2020-05-26 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2020-05-26
Time	18:00:00
Venue	Virtual/Online
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting - 5/26/2020

00h 00m 00s
the board of edu the board meeting of the board of education for May 26 2020. is called to order Terry are you with us for tonight's meeting item that will be voted on has been posted as required by state law this meeting is being streamed 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 Welcome to our viewing audience and fellow board members and staff tonight we're looking forward to receiving a second briefing on the work underway in response to the Kuba 19 pandemic I know I've heard from many families um oops sorry about that um we'll get some updates on that work as well as have the major presentation of our proposed budget we'll also hear a bit about the experiences of our seniors including hopefully Maxine so first order of business is our business agenda at this time we'll vote on the business agenda board members are there any items you would like to pull for discussion I have a couple questions uh relating generally the contracts I notified okay do you want to pull the items or shall we vote on the business agenda and then follow up with the questions I want to call the mercy rule for Emily um so if I can ask him if I could just ask him now versus having her wait until the end of the session um great thank you so um my question is around just contract says they're coming to the board and how services are being provided so we have our general employment contracts for our employees or for labor and then we have a second set of contracts which all relate to um just service providers who provide services on a contractual basis so my my question and these are just generally as we roll into this next school year and have a hosted of contracts that are going to be coming before us we didn't have a lot of flexibility um this year obviously because um of the pandemic and also some of them the governor had made some made some decisions but my questions uh my first question is our contract managers monitoring remote performance of contractors and well PPS can see here at any reports hi Julia sorry I did not hear that last part of your question I said it so that it was our contract managers monitoring remote performance of contractors and will PPS receiving year-end reports in those cases in which they're required yes I mean the expectations around contractors are the same as they would be um during if PPS schools were open however we have advised all of our contract managers that if work cannot be performed then our contractor should not be billing for services and we won't pay for uh work that was not performed some of our contract managers have revised their scopes of work to include remote um provision of services that's more the the exception than the rule but when they've done that they still have the um the obligation to monitor that service and ensure that it was completed as they did in this group so that was um some of my second question related to 401 contractors aren't able to perform the services it sounds like we're either modifying the scope or um not terminating the contract but not paying for services that they weren't provided are we is that centrally um being collected somewhere so that we have a system-wide perspective of those contracts in which um either we're not paying or we've changed the scope so we certainly without any change in scope should be in in Amendment which is certainly centrally um kept and approved and goes through our standard process for some of the contracts we've had contract managers have um have my department do early termination if they just want it to be really clear that this this work is now over um but we have also advised that that's not necessarily necessary because in every invoice that our accounting department receives the contract manager needs to verify and sign off that the work was actually completed before uh
00h 05m 00s
that invoice even goes to our accounting department to pay so at some place in the Enterprise contract management system there would be a record of whether we modified the contract either modified it or paid less than we had anticipated right what we'll find is a whole lot of contracts that have a remaining encumbrance at the beginning of this year because so much of that work was never done and as we close out the fiscal year that encumbrance will be released okay and then just my last question is um thank you by the way um is if we look at next year and the fact that there's a possibility that it's not gonna it may not be a normal school year or that we may either open late or open with distance learning then shift to in-class um or in building learning I'm wondering if all our contracts for this fall have are going to have built into them the flexibility that um say if we move to like a staggered class schedule or they need to provide the services in a different way whether um will modify our contracts so that we can be more Nimble and then we don't end up having a mismatch of services provided not at the time or mannering with you sure and that's it's really that's really a scope question and because we've had a purchasing and a Contracting freeze I haven't seen most um contracts yet that will go forward for this next uh fiscal year um but I would expect that some of our contract managers for those for those kinds of contracts that provide student services specifically will address that in their scope um we do always have uh termination Provisions in our contract that allow for unilateral termination and again we don't allow billing for work that's not done so there's a number of safeguards there but I would expect our contract managers to address uh the new reality in when they put together the scopes for this coming fiscal year and sorry just one last one um because I didn't realize this so if we have a Contracting free news that doesn't relate to capital projects because we're still voting on um like facility emulated contracts but so it's only on the sort of operational side that we have a contract increase so um all kind of capital projects and um maintenance kind of operational things have been have been allowed to go forward because they're crucial during this time but most most everything else has been okay great thank you yep [Music] anybody else not hear anything Amy just hopped off and she'll get back again she's having technical difficulties still she said everything is sounding like we're all Mickey Mouse foreign is anybody else hearing that really strange like echoey that's when the phone and the computer are too close to each other and both the volumes are um director Moore that she's not able to participate at all right now so please I think gonna try to log back in again I think the weird Echo is just how Scott always sounds can you guys hear me now yes okay I'm so sorry about that Rita could you make sure that you have the script handy so that um if I get if I keep having audio problems you can um Carry On Rita's not on she's on you Rita Rita had to get off the phone Amy she's having some technical problems right now okay
00h 10m 00s
so Roseanne also um with the script here can you um uh tell me the resolutions on the business agenda that we're voting on right now make sure this is accurate it is I just checked six one one will now vote on resolution six one one four through six one two zero in the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes hey Amy we didn't have a motion we need a motion in a second sorry we got a little flustered there when I had to meet a virtual room Liz okay I heard director Bailey moves do I have a second second director to pass seconds for the adoption of the business agenda the board will now vote on resolution 6114-36120 in the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any abstentions the business agenda is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative lateral voting yes all right okay we were going to move on to the superintendent's report but uh superintendent uh Maxine does have a brief student report for us this evening is it okay if I talk for like two minutes I promise it won't be longer than that I promise I promise um yeah so I just wanted to hop on and say hi it's me um almost a graduated senior very cool um excited for college I get to go to college which is really exciting like physically go um and I just wanted to provide a little update on the grant mural situation as this was something that I was working on a lot before covid you know before copen um and I just wanted to say that for our grant community and especially for the Native American Student Union at Grant just like an update that there isn't going to be a resolution and so the board like we won't be doing it in a board meeting um since it isn't a policy issue and instead uh the superintendent will approve it which is very cool um so I just wanted to provide that as an update and also say it's really great that students are getting to like go to our schools and pick up our stuff I'm excited to get my yearbook next week and see a couple of my teachers and when we were I was able to go get my cap and gown it was really nice to just like wave it all my teachers and their masks and um I'm looking forward to whatever my commencement ceremony is I know it's going to be very different but I'm still excited to graduate and wear my cap and gown wear that maroon super excited about that and I might look amazing but that's okay with me at this point so that's just my little update that's it thanks for letting me talk Thanks Max thank you Maxine [Music] chair constant would you like me to share I hear you all right good evening directors and for everybody listening at home uh catching tonight's uh regular meeting live stream uh we're coming off an extended uh four day weekend with your employee at PPS uh and coming off of Memorial Day weekend I just want to acknowledge and pay my respects to all our service men and women who served and sacrificed for our country and for our freedoms um it's also um a unique time uh because we have the pandemic circumstance uh and we have a lot of impacted lives there as well I just want to acknowledge that uh for my report tonight I just want to recognize we have a pretty action-packed and dense agenda this evening the main entree consists of a strategic Plan update to where are we in the development of it uh we agreed with board leadership it would be important to provide that context as we get into a conversation about our resources and tonight for the budget calendars the evening when we share our proposed budget so we'll provide an update there it is a changing financial situation and we'll highlight those uh changes as well um so as is usually the case in my superintendent reports like to call out a few other important nuggets first of all
00h 15m 00s
um following Maxine's report there want to acknowledge our class of 2020 uh who we know is is bearing the brunt of most of this pandemic and the disruption to our typical rituals own which usually comes with a lot of traditions and honors and celebrations and knowledge that they as high school seniors have you know working toward this moment for for their entire K-12 Pre-K 12 uh experience so we're not experiencing those those typical activities at this time as we maintain and observe physical distancing requirements and physical or public health guidelines um so we won't be and it shouldn't surprise people uh unfortunately uh can't host those large group Gatherings but I am uh I do want to make sure and describe tonight a few Alternatives they're not the same thing but certainly our team working with our high school principals School leaders as well as some students have a few activities um that we have already started promoting the first is uh hosting a virtual prom next Thursday evening the prom plans include include social media challenges messages from celebrities prize packages uh two hours of music from djog and you may recognize from the Trailblazers uh the last several years the second activity we're hosting for our seniors are diploma days on June 8th 9th and 10th students will be assigned time slots to come by their high school campuses and receive their diplomas and if they haven't already they're cap and gown we will have professional photographers on site for graduates to have their photos taken details and Logistics are being provided by high schools to each of the respective seniors thirdly we know it's a real piece of memory to have the commencement program with your name listed uh PPS is going to continue to produce traditional commencement programs for students and families to commemorate the occasion we're also creating virtual programs for every high school so you see in the example on the screen of what one might look like and then uh lastly we're creating a class of 2020 videos for every high school so this will include a a collage of school performing arts groups messages from principals valedictorians and a rolling list of graduates and honors these videos once they're completed will be shown on Comcast channel 28 available on the PPS YouTube channel uh and will be available for download by our graduates and we're friends and their families so we're incredibly proud of our seniors we hope that all of them will participate in these activities which we've had to adjust in unique ways in this last semester and at the close of their careers in PBS and I look forward to the many ways we intend to continue honoring and celebrate them over the next few weeks and Beyond moving on just a quick little update on home-based distance learning and and where we are at this point as you know uh work continuing with our Educators and students across all grades and virtual classrooms and lessons uh our nutrition hubs continue to serve our students and along with district and Community leaders I continue to advocate for a continued supports PPS HD our home-based distance learning program now in its eighth week I'll continue I continue to be amazed by the creativity that our Educators and administrators are demonstrating uh in their attempts to keep our students engaged and continuing to provide some continuity and education to our students of course we acknowledge their remain challenges this is an effort that was rolled out almost overnight and without much of a Runway we've heard a range of feedback and and thank you for for sending those our way uh and we've also learned um that some some students and families have expressed that uh in some ways there were so there have been some benefits uh to this experience which will also uh learn from uh I continue to say that this online learning experience alone uh will never be an adequate substitute for in-person face-to-face learning with our Educators uh but I do
00h 20m 00s
believe there are many ways in which we are getting better and better at this uh and appreciate sort of our teachers efforts to maintain connection with students and among peers so we're learning a tremendous amount we continue to be grateful for everybody's patience flexibility uh and determination at this time uh and kudos to our school administrators and central office staff supporting folks in this effort we're continuing to provide meals at our nutrition hubs where we're also Distributing education kits and other Learning Materials uh information about and access to basic services and interpretation services are also there when needed we're now at over 550 000 meals that's over a half million meals served in the Portland Public Schools since we opened our nutrition hubs in March so a kudos to our nutrition services um and all of our support staff who are there with those help supporting that effort uh and even though the demand has slowed we continue to provide computers to any student who expresses a need for a device or for internet connectivity um and we are proceeding with that work and partnership with the fund for PPS and comp guests and speaking of our partner organization next slide uh the fund for PPS I want to share with all of you some exciting news as you know from the moment this crisis started our PPS Educators like so many in our community jumped into action finding Innovative caring ways to Center our communities most impacted their living expression of what we hope for in all of our adults who support students they're adaptive caring and Community minded if those qualities sound familiar it's because they're elements of our educator essentials from our very own vision so thanks to so many Educators and members of our community the fund for PPS has raised close to thirty thousand dollars in less than a week with close to over 300 donors contributing an average of ninety five dollars to the coronavirus Relief Fund effort and this was possible with support and partnership with the Portland Association of teachers who as an organization also made a generous contribution of forty thousand dollars to help Galvanize the community to to also give so that makes a total of an additional seventy thousand dollars and counting in support of PPS families so thank you to Pat to our Educators and to the generosity of the members of our community who've made that remarkable contribution uh possible for for our media students thank you um and speaking of thinking and recognizing our Educators if we can move on to the next slide uh we've seen so many of our Educators step up uh during this time this spring uh no surprise uh the creativity and the dedication that they continually Express um and some of our best and brightest uh as as you know uh there's an annual opportunity to recognize them uh and I want to call out uh five individuals uh who teach here in the Portland Public Schools I recall that the Oregon teacher of the Euro program is presented by the Oregon Department of Education and partnership with the Oregon Lottery and part of the process is involves identifying Regional teachers of the year and I'm proud to say that we have five PPS Educators that we're recognizing uh who have been selected the first of those is Madison High School's teacher James Jeffrey West he's been named a 2021 Oregon Regional Teacher of the Year Mr Jeffrey West is in his seventh year at Madison uh it's his 22nd year as a teacher and one for the region covered by the multnom Education Service District Mr Jeffrey West is a social studies teacher he's one of 15 Regional winners who are now nominated for the Oregon teacher of the year award as you recall Mercedes Munoz from Franklin High School won the Statewide award last year so congratulations to Mr Jeffrey West I believe he's watching this evening with his wife and children uh congratulations on this recognition Mr Jeffrey West has been a champion of ethnic studies AP Psychology he's worked on the ethnic studies oversight committee and he's currently supporting the state of Oregon's effort on that context panel so congratulations to James Jeffrey West a number of PPS Educators have been also
00h 25m 00s
honored by on Point Community Credit Union two PPS Educators or finalists for educator of the year with them finalists will each receive a five thousand dollar cash award plus an additional 1500 for their schools for resources and supplies educators of the Year winners will have their mortgages paid for one full year additionally their schools will receive a 2500 donation for resources and supplies Ali Herron is a kindergarten teacher at Marysville Elementary here are some of what OnPoint said about Miss Herron Ali's ability to connect deeply with her students and provide the social emotional support necessary to build trust and confidence and learning provides her kindergartners with the foundational skills to succeed as they begin their Journey as learners Ali is a leader in mindfulness education both at her school and in the Oregon education Community congratulations Ali Herron Matt Stenton he's a modern world history and government economics teacher at Cleveland High School Mr sten's award profile states he teaches history as a story and provides students multiple ways to understand explore analyze and create example projects include oral history portfolio capitalism versus communism Autobiography on Malcolm X and Latin American hero baseball cards he also really has guest speakers in his classroom including Governor Brown Senators Wyden Jeff Merkley and Steve Duren he has coached speech and debate hosted many clubs in his classroom at lunch and led the charge to use the IB learner traits in addition to PPS Educators were named to on points circle of Excellence They will receive a fifteen hundred dollar cash award plus an additional thousand to their supplies for resources and supplies Dr Alfonso Garcia Ariola you may recognize him uh often commended is a 7th and 8th grade science teacher at access Academy Dr Garcia ariolo's honor profile states that his collaborative approach to teaching helps students learn to think like scientists with an understanding of what science is as well as an understanding of what science is not projects are always Hands-On allowing students to form hypotheses collect data test theories and investigate through first-hand experimentation he's committed to Student Success and has mentored 32 teams in the Middle School Regional science bowl and Coach students to more than 100 awards at the Intel Northwest science excellent he has also received numerous Awards himself including in 2017 the science communication fellow for the ocean exploration trust and the Robert E Yeager excellence and teacher in teaching award congratulations Dr Alfonso Garcia Ariola and then lastly Jesse Gardner teaches career and college exploration in hip-hop literature also at Madison High School Mr Gardner's honor profile includes that he connects with his students using the lens of hip-hop music and a cult and culture to teachers literature and English faithfulness restorative justice and student voice eloquently into the routines rhythms and rituals of his classroom some of his amazing lessons include a name poem that students perform in front of their class A literacy a literary analysis on Raisin in the Sun a music review essay and black history bio poems congratulations to these five outstanding PPS Educators we're very proud of you and grateful for your dedication and excellence in service of our students thank you next slide uh we are in the month of May and that makes it mental health awareness month so we wanted to make sure and recognize that uh what you see here is a screenshot of a video mental health Matters from our Student Success and Health Department we shared the video across employee and school communities a couple of weeks ago I'm grateful for the individuals and teams from the school base to the central office who do this critical support work every day their role has changed a bit in the last two months as you might imagine but they like so many others in the district have adjusted and adapted and shown great creativity and how they're serving and supporting others providing the environments programs and supports to facilitate student and staff mental health and wellness is essential and we'll be talking a little bit more about that as we walk through our strategic Plan update later this evening this will continue to remain a central priority for us next slide I wanted to say a few words uh this pandemic that we're experiencing uh certainly has has disrupted uh the norm for us uh and uh exacerbated some some stress in the lives of our students uh staff and families uh I know that families and students are anxious to
00h 30m 00s
know what the plans are for the fall when will we return how will it look when we return uh and it's and it's challenging to offer a concrete response to to those questions um frankly because we are continuing to await uh guidance from the Department of Education and and say leaders um but we are working closely and continuously with the Oregon Department of Education we are working with other districts we're formulating some possibilities um we we do not yet have clarity about what the fall all opening of school may look like we are preparing some models that will afford us some flexibility and options as those become more clear we'll be sharing that with students and families I can assure everyone we're moving as deliberately as we can but of course we'll be observing Health authorities guidelines to ensure safe learning environments for both our students and our staff so in the meantime again I'm grateful for everyone's patience it's been a challenging spring for for all of us and I know we would all like some semblance of certainty about the future and and but it's a little bit difficult to sort of really outline those details we hope to get guidelines about fall reopening in the coming week or two we've seen some draft language about what that might look like regarding some rules regarding lines for schools and we will make sure to keep the community posted in the meantime we miss our students of course we are anxious to have you all back and my hope is that that day comes soon and then lastly uh this evening's main entree we're going to be taking a deep dive into where we are in our continued work at developing a multi-year strategic plan that will provide a road map and a blueprint towards realizing our vision uh and so I'm looking forward to that discussion uh with the board um I think what you'll hear staff emphasize uh later this evening is that we're going to stay true to that North Star of a vision our core values The Graduate portrait we outlined skills and dispositions that supportive adults and Educators who are leaders will need to have and we identified some important educational system shifts that will be important if we're going to transform this system to to serve every one of our students so looking forward to that conversation later in the agenda and that's my report chair constant directors thank you you're muted foreign it doesn't look like I don't see Amy on the call I wonder if she got bounced off I I see her but her audio isn't working can you hear me sounds like psycho sorry can you hear me now this is Rita yes yes okay um Annie and I both apparently having significant technical difficulties um so until she gets back I guess I will take the home here um so next up is the public comment and before we begin the public comment um I'd like to review the guidelines for public comments um first of all before I go through this um Miss Bradshaw do we have anybody signed up for a public comment on it yes we have two people two people signed
00h 35m 00s
up okay all right I'll go through this then uh the board thinks that for taking the time to eat it to the board we developing public input as it informs our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts Reflections and concerns our responsibilities board is to actively listen board members in the superintendent will not respond to comments or questions during public comments but our Board office will follow up on board related issues raised during public testimony guidelines for public input emphasize respect and consideration of others we request that complaints about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a Personnel manner if you have additional materials or items to the Border superintendo we ask that you email them to click a comment at pps.net if you're watching the board meeting via the live stream while waiting please make sure that you mute it prior to your turn to speak otherwise you're going to get feedback that I just had um if you leave it on it will create feedback and you'll be muted by the meeting administrator and we'll come back to you please make sure that you begin your comments um with uh clearly stating your name and spelling your last name you'll have three minutes to speak two minutes which means it's time to conclude your comments thank you okay who is going to unmute the testifiers I will have Theresa McClellan Theresa you should now be unusual yes hi can you guys hear me yes yeah oh okay hello hello everyone um thank you for giving me this chance to speak um I'm a strong Public School supporter and resident of the district and three minutes is not a long time to speak so I'm going to focus on a couple of things that are very important I believe um one of them is priorities and um yeah there is accountability and transparency so with regard to priorities I believe strongly that um our Student Success in the world depends strongly on a good education and the Necessary Technology to support the education so I would strongly recommend and hope that Portland Public Schools continue the efforts in technology and particularly supporting distance learning and other kinds of aspects of the full range of Technology the second area is accountability and this brings me to the West Sullivan um school project which I believe does need some transparency and accountability this project uh is using about two million dollars 2017 Bond measure funds um supposedly they're swing funds men for a temporary facility for displaced teams for the Lincoln High School rebuild um this project has basically Fallen under the radar with public documents document not publicly accessible on important Public Schools website yet we found out recently that structures are being built in support of um building a facility for Lincoln High School baseball and softball who never had a permanent facility this does not seem to be appropriate use of public funds and certainly not appropriate use of the bond fund if new facilities for baseball and software we're going to be built that should have been included in the bond and we should have had an opportunity to vote on it given cost overrims and possible new Bond measures I think it's even more important that we have transability transparency accountability and assurance that dollars are being spent appropriately and that they're being spent on voter approved projects so I'm requesting that the board actually do a more thorough review of the entire West
00h 40m 00s
Sullivan project to make a determination regarding its proper use of plans and whether it should even proceed and uh also in the future as I said before with regard to responsibilities and priorities I think to emphasis needs to be put on technology and academic programs that support all students thank you all right we have Anthony Castaneda and they used to be committed hello can you hear me yes okay hello everyone um so for the record my name is Anthony Castaneda my last name is spelled c-a-s-t-a-n-e-d-a and first I'd like to thank everyone for your time um and I'll be speaking specifically to the district 2020-2021 proposed budget and I sent an estimated written testimony for this as well so you'll get a copy of that I believe and I'm just gonna go ahead and read it um dear chair constant and members of the board what's your network is a culturally specific non-profit certain Latino Youth and families in Multnomah from us in Washington County our organization provides services to over 8 000 Latino youth families and community members in the areas of education and family stability we support students before during and after school hours through proven programs anticipating short policy District's budget material Network urges the school board and the community to uphold the commitment to educational equity the district must take action to mitigate covid-19 disproportionate impact by applying investments in support of districts other District's most vulnerable children so community-based initiatives that give students the support often not offered directly by the district navigating with children as our Northstar we believe this approach will support Children and Families through an uneven recovery any proposed budget must continue to expand Community Partnerships for culturally specific students and family support through meaningful Investments while we find ourselves in an unfortunate situation with an uncertain future we believe that reaffirming our values and commitments to our marginalized students and families look forward to pass forward the 2019 public Portland Public School reimagined vision sheds light on this path by describing the goals for graduating class of 2030 and educational experience that will increasingly be the reality for each of our graduates from 2019 onward the goals reflect the voice of 90 Community leaders like Latino network with countless Decades of experience servicing and leveraging the assets and strengths of Youth and families traditionally underserved by school districts the 2021 composed budget clearly outlines the core values that must guide its approval centering students with a racial equity and full suggested plans this cannot be more true during the pandemic in our phase in the last few months alone the Geo Network provided emergency assistance to over 2500 skylones similar to ppf our agency has drastically reshifted its services to meet the immediate and basic needs for our students and Families and again thank you for your leadership during the Public Health crisis taking your commitment to our District's children thank you okay thank you um thank you both for your comments and uh please feel free to connect with our board manager Roseanne Powell if you have something specifically you want to follow up with the board on or or the book okay next item is an update on seniors uh superintendent Guerrero would you like to introduce this next item so directors uh students and Community listening you heard me talk a little bit about some alternative senior activities uh for our graduating class but tonight we have several of our principals uh or some student representation uh to to provide some a little bit more uh detail about our seniors at this time so I'm going to ask our our high school Regional superintendent Joe LaFontaine to introduce our esteemed guests who are going to be speaking to this topic tonight good evening superintendent Guerrero steamed directors chair con Stam um back on May 5th um uh you heard a little bit about the K-8 challenges that we had in managing
00h 45m 00s
home-based distant learning and I was asked to present a little bit more information about what that looked like at the high school and so I'd like to maybe preface some of the comments from the students and staff uh with a little bit more background if I might um next slide please the high schools were really challenged with this timeline superintendent girl spoke to it in his opening about how it was almost like overnight that we had to turn around our instruction in our high schools and this timeline shows you how the closure came on the 14th and um of March and uh by the 17th the high school principals had already had a meeting on how we're going to manage some things through the shutdown and we began our discussions with the Department of Education on the 20th by the time spring break had rolled around high school principals were already organizing distance learning and how they were going to track students and and find ways to come Tech students in their homes even in the homes of the students who don't have the technology to do that by the 30th ode rolled out their guidance for the seniors and by that by the following Friday we already were tracking just how many students we were able to effectively contact would you go to the next slide please Roseanne so the ode guidance was explicit about making sure that we had some family student contact and communication to be effective in what our instruction looked like um we the Oregon Department of Education offered a lot of different ways uh for graduation to look differently and they had an entire set of guidelines on what that was supposed to be it required um significant shifts in how we were tracking the success of our seniors because they actually changed the graduation expectations and um many of our seniors are on very specific programs and what this did is it changed those programs made some of them even unattainable unreachable and um and the the state of Oregon was trying to set a single course of action for our seniors to ensure that in this epidemic seniors would not be damaged that was our number one priority is to make sure that kids weren't hurt by changing our approach and how we were delivering our instruction um so the way we operate generally is our Synergy program helps us inform the student acquisition of credits toward graduation but ode's guidelines were different than ours and so we had to re rework our Synergy system to actually inform our our district on the success of our seniors moving forward it was a very challenging time but the I.T department and this systems planning and performance Department worked with us very closely to realign those systems so that we could actually get accurate information back to schools very quickly we also worked with the IT department to make on the distribution of devices where we started with the high schools to extract the devices and distribute them across the entire District since the majority of the devices were found in the High Schools teacher planning at the high school looked different than that in K-8 many teachers have six periods of instruction and they had to find a way to to reduce that in a way 150 kids many of them have as a caseload how are they going to address 150 kids over the course of a week and so the design for instruction being um virtual was a challenge for everyone you heard a little bit about some of the graduation ceremonies and events that superintendent Guerrero showed with you and there's there's a few other ones that I'd like to share but we tried to engage students and staff and communities on what those events might look like and the planning began as early as March actually on what those plans might look like um the student-teacher interaction platform as a learning tool for the system is what I'd like to talk about a little bit tonight and have some of these other people speak to because it was different than what we thought it might look like and what our challenges were certainly we made some discoveries in the process of this um and we had some um we had some real uh value that we've uncovered at the same time but the paradigm shift from the way we were teaching to the way we had to teach wasn't just a challenge for our system it was a challenge to our families and so finding a way to be effectively able to contact them and make instruction meaningful was one of our greatest challenges would you move to the next slide possibly so we started the work in contacting families back in early April and very quickly each of the high schools were able to make direct contact with each of the students you see this chart shows you the numbers of freshmen sophomores and juniors that were contacted and by May 1st we were down to uh less than five percent of the students had we not been able to reach as I speak to you today it's less than a half a percent of the students that we've not found we've been able to make direct contacts with these families and trying to engage them
00h 50m 00s
we still have some challenges in how we engage in instruction that we're working very diligently on that the next slide please one of the things that I do want you to know is well I can't give you a an exact number on what our graduation rates will be like I do know that our projections look as though they're at least as good as they have been in the past and probably going to be a little bit stronger it's hard to give you an actual number on what that looks like just yet because it's it changes every day actually we have kids earning graduation every day the next slide please and um and superintendent Guerrero covered several of these top items on this particular slide but there's a few other things that we're doing for the senior class including personal delivery of their medallions and by literacy to their homes and we're also posting some lawn signs to celebrate our valedictorians and Senior Award winners special class gift we're also looking at awarding something to every senior in the class of 2020 and a special gift as well I asked to join us tonight uh a couple of principles and I asked Parker myris if he might join us and obvious thinking possibly student director Maxine my lateral might be able to chime in as well but what um maybe I can't share a few of their experiences that they've had this year and what it feels like for them and I watch some of the things that they've seen that um that are a wonderful little discoveries as well as challenges we have going forward I think that they could tell you a little bit more Mr principal Frasier would you like to maybe share something that you've seen so far this year sure thank you so much uh to the board and uh superintendent Guerrera I appreciate the opportunity to address you tonight um as it's been stated uh the uh the distance learning model has been um a challenge um however it has really uh shown the resiliency of not only our district um but our students and our families and all those stakeholders involved that have been impacted by it um it's required a lot of patience you know from our teachers and understanding of student circumstance um some things that came out of this that um again benefited us that we will definitely take into next year is the opportunity to work in a more collaborative fashion as Educators and and working in teams and looking at how we look at standards how we demonstrate um or how we look at student performance and ability and use that to be a better gauge of how our students are doing in the classrooms um it's required a great deal of flexibility um and just being able to adapt our way of thinking and a great deal of innovation um it's been you know uh it's it was a rookie start at the beginning as we know but each week you can just see attraction and momentum being built um and part of that comes from confidence part of that comes from the ability to practice these platforms that teachers had to learn to um become masters of very quickly and students actually had the upper hand in the technology field but was able to actually assist a lot of our teachers and so to see teachers and students working in a collaborative and fashion has been great uh something that I've really appreciated also is the ability for our teachers to really look at the social emotional aspect that comes along with learning and being able to support students in that regard so um our motto has been you know we know that we have to um operate differently as a building however our values do not change we are still focusing on maximizing relationships with students maximizing engagement and maximizing evidence of student ability thank you thank you principal Frazier and uh Parker you might all know Parker he's uh one of our student leaders that frequents the board meetings and has come to know many of you directors and I thought I'd invite Parker to share a few of his experiences from the other side of the TV screen what have you felt so far this year absolutely um it's it's it's been um you know I'm I'm kind of going to uh Echo some of the things that superintendent uh Guerrero have said in principal Frazier um that it's been it's been a challenge um to to adapt and there have been unique uh things that have popped up that weren't anticipated but um but we've also had a lot of uh of of Victories and you know it's it's a program uh that was as as a superintendent said rolled out overnight um with with virtually maybe a couple weeks of of being able to see it coming but not um not being able to act on it um you know and I and I think um that the shortfalls uh really come from the fact that it isn't in person which is so you it's a challenge because it's a
00h 55m 00s
challenging platform um not not due to any shortcomings of the uh of the Fantastic uh Educators um which is something I'd like to uh sort of shout out if you will um my fantastic teachers and um you know all of the other Educators from around the district that have really um stepped up to uh to rewriting an entire curriculum um and that's that's not easy and and mistakes are made uh I think that the uh the main thing is um is is treating it sort of as School but not in person uh which it it is not um it as as superintendent said it can't replace in-person school um or a face-to-face uh in in classroom situation um something that I uh you know I can speak to is um be yeah that's that's the uh the main challenge is the sort of so Parker you know one of the things one of the things that's most profound about education is that even at my age uh I have great memories of of things that happen for me as a student in classes just events that really formed who I am today and and made me want to be a better learner so that happens all the time in classroom settings have you had any experiences like that um in this other platform at all I I think that it's it's similar but different um I think it's it's seeing someone who you uh you think of as as a leader you know a teacher is uh is someone who should be um respected and to see them be able to adapt so uh so well and to be able to try to genuinely um my mother's friend is a teacher uh in Forest Grove and they uh they were out in the backyard uh six feet apart of course but she um she teaches Elementary School she was just going over how um how dearly she misses her students and how much uh you know how much of it of a struggle it is both ways yeah great um I was wondering if um how you can describe the engagement of your classmates in your live sessions with your teachers like are there are there students that you just haven't seen is it pretty much the same kids who show up all the time can you tell us a little bit about that there are um it as as you said um there's there's generally a core group um in a class of 30 it might be low at as low as 16 in the very beginning um a lot more students showed up regularly and I think um now that the classes have you know we've sort of built a routine and students have adapted more uh they feel that they don't need to go to the classes and they are um optional well I I do um enjoy them I'm a very social person any opportunity I get to talk to somebody I'm not related to I'll take but but it's um and and students typically do have their cameras off and themselves muted but there there will be the occasional uh question um and nearpod is a very common uh form of uh in interactive uh distance learning it um I don't know if you're familiar it's a live um sort of interface it allows a teacher to pose a question in the students to answer in real time and so students are interacting uh in in the class Parker this is Julia um if you had one piece of advice for the State education officials for next year if we're going to be in a similar situation what would it be promoted to sort of increase engagement and the value of the interactions between teachers and staff and students yeah if I had won one piece of advice um this is something that I've heard echoed between students and Educators and principals is even if it's like 10 students in a classroom at a time if at all possible any form of in-person
01h 00m 00s
um in the interaction any sort of classroom setting is is optimal um you know if that's going to be feasible is yet to be determined um but I would say I would strongly recommend some form even if it's sort of a wonky flip-flop schedule with like shifts and whatnot so is that personal interaction yeah yes social distance and healthy way yeah yeah that's that's really how how connections are made and how um at least in my experience uh an educator can can best uh connect with students thanks Parker does anybody have any other questions I just thought I might give Maxine a chance to chime in on her thoughts about this approach all right thank you thank you Parker student director I'm sorry I just had my video off so I just had to like figure out if my hair looked terrible um you know as one does in covid land um yeah so my experience during distance learning um has been unique because I'm a senior so I'm not like stressed about school anymore I kind of checked out um but I was still I'm still able to go to the classes that I want to go to I'm really I like going to my economics class um because my teacher checks in with us and I get to see his dogs and um I have to take economics next year for college so I'm able to like you know get a little bit of a head start on some of that learning which um I like uh and I'm really enjoying still going to my journalism class because that Community is really special to me and I um like all the people in there a lot said being able to socialize with them like Parker said is definitely a really um important part for me when I'm not able to like see my friends in person um obviously sad but being able to communicate with them on a platform and our teachers kind of creating opportunities for us to socialize my economics teacher is going to have us do like some online board games next week um for like our last class which is really nice and our teachers are still making sure that we get like our stoles and our cords which is really nice I have one of mine just hanging up um before I take pictures with it because I'm definitely going to get those pictures in anyways even though I'm not you know walking across the stage I still get to do the senior things um but I'm just really happy that I was you know in in all this mess where you know what has been so many years of education leading up to this point um it's obviously sad and like I'm I you know all of the seniors in the world are like really like it had to happen like now it couldn't have waited a little bit longer like we couldn't it's like summertime it's fine um it's it's we're still there's like there are little positives in in this like being able to see their teachers to pick up our caps and gowns and um still getting cords and stalls and uh still being able to celebrate in in ways that definitely weren't expected um but grateful that that something that we have resources to make these things happen and to celebrate I think one of my initial thoughts when this all happened was like oh I'm not gonna get anything now like this is all just gone like it's I don't there's nothing fun that's gonna happen but through what teachers have done and administrators have prioritized seniors and staff especially here um it definitely showed me like it's not all terrible like yes it's a lot of it is terrible but there are like people still like love all the seniors and that's definitely being shown at least from my perspective excellent thank you Maxine yeah yeah thank you any any other questions La Fontaine so for our seniors who are really coming down to the wire in terms of passing a class or a few classes and getting those final credits do we have any different or or principal Frasier maybe this question is for you do we have any different structures of support available for them in Virtual land or or what are we doing to really help those kids get over the finish line principal friends you want to give it a Franklin Spin and then I'll I'll fill in the blanks
01h 05m 00s
not a problem uh so again our teachers are working extremely hard to uh try to push uh and prepare those students um and bring that you know potential incomplete up to a passing Mark and so again as you've you've heard there's been this change where not every student um is participating in either synchronous or asynchronous classes and so it gives the teacher um an opportunity to really focus on those students that need a little bit more additional support and so they're continuing to work hard um with regards to that and so we are you know again chipping away at it every single day we're still waiting to get a little bit more information with regards to what um Credit Recovery could look like potentially this summer so more information will come out from that but we have a host of teachers that are really trying to do everything that they can to help students cross the line and so we're just waiting for more information from the district about what that could potentially look like so I mentioned tracking students earlier on in this in this conversation it sounds a little stalker-like but the truth is what we were doing is we're examining very carefully what the progress was of every senior every senior fifth year sixth year senior every senior across the district and uh systems planning and performance under the director of Dr Brown Hub design a platform in which we could track every student every credit exactly where they were at and how they're achieving it and moving forward so ode guidance suggested that we identify students who are graduating early as early as possible so we could focus on the students who needed to recover credit so we've been able to track that I had mentioned earlier that we're graduating more students every day that's exactly what's happening we've actually partnered with with other outside vendors to actually work with us to help support students moving forward we have um we're going to have over 1600 students in uh graduate Gathering credits this summer we've already had over 100 students graduate from Alliance this year they only had 93 last year I mean we are seeing some real positive movement here and and because some seniors don't have to take eight classes then it's providing an opportunity for people to focus on what it takes for the kids to be able to successfully pass the class that they need so they can move on and it's it's brought about a higher degree of focus than we've really ever seen before in regards to student credit acquisition that's required and so we're the teachers and the administrators and our partners uh the staff in multiple Pathways our cbo's everybody's on the same page working tirelessly to ensure that every senior possible gets across the stage I just want to share one other tidbit that I find exciting and that is that today we just released a list of fifth and sixth year seniors who are not currently engaged with our schools but we're re-engaging with our schools because we feel that this approach is been so successful that we can reach out to them and re-engage them and get them to graduate this year as well because our new tracking system that came about because of the situation has now helped us identify people that are just a half a credit short of graduating so we are doing some additional Outreach even to ensure more kids have this opportunity I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak for today we're building some tools that are going to be absolutely yes so I have a question for Maxine and Parker I'm curious about your thoughts about the whole uh sort of concept of uh making things optional and to you and other students thought about that I've heard from a lot I've heard the opinion of a lot of parents um that was really a demo uh like someone demoralizing but I'm curious about what students felt about that yeah oh am I gonna go first are you gonna go first Parker go first great thank you so much um at least from my perspective I think that optional right now is like a completely valid option um didn't mean to say it twice but I think like mental health of students right now is in my perspective one of the most important things that a student can be um aware of that didn't make any sense but like mental health is really important right now for students especially because there's so many stressful events going on in our lives like yes there are always stressful events going on in our lives but I think now more than ever there's so much uncertainty and so adding and usually you know school and school work and homework is like built into that but having um having a lot of uncertainty when we don't know everything that's going on I think is not I don't think that schoolwork at
01h 10m 00s
the moment is as important as taking care of yourself um and I think that some teachers are definitely like hearing that from students and so they're trying to um you know be responsive and say like yeah that's okay I just want to make sure that like you as a person like you're okay and that your family is okay if you do some of the work you come to class and you check in with me like that's all I want is to make sure that like you're doing okay and that you're somehow stimulating your brain it doesn't necessarily have to be by writing an essay or learning how to do math on your own because that's really hard to do so I think that optional work is like a really good thing right now um for a lot of students yeah that's my perspective on it yeah I I Echo um a lot of that I I think um you know there still has to be some some balance of of mandatory um school work just to to show that you are sorry excuse me uh fulfilling the um you know the standards that have been set but it's it really is um a struggle more than more than I thought it would be um you know I'm I'm sitting at a nice wooden desk and a you know with a roof over my head and I just I just ate and I'm struggling um so someone who is in someone who doesn't have a house or doesn't have a bed can't can't get eight hours of sleep on a nice cushy mattress um and then is expected to uh then find a computer and an internet source um and and do that work the amount of of anxiety um they must be experiencing uh it must be phenomenal um phenomenally large ice but um I I think there has to be a balance um there are a couple of classes that are keeping up uh the workload um or a similar workload to what was um previous to uh school closures um and I those those classes are by far the ones that I personally am struggling in the most um and that I've heard the most um the most about from other students in terms of it being difficult um and I think mental health right now is a huge you know it should be one of your top priorities um because your whole um your what you have come to expect uh from school from from life has been dramatically altered for time being um I I really support um having a majority of work be be optional I think that that's really our our best option right now and what is best for the students thanks thank you Parker thanks Parker thank you Parker all right thank you can I say something I just want to recognize you for um just the maturity you just exhibited by um recognizing Your Privilege and having a home and you know food to eat and you know my concern is always like those kids that are most impacted those kids that don't maybe have an adult in the home or don't have a place to sleep and how difficult it must be for them to get through this um time without the support technically or or just like physically having the support and so I just um I just want to thank you I thought you exhibited some uh great like personal uh emotional intelligence there and I think that's important it's exhibiting one of the characteristics that we want to see in our graduates so it's wonderful thank you Michelle you're here all right thank you and um please um Frazier convey our gratitude to your staff and everybody who's taking care of our seniors to your colleagues and our other high schools thank you Joe for all of your work and um that was really that was really helpful we'll move on to our as the uh superintendent says eventually the main entree the budget works but first we have a bit of policy work um director Moore could you please introduce this um item coming out of the board policy committee the workforce the workplace harassment policy 5.10.060 p can you hear me
01h 15m 00s
yeah okay um in 2019 the Oregon legislature made a number of revisions to statutes related to employment the amendments were enrolled in Senate Bill 479 and Senate bill 726. the focus of the bills is to address unlawful conduct in the workplace and to provide protections against workplace harassment of employees the bills require employers to provide information to employees who complain of workplace discrimination and harassment including the district's policy supports and resources and legal remedies that may be available to them SB 726 also provides that employers may not include non-disclosure non-disparagement no rehire Provisions in settlement agreements for employees who have made a complaint of workplace discrimination or harassment unless agreed upon by the employee the district already had a sexual harassment policy 5.10.060 P addressing sexual harassment in the workplace rather than create a separate workplace harassment policy which would include sexual harassment under the statutes we incorporated the new state requirements into our existing policy this policy was reviewed and considered by the board policy committee and was provided to Pat for review thank you the proposed policy amendments will be posted on the board website and the public comment period is 21 days of the last day to comment being June 16th the board will hold a second reading at our June 23rd meeting thank you director Moore yes no this is uh Julia Ben Edwards um just a question is if we if we assume that we're going to stay sort of in a virtual meeting environment for extend a period of time are we doing anything differently to try and get um comments on our policies I know we've got some pretty significant ones coming up and um both uh student discipline search and seizure but a whole host of other ones and it seems like we have a board meeting and we're just announcing it and posting it it doesn't have a very far reach so I'm just and this is going to be answered now but I'm curious about what um we can do just given the altered work environment the altered board meeting environment we have and the amount of Engagement um because it just seems like putting something out for 21 days and then not getting comment isn't necessarily a reflection that people don't have a point of view but more um maybe even not knowing that we're changing their policies um head of the policy committee do you want to speak to any changes in our practice in terms of public engagement on policy work uh I'm not aware that we've made any specifically since the kovitz crisis started um I do think that we have we have talked about um we have talked about including uh other um of our labor Partners in the um in the discussions um or at least forwarding the policy any policy revisions that are being proposed so that they have an opportunity to weigh in as well and that's our standard practice with or without pandemic but they do there is a a regular communication to them as policies are moving through I'm just wondering for example like with parents whether we could if we have a list serve of all the ptas or the site councils so that just it gets out to a broader a broader Universe um because I think right now we're it's probably pretty Limited group so just as we have more substantive ones like tonight's I think because it's based on reaction to the statutory change I probably less of something that people are going to comment on because it's just looking forward into some changes but another one's if we could figure out ways to reach more parents which seems to be maybe the place that we're missing people it's been great Maxine and Parker and all the students who have been engaged around the policy developments and then we had the mechanism to give it to them at least the representative groups but it seems like currents are a constituency in which would be helpful um adding to that comment there are some
01h 20m 00s
of our policies that impact specific communities um and it seems like the 21 day notice on the website is as good as a floor um I'm wondering because I'm being asked also how I can better engage with those policies as they're coming up besides going to the website and plucking them is there a way that I can be I can inform myself or be informed about changes that are coming well in advance so I have a chance to communicate with the communities that I'm involved with I mean just for instance anything that happens in in you know zone two or you know search and seizure and and these policies that we know that impact disproportionately kids of color would be valuable for me to to know about or be briefed about and be able to communicate about um so I'm doing my job hi uh directors this is Jonathan Garcia Chief engagement officer here at the district uh as uh members of the board may recall uh pre-covid we were moving towards a model of engaging our community ahead of policy revisions uh this is notable in our efforts around the boundary uh the conversations around boundary our expectation is that before our the Board of Education entertains specific uh uh policy revisions that uh that we we could support you and your efforts to engage with our community uh we have a community engagement team that is constantly uh working and in in constant communication with uh communities around uh policy changes as reflected in uh the various memos that we have provided to a policy committee uh director to pass I'm happy to work with our board manager Powell to think about how we might make sure that those memos and other uh documents are available to the the broader board uh and that we work with director director Roy uh our head of communications to make sure that we have uh ongoing uh places to uh make that visible in this new covet reality where people are spending more time online we want to make sure that that online access is as easy for anybody to to read so I'm happy to to uh to pick any of your uh brains board members I know you all have uh expertise and you all have a network of folks that you're in constant communication if we are not if our office of Engagement is not in communication with the with the communities or the stakeholders that you are involved with or that you hear from on a regular basis I would encourage you to either introduce them to myself or to our director of community engagement studies work uh we love to build relationship with our with our community and bring him into the fold to help us uh realize Vision 20 uh uh PPS reimagined so thank you Jonathan that's great you guys um really I do see you getting out in the community um to the extent that you can and I I guess I'm just putting it out there that I would like to partner uh with you on that um the communications uh just getting it out there so we are signaling that we're all on the same team um and that we're up that we're offering an opportunity to hear from people um if we've missed blind spots or whatever so so thank you so much thank you and um we're gonna have to keep thinking about this and and ways to get the word out about our policy work um superintendent Guerrero we're looking to you next to um bring forward your um work around the Strategic plan development which begs perfectly into the presentation of the proposed budget and I just want to comment on the very extensive um budget message that you provided that grounds this whole process and grounds the specific framework for decision making in our strategic priorities um I learned a lot in that document and I'm sure it was a team effort but really really appreciate everything that went into that thank you chair constant for that it definitely uh represents a collective work uh and it really attempts to provide a snapshot at this moment um as to how we see our roadmap for system transformation um so I'm going to be joined this
01h 25m 00s
evening in this presentation as we get it up on the screen um by various members of senior leadership uh including our two Deputy superintendents Claire Hertz and Dr Craig Cuellar our executive Chief of Staff Stephanie Soden Dr Russ Brown our chief assistant performance Jonathan Garcia Chief engagement officer who also serves as president of the fund for PPS and our senior advisor on racial equity and social justice Danny Ledesma um joining us here this evening however are many cabinet level members many senior staff who are prepared to dive as deeply as we are able to and the constraints of the night allow us um but uh I will ask up front if you will allow us indulge us to get through about 20 slides uh we will keep it to 30 or more minutes we will try to do that I know we've uh reserved uh extensive time to get into a discussion which were very interested in hearing from our board members this evening and before I launch into this update on our strategic plan development which you know I I have heard very clearly uh board directors uh wanting you know to sort of peek under uh where staff is with that work I can assure you we've been just as anxious to share um what's emerging as far as how we get to realizing the vision that our community is excited to see be true for for our students and we felt like tonight was an important evening to to review that because um uh an organization's resources should value and prioritize that work uh and so the exercise of attaching dollars to actions uh we think should be led by uh emerging strategic plan priorities so that that's sort of our goal for tonight um for those listening um there's aside from this PowerPoint presentation that we're going to go through uh sort of Carousel style as staff the board also received to chair constant's reference a rather extensive yet another concise document from yours truly a 30-page uh Narrative of some of the highlights that we're going to review tonight uh it's also important for the public to understand there's also a posted two volume set of our proposed uh budget proposal um and there's also some narrative up front in volume one which you'll hear Echoes of in this presentation so uh no shortage of reading material uh for everyone but we're going to try to give you the 25 30 minute Cliff Notes version here this evening so tonight's outline um we're going to take on a little bit of a journey with us as we reflect about the context of the history that brings us to this time and the possibility is moving forward in Into the Future into the future so um I've shared with you the artifacts that that we have available uh that capture some of what we're sharing here tonight um but we want to make sure that students families staff and the public um have have a window into our emerging thinking about our roadmap moving forward so we're going to share our Reflections a little bit of our Reflections on leadership history current context some of this will be familiar to those of you who have grown up here in the Portland area it's been part of our journey and learning uh we didn't we'll revisit our North Star because that's our guidepost our community-led vision PPS reimagined uh we'll we'll describe how our North Star connects us to our overarching commitment to racial Equity social justice how our approach is a targeted universalism identified one and it's going to lead us to the development of our bold theory of action we'll discuss how our strategies how our investments We Believe will help us achieve the student performance goals which the board has identified and which we'll continue to expand on over time so hopefully you start to see the jigsaw puzzles pieces come together as we get into this conversation so I'm also happy to present um this evening sort of our emerging year one strategies of what will be an integrated part of a multi-year strategic plan a much more comprehensive
01h 30m 00s
one this first phase is centered around five prioritized system shifts you'll recognize them from division we prioritize five of them for the coming year uh that we felt were foundational that spoke to the organizational shifts that need to take place uh they describe how the central office in its role Works in partnership with our school communities to accelerate the work and outcomes for our students after we describe those sets of system shifts and related strategies we'll be presenting our proposed investment plan that despite some sobering recent uh resource constraints were maintaining alignment to these focused priorities vision and values so hopefully at the end of this presentation you have a clear sense of the path forward as as we imagine it that we think will get us to becoming a premier School District so moving on slide three uh we're here tonight because collectively we believe in this power of a high quality free public education right this beliefs requires us to be reflective to be adaptive leaders uh in for PPS this means we have to empower everyone in the organization to build their technical expertise their their craft their Arts their content knowledge uh and then we insist uh on this culture uh where we have to be adaptive that we have to be able to reflect on not just our lived experiences but um demonstrate and also cultivate resiliency which I think we're seeing examples of even just from our students and school leaders tonight describe we have to be able to our director will uh comment earlier about uh an ability to convene diverse groups of stakeholders to address some of these uh in some cases learning issues uh we have to inspire everyone to join what should be a collective movement the last three months have crystallized for us as a team that the current circumstances and the future might be uncertain um and some of the technical skills uh might have served us to that point well um but we're going to have to continue to to to rise up to to the challenges that are before us so how do we uh stay true to moving towards the North Star and not let the current delivery model or constraints of but rather see opportunities in uh how we LeapFrog into that kind of a future so as a system we're going to stay focused on leadership We Believe are going to be important uh by by everyone in in the organization and that Collective ability to embark on a positive change so to dive a little bit into some of the chronology and the context upon which we're building um Danny Ledesma thank you uh good evening um so uh when a lot of times when we speak about our commitment to racial equity and social justice uh we get nods of agreement folks are are very sort of like this is the right thing to do but those nods tend to slow down when we start talking about strategies that directly address racism or they specify targeted solutions for specific student groups um and I think and I think we think at PPS is that a lot of this is because as Americans as portlanders we're really conditioned to believe that racism is this thing this it's a limited incident it's something that's personal that you can prove um and at PPS we know that in order to be able to address these pernicious opportunity gaps we we have to be really explicit about the role of race and we also know that we have to be aware of our history so that we can be intentional not to embed oppression into our culture and into our classrooms so I'd like to start tonight by acknowledging while that even we're even though we're Gathering virtually our schools and our homes and Community Gathering spaces rest on the lands of the tradition on the rest on the traditional lands of the bands of the Chinook Multnomah Clackamas Tualatin Malala kalapuya Wasco Cowlitz and Cathlamet tribes these tribes established their communities in a resource-rich area where they traded and fished along the rivers and harvested those natural resources that fed and maintain our families until European contact federal policy was to eliminate tribal people and much later to assimilate Us in an attempt to erase our Rich tribal traditions in the 1950s under Federal relocation policy a large segment of the native population
01h 35m 00s
in the U.S was forced to relocate to several major cities of which Portland Was Won and this is why in Portland we see so much tribal diversity here during the same era under the Oregon termination Act and the Klamath termination act many of our Oregon tribes and governments were abolished and tribal lands were taken away and some of these governments were partially reinstated over 20 years later but there are many still who are not reinstated and the federal boarding school era policies that went well into the 1960s attempted assimilation through the removal of children from their families in order to kill the Indian and save the man none of these policies could be challenged through the electoral process because Oregon restricted Native Americans from voting until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. in the mid-1850s treaties submitted to Congress by Oregon and Washington Indian Commissioners Joel Palmer and Isaac Stevens promised to provide teachers and schools to tribes the 1855 treaty with the Willamette Valley Indians obligated the federal government to establish manual labor schools among the Malala Umpqua and kalapuya which included the construction of buildings and the provision of substances of of substances of sustenance for students as Transportation Systems improved and public education became more accessible in the early 20th century many of the reservation schools were closed and Indian students were sent to chimawa or to Public Schools today the Native American community in Multnomah County exists as a testament to resilience and resistance we know that Portland's Metro native Community is diverse and growing and that our population is estimated to be nearly 70 thousand we've selected three dates to talk about and to illuminate the black student experience at Portland Public Schools the first state I'd like to talk about is 1867. where the official segregation of black students occurred in PBS so our very unfortunate history goes back to the 19th century William Brown a resident of Portland in the 1860s tried to enroll his children into one of Portland's only two Public elementary schools launching what would be the first and only case of official segregation of black children in Portland Public Schools after repeated attempts to enroll his children um which was you know in our schools which were established prior to 1851 and being denied Mr Brown appealed to the board of education and again his children were denied access eventually rather that rather than risking the anger of PBS white parents the school board at the time eventually allocated eight hundred dollars for a segregated School in Southwest Portner Portland on the corner of Southwest 4th and Columbia Street which I don't know if you guys know that's very close to City Hall every year at school board meetings this school's existence was called into question until it was abolished in 1872 and 30 black students were quote welcomed into an integrated PPS the second date I want to talk about is 1954 the Brown versus Board of Education so as we know racist policies and practices continued in our state well into the 20th century the PPS Board of Education took the position at this time that PBS had a policy of equal education and that would take no action regarding segregation in Portland Public Schools following the landmark The Landmark Supreme Court ruling of Brown versus Board of Education in 1954. colorblind and unconstitutional view persisted unchallenged until 1962. when the local chapter of the NAACP accused PBS of being segregated and unequal for black children 1982 three decades later to address the failure of the Board of Education to take action regarding the needs of PBS's black students the black united front led by Ronnie Herndon along with others protested the school board's decision to locate Harriet Tubman Middle School at Boise Elementary School eliminating the only Elementary School within the black community we're gonna go to the next slide so our history of serving of not serving excuse me black and Native American students and now many other students of color does not reflect the type of community we aspire to be and while that brief history we just covered is meant to provide Illuminating examples it's not meant to be a comprehensive history
01h 40m 00s
we do believe however that PPS finally has the momentum to make the massive changes needed to alter our future for the better in 2011 as many of you know in the Board of Education adopted a racial educational Equity policy that called out harmful disparities in our schools and identified the district's role in eliminating them and as you know our Board of Education selected Guadalupe Guerrero as superintendent making him the first Latino superintendent in our history joining a public school system with hope for the future and a strong sense of collective potential to address historical inequities in the district adopting a sense of urgency superintendent Guerrero prior to prioritized assembling a senior leadership team that immediately began to collaboratively develop and establish the foundation for the work ahead in that first year the superintendent and leadership team began the important work of planning and implementing the essential building blocks of District Improvement including an outlined Core Curriculum and related professional learning opportunities for educators and leaders training opportunities in differentiated academic and behavioral supports and the instituting of a balanced assessment system to inform School Improvement efforts since the superintendent's arrival almost every single Department in the central office has solidified its core functions this school year and identified key Focus areas to improve on towards greater system coherence and effectiveness a much improved organizational culture more squarely focused on a commitment to transformation has taken root and optimism about our potential and future has begun to permeate a more public positive public narrative recognizing the importance of school engagement the superintendent has maintained an active and visible presence in our school communities visiting hundreds of classrooms and attending an array of school events to both demonstrate support for our schools and to have an opportunity to interact with and hear directly from students school-based staff and Families we have moved quickly and with determination while also modeling the characteristics of a learning organization hi everyone again this is Jonathan Garcia Chief engagement officer so if you recall last August in front of hundreds of school administrators central office leaders and community and Civic leaders uh director Scott Bailey uh danced uh danced away uh no superintendent Guerrero kicked off the year at our second annual week-long Leadership Institute uh that is a picture there of that a fun Friday uh morning uh if you remember we launched this this year really with a deep sense of urgency to accelerate student achievement and with deep optimism that a brighter future was indeed possible in public education throughout Oregon a few weeks earlier and that that morning uh Governor Kate Brown joined us uh uh after she had signed the historic Student Success act which provided a billion dollars to support targeted public education Investments across the state in our third year uh under the superintendent's leadership under superintendent Guerrero's leadership PPS continues our steadfast commitment to accelerating student achievement and as you heard uh uh in today's context especially for Portland's black and Native American children as you all know with a community informed Vision uh we have focused this year on developing a multi-year strategic plan that guides our decisions at the system level and Investments to realize the vision for our graduates in the larger learning ecosystem uh we've spent this year really promoting a culture of continuous Improvement and professional learning for our Educators and for our leaders and uh lastly we've been really focused on leading with the Deep commitment to racial equity and a bold commitment to social justice uh really centering the students most in need in of our resources and our strategic decisions Board of Education so awesomely and unanimously adopted PPS reimagined as the district's North Star uh back in it was a June July uh or August of 2019 uh across the system we have begun to integrate the tenets of the vision into our plannings and our programming and I want to give you a couple of couple examples of what how that's already manifested itself in the office of college of career Readiness led by our senior director uh Dr Aurora Terry uh she's convened all of our district high school principals in our community-based CTE Partners to begin aligning the district's four-year High School Success plan so uh to our vision by mapping out The Graduate profile with high school learning uh on the other side of the
01h 45m 00s
spectrum our PPS Early Education team uh met literally the day after the school board approved the vision to create an age-appropriate way to describe the characteristics of our graduate profile to the uh from the perspective of our earliest Learners and as you all know uh one of the things that our superintendent is really focused on uh uh for the school system is to redesign the Middle School experience for our young people so the Middle School redesign team has been uh beginning to utilize The Graduate profile uh to prioritize prioritize the key areas uh that we need to emphasize uh to have an ideal Middle grades experience for all of our students knowing that these Middle grades are some of the most formative years in our students identity and development across our community uh staff and partners uh um sorry across our community staff and partners inspired by our bold future aspiration for students and their educational experience described our Vigilant we swiftly move to align our work uh uh of our Student Success act so when we uh when our governor announced the one billion dollar Student Success act as you all remember we uh launched a district-wide a city-wide engagement process uh we carried that Spirit of innovation of Engagement of collaboration uh that uh that we cultivated in our visioning process uh into the planning of our Student Success act uh investment account uh and so to keep with our focus of accelerating growth for students of color uh for our black and Native American students staff collaborated with the community and several organizations to engage with students family staff Community Partners to elicit feedback and input into the planning and application process uh we heard from and partnered with the Coalition of communities of color Sanford and even our Portland Association of teachers who uh who with in Partnership we've just released the district-wide survey to gather feedback about the needs and how we might use uh the the resources the financial resources to to move the vision forward as you all know more than two months ago we were thrown into this unprecedented reality of the global pandemic our schools have been closed but our commitment to educating our students Remains the Same uh what we know is that this pandemic has Illustrated troubling inequities and uh we need uh assist we need to shift our system uh so that our community can be fully supported uh uh especially as we know that covet is impacting uh communities of color and uh an accelerator rate how do we create a system that supports them uh supports us supports our community uh during this time so we're committed to acknowledging the different impact the crisis is having on our schools and community and are providing culturally uh uh specific targeted responses uh to this pandemic good evening Claire Hertz Deputy superintendent speaking I'm happy to join this team in presenting tonight we want to talk about a key shift in embracing continuous can you go back one slide thank you a key shift in embracing continuous Improvement our Relentless pursuit of racial equity and social justice our work in racial equity and social justice to date has included several key milestones in our PPS res J framework and plan and updated it to include Equitable business operations goals to incorporate the district's work and finance planning and construction and sustainability and these goals were developed in collaboration with all of the business operation leaders we instituted a cross-functional resj advisory committee to create and promote educational social and professional programs develop goals and activities to increase the understanding and and progress we do this work because we believe in the fundamental right to human dignity and that generating an equitable World requires an educational system that intentionally disrupts and builds leaders to disrupt systems of impression of Oppression we want to be explicit about how the work is done and our use of the targeted universalism approach we recognize resource conversations can be polarizing and discourse can become trapped in either or zero-sum mindsets our targeted universalism approach aims to operationalize our res J values so every student is served so our Universal board goals and The Graduate profile of our vision are achieved our targeted universalism approach supports the
01h 50m 00s
district's needs of students of color while also acknowledging our mutual interdependence targeted universalism means setting Universal goals pursued by targeted processes to achieve those goals with the targeted universalism framework Universal goals are established for every group every student the strategies developed to achieve those goals are targeted based upon how different groups are situated within structures culture and across geographies to obtain the universal goal targeting the universalism is goal oriented and the processes are directed in service of the explicit Universal goal and now I'll turn it back to Danny Ledesma thanks Claire so we recognize with with a great sense of urgency the need for aligned and coherent strategies that improve conditions so that students of color have an educational experience where they can thrive and our approach is disruptive we attempt to disrupt institutional and cultural racism and to promote tangible strategies and resources for racial equity and social justice students of color are centered in our strategies and these strategies promote Improvement for the entire system we also know that our explicit and targeted approach May elicit fear and a feeling of being left out candidly when we see this type of discourse everywhere in Portland people want what they want until it's not comfortable and then we want to revert back to the traditional ways of doing things that underserves and impresses our students of color it goes back to that head nodding we're with you until something has to change and something makes us uncomfortable but we believe that if we stay in agreement that as a collective we are going to be willing we are going to be able to be willing to do things differently to be able to reimagine PBS and experience the discomfort as a collective and if we do that we are better positioned for success we are like Claire said challenging this zero-sum ideology and either or mindset because we know that when we Center an entire system on the experiences of black students who've been told that they are a burden and Native students who have been erased that every student recognizes that this is a system that is better prepared to meet their needs because we see them so we're pretty emboldened about this approach because we heard it and we heard about the need for this approach throughout our visioning process as Jonathan alluded to and described we started the visioning process in the fall of 2018 where thousands of students are Educators and our community gave their time and that was lots of time lots of valuable Saturday time to share their experiences Express their hopes and contribute their ideas in scores of meetings big and small the vision describes our goals for the graduating class of 2030 and the educational experience that will increasingly be the reality for each of our graduates from 2019 onward the work included in exploration of future Trends are likely to impact education in Portland learning Journeys to schools and organizations already engaged in ideas that PPS might be interested in adopting and design exercises that considered the needs of students Educators families and community members the process engaged thousands of stakeholders including students families Educators District staffs and Civic business community and philanthropic leaders and produced nearly 16 000 data points that became the basis for the various elements of our vision we adopted our community informed Vision PBS reimagined in May 2019 and PPS is committed to Preparing our students to lead change and improve the world for the district we aim to be we Define for for our in the vision we Define for our community our community to find our vision our core values a graduate portrait educator Essentials and system shifts so in order to advance the vision and achieve the board goals the three-year board goals that were developed by you We examined our current state to develop a theory of action for change to identify key priorities and we utilize this theory of action to provide focus and to Center our decision making on the experiences of students of color our theory of action explicitly calls out the pernicious institutional and cultural racism embedded in our system and prompts us to take action that disrupts the barriers that hinder us from reaching our goals
01h 55m 00s
our theory of action is a clear expression of targeted universalism we know that it also has the potential to set off feelings for folks who may not be as used to this definition or this practice but we're still very we still very we're still very committed and emboldened by our Theory so our attempt here is to make explicit the connections between the call to action that permeates our leadership moves every day uh to address those past and current inadequacies in supporting black and Native students and they form the Bedrock of our approach moving forward for moving our district forward so we have to start by recognizing that this system was built and operated on a foundation of inequities and we have to apply the best strategies forward that are actually going to break down and eliminate those structural and systemic barriers if we're going to achieve Collective success so if we if we want to transcend what divides us then we need to do that directly and explicitly by calling out instances of racism so it's it's with those things in mind that we developed and now present to you uh an emerging strategic plan uh and aligned and resulting investment plan to date um and how it's anchored to the aspirations that we have for every student in the Portland Public Schools and we've not shied away from a strategic plan will always have indicators as to whether we're being successful oftentimes it's unclear if systems what success actually means we actually started by defining that aspirational vision for our students as what we want and we also identified some key indicators that we were satisfying our key our educational core Mission and so we set as barometers with or the board established performance goals for our students it's a first set of indicators that I believe will evolve into a more comprehensive balanced scorecard but to speak to our student performance goals and how they fit into this emerging strategic plan is our chief assistant performance Dr Russell Brown foreign Journey towards Transformations the way that we hold ourselves mutually accountable to our values and commitment um to put it shortly we have to to hold ourselves accountable to a metrics and how we move the system forward over time as our theory of action suggests our school system is making a significant declaration that is community will disrupt racism in our system and improve conditions so that black and Native American students can reach their potential part of that commitment was led by the board with the establishment of four board goals with metrics and those metrics which were identified in October of 2019 and then later reported on uh in a meteor progress act as an anchor for for the plan and for our school district leaders and school principals to monitor progress toward the outcomes of this plan within you know any of this work obviously requires Data Systems and requires integration of Data Systems over time to be able to support this so that people have real-time information to support movement over time and in that work uh this year we have worked with uh through the office of system performance to refine our assessment system to have a more balanced assessment system with parsimony that protects instructional time and while still supporting and providing the core data that we need to be able to measure changes in achievement over time so in this emerging plan our communities defined our destination through the PPS reimagine the vision the board is outlined the community's accountability metrics and the district's leadership is committed to upholding this bold theory of action that Embraces targeted universalism and as school leaders we are responsible for holding progress on the system shifts we want to ensure that we have clear priorities to advance toward division guide decision making and remain responsive to our student family changing need this is the first in a sequence of multi-year strategic plan informed by continuous Improvement that will serve as the district's roadmap in a time of Crisis even more important that we double down on our efforts and ensure all our students in particular are black and NATO students and our schools with the greatest need those uh
02h 00m 00s
CSI and TSI that is comprehensive support and targeted towards schools will reach success and with that I'm going to transition to Minnesotan who will will begin to talk about some of the system shifts thank you Dr Brown so a diverse work group of District leaders prioritized five specific educational system shifts and I didn't identified specific strategies to prioritize in year one of strategic plan implementation which is the 2021 school year we will advance these shifts while maintaining operational health and safety activities necessary to run and support students and schools because the near-term pandemic affected future is still uncertain we are also adopting flexible annual action plans that can be adjusted as needs evolve to identify prioritized work for year two we utilize the following principles to guide our decision making maintain a collective focus on our theory of action of accelerating outcomes for black and Native students continuously improve and support the conditions and capacity in our high Needs school communities the CSI and TSI schools Dr Brown just mentioned hold true to our community developed Vision reimagined PPS remain committed to our emerging strategic plan and prioritize system shifts even if they have to become a narrower scope of action steps that Cascade and are sequenced over time and finally to continue to ensure the health and safety of students adhere to our legal responsibilities and fulfill basic operational needs and costs what we will prioritize and what we hope to accomplish in the 2021 school year is progress in the following five educational system shifts a a connected and transformative School District B racial Equity aligned systems and structures C cultivating system-wide learning in a diverse Workforce e transformative curriculum and pedagogy and e a culture of physical and emotional emotional safety uh okay you just slide thanks so system shift a a connected and transformative School District we identified one strategy is about cultural Evolution that we want to make as a system and the way we work together we will be deliberate and how we collaborate towards our goals build our muscle and capacity for adaptive change and collaborate across departmentally we worked on strengthening core functions and the next step is to collaborate and and more deeply and regularly include Community voice in achieving our goals this is particularly important as we begin strategic plan implementation because stronger collaboration and Community will help us bring all of our strategies to life so to achieve the 2021 action steps first we develop vet and Implement our community engagement framework to help us ensure that decisions and efforts include Community voice especially of our black and Native students and Families we will build the capacity of senior leaders in our district to engage in a continuous feedback loop with students families and Community Partners by using the framework and practice we will create collaborative teams across central office departments to lead and implement the work of our strategic plan strengthen cross-functional collaboration and increase our Effectiveness and our efficiency shifting our culture with our leaders and we'll we will shift our culture I'm sorry shifting our culture starts with our leaders and we will scaffold this throughout our system by continuing to establish and evolve organizational leadership structures including clarify clearly identified roles and functions especially as they pertain to our vision and our strategic plan we will accelerate the adoption of the vision across the district students families and Community Partners by communicating and building an understanding of and investment in our vision and strategic plan and I'll let Dr Brown talk about our second strategy thank you our second strategy in terms of educational system shifts focus is on managing our performance as a district including our quality of service and support to our students families and schools through Performance Management we will provide a more intentionally aligned system and continue to build a strong District culture of continuous Improvement that keeps all students especially those students experiencing the most barriers at the center of everything that we do Focus alignment and continuous Improvement will support our progress towards strategic priorities and our vision which is even more important
02h 05m 00s
during the current circumstances as we adapt to new needs and challenges as and as we Embrace change to achieve these goals will require some action steps in the 2021 year including establishing a central office Performance Management framework to help us measure our progress towards our goals and our plan and our goals and to define those multi-function teams we'll also work to train the central office on identifying implementing a culture of service to our schools and the students that they serve we will establish the system for Gathering customer service feedback for the central offices Services provided to school to understand how we can continue to improve our support to schools over time we also design a school improvement process aligned to our board goals and strategic plan and explore options for integrated tools to support school school level database decision making ultimately we're aiming for continuous Improvement activities that inform improvements in instruction for our schools and in support of service and in the services that provide support to our schools in that instruction finally we will develop an annual report uh akin to what we did with the board goals where we had a major report in this case we'll have an annual report uh to communicate our progress on the plan and a universe unified organizational dashboard that will allow the community to to understand our progress on the plan over time for the key initiatives board goals and identified strategic plan priorities and moving on to system shift B Danny thanks Russ uh so our second system shift is system shift B which is racial Equity align systems structures and culture and there are two strategies our first strategy is about disrupting institutional racism by building on individual racial equity and social justice efforts to develop a shared system-wide mindset and practice of improving as of improving as a community in alignment with our community with our theory of action so our current context has underscored the inequities in the system and reinforces the need to keep racial equity and social justice front and center and all of our decision making including resource allocations this strategy is about disrupting institutional racism by building on our individual efforts to develop a shared system-wide mindset and practice of improving as a community in alignment with our theory of action so to achieve uh this uh this goal that we're going to uh have some action steps so first we'll communicate and build an understanding of our racial equity and social justice lens and hold our leaders accountable to use the racial equity and social justice lens at the outset of decision making this will require developing protocols with the superintendent's leadership team for identifying and using resj considerations and decision making and providing professional development to increase awareness of and transparency around our decision making and Leverage The expertise of our community to move together as a community we will set up and convene a racial Equity social justice Community accountability committee the CAC will support development of our racial Equity social justice related work across the district by providing input and feedback and will help us cultivate a growing set of influencers across the system that will help us continue to disrupt our disrupt institutional racism and become a more Equitable District we'll continue to support and convene our cross-functional resj advisory committee uh who to be able to Shepherd or centralize racial Equity social justice plan and ensure that there's cohesion across the system strategy is about developing the core competencies and learning standards that we want all PBS Stan staff members to lean into to increase the capacity of our district if we build individual Readiness to understand learn about and support racial equity and social justice practices we can strengthen our organizational culture and capacity to proactively counteract inequities and Champion culturally responsive practices so by building our capacity we can become a system that embodies racial equity and social justice practices to support all students especially our black and Native students that experience the greatest barriers to achieving a graduate profile so to achieve uh the action steps that are listed we will provide staff development and support focused on the competencies and skills that are set out in a racial Equity social justice professional development framework and the educator Essentials through two approaches one will continue our partnership with the center for equity
02h 10m 00s
and inclusion to provide racial equity and social justice professional development to leaders and influencers first and two pilot cohorts of staff to engage in to engage in continued learning first we'll get clear on key influencers who can take take on this work first apply learnings and encourage colleagues to support our goals for racial equity and social justice this will result in 300 new staff receiving training in our first year totaling about 1600 employees over three years who are trained in this professional development as influencers additionally we'll additionally we'll pilot new cohorts leverage district-wide professional development opportunities and prioritize student support services and teaching and learning staff including our multi-tier systems of support our teachers on special assignments and our social emotional and learning social social emotional learning staff to encourage cross-departmental coherence and alignment and to support this work we'll develop a rubric for our framework our professional development framework competencies and develop a scope and sequence for our racial Equity social justice professional development I'm going to turn it over to Dr Cuellar good evening board and superintendent Craig cuer Deputy superintendent we're now going to go over and discuss a little bit about system shift C which is the cultivating a system-wide learning in a diverse Workforce there is one strategy for this shift and this strategy is focused on ensuring staff get the support and the development that they need in light of current events and alignment with competencies and skills that set out in the resj PD framework and the educator Essentials that will help us better support students and create conditions for all students we're all Educators Thrive through this work we can begin to improve on our professional development opportunities apply our racial equity and social justice lens and draw connections to the educator Essentials so that all students especially our black and Native students that experience experience the greatest barriers achieve The Graduate profile to achieve the 2021 action steps we will continue to review reflect on in a value away professional development opportunities to learn what we have in place how it meets the needs of teachers and leaders in our system and how it aligns with the educator Essentials strategic plan and the emerging needs of our staff who apply a cycle of continuous inquiry and Improvement to reflect on and learn from feedback and quality of Developmental opportunities we'll continue to provide and continuously improve and align leader teacher and system-wide professional development and training opportunities that help us grow towards our vision and goals we will continue collaboration with the ode mesb and our college and university Partnerships such as PSU UFO and Warner Pacific to support the PPS career Pathways framework build lattices of support and ensure the development of a diverse license and high quality Workforce we will pilot social emotional well-being learning for adults to create working conditions where employees Thrive especially our employees of color aligned with racial equity and social justice work and with rise in Castle efforts to guide our ongoing efforts we will create a cross-functional committee that we will be charged with aligning professional development needs and building system-wide capacity to fulfill our educator Essentials this shift enhances the district's ability for the creation of a transformative curriculum and pedagogy which now shifts into system shift d next slide thank you um a transformative curriculum pedagogy is centered around two strategies the strategy is about the implementation of a guaranteed and viable Core Curriculum and resources align the standards to ensure all students meet our graduate profile we believe we have an opportunity to be transformative and Innovative in how instruction looks and that by providing this foundational core we will be able to ensure students are prepared and our agents in their own learning and we are prepared to meet the dynamic and changing reality of instruction as we continue to develop and enhance teacher practice to achieve the 2021 action steps we have already begun the process of selecting resources to adopt of a math program in a foundational literacy program we will invest in these necessary resources provide supporting professional development and the rollout of our curriculum as we work to become a digital District we will continue our work to develop a digital backpack including the applications and platforms as online resources and the teaching and learning process inside of the Core Curriculum the DVC development and implementation we will continue to support the learning of all students and all of our content areas and grade levels as we further develop our Core Curriculum and math and foundational literacy the pre-k-3 alignment will continue to be developed through collaboration with our early learning Partners community-based organizations and District staff and
02h 15m 00s
with that I'll turn it over to superintendent gadetto who will go into strategy 2. so as you're picking up directors the focus here is on those organizational level system shifts and what it takes to posture a central office and all levels towards that student at the center experience and this one in particular begins to speak to impacting on what the student actual experience is so uh Dr Claire just talked about in strategy one that foundational core curricular work that Early Education alignment there's it attributes that our vision you know goes into quite depth about describing uh the range of learning experiences that also integrates content we think will Empower students with their sense of agency and prepare them for those post-secondary college career and lifelong learning experiences so how can we engage students in those kinds of developmentally appropriate opportunities that are more personalized that developed their problem-solving skills how can we afford students opportunities to explore and cultivate their unique gifts abilities talents in a broad range of enriched core as well as electives and extracurriculars uh that so often are what engage our students in their school experience and so we've identified a couple of uh areas where we'll be continuing to place an emphasis where we're going to go even deeper into this full education um aspect uh we're going to look at this through an improvement science and design thinking approach that involves our students in defining the experience um and our Educators as well in sort of how do they prepare themselves for for those kinds of experiences so the well-rounded education will drive forward our work and Visual and Performing Arts that is emerging in the master Arts education plan it'll continue to expand and close Career Technical education gaps um it'll continue to think about how to incorporate an inquiry-based project-based approach it'll bring alignment to PK to three Early Education continuums um it all ensure that that there's Fidelity to ethnic studies Indian education curriculum across our schools it'll make sure that climate Justice in the other areas are are available and promoted in all of our schools those are just a sample set of the kinds of well-rounded education that we intend to drive forward in the coming school year so that's that's the second strategy you see some of those uh items listed in the system shift integrated there and then we have system shift e uh and Claire's going to talk about the culture of physical and emotional safety and our strategies there so this is our fifth fifth final priority for for system shifts that come from our vision from our community and our implementation for this next year and so the strategy is about how we reinforce academic and behavior systems and structures in support of a guaranteed and viable curriculum it's also how we best meet the Health social emotional wellness and safety needs of our students and Community this involves using data and res J practices to create support systems and address disparities in the development of those systems that meet student needs so in 2021 our action steps we will are include continuing to implement a comprehensive system of targeted supports and interventions that address academic behavior and social emotional needs by moving forward cohort to um for mtss training for an additional 40 schools while continuing to support the first cohort of schools through coaching support and professional
02h 20m 00s
learning communities a cross-functional team will map out a five-year implementation plan for social emotional learning we will continue ongoing capacity building and continuous Improvement of school climate and school Improvement planning we will continue the Student Success survey and partner with Panorama to ensure We Gather climate survey data monitor progress and adjust Based on data we will integrate resj strategies executed by culturally specific Partners families and school-based teams to include positive cultural identity development engagement and wraparound services to support students and families additionally we'll monitor how needs change given our current circumstances to support students families and staff as we reopen schools and continue teaching and learning next year including providing mental health and wellness options and on that I'll um turn it back to Stephanie Soden so the shifts in corresponding next steps described in these previous slides represent the organizational level work we need to accomplish in order to support a transformed experience and outcomes for our students our next phase of work will focus on the engagement and input of our Educators and students to I identify and prioritize strategic action steps that will advance our educator Essentials and graduate portrait so you've heard in Prior slides ways that we've discussed tangible action steps and which in ways that we want to improve our Collective work and we know that to maximize our Effectiveness we need to ensure that our approach to Resource allocation is consistent with our priorities and as we continue to face uncertainty in the coming year we know that we can adapt with Clarity by prioritizing and aligning our resources to what matters and one way to develop our Collective ability to drive resources to our priorities in alignment with our theory of action is to apply our racial Equity social justice lens so using our racial equity and social justice lens we consistently ask and reflect on the question of who is burdened and who benefits we can better inform our decision making by grappling with the implications of our decisions and intentionally asking ourselves about the assumptions we make how students and their families impacted by decision making are intentionally engaged to be part of co-creating solutions we are data informed and question our data sources our data use and we also think about how we're going to track data in the future so that we can monitor our Improvement the use of this decision support tool helps us cultivate a growth mindset where we reflect and adapt and service to our students of color which in turn can strengthen our system for every student we hope that you see both our values and priority framework along with evidence of application of our resj lens reflected in our investment plan that Dr quayer is going to present to you our investment plan allocates resources in three categories professional development and a culture of learning Student Success and safety and modernization our investments in professional development and a culture of learning will continue to reflect the importance of the people who are the foundation of this District in service to our students we are proposing key Investments to increase support and develop staff in alignment with our plan we believe in the power and the potential of our human capital and Endeavor to stoke the creative fires we need in our classrooms our school campuses the central office and in our community we believe these investments will accelerate the shifts to a connected and transformative School District through system-wide learning and a racial Equity aligned culture system some of these professional learning investments will include the expansion of training for school sites and systemic targeted interventions and supports for students expanded learning opportunities and racial equity and social justice aligned to the resjpd framework and increase leadership development and supports and Improvement science and continuous learning diversity and support Talent through recruitment retention and employee social emotional learning supporting time for participation in cross-functional teams and enhanced Communications to ensure transparency our belief in the ability and promise of every student calls us to invest in tangible High leverage strategies that positively impact Student Success the investment plan for the next school year will be dedicated to continuing to implement key student-focused and student-led initiatives in several areas that will accelerate the shifts to transform our curriculum and pedagogy build a culture of physical and emotional safety and a racial Equity
02h 25m 00s
aligned and integrated system some of these Student Success Investments include academic curriculum instruction and enrichment an increase in access to technology devices content and connectivity increase Arts education Staffing and materials providing additional curriculum materials new ESL and ELD curriculum GVC for health and physical education providing more opportunities for career Pathways and Career and Technical education academic supports and targeted interventions for students that need it the most such as additional teachers and instructional specialists at targeted schools expanding access to Early Education through plans and Staffing increase of classroom services for special education social emotional and mental health supports with a focus on increasing counselors social workers and school psychologists additional School climate and restorative practice specialists culturally specific student and family supports with a focus on the expansion of the resj Partnerships to implement culturally specific family engagement wrap around Services mentoring leadership development enrichment and Extended Learning positive cultural identity development and culturally specific crisis response increase support for students of color to participate in leadership opportunities such as Student Government clubs and Affinity spaces site Council across middle school and high school campuses and an expansion of Staffing to continue to support our community engagement safety and modernization um include many large Capital Improvement projects these reflect the ways our students and Community shared innovative ways to Define physical and emotional safety and the resulting learning environments conducive to Student Success we believe these investments will build a culture of physical and emotional safety accelerate the shifts to transform our curriculum and pedagogy and a connected and transformative School District responsive to the full range of students physical and safety needs so projects continuing in 2021 include Kellogg and Madison High School construction will be completed in late summer 21 opening for students in Fall 21 exciting times for those communities Benson Polytechnic High School and the multiple Pathways to graduation building will finish design and begin construction at the end of the next fiscal year and Lincoln High School will grow vertically through the year as construction progresses health and safety projects funded by the 2017 Bond will include safety upgrades fire alarm lead paint asbestos roofs Ada radon systems and new ultra low lead filtered water stations and the board of directors is engaged in conversations for a November 2020 election to consider a resiliency Bond program focused on immediate needs and completion of Benson High School staff have identified technology curriculum and special education classrooms for possible instructional improve improvements and roofs mechanical systems security seismic and Ada projects are prioritized for facility improvements and next slide please and now we get to our proposed budget so the current proposed budget required by law consists of five separate major funds including a general fund based on the funding levels set forth in the governor's recommended budget this was developed using the full funding level of 9.0 billion for the biennium for the K-12 State School fund and the 19 and includes full funding for the Student Success act in high school success success Act it is important to note that the 2021 budget does not include any Financial impacts as a result of a covid endemic yet however the district's investment plan takes into account those financial impacts in relationship to our district priorities and strategic plan we may not know the total Financial impact of covid-19 and time to fully and finally adjust our Bud Budget prior to the statutorily required deadline of June 30th 2020. we anticipate anticipate a special session of the Oregon legislature to discuss the economic impacts and resulting shortfalls in the coming weeks and we are also advocating for additional resources through the federal cares Act next slide please sorry Claire there we go and the PPS
02h 30m 00s
Revenue shortfall it's not a pretty picture the economic Fallout of the pandemic will cause significant revenue shortfall for PPS we continue to adapt and despite these Revenue constraints we remain determined to align resources to a set of prioritized action steps that will strengthen our organization support Educators and accelerate outcomes for our students on May 20th 2020 the state Economist released the updated revenue forecast for the current biennium Oregon's Revenue short call will affect the PPS budget in three main areas and one the state school funding and a 40 million dollar or 7.7 percent loss of state school funding for the 2021 year and the high school Success funding also known as measure 98 um its programs in Dropout prevention Career Technical education and college educational opportunities we are losing 4.1 million or 35 percent and then the Student Success act student investment account in March 2020 we submitted our Sia application for approval to the ode Oregon Department of Ed totaling 39 million and now it's estimated that we'll lose 13.65 or 37 percent of that funding so overall that's a 57 million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of funding and next slide please and I'll turn it back to Craig to talk about how we're going to reconcile with those loss and resources thank you Claire so given the significant anticipated shortfall we will need to make reductions to balance our budget our departments are utilizing our approach of targeted universalism and prioritizing our spending plan so it's aligned to the tangible steps outlined in our strategic plan for next year reductions will be made to those areas of Staffing and materials outside of the focus and priorities outlined in the emerging strategic plan this meant that while we were while we are prioritizing Investments directly supporting students we did not offer across-the-board reductions instead we used an equitable formula that did not overly burden or benefit single student groups schools and or departments it also means that despite the magnitude of reductions we understand that we need to preserve sufficient central office capacity to achieve our goals and systemically support School communities and maintain organizational coherence this story of reductions of public education is unfortunately a familiar one and as we Face dire Financial projections we understand our decisions will have a negative impact on certain programs and staff we will be guided by an observance of our strategies and vision and our commitment to racial equity and social justice and I will turn it over to Danny so we just wanted to to point out that our approach to making budget reductions was part of a collective process and review cross-functional teams including the superintendent's leadership team principals and other Key Senior leaders utilize students staff and Community feedback from our Student Success act engagement process to design our overarching plan principals were consulted in setting priorities for instructional and operational expenditures for 2020 through 2021 and have helped prioritize tiered budget reductions to meet the funding levels still to be determined at several key decision points we applied the racial Equity social justice lens to ensure that our reductions were in alignment with our values our theory of action and emerging strategic plan and the next slide so as we look forward we know that this is this is a journey and that we're going to continue to um to collaborate and consult with key stakeholders so we do want to um signal that there will be continued opportunities for Community engagement we'll be holding focus groups a virtual Town Hall an open and an open survey we'll continue to collaborate with our partners and stakeholders including students families District partners and Community leaders we also want to make sure that we're thinking about how we can collectively Advocate at the state and at the federal level for increased support of public schools and as Claire mentioned there will be a special legislative session where we may see potential other changes to the K-12 District budgets and I'll just add as we conclude this that in the coming weeks we'll communicate with impacted programs and staff as more specific reduction and investment decisions are made as a leadership team we are committed to living into our role as caring empathetic and adaptive and see this commitment to a proactive communication as essential and we really are grateful for the board's flexibility and patience as we build this budget in a time of unprecedented challenges in the pandemic
02h 35m 00s
so on June 11th the board will be asked to approve this budget after seeing much more detail and investment plan and then you're scheduled to vote for adoption on June 23rd so thank you for your patience and indulging us getting through a lengthy presentation uh directors uh it's not every day however that uh we paint the picture and the context for the elements that will constitute a comprehensive multi-year strategic plan you only heard system shift work for the coming school year our hope is to launch into a new school year with the other pieces completed that should provide a pretty clear road map and blueprint for the next number of years that should March us forward with some enhanced indicators for how the vision is coming alive so uh we're excited to to present this to you tonight uh Kudos and appreciation to dozens of Staff who've contributed along the way and for preparing these documents and presentation for you this evening so I'll turn it back over to you chair to uh facilitate the conversation or any questions you may have of staff thank you superintendent and thank you for that um deep context that you provided before the budget decision so we'll just open it up to the board first to really go through we have our budget budget book but to go through the Strategic framework that's just been laid out for us and maybe start with a little more uh discussion around the thinking on the cuts specific to the general fund or open it up to others for questions I think the best the buckets that we saw in the last slide are pretty straightforward in terms of how we can make up the shortfall from cares for low hiring threes Sia and measure 98 it's easy for us to understand more what what those look like but maybe a bit of broader discussion around general fund framework for decision making could we uh get that slide up we're going to ask questions about that the proposed budget reconciliation slide is that the one you're talking about correct um I just wanted two slides from the end yeah I just want to go through those to make sure we're all on the same page in our understanding of that and that I'm not making any assumptions or others aren't making assumptions about what exactly those mean so whoever can share thank you director Bailey uh as uh I think director or as uh board manager Powell I believe is putting it up there um thank you there we go okay so uh question so uh first line that's the other one next slide no other way slide 20. excellent thank you yeah um so the 8.7 million means uh we're assuming we're going to get reimbursed that much for covid related uh expenses is that correct it's our pps's allocation of the cares act and there's we certainly have more than 8.7 million dollars worth of expenses that will qualify there that's correct okay Federal funding I'm clear on the next line that's coming through the state correct Claire it goes from the US Department of Ed to the Oregon Department of Ed and then on to us and I heard today that the Oregon Department of Ed has submitted their application through the U.S department of Ed and their awaiting approval and as soon as we get they get approval then um it'll come through our grant um system awesome that's great to know I'm clearing the second line that's the currently instituted tomorrow which again I think is was a great move uh the third line in terms of uh a ring priests is that for
02h 40m 00s
um non -educator staff only or is that include educators so the purchasing and hiring freeze combination of the hiring freezes is froze all positions as we were shutting down and that it would take you know a specific approval to be able to hire but quite frankly hiring right now has not been our priority we've actually really slowed down in in those regards as we're awaiting the um you know how the economy is going you know what we can expect which we've gotten more information now so that and um all purchasing required it in an executive leadership team membership a member to approve a purchase before it was made so mainly covet related purchasing like cleaning supplies um computers hot spots those were things I approved and most everything else waited um was put off okay in in terms of hiring I'm thinking about this coming school year uh if we have teachers who retire for example are we talking about freezing those positions this is a purchasing and hiring freeze that occurred in 1920 in order to carry over 8.9 million into the 2021 year so we will see our our okay so this is this is already basically happening this is happening in 1920 yes that's correct and you said 1920 and I was thinking are we back with the Spanish flu or sorry 2019-20 2020 school year yeah okay um the Sia reductions means basically we're going to tear down our Sia plan to reflect us funding yes same for measure 98. yes just to clarify can I just add on to that Scott just to clarify we actually are getting a 39 million dollars and then 11 39 million for the student investment accounts and 11 million for the measure 98s so these are reductions and increases that we had anticipated but they're not actual reductions after of the last years for the two sources of res to the two source of revenues that there's different answer so for measure 98 we were at full funding in 2019-20 so we are reducing 4.1 million as we go into 2021. Sia we this is new money that was coming for twenty twenty twenty twenty Twenty One um and that was 39 million and now we're we're I'm going to have 39 minus 13 650. a third less it is new money for um 2021. it hasn't it was not um in the budget in 1920. so that's 25 million essentially yes yep okay and just to clarify the uh again the 12 million reduction in general fund is or um for this country needed in 2020 21 okay so we need to reduce um 12.3 million dollars in our general so that's an item that potentially could be reduced by either uh the legislature through uh tapping into rainy day funds uh or through um the board uh reducing reserve requirements is that correct so you would hear from me a discussion about the four-year term of this recession and how there is a need for us to save someone asking for for that I'm just asking a potential question yes that's okay that's all I'm sorry I didn't mean to cut you off uh and and I want to acknowledge there are uh real questions in terms of if and how we would um paste that spending sorry I would I appreciate what you were going to say I just wanted to kind of get to make sure I understood that point I would recommend we look at a four-year plan on how we're going to um get through this four-year shortfall of
02h 45m 00s
Revenue four years of Revenue shortfalls yeah and of course potentially Congress could come to its census and send some money uh to schools throughout the country um which is uh sometimes I feel like that's Santa Claus that's uh we'll we'll see if something transpires there um oh sorry Scott I was going to add on to that point can I just finish I've got a whole set of other questions but I'll let other people rotate in at this point um just the final note I was on a zoom town hall with three legislators um one of whom said uh don't take for granted a special session um you school districts need to Advocate and Advocate strongly uh now to make sure that happens I'll stop there thanks I was just going to quickly jump in and say that the uh actually Santa Claus has delivered some funding already so unlike a lot of years maybe we can maybe there will be another uh round that's going to help for the schools uh in the future um because there does seem to be an appetite right now at least for for some stimulus funding um and along those lines um this is not a solution in any way but I do want to keep on the table the idea of of going to the city of Portland um for some of the cares act funding that they received so again the city received 114 million dollars Multnomah County received I think 25 million dollars that funding is not specifically for those governments it is for the um the city of Portland and Multnomah County it is limited in its use and it's limited in terms of how we could apply it here but I know the city uh is having conversations right now um with um uh uh cities out in East Multnomah County um and potentially helping them with some of their um you know covid-19 costs and and again it's somewhat limited but but the place where I think it would be applicable and and so sort of fall under the um uh the the rules that U.S treasuries laid out will be in in reopening schools in the fall um there's going to be significant costs related to that and we keep hearing from you all about what those costs are going to be and distancing and sanitizing and additional staff to do that um those are very clearly cost related to coronavirus um eligible for cares act funding and and I want to stress that at 114 million and 25 million is not enough for the city of Portland Oklahoma County so we would still have to get in line but um reopening schools is essential for reopening um anything that we do and it's essential for for economic activity so assuming that it's safe um and that we're we're going down that road some of those costs we may be able to ask nicely of our fellow governments um and potentially get some reimbursement for it so again not going to solve the 57 million dollar problem but even a million or two would come in very handy so that's a great Point uh director Scott is one of the questions I had um was these costs that are built into just the lift of the reopenings and it may be a reopening and then a re-shedding down or selectively shutting down if there's a geographic outbreaks um so I'm wondering about uh sanitizer signage all the things you've got to do to basically really structure the physical environment um in order for individuals to occupy the same spaces in this case schools and then other things like um if face coverings are still required from an equity standpoint that UPS can be providing that to staff and all students um you know voluntary temperature checks those whole you know any sort of testing I'm wondering is that built into the budget and if it's one question and then I guess the secondary question is is that a space potential Mr director Scott's point of um potential conversation with the city because I'm sure the other districts are going to have the same things that we're going to have as well so I could hear the first question about all those costs being built into the budget but I could not hear the second question well the second the second piece was that I'm sure the other school districts that are within the boundaries of the city of Portland I'm going to have similar issues with the reopenings and requirements about face coverings and potentially temperature checks and testing as things evolve is that the potential place to go to the city or in a city doesn't have enough funds for that do we have funds set aside in our budget to cover those items because that is sort of the just essential can you see something to reopen in the fall so we will have to prioritize those items so when we were actually having we've been having lots many conversations in in this area and I can
02h 50m 00s
tell you that in the maintenance and custodial areas in particular facilities um we have not um we are not targeting reductions where um just kind of um holding keeping our money there because we know we need it um there and um so as we're looking at that [Music] um 12.3 million dollar reduction we're keeping our facilities budgets whole and so yes we have actually purchased some items already this year and filled the warehouses we weren't sure how often how often we'd be able to get certain supplies and materials so we do have some on hand and as well as we um have uh in terms of signage we have our own capacity in our in our print shop but certainly we talked today about making sure we have all the materials there what's holding us up in terms of getting those things done is that we need to hear from our Oregon Department of Education on June 8th on the guidelines that are coming out and once um you know we're already making plans as far as we can go without knowing what our rules are good so we're you know creating all our Master lists we have a full series of groups that are meeting and a our Emergency Operations Center leadership is um uh leading those teams through a process so that we can identify both for instruction what we need to have in place and in terms of facilities and all look um multiple components human resource issues about who can come to work who can't come to work so there's a there's a whole series of things that we're considering and yes we um we have a in particularly proud of that thought of things that will come through we're prioritizing what we need to in terms of those plans for continuing online learning um but there until um really saying that do we have everything set until we will get the guidelines and get some plans laid out um yes we we believe we have the money in the budget however we also um know that we're still um it's like you know flying the airplane while you're still building it or whatever they call it right so but we are working with just large districts in Oregon and across the country and learning from each other and reading what other countries are doing and really staying connected um from around the world about what is successful so we're paying attention to other countries that have already reopened you Claire this is director Lowry I just want to say that I am incredibly moved by the work and the effort that the staff has done uh with this presentation um it makes me proud to be part of PBS that we are clearly stating that we are evaluating um all black and Native students and that we know that um we need to make significant system changes and some of those will be painful and naming that um we have a tendency as a well-intentioned organization to say lots of things and like Danny said not along um but when we get down into the nitty-gritty of the hard work we pull back and what I see here is that our staff has done this incredible hard work and Claire you just said you know we're flying the airplane while building it but what the staff has presented to them is this clear unflinching understanding of of what matters most and then you know for me um we don't know and you know those questions about hand sanitizer or the other pieces of you know the nuts and bolts of how in the world are we going to deal with all of this complex logistical issues as we face this you know challenge of the pandemic what brings me hope is that we know what matters and we know who we are and we know that we're dedicated to all of our students and especially to our students who've been underserved and continue to be underserved so I just want to commend our staff and I think you know if you this this presentation was filled with um grounding in the vision grounding in change theory grounding in what needs to happen so that we stop as a district just giving lip service to the fact that our black students have been failed but really really begin to change and it'd be so easy in this economic Nightmare and in this crazy pandemic time to say well we can't really do anything to go back to the status quo and I am like I'm getting emotional especially with you know what happened in Minneapolis today um the fact that like we are refusing to do that we are refusing to say we are in this unprecedented time we are losing
02h 55m 00s
all this money so it's okay if we fail our black kids and what we're seeing is we refuse to continue to I think what did Danny say that racism is an incident you can prove but it's this like systemic oppression and that it's pernicious and it's embedded in our classrooms um so how do we you know change that and and we don't have all the details right this second of what the state's going to do or if Congress is I think Dr Bailey says something about get their heads out of their asses but he probably said it better than that um so I just I am I am so proud to be part of PBS with the work that the team has done and like the clarity around where we're going and how we are going to we are going to change this district and my heart has been broken because I could see this realized future potential with the Student Success act money and Julia I know you were one of the people fighting for that not 39 9 million dollars is going to make a huge difference to our students and so my heart has been broken that we are going to be able to deliver on all this stuff but I feel so much better tonight because it's like okay we don't have the money but we have the will we have the dedication we have the people we have a plan and we're going to get there um no matter this setback so I thank the staff for your bravery thank you for your Clarity um and your willingness to fight the good fight even when it would have been easier to just say we're in a pandemic and an economic downturn we're going to keep to the status quo so thank you that wasn't really a question we need it now more than ever I think director Lowry I appreciate your comments and one of the things that really stands out to me from that presentation um and that grounding in our values is um superintendent and Deputy superintendent Cuellar when you're talking specifically about the um system shifts around pedagogy and curriculum um you're talking about adding um some programming and adding staff in ways that are aligned with our vision so that clearly means ceasing to do some of the things that we have historically done that haven't served our kids very well and specifically our black and brown kids very well so I'm a little I'm curious about um some of that list that you went through Craig that represents new Investments and um your conversations around the trade-offs there uh yes ma'am um director constant I mean you bring up a really good question and again I just wanted to reiterate what we stated throughout the presentation um was that we are staying core um to um our our our Focus um specific to our um our black and Native students which is clearly which is clearly stated in our theory of action um we're staying um core and focus to how we can continue to stay steadfast at supporting our most underserved schools and our youth and how we um just again like how we talked around the uh we talked about the importance of Target universalism and how we we build out um around our Our Youth and our communities that um truly need our support um first and foremost and so when we talk about trade-offs um again keeping that in mind in terms of what our core purpose um and our core value is um and staying true to that we heard it a lot throughout the presentation specific to our racial equity and social justice work um and how that is um and how that is braided through everything that we do in terms of how we're resourcing schools um how we're providing supports and services and what our key Investments are um I know at a later time we can talk about a more granular detail um you know some of the specific investments in terms of what that looks like with trade-offs but I but I am I do want to Echo uh director Lowry's sentiments that um I am also extremely optimistic and very very ecstatic and excited about the opportunities and what's ahead for our children here in PPS um it's a very bright future indeed and even though with the challenges that we have been facing in the last several months through this pandemic um this theme this community all of our stakeholders internal and external have showed their resilience and perseverance and um and and the coming together for us to be able to continue to move forward and
03h 00m 00s
what's best for children is truly exciting um so I know I know that doesn't necessarily answer your question directly director conscam but my response would be um is uh that we are optimistic that we can continue to deliver on these promises so I'm just a follow-up question um on that same track so I really appreciate the focus at the very beginning the laser focus the direct allowing mentioned on um the two groups of students who PBS has historically um really failed and not provided adequate supports and it was always some other time to make investments um so I'm wondering if um to translate this big budget document into something that's real what What would how would you how would we describe to say parents of Harriet Tubman Middle School UCLA at Humboldt Elementary School Jefferson High School how How would this budget and the Investments translate into measurable supports and achievement achievement gains and student performance gains in schools that are in the historic Albina neighborhood because otherwise it looks like a bunch of different fun categories and Investments and strategies like yes maybe let's make it real for if you're a parent and trying to understand how we're prioritizing those students in this budget hi this is DP um I guess I would encourage you to um I would encourage you to think about our work in two ways and two Dynamic ways so I think that a lot of times when people talk about sort of like what's what's the what's the um what am I getting what what is someone else not getting that's that sort of like zero-sum actually I'm just trying to think about how we sorry I don't mean to interrupt but I that's not the route I'm going to I'm trying to get to like how do we translate our values that were stated how do we describe that to to parents in a way that's meaningful to them in terms of their students sure so um so I I think that I I wasn't saying that you were going there but I think that a lot of times people think about that about the sort of like what what am I getting what is someone else not getting so I think that we have to approach this both as a thinking in terms of a system and then also thinking about like the culture and then the individuals so if you look at um some of the schools that you mentioned I think that we could we could clearly point to um where we've adjusted Staffing so in terms of like resources where those are schools that have a different level of Staffing um those are schools that would be sort of like first in long for increased um social emotional learning supports um really wanting to think about how we are instilling uh restorative practices um wanting to make sure that the um the sort of those staff are part of receiving support and additional professional development so in terms if you looked at sort of all of those different categories you could see how each of those schools would be sort of prioritized you could sort of trickle down and kind of draw each of those investments in there at the same time though I think the the other piece that I hope doesn't get lost and I know that we're talking about funding is wanting to make sure that we're really attentive to if we're going to change as a system we don't just go from like zero to systems change that we do have to attend to like individual development we and we have to build a culture and so a lot of the prioritization a lot of the things that parents and children might see that's different is that we're trying to build a culture that is more reflective that's adaptive that's embracing um and Adept at looking at uh applying our Equity lens um being explicit about racial implications reviewing data thinking about how their day their classroom their building is different um so that we're creating a more holistic culture around racial equity and social justice so I think it's I think it's it's both and we have to uh really sort of think about our investments in in both of those ways all right can I jump in um I I feel like the there there are communities that have been told you know that you know we've got to we we've covered you and so I'm wondering I mean I think Julie I'm not sure if this is the question or not but
03h 05m 00s
we're dealing with like you say the parents of Harriet Tubman and Boise Elliott that um have been historically harmed how can we talk about this what will they see on the ground that that makes them I mean we we have a lot of trust building to do in in some of these communities including the black community you know particularly and how can we message this grand plan which I'm in complete favor of by the way to assure them that things will be different this time when when it's like the Charlie Brown and Lucy thing you know um we've we're working a community that has lost trust over the last 50 years or longer even as you um shared in your presentation so I I think you captured it how do we miss how do we message to those communities that have been told for five decades or longer five decades in my own experience that things are going to get better you know are we going an extra step to do that reassuring or do we have outcomes that they can look for I think the messaging will be really important thank you for that um director of the past because I spent part of this afternoon reading this um this book that's the chronology and history of desegregation integration for the public schools from 1960 to 19. 82 and what's surprising is although the language is very dated um is how it really um the same issues of the community is Raising around black achievement levels um are you know from 50 years ago are still very much present and so what I I was just trying to get at is like um you know how do we make this this real because I think there is just a long-term trust issue and certainly with a lot of the conversations happening around the state with the budgets that the expectation is like hey this is a year in which we can't make investments in which you know people should be oh you know we're going to we're going to settle for the status quo so I think we should be trying to portray us a sense of optimism and be able to be really explicit um yeah so I think it's like I think it's comprehensive so if Roseanne if you wouldn't mind going to slide number nine I you know and also I love um Danny thank you for saying it's not like a piece of pie so if there's more for one community that means there's like less of a piece for others um this is really like embracing this culture of like there's enough for everyone um I can tell you just from my own work uh Prosper Portland in the city of Portland and Roseanne the last affordable housing one the city did and the and Metro just passed are are both in their language explicit explicitly aimed towards communes of color with the understanding that those communities you know experience disparate harm um and so I think I'm really glad to see and very proud also um Haley like what you said of of seeing this plan um and how our budget you know maps to that um and also a little bit skeptical too because I'm from the community that's been told you know things are going to get better um for a long time Danny before Danny can I just talk in for one second before we get back to some of the I think specific strategies that you're gonna talk about um you know the second large book that we all received at our home was the school profile book and it's so interesting to look through those back to your point Danny about our staffing formulas I mean four years ago we did a we started a very radical thing thank you Michelle for the visual um started a very radical thing which was the beginning of completely retooling the Staffing formula so that it wasn't just based on enrollment it was based on need and that formula has been has evolved significantly under superintendent Guerrero's leadership and um just in the past couple of years and so now if you look through at the individual schools um we can see that the levels of Staffing are significantly different based on who that school population is and where the achievement has been and how those kids have historically been served and I think what we're saying here with our values is that that's that's one of our tools that we're gonna hold harmless in this process we're not going to abandon
03h 10m 00s
um that strategy and I I think when we think about what we tell parents um that's a really good place to go back to look at look at the the Staffing levels of um you know Boise Elliott humble relative to other schools is it enough no um but do we have we have I think Danny you're probably about to talk about some of the specific um new areas of investment in terms of interventions and all that but I would encourage everybody to just really take a dive into the school profiles and see how different they are foreign go ahead Danny no go ahead I was just gonna add that what we've tried to do is um sort of place this if you wouldn't mind placing the document um on top of budget books because they're really a sort of like uh a frame in which you can sort of look at those so there's a slide that is the next slide after the one that you see that's a chart um that has the system shifts and so if you look at that sort of uh the detail about the first system shift um there's a lot of work around developing our community engagement framework and the the detail of the community and free engagement framework is about there's a set of actions around uh building trust uh sort of like reaching outside of the walls of our of our individual schools and really thinking about how we build this like Collective movement where we're building trust focused on our our priorities and um really sort of like inviting the community in to share their lived experience to share their expertise to braid it with the the experience of our of our staff that coupled with sort of like um additional uh professional learning um upgrades and safety uh upgrades to safety as well as um uh the the implementation of our guaranteed and viable curriculum we're at where we're really focused in on um culturally responsive strategies where students our agents have agency over their own learning those things all taken together with that specif with that specific focus on the student groups that is the that's the sort of like culture and the change that we're trying to build um we could you know point to the specific things but it really is the combination of all of all of these there so that the sort of if you imagine like a funnel the highest level is sort of looking at a vision getting into our goals getting into our system shifts the work around The Graduate profile that's upcoming filling out our the rest of our strategic plan and then this high level sort of like tranches of of investment in Student Success professional learning development and safety and modernization and then that next level of detail like chair constant reiterated was like and then this is sort of like going down to the school level I guess I would just I know we don't We're not gonna have a lot of time in this budget discussion between when we have a community discussion and approval but I think we need to get really sharp because start I I can't as a parent if somebody had told me like we're going to help your students who targeted universalism it that wouldn't have been a tangible like something that I could understand and when I look at just the levels of achievement and the progress that needs to be made I think we just need to be super crisp and it's not somebody else isn't going to get something because we're going to give these groups of students um because um Equity um that's not what Equity is but I just think we're gonna we've got a super strong um I think statement of values now we just have to translate it um into here's what that means and just while we've got this slide up here I guess one of the things that I'm concerned about is that there's no check mark safety and modernization around racially Equity Design Systems and structure um some of our worst buildings are in Albina the historic black neighborhood and as I view the sort of you look at how much capital investment we have on digital operational dollars that um we'd want to have that go hand in hand so I'm just for a later discussion curious about why there's not a check mark in that particular box we I think we also need to understand that the word is viewed um very differently by you know there's
03h 15m 00s
like a cultural piece there where safety means different things to different groups and so if we're we're talking about safety I think we need to be very clear about who we're talking about safety for and and what does that mean is that mean that physical safety does that mean the absence of like environmental things like Asbestos and Lead um so I I feel like every time I hear that word safety it raises red flags for me personally because I feel like I'm not thinking of safety in the same way as the the way it's being used and I'm just guessing on that I actually don't know safety for who yeah yeah so it's just it's one of those words that's got a lot of uh well so if I'm a director to pass uh when when we're talking about safety if Roseanne if you can go to slide I believe it is 12 or maybe 13. [Music] um culture no the next one um sorry the next one here we go a culture of physical and emotional safety in the context of our strategic our strategic plan in our in our vision document uh we morph uh the two together we both think about space uh as director brim Edwards alluded to and I think uh also allude to uh to the social emotional well-being of our students through safety right when we talk to our students they're you know as as we were having early conversations about safety a couple years or a year ago that's what was brought up by students it was both the physical space and the the the the social emotional space and so as you look into the Strategic plan strategy one it looks at mtss it looks at the uh our students social emotional and behavior needs and identifying uh strategies through our mtss framework uh to make sure that our adults in the uh in our organization are are well equipped to support them uh so just wanted to provide that context that I think in in this context uh uh culture of physical and emotional safety is is both and uh and then I I just to uh touch base on the uh on that slide with the check marks um we accidentally uh have a uh have the wrong uh PowerPoint on here so we will make sure that that it's updated to reflect what you all have been expressing so just wanted to make sure uh we don't get stuck with the with the check marks and we focus on the content thank you Jonathan and director to pass this is Craig um you you surfaced a really um important question around a culture of physical emotional safety and um Jonathan did a great job at really teeing it up um for us to enter that space for a little deeper dialogue and I wanted to go ahead and introduce um Brenda martinek our chief of student Support Services um who is going to provide a little more of a deeper explanation around the specific shift director to pass a good evening board I just wanted to talk a little bit more uh about creating that uh physical and emotional space um as we know especially right now during the pandemic a lot of our students are expering a lot of trauma uh vicarious traumatization increased mental health uh needs and additional social emotional issues and so this uh strategic plan also encompasses that culture of that physical and emotional safety so our physical safety really is about externally so we're thinking about external supports how we how we use space in a safe way how we interact with our environment how the environment interacts with us and then the culture of emotional safety really is more of an inward approach how we are interpreting the world and so lot of times we need both of those in order for our students and our staff and our families to have that sense of safety and so that's really what this strategy is talking about it's really combining those trauma-informed practices uh through that social emotional learning support adding a restorative justice and then also working with our facilities departments to make sure that our spaces feel safe to students in an external way as well am I able to answer your question uh yeah absolutely I appreciate that I guess I just want to you know remind everybody that you know there's been an incident of a bird watcher in Central Park and a black man was just killed
03h 20m 00s
recently I mean it happens every day but a couple that have been in the news and so this I I appreciate the the facilities aspect of safety I appreciate the safety the emotional social emotional aspect and also just want to bring to the fore that there's in popular culture this idea of safety and how it specifically relates to black and brown bodies it's a different definition of what feels safe and so I I would like us to be um intentional about explaining what we mean by safety and not assuming that we all have um the same understanding about what safety means um because I mean just the stuff that's in the news is traumatizing for people and and and these are people that are entitled also to to a sense of safety that didn't get it so director well I would like to talk about um in the the blue piece of the PowerPoint presentation it does talk about a caring adult and we do want to make sure that students feel like they have a caring adult in their life and then that's the other reason why we're continuing with a successful School survey uh one of the areas is around safety and then we disaggregate that by ethnicities by gender and then also by grade level we do it with teachers and students and families so that we're really starting to understand uh what safety means to other students and so that we can actually dig in look at that data with our school leaders and then help to inform our school Improvement plans so that we can really understand and support all of our students students to make sure they have a caring adult and that they are feeling safe whatever their definition of say means for them so I would just add director to pass that that part of the work and I think it it's we talked a little bit about in the presentation is around these sort of cross-functional teams that really interrogate our use of language so that we don't other children and other different uh different student groups um when we use words like safety I think uh Chief martinek did a great job of sort of talking about like what our intentions are but we know that when we apply a racial Equity lens and we know that when we are thinking critically about our use of language about our our allocation of resources the selection of providers in which we um sort of engage with that there has to be that sort of interrogation of of of the um of the impacts and um we heard from students directly over the last uh two years about sort of having a much um a much more comprehensive view of what safety is um and I think that that's that's the that's the culture part where you know we're gonna we we have these direct investments in um improvements to both physical and emotional safety but then the culture building work is around those cross-functional cross um cross-cultural dialogue around how how we really Target those um impacts for black and Native students all right well thank you thank you for those clarifications and I'm I'm still not hearing it doesn't have to happen tonight um an acknowledgment of that that word the word safety means different and the survey is great it's a customer satisfaction survey basically um and I haven't read the survey so I can't even comment on on it um anyway we can move on thank you if I can uh if I can try to wrap up this part of uh or the theme of this conversation um I don't want to miss the forests here um what what we've tried to sort of present here this evening are the organizational changes that are required in the school system a coherent set of strategies that are going to be able to drive Improvement at all schools but especially this the student experience in our most underserved and we believe if we take care of those most vulnerable historically underserved students first and we differentiate for them that the good work and the professional capacity building that will happen the attention to school conditions uh will be good for the system as a whole and all students that all boats will rise and so we could go into our our notes as a team and some of the guiding questions about
03h 25m 00s
you know what might appear like a bureaucratic blueprint you know starts with as a result of this work what will be different for a student who walks in this one of these schools and uh and those are actually a set of guiding questions we're excited about engaging students from those communities about and families because you're right it's their lived experience it isn't mine I didn't grow up here I need to understand that but how do we Bridge their current lived experience and marry their hopes and aspirations with the vision that that we've laid out and so if I think back to my teacher uh I understood that I need to have a keen sense of where each of these students were at in the moment and how to get them to expectations that I hold for them in partnership with their families in partnership with Partners in the community and we have to do the same thing organizationally we're proposing to differentiate our supports to those School communities who have never had I would argue the conditions to ensure success for the students that attend them so much so that members of this community often make other choices uh other choices that might better attend to their cultural affirmation their sense of self-identity their sense of safety and I'm not talking about earthquake resiliency but that matters too but I'm talking about sort of the kind of Ambiance and conditions that are gonna that are important to establish their relational trust between an instructor and a student so that the Readiness to learn factored is there and so the the work that that we picked out in these five system shifts you know are the ones that we felt were sort of fundamental to start with because they talk about solidifying what we have begun in core instruction creating well-rounded experiences starting with funding and extra resourcing as we've proven the first two years in this Administration in the budget books around resourcing to a greater degree not more just what they need and have an ad in these School communities so you have a proposed budget it reflects our full funding uh if you do sort of a cursory analysis you will see that there is additional Staffing to ensure that we can provide additional programming and that the experience of students is vastly improved from what it's been and so what we're saying tonight is even though this book is the budget we wish we would have had even though we're going to get less and thankfully it's a little bit better than the Doomsday that we thought it was going to be our values and our strategies are unchanged we're still going to take those nickels and we're still going to devote them to doing the work that will be good for our black and Native kids and teach us lessons and help us enrich and raise the community of our of our experience for all our students across the district so we can we can go into you know enumerating the pages and the school by school about where we thought you know the additional APS the additional intervention teachers the reading uh training you know all the various sort of menu uh up for for the schools that have gathered into a cohort specifically for the reason to receive specialized support whether it's coaching whether it's supervision whether it's attention from central office that has been our mode of operation um since since kicking off and so we're only proposing to elevate that to yet another degree and so the kinds of things that we talk about in our vision that we want to be true through as a social experience these are the places where we want to ensure they are especially present and so in the budget you would read the additional Arts Educators the additional elective teachers supports for the seventh period in Tubman Beaumont and George the additional reading intervention PD for the teachers to catch kids up to grade level expectations Etc et cetera et cetera the contracts for Community Partners to come in and create Extended Learning Time on after school weekends and the summer um you know those are sort of the mechanics um but what we're proposing to do is to make sure those reinforce additional academic and social emotional supports are in place so I I I I would I would love to sort of work with the community actually to sort of capture what the experience has been and the one that from the point of view of a second grader or a sixth grader or a 10th grader would be the one that we're working towards that I hope that we're able to materialize and make things and as rapid and accelerated time as possible
03h 30m 00s
um well we're sitting here having this conversation um I am just feeling frustrated um and I don't know if it's that it feels like you know we talk about the trust we need to earn back with our community and the fact that you know all those things Danny read about how um the segregated school and um how uh we just did so much damage to students sometimes that are very bored doesn't always trust our leadership um and I I feel like you know our job is to hold the superintendent and the staff accountable and we need to be asking deep questions and I think Michelle especially what you raised about that word safety um how is that interpreted and I think Danny that goes to what you were saying about how you know for white people safety you might mean um spaces of whiteness and for people of color you know that that can be really damaging and so I think those are really good things that we've Unearthed but there's almost a level in some of our questions and our conversation here of like not not trusting that staff really are living in to this new way of being and that I don't know how to articulate it but I just feel like I I feel like we're just so not on the same page around how we like support the amazing work our superintendent and staff are doing to move the district forward and to really follow that North Star like you know I believe in it and I believe in our staff and I'm also going to ask them questions and say hey we need to talk about in different ways or hey we need to you know that question about operations and how are we going to keep our buildings clean and is that being cut you know there's there's important questions to be asked but it sometimes it feels like when we have the staff present it almost becomes combative and and part of me wonders if you know we have this narrative in our community that PPS isn't to be trusted that PPS isn't good and how do we as a culture of a board and in these meetings continue to perpetuate that like I I feel like I mean I don't know if I'm articulating it well but I think we need to be honoring the fact that there's been failures and there's been disappointed and there's broken trust and yet it doesn't feel like we're all working together in the same direction for the same good and I'm not sure I'm I just have this overwhelming emotion and I'm not sure how I explain it but I I'm just like I was so hopeful presentation and I'm just starting to feel sad that like it almost feels like staff is having to defend that they really mean it and we're really going to work towards this if that makes sense and maybe I'm just overreacting but I I just have this uncomfortable sense for like the last half hour as we've talked and I don't know how we as a board do that fine dance of little things not accountable and yet also encouraging and supporting um so if any of you have any great wisdom I I have a little bit of my own personal wisdom I can't speak for anybody else but I feel like I'm a super supporter of the district super proud of the staff I mean the staff Works day and night and as a board member it's okay for me to ask questions especially as the only black member here who's spoken um and I'm getting defensive now too I want to be able as your colleague to be a part a partner in doing excellent work I I come from a background where I am suspicious and have a lack of trust and I'm here doing the work because I want to see things change I'm also super helpful about hopeful about the direction the the um district is heading it's the best thing I've heard ever all of the strategy the racial Equity policy I am not criticizing that and and I'm not criticizing it and it's okay for me to be offer a critical voice of the few times that I'm that I'm able to speak up on something and it not be a threat I'm I'm a colleague of yours I'm your colleague I'm here we're pulling the rope in the same direction I am not saying anything contrary to that and it's a it's a it's a both and situation for me I can both value deeply the work that's happening here and I can offer a critical point of someone that has lived experience it doesn't look like everybody else here on this call it's not a threat it's okay for me to have an opinion and it's okay for me the only thing I bring to this meeting is that I can share that myself and my heart and my um my my love for the district and my love for the staff and that that's all I can have and it's okay for me to say to be critical I I can't I can't show up any other way and I think it I Michelle I wasn't targeting you specifically or something
03h 35m 00s
that we can't it did take it personally and and I think it's okay I mean it's okay for me to show up um with heartfelt uh gratitude for the staff and for the strategy and it's okay for me to be critical at the same time it's not a clear-cut either or a situation for me I value the work that everybody's doing here immensely and I feel like I'm a team member and a teammate and a colleague and it's okay for me to be critical so I'm gonna offer my my perspective um as well so you know I was struck by in this document a couple times it says the board is accountable for all fiscal matters that significantly influence operations and I think it's okay to pressure test and ask questions because that makes us better and just I guess sort of building on sort of Michelle's like lived experience if you've had it if you've had a student who's been quarterly served by PBS which I have you're gonna ask questions because like the sometimes the district has said and the district like we are the district we are the man some of the districts we have said like trust us and we haven't served students and when you your own child has not been served it it's it's hard not to pressure test and and want to be able to assure other parents whose students haven't been served that we're going to do the right thing by them so I to me I I don't I see as a normal part of the process if we all just you know there's no sense having a board if we're not gonna we're just gonna be presented to and not ask questions that matter to us um I think I expressed myself incredibly poorly and it's not that we can't ask questions and Michelle I'm not trying to tone police you or tell you not to be critical some of it is the way the staff responds to board questions I mean this is not all on the board it's it's it's about a broken trust we have a way we communicate between SLT and board so this is not all on the board it's you know the board's role is to be hold accountable to ask questions to be critical um but I also think sometimes when we do that the staff gets defensive and then it kind of um escalates and so I'm wondering like Michelle you said we're all pulling ones in the same direction how do we do that in ways that are effective because sometimes it feels like we're talking past each other that we're not really listening to the questions people are asking again like your point to safety um you know it's I just wonder like as we're trying to rebuild trusts we're trying to make massive cultural shifts like how do we do that as a staff and a board and you know it's hard this is a public meeting so you know hi everybody that's watching um it's hard to be really vulnerable and for me to say like I have been feeling uncomfortable and it's not anything that Michelle or Julia you guys did specifically but it's just this sense of like there's a combativeness our conversation sometimes especially after a presentation and so it's how do we as the board both support staff and hold them accountable and how does the staff respond to the board in ways that help us all to move forward and I'm not sure that that we know how to do that cohesively yet and that's something I'm interested in us working on and I think you know is by is vital as we look at what is to be effective as a school board and there's you know studies Nationwide about characteristics of effective rewards and asking questions is key being critical is key bringing your lived experience is key but it's also how do we communicate in ways that we actually hear each other and I think that's what we don't always do and I just gave you all a perfect example of me speaking up and not clearly in a way that was understood so that's that's part of what I'm wrestling tonight and I think it goes to the heart of what we're talking about is our vision for our district how do we get there um and how do we build a relationship with the staff and a board that helps us to be functional to helps us to hold them accountable to be critical and also supportive and champions and that's a that's a difficult balance I think balance I think one of the things that's challenging about this conversation is that um we're really having two conversations here um we are talking about our deeply held values and vision as a district and you know each of us bring our own personal values and then we're also have expressed values as a as a collective board um but we're also talking about the nitty-gritty and let's be real there are some very painful budget decisions that we're going to have to make here and
03h 40m 00s
they're it's much much easier to make them given that we have a clear framework and clearly articulated values and strategic priorities which I can tell you has certainly not always been the case in this District so it's easier but it's still really hard because we each want and need to do our jobs and we want to dig in and say okay if we're not going to be able to provide all the you know particular interventions that the last year we may have anticipated we'd be able to provide for our neediest students and our media schools what are the ones that we're cutting what are we leaving off the table so we're kind of trying to have a conversation at both of those levels about personal values about Collective values and also about specific decisions and and we do need to have room for both of them because I totally agree with Julia I think we all bring this into this process that it's it's made better by our hard questions and by each of us bringing our own experiences in our own uh you know particular interests and areas of expertise to just dig in um superintendent I saw that you looked like you wanted to respond to something there no I mean I thank you chair I I appreciate that I I think there was a request staff share um where we are in the work and we've attempted to kind of capture what this is a draft update of what we hope once we work on the other elements and there's a whole lot of input and feedback and engagement still remaining so that their shared ownership uh and there's comfort in knowing that the activities and strategies that we select We Believe are going to be the ones that move the needle um so that when we have a glossy published companion document of a strategic plan that will take us steps forward hopefully big steps forward towards our vision I think that's the shared sort of goal here and so uh tonight we wanted to lay out you know uh whether we had lots of resources or now less resources there's some moves we have to make as an organization to be postured for that kind of organizational change just to make a difference for kids in school and so I I welcome sort of the conversation and sort of reaction to you know what do you think about a selecting these five system shifts versus any one of the other ones that we identified in the vision uh do the strategies and the action steps for the coming school year uh do those seem like the right ones uh you know I think those those are those are good questions for for us to be able to articulate and and of course we've said you know hold us accountable um the board has set performance goals and so our task was to identify the activities that are going to get us to those targets um and those are a little bit up in the air just like the money is you know how do we now assess outcomes when we have this massive slide in academics and social emotional health of our students there's no summatives our end of the year formatives are out the window uh there's going to be a new Baseline uh is it reality uh we still need some way to gauge where our kids are when we see them again and how are we going to accept growth not just before this pandemic but now as a result of the pandemic and so we do have to refine what those interventions are and then there's still a question about how do we even deliver those supports what's the new reality what's the new delivery model for being able to do that so if we can find some resources what's that extra remediation look like if we can open our schools for small groups of kids in the late summer which students still need to be bringing first because I know we're not serving our students with disabilities in the way that we would all like to be I know that our students that were in comprehensive support schools for intervention they're falling behind and they needed additional support and intervention what does it look like to place some extra emphasis in those communities and then how do we keep pushing the needle on all those other exciting emerging bodies of work uh you know that that's that's what keeps us busy as staff I think that's what keeps the staff motivated is to see that those those bodies of work are shifting and becoming more and more confident when we visit classrooms um you know that that's the work of the school district um and so we thought we would model that work has to start with us because we
03h 45m 00s
have to set the organizational stage um but there's a lot of work that has to happen with the support of adults uh in making the decision true which is what we refer to as the educator Essentials and I'm excited about what students will identify at some of the Practical differences in their experiences that we can help support make possible in their schools because they're going to be really hungry for that level and kind of engaging it when they come back after this long absence um and so if we're going to be open and we have an opportunity to create a new kind of delivery model how do we excite the kids who were already waiting in their engagement to come to school um that's a great question a great design thinking question to ask our students who have been marginalized I believe Dr Valentino left we used the verb gamified so um I appreciate the conversation that's been happening um I think part of it has to do with the nature of the documents [Music] um so I want to say first of all I hugely appreciate staff work on this I I know you've uh it's just an incredibly challenging year you know with the pressure the preparation of the Sia plan followed by the 180 degree term with covid uh and now looking at Cuts or we're still not sure what kind of cuts we don't know what school is going to look like when they come September um and Incredibly challenging work I really appreciate the context that the document started with and the presentation started with I really appreciate um that our educational vision is not collecting dust on a shelf that instead continues to be at the heart of what we do I appreciate the attention to cross Department work to break down silos which has been a huge issue for this District going back decades uh and really important to work on the breadth of what's included in the document is huge and my question there again for central office staff is do you have the capacity to do this without exhausting yourselves um sometimes going slower goes farther uh I appreciate the attention to improvements what you call Improvement science which others call continuous quality improvement that whole feedback loop of engaging parents and students and staff and how do we do this better how did that work what do we need to change in in a constructive way uh I'm calling out a little bit around site councils um that's one of the first things I worked on as a parent advocate in 2001 to get Psy Council training because I saw site councils of potentially being a very uh positive Avenue for Change and and sure there's probably schools that still do not have a functioning site Council now despite some efforts in that direction but to see that as part of a system it would be a big step forward and I'm glad that was called out um I appreciate just building that system of core and enhanced curriculum um you know crucially important in everything we do and the professional development around making that happen and I think we've seen improvements in that this year in terms of how that's been embraced at the school level more to do there but uh some big steps already taken um I appreciate the attention to enhancing ntss and taking that to the next level uh to improving our curriculum and results for students learning English uh so there's just for me uh a whole lot to um wow this is great well done where uh the questions I'm going to ask I think point to the questions that um Julia raised Michelle raised um because but because this is more of
03h 50m 00s
an eternal document in a lot of ways around our systems it's uh less of a and this is what this means in the classroom um so I think going forward it's gonna uh behoove us to to answer some of those questions and get more specific with some things in the document I just want to throw a couple of those out in addition to um ones that are already out there uh uh one example um would be around special education which really isn't specifically called out it mentioned I think once or twice in passing um um inclusion what I would call Optimal inclusion is still a big issue there's still a lot of segregation around special education services um how will that look differently in the next year or two I know it's embedded in this but it's not uh specifically in terms of communicating to a parent or student here's how we want your experience to be different and here's how what we're doing to make it better um same thing with rate and level learning for tag um we know there was an initial set of trainings on that and some steps being made to build that in what can I expect if I were the parents of a student with a tag plan what would I expect us could I expect to see differently next year or over the next three years how what's my experience can be better um another issue that was kind of touched on but because of the nature of the document not specifically called out um is the uh Recruitment and Retention of educators of color um still would like to see and I think the public would like to see uh kind of specific plans and structures around there uh we know a lot of our staff of color feel isolated how do we break through that isolation um also uh and and I think it would uh I think that's uh I appreciate um you saying these are some system shifts we didn't directly address others system shifts so I think we as a board should go back and review those out of the educational vision statement um to see well which which ones weren't specifically called out not that they're being completely ignored but weren't featured in this document um I think that's that's a great point to make one piece that wasn't in here directly addressed is dual language immersion um so are we at a keep at the current level or uh do we see that will enhancing expanding DLI um or or to enhancing multilingual experience of the opportunity to learn more than English will that be enhanced is that part of this plan uh or is that against something to do later we can't do everything right now especially if given our budget situation uh those were and finally um I think one Silo that's still out there um is between facilities and education um I'm I don't think we have a long-term facilities plan uh we're still struggling with that and we see it as we're trying to figure out our bond work um and and that's that's an issue that um in terms of that cross-departmental stuff um I I didn't see I found it lacking in this document um and I just have to say uh this resiliency Bond stuff uh the board has not decided what kind of bond we're going to have and so for staff to refer to a short-term Bond
03h 55m 00s
um it isn't isn't helpful it makes me feel like there's been a conversation I wasn't part of and that that's not where I want to be and that's not what I think happened but it's like wait what how did this train leave the station when I'm still buying a ticket I don't know if that's the right metaphor or not uh uh boy once you start a metaphor without an end it gets into trouble so that's that's a couple of couple of things but uh again mostly huge um this this is a big step moving us down the line appreciate the questions uh director Bailey I think we only gave you 30 pages I'd love to give you another 10 on our career pipelines that are specifically targeting the building of educators of color leaders of color in our collaboration with the higher EDS and other districts um so I know that's I know that's happening um okay yeah um it's just uh see seeing the seeing the plan um because that's there's a subject that keeps coming up publicly no I appreciate you highlighting that we need to uh as a more formal document emerges that we pay attention to describing in some of these other areas you've listed not being so light uh because work is continuing across the board in the district uh we just chose to highlight a few areas uh and then I don't think that was an intention to uh you know to to predetermine uh what direction the bond campaign goes as we understand fully the board is still an active deliberation and conversation about that thank you oh um the the I tried to do the link to the cap Bond explanation uh because I get an explanation every 10 years and then I forget uh what exactly it is uh and the link didn't work just uh note to staff it was embedded in one of the documents um but thanks for at least putting a link in there uh we can make it work and uh that's a good resource for board members to have uh it's a little Arcane but it's it would be great to have that explanation ultimately the goal would be to have a whole complementary set of communication collateral so you could see very easily describe the vignettes well the point of view of the student or the teacher or the principal so as the as the as the broader strategic plan document comes together and we've had months to engage our Educators and our students you know those are the kinds of pieces we get excited about making sure the merge that will be more Timeless and and think to a more clear picture about what it is that we're working towards so I'll I'll jump in and I'll be quick because it's late um but um appreciate sort of the conversation today and uh the comments and and questions you know and overall I'll sort of hit this at a high level I just I really want to command the superintendent and the staff um both for the budget message I've I've crafted and delivered a lot of budget messages this one is incredibly thorough and making me think I've been doing my job poorly um for a long time so well done in terms of putting putting it together and linking everything together in terms of the teaching plan and the vision and and sort of outlining that and I think we need to we need to talk um uh as a board about how we start talking about that out in the community um because there's so much there and it's going to be really valuable um as we're going through a really a really difficult budget here and not just one probably multiple budget years how do we how do we translate that um and and and and assure people that we are maintaining a focus even though we don't have the resources we thought I also want to commend the superintendent and the staff on taking really quick action um I think when we see the size of that shortfall um it's massive but we also see the really quick things whether it's the workshare program whether it's the contract freezes the higher increases Etc that um that have really mitigated some of those some of those um impacts for next year um the the general fund budget cuts are still going to be significant the reductions in Sia funding um are going to really hurt because of the plans we had for that but um but that quick action um uh really is is going to help we're going to be really grateful we did that um the other thing I I want to sort of stress and this might be from my fellow board members as well um and some of my jobs begin to blend together a little bit but we're going to be making these budget decisions in a constantly changing environment um and um we are almost certainly going to need to adopt a budget come come June both approve and adopt a budget that is not complete and that's a hard thing for a board to do um but I can almost guarantee the budget we adopt is going to change the day after we adopt and that's just the nature of when this particular pandemic hit
04h 00m 00s
um when where we are in the budget cycle one of the things I always like to say is that on the budget train it was fast and it moves slow sometimes grindingly slow but it always arrives on time because by law it has to so we will approve a budget in June but we won't know everything that we need to know and so I think just recognizing that uncertainty and recognizing that what we adopt will change um and we won't have all the answers and that means the community won't have all the answers either and that's just the nature of where we are and then the other thing I wanted to just come back to was I really appreciated um uh uh Deputy superintendent hurts his focus on the long term and and not just the fiscal year 2021 um this could be a very long recovery even I was a little shocked to see the state forecast say it could be mid decade before we really saw um you know recovery we'll have to wait and see uh what happens but it could be a very long recovery and and I think that often um organizations in general it's not just government it's public and private sector organizations um make the mistake of focusing too intently on the short term and and trying to sort of move mountains in order to save a handful of positions or programs through one-time resources or using reserves and and sometimes that actually does harm in the long run and so um I think really thinking about this not as a one-year budget but what are the actions we're taking in 2021 that are going to set us up well in in 2122 and 2223 is is going to be really important and always be asking that questions that again saving a handful of positions now might actually do harm when we think about that long term and what we're going to have to deal with there so anyway overall I think the budget message is and tonight's presentation conveys really strongly the district's thinking about this in a long-term holistic way and so I just really appreciate appreciate the work and I can't say I'm looking forward to more discussions about um the cuts we're going to need to take but um but I feel like we're in we're in good hands moving forward in good position so thank you okay Sandra we'll take that as a Segway Deputy superintendent hurts if you're still with us would you like to give a preview um to the next steps in this process yes I'm still here but I was just texting someone that at 10 10 pm I turn into a pumpkin so um next steps is the space he was texting so um Jonathan Garcia is and his team are preparing um focus groups in a town hall for us to process this budget and information with our community so people are informed and understand um what what's happening in terms of short-term and long-term appreciate director Scott's comments about focusing on the long term I applaud those comments but in terms of next steps it is truly looking at um what what kind of input can we get from our community and this um uh virtual world so it will be a little different than what we're used to but we are making those plans and they'll be coming out um Jonathan Garcia do you have um information about uh when those plans will be rolling out to the board um yes uh we uh by by end of the week we should have a better sense of um the timeline and the specific projects or the specific uh events uh that we are are planning so uh more information on that uh shortly count is that right yes that's right so uh so I mean I'm happy to give more detail um I I just um wasn't sure whether or not the board had to approve the calendar uh as is or with the new revisions so uh again I'm happy to share the details right now um as we are thinking uh or I can also do that in an email to the board as soon as we materialize a little bit more of the thoughts email's great otherwise Claire's gonna turn into a pumpkin so one question though I have two questions before we sign off because I do feel um that we we have a very condensed time frame I absolutely agree with Andrew that um the budget is uh so their iterations times like this I mean I it was never more true than in 2002. so I've been through the multiple changing budgets um but we have a document that we we received that has 12 million dollars in unspecified cuts and then uh it looks like 17 million dollars that it's going to be in the student investment accounts and and the ballot
04h 05m 00s
measure 98 and I'd like to know when are we going to receive what those cut those specific cuts are so we know what we're voting on because if we take the 2021 proposed budget that's not what we're going to be voting on and I guess I wouldn't I'm not going to feel comfortable having a community conversation we're voting on a budget without having the opportunity to see what things make are going to be cut out of that plus and then be cut out of the student investment act and ballot measure 98 just so that we have a process in which even those those are hard hard conversations when you're in a reductions mode but that we just be transparent in um and and what's going to be funded and what's not and what we're prioritizing um so I guess I'm interested in when are we going to get that information and hopefully it's not on hopefully it's well in advance of June 8. it will be before the um Forum uh the town hall and so what it's just the we have a system of communications that we need to get through in order to share information throughout our system about what those reductions will be and so once we've got that communication in place we never want someone to hear about a program reduction when they're a part of a program from a budget meeting we want them to hear that um personally from their supervisors so that's something that we we need to go through and have that work completed and then we will have information to the board and to the community prior to the town hall and it will be part of the information that will be um presented in the town hall as well my second question um that I just want to make sure and ask is um and I have to ask it um so I don't think it's I'm gonna be unexpected but um Jonathan you you reference the Middle grades redesign and um my question is last year the year before the board put four million dollars into that and sort of the final budget amendments my question is is who is who is leading the Middle grades redesign process when are they going to be done when is is there a timeline for it to be completed and are there any Investments in this budget I looked through it I didn't I didn't see anything but also I that may be something I couldn't have seen so I'm just curious about those under enroll k-8s that are still sitting out there I'm happy to take it offline as well but those are the three questions I'd like to know about the Middle Middle grades sure we can recall what we've shared with the board previously about it most recently we described uh coordinator and a task force that are being set in place uh some of the work we've done exploring models out there uh some of the budget recommendations that are in these two volumes of books were to Resource uh schools uh in addition to Verizon grant funding so as we described the last time to the board that works in motion and we're going to kick off at a pretty steady quick rate uh especially in the first semester knowing that Kellogg is is quickly coming our way Dr Valentino if you're there do you want to provide an additional minute of Middle School redesign updates send my very specific questions I think back on that point too it's important to go back to the School profiles and back and about our staffing formula because we have made huge Investments and I expect continue to make those same Investments and commitments in Middle grades equity um by by really beefing up course selection in our k-8s and it's and uh there's a few threads in this budget proposal that indicate that we're not letting go of that that'd be great I just um when I read I read through it I couldn't see that and I'm interested in who specifically is going to lead that and be accountable for delivering that work uh it's a group of us uh director brim Edwards and and I'm keeping Taps on it as well all right thank you so much and um superintendent hurt Deputy superintendent Hertz and chief of staff and all of you all of you on the senior leadership team
04h 10m 00s
um we know that the conversations ahead regarding um impacted departments and areas of work and employees are really really difficult and we appreciate the The Compassion that you're showing in in your approach to those conversations so thank you for that we've got one last small order of business we had a couple of board committee meetings director Scott is there anything you want to relay from the bond committee meeting although I think just about all of us were there yeah uh I will just yeah so we we had that meeting on on May 19th and discussed options for 2020 and resiliency Bond and what we want the focus to be and whether we want to make changes um and we had a great exercise uh with Danny led us through the uh racial equity and social justice lens and then got the board feedback and talked about Community engagement um and I think we moved the conversation forward but we're gonna need to have another board discussion and I think right now there's a proposal for June 11th um at that um that board meeting to add the bond discussion for a full board discussion um to to settle on some some options to take out to the community thank you very much and then um director Moore um do you have something to report from the policy committee other than the first reading that was brought forward tonight nope that's about it um there there is still some other policies that are uh kind of in the works they'll be at least one other policy coming to the full board probably after the next um committee meeting um for a first reading all right thank you very much uh anything else for the good of the order all right thank you everybody for hanging in there this uh meeting of the Board of Education of Portland Public Schools is now adjourned good night everybody take care thanks everybody

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)

2020-05-26 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting - 5/26/2020

Sources