a pin in it for next year and I would hope I feel like I'm echoing I would hope that next year having established a new template and and having having some baseline info under our belt that we'll be able to produce an evaluation template including goals and metrics much much earlier so I would hope that you know come June or July we'll be able to come up with you know a set of expectations and goals so that the superintendent for the very first time in his tenure in fact will start the school year knowing where we want them to end up thank you and thank you director Scott for putting this together and your work putting in and your comments everyone and I'm from a big family so I need to get the last word I'm suggesting that we we need to measure what we care about we need to understand where we are so we know in a year or two years from now that we've made progress or not and I know that our our yesterday committee is working on discrete goals around these very issues and that they'll have sort of some some
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goals for the district around teacher retention and other areas that that will be our district focus and I think the timeline is like in the next two or three months so once that is in place from the racial equity social justice committee I think then that makes it really easy for us to hold our chief equity office officer to those goals that are our esj committee sets out so I think we're all on the same page around having there we're just not we're not quite there yet I would support putting in something now just I would support is there a proposal do you want a proposal well I I also agree that you know it's let's say January and we don't have I don't feel like we have enough time I mean we want we want to see success here I feel better about setting it up to be successful next year because we have the input from the racial social what is it racial equity social justice committee and I'd like to be thoughtful about this I also want to say that it's important to me and to all of us really that we get it right so I'm not in favor of you know rushing to put something in just to put something in I'd rather have it consider it a considered approach where we know that we want to measure it we need to understand where we are so we know that next year or the year after we'll be able to measure the progress that we've made over time so there was language added between last meeting and this meeting and maybe director Scott you could I don't think the community has a red lined point out what was added on equity wasn't yeah it was uh it was one point six was added on equity based on the conversation we had two weeks ago the board wanted to see that language makes progress on PBS's racial equity and social justice strategy with a focus on the professional development strategy my question again is how are we going to know if we're successful on that or not because I'm looking at the framework right now just I want to be clear so we're linking that one so the new edition the new language is connected to this framework that the senior equity advisor shared with all of us that is a professional development framework that has stages for organizational change it some implementation strategies system integration problems to practice so just so I understand what by putting that in there what this means is this does this mean that the accomplishing it is that all staff have gone through it or just trying to blow everything how are we going to measure whether I think accomplishing it as I said a few minutes ago the goal is making progress on PBS's racial equity and social justice strategy with a focus on the professional development strategies the super antenna will provide his update as part of a self-evaluation in terms of the progress that has been made on the racial equity and social justice strategies and a professional development framework we as a board will evaluate that progress as we do his evaluation I'm just going to understand so we don't but I don't want to have is like at the end of the year being asking for something that wasn't what it was so I'm just trying to get clear on what it is so the racial when you say the rest of the equity strategies are you talking about the plan that we had presented to us a month ago or the that to be developed strategies we're not being argumentative I'm just trying to figure out what it is that we're because I don't want to be unfair to the superintendent superintendent guru do you feel clarity on this particular point I'm happy to share my initial thought on the discussion that I'm listening to first of all I just want to appreciate the board for quite some extensive work to land on some performance goals I think it is the right direction to actually be concrete about to it reject the positive trajectory we want to see for student outcomes in PPS and primarily starting off every one of those goals by highlighting the acceleration you expect to see for students of color every one of the performance goals starts that way that that our task is to narrow the gap especially for our students of color and I lived in that other student groups but with a particular emphasis on those that have been historically underserved which we would be the first to acknowledge we we have a lot of work to do in in in
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regards to how this proposed template ties to an equity centered approach whether it's instructional or human capital related I guess I would say as one of eight district superintendents of color out of 198 in the state of Oregon who frequently has these conversations with my seven peers as someone who has attempted to model a representation that closer approximates the demographic of the students that we serve by ensuring that 50 percent of cabinet-level positions are people of color leading Portland Public Schools my hope is that over time at every level of the organization that we have a diversity that reflects our students the challenge with that is that's going to require a broader collective effort to ensure we have the pathways and the pipelines that will create the candidate pools that we want to see so that we can install folks in various roles in the school system so have remained very active with our College of Ed Dean's imagining what further pathways we can strengthen we know there's going to be and continues to be a very urgent talent need not just in Portland but across the state it's a concern that that's shared by system leaders I know that our chief of HR loses a lot of sleep thinking about this we have a spring hiring season coming up we know that the yield of graduates into the teaching profession doesn't begin to approximate the level of need that we have in the region particularly in specialized areas and particularly when you look at who is enrolled in teacher education programs that we actually have to select from that doesn't look like the student population that we need to to better serve so there's certainly work that we need to do from from a talent perspective you hear frequently here on Tuesday evenings about our work from an instructional point of view in our continued work at making our curriculum and our instructional pedagogy's more culturally responsive more attuned to the diverse learners that we serve that is ongoing work and you just heard recently from our senior advisor on racial equity share with you an emerging framework and some goals in many of these areas that we're not doing unilaterally we have a hundred person cross-section of stakeholders educators and meeting in a racial equity advisory team beginning to have these conversations around what are some of the systemic interventions the school level and student supports that we should begin to really strengthen and invest in and I'm looking forward to those emerging recommendations as we come up on our budget development season so that the proposal we bring forward to you not only ensures the Student Success act that has said those resources are specifically intended for underserved students of color but that we also Marshall the broader general fund to institutionalize strategies that are going to improve both opportunities and outcomes for for our students of color we have HR baseline data which we'd be happy to share with all of you my hope is that at a minimum we do better than the diversity index that we currently have here in the Portland Public Schools and that's going to take some some really strategic work to make sure that the that we're doing that I would also say to the discussion around accountability I'm glad that we have performance goals that are tied to specific metrics this is why at the start of my tenure here my team felt it was very important that we begin to institutionalize a few phases of work that actually provide us actionable information starting with some interim assessments so that we can actually gauge student learning and inform instruction any professional development we invest in and work with our school leaders you now have for the first time almost half of administered student results coming to us as we continue to roll out those assessments they're providing us with valuable data we didn't have before across many more schools and many more grade levels and that work will continue to roll out so starting with student performance data to initiate
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conversations about how to continuously improve what was the first step the second step the board saw is that it was important for us to transparently gather perception data about our school communities cultures and climates we issued those surveys to our students our staffs our families and other stakeholders we had 25,000 people respond it's a pretty broad sample set you saw the results of that we didn't just like with the student assessments pursue a prescriptive punitive approach to those what we said to our school communities is take a close look at those results and we encourage you to have a specific dialogue and a continued conversation in your school communities about how do we continue to improve on the perception that our students and our families have about our schools when we see ratings that indicate that our students want to feel a stronger sense of belonging that's an important and important point that we need to think about both at the school level and organizationally how do we support our schools establishing those conditions so those perception surveys was a second phase a third phase that I'll preview with you now since it's relevant to this conversation is I also think we have to model performance management at the system leadership level and so something that we're looking to institute our key performance indicators and that it what I mean by that is making sure that we as a central office administration are serving our school communities in effective ways and so how are we doing with our facilities response our transportation delivery rates professional development offerings across every department it would be very will be very important to hear from our over 80 school communities how we're serving and supporting them and to be really transparent about those departmental performance surveys so that we ourselves can model that continuous improvement and set some goals for our own central office departments about more effectively being responsive to our schools so that will be a third body of data that that we'll be sharing with the board and that's going to take some work to have that be a substantive and informative process the the combination of those things combined with our state accountability data certainly our summative data provide us with a pretty broad array of being able to identify where our strengths are and certainly where we have a lot more work left to do and helps us to focus our energy our time and our resources in specific ways where I lose sleep is that we have a couple dozen state designated schools and so by all accounts there the measures indicate that our students aren't yet being provided the opportunity that they should be afforded and typically they are of a darker complexion much like your superintendent and so this is going to be our opportunity the spring time to really communicate to the broader community that every one of our students deserves to have that that quality educational opportunity and so you you can expect to see a recommendation that really prioritizes in a way that we haven't ever been able to do in the school system we've made some early moves in the way that we equitably staff some of these schools in the way that our principal supervisors without too many more resources dedicate the vast majority of their time in these schools if nothing else to offer sweat equity and guidance to the challenging work in front of them I know that as part of our racial equity work we know that to accomplish some of the success that we hope to have over time that we can't do this by ourselves and so partnering with some valued community partners is going to be a part of that equation I don't think that we've kind of kept that level of investment pretty level over time and we know that there are some pretty specific ways that they can help add to the collective effort of making sure that some of these gap areas where maybe the the cultural responsiveness or maybe some of the educational opportunities or maybe some of the adults that they see within their school community better reflect a community what better way to do that and to increase and expand and enhance our partnerships with those community-based organizations so that will likely be another event we also know for our students that are further behind they need more instructional time they need greater enrichment opportunities and so we're gonna see how far the dollars go we are really thinking about how we create those extended learning opportunities
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including a fifth quarter and our title one or CSI schools so I'm just going to plant the flag on that one but you know 20 more school days that doesn't look like the other hundred and seventy I think could be an engaging strategy to help provide some of that additional intervention and acceleration that our students deserve so just to give you a little bit of a preview of some of the the narrative that you can expect at mid-year when we get our progress measures and our perform our interim assessments are are turned in at the end of January we'll synthesize those and let you know how we've done in our progress measures and certainly we have high hopes - at a minimum do better than we did last year on our summative z' but what I'm most excited about is having a plan that permits us to go much fuller throttle so that we can really start making that curve make a steep climb and that's going to require partnership with everybody it's it's going to require continued accountability I'm not shy about insisting that I do be held accountable and making sure that you have all the data that you need to measure that across the work that we do as a school system so that's my initial thought thank you for the work on this template it is a combination of demonstrated leadership standards and hard performance goals and I think all of them across all areas are reasonable stretch challenges which my team and I take very seriously so thank you thank you so at this point I'll just sort of remind everyone again so we've been discussing the evaluation template for months we've spent many many many hours both discussing the goals the template etc last meeting two weeks ago we discussed changes people wanted to see which we put on the table and then the goal was to come back at this meeting and adopt this on consent it's been pulled off consent so I think at this point if there are any substantive very specific changes to the template I think we should entertain those but I think we should move quickly to a vote because I also want to point out we're an hour behind schedule we have a number of people waiting to testify and my understanding was our agreement was last month we were gonna add some language around equity and that was sort of the and then we were going to talk about that what the superintendent just said which is that sort of time through the department's about how we improve right so we made the changes and I think we're ready to move forward but if there are specific amendments I'm not gonna offer amendment I just will make a final comment but maybe the other thing to do is what other changes specifically were made just it's just that one yeah sure metrics aboard received the changes I know but we also are a public body I just that's that's fine sure I mean I'm happy to go back through those we discussed them last time at length okay we went from one document to another I'm just sitting it I I can pull out what they are but you don't have to do not go through that's fine that's we have gone through them multiple times that's I was just asking what changed between the last document in this document but I'll just make my comments so I wanted so my understanding is that the only change between this document and the previous the the the last version of this was the addition of one point six which we've already talked about is that correct there were three things that the board asked for in the last meeting the waiting and then also there yeah sorry I didn't mean I didn't make difficult just seemed like okay here cuz we discussed last time here's what the changes were it's okay I can summarize him that we did double waiting on the student performance goals versus single waiting on the standards and then there also was sentence added that the superintendent would directly gather feedback on his performance that's correct no we're supposed to adopt it on consent that's why I just didn't bring sort of all that material but please if you have changes I don't have changes I'm just gonna make a statement so I because I've gone back and forth about they tempo and I think I appreciate the opportunity last week to raise a number of issues last time so I'll just I'm gonna submit a statement for the record but and I'm gonna support the evaluation tool I would suggest that the board asked for the fit assessment which provides a snapshot of the perception of school staff or central office supports in leadership I just think it would be useful
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and also I just want to highlight I think it's difficult for us to we're gonna run into the US having and maybe this maybe it's okay having very different assessments on some of these things because we're we're not directly getting structured feedback like the communications and community relations ships without a foremost structured feedback directly to the board I think we'll all rely on our individual relationships within the community I'm like I know with making an assessment around the superintendent's just leadership around curriculum development I'm certainly not qualified to make that assessment so I will probably go to places that I'm that I'm comfortable asking that question and same thing with the communications and community relations and I think there's a very positive way to get structured more structured feedback directly to the board but I acknowledge that that's not how we're going to do it but so I'm just slightly uncomfortable with with that but I'm gonna support the tool and I realized once we adopted it is it is the tool anyway just wanna clarify chair is that a different set of criteria or evidence that you would be expecting I think what it means is so we get to relationships change to the evaluation template we need to go ahead so I think there's a motion on the table check on same I would I would ask that we move people there's a motion on the table for item six zero one five to adopt the superintendent's goals for 2019 2020 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any abstentions seeing none the motion passes by a vote of seven to zero with student representative lateral voting yes all right and I just want to say thank you this has been a really long and full process Maxine you were in it you were a big part of helping to come up with some of these metrics and you just make it a thumbs up or down good and I also want to save it a believer stand wrap was ready to vote some time ago this are your are your DSC meetings like this Maxine there are a lot more productive and fun as my sons would save roasted and toasted roasted in toast I appreciate you all but I feel like students can make decisions in a quicker way and have YW power sometimes I don't doubt that although I would call out that we have Tay and Parker in the back who are on our DSC and thank you all for being here because I did just want to add one governance note this passing the template for the superintendent's evaluation is kind of the capstone of this long series of really important governance and strategic planning work that started with our visioning process our community led visioning process in the summer the visioning process that then really informed our board goals and then the board goals which are very explicitly expressed in the superintendent's evaluation so it feels rather tidy to be settling all of those by the end of the year and it feels good to be moving forward with some pretty clear expectations and standards and thanks everybody for all the thoughtful thoughtful work on that I just gotta say to to appreciations one is back in 2000 I worked on a district strategic plan and I specifically wrote language about a basically customer survey service feedback system for the central office how we doing and serving schools and 19 years later I'm hearing we're going to get it and as important as that is I mean this this is this is I mean dog ears right [Music] also appreciating that however important that is you bring it right back to how are we doing with our neediest students superintendent with your blessing given the late hour I'm going to move to our public and student comment before your report miss Bradshaw do we have any student comment no okay do we have any public comment yes I'm with Lisa line and Angela uber blah Blau verbal out
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good evening chair Guerrero members of the board my name is Lisa Lyon lyo n thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight as the parent of a dyslexic 10th grader at Grant and as a founding member of decoding dyslexia Oregon fortunately many positive things have happened since I first addressed the board regarding dyslexia more than five years ago recently PPS has provided training to 20 reading specialists in the orton-gillingham approach sent 40 educators to the International dyslexia Association conference and to the statewide teacher in-service on dyslexia at the University of Portland they have also hosted a community-wide dyslexia listening session and they also have appointed a program administrator for dyslexia while this commitment to be is to be recognized and applauded I want to focus on the curricula that is under current consideration to be added to the existing equity based balanced literacy instructional framework but before focusing on this current proposal we must look back to the last adoption for years and approximately nine point five million dollars ago alarms were sounded expressing dismay and fear that selected curricula which formed the EB BL framework were insufficient materials were purchased from the five unique vendors although there was no evidence to show these curricula would coordinate to form a comprehensive literacy curriculum finally four years later after you of these offerings PPS has courageously admitted that there is a gap in instructional materials in the previous adoption the curricula did not include content to address two of the big five ideas and reading instruction as outlined by the National reading panel phonemic awareness and phonics the two most fundamental reading skills upon which reading success is built I am grateful that PBS has recognized this gap and is acting to fix it however what will be different this time can you ensure us that the foundational skills resource committee currently tasked with examining curricula is made up primarily of experts in how to teach reading are they already knowledgeable in the science of reading including phonemes morphemes and syllable types is the committee racially diverse this matters we all know that PBS has not done nearly enough to support our students of color who are struggling with reading and our outcomes reflect that during these past four years how many of our k3 children have missed out on the most fundamental instruction in reading because of poor decisions that were made four years ago to many a guesstimate is four thousand my question is what will prevent PBS from adopting another inferior curriculum I have been told that teachers will be piloting programs but there will not be any data collection although I have learnt heard that all five curricular candidates are solid choices according to ed reports an independent non-profit that reviews instructional materials there is a clear winner among the five candidates Edie reports shows that the American reading company program meets expectations in every category other programs under review only partially partially meet expectations I urge committee members to digital digital diligently review these materials to prevent another instructional mistake PBS educators children and families deserve to have nothing left to chance regarding reading instruction give educators the best tool so they may provide better reading instruction to their students the selection of essential materials should be guided by data and not by popularity thank you I thank you for the chance to speak with you tonight my name is Angela we're below and I'm the mom of two girls at Irving Tinelli mentary school and along with Lisa and several other advocates I'm a co-creator of Oregon kids read comm and I'm here to talk to you a little bit about the petition but before I do that I want to take a minute to acknowledge all of the PPS students I just want to thank you for your hard work every day I want to I'm looking at you because you're the student representative we see you we see your hard work we appreciate you and we're proud of you as I said three weeks ago I and other literacy and racial equity advocates launched the Oregon kids read petition and we did this because Oregon is failing our students and in particular failing our students of color when it comes to reading almost half and I know many of you already know this but almost half of our Oregon students are not meeting reading benchmarks 72% of
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our Latino X third graders are not reading at grade level seventy-four percent of our African American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander third graders bless yous they're not reading at grade level and as we've talked about tonight the numbers and PPS are similarly appalling and behind every number is a child that we care about and all of us in this room every single one of us wouldn't be here if we didn't care about those children and also I want to be very very clear to any student who is listening this is not your fault this is not your failure this is an adult failure and these are problems that adults have created and we need to do more about this and we will the oregon kids petition oregon kids read petition is part of that we are calling on the oregon legislature to dedicate 2% of Student Success act monies and that's at the statewide initiative money is not at the district money's we're asking them to dedicate 2% of those monies towards eating instruction offering it to all of our k3 teachers and our reading specialists already 2700 people have signed the petition including your former board colleague dr. Julie Esparza Brown and Mercedes Munez he's the Oregon Teacher of the Year for 2020 we're doing this we've signed it because we're inspired and were motivated by Mississippi they have adopted a comprehensive literacy program and since 2013 they've trained 13,000 of their teachers in the science of reading and this year they're fourth graders were the only fourth graders in the country who improved on nation-wide reading scores Mississippi the poorest state in the country with the most richly racially diverse student population they're showing us what we can do here in Oregon and what we can give to our kids so I'm here to ask you because science I know I'm almost done science proves that almost any child can learn how to read if she or he or they are given the tools so I'm asking you as a board to consider signing the petition and I know some of you already have and we're very grateful for that and some of you are just learning about this so please take a look at it we welcome your support and we really appreciate you and thank you for everything you do for students thank you thanks so much so much Rebecca hanison and Carrie Archer hi my name is Rebecca Hannifin I'm a member of the PPS dyslexia advocacy group we want to thank PBS for hiring Elizabeth Martin to serve as the district's point person for dyslexia she's been a fabulous collaborative partner our group strongly supports the PBS five-year dyslexia priority plan and we urge you to fully fund it and then we urge you to dig deep and commit to solving the district's literacy crisis my fifth-grade son is among the 81 percent of African American students at PBS who are not reading at grade level this is a full-fledged civil rights crisis happening on our watch I'm a lawyer so my kids started out at one of Portland's good schools I wish I had time to tell you how awful it was my son struggled in kindergarten when I asked for testing the building's team dragged their feet then they misread their own test results and refused to give him services after 3,000 dollars in private testing in a year-long fight in second grade my son finally got his IEP I drafted most of his accommodations myself because the special ed teacher wasn't trained to identify or help dyslexic kids the classroom teachers weren't trained to teach struggling readers there was no assistive technology at the school and when it finally arrived no one knew how to use it my son would never have learned anything at this good school if we couldn't afford years of outside tutoring we also paid therapists to help manage his emotional stress and don't get me started on the racial microaggressions and culture of low expectations that were in every day part of our black child's life in affluent Portland thanks to the boundary change word a less rich but much healthier school Rose City Park Elementary is amazing they've committed to real equity with resources directed first to marginalized students the instructional specialist and special ed teachers are trained to support struggling readers accommodations are normalized classrooms are flooded with interventions that benefit all students my son is happy last week my fifth grader was able to fluently read a brief fifth grade passage it's magic but next year's middle school the dyslexia priority plan includes training for k2 teachers and reading specialists but little support for middle and high school students who need one-to-one instruction or who struggle to complete the world language requirement for graduation Rose Way Heights where we're going is the list on the list of middle schools needing tar
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improvement at PPS and thinking of the battles ahead is exhausting I'm a white lady with a law degree imagine the hurdles faced by less privileged families we must identify students who need one-to-one instruction as early as possible using simple assessments without having to wait for special ed identification we need orton-gillingham or structured literacy trained teachers reading specialist special ed teachers and instructional specialists in every school including middle and high schools we need strong specific tier two and Tier three instructional plans at the middle and high school level based on each student's individual needs we must fund and implement equitable access to assistive technology we need to offer ASL at all high schools not just the ones on the west side we need consistent curricula and instructional practices that are scientifically proven we strongly recommend that the district form a cross-departmental literacy taskforce perhaps building on the existing dyslexia working group literacy is a prerequisite to all other formal education and we believe it's a civil right our group is eager to be a resource for Elizabeth Martin and other district staff in this work please let us be a resource for you as well thank you thank you really happy to hear about your son success hello I'm Carrie Archer and I teach kindergarten at Arleta k-8 I have taught kindergarten and pre-k for over 20 years I have a reading endorsement and I'ma just Lexia advisor at Arleta through my training as the dyslexia advisor I became more aware the necessary necessary necessity of explicit and systematic literacy instruction that compounded with the fact that I had a student last year who despite one-on-one support for me the kinder EA and our reading specialist every day did not make any gains in his literacy skills sorry this prompted me to pursue training in the orange illing hemorrhage I felt that I needed these skills in my toolbox as a kindergarten teacher to be fully successful as my job I'm now a part of the PBS orton-gillingham cohorts and my student from last year is my practicum student and he's finally making growth sorry so emotional I definitely think orton-gillingham and other structured literacy approaches are necessary for struggling students and those with dyslexia however these approaches should not be limited to struggling students all students deserve to have clear and complete understanding of the English language I have been using the ordinary Gillingham approach with my classroom my of my kindergartners and I have been amazed at how much my kindergartners soak up about our language and then apply it in their reading and writing I've been teaching them about syllables phonemes suffixes and morphemes at parent-teacher conferences I had parents tell me things about their kindergartners that had that had they had been teaching them about our language they told me they were amazed for example I taught my kindergarteners the suffix IDI and that that means the morpheme for that is it means in the past and then we hear at three different ways and they've now been applying that in their lay in their writing today just today one of my students was writing a word and she said is this at the end is that Edie I mean it's amazing the things that if we teach our children what our language is all about the amazing things that they can do with it and then how it'll help them grow so much we must I just feel so strongly that we must provide quality systematic structured literacy to all students yes struggling students yes dyslexic students but all students across the board and we also need to provide the education to our educators as well I have my reading endorsement my master's and I was never taught about structured literacy in my college experience from Pepperdine University all the way to Lewis and Clark and that's just not acceptable so we need to teach our educators so they can teach our children thank you [Applause] that's all for their public comment okay thank you thank you so much all right who are you seeing when we're there on the agenda item yeah student represent hi it's been a long day it feels like it should be Friday but it's only Tuesday at least break is next week we're almost there people okay cool things going on sro state of the
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union is tomorrow get excited it's 4:30 at the left bank annex which is like two blocks away from here Shanice Clark and a lot of students both within our district and outside of our district have been doing community members have been doing a lot of work to make this event happen it's gonna be a really great afternoon evening with lots of learning I believe some board members are going to be there yes I see nodding awesome great see you all there we're gonna be doing some comp we're gonna have a lot of discussion about SRO safety and the student benefit agreement and there's going to be a great student panel with students who went through our education system and also students who are just very educated in this topic I in DSC News we had our retreat on Saturday which was really productive we did a lot of community building which is really nice to see from the beginning of the year kind of having some fun times which I enjoy even though you know it is work it still it still should be fun and there's a lot of great people that I get to hang out with and work with we did some sticky note goal activities which was good I know everyone is familiar with that and coming of that we kind of decided on our goals today which are going to be centered around equity and curriculum and arts and being culturally inclusive in our curriculum we're gonna be having an ongoing conversation about safe and modern schools especially with representatives from Jefferson on the DSC we've realized how important communication across schools is throughout you know all of us building relationships with each other on the DSC and realizing you know not all students have this and so doing more of that and then focusing on climate justice we've all noticed a lot of you know recycling doesn't happen even though we have access to recycling bins in our school also we had two student members who I don't know we I didn't comment on it because I just didn't in the business agenda who are now officially on the CBR C which is exciting so starting to infiltrate the board committees with students get ready all of you it's going to be a fun time we have lots of students everywhere the Audit Committee yeah we have people interested get ready whoo yeah I'm coming in I'm we're doing it who are gonna join some board committees I told Andrew I already have someone interested in the bond committee it's gonna be great policy committee get ready we've got lots of students who are interested so it's gonna be really awesome to start putting student voice at the center of all of these decisions like I so strongly believe I'm getting better at this which is good also was it a plus I think I'm just really tired and like I've given up on being nervous so that's all I have thank you Thank You superintendent would you like to give your report thank you for that a early birthday present with my evaluation good evening I anticipating an ambitious agenda kept a very brief there's a student trombonist there if and our board members are getting out there but certainly want to encourage our community to get out almost all of our schools have some wonderful winner showcases concerts including moving into January and we try to post all those performances so definitely encourage folks to check out our talented students just a few photos this one might look familiar this past Saturday we celebrated a major milestone I want to thank the board for being a part of the groundbreaking at Lincoln High School where work will soon begin on modernizing the Lincoln campus chair Cal's time and I had the honor of sharing a few words with Lincoln community members who braved this gray Saturday morning to show their support principal Chapman and her team or wonderful hosts at the school where we were also joined by a number of elected officials including congressman bloom in our and mayor wheeler along with fire chief boom Lincoln students and other alumni and Commissioner Sharon Meyer was also present Thank You Lincoln band and choir and choir excuse me and the turquoise pride drummers who were also present there were many voices of the podium but the message was consistent throughout every one of our students in Portland deserves a safe and modern learning environment so we will need to rely on the continued support of our Portland voters for many years to come to better
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ensure that every educator and student NPS has access to an optimal teaching and learning environment that that is going to support our vision to reimagine Portland public education in Portland as we proceed through tonight's agenda you're gonna hear very briefly I don't know that you'll have a discussion but I want to make sure and blow our trombone on this one a clean no findings comprehensive annual financial report I don't take that for granted and you're gonna hear some more on our continued dyslexia work an area that we're committed to or I think you can only expect some continued focus attention and then really just a parting message want to wish everyone a safe and warm winter break our educators and students have certainly earned a bit of time off to recharge and reconnect with family and friends just a few more days our student delegate and as we find ourselves in this in the midst of this season of giving I want to thank all of our community who helped make this season and all year round the best it can be for our students so I just wanted to leave you with a short video by one of these efforts by our local Portland firefighters so this morning we have Portland firefighters union 43 coming today to donate 250 coats to the head start program hi I'm Terry what's your name Bale you want to go get a coke alright let's go get a coke let's go look over here oh yeah what color do you want my tail alright let's try it on now it's gonna be really big so it's gonna fit you for a long time okay thank [Music] Wow it's a great day for not only what you get for giving to the kids but but what you see in their eyes and knowing that they get to take something home that's extra special in the last a long time it is a huge help for families with the need that we have in this community and there's just enables families to spend money on food and rent and not worry about getting their kids a warm coat and they cannot believe that they actually get to take home their coats a lot of these kids have never had a coat of their own right they have to share a coat so that's why we put their name in it and they take it home and Portland firefighters begin giving out coats for over eight years for eight years and we've given out more than two thousand coats and we plan on increasing that every year [Music] para las familias que no están audit aqui Priscilla Rodriguez siempre nosotros encontramos una manera para poder llegar lo su necesita un abrigo yone Munira Bravo nosotros in si Sita and it's a visa de Familia psyche in Sacagawea head start [Music] I think the the biggest messages of people out there they care and and even though some folks are struggling and can't afford those coats that we are here to help thank you to our local Portland firefighters and the broader community for for caring for always stepping up for our children and youth particularly at this time of the year and I think directors heard a little bit of a preview from me earlier in the previous discussion but we have an ambitious agenda for the coming new year and I expect us to have a productive second half of the school year thank you that was great also shout out to our PBS employees because we have had a great close drive here at in this office to support our PBS clothing center at Marshall High School so I saw a lot of those bins full with a lot of new coats and cozy warm things so thanks everybody deputy superintendent Hertz the next item on the agenda is the kafir' would you like to introduce that
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yes doing so on December 5th the Audit Committee which included includes directors Scott and paths and two community members we had a presentation of that's okay the comprehensive annual financial report and it was presented by the district's financial auditors Talbot Corps Wolle and Warwick and just to summarize and we'll hear it in here in a moment but that they've issued an unmodified opinion of our financial reports for the year in June 30th 2019 and that is a technical term for a clean audit and it's the highest level of opinion I think I want to be before you all go just I'm sorry that our CFO is not here tonight to hear us say what an excellent job the team did this year to get a clean audit if you read through the whole thing which the audit committee members get to do so you can sell that as a sales point but I I want to thank the CFO the whole financial team and the deputy superintendent for business and operations for the work they did this year that resulted in this unmodified opinion and really a excellent putting us an excellent standing going into the next fiscal year so with that you can count on having this under leadership standard number seven sound financial resource management deputy hurts first of all I'd like to I just wanted to wish everyone a happy break I'm gonna go home and do some homework yeah [Music] [Laughter] five never stops okay so what it's my pleasure to introduce our external auditors here Tim Jillette is here joining us and he you know was our audit partner for the last oh gosh several months and our Director of Finance Tracy pinderhughes really the one that does the work if you really want to know about the kafir' so i her favorite thing is to come and do public speaking in front of the board and so I she I she just is smiling and sitting up front with me and I appreciate her being here with us just so she knows how much we appreciate the work she's done but at this point I think you got the the headline from our super antenna and I couldn't be more pleased with the progress our team has made our financial team in this district in terms of where we were a couple of years ago and having consistency we have sound financial leadership that continues is has been here for more than a year continuing to a second year we you know that's that's a turning a corner for us so I'm very pleased at who we have on board and so with that I'm going to turn it over to Tim to just highlight a couple of things for us thanks thanks very much Claire Tracey loves public speaking so much of course she pushed the microphone over towards me hi I'm Tim Jillette partner with Talbott kohrville and Warwick your external independent auditors as Claire mentioned I did meet with the audit committee a week or two ago and had a chance to go through the audit report in as much detail as they could stand but they asked me to go through each and every page of the 200 pages of your capper one at a time it kind of in keeping with the meeting so far tonight okay I'm kidding about that but but super superintendent and an counselor broom Edwards have already kind of stolen my thunder because the headline is it is a clean audit report an unmodified opinion the best the best thing you can get from your auditor so that's the report on the financial statements that they fairly present the position of the district there are a couple of other reports included in here a report to the state of Oregon on Oregon minimum standards and there's also a single audit the single audit report is the one the federal government requires you to have because you expend over a certain level of federal grant dollars and that's the one we're not that many years ago there were a number of findings and this year there are no
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findings so that's a wonderful thing and a tribute to to Claire and Cynthia who's not here and Tracy and and Sheryl and the rest of the accounting and finance team doing good work again so thanks very much for having me and I'm happy to answer any questions anybody has I should note that the Committee recommends that the full board accept the audit it was done so well yes that's was that emotion it wasn't emotion I was just noting because I forgot to say it earlier but that was the action of the committee to make their recommend that the board accept the someone all right director more some discussion on our clean on it brief no I just wanted to thank the honor for the presentation I was at the Audit Committee earlier my background is in public finance and I spent a number of years as a budget director for a city and even though I'm not a CPA I have spent a lot of time with kafirs and this is truly a it's a really good result that I think that sometimes it gets lost a little bit in in the larger narrative around just governments in general local governments in general particularly school districts but we manage our resources really well we follow all the rules we apply all the Gaspee standards and that's something that we should really be proud of so congratulations to deputy superintendent Hertz and her team and thank you for your work just just a couple so thank you to everybody and I think it was it was relatively recently that the kafir' was not clean and and we've now had two years in a row with a brand new finance team and and I think it shows so I wanna I'm repeating what everybody else has said but thank you for all the work I know there was a lot of it's taken quite a lot of very concerted efforts to address the issues that were present in the past and and I think another clean were audit is a testament to all the effort that's gone into it I wanted to I wanted to ask a couple of things that are actually not specific to the kafir I wanted to ask a couple of things about the revenue this is on page 23 of the report and these are probably less questions and more me making a point so under revenues we have to - we have a chart and we have a bar chart in a pie chart and the the bar charts I just want to make sure I'm I'm getting this right so in between 2018 and 2019 the state school fund the revenue we got from the state school fund actually decreased by fourteen point three million I think that's worth noting and am I correct in assuming that that is because the state did not actually apply the the appropriate now I've lost the terminology maintenance of effort it's not the right term no it's the current service level that that they used a formula to determine the current service level that actually did not reflect comprehensive and actual costs to districts historically that has been true that it usually our current service level roll-ups do not keep up with all of the revenues and that was the case for 2019 right I think also that number there is a
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reflection of our changing student demographics right well it's all there's a calm there's many factors but there's also because we're paid on the number and types of students that we have and our property tax collections have gone up as well that does mean that we receive a total state school fund based on those two items added together yeah so it may be more the state equity model because you have to look at the orange much the orange minus the local option plus the gray is what we get from the state basically and if our property tax education property taxes are going up substantially more than the state average then the backfill from the income tax for us will be proportionately less so which means that there's a net outflow of money from from the metropolitan from this district in the metropolitan area to the state probably gotten correct okay just making a point here and that in the in the the pie charts the property and Local Option taxes makes up 56 percent of our revenues as compared to 26 percent from the state school fund so thank you vote errs for passing the local option levy and there's a reason why we were so so anxious because this is a very big item for the PPS budget and then I had an actual question on page 27 it's looking ahead to next year and it mentions the possibility of a kicker and I believe the kicker is gonna kick is that correct that's correct okay what kind of what impact can you speculate what kind of impact that's gonna have on on PBS revenue and the state school fund in general so the kicker doesn't change the amount from the state school fund what it does is it's returning money that was collected above and beyond what was originally appropriated at the state level the original budget for the state right so what what it does is in in our state because we rely on fewer types of taxes when we have a upturn in the economy we end up giving money back when we have a downturn in the economy we end up not having enough because we don't have all the types of taxes that many other states have and so that then we can have a boom and bust in terms of how we support our schools it's not so the kicker adds to that component so overall it's an important to note that when times are good we're giving resources back which is what is in our Constitution to do that and however when we have a future recession which the state tends to have we we don't always have the resources we need to continue on with k-12 education right so it's it's not the health the probably the healthiest way of operating financially which is why the board in its infinite wisdom a few years ago passed a resolution around the contingencies around the reserves so so we now have I think six point four percent of our budget is now in reserves and we we have pledged to have reserve level between five and ten percent moving toward ten percent in order to provide a with sufficient funds to maintain some level of stability even in the event of the inevitable economic downturn in recession so we have targeted 2025 to be at 10% our that is our current goal in working between now and then to get right here hoping that we don't get a recession in between anyways correct okay next year for the first time we'll
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have somewhat of a third leg to the stool start any further comment down payment as you would say it's gonna be a small leg but it you know I'll take it any further comments or questions about the comprehensive annual financial report I'll just chime in that it is remarkable for an organization of this complexity to have a clean report even if the vast majority of the functions of the house are in order there are often a few loose ends and to have a completely clean on it like that is great so thank you again for your diligence and pulling all this together it's it's a delight to have a high functioning Finance team and the board will now consider resolution six zero one nine acceptance of the comprehensive annual financial report all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any abstentions resolution passes by a vote of seven to zero with student representative lateral absent thank you all thank you thank you very much all right we will now move on to item number 7 the amendment to the Roosevelt phase 4 plan superintendent Guerra would you like to introduce this item I don't want to rob the opportunity of our chief operating officer to come down here and introduce a star-studded panel to speak to this topic thank you for the very many of you who've remained engaged on this important plane Mr Danielle thank you good evening directors and superintendents in your packets tonight you have a staff port and staff recommendation and a resolution on the item of the Roosevelt phase four and with me tonight I have principal Roosevelt principal Katie Parman dr. orihime oh and osm director marina Cresswell they're going to come up here they're going to give a brief presentation about the materials that are in your packet and we are here to answer any questions that you may have so if I may I will invite everyone down welcome thank you good evening directors my name is Aurora hee Mel and I am the senior director of college and career readiness and I'm gonna start the presentation just with a little explanation of why we're here tonight and what we're gonna be talking about and so as most of you know Roosevelt High School under the 2012 bond was rebuilt and in 2016 a resolution was made 52-42 to add an additional 10,000 square foot to the building the original resolution cited that the bottom floor would be made up of manufacturing CTE aviation CTE and that the second floor would be a district-wide makerspace hub and that movement to complete that resolution was put on hold in 2018 when there is a large turnover in central office and also as a pause as we went through the visioning process made sure we had a college and career readiness CTE plan in action as our STEM team also came together and so the next step in the process is that we as a district came to the Roosevelt community to hear from the community if those items that were written into the original resolution we're still viable and wanted by the community because as we know programming and situations change in schools over time and so what we found was that there was desire from the community to to keep this the spirit of resolution which is to add additional
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hands-on opportunities for students to have rigorous stem opportunities and project-based learning setting but there are different lens so I'm gonna let principal Parman talk a little bit about the current needs and desires of the school in the community which will give some background to the proposal that we'll be making this evening hi thanks um so I became principal July 1st but I was actually a teacher at Roosevelt in 2013 through 15 when we were going through the process of which of this building look like and so it's been really great to get back onto campus and just see the reality of the building and in that short time a lot has shifted and changed so we welcome 1,200 students into our building every single day which is great because when I was a teacher there we were really excited to break 900 so we are growing very quickly much quicker I think the district folks and I think folks in the community thought was going to happen we also have the need for a space that's flexible with a movable wall or something because we offer a 15 credit dual credit class through Portland State University called senior inquiry and it has 50 students to high school teachers 1 to 2 PSU faculty that meet what they'd like to do is meet as a whole group every single day and right now we're only able to have them meet as a whole group one time a week because we don't have a space large enough for them to meet on a regular basis so that's a need that was there in 2012 but we didn't really figure out a way to address it so that's something that our students and our community are saying we need to figure out a solution for in this remodel and then the great thing is we've built some different CTE programs specifically construction where we we turn away 50 to 80 students every single year because we just don't have the room in the small space we use for our construction CTE program and so the community folks at Roosevelt are super excited to be able to offer a commercial construction CTE program which would be the only commercial CTE construction program in the city which would take welding and wood construction so we could have introduction to welding classes intro to construction classes and then students would figure out how to put that all together so that they could walk out with some experience in commercial construction which I don't know about you all that I've noticed there's a lot of commercial construction going up in Portland right now so those are a couple of things that that as a community I've heard over and over again from students from teachers from community members so I'm gonna turn it over to Aurora to talk more about what they decided so when we heard these needs of the the current community the the desire to increase and improve the commercial construction program additional classroom spaces to meet the larger enrollment needs some flexible spaces for the senior inquiry as well as large spaces for students to be able to do hands-on inquiry project-based learning we brought to the community in November to possible options so you'll see those in both in our staff report as well as in the beginning of this presentation or the two options that we brought to the community and then based on the feedback that we received through those community meetings in November we we did a few slight alterations to the options to come up with our recommendation that we're proposing tonight to you that that we believe is a great way to meet all of the needs of the students the staff and the community desires for the students at Roosevelt so Marie knew is going to walk us through the the recommendation to start by showing you the existing floor plan and where the proposed addition would go you can see that in your packets on page three but we have also outlined where the existing and CTE programs are this is helpful because we are looking to make some changes within the existing space as well as adding the 10,000 square feet so you can see the planned addition is on the north end there next to the theater space and some classrooms that would be a two-story addition it is not attached at the
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second-story I'm actually going to go ahead and take you directly to the staff recommendation since you do have the scenarios that we proposed to the community in your packet already and as I noted it's just a test [Laughter] how quickly can you read hopefully his pictures and it was a quick read staff recommendation on the ground floor so what I'd like to note is the proposed addition at the north end we are looking to move the construction season program into that ground floor entirely we will be moving it from a space in the existing building and we will convert that existing building space to a new makerspace that will more than double the size of the Roosevelt makerspace the existing makerspace will be converted to a science lab that is a great location for a science lab because it is in the same core area it's the rest of the science labs for Roosevelt in addition to those changes to the space we are also looking to add an operable partition at the two classrooms just north of the new makerspace that will provide us with a potential senior inquiry space it also provides us with some options for expanding makerspace to the north and as part of that will be look to add an interior window and door between that new makerspace and the classrooms to the north on the upper floor of the addition we will be putting in floor four classrooms between to those classrooms we'll add an operable partition there as well again flexibility for potential senior inquiry space but it also provides us some flexibility to potentially use that as a science lab if that is how principal Perrin wishes to manage her operations that essentially summarizes the changes that we were looking to make to the space and we are available to answer questions Jen's I just want to thank you all for the hard work you've done and consistent engagement with the community and I know there's lots of different you've taken that community engagement and synthesized it into a plan that will work for the existing staff and students so thank you for all of the time and dedication that you've put into this it's very apparent in the complexity and level of care that was in the report you included in our packet even if we just got 2/3 up marina no just sad I mean I think what you've arrived at or what we've all arrived at is a plan that addresses the need to add more CTE space and addresses a need for more classroom space and flexible classroom space to attend to the enrollment growth right now so it solves our long term and our short term objectives in my view yeah I wanna I want to thank you for for hanging in there I also want to thank the Roosevelt community because this has been an unfulfilled promise for quite a long time and and I know it's been a rough road and and I want to thank and you know who you are I want to thank the community members and the parents and the teachers and the new principal but as you know this has been going on for a good long time and and I really do think we would not be here today if not for the the constant engagements of people making us remember that this was an unfulfilled promise and and I want to thank the staff for listening and this seems to me to be a a really elegant solution to a number of problems it is it's going to provide Roosevelt students with some opportunities that they've never had it's going to redress some major inequities in opportunities especially for the construction program
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it's going to it's going to accommodate the increased enrollments which is a great problem to have but but we do have an in a fairly urgent need coming up and and I think it's I mean it's it's elegant your your repurposing space in a way that I think actually is much better than the original design and and I think it's a testament to the the people that this administration has brought on to to kind of Shepherd this CTE district-wide program out you know there there was not a lot of in the original design process for roosevelt's we didn't have a lot of internal capacity to really think through the issues related to CTE and I think it showed in the design and and now we're now we're making some decisions that that I think really are going to last for the long term that being said I'm just gonna say out loud that it is my hope and expectation that Roosevelt will continue to grow and this will resolve some of the some of the looming issues of space shortages for the growing enrollment but I think we're going to have to actually follow through on the original plan for another extension to the original remodeled building in order to bring the capacity of Roosevelt up to the 1700 students that is that is the norm for all of the other high schools at this point and it's probably going to be a little while before that can actually happen but I if we do have continued growth in that neighborhood and I think we will I think it's something that the board is going to have to think about as we look ahead to the next bond package because I think the need is going to be sooner rather than later anyway thank you all for all the work that went into this I think it's I think it's a good solution I think it's a great solution and and thank you all so what well said director more thanks to the staff and the Roosevelt community for the persistence I want to call out one more group because two and a half years ago when I was going to run for the board then the person in my seat at the time Tom curler said well if you get on the board you better stick with that Roosevelt plan and I know that I want to just call out that the board members realized that there was an equity issue at play and really persisted and I think they saw that they put a stake in the ground that the community could sort of hold on to when there was a lot of different things happening at the district when you know what was happening CTE at Roosevelt was not the most important thing or the focal point of what was happening in the district but the community and really the the board putting the stake in the ground at the time and I guarantee you that Tom curler is not watching the board meeting tonight I can guarantee you but I just want to call out the board members at the time of doing that and I'm sad that looks like Steve fuel may be missing one of the few meetings he's missed he wasn't here earlier but the board members were around the time there at the time I want to just call them out as well and again for the persistence of the Roosevelt community to get this so well done staff of putting something together that I think matches the vision that people had and I want to say I appreciate that very much Julia and part of that board persistence was budget earmark that we never let go of in the 2012 bond budget and this project is coming in within that scope that's been set aside so that's also really gratifying so good work there and now our next step is to go out and build our partnerships with our manufacturers and our construction contractors so that we have a really great launchpad for our kids in those CTE courses in those professions that's really exciting because we know they we
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know they need the workers and they'll be hungry for all those skilled people coming out of Roosevelt the other comment Thank You director more for oops yeah again thanks all the way around I think the perhaps the lingering worry is is this the right layout of space to do all the things that's you need to do that our students need to do and learn as part of makerspace stem I don't care what you call it those activities so I think it would be fruitful to have return visits just say yeah here's what's actually happening in that space once it's constructed and that's then we might have another conversation hopefully that's that's a thumbs up all around yeah this is this is what we had in mind this is working it yeah I think that's my only comment to move this item resolution number six zero one eight authorizing amendment of resolution five - yep resolution authorizing amendment of resolution number five - four - regarding Roosevelt a phase board do I have a motion so director de Paz moves and director Lowry seconds the motion to adopt resolution six zero one eight I heard a chorus there it was hard to discern miss Bradshaw is there any public comment in resolution 6 zero one eight yes we have sheamus linskey and Donna Cohen so hello I'm Donna Cohen and I'm here representing myself and the six other stalwart advocates who've been working on this for six years and counting Joe perky Paul Anthony David Crandall Dennis Phillips and Mike about and over the last couple of weeks various configurations of us and of the deputy superintendents craig and claire and also Aurora and Cady have been meeting very assiduously and I appreciate that a lot of time has been put into the efforts in these meetings and a lot of dialogue and I'm sorry the wrong number here for the resolution so excuse that on the thing so as you know the goal of the stem advocates has been to provide Roosevelt with an equitable and adequate stem work space and you may recall from the last time I was here that the plan I showed you actually looks somewhat similar to what you just saw we had hoped to that the vacated CTE place would become the home for the project-based STEM program and it's moving we're moving in in that direction which is really wonderful and this would be a space that would be a stem course location with a certified teacher experienced in many technologies and the approach request would add to the overall school classroom capacity being used in that way our discussion discussions also included ways to expand the interest in stem courses among the student body as well as future increases based upon an increased enrollment that we expect to see to include and this would be looking ahead to the future at the point where we do have a bond that gets us another addition at the time to then look toward taking those two classrooms that are adjacent to the space we're talking about now and expanding the facility into that area and we expect to have a lot of conversations about program descriptions and equipment needs teacher qualifications space layout Scott I'm glad you mentioned that about the configuration that is it's so important especially if you have a long narrow area and for example when the CTE construction space was developed they didn't put in a dust collection system well obviously that's an egregious
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oversight so there are a lot of considerations of safety and spacing accessibility that we would like to be part of those discussions and expand and have that be part of the bond and at that point I think we really can have something that would be really that we've been hoping for so and just one other last thing I put on here there's a correction to you know in the material you were given I don't know where the barn committee got the space for Franklin but we actually we have the drawings and we were there last week and so there's some Corrections there in comparative space requirements but thank you very much and thank you for your persistent advocacy on this thank you good evening directors and superintendent Guerrero my name is Seamus Olinsky and I have a senior at Roosevelt and I have a 7th grader at George middle school and I'm the PTA president over there at George my wife's car Lenski sent you an email yesterday and I hope you read that because she's much more eloquent than I am but she had a meeting tonight so here I am I've read the memo from his Cresswell and dr. Heim all regarding recommendations for phase 4 and in it it has a brief history of the decisions that led us here and it shows you the few options they're considering and it has their recommended plan it leaves a lot out of the history though and that's what I would like to talk about you know Roosevelt was built for 1350 when all the other schools have been built and are being planned for 1700 Roosevelt was also given fewer science labs and STEM space than any of the other modernized schools and to be clear this wasn't an oversight this wasn't a mistake this was a conscious decision by the board to do this it was a vote of no-confidence in Roosevelt and the projections were there for there to be as many students as there are now and as many are as expected to be there but the Board decided to short Roosevelt and in the memo with the proposal what I also didn't see was an acknowledgment of the inequities that got us here and I don't see any plan for looking at the process that got us here and addressing those inequities you know it's been it's been a theme of tonight where is the equity lens you talk a lot about it but it needs to be put into action otherwise these these mistakes are gonna happen again and again so you know the plan will give us a little more stem space and it'll increase our capacity to 1,500 but the problem is we're gonna be at 1600 in three years so I you know I don't care if we go with the original plan of stem and CTE or plan a or plan B I actually trust principal Parmen and the community's given you a lot of input as to as to how it should be configured my concern is that when the project is done in nearly two years we're still not going to be at a place where we need to be so you know this is a very short-term solution that if it were built today would solve the issues we're facing right now but it'll immediately be out of date as soon as it's done in two years so look at the medium term and the long term and and and make a real decision to address these things to be clear we do need this now but you know I I'm just sad you you've let these kids down and it's the most underserved school in the entire district and you gave them the least so these inequities just continues so please do better thank you very much [Applause] all right I think we've had our board discussion on this item so the board will now vote on resolution six zero one eight all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions seeing none direct I see a raised eyebrow from director Bailey I'm gonna say the motion passes a vote of seven to zero I actually had a short comment to add to the discussion which it's important to remember that Benson which city MI and Roosevelt common spaces were built to 1700 and that was
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something director Moore had a a hand in back in 2013 I am assuming that we still do yeah that was when the district staff came back to those of us in the community and said who building high schools to 1500 isn't going to work we need to go to 1700 and we said what about Roosevelt and they were saying well no Roosevelt's fine we said in Indian Union yeah and they wisely agreed with us I still think there probably should have been some betting around why is there a shortage of science lab space I don't get the whole process back then was really messed up in all sorts of ways so just wanted to say that and still today as this district continues to work on breaking down silos in how we do things as we're approaching another bond we haven't worked in our enrollment projections and I think that's really important to do as we figure out where we're going particularly for the next bond particularly if it's a longer bond this is this is like if we do an 8-year bond this is our shot we better not leave anything out or underestimate what our needs are so we really need to bring those two pieces together in our planning process to be clear though you're excited about this positive step forward right so they were there god yes I mean I can tell right through the pass I just have a question about how our projections are done if we are working with a vendor that does that forecasting I know but are we actually hiring them and we I'm the new girl so I'm just asking like who's our vendor we have an ongoing read excuse me we have an ongoing relationship with the PSU Center for demographics research population research and they have historically been pretty accurate so we continue to get updates from them yeah and that's what we depend upon yeah can I just I don't think you'll hear anybody up here claim that the original process for community engagement with designing Roosevelts in 2013 was was optimal and I think we learned a lot of lessons it's unfortunate that that Roosevelt went first so they were the guinea pig and and a lot of the lessons that we learned came at the expense of Roosevelt students in the short term but I the way [Music] subsequent design processes happened benefited enormous Lee I think from the experiences of the Roosevelt DAG designing advisory group and and I think that the process for working with the community and with teachers and with students in designing the high schools and other schools has continued to improve and I I expect that that will continue to get better and better at it so inequities happened it is our job now to redress those inequities going forward and make sure that the subsequent design processes are informed by equity considerations at the forefront and and I hope I think that's what we're doing with with the 2017 schools and I expect it will continue to do it in the future um one last comment and that's that you know there's a real estate component here too so housing is being built quite readily in North Portland OR Portland purchasing and so I'm not sure who the staff contact it's
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but it might be wise of us to be mindful of where these 300 unit buildings are going in that are in the Roosevelt cluster finally I just want to say I am really excited that people were going forward yay director Bailey okay moving on thank you very much that was a long time coming next we have a report to the board on dyslexia and this was prompted really for two reasons one was as chief academic officer Luis Valentino can refer to there was a state mandate for training and professional development on dyslexia and then also we wanted to hear about the district's activities because it's critical to our board goals around improved student literacy so welcome dr. Valentino thank you good evening superintendent guerrero chair constant directors the team is here this evening to provide update on our efforts to address dyslexia in a comprehensive and sustainable way and so you've already heard from some of the team members who we would definitely like to thank that as members of the advisory have provided not only great insight but have challenged us to think more broadly more openly and more comprehensively about what we're trying to do in addressing dyslexia and the precursors to dyslexia and so on the team who will be presenting to you this evening the second phase of this will be dr. Tanya McKee who is one of the newest senior directors in the Department of humanities report in public school and Elizabeth Martin also new to the team who has been working with the advisory group to prepare for this evening but also to develop the plan of action that will take us not only through through this year but also beyond in terms of addressing the support and guidance that our schools and our classrooms will need the resources and supports that that they will need and being able to articulate what our accountabilities are going to be to ensure that all of our students receive the supports the supports that they need so I'd like to invite dr. McKee and Elizabeth Martin thank you I guess I'm gonna say goodnight it's a good evening we can go with good evening I'm kind of a early to bed early to rise with a three-year-old at home but here we are directors superintendent thank you like dr. Valentino said really to give a shout out to the parents in the community for being here until now and supporting us through this work the work that they've done before today and in supporting Elizabeth Martin in her position it's important and I just wanted to reiterate a few things as we go into this presentation in terms of an update for the board with new board members that this was co-constructed with with the community with the dyslexia parent advocacy group and it's really important as we move forward that we're working alongside our parents in our community not just with dyslexia but really reiterating what Angela said earlier about reading being a civil right and that all kids you know deserve a world-class education and we will continue to work with our community and work with experts in the field to ensure that we are closing that gap with reading so again I want to say thank you because here we said at this time and they're here with us and it's really important and as this presentation was put together Elizabeth Martin being the program administrator for dyslexia has worked closely with the parent group and really working to ensure that we have everybody understanding what dyslexia is and how we continue to support this within within our district so okay so really where we're gonna it's just a quick overview of literacy in dyslexia just to make sure again that some of this was done previous last year was my understanding and looking at Senate bill 1003
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the parent advocacy group and then also will make mention to this as we're going through but there was several handouts that should have been included in your board packet that will reference as we move forward um Thank You superintendent griot Thank You directors I have put this dyslexia priority plan in front of a lot of eyes and so it is really great to be here to put it in front of yours as Tonya mentioned this was co-constructed and I worked with our parent advocacy group as well as people all across PBS and one of the first things we want to talk about is just giving you a little bit of background background about comprehensive literacy best instruction around teaching kids to read which some of our comment tonight spoke to so it might feel a little repetitive and then going into dyslexia shortly after so first off comprehensive literacy were really looking at that same research that came out almost 20 years ago and has not changed that all kids to learn to read need these five pillars you might hear them as the big five you might hear them as the five essentials its phonological awareness or phonemic awareness which is that ability to hear and manipulate the sound structure of our language it is phonics that is that letter-sound correspondence it is fluency the ability to read at grade level at a regular rate with voice and intonation vocabulary understanding the meaning of words and how to apply those words across all content areas and comprehension this research hasn't changed we know this is what kids need so in PBS we have a comprehensive literacy system that doesn't need to have some supplementing we know that we absolutely know that and that's specific to the foundational skills and when I talk about foundational skills tonight you're gonna see it in the priority plan and that is really looking at all those pieces plus print concepts okay that's the ability to understand the order of print how to move from line to line we are going to talk about spelling grammar and those those foundational pieces come straight from our organ state standards the foundational language standards and that's what we want to ensure that all kids get explicitly taught and when kids need intervention it gets explicitly taught just in a more intensive way so this is our call to action you heard a little bit again tonight during the testimony that we have a literacy crisis it is not just here in Portland it's not just here in Oregon it is across our nation this slide was made available at the international dyslexia Association conference by a researcher out of UC San Francisco famiy co-host I have to give her credit because she said yeah use it in your presentation so here it is this is this is this is pretty big this is why we're here this is why we need to ensure that we support our students better and we should poor our teachers and understanding how to teach to our students better one thing I want to know is when readers don't reach that third grade milestone as I know you're aware just looking at your board goals it becomes more and more difficult to provide that intervention and part of that is because our teachers up the grades don't necessarily have the time in their schedule nor all the background are how to intensify and support students that becomes then pervasive and then it is harder for all kids who are struggling to access content across the board high school science high school math all those pieces are impacted when kids are reading significantly below grade level we're gonna talk about how we address that in our priority plan real quick as we move into that priority plan I do want to talk a little bit about why we're here which is around dyslexia so in your handouts you do have a definition of dyslexia from the International dyslexia Association and I just want to call it a couple of the the big pieces from that definition is that dyslexia is neurobiological in origin meaning that it can be heritable and its surface is in the phonological processor of the brain it is characterized by difficulties with accurate and fluent
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word recognition as well as poor spelling and decoding but that is unexpected when you look at the cognitive abilities of students who have dyslexia it's also unexpected when kids have had strong instruction so that's really something that we need to focus on here we need to support all kids in a preventive way to prevent this but also support our students that may just need a little bit more intensification the other handout that you have is an FAQ that we give to parents it goes at conference time to parents of kindergarten students in PPS as well as new to first grade and then it's available in our schools and that has additional questions in case you have more questions about dyslexia so the other piece to share with you tonight is the Senate bill Senate bill 1339 Arden or a first-grade that training is very explicit around foundational reading understanding and recognizing dyslexia as well as intensification for instruction the second part of the Senate bill is to ensure that we screen all kindergarten and all new to first grade students the state gives us a list of screeners that are approved dippel's is one of them so that is our screener doubles and Edel which is a Spanish version of dibbles for our 90/10 programs the second area is notification when a child shows risk in fall and winter on dibbles Reidel we screen families and we notify them and that is a family history checklist that gets sent home to those families oh I want to point out that this is not testing for dyslexia this is screening for potential reading difficulties so that is a big big difference okay a little bit just briefly about comprehensive literacy the legislation around dyslexia the screening notification a big part of putting together the dyslexia priority plan was working with different departments not just the office of teaching and learning are just humanities and then working alongside alongside family and in communities and so at this time I'm going to bring up Jessica Colby who you know we're limited in the number of people that can have public comment but it was it was important to and to the advocacy group to allow Jessica Colby to be a part of our presentation as it was co-constructed with the parents you may know or you know anyway I'm a parent of a Lincoln senior and a member of the PBS parent dyslexia advocacy group and I'm not going anywhere by the way the kid is graduating I'm not just you know I want to start by thanking both Tanya and Elizabeth to have having for bringing us into the presentation and for supporting our efforts to testify tonight and to bring me into this well as part of dyslexia I also want to thank you guys and Superintendent and all the work you're doing and all the staff who have worked so hard to bring these life-changing literacy changes and supports to PBS students we appreciate the collaborative approach via Pia yeah PBS is committed to and we are in return equally committed to this relationship and the continuing work that will be necessary to fully realize a comprehensive and equitable dyslexia support system um that PBS has a dyslexia coordinator he and that she has a budget he is huge not many schools in the nation have been willing to confront dyslexia head-on and we hope that PBS can become a model for schools across the country to look to for their own students the current five-year plan is a good start we've got a lot of know that we like the intentionality and the commitment to students is clear as is the effort that has gone into such a monumental task some of the springs we see are the commitment to consistent and ongoing training for PBS staff from reading specialists to parent educators
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to admin everybody's getting educated and I love that expanding to succeed dyslexia supports and training for middle schools and high schools that's a really great start pushing into the middle schools and high schools I mean the foundation is key but there will always be kids who need the supports and there will be kids who come in from out of district who need those supports access to audio books and instructional support lists it sounds really no-brainer but it's awesome that it is actually happening and then my very favorite things that I was told tonight is that we're the PBS is now going to be doing ASL American Sign Language online through virtual scholars yay thank you for letting you know that so yes so this plan is strong but we know there is more that needs to be addressed as complex as this task is and somehow within the constraints of budget and staff hours and everything else we want even more we want more I know we're eating that way so we want all of our struggling students to have one-on-one instruction as soon as possible at the lowest levels and whatever level they're at without needing a sped designation without having to fight for it or without having to go out into the community to get the diagnosis and then pay for the SLP or whomever at several thousand dollars by the end of whatever you're doing because so many kids cannot do that and while virtual scholars the American Sign Language via virtual scholars is fantastic it can't replace direct instruction and every high school in Portland needs American Sign Language direct instruction classes for the basic equity of giving these kids the world language that they can embrace my kid loves it she is every every college she's looked at has had to have ASL so okay and then yeah the consistent and continuing budget to support all of this work so I want to thank again everybody for supporting the work we do as advocates and for having me here at the podium and I would like to thank admin and staff for being so supportive in this collaboration with when many districts would choose not to be it is clear we are all here to Stanford thank you so thanks thanks Jessica for that um and and we agree there is some we're gonna share the priority plan where we're what happened last year in terms of Year Zero and what we're planning for moving forward so in in Year Zero having a kindergarten task force kindergarten professional learning foundational skilled professional learning K 5 K 5 foundational skills GBC and dyslexia advisory training so last year being the first year or the zero plan year was the start of of this work and Elizabeth will move on to where we're at for this year okay this year um a lot has already happened so first off we just convene the first and second grade foundations task force these are ten teachers across PBS that have a desire around teaching foundational skills they've embraced the gbc's that were created two years ago around foundational standards and language standards some of them have orton-gillingham training some of them are dyslexia advisors in their buildings and they will come together and look at practices across PBS look at those GBC documents identifying any gaps they may see and really take those out of more of a draft phase and put it into more of an implementation phase the other piece that they will be doing is designing professional learning for all first and second grade teachers we have sub salats for all 150 or so at each grade level to push them into those trainings where they learn about what does foundational skills and language skills instruction look like in the first and second grade classroom so that 30 to 45 minute block of time how are we teaching that code-based instruction and giving kids all those pieces we know research says they need
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this follows the kindergarten that she mentioned earlier in this exact same format and it was some of the best feedback I've ever received in PBS for training so we're hoping it continues to be very positive for our teachers we will be looking at the Foundation's resource advisory committee I am a member of that committee where a team of teachers and administrators are looking at some supplemental programs to support the instruction of foundational skills and because I have dyslexia advisor training orton-gillingham training was a reading specialist I'm really excited to bring that lens to that committee work you meant or this was mentioned earlier but we have trained several teachers and PBS on orton-gillingham they are getting the associate level training they wrapped up about 60 hours of classroom training and are now moving into a practicum where they have direct support from a trainer while they are teaching kids in this practicum so that is going on this year they also have a PLC or they come together as a professional learning community to just really problem-solve any things that are coming up and support each other as they are learning this new technique I did some dyslexia overview sessions really again to build that awareness and understanding so I came to leadership in August and did a session superintendent Guerrero joined us which was really exciting and I did another one at the educational assistant fair that we had in August and I often go into buildings or support teachers overviewing you know what is the legislation what is dyslexia and how can we support kids just last week I was with a 3rd grade teacher really looking at the instructions she's designed for two kids in her class that have dyslexia really exciting we have our library Tosa working on accessibility improvements for audiobooks we are gonna pilot overdrive in two of our high schools and one of our middle schools this year to see how that can support our students across the board especially in middle and high school and then a very exciting thing that is going to start in January is I gave you that FAQ that's the one we hand out to parents it's a two pager it's a little dry I'm gonna bring a committee of parents as well as PPS folks in to really modify that and turn it into a really nice brochure for our families and then a big exciting thing is I'm gonna work with Lorraine Allen in special ed and we really want to revise our PPS dyslexia page on our PPS site to turn it into more of a handbook and that is just very exciting because then we'll have that cross connection between me living in humanities more general ed and Lorraine living in special it so that's this year so going into next year and beyond and again this priority plan got in front of printables Center offers office administrators teachers parent advocates as many people that would give me about 10 minutes to go through it and so we really want to continue that professional learning for foundational skills of course but we really want to grow this to support 3rd through 5th grade teachers to support 6th through 12th grade ela teachers English language arts teachers and eventually our 612 all content teachers reading again is across the board it is an access issue if kids are reading well below grade level how do we provide that access better how do we train our teachers on the ways they can provide support within a classroom and scaffold so kids have that access and that continued support across their day the other thing we really are trying to advocate as a humanities is for additional FTE for reading specialists we have a handful of reading specialists across BPF I was one and was cut and that was the second time I had been cut in only five years and so that happens we need more FTE we need to provide people in buildings that know how to provide Tier three support tickets and related to that I really want to develop this reading specialist cadre which is pulling in those specialists and looking at our model what is our model and PPS how do we support kids who have Tier three needs
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and let's get them more training with orton-gillingham so in thinking about our graduate portrait I think it's really important for us to think about the things in this priority plan and how it connects there so educator essentials we really need to give our teachers as much content and knowledge as they can get to really know how to intervene and prevent reading difficulties when thinking about the Graduate portrait we're talking about giving kids core knowledge and reading because we know how important that is when we look at our system shifts that's where we're really looking at advocating for more reading specialists advocating for more training really shifting our overall support at Tier one tier two and Tier three and just with that last piece of the system shift is that all teachers are language teachers and so we have to do something differently we have to ensure that we are really pushing that with all of our teachers that it's just not an issue in k2 and then students get to the older grades and we have teachers saying we need some help here so really that system shift is saying we're all language teachers and for the district to move forward and train but not just an initial professional development a week-long training but what is that ongoing coaching and support which actually goes with our additional ask of FTE in terms of reading specialist thank you so working with our community and family I cannot thank them enough just thank you again last year I had a chance to meet a lot of the folks behind and actually some something even before that and we planned an evening as you heard about earlier going into this year and beyond it's really partnering across the board so this five-year priority plan the handbook the brochure and then supporting site based literacy advocacy groups we have schools that are coming together and thinking about you know what are the literacy practices at our schools how can we support you know from that that school-based site based PTA level so supporting that as well and then I just want to end I know it's really late we sent 40 people to University of Portland for the statewide and service day on October 11th to learn about dyslexia that was a joint event with decoding dyslexia in University of Portland and then thanks to our superintendent and Tanya our humanities senior director we sent 26 people from PPS to the annual ID a conference and that international dyslexia Association conference which was held here in Portland and this included teachers and included administrators and it included parents so it was really exciting to have those two events back-to-back October and November and I thank you all for attending and advocating and getting people there so so the other thing I want to add with the community event piece is that dyslexia isn't just about having an event and bringing people together that is part of it but it's what are we doing to support our struggling readers and our students with dyslexic like symptoms right now and so I just I want to bring that up you know we end with thinking about that as I'm sitting here oh we ended we wanted to bring attention to the fact that we're supporting this work and it's about events but I want to get past that it's not just events this you know we do have a literacy crisis and we are working collaboratively with our parents and our community and again both of us being new and our roles and so work is happening and that was really the purpose of tonight was to ensure that with new school board members that everybody is aware of the work that is happening and so that with our additional budget asks for next year that you're aware of the work that that we're beginning and the support that we're going to need we have any board discussion I just wanna make a comment so this presentation really makes me feel hopeful so I 20 years ago had a child a student who really struggled but there wasn't any of these supports in place and it's a very lonely lonely journey if you're a parent without the structural supports within the schools so I this is great I've really applaud you and all the advocates because they'll make a huge difference
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to our students and there's no there's no short journey but having a whole community behind you it makes a huge difference thank you you know I also want to say that it's really meaningful for us because it helps us see a through-line to all of this governance and goal-setting work that we've been doing with a particular focus on literacy and on the appalling rates that we see now and so to be able to have for us as non educators to have a deeper understanding of the strategies and and to your point you know this is not dyslexia screening this is reading what did you how did you refer to it exactly Oh instead of evaluating it's really screening getting difficult yes reading for reading difficulties for for all children it's so meaningful because the these are the strategies that were are going to make a difference in accelerating growth fir for all of our kids and also especially your point about you know every teacher is a reading teacher at every level and everybody needs to have the skills it's not just about get them there and second grade and then they're all golden for the rest of their life so this is just really foundational work and I'm glad we took the time to do this I want to echo what director bream Edwards said I have a son that has struggled also his whole academic career has amazing socio-emotional skills and so I feel your pain it's hard to be the mom that's like going to work and your kids struggling also have a million questions more questions and we have time tonight so I'm wondering if I could follow up with someone I have a million questions like what's on the family checklist history why doesn't every teacher get this orton-gillingham I and it's pronounced that orton-gillingham training what are the who makes up the the groups of kids that are dyslexic or identified as such and who are we missing so and I've got ten more besides that behind that but rather than going to tonight so late I would love to have a conversation just for my own edification absolutely please follow up yeah we burn people and and to your point you know you're you are pointing out something that's really important so not all kids get flagged not all kids get identified and sometimes it's really late and that is why we're really trying to look at this k12 all teachers all subject areas because this is what the work is when kids have a reading difficulty we got to do something about it whether or not we have that identification or not and so that that's what we're trying to hit so I am happy to meet with you Tanya and I parent advocates so let's let's be sure to follow up yeah I'd also be curious about like the universe of care providers like this functional neurologists that we've been seeing for years on end and still see so it I just would love to get some question there are some answers to the questions I have offline and I think also that it really brings light to what Angela spoke about earlier in the testimony about Oregon Oregon reads and the the focus that we must have on on professional development because again you know many times you know it's later on right students are struggling and so we have to do a better job with our Tier one core instruction but it's not just about materials it's about making sure we heard that from another person dying about testimony about having a reading endorsement but not having the professional development and the learning around the science of reading and so that's not going away we're gonna continue to have that conversation it was mentioned about Mississippi Alabama is there they have decided that all pre-k through three teachers across the state of Alabama who received the science of reading and so this is beginning to make some or to have some momentum so really excited that you allowed us to present and allowed the community to be here because it's really important work moving forward just one thing and I can get a follow up later or maybe be good to get the full board sent something to us but not to cover right now but um it would be good to understand how English language learners fit into this plan and didn't appear that it was in that plan so if you could send something to us sure to share that that would be helpful Thanks yeah I have a couple questions so I'm looking at the at the slide I think it's one right before this connecting it
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to the PBS vision under system shifts and I think I think there's an additional system shift that that PBS has needed to do and and I think we're finally starting to do it and that is kind of using a collaborative model not just with in you know among district staff but also between the district and community members and students and so we've had two items on the agenda tonight where advocacy from community members has been really critical in changing the way we do business and it's it's really exciting to hear this kind of love fest we don't hear that often that the advocates are saying that you've been collaborative and and you're saying you know back at you I mean this is something the community Marant the parent community in this district has always been an untapped resource and and it's just really exciting to see that we're we're beginning to take advantage of the resources the other question I have is sort of in the spirit of collaboration I'm I'm curious about what's happening at the university level so are we really well I mean I'm hoping I can get excited but it's it's curious to me that teachers are not coming out of teacher education programs with these skills already so so what's the deal yeah I don't know exactly but in all transparency the last two years I was assistant professor at Portland State University and and so I have reached out to several universities I have several connections across Oregon being part of what we call the Oregon professional education administrators association and beginning to have these conversations because that has come up as well is what are we doing and so I've already started those conversations with the Dean of you know the Graduate School of Education and Marvin Lynn about help us out here right so if we're looking at training all of our teachers what is the universe what are the universe he's doing every to Concordia University as well I make him just be real sometimes in higher ed we don't move as fast as we would like to move so it's additional work that we could use support on but we have been making those initial contacts and isn't that part of the legislation that there was there was an at least an expectation it's not a requirement my understanding yeah and I think got some time to wait because it so I just want to reassure the directors that myself and my neighboring superintendents have brought up the importance of foundational literacy and effective reading instruction being a core part of all of our College of Ed syllabi and we've been meeting regularly as a collaborative with our College of Ed Dean's including just this past Friday again to talk about not just our human capital needs which we talked about earlier but also as we work on that what is their program look like because it must include work in these areas as someone who was the literacy specialist for a while understand the critical need for these type of supports and understandings but will continue to keep it on the forefront in our conversations with our teacher ed programs but we've got to continue that professional learning for all of our educators here within the organization as well can I make a request so I am I was appointed to the regional educator Network that has has been charged by the state with developing regional plans for professional development for educators I would like some info from you guys about what what would help what would work what you want me to advocate for
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and the more specific the better so we need to talk this would be a great topic for the Rennes to take on and I'm gonna apologize for their rudeness of the sunglasses but my migraine is back so this is gonna help us cope for the rest of the night yeah I just get to pretend I'm a cool school board member you're not pretending yeah all right thank you I was gonna say drink you again it's really it's incredibly beneficial for us to have a window into the depth of the work so thank you Oh director Bailey yeah another thank you for to the members of the community for schooling me over the last couple of years Hollywood Library Saturday afternoon innocently walking by got pulled in yeah so uh very quickly do have numbers in terms of the screening from last year and the demographics again I mean not now but a follow up I think yeah so I'm also getting feedback right now about those processes to ensure that we're supporting our schools with that because that you know it was the first year so there's always going to be hiccups first year and I want to just ensure that that is as best as possible so I've emailed dyslexia advisors principals as well as kindergarten teachers to get their people and they're really ties in with the ëall question especially non-spanish speakers in terms of a screening tool you know any 50/50 program is still screened in dibbles so so yeah there the guidance is that you screen in the language of instruction so 'dallas use the language of instructions that's what UDL is use for our 90/10 programs because in kindergarten of course 90% of the day is in Spanish so but you know I answer a lot of questions and and when a kid does come up with concerns I always say well also screen you know if they're learning Spanish and their native English and still screen and dibbles and cross-reference both so yeah thank you all right I would like to welcome a very patient Mike Porter from Miller Nash Graham and Dunn who is going to provide us a training on Oregon ethics laws and key issues for public officials I'd like to apologize mr. Porter for the length of our meeting too so thus far and welcome and superintendent would you like to know here we go take it away Mike Porter thank you very much thank you and no need to apologize I've enjoyed it and learned a lot about a lot of the work that you're doing and it's nice to see it live instead of YouTube and I do have a couple of slides that I will use and if I just oh yeah there we go they are well boards like to take an opportunity like this when they're together somewhat of a new group to address the Oregon Ethics law in particular and the obligations of public officials public employees public board members and so this was an opportunity I think that the board looked to get an update training put it at top of mind just as a reminder this was a referendum bill back in 1974 it had some major revisions and amendments in the late 2000s 2007 2009 and so our overview today what I'm hoping to do is help you spot some of the key issues that you will see and the people are likely to see in the district help you identify them help you think through how you will think through when those issues arise it's impossible in a short period to cover all the nuances of the law there is a very good Oregon Ethics Board guide for public officials that has in-depth on a lot of these topics if you want additional follow-up and is a very good resource I always like to start with the policy of the law we will get into certain components of it but it's helpful to know what is it that the law is trying to accomplish and the Oregon Legislature provides specific statutory policy expression it's it's longer than this there are many
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subsections with these to sum up some of the key components the legislative assembly declares that service as a public official is a public trust and that as one safeguard for the trust that people require all public officials to comply with applicable provisions of this chapter of the Oregon ethics code and public officials should uphold the principles described in the Oregon ethics laws ever conscious of the public's trust and the law is floor not a ceiling and so when we see issues that maybe there's not a clear answer to that are particularly challenging a lot of times the advisors we're talking through them it is what is what is the law trying to accomplish here because if there's some ambiguity in what it is that we're looking to do or looking to accomplish then how does it further the trust how are we're being ever conscious of the public trust because that is what the law is striving to address so just as an overview topically what we'll talk about is it's the laws broken up and it can be tricky to follow when you're going straight through the statutory definitions but it's described as the code of ethics which has a significant portion that addresses use of office and so we'll talk about that a component of that is a rule about gifts and the acceptance of gifts and the fifteen or sixteen exceptions as to when is something a gift but still acceptable we won't go through all of those but some that we see arising more frequently and then we will talk about conflicts of interest which arise more often in the board context at least in my experience when they come up and what it is that board members need to be thinking about with respect to acting on potential conflicts of interest or conflicts of interest and then as we conclude there are a couple of other code of ethics provisions that I'll just put out a reminder of that don't come up as often as well as some of the just very briefly procedural and penalty provisions in the law because I think it's helpful to know what is there so starting with the use of office rule the general rule is that a public official and this includes a public official spouse may not use or attempt to use the public officials office to obtain financial gain or avoid financial detriment and so that can be a mouthful that are you getting something or not having to pay for something because of the fact that you are in the position that you are in the courts have developed a but-for test in other words it is because of your position that you obtained a benefit or avoided a detriment it's a lot easier to say than it is sometimes to apply some of the definitions in the Oregon set Oregon Ethics law are important to understanding the scope of this rule and others the rule applies to obviously the public officials anyone serving as an officer anyone who is an employee anyone who is an agent so it can apply to volunteers and it's something to keep an eye out it's it's not every volunteer but volunteers who have meaningful roles on you know significant committees like those committees that might be doing direct reports to the board volunteers can be subject to the ethics law relatives the definition of relatives we are talking about for the most part I'll mention an exception later where it's a little broader spouse parents stepparents child sibling step-sibling son-in-law or daughter of in-law of an official and remember this applies to the spouse so it keeps going and so it's also applicable to the spouse so you can see it has a pretty broad reach also reaches businesses with which the official or the relative is associated
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there are a couple of key components alternative components to that definition so it is any director officer employee or agent of any business so no matter what line of business that you are in and then publicly held corporations if it's an officer or director or stock if it's a closely held corporation of a thousand dollars a hundred thousand dollars in a publicly held corporation you can have a conflict of interest or the subject to the code of office code of ethics use of office rules if you have those interests actually I'm gonna start with some of the exceptions to the general rule so remember we're talking about using office for personal gain or avoiding financial detriment and frequently we see this come up in does this is a certain situation something that implicates that rule the use of office rule the official compensation is one comes up more with employees but if a person has something that is defined official compensation in a contract that is specific than those individuals that is not going to be a violation of the use of office rule the way this tends to be more of an employment issue and maybe a tradition over the years has been that hey as public employees in this you know in a particular with a particular employer we we all use some benefit that we get some credit card benefits some miles benefits just become as a matter of practice we consider that part of what we're paid and entities have to look out to make sure that it is official compensation it's something that's been designated a benefit as part of the compensation not something that has just over the years become part of the way there is an operating some honorariums so generally public officials may not receive honorariums so that's the first part of the rule is generally you may not but there are some that that may be received an honorarium is I think I didn't put the full definition up here but it's a payment or something of economic value given in exchange for services which custom or propriety propriety prevents the set of a price it's usually speeches or other events where you get a gift it's not something that should be pre-arranged or given first it's you gave your speech and somebody oh they have something for you and isn't that's nice that's surprised you know you knew they did it last year but maybe they're gonna do it again that was nice it wasn't pre-arranged the custom is that that it's part of the the event and that can be like a commemorative pokken something that has a fair market value of 50 dollars or less and then there's another kind of honorarium that is not precluded by the rule and that is an honorarium that it's really something that is separate so you you are in a particular field and you are given a gift and it is an honorarium and it is really related to the field and it can't be traced back to the work some way to influence the work that you're doing as a public official a couple more of the common exceptions reimbursement of expenses so certainly a lot of public officials have a lot of traveling obligations and to reimburse the expenses for those traveling obligations for example is not a violation of the rule you all have a policy specific to reimbursement of expenses 1/4 1.4 0.08 oh that describes how board members are to go about seeking approval depending whether you're in state out of state the type of travel that it is but it is permitted by the rule and of course you always want to be cognizant of any policies that you have that might reflect how a rule is enforced and then there is also the exception to the gift prohibition and you can talk yourself in circles with the way the word gift is
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used and the way it's used in the statute but basically this is where there is a gift that is from a source that you wouldn't that the source wouldn't reasonably know to have an interest in the work of the public official so if if you got a surprise that a stepchild got went to a suite at a Blazers game by somebody who had who had business before the board and there would technically potentially be a violation but the person didn't know in the role that they were in the relationship perhaps that they had with the individual they didn't they wouldn't have a reason to connect it all together maybe it's a long-standing relationship and there are regulations that have factors that that are considered when making that how long is the relationship is this something historical though they've been doing it for years and suddenly you got elected and now is it an issue or isn't and so you have to stop and pause and really sit down and evaluate the rules on those the more common examples that come up frequent flier miles credit card benefits those things that if you're generally to be safe not using district you know or not using not getting personal benefits when you're doing something on district business instead using using district offices to arrange travel that sort of thing can help avoid these types of problems volume discounts I see that more in the employment context the the classic case was a motor pool person and so they had a large volume of work with Ford and then got a discount on a personal vehicle because of the large volume of work we talked about compensation so compensation where it is not part of the official salary or people are calling it the official salary but it isn't that can be an issue and then a tricky one I think is benefits that are on the same terms and conditions as a as somebody in the private sector would get and so in other words you can't say that this is something that because of your role as a public officer or public employee that you're obtaining example that the Ethics Board has is trying that had a large volume discount with Nextel for all of its employees and it was able its employees were able to get additional discount well that discount was available whether it was trimet or a private company that was the same type of discount and so because TriMet was able to show that that wouldn't have been a violation but you really want to make sure it is the same benefit that a private employee or somebody in the private sector would be obtaining okay I want to move on to the gift prohibition this one you probably hear a lot about but we'll talk about the general rule and then some of the exceptions that are more frequently arise a public official and again it's a public official and the spouse may not accept directly or indirectly gifts or gifts worth over $50 a year in a calendar year from a single source which could have an administrative or legislative interest that is defined an interest that is distinct from the general public in something that is being decided so we might all have some in a boundary situation there might be the general public might have an interest but it's something that would be distinct from what everybody general public has common exceptions that we see our campaign contributions that is an exception to the gift rule a fortunate amendment that was made after to fix a problem was relatives of members of the household may give gifts because for a short period of time there was a question as to whether or not if you had a member of your household and you had a holiday gift exchange that you you could have violated the Oregon ethics code that that was fixed unsolicited token or award of less than $25 so this is maybe a giveaway at a
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conference you know the less than $25 is a pretty low amount and when you pick that that's something up and you go what wow that's really that's really nice and you think I could re-gift this and you know it'd be alright maybe you might be approaching thinking what's the reasonable fair market value of this is it something I should really be taking subscription related to performance of official duties that's actually a helpful one it's probably more helpful for employees like teachers for example who are able to not violate the gift rule if they are given a subscription admission or food for an official or a member of a household when representing a public body and so this is going out as you know there's a large dinner a community dinner and going in your role as a public official there's not a lot of bright lines in this one of the things that I think about as many of the dinners I go to they say if you're a public official stand up well you're there you're representing the entity when you're doing that continuing education discounts so those are available for a lot of public officials so for example lawyers who have continuing education sometimes there will be a discount entertainment that is incidental to the main purpose of an event golf outing not incident optional mini mini golf course that is over at the side of a fundraiser incidental the examples the OEC uses also are things like ribbon-cutting ceremonies throwing out a pitch at a sporting event and then there is a first school to uniquely expenses for public school employees accompanying students on an educational trip so that comes up although your board members not employees but knowing that that is there within the context of schools something to be known one more main topic and that is conflicts of interest and that guides what to do when you have a potential action or decision that could be or would be to your private pecuniary benefit or to a person or an associated business and so there are some very limited exceptions concerning I think not present here where there's some requirement that you're part of a particular business to make a decision on something or where it affects individuals many individuals in the class in the same way so I'll use the boundary example again that may be something where there would be an exception people are residents of the district it it's affecting many people an actual conflict would result in the private pecuniary benefit there is a declaration required in other words I declare I am informing and stating publicly that there is a conflict of interest and if it is a potential conflict of interest you may participate that is optional and if a actual conflict of interest then you need to Rick you recuse yourself from participating and of course these are situations where if there's any question and you have the option it's something you know you get to decide on your own if you're a board member but certainly the perception if there's a potential conflict of interest it can be problematic and so it's something to can consider the option just because it's an option doesn't mean you should participate or I believe if you're a legislator you're required to vote but you have to state the conflict and you're saying this is based on our policy that if you have an actual conflict that you there is a rule of necessity where so if you have it even if you have an actual conflict there's a rule of necessity so you your vote is needed for a quorum or your vote is needed for to break a tie then there can be a vote is permitted for an actual conflict interestingly you are I probably want to go double-check it but not permitted to participate if you have an actual conflict of interest but you
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are permitted to vote which seems in congruous to me but my recollection of the rule sitting here is that that is what it is and that it so you couldn't participate that you which is troubling but you could but then you you were close even though you have an actual conflict of well yeah only if an assessee I think is different under different rules for them then we would be yes the legislators have different rules but public but any public body does have a yes my understanding would only apply like so some three-person board so it would apply you know to a seven member board it would apply only if we needed a quorum or there was a tie did not sweep that's correct otherwise you you're not allowed to vote otherwise you're not allowed to vote if you have an actual conflict and that's in the statute I'd have to look into it I would I believe that is in the statute as opposed to the regulations but it's also something I'd probably go look out myself because I'm remembering this coming up somewhere sometime ago when when we discussed it no I mean it's interesting because we have so director Bailey's wife is an employee of PBS and so historically he has declared that conflict but also voted even when it wasn't a necessity on our p80 contract so this understanding is different than what our understanding has been before when we went to OS v a training and ER I think your director Scott I think you were in this training with me but they said that in the case of like the p80 contract it's okay because it's such a large body it's not unique to director Bailey's spouse but because it is a you know if we were a tiny district of ten people then there could be a conflict but because it's 2700 teachers it's not considered it's like a common interest like the boundary example in fact that was a nice segue into the next topic which is the nepotism topic which has a prohibition but the prohibition would be not to vote on a specific employee so you can't take action to employee promote discharge and in fact if you if you look at the language of the statute it's consistent with what we were just talking about in other words it's an individual situation so if we took a if there was an individual promotion decision that was coming up I think you would want to look at that I think it's different than that p80 contract so these are some of the other code of ethics provisions there is you should not be soliciting or receiving employment in return for action that you take hopefully that one doesn't need to be written written out and then also misuse of confidential information so board members are privy to a variety of confidential pieces of information and that is for personal gain it is not personal pecuniary gain it is personal gain which is a bit ambiguous but if there is information obviously there's confidential information like confidential information of students that is protected by law but also there can be confidential information of the district at various times before it's released publicly for example and utilizing that information that someone is privy to for their own personal purposes how it can be a violation of the ethics law very briefly on some of the procedures and penalties there are a couple of ways that you can get information from the organics board and one is you can ask for an official opinion an official opinion takes quite a bit of time so you would probably only want to do that on something that's either recurring or distant in the future it does protect the public official from a penalty and the finding of liability if it is a fishel opinion of the board there are staff opinions and the staff opinion is faster can take as little as a few weeks and it can also reduce the penalty or the potential for a penalty - in fact if you follow a staff opinion the only you can only have a letter of reprimand or an educational sanction as opposed to a financial sanction when caveat is is all of these where you have a cover if you get an opinion say you know so long as the facts were represented in the way deemed accurate so you can't be shifting away too far from the suppose that you gave to the Commission and then finally just pointing out that
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the penalty there are a variety of penalties but the most common is a $5,000 it says up to $5,000 penalty and they can in addition to that if you've obtained a financial benefit multiplier double the financial benefit so remember when Liz said a half-hour and I thought that is about a half-hour it gets a pretty high-level overview of the key key areas that come up and so that is the that is the overview you can get the guide for public officials there's a quite a bit in that quite a bit of information on the website and again I always come back to when in doubt look back at what the policy of OAC is if you're having if it's something that the law doesn't answer clearly which happens occasionally think about what the policies of the public trust are and that will suit you well likely in the decision-making thank you very much we're gonna get a lot of tokens and trinkets alright alright thank you so much and again thank you for you for your patience so it's worth noting for the board that we can annual ethics training is considered best practice the association of local government auditors had a whole session on this just as a refresher and so that especially when you have it presented to the board in a public meeting that it sets the tone for the organization there was a great audit that Metro did around ethics I don't know if you're familiar with this but it was the one that just came out yeah no not last week it was this conference was a while ago but it was a really interesting out of like how the perception of employees of how standards are set in a district informally but as part of it they were their recommendation was that public bodies have annual public training I can't wait for next year's thank you thank you general council large for setting that up for us and given the late hour we are going to postpone our next agenda item which is discussion of our board work plans so board members take a little time over the holidays and look at that document again and see if there's anything else you'd like to add or any any substantive comments our last item of the evening will be just two reports from any of our board committees or any of our school improvement bond master planning or design steering committee meeting so director Lowry did you have a report from Cleveland I have two reports I'm going to start with a report from avid National Convention which I got to attend last week there was a team from PBS of about 12 staff that went some of them district level staff some building principals some classroom instructors it was a really great event and talked about the ways that avid is used to improve instruction and support students who are preparing for a career in college I attended many sessions for the three I found the most helpful were on culturally responsive teaching and I would encourage everyone to look at Patrick Briggs online lecture it's like five minutes long it's called $2 and it's about the equity gap and he is an incredible speaker that works with avid we also did a session on student voice and I'm excited I have already talked to student representative lateral about some practical applications from that that can inform our board work and she and I will be getting together doing break after the chaos of this week has passed for her to talk some more about that and then there was a fascinating fascinating session on teacher recruitment and retention out of Clarksville Tennessee School District and the way that they're working with teacher trainees and teacher recruits in their classrooms and working with a local university and just excited about the ways that other districts are finding solutions to the very things that are facing us and then secondly I have been part of the Cleveland High School conceptual master plan process and it was really interesting they started I'm sure this was similar to the Wilson and Jefferson process as well but they started with images of the school and the grounds and asked people to say what was important what they loved what were barriers and then the next time we
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came back and raided a range of options so things like is it important to have counseling near administration is it a whole variety and we got to do a dot exercise with that and then most of the plans and ideas were created based off of the different feedback that was given through those earlier two sessions and then we interacted with those plans and they kind of reduced down to four high level plans so the one end of the spectrum is preserved Cleveland's historic facade with all those quotes and then the other end of the spectrum is a complete teardown and building a six-story sort of Lincoln like idea there's one that uses the parking lot that's behind Burgerville there at Cleveland and has one had a sky bridge in it but the biggest barrier for Cleveland is that the campus is not contiguous and so how to get students to and from the field safely and how do we deal with being the non-contiguous so there was a lot of robust community discussion about real estate acquisition and what their needs really are and how do we preserve student safety given the layout of the land so it was a wonderfully led process I think with a lot of really great community engagement and we're excited to see how this high-level plan kind of Colossus as we move forward with our bond process sure more do you have a report from the policy committee we had a meeting yesterday yesterday yesterday okay and we we started talking about a revision of policy around some reimbursement around meals and and gifts some issues that were covered under the under this ethics presentation and we continue talking about the three policies that are associated with student assignments and we're going to be continuing with that discussion at our next meeting which is January 6th so stay stay tuned with for all that in addition to that we had a meeting of the legislative an intergovernmental Task Force on December 9th and we talked about a number of things mostly getting sort of lay of the land about the multi-faceted relationship we have with the city and different bureaus within the city and with an eye toward identifying some areas where we could improve collaboration and we talked about the i-5 expansion projects and the board has already weighed in several times the wisdom or lack thereof of that project and where the next meeting is scheduled for January 14th yep so we had a Audit Committee meeting on December 5th and there was a presentation by SC consulting on the 2017 bond performance audit as people remember we had a year one phase one audit that was presented well they came out in April of 2017 that was primarily focused on the cost estimations and the methodology so this was a presentation on year one phase two and basically providing a overview of the status of the 20 2012 and 2017 bonds cost estimation financial management there were a number of findings and recommendations and staff is currently in the process of implementing that we talked a little bit about the amount of auditing that is underway there's a lot of auditing underway in the district and so we've had tonight you had the calf or the financial audit we had the bond performance on it but the Secretary of State's audit that there's gonna be follow up on and then also the our own internal performance auditors and we talked about really in some of the good work that staffs doing as following up on recommendations that
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have been made to improve performance or do things in a different in a different way and how do we share that story with the community about the work that's underway and matching the sort of staff reports on how they're implementing the recommendations with the with the audits so we had a full discussion about that and then we also then we had a presentation on the comprehensive annual financial audit which we accepted this evening the last two things that the committee that we had a brief discussion about we received an update from the internal performance auditors on phase one of the contracts audit and they are targeting I believe February in end of February I think is what they said for the country I think it was okay Wow okay so so the end of probably end of the February for that first internal performance audit and then we had a brief discussion about the Secretary of State's audit and the district response there's really two components of at the management response and the board and the board response staff has already created a very comprehensive reporting template or matrix that information is being dropped into and to actually make it understandable and manageable this huge Excel spreadsheet make it manageable and understandable to the general public deputy superintendent Hertz has created a draft scorecard that you can sort of easily go through all the recommendations and [Music] where we are in terms of implementation and when we get to the work plan discussion there are some items that the board's already undertaken and completed some of the items in the audit like the policy recommendations that sort of for example the professional conduct policy the field trip policy we've done that but we said other work and that needs to be incorporated into our upcoming document I'm sorry our upcoming work plan or board meeting agendas that's it anything scattered about some quick updates on the Wilson master planning I was not able to attend the earlier committee meetings because unfortunately they scheduled them during on Tuesday nights during our board meeting but I was able to go to last week's sort of summary meeting and sort of four takeaways that I heard from the community really strongly one was a really strong belief and the need to invest in Westside schools there is a overwhelming sense that in the 2012 in 2017 bonds the Westside has voted to increase taxes they've paid the taxes high schools have been built in other parts of the city and they feel very strongly that it is their turn and it was really interesting to have that and followed up by Facebook post about the east side feeling like they don't get enough and investment and I think what it would it goes to show I'm not making a judgment either way that that every community feels a little bit left behind and I wonder if there's not a way we can sort of change the conversation away from are we getting ours to more district-wide conversation about is the district getting and investing in what it needs to move forward but but really really passionate about the need not to change the plan in terms of the overall rebuild of the high schools too they want a full rebuild and not a remodel every other school has been fully rebuilt which I don't think is necessarily true but that was the the sense and so a strong belief in that three keeping students in place there's space at Wilson to do what they're doing at Lincoln keep students in the building while they rebuild so it was a really strong sense of they don't want students sent across you know to Marshall or other options and then finally this was less important to I think school community members but very important to the neighborhood community was focusing on some of the community assets such as the pool the food carts the farmers market etc as we do that master plan and then segue into the bond committee we met on December 4th had a lot of conversation about Roosevelt which we may took some action on today so that's great and then a lot of discussion about the overall schedule and the only thing I'll just for those board members who were not there we are gonna need to be making a decision about the next Bond in January because that's when the district's going to need to go out for the next tranche of 2017 bond borrowing so there's not another deadline but I mean that is an important deadline for us in terms of how we structure that borrowing so you are gonna be hearing and having discussions over the next few weeks as we come into that timing discussion and the
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committee's meeting Thursday December 19th to continue that conversation don't forget there's well it's not exactly a task force but on enrollment balancing I was instead of having a task force director to past and I are attending the staff team meetings I was able to make the first wandering pass was not raised a lot of questions so Claire has kindly arranged for kind of a that orientation but centering on where we are in the process for Friday morning and as reported I went to Lebanon today to and testify to the Oregon Transportation Commission the good news is they just they didn't decide not to do an environmental impact statement but they're going to delay for a couple of months trying to well well I think we'll be having more dialogue with ODOT trying to figure this whole thing out it's gonna be interesting and thanks to Courtney Wessling has been been doing good stuff worse then I'm joined the I got a briefing because I'm joining the Bentson design development process which is the stage two after the master plan and that first meeting is right before the bond committee meeting on Thursday so I just have one last note I'm on the steering committee for Lincoln high school and as the superintendent noted we had the groundbreaking ceremony this past Saturday which was very exciting Lincoln Community is really excited Friday I ran ran a lap the last lap around the Mike Walsh field which was also a blast so those design documents are at 90 percent completion now so all of the the subcontracting work that's coming in to Hoffman is coming in getting getting good interests coming in at competitive prices well within budget thus far so good news and a lot of excitement on that front so thank you to our staff out there who've stayed to this late hour everyone happy holidays and we'll see you in the new year this meeting is adjourned [Music] [Music] you

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)

2019-12-17 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: Regular Meeting of the PPS Board of Education-Dec 17, 2019

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