2020-03-03 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2020-03-03
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education March 3, 2020

00h 00m 00s
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]
00h 05m 00s
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]
00h 10m 00s
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]
00h 15m 00s
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]
00h 20m 00s
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]
00h 25m 00s
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]
00h 30m 00s
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] haven't yet what are we do long AG all e people
00h 35m 00s
do made did did [Music] [Music] all right welcome everyone please take your seats we're glad to have you thank you for joining us welcome then I do have a report oh okay the board meeting of the board of education for March 3rd 2020 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 PPS TV services website site welcome again um we're excited tonight to be getting our first update on midyear progress measures related to our board goals in addition the student investment account Grant application package um but first we'd like to start by adopting a resolution to recognize this week as classified and non-represented Employee Appreciation week and we always love the opportunity to shine a light on our classified employees in our schools um this week we C uh March 2 through 6th is classified non-represented Employee Appreciation Week here at Portland Public Schools uh it's a great chance to say thank you to the familiar faces that our students families and all of us depend upon each day um superintendent would you like to in invite uh Sharon reup to come talk to us about how we're recognizing theis valued employees thank you chair constan what's so funny for introducing our esteemed chief of Sharon ree the mic is yours thank you and good evening in our district and I may be a little long-winded because this group uh deserves so much appreciation and recognition um in our district we frequently reference the importance of creating conditions for students that Foster learning well-being and a sense of belonging every employee in Portland Public Schools has a role in creating the conditions for belonging and learning tonight and this week we are recognizing our classified and our non-represented staff these are employees who shap sh the worlds of both our students and our staff every day on the front lines and behind the scenes our classified and non-represented staff are in a unique position to influence our school communities from the moment a student steps onto a school bus in the morning to assisting students in the classroom to making the school's spaces clean and ready for Education providing nutritious meals caring for their physical needs keeping them safe I can go on and on aiding their families we literally could not open schools without these employees classified and non-represented staff keep our administrative and school offices running they attend to our buildings and grounds they help us communicate with each other and with our community and they shepherd supplies and equipment to name a few I am grateful for their work and their support in the past nine months we have ratified a collective bargaining agreement with each of the labor unions representing our classified employees so this includes our Portland Federation of schools
00h 40m 00s
professionals our service employees International Union uh ATU and the District Council of unions the reality is that our employees have the option of working other places uh but this is a collection of people who choose to work for a public school district not because of the fame and Glory but because they are motivated to serve students and to serve their communities motivated by being part of something greater than their individual selves I'm pleased to honor honor these essential hardworking and dedicated employees thank you thank you very much um the board will now vote on resolution 6067 to recognize classified non-represented Employee Appreciation Week do I have a motion so moved director Bailey moves and director brim Edwards seconds the motion to adopt resolution 6067 Miss Bradshaw is aing public comment no uh seeing none the board will now vote on resolution 6067 which resolves that uh the Board of Education declares March 2nd to the 6 2020 classified and non-represented Employee Appreciation Week in recognition of the many daily Services provided to enrich and support our students and Portland Public Schools toward their highest achievement possible be it further resolved that the board encourages the Portland Public Schools Community to join in honoring classified and non- represented employees for their positive impact on our students and our community all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any extensions resolution 6067 is approved by a vote of 7 to Zer with student representative lateral voting yes all right thank you thank you again to all of our classified [Applause] employees we also want to take a moment tonight to recognize another important group of employees um which is school Social Work Week superintendent yes this is another employee group we very much want to acknowledge and appreciate for for their tireless work in supporting uh our students I'd like to invite Amy Rona who heads our Mental Health Services and supports here at PPS is she present here she comes come on down welcome thank you uh we just appreciate the acknowledgement um as the senior manager of mental health and wellness in Portland Public Schools the increase of social workers in our schools will make a tremendous difference for our students so we're very appreciative of that this is work that people long before me have been working on so I want to make sure that I'm really clear and I give those folks the recognition that is due so Mary Crow being one of them thanks um I'm the district coordinator for substance you sports but um I'm also the vice president of the Oregon school Social Work Association and I've worked in and around PPS for 22 years it's my life's work and we are so appreciative of Portland Public Schools recognizing the value that school social workers bring to our most valuable our most vulnerable students and the increase in Social Work support in the schools and um we are here to partner with you the Oregon school Social Work Association is in any way possible um and we just look forward to expanding that Ro thank you thanks chair just to expound a little bit more on the critical role that our school social workers do play uh the fact that our students have someone to turn to uh when they're facing serious challenges uh especially when they're impacting on their school Success they might be poverty related disability related instances of discrimination they might be confronting abuse addiction bullying um looking for help in dealing with the loss of a loved one and and other barriers that come up so so I just want to extend the critical work and the way in which our social workers do that sensitively every day of the school year also want to recognize that the timing um feels really fortuitous tonight given that we'll be acting on our um student investment uh account Student Success act funds which um one of our critical strategies um in our own PPS proposal is the addition of so many more school social workers which we know make a huge difference for our kids and for our school school communities so the board will now vote on resolution 6 75 to
00h 45m 00s
recognize March 1 through 7 as school Social Work Week do I have a motion second director Scott moves and director Bailey seconds uh Miss Bradshaw is there any public comment on resolution 6075 no all right any board discussion the board will now vote on resolution 6075 which resolves that the Board of Education of Portland Public Schools extends greetings and best wishes to all observing March 1 through 7 2020 as school social work week all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any extensions resolution 6075 is approved by a vote of 7 to zero with student representative lateral voting yes all right thank you thank you very much and thank you for your testimon or your coming up to talk to us about our value of our social workers um one more recognition and I do want to say that um I think for each of us um we really appreciate the opportunity to recognize different employee groups and to take this time in our board meeting to really call out the work of um in different groups of employees that serve our kids every day and also students and families um so now we'd like to recognize that March is National developmental disabilities month superintendent would you like to introduce this item yes thank you we know that um one of the most effective ways to change the impact of disability is is by increasing our own awareness and by being open to learning and acknowledging that uh there are systemic barriers that reduce the likelihood of those with disabilities enjoying Equitable experiences and having independent productive lives within their school and their broader communities um I'd like to invite Noel CIS who leads our special education family who is our special education family and Community liaison to highlight uh many of those activities and support that we've been focused on here at PPS this year uh in support of our students and families who experience disability Noel thank you very much seems like longer than a year ago we were doing this um so I appreciate the opportunity for this to come back around last year was our first resolution um recognition um some of the activities we've done which are more than triple the amount we did last year so um this recognition and work is really making an impact in our community we were able to have um a woman named Lucy Meyer come and do six different engagements within our PPS communities and I was able to host four different assemblies which tallied over a thousand kids hearing her speak she's an international national speaker on inclusion and experiences an intellectual disability um this Pro she also is a Unified sports Ambassador and this is a program that a lot of our high schools have and Hope hopefully soon some of our middle schools will be participating and it's a program that she believes is critical and a necessary step to include our students with disabilities in our school communities classrooms along with their non-disabled peers we also hosted a districtwide showing of intelligent lives that included Lucy Meyer speaking at the event to over 100 attendees this was supported by our superintendent which we're very grateful for and intelligent lives is a film from award-winning film maker Dan Habib and it is a catalyst to transform for the label of intellectual disability from a life sentence of isolation into a possibility for the most systematically segregated people in America we have also hosted numerous IEP trainings and to help make sure that parents understand how to navigate the special education process as equal members of the team it can be often overwhelming when you're the only one who isn't a School employee and as we know engaged parents really help to have higher outcomes for our students specifically with disabilities um we have also done par um five now almost six um districtwide trainings for all of our PPS Paras this is the first year that our special education PPS Paras have had this opportunity and this very much um impacts how we serve our most um our most impacted students my daughter and I my daughter experience an intellectual and developmental disability due to cerebal paly and we were able to present to over 60 Paras who work within our intensive skills classes and we talked about high expectations she talked about what she wanted to be when she left Portland Public Schools and we talked about um making sure that we have inclusive practices within our schools
00h 50m 00s
even if you are in a focused classroom and then we also showed the film intelligent lives so then another 60 people were able to be impacted by that U message um uh we also the last thing I want to bring up as far as future activities if you check out the board on your way exiting um we have we've just launched our special education toolkit which is a collaborative effort with our ESL department for students who are dual identified within special education and ESL services and this is to make sure that families who speak a language other than English have the opportunity to equitably and meaningfully participate in their meetings and we know that currently that is not happening and so this is going to be an incredible door opener for these families to engage meaningfully in this process um and we have two more things coming up we have our first Middle School transition night coming up in April for students on iups going from fifth grade to sixth grade so that their parents better understand the process and then we have our second annual special education transition re resource Fair hosted by Roosevelt High School being run by KIA Swain one of our wonderful YTP coordinators so I just want to thank you for recognizing and bringing awareness to this month and celebration of students with developmental disabilities thank you thank you so much it was very inspiring yesterday to see the materials in the toolkit for our um in all of our supported languages um to walk families through the special education process it's really overdue the board will now vote on resolution 6076 to recognize March 2020 as developmental disability awareness month do I have a motion so moved second director dep pass moves and director Bailey seconds the motion to adopt resolution 6076 Miss Bradshaw is there any public comment no is there any board discussion on this resolution someone was and I checked that today thank you so sorry about that please come on up Susan Carson thank you thank you for the resolution about developmental disabilities awareness month I'm going to share my experience but this isn't just about my family I'm also here to speak on behalf of many other families in PPS who have had similar experiences my son is a fifth grader at Scott he has a developmental disability and he has been successfully included in general education with supports since kindergarten when I say successfully that doesn't mean we haven't had difficult times but he's making good progress on his goals he's happy to go to school every day and he's fully a part of his school Community next year he's going to middle school like all parents we can't believe it it seems like just yesterday he was starting kindergarten in fact I was probably here talking to some of you we were nervous but excited about him starting at Rose way Heights our neighborhood School our neighborhood middle school but then we had our IEP meeting and we were told no Anthony won't be allowed to go to Roseway Heights for Middle School the district decided that Anthony would be better served in an intensive skills classroom somewhere else this subject has never ever been broached before in six years of IEP meetings even in the toughest years even when he moved to a brand new school knowing no one ever suggested that he would be better served in an intensive skills classroom Oregon administrative rules state to the maximum extent appropriate children with disabilities are educated with children who do not have a disability in the school they would attend if they did not have a disability they also State a child with a disability is not removed from education in age appropriate regular classrooms solely because of needed modifications in the general curriculum in addition there are countless research studies showing that students with disabilities do better in General Ed with the right supports than they do in self-contained environments yet here we are just last week one of Anthony's classrooms shared that Anthony is her best friend another classmate asked to have his desk moved so that he could sit next to Anthony what should we tell these kids when they ask why Anthony isn't coming to Roseway height with them next year
00h 55m 00s
that he's not smart enough to go there because that's what you're saying yes my son needs help and support sometimes a whole lot of help and support he has Down syndrome that's not going away and it's likely he'll always need some help but that's okay and it's his right to receive the support that he needs in his neighborhood school what am I asking you to do an attitude of inclusion starts at the top make it clear that our kids with disabilities are general education students first a resolution on developmental disability awareness is great but a resolution affirming the right of students with disabilities to be included in general education and to attend their neighborhood schools would be even better the draft budget includes extra funding for focused classrooms I know I know that these are very much needed I do get that and I respect that but I would also like to see more funds going toward Innovative projects like co- teing professional development for general education teachers on supporting special education students and strategies to make the age- level curriculum accessible to all Learners Advocates and Community organizations are here and ready to partner with you talk to us work with us stop pushing our kids out our kids matter thank you thank you very [Applause] much is there any board discussion on the resolution uh the board will now vote on resolution 6076 which resolves that Portland Public Schools Board of Education proclaims March 2020 as developmental disabilities awareness month and galvanized efforts that will lead our schools and policy makers to create real systems of change so people with developmental disabilities will enjoy Equitable inclusive educational opportunities all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any extensions resolution 6076 is approved by a vote of 7 to zero with student representative lateral voting yes all right thank you at this time the board will vote on our business agenda board members are there any items you would like to pull for discussion um we will set these aside for discussion at the end of the meeting I don't want to pull um an item aside but I do want to note that there is a new staff report for the financial audit Services contract extension thank you we saw that come through thank you very much uh do I have a motion to adopt the business agenda I so move direct director Lowry moves and director Scott second the adoption of the business agenda Miss bradart is there any public comment on the business agenda no uh is there any board discussion on the business agenda all right the board will now vote on resolutions 660 through 6066 in the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any extensions the business agenda is approved by a vote of 7 to zero with student representative lateral voting yes all right thank you so much okay before we begin the public comment period I'd like to review our guidelines for public comment the board thanks the community for taking the time to attend this meeting and provide your comments to us we value public input as it informs our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts Reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen without distraction from electronic devices one quick reminder any oversized signs need to be in the back foyer and signs in the audience should not be held in a way that obstruct others view of the meeting board members and the superintendent will not respond to comments or questions during public comment but our Board office will follow up on board related issues uh raised during public testimony guidelines for public input emphasize respect and consideration of others we request that complaints about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a Personnel matter if you have additional materials or items you would like to provide to the board or superintendent we ask that you give them to our board manager Miss Roseanne Powell to distribute to us presenters will have a total of three minutes to share your comments please Begin by stating your name and spelling your last name for the record during the first two minutes of your testimony a green light will appear when you have one minute remaining a yellow light will go on and when your time is up the red light will go on and a buzzer will sound we respectfully ask that you conclude your comments at that time we appreciate your input and thank you for your cooperation Miss Bradshaw
01h 00m 00s
do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment yes we have both student comment is loyal Wy do you want to call that name again please miss Bradshaw here we go oh welcome you can pull that microphone down a little bit hi hi my name is my name is Loy loyal W your last name w w a ddy i am a second grader at Rosa Parks in my opin oped you should keep your own school one reason is because we come back one week one month early for school to learn more another reasons is we have after school activities year round the third reason is even though I have a computer at home I can't do the activities I can do at school the last reason is I like to go on field trips all year to learn please keep my school year round because I've been going to school year round my whole life and it keeps me from forgetting things thank you so much [Applause] we have Mark Jackson and DeShawn Williams welcome good evening Mark Jackson JS o n co-founder of reap Incorporated uh this evening I wanted to come before the board and just to extend my gratitude and appreci iation for leadership of this District in terms of their process of being intentional with the SSA uh funding in terms of engaging the community I think the district done a great job modeling what engagement looks like in terms of community voice I want to begin by saying thank you uh for that where many districts in the neighboring area had a hard time translating Community input into actual budget allocations PPS has been very intentional about that process so thank you thank you very much uh as you all proceed with the SSA process around your your budget vote and also the continued process impementation of these dollars I want to call the board attention to SSA budget allocations specific to social emotional behavioral mental health supports uh in the actual uh budget it spells out that there'll be funding allocated for cly specific uh services for contracts it'll be great to learn uh how that will be identified and how it will actually roll out so the community is well informed about the process uh also I want to call to your attention that uh the chief of schools Chief academic officer and chief of student Support Services uh be intentional uh and engaging communities of color as they wrote out their plan on how they're going to disperse their dollars that have been budgeted I think that the uh office of racial uh equity and social justice is a great model around engaging communities of color I think across the district there much can be learned from uh Danny's leadership so I want to give her a shout out tonight for her transparency and intentionality around engaging the community in a proactive manner uh lastly I want to lend my support to Kiros PDX uh that they their Charter be renewed uh and that the board really applies their Equity policy as it pertains to allocating more funds per pupil with the ad ADP uh ADM model rather uh kyos does great work for our kids and for our community and I'm hoping you all will continue to see the value of their vision and their commitment to EO education uh thank you very [Applause] much good evening um my name is deshun Williams w l l i AMS and I want to speak similarly to what Mark Jackson has spoke to as well will um I'm the owner of rap
01h 05m 00s
counseling and Consulting I'm a licensed clinical social worker I also partner with uh reap um and I'm here today and I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here to give testimony today I'll speak on behalf of those few of us who are providing culty specific services in the community um and mental health providers in the community um myself I am a Portland Public School product um and now I'm back serving my community um I appla the efforts and the projective vision for this implementation of increased Mental Health Services um and more importantly cultur specific Mental Health Services as described in your recitals um as a provider in the community and member I want to deeply Echo the importance of targeted partnership within the community that accurately reflects the demographic students in need and those that um and and that these community- based organizations or cbos uh providers for example given the support needed to do the work with no barriers and my experience is not the lack of providers but the abundance of barrias that intrude on those community- based organizations and or providers ability to get in the door and the accessibilities of families and students to these providers and Community Based organizations My Hope that the greater efforts are being done to intentionally partner with culturally specific community- based organizations and providers with intentional resources allocated to these Community to these cbos and providers and not in just in some general fund but that it is named and allocated Community Partners and providers of color in particular black and brown students are in need of such support and in order to meet the need of a comprehensive School behav behavioral and mental health system with a system provides a full array of culture responsive supports and services careful attention and action should be done to ensure that cbos and providers are given the necessary resources to meet that need thank you thank you very much Heidi hacker and Matt Drake [Applause] good evening my name is Heidi hacker ha a c k r and I'm here tonight on behalf of the Forest Park Elementary community of concerned parents to address the portable classrooms that house half our student body as full-time classrooms you may recall we came before the board last September to discuss several issues with our Portables most immediately the elevated carbon dioxide levels we would like to extend our appreciation for the installation of heating and cooling units while the CO2 levels have shown Improvement some of the portable classrooms continue to exceed the maximum levels for a healthy learning environment therefore our ultimate goal remains to remove the Portables and finish building our school in the meantime however we are here tonight asking for your help please do not look at Portables portable classrooms as equal to Brick and Mortar class rooms they are not equal among many concerns these Portables have a smaller footprint tighter spaces with less ventilation and less light compared to Brick and Mortar classrooms currently some of our Portables have as many as 33 students in them these kids are literally sitting back to back touching because that's the only way they can all fit in this space this is a safety hazard interface engineering came to our school to inspect our Portables and on February 6th Brett borgas senior manager of environmental health and safety risk management for Portland Public Schools included in his report recommendations Portables maintain 30 occupants or below with one teacher this would be a maximum of 29 students the projections for 2021 school year exceed that suggested limit and do not differentiate portable classrooms from traditional classrooms we know that the board shares in our desire to prioritize a safe secure learning environment in all of your schools and we appreciate the district's support as we pursue smaller class sizes just for these Portables we are uniquely situated we're confident this will not be a districtwide issue for you because Forest Park Elementary is the only school with five Portables housing half of our student body the majority of your schools have one or two portables in which the students visit them on
01h 10m 00s
occasion throughout the week for their electives they are not there every day all day and on February 21st superintendent you emailed the plan for student investment account funding which has been referenced tonight in the body of the email it was stated Sia is part of the Student Success act which was passed by the Oregon legislature last year and one of the highlights included more optimal student teacher ratios and class sizes so it's clearly a focus of SAA so we're here to ask you to please differentiate full-time portable classrooms from traditional brick and mortar classrooms and moving into the 2021 school year please I'm wrapping up set the maximum allowable students for full-time portable classrooms to 29 so that all students have a fair and Equitable learning environment thank you [Applause] good evening my name is Matt Drake Dr ke I uh am a parent at for of children at Forest Park as well as a pulmonary and critical care physician at OHSU in addition I run a basic science lab that is focused on environmental exposures to the lungs so I'm uniquely situated to be able to comment on the risks that's elevated carbon dioxide levels pose now this gas is clear we can't smell it we don't even think about it most of the time but my life involves thinking about carbon dioxide a lot carbon dioxide levels pose significant risk to cognitive function at the levels that are seen in the classrooms at Forest Park Elementary there's a very clear connection between reduced cognitive function and executive reasoning and when you think about the effects that that has both on a developing brain and the ability to learn these are potential complications that'll last a lifetime for these students so there's a very the science is quite clear on this issue when we looked at the recent data sincey installation of the new HVAC systems in some classrooms G greater than 75% of the time that the students in the classroom those levels are exceeding the limits set by PPS so these levels are a major concern both to their learning as well as their lifelong Health there's associations between carbon dioxide levels and Asthma development and you can imagine how these going forward things like headaches on a daily basis eye irritation even the minor symptoms can really interfere with learning so setting the limits of students in these classrooms is the most acual way to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being produced in the environment so this is more than just asking for more reasonable class sizes and better space within the classroom we're talking about imp helping our children's health and focusing on our children's health and Learning and Development I've included a letter uh with reference to some of the science and studies behind this and uh you have my contact information in there as well I'd be happy to chat on a more detailed basis about these effects thank you thank you [Applause] Amanda Weber Welch Amanda Weber Welch are you here all right is there anyone else Miss Bradshaw no all right thank you for your comments um please feel free to connect with board manager Roseanne Powell if any of you have something specifically you want the board office to follow up on uh tonight we have a request from our partners at the Portland Association of teachers to address the board um I understand that P president Suzanne Cohen is sick but Elizabeth Teel is here please come join us hello good evening I'm Elizabeth teal Portland Association of teachers vice president um and now the president elect thank you for having us here today uh the Portland Association of teachers has been fighting for years for adequate and stable public education funding we knocked on doors organized marched lobbied rallied and finally celebrated the passage of the Student Success act last spring and it is so exciting to now finally see the impact that this new funding will have on our schools since we received the details last week we've been working to unpack and understand the plan for the Sia account dollars and while we have some questions we have a lot to be excited about we are especially excited to see significant investments in school Staffing levels including hiring Elementary and Middle School teachers to reduce class sizes for our students adding counselors to our middle schools and elementary schools to meet the ratios recommended by the American school council Association adding social workers at all
01h 15m 00s
our high schools and increasing elective opportunities for students at middle schools and k8s Equity starts with relationships and it is essential that our classrooms are spaces where every child is known and recognized for their unique gifts and supported in their unique challenges the first steps to making this happen are prioritizing small class sizes and providing ample supports and opport opportunities at all of our schools your investments in these areas are a crucial step forward and notably we seem to be on track to begin hiring for these new positions in the season when the hiring pool is full um that is huge so thank you we know that the SSA money cannot meet all the needs at our schools immediately and it is my understanding that this plan um won't even be able to bring our class sizes and case loads down to the overload levels that are already agreed on in our contract but we are excited and hopeful for what this first step of investment might mean for our students we appreciate how PPS collaborated with us to receive real input from Educators and incorporate our feedback and we see that um but the process hasn't been perfect we only received the plan at the same time as the public and we were not able to be at the table um for the plan creation and so as the district is unveiling these new Investments it's been hard to rectify Some Cuts to certain programs that serve our most vulnerable students and that's part of the reason that this room is full cuts to school-based school psychologists speech language Pathologists and teachers of year round of English language Learners and the discontinuation of Rosa Park's year-round calendar I appreciate that some of these problems there's already Solutions in the works and others I'm not sure that there are um but I hope there will be in the context of a $39 million investment to our underserved students it seems that there was a lost opportunity to work together on the front end to find solutions that we all could have been celebrating tonight ultimately that is what we want to be celebrating with you the shared vision and co-created plan to invest in our schools our students and our Workforce we will continue to work with you to troubleshoot correct course and when necessary demand better but ultimately we know that when educator voice and student voice is Central to decision- making from the start will get more buyin smoother rollouts and ultimately better results for students the 4,000 Frontline Educators that P represents see every single day what our students need to be successful and as we move forward with future iterations of our SSA plan um we hope to bring this perspective to the table at every step of the planning process um so thank you and we look forward to um all the next steps thanks so much all right the next item on our agenda this evening is a discussion of the calendar at Rosa Parks School in March of 2014 Rosa Parks was granted permission to conduct a pilot on a year round calendar in February of 2017 the board voted to end the pilot and extend the calendar by more year before returning to a traditional calendar the board voted in March of 2019 that staff was to return to the board with a recommendation on the continuation of the yearround calendar superintendent Guerrero would you like to introduce this item please yes thank you and uh thank you for postponing my report till after so we can get to uh this topic uh we have several staff that are just in the in in the effort to provide a little context for the resolution here before you uh I'll have each of them introduce themselves as as they come up so Deputy superintendent good evening chair conam uh Vice chair Moore superintendent and um board directors um today we are going to go through uh the recommendation from staff for the Rosa Parks calendar uh we are joined by different members um of the team from the office of school performance which is our chief of schools Dr sha bird our regional superintendent Dr key Simpson um we're also joined by our chief engagement officer um Jonathan Garcia as well as uh Shanice which is our director of communications and we're also joined by um principal Walker who's joining us here as well um we are going to go through um several slides um going through talking about uh the process um also talking about what it's going to
01h 20m 00s
entail um moving forward um to the proposed calendar um and hopefully also open up to engage into any questions or dialogue that the board may have so um with that being said I'd like to welcome up um Dr Simpson and um Dr bird welcome good evening chair con superintendent guo members of the board my name is Shan B Chief schools officer I'm with me key Simpson Regional superintendent and we also have joining us Kevin Walker principal so as uh Deputy superintendent quer mentioned uh we have a recommendation tonight and that we want to go through and explain the rationale of that recommendation and also explain the additional supports that we are adding uh to the school we also have joining us up here at Chenise Clark from Community engagement so our recommendation to the uh School Board is to transition Rosa Parks to a traditional uh school calendar and I want to talk about what we are adding in terms of support to um to make that transition um possible uh first we would uh increase the instructional enrichment days uh by adding a 20-day summer program so that would increase the effectively increase the school day from 177 days to 197 days or 140 hours of student learning opportunities in a year if this um vote is approved we will begin working with the school Community immediately to uh tailor that summer program to their needs and we can talk about that later in the presentation we'll also be establishing a sun after school program that will provide um all students at Roso Parks an opportunity to uh have after school programing they currently do not have those opportunities for all students at this time um and so we would work with the community to identify a partner and that is part of the reason that this uh vote is coming to you at this time so that we can begin that process early so we have it in place for the time of new school year and uh we're also willing or we're also able to provide before and after school child care for students in kindergarten through second grade some first and second graders may choose to participate in Sun Also but for kindergarten we would have the before and after school care if they needed it we're also excited to provide a 3-week uh summer transition program for kindergarteners uh early kindergarten transition uh this is not a program only for students but it's also for uh kindergarten parents so there's a programming for students during the day to get them ready for school and then there are pro there's programming for parents uh in the evening to help them with their new students who are just going to school and uh there'll be CH child care provided for the children while the parents are in their classes for that time and finally we're um pleased about additional Staffing to support interventions including a reading and math specialist that uh funding is coming from the student investment account and additionally from the student account which is not listed on this slide is a halftime qualified mental health professional to help uh with some uh mental health services at the school um ultimately the alignment of the calendar will provide uh the school staff with additional professional development time that we're not able to do on a year on calendar because uh some of the times we would normally provide that professional development our our licensed staff are off for the summer and so the calendars don't align so we're not able to provide those opportunities uh on this current year calendar so we want to talk a little bit about some of the uh benefits that we think this will provide and so um ultimately we are doing this because we think it is in the best interests of of children and the achievement of children and I want to invite Dr Russ Brown our uh from the student school performance to talk about the data slide that we have here good evening um pleased to have the opportunity to to speak with the board again this evening and I think this conversation um is good in context of uh speaking about the board's performance goals and the performance measures for for the board um we've talked about moving this board forward and moving this community forward in a databased decision-making process and unfortunately when we look at the data for Rosa Parks uh we see an alarming Trend here uh over the last four years there have been substantial declines an achievement and the these are declines and achievement in place um in a school in which we weren't seeing a strong achievement to begin with so these downward Trends and achievement particularly for black and brown children are deeply concerning as you can see um in terms of ela uh our African-American students have lost 13.2 percentage points in achievement over the last four years um in mathematics uh that's been 11 points uh percentage points in in achievement decline uh we have less than 5% of our
01h 25m 00s
African-American students meeting uh the achievement Benchmark in mathematics at this building and roughly one and 10 currently meeting the the achievement marks in English language arts I think these should be deeply concerning for us and and a reason to to change direction unfortunately uh when I look at this year's preliminary data some of what I'm going to talk about here in a moment if I look at specifically for this building for EA in third grade and fifth grade mathematics these Trends are continuing so the gaps are actually getting wider and again I feel this sense of urgency that we need uh at this point in time to to change direction and to invest in this community to to try to create change all right we also want to talk to you about the process that we engaged uh with and we have shenise Clark from Office of community engagement uh to for that greetings uh superintendent chair and directors uh we we to to add to this we incorporated uh the process uh from Community to be informed um by their priorities as we uh made made this decision and so I think as the perspectives of student staff and families were were at the table at the onset uh staff engagement uh we use that to identify core priorities uh that that shaped the questions and uh focuses for for our engagement um I I do want to recognize too that um there the it was already said but uh this community uh before this year um has been engaging in this conversation and uh I think uh there has been a a level uh of of f fatigue and frustration that I I'd want to name and also there folks are largely in support of the year round calendar and so I think uh as we navigated this discussion there was uh a an interest as we collaborated across departments uh to not engage in a yes or no question but to uh understand perspective uh getting at the why how and and what's working uh with the calendar and so um that shaped how we did our engagement uh the school staff and and parents uh who were participating on our advisory uh committee were identified uh earlier in the year uh by principal Walker and we work together uh in collaboration with the office of school performance to think about um how we would shape this process earlier in the year and so we had a total of uh five meetings between uh this work with the advisory Council but also did uh engagement with uh with students uh and community and staff um from this from the months of December and January um in in a more zoomed in way and so I think the results uh conducted or that we've heard uh from the student and adult survey uh has incorporated some levels of focus uh that was used to identify some of the supports we we're seeing like after school care uh and uh thinking about um overall continuation of of academic rigorous um experiences for students and their uh ability to continue continue on and so I think there is uh a space that we held um the the engagement team to understand and and recognize uh where where folks are at um in this work in addition to trying to gauge um what needs um are are able to to be addressed in the process thank you and then just in conclusion I also uh want to um Echo that I have had the pleasure of of meeting uh several members of the staff over the last U couple of several weeks uh since I've been here and I do want to uh acknowledge their frustration uh with this multi-year process and I also want to thank them for their engagement in this process um we have um you know we all want the same thing we all want our students to be successful I know that that that is um at the heart of what they want and I know the principal we all share the same the same desires for that so uh if this um plan is approved uh we will immediately establish a task force Dr Simpson and I will work with the principal to immediately establish a task force uh because as the um supports that we're putting in place those are can be uh tailored to meet the needs of the school Community especially the summer program and we are also you know open to uh collaborating with them on other supports that maybe we haven't thought of and that we can uh still work with them to um to make sure that students are getting what they need in this transition uh and and that concludes our presentation and we're
01h 30m 00s
available for your questions thank you thanks I'd like to get this um resolution on the um floor and we can have board discussion the board will now vote on resolution 6068 adoption of the traditional PPS calendar for Rosa Parks in the 2020 21 school year do I have a motion so moved second director Lowry moves and director Scott uh seconds the motion to adopt resolution 6068 Miss Bradshaw is there any public comment on resolution 6068 yes there's Melissa Duos and bang Yu welcome hello thank you for having me um my name is Melissa DLo du u l oos I have two kids at Rosa Parks and I'd like to ask that the supporters of Rosa Parks and communities of color who are here with us today please stand up imagine a public neighborhood Elementary School that follows a year- round calendar students and teachers still get the same amount of vacation time as they would on a traditional calendar but those vacations are evenly dispersed throughout the year kids at the school lose less ground over the summer than their peers at other schools they have more consistency in their their lives including better access to free and reduced meals their teachers have breaks when they need them enabling them to better meet the social emotional needs of their students and teacher turnover rates are lower than at other schools in the same district would you want to send your children there I moved down the street from Rosa Parks when my kids were still in preschool because my answer to that question was yes when I made this decision I imagined other things about Rosa Parks I imagined I'd have access to after school care and camps that match the school calendar I imagine teachers would receive their curriculum on time and the district would seek input from teachers and administrators on how to improve the approach and work with families to address challenges like high absentee rates in short I imagine that having launched a bold experiment to improve academic outcomes for students at Rosa Parks the district would provide the long-term commitment leadership and willingness to take to engage families that it takes to succeed it turns out I was wrong rather than demonstrating leadership and commitment the district has sat back and waited for the school to prove on its own that the model Works they've failed to provide any supports or even to commit to the calendar for more than a three-year stretch of time making decisions after the initial pilot on a yearly basis this year is no different despite the uncertainty and the lack of supports like after school care I agree with the 71% of teachers at Rosa Parks who want to keep the year round calendar I wish I could tell you how many other parents in the community agree with me but I don't know and neither does the district they never bothered to ask us they also haven't done any real engagement with the culturally specific organizations serving our community the presidents of the Coalition of communities of color and the Coalition of black men are here tonight and neither of them support returning Rosa Parks to a traditional calendar the district has recommended that we return to a traditional calendar I assume because they view the experiment as a failure imagine instead if they acknowledged their own failers to truly work with the community to assess and adjust the approach to year-round school or provide timely curriculum and child care options that teachers and parents need imagine if they committed to conducting a better experiment putting their full support behind this creative approach to providing academic and social emotional support to children on a year round basis every parent I have ever told about the year-round calendar at Rosa Parks has responded with some mixture of jealousy and amazement why they always want to know don't more schools in the district do this the answer is because it requires more work than just moving around some vacation days imagine what would happen if the district committed to doing this work thank [Applause] [Applause] you my name is bang Yu and I'm ESL teacher at Rosa Parks Elementary I just need to kind of point out in the slideshow earlier uh a fallacy that I saw is that we are getting provided a halftime therapist due to moving to a traditional calendar and we are being
01h 35m 00s
provided that whether we are year round or traditional due to the siia funds we the Rosa Parks Community are here in front of you again because PPS has a long and proven history of failing students of color so I want to start my speech by reminding you that PPS is own Equity lens policy states that the district must intentionally involve stakeholders who are members of impacted community before making decisions that hasn't happened for Rosa Parks Community engagement happens when there are relationships in place and trust is built if you were intentionally involving the community you would have told us the metrics you are using to measure the success of our calendar you would have asked parents and teachers whether they wanted to keep the calendar you would have kept District staff who had relationships with our community like Carl Logan and Scott Whitbeck working within our community instead we are working again with the same District representative that harmed us three years ago and another who has been the chief of schools for five weeks it is demoralizing what was the point of extending us last March if PPS was just going to procrastinate until November to meet with teachers and parents before the vote today we are almost to Spring Break and our community again has no answer for what their lives will look like come June knowing District leadership failed us these Last 5 Years why did the board sit back idle while leadership was failing us again this year the superintendent has never sat down with our teachers to hear our grievances never asking a marginalized Community what they want is oppressive is it the district's intention to alienate and segregate our community until we grow tired and give up what if I could remind you of our Nam Rosa Parks who in the spirit of equity and equality refused to segregate herself to the back of the bus our students at Rosa Parks also refuse to sit at the back of the PPS bus just because it is a mere inconvenience for the district schools like Da Vinci and mlc do not completely align with your schedule and yet they exist and are not set up to fail six years in a row alignment is not Equity offering us a summer program that has not been approved or co-created by our community is community division since PPS hasn't done enough real Community engagement at our school let me tell you about Rosa Park's Elementary the island the school that never gets its materials on time whether we are yearr round or not the school that struggles with attendance test scores and poverty whether we are year round or not the calendar has obstacles which could have been navigated if the district had been willing to engage with our community and make a plan if you had been willing to listen to the 71% of Rosa Park's Educators that want to continue the year- round schedule you have not worked with us to improve our interventions attendance and test scores with our black and brown students you have not measured the 19 different first languages and those who come to our school with no prior education you have not measured the 86% student body of color that has a teacher of color in every grade level you have not measured our abnormally High teacher retention rate in a title one school you have not measured the value of having a black student being taught by a black teacher nor have you measured the social emotional value of providing a population of kids that are 95% free and reduced lunch a safe place to learn throughout the year because how do you put on paper what having a year- round school can mean to a student who who may be homeless or dealing with severe trauma during the long summer months we've tried a summer school before and it failed students did not attend and it was staffed by substitutes who lacked the relationships necessary to serve our high need students can the district not lead us and work with our Community Partners to find a workable solution for child care snacks Community engagement effective interventions ontime curriculum and provide us with a permanent supported year round calendar who should be given the priority within the district economically sound majority white schools or disenfranchised communities of color racist policies are any measure that maintain racial inequity between racial groups voter suppression segregation discrimination are common themes on the island of Rosa Park's Elementary in the spirit of Rosa Park s we say our students deserve to sit at the front of the bus
01h 40m 00s
[Applause] [Music] H Miss Bradshaw is that it that's it okay thank [Applause] you can like to open it up for board discussion or questions of staff on this resolution I have uh two questions for uh Dr bird um I remember reading some of the materials that the Sun School would not start until January of 2021 and but when you just spoke it sounded like you were saying it could be for fall this upcoming school year yeah so it's a process to started takes about 6 months apparently because it's a County Service uh we're actually having uh they have a provider now that does some after school stuff that's attached to their building uh they have expressed an interest in um working with us uh and so the school have to have input on who their provider is going to be so we would start that process immediately we work with the office of student Support Services to uh begin that process of searching for it now so so the plan would be to start in the to have that available in the fall if possible but knowing that it might not be possible because of the timeline six months yeah we would we would try to accelerate the timeline as much as possible and then my second question is um you mentioned here on this that we plan to establish a task force composed of school and District it went away um who you said that um principal Walker would be part of that but who is going to choose that task force I think we've heard from the community this desire to be engaged and so how will that task force be created so we would rely on the principal as a leader of the school to um to to com to uh compose that task force and then it's our job as District people to support the work that they want and if I might just say something about the summer program so in all of our CSI schools there will be a summer uh program that's happening it's a steam uh theme program which will is engaging there was a pilot of that last summer at a school is very popular so that is the uh that's been developed by the office of teaching and learning however we recognize that um you know every school is different and we will we will um are happy to work with Rosa Park's uh staff members to uh ensure that the program is meeting their needs and their program will actually be a little longer than the than the other uh CSI so what I'm hearing you say is that Rosa Parks will have a specific developed with their community and their educational leaders program for them that's correct principal Walker um would you put both staff and parents on that um task force what's the sort of plan there absolutely yeah that was a very affirmative response to that question uh what's your plan for like how you go about choosing those folks and um kind of making sure that people feel like uh there's well they're well represented across um the community yeah well and I think in uh looking at um how the school calendar advisory committee was selected um it was intentional because it was people who didn't feel like the system served them well last time right and so I think um in looking at uh how that how that committee gets selected or how those get put together it's going to be who is um who's going to be uh uh who's best going to serve the students and who's best going to be able to put that together uh who's who's best going to be able to serve them in that way yeah thank you that's all of my questions CH conam I have a question a couple questions um did just curious about our engagement did we engage with uh members of the black Student Success task force um the Coalition of black men um the Coalition of communities of color the NAACP or the Urban League while they're not necessarily in the school Community there you know Portland as you know is a very small black community and I'm just curious if we were able to get some feedback from them in terms of how best to educate uh black and brown children thank you for that question uh so we initially had some convers ations that look different with partners that are connected to the Rosa Parks Community but uh some of the organizations that you have named uh we might not have had some specific engagement there and our school Community I know through text messages and emails and other efforts uh to folks uh specifically um who might be families or students at Rosa Parks might have been the center of who we focused engagement to and use some other channels to connect with other partners and I'm
01h 45m 00s
not sure um what what else we would add there but um so I had a a question um there was a reference to last year's um there was a pilot summer school what what what school was that at uh I know for sure it was at Lane and I'll ask um oh lent sorry lent lent lent and what were what were the outcomes or I mean was this designed to stop summer melt I'm just trying to get the sense of if that's the model what Dr Valentino that program is from his office so I would invite him this and I guess base part of my question is is that what is if that's what it's modeled after like is going to be something similar and like what did we find last year with the the pilot if we're going to roll it out roll it out it sounds like not just potentially at Ros Parks but if a decision is made tonight but also at the other CSI schools right so they're learning from last from the last roll out last year which was the first time we attempted this as uh at scale was that number one we needed to begin the planning earlier because there were a number of shifts we needed to make right to the way that curriculum was being developed and remember last year we were still in the middle of curriculum development so as we've moved forward now to uh teaching practices the way that our curriculum is being designed is really to ensure that it actually uses data information on the progress of the students participating to make sure that we are more targeted in the supports that we're providing so that was the big learning right we went wide not yet really understanding the context of that work as we understand it better we need to be more targeted uh greater specificity to the the subjects that are taught not broader but more focused and then provide some additional support through sun programming that provides some of the other activities that that they can participate in so there is more partnering now then there will be more partnering now and into the future than there was last year so there were a lot of lessons learned from last experience so it it will be um much stronger program over the summer one of the things given the context of this situation it would it would behoove us to be more um engaged in the conversations with the part the school who has a better understanding of their students um the teachers have a better knowledge of where the students are so we would be um better positioned to support the school if we work more closely with them moving forward so um maybe just so so I can imagine what it's like so you have it's uh what's being proposed is five weeks four days a week four hours sing sing a nod um so those four hours is it a continuation of the instruction that's happening that's happened through the school year or is it a different curriculum I'm just trying to understand what the well as we've used as we've used the information on student progress and growth over the school year then if we are providing targeted support then it is still part of the scope and sequence of the instructional program but is really to address where the gaps are right so if student if if a third grade student fails to attain grade level standards in C areas those are those are the areas that the curriculum is designed and the instruction is designed to address so the more effectively we are able to identify those gaps and work with the school the better we will be able to coordinate effort to support them during the course of those five weeks I have another question about the um I know the calendar year you've said will help align wraparound surfaces that are available during the traditional school year but and I'm not an educator an educator so pardon my naivity but are there other interventions that could be had or could be made in place of you know cons the the statistics were were pretty dire that that were just shared um in terms of achievement but what other interventions um are there out there as Educators that could be put in place to support this the achievement levels being raised besides the calendar is there are there other
01h 50m 00s
interventions like I mean having an additional social worker or two or five or additional you know teaching staff um I'm I'm trying to be creative here and I I'd like to piggy back uh on director to pass's question and just ask principal Walker as well if he can comment on his proposed Staffing and budget for next year and what it looks like relative to um what it has looked like in the past that's both a reflection of our General District priorities but also an infusion from the student um investment account dollars so moving into next year we we've been allocated some additional FTE which is uh largely uh because of the Sia funds and so we have a uh two instructional Specialists that'll be present at the school along with a 05 qualified mental health professional so a halftime qualified mental health professional um the the two instructional Specialists will predominantly work with students on tier three needs so they're really going to uh work on lagging or uh lagging skills or or Universal skills that haven't quite been developed yet um that is going to be really targeted moving into next year that's a significant difference than what we have this year um with that said there's there's always a lack of resource right um and and I feel really strongly that uh Rosa Parks is is a unique Community there's not another Portland Public School like it um and so we uh we do need more and we do need different um because it is it is it is a significantly different school so thank you I'm trying to get a sense um for isolating that variable so if the calendar is one variable and inviting you know six more staff to the building and additional support and that is a separate variable what the impact is so what what does success look like with the with the calendar as it stands today sure and the additional supports that you're planning on for next year so is the calendar as it stands today as in the the year round calendar the year round calendar so what would it look like to have a year round calendar with the support to help help bring these students up the achievement just question I I I don't know the answer I it's an honest question no absolutely yeah and and so one of the things that I think is really important and what came out of the work this year with the staff was that we elevated a number of things that um needed to be addressed in order to make the year round calendar more effective at Rosa Parks um there are things that are lagging and lacking within the scope of that calendar that have been lagging and lacking for six years at this point and so it's it's uh it's really difficult to say what uh without uh knowing how we can Broach some of those large pieces that are that are lagging and lacking what we could do within the scope of that work if that makes sense I I I I think that um there are pieces that are outside of the district's control and pieces that are within the district's control and and there's not a good way to know what it looks like to have it fully supported because it's it's uh it's yeah yeah thank you I appreciate your your honesty it's a difficult question yeah um yeah any further board discussion or questions um so don't leave but give me a minute um so can you say a little bit more about the um so you mentioned things that are within the control of PPS and then things that are outside yes can we start first with the external can can you elaborate a bit on that sure so uh Rosa Parks is situated in uh new Columbia and we have uh three different Community part Partners uh two of the Community Partners predominantly serve our students Boys and Girls Club is connected to our building Rosa Parks was built in conjunction with boys and girls club um and then Charles Jordan Community Center is also adjacent to Rosa Parks and also serves Rosa Park students both of those buildings serve students from the north Portland area not just Rosa Parks Elementary School and so uh it has been a struggle for us to to tap and utilize those resources because they operate on a different calendar they use the traditional calendar and so they serve students who are coming from other schools and they
01h 55m 00s
also hold summer camps um and so that is outside of the school district's control to to be able to to uh make changes there and have efforts been made with those Partners so I spoke with the partners recently and they're they're unable to to shift those calendars to match our school because we are one school um and they serve a lot of schools in the north Portland area so uh they have a lot of different different student bodies who show up there um so they're not they don't they're not going to move for us so what kinds of resources are available for families um during the um during the vacation periods for Rosa pox um and and let me as a single mother sure um I depended on summer camps you know I depended on the Boys and Girls Club yeah which cost me $5 a year at that point um they provided Transportation yeah um it allowed me to function a as an employee and a mother at the same time so what kinds of resources are available to families given that the The Logical partners are not able to provide those kinds of resources to amilies what do families do that's been a significant barrier and and boys and girls club has gone up since $5 um that is that is something that the price has gone up a little bit since then and just to be clear it wasn't that long ago a little long ago but not that long um we uh there that's that's an that's a significant issue there isn't a lot of uh resources for families to be able to tap I'd say the hardest one because it doesn't line up um is the September break that we have into early October because um everybody else is in school and session at that time and so families are kind of relying on you know uh the community as a whole to to uh you know watch their kids so yeah so are there families in Rosa pox for whom the current calendar is um is difficult absolutely yeah I would say that that's a that's a fair statement absolutely well and there are also families um who are not in your who live in the neighborhood who have chosen to go to school elsewhere um many of whom say it's because of the calendar we don't know all the reasons why but the the catchment um in that neighborhood is lower than than what we see with most of our neighborhood schools yeah I would say I would say that um there are families who who have left because of the year round calendar I would also say that there are families who have come because of the year round calendar as well so yeah and we I don't think we can know why somebody doesn't go to the neighborhood school you know yeah yeah it it's so many different reasons I mean I had my kids in and out of the neighbor neighborhood school so depending on my Transportation plan frankly so um so the PPS what what's within the control of PPS um within the current calendar um what are the um what are the resources that you need to support the students and the families and the teachers and staff yeah um that you haven't gotten and are they are they getable said a word um is it is it doable realistically doable for PPS to provide those resources um to the only yearound School in the district yeah and and I mean it might I don't want to put you on the spot all the time but um I'm going to offer that up anybody who wants to answer that one please yeah I would say I can't I don't know what's doable and what's not doable I know what I do for the community and for the school right so I'm when I call and I'm asking about nutrition services or I'm asking to open up a testing window or I'm asking about curriculum of materials or how we can reschedule PD for our teachers to work around the calendar that's those are things that I'm working to do to make the calendar work um and so I don't know the degree to which those things are in control or
02h 00m 00s
not in control of being able to be shifted so much uh to to to make it work so um yeah I had a question question about the summer program um can you um I mean said a little bit about what it was like um I is it going to be uh so it's four hours a day four days a week for five weeks um is it is it going to be solely classroom based is it going to be I mean is it going to be any fun involved is my question the first four hours is academic uh enrichment intervention and the actually the program run will run from 8 until 4:30 so the first four hours is the academic part of the program and the rest of the day will be uh you know different activities with uh Community Partners that we partner with I'm sorry that's that provoked a question um because I thought when I asked it was going to be four hours but it's a in essence you're saying it's an eight hour day and four four hours of instruction and then four hours of enrichments but it's not like you go you're G to you would go to four hours and then you choose to leave or not you're it's like your scho school day is from 8 to 4 for those students that choose to participate yes they could it's a it's the academic enrichment intervention and then there are some Partnerships that we'll uh work with to have other activities for students uh in order to address one of the needs that came up in the conversations about uh child care and also um uh improving student achievement so this will be open to uh uh any student that wants to go in grades one through five uh for for the school and what is the capacity in terms of number of students we planned for uh so we plan for 50% of the school population and that is based on uh what principal Walker gave us for the students who attend the intervention week so we kind of planned based on uh that and it's a our projection is a little higher than what I uh think they normally get for intervention weeks during the intercession periods I did I just hear that the kids can opt in or opt out it would seem like the kids that need to be there are all of those kids that are below that median line I mean every kid in the school that's not achieving at grade level shouldn't have a choice right about summer school I mean I make it up make them all go they will have any it's open to any student in the school district in the school grades one through five we are just using the projections based on uh the numbers that they normally get during intervention week so it's technically a school holiday so we can't force students to go but it so I'll let uh principal Walker speak about their intervention attendance now well as it stands um intervention is uh also uh additional time but it's not mandatory or required and so you know if a family decides to keep their uh young person home they they do that um everybody gets invited but it just is kind of up to the family whether or not they attend we send them a letter let them know we could really uh use your young person here and we'd love to support him um additionally in these areas and so you know should you choose to bring them um here's what the day looks like and uh and and here's when they get off if it turned out that all of the students wanted to go to the summer program would you have capacity we would staff for so we're Staffing based on interest of the students so yes um we would have additional capacity to do that in the budget okay thank you any further board questions or discussion director Bailey yeah could you talk a little bit more about well intercession or the intervention week how many times through the year does it happen now and what's what's the turnout um let's one question at a time so sure sure so it happens um three times a year um basically what the calendar looks like currently is 9 weeks on three weeks off within the third week is intervention enrichment week and so in that week uh we invite students who are at uh or in need of additional support So Below grade level back to receive additional math and reading support and students who are at or above grade level get invited to uh enrichment uh we cycle through the enrichments with our Community Partners so boys and girlss Club in Charles Jordan uh we have
02h 05m 00s
contracts with them and we provide uh within one of those one week intervention weeks we have uh enrichment that that they do for K1 2 three and then four five so fourth and fifth graders are going to be having their uh enrichment coming up so all of fourth and fifth grade will be invited but K5 intervention um everybody gets invited who needs additional support support um the attendance of those has has gone down over some time and it's definitely something that uh we would love for more people to attend um we it's their choice as it stands right now uh and um is the academic intervention mostly staffed by uh Rosa Park's teachers it is it is staffed by Rose Park's teachers um yes yep questions or discussion I do and at the expense of again I'm being naive so what would it look like during these special this intervention week to have you know reading Specialists like a whole team of Specialists come in and do that week that you know got the kids got some outdoor play they got some steam activities you know they're not sitting down for8 hours in the classroom learning how to read and write but they're out you know getting the enrichment activities that I benefited from yeah um you know I think that uh one of the things that um we could definitely use is is to kind of rethink and reimagine the current intervention enrichment weeks because looking at the the data across the board right tells us that stuff is not going well um things have consistently gone down so it's something we need to to look at and address seriously um because it it's it's not okay to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result right um and so I would say that uh I don't know I mean I can we could build a plan around having additional support and resources and things like that but I don't know what the outcome would be without actually doing those things sure sure I I mean I like your kind of the way you're thinking about that is that we're not really innovating you know with the same Minds that have we're not we need like an infusion of some type um of thinking to sort of solve this problem because it's pretty I mean this Statistics are dire and it's not the end of the world I mean I believe that the school could turn around with the right variables and and inputs into the system yeah and and Rosa Parks is again uh an incredible Place uh the teachers the staff everybody that they love and care about the kids and they love and care about the community and it's a place where people show up because they're invested and they're heavily invested in in those students um and so you know I can't say enough uh unique and good things about the climate of our building about the community and about just in general uh how how people show up there on a daily basis ready to give of themselves for our students thank you I think that's pretty clear um do we have any further discussion or comment before we bring this to the vote um I do want to ask Marcus Mundy asked if he could um do you still want to come up do you want to make a comment or sure okay please come up director of the Coalition of communities of color um you got Applause and you haven't even said anything yet I know see if see if I applaud when I when I'm finished um Ju Just a point of clarification it was presented to you all earlier that the the Coalition of communities of color had endorsed the earlier testimony and I just want a point of clarification I hadn't agreed or disagreed with it there was an Outreach done to me uh before tonight so uh I just want to be clear that we have a process at the Coalition we check with our membership we get feedback and then we come to conclusions we have a consensus model so that wasn't done and I just wanted you all to be aware of that and Mr Jones can speak for the Coalition of black black men but let me see i' made some notes but yeah just no Outreach and you know until we fully share with our members ship you know I'm not going to rush out with an opinion I've heard great things on both sides today so uh I would have
02h 10m 00s
uh been happy to consider it in a timely way but that didn't happen so appreciate that all I have um Tony Jones chair the Coalition of black men we weren't consulted at all so I have uh we as an organization have no position on it so as a result we don't support it because we haven't had a time to deliberate or know anything about the matter when what's disappointing to me I was here a year ago when you guys talked about reviewing this and working with working with the community so it's disappointing to me how it's coming about but I just want to say as a official position we do we do not have a position so therefore we don't support it just because we have not had a chance to review anything thank you appreciate that thank you I I have some comments I want to make unless somebody else wants to go first uh go ahead okay um so I want to um thank the community members for sharing your point of view about what you think is working well with the current calendar and what the challenges have been and I want to thank uh director Moore for um giving me the de debrief on yesterday's meeting um that occurred and it sounds like um there was a lot of feeling and information shared by the community with the uh board members and thank you for sharing that um and appreciate the Community member sharing um their points of view um yesterday and then I also want to thank um the followup from teacher bang Yu Who provided um followup from last yesterday's meetings um about the sense of um you know how the community has felt over the last six six years sort of the ups and downs and also what uh the community felt it needed to be successful um just stepping back I want to acknowledge that so I was on the board before when Rosa Parks was first um envisioned and uh and built and um I think there were lots of hopes and dreams for what would happen inside that school and I think there has been a lot of magic that's happened there um in the last six years since the calendar uh was put into place there's been a lot of change um I don't see anybody here myself included on the dis here um that was that was here six years ago in the calendar as I know some of the issues that have raised um go back from the very be beginning um so I just want to acknowledge that there has been a lot of changes at the district um I think it's also important to acknowledge and I think um this came up tonight that in many ways because Rosa Parks had a different calendar there were challenges for Rosa Parks because it was not like the others and I think often that wasn't um with good or bad intent it just was different and that created challenges whether it was related to PD or curriculum Cycles you know that not being seed up with other with other ones and it's not it's not good or bad it just created I think some additional challenges that would have required um work to to overcome because you've got you know the rest of the district on this over on this other cycle um I think there were also promises that were made at the beginning for example the cluster would go that direction that when that didn't happen it really created additional challenges for Rosa Parks because again it became one of the more of an outlier in the district um I will say that we should acknowledge that there's lots of positive things uh Rosa Parks um that students um have a teacher of color in every grade level um there's lots of Social and emotional supports for the students and I think last year um there was a new principal after the retirement of longtime principal Tamila Nome and I think um I want to thank the District staff and the community for working together because um from what I've heard um that was a very successful um selection of the new leader and that um that has [Applause] brought and to me that demonstrates that the District staff and the school Community can work to work together to do good things for the Rosa Parks Community um I want to honor the passion and commitment of the teachers and staff at Rosa Parks and what you do for the students um and I also want to acknowledge that um as a board and a district we have set um we've looked at the data and it's not just at Rosa Parks um but across the district that we have a lot of work to do and we've set really aggressive growth targets for historic ERS Serv students um and I believe the District staff in good faith have tried
02h 15m 00s
to not just at Rosa Parks but other schools as well but tried to look at what sorts of sports and interventions would best support our students and really change your trajectory which we all know is not acceptable um so I I I do thank the staff for the creativity and the uh work that they've done to try and um you know do exact what um I think we as a community all want to have happen um and then I think just in closing I think I want to acknowledge that um PPS and I'm part of the Wii still needs to win the hearts and minds of most of the Rosa Parks staff and Community um and so I hope following the outcome of tonight's meeting that collaboration and co-creation are at the center of the work thanks appreciate appreciate those comments very much um director brim Edwards and the only thing I want to add to this is you know in a few moments we're going to be talking about our proposal for the Student Success act dollars and um the really hard detailed work the district has done to identify what our priorities on it's such an incredible opportunity um for so many years we've talked about things like adding social emotional supports providing additional instructional hours and summer program in in our highest need schools and it it hasn't been possible it hasn't been a reality um so I think that the opportunity to put those dollars to work in Rosa Parks and our other schools um some of our other really needy schools um is is a huge game Cher and um I guess it feels important for me to say that because um if this board decides to um put the calendar back in sync with the rest of the district schools and coordinate the the provision of support and resources to Rosa Parks um there's there's going to be a lot more to the story as well and I think that's hugely important so does anyone else have does anyone else have any comments I'd like to make before we take a vote okay um I want to thank the Ros aox Community for um for inviting us um more than once um to come visit the school and to listen to the uh the community members parents volunteers um longtime volunteers who put in a lot of time um the staff um and it's it is painful to admit that um people PPS has not um Faithfully fulfilled the the model that was originally proposed six years ago um there are essential elements of that model that have never been in place um at the time um I was concerned um that PPS was not providing was not setting up the the three schools in the pilot um was not setting them up for Success um and then four years ago when the pilot ended for two of the schools and continued for Rosa pox um PPS still didn't um still didn't provide the supports um in addition the model assumed it envisioned um a very strong um partnership with external Partners um that would provide the the kinds of um especially family supports during the during the vacation periods um and that has not happened um and I I am aware that uh over the years um attempts have been made to work with uh with the Community Partners and I'm talking about boys and girls club and Charles Jordan um attempts have been made to uh to create um Child Care opportunities camp opportunities for students at rosao during the vacation periods and and those have not been financially sustainable for those organizations um so there are a number of things about the model that have have never been full achieved um and from where I sit here here's the
02h 20m 00s
problem um I think the yearound calendar is a promise that PPS cannot keep um I I am not uh I'm not interested in PPS um trying and failing to provide the supports that a a unique program in the system um requires um I I just don't think I just don't think we have the capacity um if we were talking about making the entire District a year a year round program well we might you know I I actually think think we might want to entertain that concept but absent that I I I just do not think that Portland Public Schools has the has the ability to provide the very um specific needs that that Rosa Park students um have um so so I'm going to I'm essentially going to say I said to the um staff and community members at the meeting yesterday I'm going to vote to support this resolution um I know that's not the answer you want um but I think it's my responsibility as a board member to ensure that the district is um is able to to fully support this school and every school in the way it needs to and there is I mean I've been in I've been in the school a number of times and um from what I can tell and by all reports it is a remarkable school um the children are happy the children are um I mean they their Joys to be around um um the the families are deeply engaged um the the staff are deeply engaged um it is it is my hope that even with the calendar change that those things will not change and um I am what I can do is pledge that I will do everything I possibly can to ensure that PPS lives up to the promises that were making to you today and I believe that I believe that this District I believe this Administration is fundamentally committed to serving um all students in this District but in particular students of color and they are they truly are committed to providing these additional resources that Rosa Parks has never enjoyed and um I think I hope that um it will that the Rosa Parks community at this time next year will be um will be pleasantly surprised and we'll be happy with the kinds of supports that they're now getting from the district all right the board will now vote on resolution 6068 oh I'm sorry yeah the the board will now vote on resolution 6068 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no no are there any abstentions resolution 6068 is approved by a vote of five to two with student representative lateral voting no all right thank you all right um the next item uh is okay next item is uh approving an increase of the pass through rate to 95% of the charter school rate for Charter Schools serving populations of 50% or greater historically underserved by race and ethnicity historically underserved students by race and
02h 25m 00s
ethnicity so this uh resolution reads the board of education for Portland Public Schools approves an increase of the pass through rate from 80 of State School funds from 80% to 95% for K8 Charter Schools serving student populations of 50% or greater historically underserved students by race or ethnicity let's take just a minute uh let's recess for uh three minutes e for e e e all right director to pass and director Bailey can you please rejoin us at the de and director Moore Sergeant arms yes all right back to the issue at hand which we have just introduced um which is regarding the um pass through rate of State School funds to charter schools that serve a student population of more than 50% historically underserved students uh as defined by race and ethnicity um superintendent Guero would you like to call staff forward to bring some context on this yes this this is an important item and I want to make sure that um our senior director for multiple Pathways Karina wolf as well as Tara O'Neal Who heads and supports our Charter Schools uh provide sort of a clear explanation of what we're proposing here is it in there good evening so the resolu or the um the context is we were asked to um consider the implications of passing through uh
02h 30m 00s
more than the state's minimum for schools that have a greater percentage of a majority of students who are racially and ethically um under historically underserved okay and what we uh what we um did was a an analysis of our funding strategy right now and where the uh Charter School funds that we bring in through the district for the ADM at the Charter School uh what is actually spent and passed through to the Charter School versus what is retained in the district uh and additionally we also looked at Charter Schools percentages of historically underserved uh by race and ethnicity and uh in the um analysis that you received also showed um the cost of running the charter school program uh and I'm apologizing because I did not bring that memo with me it's right here and the uh overall um analysis is that we are uh running the program for less money than what we are bringing in we are able to uh um pass through by law more than a minimum amount of funding and uh the potential for passing through to to support schools that are serving a greater than 50 % historically underserved by race or ethnicity population uh exists without um uh exceeding the funds that we bring in for Charter Schools right I I think I'll um just bring the motion get the motion on the table and then if we have further questions um the board can bring those forward um the board will now vote on resolution 6069 approving the increase of pass through ratees to 95% of Charter School rate for Charter Schools serving populations of 50% or more uh historically underserved students by race and ethnicity do I have a motion so moved uh director Lowry moves and director to pass seconds the motion or actually that was simultaneous to adop to adopt resolution 6069 Miss Bradshaw is there any public comment on resolution 6069 okay thank you Miss Powell um is there any board discussion um I would go ahead director Lowry the chair of our Charter and alternative programs committee I would like to say this came out in a conversation at the charter and Alternatives program committee meeting um and I know that CH onam was the sort of Energizer behind asking staff to do this analysis but the committee discussed it at length and um we do recommend this um that that our we have um Charters that are doing incredible we have a charter that is doing incredible work and we want to honor that and also look to the Future um and ensure that those students that have historically been underserved have the resources um to be as successful as possible so um I would encourage my board colleagues uh to really think deeply about this as a way to serve those students well so I I really appreciate the committee bringing this forward I I think it it sounds like a great idea I'm definitely going to support it I have a more generic question I don't know if it's the staff or the committee um but just sort of getting to understand this so state law requires a minimum of 80% to be passed through and it sounds like PPS policy to date has been to pass through 80% % but it sounds like prior to this we have not done any analysis we've now done the analysis prior to this though it was really just sort of based on that minimum and I guess my question is a policy issue I I appreciate this and I appreciate the focus on students of color um and really rewarding those programs that do that is there an argument here though that we should really be looking at our true cost of of running and administering these programs and and to the extent that true cost is less than 20% passing through the remainder to the charter schools that are approved so I think a couple things just just to be clear it's 80% the statutory minimum and threshold is 80% for K8 and it's 95% at high school so there are two different rates that the state has set and part of what we were asked to do as staff was to do an analysis I will say that there was an analysis done about six years ago maybe around how much it cost to um so a similar probably less but a similar analysis where was how much does it cost to run run the positions how much does our charter school office um require as far as fiscal uh impact and and a and a percentage of other positions in the district that help also support our Charter Schools um I will say I believe this is um probably a more expansive analysis than we've had in the past so um so I appreciate director con's request um and just to share um with folks who might who maybe have not seen this memo part of what we shared was to run the charter schools office our current um line items for the charter schools office is
02h 35m 00s
247 um 5,500 and other District personnel and this is an estimate so our estimate was other District Administrative services to support of our Charter Schools was $ 398,375 46,2 32 um which is 3.8% of the total PPS charter school state fund allocation so um with regard to your question I think I would def defer back to to your body as a as a deliberative board um around around what that is but but we do now know what the numbers are we did discuss this very question um around what is an ethical amount to pass through and first of all I just want to thank uh Tara for the incredible amount of work sheated with this analysis she looked at we'll let her get her Applause she deserves them um she looked at data and like her calendar over the last several years to kind of create an average because there are some years where we ask more from our Charter staff uh to do this work last year in particular and so she has just done an incredible very thoughtful very thorough analysis so we have a number that's real um the question about should we pass through more um we sort of have this responsibility to have space for students so if they choose to leave a charter program and go to their neighborhood school there needs to be a space for them so there's this tension of how do we fund our charter schools and also make sure we're funding our neighborhood schools appropriately so that if those students there's a space for them if they choose to leave so there's this kind of like tension between how we how much we pass through and how much then gets sent on to the neighborhood schools that students could possibly end up attending and so that's the reason for the n going to a full 95% across the board okay thank you guess just one of the things haven't been on the board twice or three times almost uh when where charter schools have really struggled and ultimately not had their Charters renewed the level of Staff work um to both support um from a financial standpoint and um engage and then if you ended up closing them the work to get the students replay bed um I think there's a cost there they're they're onetime cost but it happens periodically and if we don't account for that then the district's going to be um eating that it's a great question U I just think we have to account for those times when you have just this intense staff amount of focus and time and energy when you're having to close down a charter um versus all the charters we're looking at tonight which hopefully require less staff time um so maybe there's some sort of sliding scale but I think we have to account for that that it doesn't always turn you'll notice in the memo that there's like General Council two perc and some of those other numbers and that is based on the last year when we did end up with a non-renewal and there was additional staff hours so terara did kind of an aggregate across years to make sure that what was there was taking into account the fluctuations and so it's not you know an exact number it is an estimate but it is based on looking at several years and several different seasons of Charter renewals but that's a really good point brim Edwards um so again I want to thank staff for this analysis too and also I want to thank chyos PDX for calling the question um in their renewal process for really asking us to um address this uh what they consider an inequity which I agree um and because that we wouldn't have otherwise done so I think we've been doing business this way for a long time and um uh you know just going with the state minimum and you know quite frankly not even aware that that statute Le gave us flexibility on that um so thank you to the leadership at kyos PDX Mar um oh my gosh zik Mara I'm so sorry um for originally doing the number crunching that you brought to our committee I'm flustered because you don't have your adorable children here um so yeah it was really an important conversation and part of the conversation too was uh this resolution is not specific to chyos PDX they just happen to be the only one of our charter schools that serves that population right now but hopefully this is an incentive to our other charter schools to really diversify their student populations and I think um they they regard it as such um so do we have any other uh discussion on this item um just to follow up with that um do we have any other ch ERS that might be on the cusp close to the cusp of
02h 40m 00s
right now the uh the remaining uh five Charters average about 20 to 22% uh students of historically underserved races and ethnicities um and I think uh we do have an opportunity with uh schools that are using a weighted Lottery to increase those percentages um weighted lottery I would take take a very long time to increase between 20% to 50% also opens the uh the question if we ended up with a charter application so okay all right just any other I was say just along that point it seems like um I know that the conversations in the charter committee have been about getting schools to have more diverse um student population so maybe instead of just having a cliff at 50% that there be some sort of sliding scales to incent incentivize um the the schools to have their student bodies be more reflective of our um student population I'm going to say that's a great idea and we will take that back to the Charter and alternative programs committee for further comment thank you up to I mean does that go up to that 3.8% though so is that a a ladder up 95% and go up from there or are suggesting no I think what uh between 80 and 95 a ladder to get to 95 mhm yeah isn't that's what you were saying right yeah instead of just having a cliff of like either you're either 50% and you get 95 or you're at 49 and you get 80 you were at 50.1 last year but you're at 49.9 this year and so you take a big hit doesn't make much sense just to be clear this resolution speaks only this resolution that we're uh considering this evening speaks only to that um 50% threshold but uh director Lowry who chairs that committee um we can we can bring it up in committee and see if there's an interest in bringing forward some some tweak uh as to this resolution at some point in the future um but the board will now vote on resolution 6069 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any abstentions resolution 6069 is approved by a vote of 7 to Zer with student represent lateral voting yes all right thank you thank you uh so representative lateral you do not have a report from DSC tonight is that correct okay and superintendent Guerrero thank you um we moved your report down in our agenda so that we could accommodate the students and families that have been with us on these earlier items so we would love to hear from you I know you are also considering Charter renewals since we have the staff here I didn't know if you also had school community members that you wanted to take this item out of order H happy to go after that okay thank you very much sure we'll Forge ahead um so our next resolution is to approve the request for renewal of the charter agreement for chyos PDX sorry guys we're trying to help you get your steps in superintendent I will not ask you to invite Karina wolf and Tara O'Neal back up welcome back right good evening um so we have this is our first of four orders of business tonight so Kyros PDX Academy Public Charter School submitted a written request for Charter renewal on January 2nd 20 or 2020 in accordance with the charter Charter School renewal process outlined in osss 3 38.0652 information included in the binders provided um tonight and materials provided on February 13th the public hearing was held per OS 33865 5C and the board committee met again on February 20th to discuss its recommendations the next step in the renewal process is to determine whether or not to approve the school's request for Renewal District sponsors of charter schools in Oregon are responsible for evaluating charter school performance and determining whether or not to renew the contract of the Charter School based on its compliance with the law and the contract with its sponsor as a member district of the National Association of Charter School authorizers PPS requires charter schools to use the recommended renewal application to ensure a fair and transparent process for schools undergoing renewal and to ensure that the renewal decision is based on criteria specified in statute evaluation for Renewal includes a review of annual performance reports Financial audits site visits and any other information jointly agreed upon by the sponsor in the charter school the information is formally collected in the school's annual performance framework and report and now I'm going to hand it over to
02h 45m 00s
Tara to give some more school specific information good evening kyos PDX is a K5 year round Charter School currently operating in the PPS humble Elementary School building in North Portland Kyros currently enrolls 204 students with a growing student population as the lead class uh fills the full class uh ages into the upper grades kyo's current contract includes an enrollment capacity of 244 students because chyros has been growing by one grade per year the school has only two years of State assessment data reported the results on state assessments have not been consistent in part due to the small student population in grades 3 through five U more data is needed both longitudinal over time as well as sample size within years before we can assess trends for student achievement data the board has been provided with copies of uh the chyros renewal application the 201819 Oregon report card and the 201819 annual performance framework and Report which includes analysis of student achievement data to date in addition over the course of the last Charter term the school has exhibited Financial sustainability and consistently meets both financial and organizational standards on its Frameworks Kyros PDX opened in 2014 and is in its sixth year of operation completing its first Charter renewal in 2017 this is kyo's second Charter renewal and per Oregon revised Statute 33865 the first renewal of a charter shall be for the same period as the initial Charter and subsequent renewals of a charter shall be for a minimum of 5 years but may not exceed 10 years kyos PDX has requested a 10-year renewal of its Charter the reason for the requested length is that the term of the contract with a charter school will often be considered in applications for low interest interest financing and the longer term allows for greater access to lower cost facilities financing opportunities additionally as part of its renewal application chyos requested uh pass through of more than the statutory minimum of 80% uh and an increase of the pass through rate to 95% kyos has also asked for an increase in its enrollment capacity from 244 to 255 students to allow for flexibility in class sizes as the upper grades become fully enrolled we get this motion on the table the board will now vote on resolution 670 to approve the renewal of the charter agreement with Kyros PDX Learning Academy do I have a motion so moved second director Bailey moves director Scott director Scott and DEP pass second the motion to to adopt resolution 6070 Miss Bradshaw is there any public comment on resolution 6070 yes Marcus Mundy welcome when I signed up I thought it might be controversial but uh I just wanted to say that uh we're proud of chyros uh they're a proud member of the Coalition of communities of color we support them we applaud the wisdom of the board for approving their pass through amount and we look forward to a positive vote on the extension of their Charter we're very proud of kyos thank you very much go comment um this may be a comment a question for staff um when it comes to facilities overall for um Charter Schools um and I'm just curious that I'm not on the charter committee and as a new board member um how does that play out so I know kyos right now is in um a PPS facility are they guaranteed to continue in that facility or is that uh question how does that play out for a charter school just just generically um so there's no obligation for the district to um for our any of our contracted schools um to uh provide a facility and so that's an individual negotiation between the school and the district is that a a year-by-year negotiation or if we you know approve a 10-year Charter do we enter into like a 10year lease with the organization is that a possibility you know I would defer to the facilities department or um or the superintendent that's that's what I will say is that's not handled in the Charter office so the my understanding is that the renewal correct me if I'm wrong superintendent ger that the renewal is for the charter does not have to do with the lease agreement at Hult and in fact the feedback from that kyos PDX has been that they would like their own building and part of the reason for this 10 year is to give them the opportunity to to look at purchasing another facility that would better suit their needs um and so that's the long that's part of the
02h 50m 00s
reason for that 10 year is to provide them that stability so they can find a permanent home and so they don't have to be um worried about if we need tumblt at some point what that might look like and apparently it was an important variable in um obtaining financing to show that the district has extended a 10-year lease in U Portland Village School relay the same um comment to us I guess I would say just specifically about the the school they have a like a lease that it's for a certain amount of space that they pay a certain amount of which is a separate um item that we approve separately and I believe they're the only Charter in a PPS School thanks any further board discussion all right um the board will now vote on resolution 6070 approving the um renewal for chyros PDX all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes any opposed please indicate by saying no any extensions resolution 6070 is approved by a vote of 7 to Zer with student representative lateral voting yes all right great thank you so much next we have uh renewal uh request for extension of the charter agreement with opal Public Charter School we'll I'll put the motion on the table and then we'll uh see if we have board questions or discussion the board will now vote on resolution 6071 approving the request for extension of the charter agreement with Opel Public Charter School do I have a motion so moved second director Bailey moves and director to pass seconds the motion to adopt resolution 6071 Miss Bradshaw is there any public comment on resolution 6071 no all right do we have board discussion or questions on this or staff just a clarification I do have just we do have just some general information on each school if you'd like it yes please do okay um opal Charter School submitted a written request for one-year extension of its contract on January 2nd 20120 as required by its contract with PPS on February 3rd the board charter schools and alternative programs committee held a meeting to review opal Charter School's request and the supplementary information included in the binders provided tonight opal charter school is a K5 Charter School in southwest Portland housed in the Portland's Children's Museum enrolling 89 students the school's instructional program is Guided by the work of Early Childhood Educators in Regio Amelia Italy Neuroscience research and constructivist practices the Opel School through its association with the Museum Center for Learning operates as a research lab for educators Nationwide who take part in opel's summer Symposium and visitation days during the school year and now I'm going to uh opal charter school is currently operating under a 5 to 10e flexible term agreement the fourth extension of which terminates on June 30th 2020 so this is the ninth year of that contract and the PPS board and school need to agree either to extend the contract by one year or to initiate a full renewal process opal has requested that his contract be extended as per section J of its contract with PPS the PPS Charter Schools office has submitted opal's report card Oregon report card and performance framework uh and in its review of academic performance fiscal management organizational stability adherence with all applicable state laws uh the charter schools office has found no areas of statutory or compliance concern in its review have any uh further board discussion or questions regarding opal nope my son went to uh pre prek they had a a three and 1/2 year old program back in the early days so you been everywhere I have been everywhere yes just want to note for the public and for my fellow board members that uh for each of these schools even with a 10-year extension we're monitoring their performance every year um so that if need be we can inter intervene as needed or uh hopefully not have to intervene but but we're doing that accountability work on a year on a yearly basis important point the board will now vote on resolution 6071 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all oppos please indicate by saying no any extensions resolution 6071 is approved by a vote of 7 to Zer with student representative lateral voting yes all right we have one more which is the resolution to approve oh excuse me two more to approve the request for extension of the charter agreement um with first uh Portland
02h 55m 00s
Arthur Academy uh Public Charter School um we'll get the motion on the table and then tell us a bit about Arthur Academy the board will now vote on resolution 6072 approving the request for extension of the charter agreement with Portland Arthur Academy Public Charter School do I have a motion second director Scott moves and director Bailey seconds a motion to adopt resolution 6072 Miss Bradshaw any public comment no all right um tell us about Arthur Academy Portland Arthur Academy um Charter School submitted a written request for a one-year extension of its contract on January 2nd 2020 as required by its contract with PPS on February 3rd the board and charter schools and alternative programs committee held a meeting to review Portland Arthur Academy's request and the supplementary information included in your binders Portland Arthur Academy charter school is a K5 Charter School in Southeast Portland currently enrolling 175 students the school uses a research based direct instruction model that focuses students through a highly organized incremental curriculum and ensures they Master each skill before moving on to the next Portland Arthur Academy is one of six Arthurs in the greater Portland area which share a common curriculum a single board of directors and a central Administrative Office uh Portland Arthur Academy is also operating under the flexible term 5 to 10e agreement is also in the fourth extension of that term as was opal school and again this is the ninth year of that contract for them uh Portland Arthur has requested that its contract contract be extended by one year uh the PPS Charter Schools office again submitted the uh Oregon report card and the performance framework for Portland Arthur Academy and found no areas of statutory or compliance concern in its review any board discussion or questions it's just fascinating to see the different approaches in these schools arther Academy in in particular that's wow that's that's different y I've told this story before but I visited Arthur Academy and um opal school on the same day and their their practices and their pedagogy couldn't be any more different and in both environments kids were learning kids were engaged kids were joyful um it was really kind of incredible to see um these very different methodologies um all achieving pretty great results in terms of student learning so um the board will now vote oh I'm sorry did you have a comment okay the board will now vote on resolution 6072 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all oppose please indicate by saying no any extensions resolution 6072 is approved by a vote of 7 to0 with student representative lateral voting yes all right um Now we move on to a request for renewal of the charter agreement with Portland Village Public Charter School um we'll get it get it moved the board will now vote on resolution 6073 res 73 resolution approving renewal of the charter agreement with Portland Village School do I have a motion so moved directors Bailey and director Scott moves and director Scott seconds the motion to adopt resolution 6073 do we have any public comment I no sorry okay it's all right uh is there any board discussion on this resolution or excuse me can you please tell us about our friends at Portland Village School sure Portland Village Public Charter School submitted a written request for Charter of renewal on January 2nd 2020 in accordance with the charter School renewal process outlined in statute um at the same February 3rd board charter school and alternative programs committee held a meeting to review um Portland Village Schools renewal application and supplementary information included um in the in the binders and on online on February 13th the public hearing was held per OS 3 38.0652 C and the board committee met again on February 20th to discuss its recommendations the next step in the renewal full renewal process is to determine whether or not to approve the school's request for Renewal the renewal's decision must be based on criteria specified in statute evaluation for Renewal includes an uh review of an annual performance reports Finance audits site visits and any other information jointly agreed upon by the sponsor and charter school this information can be found in the school's annual performance framework and Report Portland Village School is a K8 Charter School operating in North Portland using a standards based Waldorf inspire ired approach PBS currently enrolls 404 students with an enrollment capacity of 444 the board has been provided with
03h 00m 00s
copies of the village Portland Village Schools renewal application the 1819 Oregon report card the 1819 annual performance framework and a summary and Analysis of the results of Portland Village school's academic plan of improvement the plan of improvement was implemented in 201819 due to two consecutive years of failing academic results on state Assessments in Elementary grades English language arts and grades 3 through 8 math while PVS still has some work to do to meet District average State assessment results in math the progress toward Improvement in one year is impar is apparent by a 15% increase in students meeting Benchmark in grades 3 through 5 math and a 133% increase for students in grades 6 through 8 math additionally in English language arts grades three through five students meeting Benchmark increased 12% meeting the district's average for the first time in over four years Portland Village School has continued its implementation of their academic plan of improvement in the 201920 school year uh Portland Village School has undergone significant turnover in school leadership as well as in the business office in the last two years there were concerns listed in the 189 Municipal audit in regards to internal controls and preparedness for the audit which were a direct result of having lost business office staff just prior to the audit in response the school has implemented a sound financial management system that includes an internal bookkeeper and an external contracted accountant to provide a more robust system of controls and protection against future staff turnover historically the school has exhibited Financial sustainability with a reliably healthy cash balance Pand Village School consistently meets organizational standards on its annual performance Frameworks have a strong governance structure through its board of directors Portland Village School opened in 2007 is in its 13th year of operation completing its first Charter renewal in 2010 and its second in 2013 this is Portland Village school's third Charter renewal per statute the renewal of a charter shall be for a minimum of 5 years but may not exceed 10 and Portland Village School has requested a 10-year renewal of its Charter specifically so it can be eligible for a spef specific facilities financing opportunity at a lowered interest rate and just to be clear our uh resolution recommends that 10-year renewal um do we have any further discussion or questions I would just say that Portland Village School is housed in um a church that they are renting and they have a lease through 2024 but this 10e renewal gives them the opportunity to um secure that low interest funding so that they can hopefully purchase a building so that they they can continue to grow and sustain their program sustain and grow I guess is the correct order of that sentence thank you we won't quibble about that uh the board will now vote on resolution 6073 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all oppose please indicate by saying no any abstentions resolution 6073 is approved by a vote of 7 to Zer with student representative lateral voting yes all right thank you very much and um again really great staff work um these renewal processes are very labor intensive and I also um want to commend director Lowry for her stewardship of this process through our board committee um she did a fabulous job and she's good at everything it's always a great it's always a great opportunity to learn more about what's going on in our charter schools and I'm going to make by always make which is um as a district Our intention is to use our Charter Schools as Laboratories to help us learn and to learn from the things that are that are working for their students in these smaller environments so um we have had some discussion recently about shared professional development with our charter schools so um I hope some more of that does take root and chair con Sams I would just thank you for giving me the role of serving as the chair of that committee it's been a wonderful learning experience and it has been great to know the get to know the passionate Educators at all of our charter schools and to have the chance with director Bailey to visit everybody this uh winter and to really get to see um the incredible education that's being provided for our students at those charter schools so thank you all right I believe you have a report good evening um I appreciate that we prioritize hearing from our school communities on an evening like tonight
03h 05m 00s
um so I wanted to do something a little different tonight um particularly given recent hate related incidents in our schools uh in addition to hearing tonight's testimony from members of the Rosa Parks Community uh especially as we're just entering the month of March as we close out Black History Month uh so I wanted to share a few Reflections there's not going to be a slideshow so thank you for um indulging me um but I wanted the broader Community to be clear about my position on issues of of racial justice so I'm going to expound on a little bit on that tonight um because it does pain me to hear feedback from our PPS teachers and uh from members of Rosa Parks Community for instance uh the lack of trust that underlines their words puts puts on display the evident work we we still need to do uh to close that Gulf between our Collective words and actions on behalf of children of color the commitment I bring to the students of Rosa Parks and in every underserved School Community is that children of color and their parents deserve and have the right to expect that each day in school is is affirming of our students identity and that they feel that their culture is valued uh that we ensure rigorous culturally responsive instruction is provided that as Educators we demonstrate care for their academic social and emotional well-being my commitment requires that students needs are centered in the conversation uh I commit that the proposals brought before the board I are developed by leaders who share this Viewpoint uh who bring their relevant experience and who work tirelessly to achieve these ideals uh this is the culture that we are trying to build transformation work is complex and by definition involves real change and there may not always be unanimous agreement the opportunity we have is to build relational trust by demonstrating strategic actions and improved outcomes and the opportunity to build trust exists by continuing to work together against many of the often larger forces working against us last week I reported on the highlights of our District's celebration of African-American culture our leaders our students uh we need to keep celebrating black excellence in PPS all year round it's important and it's tough because Oregon and Portland have a unique history this district has a mixed track record in being able to deliver an educational experience that produces Equitable outcomes for students of color it's an environment uh in particularly at this moment in our country where students of color continue to experience or be victim to hate incidents in our schools uh these are Eerie painful reminders of the acts of racial Terror of our past uh and they're indicative of the racial Injustice students families and staff of color face today still when we are confronted with addressing these acts of hate I know that uh it is not representative of the talent and Gifts of our students and educators of color and there are many places where this Excellence is evident and places where we're making progress I want to affirm the strong leadership and we've often highlighted them just in this past year just to recall our memory of people like Mercedes Munos our teacher of the year in Oregon uh principal Chris Frasier new community engagement team member Chenise Clark principal Curtis Wilson Lincoln assistant principal James McGee a keyr talent recruiter Loretta Benjamin Samuels Jeffrey McGee Camille it and many many more um and I also want to point out that our student leaders continue to grow in their own voice and Leadership we have examples around our offices all the time uh Mr tavv vandre if you're still here who's always around bugging us about what we can do better he might be upstairs they like to wander around uh not the best practice I have some spreadsheets he could uh balance out for me uh Jamari a Tiana Haley fisel Osman uh these are just of the few uh of the names uh we we get the opportunity you know when we're not in schools to to
03h 10m 00s
see around uh who I appreciate for for their feedback uh so that we might listen to them so that we might continue to identify more effective ways to continue elevating student voice and perspective uh for me these These are small and big examples of leadership and black Excellence uh and their living proof of of the resistance the charge before us as the district's leaders which we fully have embraced is to reimagine a school system so that it serves every student especially black and Native kids in a way that public education was never actually designed to accomplish we've made much progress in a short amount of time to both set a foundation and begin to rebuild build the system um better designed to serve us yet I know that to improve to transform to innovate to reimagine and provide the best possible educational experience for students of color we have to confront we have to talk about the pain and suffering often caused by the system A system that produces inequity and that to this day is the sight of reproductions of terrible symbols of racial hate and Terror they happen here in Portland as I talked to my colleagues embarked on similar work around the country they face them too we cannot get outside the shadow of the system unless we can integrate our ability to resist and create pockets of equity we have to face our failures and commit to working together to build and create a system without oppression uh because as James Baldwin once said one of my favorites uh not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it's faced when we take both our our potential and our failings we arrive at the Nexus of who we are it's in that spirit that I want to urge us as a collective to face what is happening in our district and our community let me give you some current examples noes continue to be found in our buildings graffiti with disturbing imagery and the n-word have been written on our walls our indigenous students are traumatized by images that glorify depictions of colonization our Asian students and their parents are being victimized by fear of xenophobia there are concrete examples of every one of these just in the last week how are we building our understanding in order to move forward for the past four months several leaders and teams throughout the district have engaged in deep racial equity and social justice professional development um partly to review the racial Legacy of our country but also to study the racist patterns that show up over and over again uh and that are often entrenched in school systems across the United States we know that we've inherited an institutionally racist system and we're ex examining headon ways in which culturally racist narratives and beliefs show up in policies practices and procedures because they still do and no matter what we are told no matter what how much we might wish it so racism still very much exists institutional racism continues today to create barriers and hold people back we must examine ourselves and our system every day to ensure that we are not part of the problem our hope is that this shared learning not only leads leads to concrete actions that make PPS a more racially Equitable and social justice oriented institution and I would say after a career of this engaged in strong anti-racist teaching and leading that we build a shared culture around learning and leading together we aspire to partner with the Greater Community to build deep relationships of trust so that we are a more truly inclusive organization one where we must embrace a collective effort to embrace our young people as partners in our decision-making and one that shifts power so that voices and perspectives from communities and leaders of color participate in the work to close these pervasive disparities one school one leader one parent one board member one classroom cannot do this alone to become more hopeful more committed to living in a complex world we have to do this together and we have to live the principle of being kind to one another while being critical about the system for me this is personal as a Latino the
03h 15m 00s
son of immigrants a man of color I've chosen to commit my life to this work and I live in a community where the beneficiaries of our racist system call into question my commitment and moral courage to lead racial Equity work we can't address the trauma caused by a racist act when we point fingers we can't find Our Hope or bolster our commitment to students when we only run to the fixes we have to be in community with one another with our students our families our Educators our culturally responsive Partners talking about the Injustice and committing together to create a more just World a more just school system I believe many of us believe that the staff recommendation for Rosa Parks with all the additional programs and resources including Ed is an improved array of responsive supports for students the best way to ensure that we are able to influence the conditions in the school and do better by students of color but I also know that people in the Rosa Parks Community still do not feel heard no matter the structural plan for the school or what calendar we use we share responsibility for continuing to find ways to bring us together so that we can fortify the relationship between District leadership and the school Community furthermore tonight the board of education is going to vote and consider our student investment account investment package specifically the application I'm proud of the work that our community and staff have done to prioritize and often Center students of color in that in these Investments we know these investments will have the potential to accelerate achievement and as we say in our community-driven vision prepare our students to lead change and improve the world this is not about a single conversation it's about the broader transformation of a public institution I'm committed to this work and I know that you join me in that effort thank you for hearing my reflection tonight [Applause] thank you for your support thank you you know what we call that in black church don't you we call call it preach I really appreciate you um sharing those reflections with us um they're uh personally meaningful all right our next item on the agenda is uh a look at our midyear progress measures um in October our board adopted threeyear goals that outline a set of academic Milestones that hold ourselves accountable to increase student outcomes for students most historically under Serv served in our district we are committed to making the system shifts required to better support our students Educators and leaders to improve student performance even when those decisions are difficult superintendent Guerrero would you like to introduce this item oh what an appropriate transition to be working for a board that uh is being clear about uh our own accountability and the improved outcomes we want to have for the students we have the privilege of serving so uh thank goodness we have uh nationally Renown Dr Russ Brown with us now uh who like many of our new cabinet members has had to come in running um the good thing is that uh we're here tonight to follow through on the commitment we made with the board to report out at the midpoint of each year uh how we're doing so uh Dr Brown thank you very much thank you um chair conam um Vice chair Moore superintendent Guerrero members of the board and Community pleased to be here this evening uh tough act to follow thank you very much um that being said I am pleased to to be coming back to present a midyear update uh we had promised the board and the community to to not only um talk about the the board goals but also update periodically on on a series of progress measures as well so in October of um 2019 uh the Portland Public Schools board adopted a
03h 20m 00s
series of four board goals um that were informed by the commun engagement process that led to the portrait of The Graduate uh as you can see we our goal our vision for the system is to produce graduates they compassionate critical thinkers who are able to collaborate and solve problems and be prepared to uh to lead in a more socially just World um the the goals that have been outlined by the board work in a ladder they they act as a a series of rungs towards this ultimate vision and um have been informed by that three of the four goals uh and I was really pleased at the time that the board was um so bold to take three uh three of the four goals and make them racially explicit in in terms of their outcomes and to to outline those um as students move forward towards this um portrait the first of those rungs on that lad um is that transition from learning to read to reading to learn and it's such a critical uh transition for students to be uh successful further uh in their educational process and to be able to fulfill that potential of a portrait of grad um as you can see the the third grade reading goal is the first of the racially explicit goals uh last year when we were looking this data only 44% of our uh historically underserved students of color were meeting growth and we were projecting to to move to 60% to meet or exceed growth by the spring of 22 now as you'll recall as we moved into December we talked about well what could be some midyear progress uh monitors for that and what we decided to do was to focus on winter map and where we are at the midpoint of the year uh and the winter map is highly predictive where students going end up on ESC it's also highly predictive where they're going to end up in the spring on on map the expectation was that 45% of our historical underserved students of color were going to meet or exceed their growth expectations in the winter map um as you can see uh this progress measure is on track 47.3% of our our students have met are exceeded uh growth expectations at this point in time so the first of these um is much in line with what we expected I I think you're going to hear this sort of resounding theme that you know these midar progress monitors they're they're formative they sort of let us know are we in the ballpark or where we expected to be I think you're going to hear me say again and again we're about where we expected to be uh when we put these forward the second of the goals again racially explicit goal is around fifth grade math and again we we focused on fifth grade math because it's a set of essential skills for for students to be able to move on and and be able to access advanced mathematics later and again when we're looking at our historical data 41% of our students our underserved students of color were were meum or exceeding growth targets and again to keep up you have to be at about 50% so gaps were actually widening and we're moving again to 60% of our historically unders servance col are meeting or exceeding the growth um targets by um spring of 2022 so when you look at the fifth grade data again we use map as as a midar progress point for this the expectation was that 43% of our students would meet or exceed growth Targets this year this is in line with the performance we saw last year so we again we were expecting a ramp up in terms of of the outcomes over time and this year to be relatively stable at this point in time we see 42.8% of our students are meeting or exceeding their growth targets very much in line with the 43% I'm not going to interpret two10 one way or another it's in the ballpark on that just a quick um question about the um just how it's set up where you have the I guess it's the slide before where you have the circle and the lines um so is this the spring the last measurement or is it the summer the last measurement just I remember we had four points there are three points of measurement so when we look at the eighth grade goal the eighth grade goal um is a summative measure and if we recall it's a placeholder because we're redesigning middle school and we want that that redesign to be reflective again of the exploratory opportunities that students pursue in Middle School uh in preparation for entering High School to be ready to pursue those po post-secondary Pathways that we have defined um as a placeholder uh we fully expect that that part of that is academic outcomes that we expect students to perform uh in terms of reading and Mathematics on on back and that that's a placeholder for this and we looked at both of those do stud how how many students are uh passing both the esack and reading as well as
03h 25m 00s
mathematics and again um looking at our data 43.9% of our students were passing both subjects and we're looking to move forward to 51% meeting Proficiency in both as we move forward when we looked at this data we disaggregated we break broke it out and looked at in terms of progress monitor monitoring where are we in terms of reading where are we in terms of math and then where are we in terms of combined and I'm going to go through this relatively quickly because of the hour and other things that we need to be doing as well um I'm going to talk about Ela first I'm pleased to say that um in general uh Portland Public Schools uh students are outperforming their peers nationally about 4.5 points uh in terms of NWA the map scores 4.5 points in eth grade is a lot uh the average score for an eighth grade math participant in our system is equal to or higher than 73% of the students in the National normative sample so 73 out of 100 kids perform at or below the average PPS student so I think that that's really quite promising the metor expectation for ELA was the 59% of the eighth graders would be on track to meter exceed proficiency and this Pro um this progress measure is on track with 61.2% again being on track to meet Proficiency in the EA you better be careful or we're going to ramp up our goals not yet I've seen that before let's not do that um again in mathematics uh our our students are outperforming the nation again and this this is unique for mathematics because this is the first grade where we see that outperforming Nation by about 4.1 points that is again quite a lot uh and again our students on average are outperforming 67 out of 100 uh students in the country it's quite impressive major expectation for mathematics was that 42% of our eighth graders would be on track uh to meter exceed proficiency 42.1% are at this point in time yeah I see the question mark how is it that we've got 67 we're we're ahead of 67% of the country but we're only projected to have something less than 50% of proficiency and and I'm ask that you humor me on a on a little statistics thing here but I think it's really important for our community to understand the shift that occurred when we went to the common Corp so the as back the Common Core threshold for uh career in college rist is not the historical proficiency if so if you look at the average score for mathematics around the country uh the score on the RIT is 229 that's the 50th percentile our distribution is at 233 it's at the 60 uh 7th per it's shifted over the vast majority of our kids are above the medium the cut point for proficiency on esac is at the 72nd percentile so over half our distribution is below that the the cut point for proficiency is extraordinarily high in eth grade for mathematics and it's just I think really important for us to be aware of that and for the community to understand that this isn't your you know your kid your you know your grandkids proficiency the shift uh to career in college Rus which I think is ultimately align uh very well with our expectations for postsecondary Rus in high school um is quite a shift in expectation It is Well above the average and again at the 72nd percentile 7 out of 10 kids around the country are falling below this cut point and the fact that we have them uh close to to half of our students meeting this threshold is really rather impressive for our kids just just to clarify so while it's a high while you're saying it's a high bar you're also saying thought I heard that it's it's the right um the right bar for College and Career Readiness and being prepared for high high school it I believe that again monitoring to be on track to to meet the the cut point for the PSAT or the SAT I believe is the right threshold 7 72nd percen is actually probably a little high for that but in spirit this idea that we want to have a higher Bor and we want to be moving towards this um I think is really important for for the board and Community to understand that it's also important to understand in the context of of moving student achievement these shifts for for moving an entire distribution of scores don't happen overnight if we look at nape scores around the country over time they move gradually this sort of shift is going to take time so finally when you put these together uh the on track measure which which combines both reading and math it was set at 40% 39 uh 3% of our students are meeting that threshold right now and again that's the combined reading and Mathematics and Mathematics is the
03h 30m 00s
limiter there and and part of that's because it's such a high bar finally uh the post-secondary Rous goal uh which may be the one that I found the most exciting uh of the lot was looking at again Portland Public Schools graduates and how they could demonstrate in in one or more Pathways that they're U meeting some sort of postsecondary rating is and um specifically for our students of color that roughly half our students of color are meeting uh one of these criteria right now and we want to see that move to 56% uh by 2022 we are still committed uh to the Arts and weaving Arts into that a as well as um adding the the testing requirements as we move forward when we talk about that but we can't measure that expectation for the Arts until we have the consistent opportunities in place exactly but we're building again the pathways to be able to to talk about what that means so just as a reminder for the board and the community uh we looked at uh students who successfully complete three or more AP classes with this year above or three or more IB classes with this year above folks who complete a CTE pathway or uh students who complete uh three or more dual language courses with um successfully or students who meet the Seal of by literacy at this time last year 58 uh 57.8% of our students were on track to to meet one or more of these criteria at this point this year 59.4% of our students are on track to meet one or more of these criteria which I think is quite promising in terms of of our uh historically underserved students of color last year at this time 46% were on track to meet these criteria at this point 44.1% are on track to meet one or more of these criteria so I've buzzed through this fairly quickly and again uh my suggestion would be that you know given that this is the first time that we've looked at this uh in our first set of um interim progress measures we're not at the end of the year yet it's not summative um these are largely consistent with the expectation uh some are a little higher some are a little lower but I don't know that I would interpret any of these um I wouldn't get excited in either direction about these I think this is where we expected to land and that's what we're we're we're seeing at this point happy to entertain questions um at this point in time thank you um can we go back to the uh eighth grade um and the eighth grade goal is the one is the only one of these four that we did not explicitly set um or or didn't set a a goal explicitly focused on students of color underserved students um could you break out have you broken have you disaggregated these numbers by race ethnicity I thought yeah okay I couldn't find it yes um okay I wasn't sure whether I made that up or not thank you um okay so um some of the numbers there's great variation correct um among the student groups um what do you make of that so it one of the things that we committed to do that the board identified four goals and we have been working through and Reporting out on those goals we did agree however uh to report out the data disaggregated for each of those board goals um I think in part for us to be able to reflect up on those disparities that we see and we may over time choose to adjust or rethink some of that um again I don't think the disparities are necessarily surprising at this point in time uh we know that we have and I think the superintendent spoke to it earlier we know that we've seen disparities in in our educational outcomes those will accumulate over time so the eighth grade um and the fact that we're looking at a cumulative score for both Ela and math um sort of doubles down on those dispari so it's going to it's going to accentuate those where they exist so I I I'm not surprised with what I see here uh but again we we have committed to to talking about this goal providing the information and providing in a disaggregated way so that we're informed and can be thoughtful as we move forward um I so just to add to that there is an extreme variability there and I just to underline they're not acceptable to any
03h 35m 00s
of us and they help us begin to prompt the next level of conversation around what do we attribute the growth or the decline or the status of how any one of our student groups are doing um and really helps to prompt sort of our own District continuous Improvement in the same way that we're expecting every individual School leadership team to disaggregate its own data at this point in the mid year and I know that our principal supervisors are working with their principles on exactly asking themselves those questions does this reflect the goals you set out for yourselves in your school Improvement plans and are you marshalling your professional development your efforts your resources available to you to try to narrow those disparities and I think in so many ways um all the different pieces of our agenda tonight are are coming together because this is very pertinent to the conversation that we had about Rosa Parks I mean we're going to keep getting the same results if we do the same things and basically what you're bringing forward are um results that don't reflect an infusion of new strategies or supports yet and yet in our next conversation we're going to be talking about specific interventions that the student investment act enables us to do similar to the interv the supplemental programming that we just committed to to Rosa Parks that we have reason to believe will make a difference in student achievement but we have to be we have to be willing to disrupt the system um that's not working for our kids absolutely I think that's exactly right is having an actual package of strategies that we can begin to work on actual execution and implementation with Fidelity across our schools can we then begin to reflect on whether those those are high leverage or not uh are they are they impacting student learning in the way that that we're hoping and so uh that's true so you know to to Dr Brown's Point sort of what you're seeing is sort of in some ways reflective of what we kind of unfortunately are expecting in many ways because of uh the historical lack of targeted supports and interventions in many case when a system doesn't have an implemented Core Curriculum when it doesn't have an apparatus for de professionally developing its Educators or its or its leaders and so as you begin to put all those systems in place let alone build a Balan assessment system to even have data literacy uh driven conversations um the these are the building blocks of of high functioning School District so the challenge is then starting to pull the levers to get the the results we want to see serous this is just want wanted to say thank you for both the the break the breakouts and the absolute score along with the growth percentiles as well it's very useful and yeah we're uh as I visit schools and look at classrooms and talk with principles and teachers and it's we're we're we're in the baby step mode in a lot of ways in terms of um teachers learning to use the midyear assessments to reflect on their practice and to make adjustments and to function in a in a professional learning committee with Community with their peers uh to align what they're doing to be able to learn from each other and the the exciting thing for me is for next year to have a more staff and B more capability for the reading specialist to step into a classroom for an hour or two so that teacher without getting a sub can go over and observe one of their peers um and I I think that's going to start to accelerate well our progress quite welcome on the on the data and I I have to say the exciting conversation for us really is the conversation that follows Us in terms of those Investments that can actually change these trajectories yesterday our central office leaders spent the morning um continuing to become fluent in how to generate and filter reports so that as they go out to their school communities they're charged with supporting you know they can sit with their principles and really kind of together uh sort of reflect on you know the the outcomes that they're seeing at this point in the school year and have some of those realtime conversations and and adjustments that might need to be made and so we need to continue doing that kind of data literacy across the school district and so I know our principles
03h 40m 00s
are starting to get a little bit of that but um and certainly at some point we want our parents to really feel like you know there are opportunities for them to really be able to interpret the same kinds of progress measures so um do we have generated and you know we talked about the this the quadrant scattergram around that's that's growth on one AIS and and actual proficiency on on on another do we have those for our all of our schools that are using map now those are available for all our schools and actually for each of our individual teachers who are using map so they they have that for themselves okay is that something that's easy to get to a school born member who's about to visit a school and just the school level not the individual classroom but just as I I will take a look um because the ones that I'm thinking of are set up by classroom so yeah yeah and that's a little bit Yeah and I don't want to go there I don't think I want to go there so again the operative word is it easy the the the classroom level ones are very easy for teachers but um I I I'll look to see if we can get a school level one set up one way or another okay thanks two two questions um maybe this is more for the superintendent um on the High School Readiness goal or the deputy maybe [Music] pardon I can set my spreadsheet out um you got the spreadsheet on one side and the data on the other so I can predict because they're the same conversations we're having easy that may be a Louise question um so one of the things about the High School Readiness to school it's it's the um one that had proficiency but we had a much we had much bigger dreams that it not be sort of this quanti just solely a quantitative um ASA score and know at the bottom it is as part of the Middle School redesign a more comprehensive District rubric will be created um and then when I looked at the um um um our potential investments in the tier two it had ad funding for a full-time Middle School director to lead and manage the Middle School redesign and um since we're only going with tier one I'm I guess I'm looking for an update on like where where we are on having a leader in the Middle School redesign process um I think we all got excited about the possibility of having something much richer than this piece so I'm looking for we're charting into the cao's territory hello again so the Middle School redesign is in the process right now and I'll just share it as an update where we are that might capture your question or your concern um in the process of uh just posted um an RFP to get a consultant uh excuse me to be working with us through the process as the um as the consultant comes on board which will hopefully be within the next 46 weeks then there will be the hiring at the same time of a director Middle School redesign we call it a director of innovation and Improvement and the goal of that director initially will be to form a task force that will be very similar to the process used in the visioning it was um an opportunity to apply some design thinking strategies in the um in the process of developing the Vision plan and so we founded rich and so we're going to model that not that different than the work that is being done in the pk3 initiative very similar as well but that's being led fully internally um through um Leslie Leslie Odell and her department but in the Middle School redesign because of the richness and how more comprehensive we're going to go with it um the director once the task force has been formed is charged with creating the timeline for the next 3 years um based on the concepts that up to this point have been developed within that Middle School redesign um the first year based on recommendations by um the district we visited Miami dat but also um the the schools districts we've connected with and the universities including university university of Chicago's lab school UCLA lab school um Los Angeles Unified School District Houston Independent School District Dallas istd they all recommended that our first stop should be empathy tours where we spend time interviewing students about their
03h 45m 00s
own experience uh learning from them both those who have already graduated those who are in it and those who are coming to it Dr Valentino yes ma'am am I may I be really rude and interrupt you for one moment please so that we can say happy birthday to Maxine before she goes [Music] home sorry Max you're turning a little red her birthday is this week that could not go unnoticed all right good night thanks for the cupcakes we get excuse me Dr Valentino that's okay my apologies I'm being long-winded here but I since I had had the opportunity to share anything with you I'm taking the opportunity to do so um and and based on that learning we will then spend the time developing the preliminary out line for what our Middle School design model would would include um some guiding The Guiding principles are similar to the ones in the vision plan but what is different is that um if you recall a year ago the conversation about Capstone the conversation about portfolios that is going to be situated primarily in the middle school and then we're going to work outward um where does a Capstone project come from so we have to work backwards how is that situated in a portfolio and where is it headed so then eventually we will have that pk12 through line with with those with those tools but we're working on the concept right now um and once Personnel is in place to really focus their time 24/7 on this you will begin to see the traction that was gained initially in the conversations we had in our visits but more importantly that there will be indicators that you can actually look to to suggest that so while all this is taking place we're talking to for example potential Partners on portfolio platforms right um some are used already by CTE so we're looking at those so we are we while it is being developed we're already looking at things on the ground that we would begin to integrate if they if they seem to align and work well with what we're trying to create so appreciate that impromptu uh sneak preview of of sort of where some of the internal thinking as but um I think I appreciate the question because uh if it's not going to be there I I think what we're pointing out here is that at this point mid year we're able to put our nickels together and double down so that there's a a position that's dedicated uh in large part to to providing coordination among all of us uh in how we think about this work but also in the identification of the technical assistants uh who we've been meeting with and in conversation with uh that are skilled and working with other school districts doing this exact kind of work as well and so that gives us that little bit of extra capacity and Direction on Lessons Learned From from other districts in the school uh in the country I mean tier two that is not Happ sounds like in it's on track the next month plus some technical expertise which is the consultant one those things really clearly and um you articulated this very early on when when when I I started serving here was that um it it has to begin with the core tier two and tier three does not exist absent in core because it's not tier two it becomes your tier one your tier one has to be solid guaranteed VI curriculum based on State Standards with rigorous instruction uh high ceing low floor allowing everyone to participate then as kids need additional support then we start moving into differentiation within the classroom with the first tier then we differentiate into the second tier and it's not a program that we send them to but strategies that we use to address those those challenges and that's begins tier two so while you don't see it in the in our full application of the Sia for us this work was urgent and we didn't want to wait until a new general fund budget was proposed and we wanted to get started and so kind of we've kind of scraped up among our departments to to make this happen like and get started all right are we ready to move on to our conversation about our uh Sia anything further can I ask one last question about the the high school and if there's not an answer you can just share it later but um just the the um slightly lower rate um on the historic land to serve students um I'm just wondering if that you've had any insights on you know it's a different class and everything but if if there was something that is it we're missing some CTE or some I I don't have any insights into that thought I was on I I don't have any insights into that at this point um again this is the first time we've tried to estimate that that midyear number um
03h 50m 00s
it's going to be interesting to see how that evolves over time so could be that students hadn't finished a class or okay yeah there are lots of different things that could work into that right now yeah so well that's our that's our first interim progress measure report thank you um this is these are the kind of conversations that we look forward to continuing and tracking um superintendent Guerrero would you like to introduce this next item yes uh it's been a lot of work uh not just because we're developing viable spreadsheets but because um it required a lot of input and feedback and needs assessing uh if you think back to what we were sharing all the way back to late October November um to arrive at this point um uh we think we have a well-rounded investment package here that's aligned with the spirit of the legislation that uh attempts to make uh a substantive uh prioritization in a number of areas uh that prioritizes underserved students uh in in many different ways while at the same time giving uh a broader capacity to the to the overall system so um we're excited to continue sharing about um some of the details and what the processes at the state level uh we PPS is is definitely in a very good place in its application uh we were hoping to be the first uh big District to submit unfortunately uh Salem had an earlier board meeting so uh not that I'm competitive or anything uh and we we kudos to to to superintendent Perry's team there for their good work but uh Deputy superintendant Herz I'm actually if I could just interrupt for a second my apologies to the board but I um have a very early um meeting as we continue to deal with the covid-19 um issue in the local community but I have reviewed the materials and we've got gotten briefed on this before as well um and if I were here to vote for it I would be very supportive I think the district has put together a very strong application uh and I will review the testimony later because I know we have some people signed up on this item as well so my apologies and congratulations so on I think a really excellent application so thank you superintendent Guerrero um said earlier we've been working on this since October and I want to publicly thank all the staff and Community Partners that have worked on this proposal and brought and bringing this forward it's a well balance proposal that supports our vision and students from racial or ethnic groups that have historically experienced academic disparities our commitment is also to hire staff who mirror our student racial and ethnic demographics with that I'll just open it to Deputy superintendent qu we're really excited um and just to Echo some of those sentiments um we've been engaged in a lot of um Community feedback um forums um throughout the fall um I know that we heard some of that testimony earlier from some of our um Partners um and we personally feel um through um not only through our community forums but also um through our district budgeting process as well as through our staffing process um and working um you know with u multiple individuals including our our principles um who really helped steer um our Direction in this investment to be completely centered um on our students and our staff first and foremost and our schools um and I want to be reminded of that that that we feel that this investment package is really centered on a lot of those critical components that were outlined initially in the application which was first and foremost to make sure that we're centering the Investments on our most historically underserved youth um and to make sure that we're centering our invest our investments specifically ly on U mental health supports and expanding opportunities for all of our students um and um just echoing the superintendent sentiments as well as I think we're really excited that we have a robust package um can we ask can we say that we wanted a little bit more sure um there's a lot of things that we absolutely could have done with more funding but I but I think that with the funding that we were allocated um we were very very deliberate um in addressing um um a lot of the areas that our community our internal and external stakeholders have identified as critical needs um we were also very deliberate to make sure that every one of our
03h 55m 00s
communities and our schools um felt this investment to some capacity um and and that's again a lot of the uh um a lot of the excitement that surrounds this is that um um it was purposeful in that regard to make sure that uh every student in school would be able to um um benefit from this with that yeah I think we'll get the motion on the table and then we'll see what board discussion and questions we have um the board will now vote on resolution 6074 the student investment account application for 2020 2021 do I have a motion I so move second director Lowry moves and director Bailey seconds the motion to adopt resolution 6074 Miss Bradshaw is there any public comment on resolution 6074 yes Amy Henry and Marcus Mundy thank you both for hanging in there welcome [Music] my name is Amy Henry and I'm a counselor of Benson poly Technic High School I am here representing all of the PPS counselors at the Comprehensive High Schools some who are with me here tonight we share a collective concern that we received no increase in high school counselor FTE in fact in some cases there were even cuts to high school counselors despite increasing enrollment we have observed escalating needs across many areas of our work so we were stunned that a decision was made to support K8 in the SSA without more consideration of the unique needs of high school students we understand that k8s were funded to 250 to1 because the escalation of behavior issues however we also have seen significant increases at the high school level having worked as counselors at elementary and middle school levels a lot of us speak from experience at the high school level there is much more focus on graduation and as high school counselors we are responsible for developing an academic plan and monitoring progress towards graduation for every single student almost all of our high school counselors are over 300 with some counselors even having case loads of over 375 at Benson um we have three counselors and we have been tracking how many students have been coming to the counseling department and we have seen over 1,000 visits in just the last two months this does not include parent meetings 504 meetings enrollment meetings and hearings we recognize that with the students ofx act funding all Comprehensive High Schools will now have a full-time social worker it is important to understand the highly specialized and limited role that that serves in a school it enhances crisis response and help in connecting students and families to community Community Resources but on no level does it replace the day-to-day work of a school counselor in many cases schools were already funded a 75 to 1.0 School social worker so this formalized addition does not materially change our work rather our schools simply are allocating the resources that have been provided to fund the school's social worker to other areas we are really concerned that the key decision makers and Advocates who were at the table for this project class ES had no High School counseling experience something that impacts their ability to truly understand the unique challenges of a high school counselor many of the metrics which our district is judged ultimately emerge for the work of high school counselors the graduation rate the number of students taking AP courses the transition to careers and or college mental health statistics and access to preventative social emotional and academic support in recognition of all of these factors we urge you to make the same monetary commitment to 250 to1 counselor ratio for grades 9 through 12 thank you thank you thank you my turn Okay um good evening again for the third and final time I'm Marcus Mundy from the Coalition of communities of color we're an alliance I'm just going to read instead of speak extemporaneously we're an alliance of culturally specific community- based organizations with representation from six uh different communities we support a collective racial Justice effort to improve outcomes for communities of color
04h 00m 00s
through policy analysis and advocacy culturally appropriate data and research environmental justice and leadership development in communities of color our mission is to address the socioeconomic disparities institutional racism and inequity of service experienced by our families children and communities and to organize those communities for Collective action resulting in social change to obtain self-determination Wellness Justice and prosperity that's a mouthful but our mission applies daily to helping our kids of color achieve educationally for over a decade our members have partnered with PPS to provide culturally specific services to students and families here at PPS we provide these family engagement wraparound services leadership mentoring Extended Learning opportunities for thousands of students and families each year on behalf of En shoulder to shoulder with our members the CCC has Advan advocated in Salem molom County the city of Portland and this board of education on behalf of policies and law to promote education funding and support of these Partnerships our members were critical in the advocacy that led to the passage of the SSA it would not have passed without the deep and Relentless commitment from communities of color always with the tacid and direct understanding that their children the historically underserved and currently underserved you know I keep hearing historically underserved but our kids are currently underserved we're the children of a state that began on its first day with an equity codified into its Constitution and that these kids would at long last received the resources they deserved as students in Oregon legislators heard from our members staffs and the many families they serve about the imperative to focus resources on students most in need and strategies to close the pernicious gaps our students of color students with disabilities students facing homelessness and students living in poverty all face I commend superintendent Guerrero for his leadership and commitment to engaging with me our members our communities of color I was thrilled actually to participate in the visioning process and believe in the promise and power of that Vision this process paved the way for the district's commitment to partnering with our stakeholders in the community to learn more about how to prioritize the siia application about which you're deliberating tonight in addition to hearing from Educators students and parents PPS also partnered with us and Latino Network and our members at fa on one day to hear hear directly from the service providers who represent and are accountable to the communities of color think I have too much on my list but uh I have a lot more to say but I'll just say a couple more things I'm happy to see PPS is support of chyros receiving more funding for their Learning Academy of NAA and poic and the many other entities providing educational opportunity to our children and there's four bullets that I just want to share of particular importance for our members are the following additional funding to support racial equity and social justice Partnerships with culturally specific providers the focus on additional mental and Behavioral Health supports provide in additional PC representative uh Educators counselors and social workers to support students classrooms and the school communities additional funding for the Arts and Middle School redesign and to continue to support Latino Network SEI NAA erco these are all CCC members who provide the essential wraparound services that make what happens in the school system go on a regular basis I will just submit my comments the rest of the way but I thank you for the opportunity to share some of these thoughts uh with you today thank you we appreciate it and uh look forward to continuing to work with all the members of your Coalition it's a great opportunity we have before us uh we have Stephanie shavo thank you for your patience thank you for being here my name is Stephanie I'm a school psychologist with PPS I'm actually at Benson as well with Amy we both realized we were speaking here today I have some number information for the group kind of a overview what I'll talking about so um School psychologists have been historically under um staffed just according to National recommendations and recently historically we have been staffed in PPS based on a formula that we as a group developed to promote Equity um for hisor ly underserved students and our most impacted special education students um but the most recent Staffing that we had didn't honor that formula they used it some different numbers and
04h 05m 00s
so um the total number of school psychologist that are slated for our next three-year cycle because we work in a three-year cycle is exactly the same as it has historically been but we've had a 16% increase in special education students in the district and so we're concerned about that and we wanted to bring that to the group because we we don't feel that we're going to be able to support students in the same way that we've been able to with that kind of an increase um so if you look on the second page I actually blew up part of the numbers it's a it's a yellow graph and you can see in October of 2018 the psych FTE allocation and the count of special education students excluding students that are only served by this beach pathologist um and despite the increase we actually only had a had a very tiny increase in allocation um and so we're requesting that we'd be staffed based on our formula as opposed to based solely upon the numbers um and that would serve two purposes we feel like we were already staffed at a level where we couldn't get cut back anymore and continue to really serve the students well um and then also the cuts the way that they were made if you look on the next page it's very tiny and I apologize for that but it has the um the FTE that is um that we would recommend based on our formula and then in the next column it has the district allocated FTE and then in the third column you can see which schools are losing FTE based on that and if you look through it as a group if you have a chance I think you'll see that um it's all the schools that we wouldn't want to lose support they're the schools that we've really been working toward um supporting the students there and we don't feel like the cuts and especially the the way that they were made are in line with any District goals or initiatives and we would urge that it be reconsidered especially given the length of time that they'll be in place for for the next three years did you put this chart together here um no actually some of my lovely colleagues did I helped with it but I I did not um they're they're right in the back back there it's very useful thank you they do a very good job do you guys have any questions about that before I know it's a lot of information so we tried to break it down and the first page really has the allocation of FTE that we would like that isn't an increase it would be based on continuing to staff us at the same level it has some information about cuts that were made to different psych programs over time that we think would make sense to go back in like early intervention for example doesn't have a psych allocated to it right now which makes no sense um and then um all of the all the numbers yeah thank you you oh thank you than thank [Applause] you excuse me um do we have any other questions um regarding the siia application any questions of Staff or board discussion I have a couple questions okay um actually I don't think we moved this did we getting oh we did excuse me okay and proceed director brim Edwards um so I was just looking for a clarification of [Music] um the process so that I think for the community to understand kind of what the multi-stage process and I had a conversation with the superintendent earlier today about about this because I think there's a lot of people who have been working for a long time on school funding and this is like the first um probably significant in increment we've had in last 20 years um so just a Clarity on the process so um the application gets submitted I guess right after Salems um sorry after your vote not to rub it in um and it goes in this template
04h 10m 00s
um and can you explain the process and I guess when that it's going to certain point it's going to come back and I think people would want to know like once once we submit it is this is this it or say after they've looked at it and they say you know we're good with 80% of this but this at the 20% Then we go down to the tier 2 list I've got it right in front of me U but I guess I'm looking for more be and I know it's um this year it's a little bit of a um work in progress but I'm wondering if you get a preview because I think um once we send things down people want to know well is is that it what does it specifically look at look like um so maybe it's the best of what we know I think it's probably the qualifier so after the board approves this tonight that's presumptuous on my part right then we would submit it to the Oregon Department of Education and then they go through a a vetting and um a process an approval process and then it would come back to us it could mean that we would need to make some shifts along the way right um to get to that approval process with OD and then we bring that um OD approved application back to the board for review and then approval a second time okay and that would it it should be done prior to June 30th but we just don't with the Oregon Department of Education we're still it's the first time for them it's the first time for us we'll um this be we'll become a routine as we go forward so what gets is going to get submitted I've lost my chart um but you know what I'm talking about uh this one right here so we what gets submitted the four components that we have posted to the website yes um so this pretty much is once we approve it tonight this this is what's in it and I guess I um so you asking about like tier one and tier two no I'm tier I'm assuming it's all tier one yes um so nothing in tier 2 is in there correct but if anybody has asked for anything else and it's not in the current document once we vote tonight that is the proposal that's what we're submitting to the state that's correct and then if they're um one of the things that we want to be sure of is because they give us um a certain period of time to spend the funds the tier two is there in place in case there is a position we can't hire or there is some other you know circumstances that that shift and then we need to um have a second tier to make sure that we spend every dollar Available To Us by the deadline um made by OD so that's the purpose of the tier one is the proposal The Proposal so say they say 3 million of it like we're not going to improve that or for whatever reason um what's the process to go into tier two does it come back to the board or is that an like administrative staff function or so the tier two is it's an administrative staff function at that point because we'll need to monitor monitor this all the way through June 30th because we will um we will be tracking expenditures and you know really looking at at a quarterly basis and seeing if we're on track and making sure that as um resources become available because maybe someone took an unpaid leave for a week and then you have you know a little bit of dollars there we're going to make sure we buy some materials out of those dollars something that's on our list so that we um make sure we don't um give any of the grant back we want to make sure we spend all the dollars on our students and and I do think it's worth saying that um you know we had a work session on this proposal um and went through all the elements now it's coming to the board per for approval but this is also a precursor to our ordinary budget process and we haven't talked about the nuts and bolts of that but I'm hoping that in our budget process we will be able to see um what resources and what recommendations tie back to the um to this proposal so that we you know are differentiating our general fund resources from the Student Success act dollars and we can take another another run at things that we think we might not have gotten quite right just as we do not not in this proposal but just as we do every year in the budget process take into account the
04h 15m 00s
supplemental commitments we made and where we might still have needs even though our our school staff have gotten their initial Staffing um uh allocations thank you director more I was going to say allotments I'm like that's not quite right um anyway so there's still process to come and there's still decisions to be made and priorities to be uh discussed as a board about about our general fund resources the these are all good questions I can assure you the staff is on top of details and rules and guidance as quickly as they come out or even when they're not even invented yet uh some of our staff is in the audience cuz they're in constant communication uh with with OD this past Friday I was uh participating along with my colleague superintendent around the state uh with OD and our and uh Deputy superintendent Colt Gil uh who gave us a little bit more real time information about where they are in in this process uh they're they're building and flying as much as as we are given this infusion of resources and what they're doing now is interviewing for a cross-section of folks to serve on these review panels so they will take a look at our documents that we are submitting all the ones that are posted publicly our narrative our spreadsheets uh the idea of including the tier 2 so that we can uh move with a little bit more expediency if for example we can't locate all the Personnel or human capital uh that we're looking for uh that we have some flexibility to make some adjustments and of course we'll keep the board apprised uh when when it comes time to thinking about making some of those adjustments um so we just wanted to get up at the top of the queue so as those review panels come together uh they've already identified a number of dates in the middle uh not for a few weeks in in the middle to the end of March and we we hope to be in the first batch uh for for our application to be reviewed of course we couldn't help ourselves and uh already previewed it with um many of the folks at OD so we think it's strong and we look forward to whatever feedback they may have uh or clarification um they might be looking for so uh we're we're about as up to- date and real time on on this process as as we are can be um and we'll let you know uh as Things become clear I guess the reason I had questions is because we at the work session I think we had roundtables but we didn't actually have an opportunity to ask questions um and I I'm just anticipating um and I had a conversation before the meeting with Deputy superintendent about sort of the um the time period between now and when the money flows out because for I mean because I know there'll be questions by the community like where did all the money go I mean because people will perceive as it went somewhere else and well in in our um proposed budget document we'll have very similar to last year and it you know know two pages for every school that shows all allocations regardless of fund including the siia funds so you will be able to see by school what is allocated at every school that's so that's great and for for example I we're going to here's the nature of my question for example um there's a line item add 26 FTE to reduce class sizes in grades six to eight my question was what schools is are those 26 FTE going to and will there be an equity formula and the answer was not like which schools they were but like it's going to be determined by enrollment and I guess I I think there will be an expectation from our community and we'll need to be able to account for where the FTE went um because people will look um I mean in board as well of you know where where where where is this because we're not going to get we're not going to get another billion dollars for sure um I don't think in the next couple years so you know where has it gone what specific schools is it what you know what lens what lens are we using um there had another question but I can't I I can't move the chart but also related to the sorry the the middle schools and some of the FTE looked like it was going to the middle schools but there wasn't an e there wasn't a similar allocation to the 68s that are in the
04h 20m 00s
k8s so I'm I guess I'm asking is between now and when it comes back to us are we going to see that level of specificity be before it gets into the it'll the budget documents it'll we will be able to share it with you once we've rolled up the budget into the budget document th one we'll be able to show the detailed by school and how everything is allocated it we don't have that um and we're still inputting that into the system in order to create those reports that you're requesting and what will we have that when with when it comes back again for the second it looks like it marries up with the budget process it we don't know exactly when the state will be returning it to us so it's hard for me to answer that yeah I think they had a back by June um so yes you'll have the information before June so um I just think that we're going to be able to need to show that um the money went to I think historically or um currently um underserved students I had a question and I don't think this is for you for you um it's about the social work um there is a significant amount of money for um it says social social workers and Social Work activity or something like that are is that for certified social workers or what what does that mean social is it look like it's a um not actually a certified social worker and I'm wondering if we um actually are um I'm just trying to figure out what we're proposing are we proposing all certified social workers or is it certified social workers and something else the way it's the the way the wording is um constructed is it doesn't necessarily sound like they're actually social workers but it may be more Community agents right so um I'll call Brenda down here but you're right because that's called the conditional flexibility in terms of how we're focusing on Mental Health um supports for students in terms and so there is some flexibility um with those 05 specifically um in terms of what that can be utilized for to answer your question but I'll let Brenda kind of go into more detail around what is what is contained within that conditional flexibility for schools to to use good evening so uh what we have done is we have allocated social workers licensed social workers for our high schools and then our k5s uh and k8s we have uh given them flexibility based on their Community needs and their school needs um and that has been in collaboration with James Loveland and Amy Rona um because um they're working uh with um threat and suicide ideation and uh specific needs so uh we have given them some constrained flexibility in regards to hiring um three different types of uh Personnel uh so it's either so that's why it's called social work okay I knew there was a explanation here yes so um so it's either a licensed social worker it is a qhp which is a qualified mental health provider so that provides them a little bit more flexibility in um in looking at different um needs that they have or a counselor so those are the three areas um and there's also flexibility there between um FTE and some contracted support correct correct yeah we have some schools who have already contracted with with some providers and then they just wanted to increase that FTE additionally uh like the superintendent had stated um we don't know for sure that we're going to be able to hire you know 42 um Social Work type we're going to beat Salem on that one yes we are so anybody out there watching at 9:55 PM Sal yes please apply for a social worker uh applicant pool it's live right now give L PSA has anybody worked with Portland State School of Social Work we have reached out our fingers to every Social Work type of entity um known to James and Amy and many of our other providers um one thing I also want to state is under um the Under the Umbrella of a qmhp or a qualified mental health provider um a school psychologists can also fit under that um and so I just wanted to be clear about that that that is one uh role that they can follow under that qmhp it's a different um it's different than um the special ed role or
04h 25m 00s
the special ed hat that they wear um and so I just wanted to be clear about that so it's a it's some pretty defined roles it's not just a generic um like a community agent or something like that not correct anything wrong with that I'm just trying to understand so it is defined role they are licensed individuals any further question any further questions anyone anyone from the board um but Renee we appreciate your input so not not on this topic but back to 68 or middle school 68 is part of a K8 or Middle School um so there's a clearline item on the pilot project for four middle schools uh there's also a class size reduction for grades six to8 um is there again we're still in a transformative process where hopefully we create more middle schools but in the meantime is there funding to address uh 68 within um K8 in terms of offerings well we are dedicating a large portion into expanding elective offerings um um part of that um part is there a line item on here that corresponds 58 yeah 58 I thought there was 52 and 58 late we're we're adding 10 and a half FTE at 68 in K to8 in Middle Schools as well as another line item for uh the 13 FTE in the four middle schools currently with seventh period okay so bless you bless you I just saw that Seinfield Episode by the way but just uh anyway are we still moving sorry I'm getting rmy uh okay to answer your question directly it's um 10.5 FTE um that would be spanned across some of our schools to help expand um their um there their elective offerings specific to their pathway offerings so I I just wanted to clarify cuz uh director REM seem to imply that there wasn't a funding stream there but there is and I don't know if I misheard you or not but well it's it's hard to tell if you don't have the the name of the schools and which which ones they're going to um that's not the that's that's different from saying there's no money going there it's different money 26 and it's for grade six or in KS and middle schools it's the description 10.5 FTE and that's not and that's not including the four middle schools that we have on here to Pilot correct the seven period schedule which we know is 13 dedicated FTE to make that happen right so say for example I guess I was trying to get out with that is like I looked at that list and it's just like seems like Lane is I know it doesn't currently have the seven period day but just the kind of glaring example of of this of a school that probably could use some additional support and I'm just trying to figure out where they um in in a couple months that'll come clear as to how that falls out but there's at least a you know significant investment there so Dr Brim Edwards we we have heard from some of the lane team around their expressed desire to go to a seven period um we also are approaching that the same way we approached the the the Bowmont 7 period schedule last year which you know had to go through um a staff process um in in collaboration with both district and P um so that is something that the team is looking into and exploring because that's to to your point um Lane has expressed interest in that and I guess I would be interested also in longer term if we we're switching over to seven a middle school 7 period day it looks like they get 26 hours less of in you get you get more
04h 30m 00s
classes but 26 hours less of instruction and is that something we in in each class so you get you get the same amount of instruction right but so I guess the question of from the academic side of the District of you know are we concerned that in sort of math and language arts and science um to lose 26 hours it's not a question you have to ask now but I think before we wholesale make the switch um it would be great to be reassured that we still think kids can get their core content in a skinnier and I and I think and sorry superintendent um I think there are some good examples already of what's being done I I would really encourage even the board and some of you already have um gone through Oley um green there this morning so um and and just seeing the work that the teachers are doing and really committed to Bell tobell instruction um how they've completely revamped their professional learning community structure um it's it's it's a very um Dynamic collaborative um Team um that's been committed to making that charge and and I look at them as kind of one of the model exemplars um in terms of um how that could potentially look so so all of it also aims to just be able to go a little deeper with you know personalizing the learning for our students so there's another line item in here for 26 FTE just for the comprehensives to not just drive down that class size but it'll also result in sort of that increased learning time as well we hope Dr M um can I take it up a few thousand feet um I I think you guys have done a remarkable job um I was blown away when I saw the even the initial draft um in the larger scheme of things $39 million is is a relatively modest amount of money especially when we're talking about billion dollars of new Revenue um and it's worth noting that the the so we've been talking about tier one and tier two the tier one activities are the this is where you've landed these are the things we absolutely need to do want to do can do um tier two um is another $40 million a year worth of activities that we would desperately like to do um and I just think you've done a remarkable job um and I I I know a little bit about how much things cost and you have squeezed out every nickel um and thank you um it's it's been really an amazing thing to watch um can I say one other thing and I know you're all very tired yeah yeah um I'm just telling you it shows you're looking tired um um so we should probably get you out of here sooner rather than later um but thank you for all of it it's been um I mean I have heard from teachers I've heard from principals I've heard from parents who've taken a look at this um people are very happy they're quibbles I mean we could use more money um but I mean I'm I'm just I I want you to know that we know how hard you've worked and what a remarkable job you've done here thank you thank you directors absolutely kudos to this has really been uh a very broad team effort to to pull this off it's required just about every Department here uh in the central office uh to sort of come together and and the challenge of competing priorities and in fact stretching those dollars um I know they call it tier 2 Investments they really should have called them plan a and plan B investment packages it makes a little more sense to the lay person but you can see that there are many other areas where we really want to uh increase our our capacity there the good thing is this is this is going to be a little bit iterative because um there's a massive human capital demand that is
04h 35m 00s
hitting the state of Oregon and we're talking about over 200 licensed uh new uh Li positions in these SAA monies but that's on top of the usual demand we have in hiring staff into so that's that's several 100 licensed professionals ideally coming into PPS for the start of school um and so if we can't identify any level of those we'll we'll seek out alternative models for providing those Direct Services but we may have to go to our plan B we may decide to increase the allocations in those other areas that we do think and and agree are also important and supportive uh and maintain a direct service to to students um it's it's it's not a small thing to note since you're you're bringing up the administrative capacity um under the legislation big districts are limited uh in the administrative indirect that we can charge against this Grant and so that's limited to $500,000 and so you're looking at the same team who has to pull off the coordination and implementation of all of this new programming and so we took our little bit of indir and are applying it to hiring HR recruiters because uh and the other thing that's been driving and motivating us to to get this done as early as possible is it allows us to jump into hiring process in a month early almost and so uh you know we we need to sort of take every advantage that we can take so uh I am thankful that the team has has got us uh to this point I can share with you that many of my colleagues across the state are definitely not uh in a good place right now uh the rules are very clear this was reiterated by OD March 2nd through April 15th is is the window for submitting your application if you miss the deadline you're not eligible it looks like to receive any monies for the coming school year so um you can you could probably understand sort of the pressure that they're probably feeling right now particularly in districts that don't have you know the talent and capacity that that you see uh many of whom here in front of you now so uh I know Leslie is anxious with the team to press send tomorrow morning when uh we get the word uh and other question happy to just thought thank you for all your work and and also on top of that having at the drop of the Hat having to come up with a Corona virus plan I mean and probably some ice stuff as well thrown in um and and and thank you thank you thank you not even not just a Corona virus plan for our district but as leaders in the state supporting those districts again who don't have the Staffing levels we do by sharing our plans with them and and offering resources so thank you so much for I know it's been a really busy weekend yep and it was a weekend the board will now vote on resolution 6074 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all oppos please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6074 is approved by a vote of 6 to zero thank you so much again for this really Herculean effort thank you very much thank you board really appreciate your support yeah super exciting um last very quickly um I think we have one uh board committee report director BM Edwards did you have a MPG design advisory I did actually um the last week there was both an MP uh multiple Pathways to graduation um design Advisory Group meeting and a catalog one um really quick on the multiple Pathways to graduation um we had a meeting on the 27th and went through you know just had a Master Plan update went through some image boards um and excitingly uh there's going to be the presentation to the next U Bond subcommittee meeting uh of the the master plan and so um that will be coming to the board shortly and it's been great to see all the different staff from the different schools um and the different programs come together um and build a building that's going to uh support very diverse students so that's coming to the board shortly then uh the other group was for Kellogg um hadn't met for a while uh so they did a bit of a recap of what's happened in terms of the build and um their running right in the nose in terms of the budget so that's um all as well they're still looking for the fall of 2021 um
04h 40m 00s
opening it's going to be lead gold standard um there were a couple instructional issues that came up about the number of students and whether it was going to be a regional special EDS site um and whether that impacted the number of students and that that probably needs to get resolved before we decide the number of students um we're for county has 675 students going in there and it's going to be a regional special ed site which might have some out of neighborhood kids um the board and the district are going to know that um in terms of just planning for the for the boundaries um how many students you put in and then the second issue that came up that is um probably board related is um mascot colors and question about a question about the Kellog name continue to have some student activism around reconsidering the name so oh excuse me just um acknowledging the student activism around reconsidering the name for our newly constituted school so um we'll be attentive to that and our district student council will be attented to that as well so no more Kellog Tony the Tiger all right with that thank you very much everyone we are

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)

2020-03-03 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education March 3, 2020

Sources