2020-06-11 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2020-06-11
Time 18:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type regular
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting 6/11/2020

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education for June 11 2020 is called to order for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on has been posted in support by state law this meeting is being streamed live on Channel 28 and will be replaced throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our PPM TV services website first I would like to start with a sincere apology to our viewing audience we are 25 minutes late and we have just a lot of a special meeting to hear a uh complaint so again my apologies for the delay I know many of you have been participating this um thank you everyone Welcome to our viewing audience um I think we may have a few people whose phones are not on mute so if everybody can take a look at that that would be helpful um today marks the first day of summer break for our students as our student representative Maxine was just discussing um we know how difficult it is to end the school year without the opportunity to say goodbye to teachers and friends and students and families and to Walk The Halls that final time probably they'll throw your papers in the air um but it has been heartening to see so many creative ways that schools and families are marking the end of the year from promotion ceremonies to visual our Visual Arts showcase which was amazing um drive-by graduations lawn signs um we love how our community is still finding ways to display our love for school and our fellow students and teachers um tonight in addition to approving the superintendent's proposed budget for the 2021 school year we are also receiving an important update on multi-tiered systems of support and also being asked to approve the master plan for the multiple Pathways to graduation building building building um at this time the board will vote on our business agenda board members are there any items you would like to pull for discussion yes so I'm sorry does somebody else speak up or just me I don't think so okay um so I didn't have um any ones that I want to pull to the end but I do have a couple comments when we get it moved and seconded and are ready to hold on okay Miss Bradshaw are there any changes to the business agenda all right now no do I have a motion and a second to adopt the business agenda I believe director Bailey moves and director Scott seconds the adoption of the business agenda is there any board discussion on the business agenda Edwards yeah thank you um I just had three items um one we have actually three Advanced authorization contracts and I just want to note that while we have three and it seems like we've had an acceleration of them actually we're on Feast about here and we have memos for the mall which is part of the contract improvement process that's being implemented by staff the other issue that I want to just flag was the PPS Concordia lease termination um and this is a question for um I believe this large and um I had a question from the community because it wasn't completely clear um because it was framed as a lease termination there was a question about the Concordia PPS um read a PhD partnership maybe this is a question actually for uh Mr Garcia and just a confirmation that not only this terminates the lease but also the uh read a PhD partnership because it wasn't entirely clear to the community that this wasn't just a loose termination I director Brian Metter words uh this is Jonathan Garcia Chief engagement officer I also happen to serve as the co-chair of the three to PhD initiative at Fabian uh what I can say is that uh the the official uh program or official initiative that is through the PHD the the what is branded through the PHD is for uh is ending uh per this term for these terms however um we are very much uh looking forward to working with Dr Williams the principal at Fabian to elevate the importance of Community Schools uh which
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is uh which Fabian as you know is is one of those uh here in our community and so we look forward to working with her uh to grow uh that Community School model there and potentially elsewhere so um so again yes 3D PhD uh branded uh initiative is for now uh ending uh and and in its place we're really looking to concentrate our efforts around building uh that Community School model that the community has so envisioned for that community so this lease termination in effect will have that it will also address the partnership correct and part go ahead sorry yeah and and and and the reason that that is the case uh when the founders uh uh uh developed the least the term the lease agreement and the uh operational agreement uh those those were intertwined um and so uh because Concordia uh has has closed is closing its doors um by and therefore terminating the lease essentially by default maybe that's not the right word but by default the what is three to PhD is no longer uh a an initiative great uh thank you and then my last um just thing I want to know in terms of the contracts is we have a contract for the office of the general counsel Network and that just note for the record that the board received um a on previous uh amendments received a memo on the structure of this particular engagement and that's it thank you the board will now vote on resolution 6121 through 6127 in the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes please by indicate by saying no any abstentions the business agenda is approved by a vote of 720 with student representative lateral voting yes all right thank you and Maxine you are up next congratulations graduate thank you um I'd like to provide your report yeah so wait can people put themselves on mute because I'm hearing myself like four times and I don't know why we were clapping oh okay that's great thanks guys appreciate it um yeah so I just wanted so I got jointed very cool thing that I did um and I wanted to express my gratitude for um PBS for you know putting together the diploma days and making sure that both high school graduates and middle school graduates are able to celebrate it was really awesome for um myself to have my diploma today uh and see all my favorite teachers and administrators and for my sisters while who graduated eighth grade from Sunnyside and uh we had a really fun uh Sunnyside style celebration at Marshall campus doing a little parade and taking over a radio station it was a really cool experience um and although you know it wasn't regular it was it was still really great and it was really fun for me as a high school graduate to to be able to celebrate this achievement it's such a big achievement to make it through this many years of education and um even though also acknowledging like what's going on in our world today this historic movement that we are all experiencing um it's valid to take time to recognize that you know we all did it as graduates and now it's it's our time to um use those skills that we've been that we've been given during our public education and uh Change the World um which is super exciting I also wanted to just commend PPS and especially Guadalupe for making the decision to no longer have sros in our schools because that's a very big decision um I do want to say though that having this decision be made um you know and not making this decision sooner uh brings up that we have as a as a district have kind of messed up by not listening to our students and our families and uh community members who are most affected by police presence and by sros in our schools and by not listening to them our relationship with them is now strained um as when they reached out to us and expressed their opinion and we had students being engaged it was like we did not listen um and you know now as what the world is saying we have to start to reimagine what the public education system is going to look out like without that police presence and
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um before the board meeting DSC had this conversation um you know regarding this decision about sros not being in schools and students are glad that that we finally have a decision that's been made and we don't have to keep asking questions about when Sorrows are not going to be in schools anymore um there's still that question that's in students minds of like why hasn't this happened sooner when students already felt uncomfortable but instead of looming on those questions that you know are are still in the back of my mind and still in the back of many other people's minds I can imagine too I'm looking forward to the future of student leadership within PPS with with what the DSC has has become this year which is such an amazing group of students and only to become so much better with um you know help from staff and gaining exposure through what work we've done so far um but as these just as these conversations about police presence and about um are the war the events in our world come up uh I just ask that you know stay engaged with what students are thinking and are saying it's it's so important to listen and to to just you know these are the people that we serve and these are the people who are our future and um you know being one of them it's it's really stressful to to see these things happen in and you know think about if they were to happen to people in my schools um yeah this is really stressful for me to say just because I haven't I don't have all the experience that other students of color who who are students of color who have I'm just a white chick who's middle class white chick I go to a diverse school and so I I know people with diverse backgrounds but I am not one of the students who would be affected by these sros and so as an ally I just want to say thank you for making the decision to um not have them in our schools anymore so that's my that's my piece thank you thank you thank you for all the student activists um who who really um LED that process last spring I'm sorry director to pass I'm sorry I cut into you but I wanted to just tell Maxine how proud I am of her um and the job that she's done this year just showing up um balancing your student your senior year with with board service and you brought up this idea of you know I'm just a white chick but the fact that you kind of come into this like showing knowing how you're showing up um speaks really highly to your what you've learned about being a student I've also been thinking about the student leadership too and wondering if there's some way to recruit um leaders of color who might be less more hesitant to show up and speak um this Tuesday we heard from an amazing student who's a junior at Jefferson I think this year going into her senior year I believe and and I would love to see people like her represented on our student council because if we want to see different outcomes we need to start we need to have different people making decisions um it'd be great to have a student of color um supported and represented particularly in light of you know we're in the post George Floyd era of leadership and so one statistic I'll leave you with is that women of women who run for office need to be asked seven times from various people that they admire to run for office um on average and so I don't know if you can I don't know how the DSU system works but if there's anything that you could do to advocate for a student of color to help them develop their leadership maybe someone that doesn't you know come from a middle class family that would be really valuable to our work and and congratulations by the way it's you've done amazing things this year thank you so much it definitely you know for the future of Tennessee as the I'm I'm gonna be gone but I'm really hoping that um it will expand and it's really hard to know what DSC is going to look like with covid going on um but through these conversations around the budget other students have been um engaged and it's it's a very valuable you know even though the budget talking about that is a hard conversation too bringing in those other students from organizations like Multnomah youth commission and um you know with our DSC students doing Outreach at their own schools and um especially a lot of climate groups that we have in Portland there are so
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many students that want to be engaged with PBS and so I'm I definitely you know want more students of color to share their experiences with with not only the DSC but with PPS as a whole because those are so valuable um and there are so many takeaways from from those students as experiences so yeah sorry thank you I was going to take a point of privilege as uh the chief engagement officer uh our team has had the opportunity to work with Maxine uh over the last year as the student representative and actually uh as I mentioned to Maxine uh much earlier than that uh as she walked the halls of besc uh with Nick uh the year before and so uh I really just appreciate Maxine's energy and commitment to our our schools and our students um and and she was she had a huge responsibility or responsibility you know coming to every board meeting uh and and and and speaking on behalf of you know uh or for with you know on behalf of 50 000 students uh who have very different lived experiences different uh and so she she took that and and ran with it um and I appreciate uh her leading leaning into um understanding her privilege in a understanding the role that you can play in that um and then director to pass just you know uh part of uh Maxine's uh you know uh I would say accomplishments is being able to diversify our DSC so you know our superintendent this is the first year we've had a student rep uh manager if you will overseeing our DSC and so Maxine has been working with Ian very closely uh so again just think Maxine for for helping us diversify our DSC we have a lot more to go as as Maxine and as you suggested but you know uh but just appreciate our students really raising the bar um uh for us as adults so thank you Maxine thank you and and we will have one more opportunity to fate Maxine One More meeting yeah two weeks this is my last one nuts but yeah we're gonna miss you yeah so this is the last one next next one on the 23rd is my next my last one I am looking forward to having regular meals on Tuesdays though me too I miss but it's okay you've still got some time Amy all right thank you so much hey Maxine um loose threat uh via the youth commission uh I met with them oh God two years ago and they were trying to push for a later opening for high school students do you know if that has gone anywhere we met with them uh multiple times this year I do want to talk about this off off board meeting Scott sure okay great let's talk about it later this week or something okay that'd be great Austin all right would you like to provide your report to the board I would love to good evening chair constant and directors and good evening to everybody who's watching from home uh on our live stream uh so let's go to the next slide if we can get that on the screen so I'd like to start tonight by of course uh congratulating also our Portland Public Schools graduates so the PPS class of 2020 uh it's been affected by this covid-19 pandemic and some really unique ways uh the Milestones the Traditions that might have been expected uh were impacted and affected and they and they finished their PPS careers under circumstances unlike any other graduating class that preceded them so I've been Amazed by our students flexibility throughout the spring I was delighted to hear about seniors participating in the virtual prom We hosted last week and yesterday marked the last diploma day of 2020 where schools welcome back seniors back to campus to receive their diplomas to be celebrated in a way that allowed for of course some some appropriate safety practices we're grateful for how schools and our school leaders adapted to make sure that our graduates would have this moment to be celebrated by families and friend friends so graduates can look forward to Virtual
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programs being made available next week and I know that senior class videos are being put together now uh and we will remember this unique class of 2020 forever um I also want to extend uh and share two personal congratulations first uh we've already started here uh roasting vaccine a little bit but to our dear student representative Maxine lateral thank you for playing the very important role of raising student voice uh something we're going to stay committed to being better about listening to youth about these real world issues and secondly like many District staff that are also parents and have children celebrating this same important Milestone personal point of privilege I also want to wish a happy graduation to my daughter Liliana Guerrero I'm sure she's not watching her father at work tonight but she also had Hershey where you're disrupted and graduation not take place the way she imagined I want to wish a bright future to all of our graduates as you embark on your next chapter and journey next slide so I think I speak for all of us when I say that a big part of moving through the challenges of the past three months has been about holding on to those moments of Joy where we have a privilege to witness an experience uh our students those moments now include this past Tuesday evening's live streamed Showcase of our talented PPS students and Visual and Performing Arts teachers Who provided performances and was hosted by artslandia I know many of you join me in watching and commenting during the live stream and really delighting in the performances that span across grade levels schools and arts disciplines in fact so many of us joined in on the fun uh that artslandia reportedly crashed their computer servers but they were quick to adapt and in keeping with the theme of the spring the show went on as planned and if you missed it live you can still watch it on YouTube so my thanks to all of our student artists our incredible Arts Educators uh and to Kristen Brayson and our incredibly small But Mighty vapatool who helped with this show together uh in the face of losing over 150 typical spring Arts performances that would have occurred across our schools this spring our Visual and Performing Arts team and our in collaboration with Arts landia found a way a creative way to honor and celebrate the incredible passion of our young student artists across the district thank you and next slide uh so one of the entrees on tonight's menu uh our staff recently submitted a full budget proposal to the board uh like other districts uh and it was pre-pandemic so therefore not reflected of the new economic realities and shortfalls the exercise we're working at now involves amendments that will surely need to be considered later uh and PPS is is running ahead of schedule uh relative to to many of our neighbors we staff has worked feverishly to address what started out as a massive 57 million dollar budget cut budget Gap and I think we've made great progress in closing that down to about 12 million in reductions um that's focused as much as possible from impacting classrooms and Direct Services to students um my teams continue to examine every available source of funds to protect services to students later in the agenda we're going to share with you a bit more about the iterative process of getting to a final budget for the 20 20 21 school year and I want to reiterate these points we've reduced a potentially devastating 57 million dollars in budget cuts to 12 million and probably 10 million now with some further proactive cost saving measures and labor collaboration even in just the last few days and secondly and importantly we're staying true to our racial Equity agenda and we'll hold harmless the students and the schools who most need our support So budgeting is only going to be more challenging a year from now in the new biennium I think everybody understands that I know that we're committed to staying true to racial equity and social justice an easy budget year so we also have to be committed to those values of difficult ones we cannot continue to protect a
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status quo in our in our budgets um when we expect results to accelerate and improve for every one of our students especially our black and Native American students so despite the massive budget Gap after much work over the course of many weeks we have been able to restore some tentative reductions in a few areas again prioritizing Direct Services to students and given some unanticipated Revenue by identifying additional cost savings and incorporating further management level reductions into the new fiscal year as a result of those actions we're able to ensure funding to include restoration of the third day of general education ee in The Limited number of elementary schools where there was an initial proposed action to the level of service there of course that's assuming that Traditional School opening and schedule in September uh and then secondly the restoration of every one of our adaptive PE teachers in the biscuit so I wanted to I wanted to mention those two items in particular because I know that this will be welcome positive news to many of our Educators and families uh rather amazingly I think we've been able to contend with this massive budget hit uh caused by severely declining State revenues by acting strategically and and with urgency uh all in the attempt to preserve our ability to deliver on our stated theory of action minimizing employee impacts uh and minimizing the degree that uh of potential layoffs that there would have been at a rather Unthinkable level when we initially began this work uh and I also want to say up front that I want to thank the cbrc for their work and Report who also worked under a very truncated timeline just like the board just like staff I appreciated the the very thoughtful deep challenging questions in the conversation we had last week uh in in the cbrc meeting about our strategic priorities and our aligned investment plan which we've been sharing And discussing with the board as well in our next slide um finally I know that families are eager to know what fall is going to look like at PPS uh yesterday uh Mark the last day of the school year like no other in the history of PPS um I'm really grateful for the patients the understanding the flexibility of our students families Educators administrators and staff that they've shown and demonstrated over the last three months District staff has been working and planning for the 2020-21 fall opening since March we're busy mapping out multiple scenarios for the fall reopening of school given the number of variables at stake and the fact that situations could change suddenly over the summer we are now working urgently and in collaboration with other large Oregon districts to reconcile the department of education's guidance which was just released yesterday uh with our own Draft plans and capabilities so we expect uh very soon here probably in the coming week that we'll be reaching out directly to students Educators and families to ask for their input their preferences uh their comfort level related to various possible School openings certain scenarios so please look for an upcoming message from us as your perspective is going to be critical as we continue to plan for the fall and attempt to finalize uh what that's going to look like so thank you in advance for that and then last slide um I I want to acknowledge all our youth and community members who are making their voices heard at this time that black lives matter our school district's vision is very clear that our charge is to ensure our students are prepared to lead change and improve the world you heard Maxine describe that a few minutes ago that we proceed with the core value of racial equity and social justice that our graduates become transformative racial Equity leaders they're actors I I think we're already seeing evidence of this that concludes my opening remarks for the night for this evening thank you thank you we will move on to um public comment from and student comment um before we begin the comment period I'd like to quickly review our guidelines for public comment the board thanks the community for taking the time to attend this meeting and provide your comments to us we value public input as
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it informs our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts Reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen 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 Personnel matter if you have additional materials or items you would like to provide to the board or superintendent we ask that you email them to public comment at pps.net if you're watching our board meeting via the live stream while waiting please make sure that you mute prior to your turn to speak if you leave it on it will create feedback and you will be muted by the meeting administrator and we'll come back to you please make sure when you begin your comment that you clearly state your name and spell your last name you will have three minutes to speak and then we'll hear a sound which means it's time to conclude your comments again we appreciate your input and thank you for your cooperation Miss Bradshaw do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment this evening yeah we have Camila artist Amelia muted hello Camila my name is thank you for your look around the budget that focuses on our students of color at the Latina environmental teacher I want to share the work of black horse Health students have been doing in 2017 they wrote demands for our school and District they stated we are not high school students asking for simple changes we are black people demanding these Necessities in order to survive I'm here to amplify some of these Necessities demand number one hire more black teachers why do our students have to fight to be on energy panel for teachers and administrators why do they have to fight tax questions about black lives matter be a part of interviews we also need to fight to retain black teachers that we had for six years I've seen black teachers pushed out of buildings they are asked to speak for their race heavily relied on to create sports that supports the deficiency circles and in the worst moments asked to validate their presence in a white dominated building our senior inquiry students stress the need for administrators and staff to be trained in deconstructing their whiteness and white fragility this is imperative um if we have a chance of keeping our black teachers and based on the last board meeting where the one black board member was home police without adequate resolution I think some board members might need it too demand number two mandate black history and ethnic studies we cannot leave liberatory education and black lives matter to a high school elective it is tragic that when I asked my 11th grade ethnic study students if they can name any black change makers other than Rosa Parks or Dr Martin Luther King Jr I met with Byron this week expand that narrative it empowers black students to see themselves as change makers and to see black Excellence woven to the fabric of our society not just in Social Studies classes from what I've seen of the GBC so far we need to do better command number three and zero tolerance now funding culturally responsive supports is just the beginning we also need to address the actively racist policies by holding administrators and teachers accountable for the way their racial biases show up in exclusion rates we are operating in an educational system and School District that allows the students to be Expendable we cannot continue to feed the school-to-prison pipelines fund counselors not classes demanded before I want to thank you superintendent Guerrero for finally doing the right thing but when you said the time is now it was a slap in the face with those who tweeted and organized and testified for years we were well past the time and I wonder why you couldn't make that same as last year when students were here students deserve proactive leadership not just leadership in the face of national crises I'm tired of seeing our students of color in this District testify in front of the board we met with smiles and Applause and no problem up I'm tired of our students committing hours of emotional labor without seeing systemic change I'm tired of having only one or two black teachers at our school I'm tired of seeing Roosevelt students on the PBS website without credit reference or action on their needs and if I'm tired I know my black colleagues are exhausted and if they're exhausted our black students are hanging on by a thread Classics do not need a statement of solidarity and they don't need white tears from administrators or teachers they need real change now the lack of urgency in our district speaks volumes if you are not actively dismantling braces in an equitable system if you are not actively working on these demands you have perpetuating racism and inequity I urge you all to do something to be anti-racist because students and teachers of color are tired of doing that work for you thank you I didn't get your name but thank you thank you thank you Miss Bradshaw yeah we have Anne Wong and you should be in muted now yes my name is Anne Huang h-o-a-n-t my daughter Camille is a fifth grader in
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PPS thank you for hearing my public comments tonight you are going to see a presentation about multi-tiered systems of support and review the budget recent events have highlighted the importance of every voice in addressing systemic racism I want to voice my support for the board's revision of the student conduct and discipline policy including multi-tiered systems of support as a budget priority my daughter is a student of color in the disparity and suspension and expulsion rates for non-white students is particularly alarming to me last year her Elementary School suspended or expelled black or mixed three students at a rate of 5.8 12.1 times more than the general student population respectively according to your own published data this is discouraging to say the least for all students research shows that restorative justice and trauma-informed practices reduce Behavior incidents as well as the need for suspension or expulsion I ask that you eliminate suspensions and expulsions for pay through five students all together as these children are in a critical time of needing behavior modification support for all age groups I ask you to commit to investing in counseling social work and teacher training rather than policing brown and black students out of our lives well we Face unprecedented adjustments to school life and a decrease in budget resources I urge you not to lose sight of the human faces of children who deserve Equitable access to learning and a safe place to exist thank you thank you Miss Bradshaw do we have further public comment yes Alicia Blackboard you should be on YouTube my name is Alicia b-l-a-c-k-f-o-r-d I teach at Madison High School and I would love to talk to the board about listening to black and brown voices when the superintendent tweeted last Thursday about removing our sros from our schools he said the time is now no Mr Guerrero the time is long past black students have been coming before this board sharing their lived experience and demanding removal of SRO since 2016. I'm extremely happy that armed officers will no longer be fixtures in our schools and let's call this decision what it was reactionary thank it's great to react now we have to react now and the reaction every single one of us in the school district has to take is to go back and listen to what our black students staff and families have been demanding all along and finally start acting it's largely non-black school board and District administration has continually made it difficult for black students and by community members to have a voice and then largely ignore their voices how many black students Educators and community members came before you and implored you to keep Rosa Parks year-round schedule what was your vote how many black students came before you to explain the importance of restorative justice to their school experience what did you do with our contract with resolutions Northwest how many black voices have demanded not only the recruitment but the retention of black teachers what are our numbers how do our black staff and buildings feel the superintendent tweeted on Friday that he agreed with Joanne Hardesty 100 when she said that quote now's our time to undo this historic discrimination and all the racially unjust policies that we have we have to take this opportunity to fundamentally change no more lip service to equality end quote he said that he looks forward to enacting the changes that our young people seek well we know what changes our young people seek because they've been telling us they've been organizing community events and coming before this board and telling you if you're going to finally React to what is happening in our street then let's do it show us but you have finally heard what our black students staff and families have been telling you and stop giving lip service to equality we have the chance to go beyond just removing a thoroughs from our schools we have the opportunity for our school to be models of what abolition and investment in restorative and community-based practice can look like I am here to repeat the demands of our black students staff and families that you have been ignoring for years one fully fund restorative structures and training led by people of color two mandate ethnic studies on every subject and at every grade level three give Rosa Parks their year-round schedule back and forth lead the work to change our buildings into a place that black folks can actually see themselves wanting to work in so that we can truly recruit and retrain retain black teachers this work needs to be decisive led by black folks Guided by student voice transparent and it needs to begin immediately transparency means that we will admit and repair the harm this district has inflicted and continues to inflict on our black community it means centering and giving power to the community of women doing the equity work for us it means giving time it needs board meeting and each email from the superintendent for updates on what work
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is being done this is a critical movement in history and while I wish I could say I worked in a district that started the revolution at least let me say that my district followed through with the revolution thank you thank you Ken gadbo can you should be unmuted great thank you my name is Ken gadbo g-a-d as in David he is in boy o w I have 15 years teaching social studies in Portland Public Schools I teach U.S history criminal justice and I am the sponsor of Madison High School's restorative justice club I'm also the father of two teenagers one of whom will be a senior at Madison next year the other room will be a freshman I'm dedicated to the Madison community and the Portland Public Schools I'm also white cisgender middle class middle age able-bodied native English-speaking and male I am aware the ever evolving extent that I am able of the privilege and responsibility of those labels I'm going to say some things that are not necessarily my own ideas but because I know that as a 45 year old white man when they come out of my mouth they are given certain consideration that youth women trans folks and people of color are all too often not afforded school is not fair it's not Equitable and it's not accountable headed to Genesis it was not designed to be and in spite of the tremendous efforts of The Advocates and allies that have come before us as well as the ones here this evening School continues to be a place of violence for so many young people particularly our black brown and Native students we need to look further than our graduation rates our suspension rates in our incarceration rate for evidence so how do we capitalize on this moment to do what's right what structures can we change to make school more Equitable and more accountable for my students and many of my colleagues at Madison Roosevelt and Jefferson I have heard some common themes students need dedicated spaces and times within the school schedule to have their voices heard and taken seriously every PPS student deserves to have a staff member that is knowledgeable about their strengths and struggles every student needs an advocate students need mechanisms with which they can hold us teachers accountable students need Equitable grading practices students deserve a course load and daily schedule that is navigable and appropriate even when life is unpredictable and finally students deserve have teachers and administrators that look like them at the state and District look to reconvene schools in the fall in a way that is responsible to the current crises to ask the board to prioritize these structural changes that support our students voices it is not a lack of Desire or skill from the part of students of color to express their ideas it is regular hyper local predictable prioritized access thank you thank you we have Jacqueline bovey Jaclyn you're unmuted Declan can you hear me now yes sorry okay can I start now yes okay my name is Jacqueline bovee e-o-v-e-e I'm an English language development teacher at Jefferson High School I'm happy to see that the district is focusing on the budget as not simply a list of numbers but as a moral document I appreciate you all naming some of the student groups that the district has Miss served especially black and Native students and I'm grateful to all the people who have joined tonight to raise up the demands of black folks in particular time that doesn't mean that we can put any less focus on other served racial groups such as latinx students specific students and Middle Eastern and North African students just to name a few I'm specifically here to bring attention and focus to English language Learners of all different races across the district who need a lot more attention than they are getting right now the need to focus on English language
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Learners or Ells is especially relevant in this moment as we Face the challenges of distance learning Ells not only must contend with language barriers between themselves and the Educators who are paid to serve them but also many face substantial technological barriers I've heard many teachers talk about being impressed by students Tech skills often notice and sheepishly that students know more about computers than they do however this is not true of all of our students many of my Ells at Jefferson particularly newcomers and students with interrupted formal education have never before been taught foundational technology skills that we tend to assume all students have this is just one of countless examples where the unique experiences of Ells are misunderstood when we neglect to Center the experiences of English language Learners we part we poke more holes in the fabric of our school system for our kids to fall through in PPS we love to talk about student voice but we miss hearing many students voices because we do not provide adequate access for them to share their thoughts with us especially when those thoughts are in a language other than English in this main translation and interpret interpretation Services must be at the top of the priority list for our district and school budgets it can never be an afterthought in the last week I've watched and read multiple presentations about the budget and the only time that I saw the work we do with ell specifically highlighted was in a slide that said quote resource the refresh of new English as a second language curriculum unquote I honestly have no idea what resource the refresh means but I hope that it does not mean pouring more money into expensive curricula written and sold by private companies instead it must mean supporting deeper collaboration between Educators across the district teachers social workers bilingual and multilingual EAS are partner organizations like erco SEI and Latino Network who already know what we can do to better support our students it must mean providing our students and families of greater access to share their voices with us directly through prioritizing interpretation and translation services in every budget area it must mean leaning in and listening more closely in all different languages to the experiences of each of our students thank you thank you that's all what we have at this time okay it's Mr Moore director Moore I'd like to call on you I know you have a resolution that you wanted to bring forward to the board that pertains to many of the comments that we just heard as well as representative lateral's comments on the school resource officers foreign yes thank you uh can you hear me can you hear me yes yes we can hear you yeah okay good okay thank you it's it's uh I typically have technical issues um yes um I'd I'd like to offer a resolution um in support of re-centering the pts student experience through supportive and affirming people culture and climate um and um I think it's important for the board to kind of speak to the moment um and um I'm I'm hoping that uh some of the thoughts that I put in this um will will be um will resonate with you all and and that um we'll be able to make this statement to our students and families and communities um so it's fairly long so please bear with me um public education is the Bedrock of American democracy as it provides opportunities for everyone to transcend their circumstances as the public educational system for almost 50 000 students Portland Public Schools is the steward of this City's future and is responsible for providing a well-rounded community-centered education that allows every student to achieve their fullest potential and Thrive into adulthood in 2011 the pts Board of Education adopted the racial Equity racial educational Equity policy which states quote the board of education for Portland Public Schools is commuted to the success of every student in each of our schools the mission of Portland Public Schools is that by the end of elementary middle and high school every student by name will meet or exceed academic standards and will be fully prepared to make productive life decisions we believe that every student has the potential to achieve and it is the responsibility of our school district to give each student the opportunity and
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support to meet his or her Highest Potential unquote in 2019 thousands of students families staff partners and members of the community helped Portland Public Schools formalize an ambitious vision for that education it summons PPS to transform into a system grounded in our core value of racial equity and social justice that would equip students to quote lead change and improve the world unquote by nurturing both their intellectual curiosity and their Humanity in supportive engaging learning environment since its adoption by the board in June 2019 that Community Driven vision of Portland Public Schools reimagined has guided the district's efforts to improve its performance in service to our students and Families as elected representatives in our community the board of education is the steward of our Collective vision we acknowledge that our District's persistent failure to serve black students betrays our aspirations our Collective responsibility is to uphold our commitment to Center the experience of students in everything we do to interrogate our decisions through racial equity and social justice lands to build authentic collaborative Partnerships with our students our families our employees in the larger community we must lead with integrity and boldness to fulfill this community's vision of what PPS can and should be it is therefore incumbent upon us at this moment of national Reckoning to clarify where we stand and what we intend to do we affirm that black lives matter we choose to be a community that not only expresses but also lives a commitment to every person's fundamental right to human dignity we believe that students families and communities have a right to respect safety and full access to schools that prepare students to be agents of change in their own lives and in the world we commit to eliminating the racism and oppression embedded in PPS and rebuilding it as an educational system that affirms positive identities nurtures a sense of belonging and promotes the joy of learning we will act to make schools welcoming learning environments that employ practices that are developmentally appropriate from informed culturally responsive and aligned with the principles of restorative justice we support the superintendent's overarching strategic framework of targeted universalism pursuing Universal goals through strategies that are targeted based upon how different groups are situated within structured culture and across geographies accordingly the board confirms its four goals for universally improving educational outcomes that specifically focus on improving academic growth of student groups that the district has persistently failed black and Native American students a growing body of research on the impact of the physical and emotional well-being of students on their academic outcomes in personal development reinforces the notion that PPS has a primary obligation to provide School environments that are healthy affirming and conducive to learning but 18 months of consultation with many hundreds of students in high schools and middle schools revealed that an overwhelming number of students particularly students of color Express the profound sense of insecurity and fear over the presence of armed police in schools a sentiment toward law enforcement that is generally expressed across the country by black native and communities of color we support the superintendent's decision to end the presence of school resource officers in schools and will work with our community to ensure our students especially our black and Native students attend schools where they feel a strong sense of safety and belonging institutions especially Portland Public Schools have a moment an opportunity to lead not with race Mutual plans but with an anti-racist agenda that begins and amplifies an intergenerational healing process among students their families in our community therefore be it resolved that the Portland Public Schools board declares that the lives of black students and our black community matter and commits to working with the superintendent to create the conditions for every student especially our black and Indigenous students who experience the greatest challenges to realize the vision of The Graduate portraits strongly uphold the superintendent's charge to recenter a student's sense of belonging and safety by encouraging positive relationships in a supportive and affirming culture and climate in every school endorses the superintendent's decision to immediately discontinue the regular
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presence of school resource officers on Portland Public Schools school campuses command is the superintendents in the district leadership for its bold commitment to Center the lived experiences of our students and apply a racial equity and social justice lens to all decisions and directs us superintendent to continue the work of building meaningful relationships with our students families racial equity and social justice community-based Partners labor leaders and school-based staff to collectively dismantle systems of Oppression that hurt our school communities especially our students families and staff of color direct to the superintendent to provide regular public updates to the school board on the progress made towards implementing the charge to school district leaders on June 4th 2020 to create and support a firmary school climate characterized by positive adult student relationships student sense of belonging cultural responsiveness and overall student physical and emotional safety recognizes that the decision to end the SRO program within Portland Public Schools presents an opportunity to reform the relationship between black indigenous and communities of color with law enforcement ending the SRO program does not speak to anyone's specific school resource officer anyone incident or issue on school campuses instead it speaks to the systemic racism that has plagued their institutions since their founding the school board expresses gratitude to the school resource officers who have worked hard to build deep and positive relationships with our students and encourages the Portland Public Portland Police Bureau to leverage the types of training supports and skills of these sros to help build a strong Community focused police police force our students especially our students of color demanded welcomes Portland mayor Ted wheeler the Portland City Council and the Portland Police Bureau to engage in authentic conversations with our students School District leaders leaders of color and other key stakeholders to develop racial Equity aligned actionable steps for reforms and local law enforcement that's it um thank you for indulging the long recitation um I I apologize for getting this to you pretty late in the day so um I would welcome any comments or suggestions or questions I think you're offering this as a resolution so I'd like to ask ask for a motion to put this resolution on the table so moved do I have a second I'll second IT director to pass moves and seconds motion um do they have some discussion I just want to thank the people that um spoke up tonight we heard pretty strongly from um all of the speakers that they want to see real change around um our racial Equity work and not just um a recitation of the rhetoric but a demand for for real action for changing the way things have gone for years and years and so I appreciate that I too am feeling a sense of urgency around this work not just because we're in a post George Floyd time which is impactful but because for for my entire life we've I've I've been and I I and my parents and my grandparents have been asking for this and so the sros being you know out of our schools is a great thing it's a start and it's demonstrable and and we have to do so much better in every other way um I feel like the community here in Portland is ready to talk about real solutions that means doing business not as usual that means not um falling back on the way we've always done things because that hasn't worked for everybody um I'm I'm excited about it and also cautious I I want to you know I know we're all I think we're all moving the same direction um but just want to like put an exclamation mark on that on that resolution and that um I'm committed to doing this work and have been for I'm 59 I will say 50 years um and we'll work with the district to to see those outcomes I mean the rhetoric is one thing seeing a 95 to 98 graduation rate for all of our students is is another and I hope that we're all committed to focusing our work on black students specifically being comfortable with saying the word black students and and understanding that when we talk about black students we're using that term as a proxy for all of our students
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but recognizing that we need to focus our attention on on the very black and Native students that were intentionally not serving and and that those benefits will trickle up to all students so thank you uh Rita director Moore for your work on this I didn't see it still very late today but um I'm fully supportive so thank you director to pass any any further comment yeah this is Julia um so my question um is is this on the District web page I'm sorry I'm a visual learner um and you read it very well director Moore um but is it posted somewhere I went on just one on the District web page I couldn't find it um it's it's not posted it was sent in an email to you okay this afternoon I wasn't sure if it had changed since then um no okay it would be great if we had it posted because I think it's a it's a big Manifesto um and again I'm a visual learner so I'm just thinking back to the verbal um rendition and I think that you've captured I think the collective um Spirit of um the work that most of us that all of us have said that we're committed to um I um I'm trying to think in if I had the language in front of me of like how we link it to actual action I know where there's the piece about um getting reports um but I feel that just having been around PBS for 30 years that um you know I believe many people are well intentioned but we need to make sure that we link it with action because I don't want a year from now it to be that we um commit committed ourselves um our hearts in a mind but then there's not action behind it so um I just want to make sure that we have something that acknowledges that that um this will be actually linked to actions data and like robust um conversations about our work and how it plays out and I'm just going to go back up to the very uh start Rita of so that's one you know how do we for sure link into um actions so the community can hold us accountable because they can't hold us accountable just uh for Good Intentions um but they can hold us accountable for what action you take um and then the second piece go ahead I was just going to add that I can I will pledge to work with director Moore and superintendent if you could make um Danny Ledesma available to help us in this effort we can um just like with all of our our board um goals we can um pull out some specific accountability metrics there and calendar them and align them with our board work so that we actually can report back to the board about when we will be um you know checking in on these accountability metrics actually what I would suggest is that be a full board discussion um because uh I know that director uh pass for example raised in the past getting just a bit some baseline data around Recruitment and Retention and hiring and so I think that would be a great discussion for the for the full board because then we all um are will be in agreement on what what the action looks like um and a really specific point and Rita I think it was like in the first resolved it talks about the board working with the superintendent and um it seems like it should be the board the superintendent and the brought and the broader PPS Community not just the board working with the superintendent but again I don't have the language in front of me so that would be one suggestion I would make I want to say one more thing and that's a couple weeks ago um we had a conversation about safety and I I shared that we should be mindful about the word safety because that word means different things to different communities and so I'm really I'm grateful that we are expanding our own use of the word safety to Encompass safety for black and brown students um and recognizing how they show up in spaces that haven't been safe for them ever and um we're expecting their brains to be open to learning and they're coming in like scared animals and
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um from fear from not being safe and just out in society and so um I'm really grateful for that and I also think yes I mean we're talking about racial equity and how it how it ends up within our system with students and teachers and administrators but we could also go kind of upstream and look at our operations and HR you know how are we recruiting um teachers and administrators um that are from black indigenous communities of color how can we report out on the data that we need um when we're doing these Bond projects how do we know what the percentage of minority and women and contractors um is that are working on these projects what what we know when we hire minority and women on contractors that those dollars stay in the community for longer which helps our our community overall for longer right our dollars aren't going out out of state and so um I feel like this is a really great opportunity and I'm also very interested and we'll have a keen ear towards watching what's beyond the rhetoric and and holding my you know my own self accountable for um for paying attention go ahead Scott uh director of the past we do actually um our office of school modernization regularly reports and has metrics around the Contracting um contractors uh owned by women and people of color um so that that's there and uh we do a reasonably good job of hitting our inspiration or being pretty close to our aspirations I don't have any idea what our aspiration rate is I have a really good idea what it is for the city of Portland and for Metro but I I don't know what it is for PPS um I'd like to know what the number is there is an actual number like it's sometimes it's 18 percent and that's a nuanced number um do you have any idea offhand what our goal is Dan I'll let you answer that question it's on our dashboard for uh our quarterly reports yes hello uh good evening Dan young Chief Operating Officer 18 is the right that is our Target for all of our projects over a hundred thousand dollars uh I believe is the same as the city of Portland but it may have changed over the years thank you so I think we're hearing um that we um in addition to um acting on this resolution that you brought forward tonight director Moore um we're hearing that we're gonna we need to have more discussion around how we're going to own it so to speak how we're going to engage the community how we're going to engage our students and how we're going to create some um tangible accountability metrics to back up um our expression of commitment so um we will I'll we'll work together as a board to for the next uh figure out the next time we'll revisit this issue and and try to get down to brass tacks on some accountability metrics but can we um superintendent can we count on some assistance from Danny Ledesma in the suffer able to support the board as it desires can I make one more Point certainly as um one of the senior people around I was on a uh close the achievement Gap District task force in like 2002 as a parents and he came quickly apparent it was just an exercise uh nothing serious was going to happen with it um and um and I want to contrast that with uh the Strategic plan in process that the superintendent presented and staff presented two weeks ago week and a half ago LED off with Community engagement um and and specifically with our communities of color um so and if the budget that we're going to talk about in a bit um certainly is um Equity through and through in terms of how we're spending our dollars so uh just in that almost 20-year period of
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seeing a lot of rhetoric um look at the budget um and and look at those communication lines uh and that kind of community engagement um and and that's where you see if we're actually doing what we promise to do can I just say one final I'm not uh I'm not bringing this forth thinking that just by passing um you know a two and a half page Manifesto um we can say we're you know to fix it um it it is all about what we do now um but I do think it is important to to say things out loud um that um we we have a moment now where um I think it's important for people to articulate where they stand um so I wrote it in that sense um but yes I mean in in my mind this is a this is a call to action and I think the first action we can take is later on tonight when we talk about the budget um because it is what we do day to day is what is going to bring these pretty words to life or not um so I think it's up to all of us to um to to Really commit ourselves to um bringing to life the the vision that we talk about all the time um and I'm I'm pleased to say that I I believe we we finally have an Administration that is dedicated all day every day to um to doing right by kids um and um leading up to the rhetoric um and and I'm I'm happy happy to be a part of it um so anyway I offer it not as a um a solution to anything but is is just kind of a Manifesto of this is what we stand for so director constant I have a small Amendment to suggest I now have a little bit in front of me and I don't know if everybody else has it in there um but it is it is posted now okay great uh thank you Roseanne um in the first resolve it says therefore be resolved that the Portland Public Schools board declares the lives of black students and our black community matter and commits to working with the superintendent to create and I would just suggest that after superintendent we say and the Portland School Community with it or the Portland Community so that it's brought so that it's not just there's going to be eight of us um or the board just working with the superintendent because it has a broader um engagement Miss large can we embed that as a friendly Amendment with no objection I think you can treat it as a friendly Amendment all right consider it done thank you thank you director brim Edwards um all in favor of endorsing this resolution please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes student representative lateral yes all right thank you very much thank you director Moore and to be continued um yes directors um you know every day I wake up as a person of color and um I I've dedicated uh my entire career uh to living and working surveying all students uh Children and Youth especially students of color who haven't been served well in public education and I've done that in two Urban cores in the country and for the last 10 years on an almost weekly basis I've spent an evening listening Boards of Education uh conduct their business or introduce resolutions Lambert hundreds open but there are very few that I can count that I can think of that attempt to do what I just heard director more just state and I just want to state that I appreciate and commend putting that stake in the ground and I think the board should take the time to
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be really clear about what it's committing to because what I heard is a desire to proceed with a clear mandate and a racial Equity agenda and that's going to require political will and for those that have been paying attention we've initiated a racial equity on social justice framework we've talked about accountability goals that place students of color as the barometer in some ways we've been working really hard to create a functioning learning organization that would be ready to start to do the kind of work that is going to be required to actually create the counter narrative for students of color while serving everyone and I think that's the notion behind targeted Universal and then we need to continue to have a lot of dialogue about uh and so I I do hope the directors take this as a meaningful uh exercise because it communicates a lot to Educators and to the community uh into best and especially to those that have been disenfranchised um so I know they're listening I can tell you right now my attendance is way up listening um and um I'd love to stay I'd love to step on the gas pedal um uh it is time to to stop sort of tinkering around the edges um our students have been waiting in our communities been waiting for a long time and I it wasn't sort of um it wasn't just a cliche thing to say uh are we committed and ready to becoming a premier School District this is an opportunity in a moment in time and sometimes we're not ready to hear our students because they have crystal balls envisioning that we're a little more dense about hearing um but we we've had some unique opportunities recently we're able to make despite Cuts I'm glad our cbrc members to really start thinking about student support and affirmation in a different way it doesn't require armed officers in our hallways we'll let you know when we need to um and so I I appreciate the um the the effort uh and and the commitment and uh I don't think we need another layer of uh work per se because I think that should be captured in our emerging strategic plan and the system ships that we say we want to make uh and uh we've always committed to becoming more balanced about the performance indicators that we want to report on on a quarterly and annual basis so let's do that work and let's capture it through the vehicles that are intended to spell out uh what our district Improvement what our system changes are going to look like so um I appreciate the conversation I I hope it's not uh uh I've I've looked I've had the chance to witness a lot of board meetings over the years um that um we not get bogged down and sort of overly process so what I think is intended to be just a clear statement about the commitment and willingness to get started in really doing this work so thank you can I just say one more thing I'm sorry I keep jumping in but I think that's my job I I want us to recognize that we're we're doing this work that's so amazing in the context of a state that has a very bad history around black and brown people um and so we're gonna be facing some difficult conversations probably especially we're going to be talking about the budget later this evening and we're going to be talking about resources resourced in communities that we don't and have not resourced before and sometimes that feels a little funny um but I just I'm going to invite everybody to step into that discomfort because it is business not as usual when we Center um outcomes for black and brown students and and just just to be okay with that discomfort when we're doing uh this change management process at the district level it does feel it does feel different um none of us have experience if you've been in Portland long enough resourcing anything that's black or brown lead and so it feels different and it's okay it's going to be uncomfortable and we need to do it anyway um so that's my I'll shut up Michelle I think those comments are so important as we lead into our budget discussion
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because um there is no mistaking this budget and this budget process as a fairly radical document and certainly an anti-racist document in in centering our resource allocation in the board centering our board goals on the achievement of our black and Native students so um I will move us along so that we can get to the meat of that conversation but I just wanted to recognize that superintendent that um you know the the values and the direction expressed um in the budget proposal are are absolutely aligned with this conversation um all right speaking of those efforts the next item on our agenda is a deep dive into um oh no we have not voted thank you very much Rita yes we did vote we did vote we did vote um superintendent Guerrera would you like to introduce this next item on our multi-tiered systems of support which is an important component of what we've just been discussing as well absolutely because I think when we support our students well we'll pay this attends to their unique needs and affirms their identities then we can place the focus on our core mission of educating them so uh I know that we have a number of our talented staff uh ready to describe for you an update on where we are with our district-wide efforts around a multitude system of support but Amela lab chief of student Support Services Brenda Martin that set up the volleyball for the team uh thank you superintendent and thank you uh excuse me board of directors um I think that tonight's discussion uh in tonight's presentation on excuse me multi-tiered systems of support is a perfect tie-in because multi-tiered systems of support really does align with our vision our strategic plan and our theory of action and I would like to start with her theory of action it says if we braid racial equity and social justice strategies into our instructional core work with our students teachers and content and build our organizational color and culture and capacity to create a strong Foundation to support every student then we will reimagine Portland Public Schools to ensure that every student especially our black and our Native American students realize the vision of The Graduate portrait and that is that is huge that's what um that's what we need to do we need to take action I think the superintendent when he got here a few years ago and hired me into this position it was my charge to create a multi-tiered system of support department and this tiered support system is critical to providing that first good teaching the good first teaching in our classrooms for all of our students especially our black and our native students uh we must have a system to meet students where they are both academically behaviorally emotionally and provide those tiered supports and interventions as needed in order to move our students from tiers two and three back down to tier one additionally our black and brown students continue to be excluded at disproportionate rates we must work differently to keep all of our students in school thank you Roseanne so as you can see on the PowerPoint this is an overview of our pyramid and what mtss oversees so we really look at our academic and climate structures through a tier one support first and that is universal teaching it's all students all settings being preventative and proactive then we move into our tier two which is our smaller groups of students to provide intervention and supports and then we finally move into tier three um the rest of my staff will be talking about those tiered supports um how we provide Fidelity implementation Tools in our schools
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how we partner with our office of teaching and learning for those academic supports in tier one two and three how we also braid our racial equity and social justice practices into our mtss system of support we also look through a trauma-informed lens and we provide restorative justice practices we do all of this to promote School climate a sense of belonging for our students and and when we are able to engage all of our students specifically our black and our native students we will increase academics and social emotional pro-social behaviors for all of our students and so with that I am going to introduce uh Chandra Cooper she is our senior director for mtss thank you good evening thank you Brenda I appreciate the opportunity this evening to be able to introduce my team we have um Char Hudson with us who is our restorative justice manager we also have Naomi montalongo with us who is a program and manager for mtss I'm sorry program administrator and then we also invited Myrna Munoz who is the principal at wrigler so right now I'm going to actually turn it over to Naomi who's going to share a little bit of the um overview and structure for our department Roseanne can you move it to the next slide please thank you is Naomi on mute Naomi are you there can you hear me now yes yes all right good evening and thank you again for having us on the agenda tonight I'm Naomi Montelongo one of the program administrators in the mtss department and to start with with a quick overview of our current structure in this department you will see the breadth of mtss work district-wide beginning on the left you'll see the restorative justice program manager and three RJ Specialists and you're going to hear a lot more about their powerful work later in this presentation next you see there are currently 10 mtss teachers on special assignment or ptosis that are each assigned to support between 8 to 10 schools in both climate and academic systems and support in addition there are two mtss tosas who specifically support the use of the Fidelity implementation tool or fit across all schools in the district and we'll also briefly look at what the fit provides for schools and the district on a later slide and finally the mtss department also has the District student conduct coordinator who supports and advises schools in the district as well as the district expulsion officers and that process next slide please to give a picture of what artosa support in schools the 10 mtss toast us who directly support schools have a broad set of responsibilities and duties they must have expertise in both academic and climate systems as well as in providing professional development in many settings as seen in the First Column ptosis work directly with schools around specific team structures and those are critical to best meeting the needs of all students ptosis can support instructional leadership teams with processes for creating a clear mission and vision creating Master schedules and co-facilitating the Fidelity implementation tool and using that data for school Improvement student intervention teams are supported with the process and organization for tiered interventions for both academics and behavior and climate teams are supported with data collection through the culturally responsive tiered Fidelity inventory or crtfi they're supported in using the racial equity and social justice lens in developing school-wide climate action plans and continued strengthening of positive behavior intervention and supports and finally they also support the Improvement of professional learning
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communities or PLC at the building level the second column describes the areas in which mtss ptosis provide professional development at various levels at the district level district-wide tulsas Provide support for the mtss coaching academies and you're going to hear more about that in a bit as well they also develop and provide district-wide professional development on many topics and though some of those are listed here including their functional behavioral assessments and Behavior Support plans student intervention teams again PBIS effective classroom practices Java likes for school climate Specialists and and also mtss 101 at the school level they work closely with each of their building administrators and their teams to develop and provide personalized professional development at staff meetings and at the teacher level ptosis can provide classroom coaching as well as direct grade level PLC support the final column on this page as an overview of some of the work that mtss toastas do to support system development and this includes continued research on best practices racial equity and social justice alignment Within mtss further development of PD opportunities and cross-department alignment and collaboration through the next slide so the mtss department supports individual schools and the use of a variety of data tools to collect data related to mtss including survey data and the crtfi which is a self-assessment that focuses deeply on climate and in addition the Fidelity implementation tool or fit is being used district-wide as an evidence-based tool that measures the extent to which a school implements ntss for equity-based education the fit was implemented last school year with all of the CSI TSI and Title 1 schools and this school year it was used district-wide for all schools this particular graph shows Baseline fit data for all schools half of which was collected in the spring of last school year and the other half in the fall of this school year the items along the bottom of this graph show the features that are reviewed using the fit and then schools are provided with individual reports to inform School Improvement planning this tool is not meant as an evaluation the intent is to measure growth over time as schools implement the features of mtss now with the school closure due to covid-19 the second set of fit data that would have been collected this spring is pending and of course if you're interested in looking more into the domains and features of the fit I encourage you to visit the mtss webpage on the PPS website where you can find more information on this and other mtss reports now I would like to pass this along to char Hudson good evening members of the Board of Education PPS community and superintendent Guerrero I'm Char Hudson the program manager for restorative justice in Portland Public Schools I'm honored to support students School staff and the PPS Community the roots of restorative justice also known as RJ stem from practices of indigenous people of North America Africa South America and New Zealand RJ is about building maintaining and repairing relationships to form healthy supportive reflective and inclusive communities RJ provides support for schools to maintain those healthy relationships and encourages Equitable access to a culturally relevant and meaningful education what is true about restorative justice is that unlike a typical discipline program it is not a cookie cutter system with set steps to follow in every incident when done thoughtfully and with meaning schools that put restorative justice into practice and approach RJ holistically looking at how we are building relationships with our students how we are preventing wrongdoing as much as how to address it when it occurs they will see a shift in school culture next slide please as a team of four Mighty restorative justice urgent Specialists and I love my team we have Sarah home who works with K5 and K-8 schools Keela Tillery who works with middle schools and some K-5 schools in
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Jasmine spring who works with K5 and K-8 schools and all on the program manager I still do Direct Services and I work with and support high schools in the 2018-2019 school year our objective was to provide restorative justice practices to all 91 PPS schools who requested an RJ process or needed staff training however as a small team of four that sometime resulted in us over promising and under delivering for the 2019-2020 school year we all we all redesigned our school support approach by identifying focus and responsive schools with our current model we work with Focus schools to build a multi-year district-wide implementation of restorative justice practices Focus schools are intentionally building a restorative Community with the commitment from school school administration some of the ways we support our focused schools are providing on-site training for staff supporting school teams and teachers with Community Building circles working side by side with Student Success Advocates our School site RJ coordinators and other support staff giving guidance and assistance and working toward responding and repairing harm we support our responsive schools by providing a Google screening tool used to request RJ services on an as needed basis to give an example Sarah supports 29 schools seven schools are Focus sites and 22 schools are responsive sites every week Sarah visits half of her focused schools in order to fill the needs of each site she also communicates with her responsive schools when a request for a RJ process or on-site staff training is needed and she responds immediately when a racially charged incident occurs in our district the RJ team values the importance of collaboration and community building the most effective way for us to do this is with cross departmental collaboration we partner with Danny Ledesma and Jonathan Garcia in the 1819 school year to co-create the student engagement conversations using a restorative lens as well as visiting schools to listen to students share their thoughts about the placement of sros and school campuses we are committed to disrupting implicit and explicit biases using both the racial equity and social justice lens and arj lens when conducting school-wide in our district-wide training we use data to show racial disparities their disparities regarding lgbtqia students and students with disability so that staff and climate teams become aware of the harms to to their students we work with James Loveland and Mila Rodriguez sedare with Student Success and health in regards to escalating conflicts and supporting students and families of color and responding to hate discriminatory events RJ team conducts say RJ process in classrooms and with small groups after a mental health crisis and our team has supported students and families after incidents were where drugs or alcohol were involved we support the rapid respond team when requested to help teachers strengthen relationships with students we are available to support students at Student Success Center before during and after the students time at SSC RJ Specialists support re-entry meetings processing the events with the community and preparing for the students re-entry back into the community we have assistant Dana Raymer Reimer student discipline coordinator to conduct both students and family listening sessions in regards to the discipline policies and changes to the student handbook handbook using a restorative Focus next slide please sort of practices uses tier one for prevention measures and tiers two and three for intervention measures the goal is to use the first implementation year to build tier one practices with the focus on building relationships using Community Building circles having restorative conversations and providing RJ training and education and use as an intervention measure a restorative approach to discipline change the fundamental questions that are asked when a behavioral incident occurs I've listed the practices for each tier but for the sake of time given to me I will not go into definition however I will direct you to review the
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resources we shared with you in our Google Drive next slide please we offer district-wide training for PPS staff throughout the school year the school year this school year we had 120 PPS staff attend our Tier 1 introduction to restorative justice training that included 31 school teams and seven District staff we had 42 PPS staff attend our tier two harm and conflict training and that included 21 school teams and three District staff and then we had two School administrators and eight climate team Specialists and our Deans who attended our re-entry and Conference training we had smaller numbers and attendance this year with our tier three training due to the capacity to fund substitute coverage and our numbers were impacted because of the last three training sessions being canceled due to covet 19. however the RJ team is looking forward to expanding the training opportunities for restorative justice next school year as I close I ask you to take a moment think of the impact of covid-19 on our community families are out of work or other families are working twice as hard as essential workers covid-19 brought to the surface many racial social and economic Injustice in our world and within our district from the lack of access to food for some families to the lack of access to the internet and technology devices we have all watched the demonstrators protest for black lives matter as we witnessed the murder of George Floyd the lynching of Ahmad Aubry and the execution of Brianna Taylor my hope is to see the commitment to expanding restorative practices throughout our district making it a mandate practice in order to repair harm and truly build schools to be Community hubs where every individual is celebrated and empowered to be their true authentic selves the city of Portland and Portland Public Schools need help healing during and after the pandemic and restorative justice is the most authentic way to achieve healing as we move move forward with our new normal restorative justices is not a program it's who we are it's how we show up every day to impact the lives of our students and school communities we would love the opportunity to come back to present to the board of directors the importance of implementing restorative justice district-wide how we can move how we can move the work forward building and adapting policies to shift from a historically punitive discipline to a restorative Community Based and responsive school system thank you I'll now give this over to our next speaker okay thank you Char that's gonna be hard to one to follow slide please so Myrna and I are going to uh close the presentation with a brief update um on our mtss trainings up to date actually Roseanne can you go back one more thank you so as you may know we do have a contract with um solution tree and a partnership as well we have been very fortunate to have secured three very highly effective trainers and Consultants who we work very closely with we have a three-year Implement implementation training plan our first year of training actually began last year in 2018-2019 and it was intentional that we started with all of our district leaders including central office administrators all of our building administrators and then we were also able to offer two days of training for all of our district tosos coaches and mentors so the trainings last year really did emphasize the why and the research that supports mtss implementation and it was also important that we established a common Vision a common understanding and language around mtss before we began the training at our school sites so then this year 2019 2020 was actually our second year of the training plan and we were able to start with our school teams this year it was important to the senior leaders that we did not extend the training longer than two years for our school teams so in order to do this we divided our district into two cohorts cohort one includes all of our CSI TSI
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and title schools plus we have eight more schools that were either in those regions or they requested to be a part of cohort one and this made up about 41 schools who went through our training this year and then this upcoming year 2020 2021 will be our third year of training and that will be all of our remaining schools for cohort too uh next slide please so this slide is a visual to help show the structure of our training and how we were able to uh divide our 41 schools into three different groups this um also allowed us to have three different trainers and it gave us an opportunity to provide differentiation so that we could have all of our middle school and high schools together so you can see in group a that's all of our middle school and high schools and so their trainer Luis Cruz was actually specializes in secondary education our sessions are actually called coaching academies and they're scheduled in three two-day sessions for a total of six days so each school that you see on the slide uh brought a team of six which included the building principal and then the principals did have flexibility on who their team was that they uh brought to the trainings but most of our principals brought their instructional leadership team so the concept of our coaching Academy is really similar to a trainer of trainer model where school teams will attend the two-day session and then they are expected to go back to their buildings apply content learned as well as share the content with the larger staff before returning for the second two-day session so you can see by the scheduled training days at the top of each group that the sessions were scheduled four to six weeks apart which was intentional to allow time to go back and apply the mtss team also attended these sessions you can see towards the bottom of the slide the mtss tosa teacher on special assignment is assigned to their schools and they actually attend the sessions with their schools Naomi and I also attended the all of the sessions for all of the groups and so with that we were able to create summary slide decks after each of the two-day sessions and these summary slide decks were really intended for the school teams to go back and use the slide Deck with their larger staff we just realized that when teams come together for two full days of content it wouldn't be realistic for them to go back and try to replicate those two days with their staff so the summary slide Decks that we've created are actually in 90 minute modules to be able to fit into staff meetings so lastly if you look at the bottom you will see the outcomes or the focus for each of the days and sessions it was a priority that we were able to customize the content with solution tree and working with our Consultants so that the work that uh has already been done in PPS especially around the GBC and standard-based instruction was aligned and that these mtss trainings really continue to reinforce and build upon the work that Dr Valentino and the OTL team has been rolling out for PPS so as Naomi shared we were not able to administer the fit assessment the Fidelity implementation tool um this spring with these schools due to the extended school closure which is unfortunate because this would have been our first year of growth data or implementation data however I can share with you that we do provide a survey or an exit ticket after each day on each session and I can tell you right now that 100 of the schools in cohort one that you see on this slide are reporting to have regularly plc's professional learning communities scheduled on a regular basis so that is a huge win for us plc's are a significant component of mtss and of our training so with that I'm actually going to turn this over to Myrna who has attended our trainings and she's going to talk a little bit about the mtss work at wrigler evening board what a pleasure to be here it is my first time addressing you so I
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am excited um and I'm excited to share with you what this training did for our team so um the very first time we did the training during the 1819 uh school year it was after Janelle Keating came to talk to us um she kind of talked about how important it was for kids not to be pulled out of their main class um in order to get their interventions and it was it kind of like was like oh yeah like if I'm getting pulled out of math to do reading how do I do this so the first step that Ethan and I my AP and I took was to make a schedule that had additional time and support for every grade level of at least 20 minutes and then in that schedule what we created was the opportunity for the ELD teacher that was assigned to that grade level to be able to push in and do interventions this said to teacher that was assigned to that grade level to go in and do push interventions our intervention is to be able to do push-in intervention so um it was it was our first try and we made lots of mistakes in that but it was kind of how we're arriving at a refined understanding of what tier two supports are and what tier 3 supports are and it also brought our whole staff together in agreement about the fact that tier two needs to kind of be handled by the classroom teacher and then tier three needs to be an outside Source that's closely documenting and and closely checking in on interventions with kids um so it really ended up getting us pretty far this year um the other thing that happened is this last year we've our session two was all about plc's and it had my whole instructional leadership team just super excited because we had plc's at our school but they weren't feeling like we were doing enough work in them they weren't like meaty enough they didn't have data they weren't an inquiry they weren't brought up by teachers um and what happened is after we had the big session um with Brian Butler I was in group C um then we came back as a cohort because I'm I'm in a cohort that has a senior director for just the nine of our schools so also I've gotten the opportunity to see how this tiering support works as a system right because I'm getting the tiered support I'm definitely feeling the love and excited this year about what is possible for my students but anyway in that little group we delve deeply into what a PLC should look like and the structure it should have and I immediately stepped back and thought oh goodness that's not what we're doing so we I have an amazing team of teachers at Riddler if you have not been there you have to come check us out um but we agreed that one person per grade level would come out and do a full day training about what it was to be the PLC leader and I added links on here if somebody could help me click click on the kindergarten PLC five five link um I'm particularly proud of what's happening now because what's happened is my teachers are leading their PLC and then it's a database PLC so when they go look if if we don't have time to do it now you can do it later but um if you go look at that PLC there's actually data that we looked at we first agreed what is our biggest concern during this pandemic with students and it was engagement right so then we went right to engagement and we said where do we want to analyze our engagement in Google chat or on the platform and we agreed Google Chat so we took careful data about who was engaging and who was not engaging and we were able to see pretty clearly like who the kids were that needed tier three interventions which while we're online was me giving the family a call to find out what was happening what was needed if you could scroll up please I could show you where to click so people can see the data but this is just an example of our an agenda that one of the PLC leads created and if we scroll down on it there's a link to the data that we created but it's basically the attendance for Google and then a plan for what are we going to do for the kids that you know that that were able to engage at core what are we going to do with the kids that need a little more and what are we doing for the kids that are not engaging at all so you can go look through this later if you want to I just wanted you to have an example of what that looks like of what it means for us to have like a meaty PLC it's database we're discussing Solutions and who's doing what on a team the other thing I linked on here for you to review was how it changed our Direction our of our of our whole team as a leadership
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team so I shared the leadership team agenda that now regularly starts in our school with looking at which three parts of our PPS Vision are teachers all hooked into and felt like were essential for our school and it was in I think it was day three of Brian Butler's piece that we talked about what leadership is meant for like making the big umbrella and then we went back and re-did our vision and it truly made a difference for us I'll also linked in where our tiering work has taken us during this pandemic I feel like that training was essential in helping prepare us um to be powerful teachers with data while away from the kids as a team so that last sheet if you go look is just a tiering of like who needs what and in what order in what area is it in in hyper um and distance learning engagement is it in math that people need more support um and in closing I wanted to be a little bit of a show-off and show you what we're able to produce um with a base like this um so if if somebody can help me click on that 57 2.53 and go to that part of the video it's the 30-second moment in time from yesterday's fifth grade promotion that kind of shows you like how we're delivering our mission um in supporting all students uh via our work so it looks like nobody can click on that but later if you want go click on it go to that second and be ready to be impressed with what we're creating bilingual by cultural confident strong students that know that they matter thank you so much Brenda I believe I'm handing it back to you thank you Mirna thank you Chandra and Naomi and Char um I know that we went over a little bit um but we're very excited about this work and we really appreciate you taking the time to listen um I think that this is a perfect example of the ways that we are leading um uh doing the work of our racial equity and social justice um uh and and weaving that into action so thank you very much and and that's it thank you Brenda um uh this is this is Rita I am stepping in um director constant had to step away to deal with a family emergency um so I want to open the Florida board members do you have any questions um yeah this is director Bailey um and I I know it's uh one of the outcomes I think that we're seeking from this one one that was an incredible presentation um and there's uh uh from all of you and there's uh I look forward to more conversations and diving into all the stuff on the web page too because there's uh there's there's a lot of you presented some pretty high level stuff that uh I want to dive into personally and uh figure out more one of the outcomes we're looking for um is an authentic reduction in suspensions and explosions [Music] um to be replace by restorative justices uh restorative justice and processes um so it's exciting to see that we're building that framework and implementing that framework and great work is being done do we uh and I again a cultural shift takes time um do we have uh recent data um of course this year it's kind of crazy but uh with suspensions and expulsions and the disparity um yes uh so um you said on our website uh last year's data is on our website uh we're mandated by law at by June 30th of every year uh to post our um our suspension expulsion uh data on our website um we are beginning to do a crosswalk between all of our schools who have received the cohort one mtss training and discipline referrals and then also uh in regards to special ed referrals and the level of implementation within our schools
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using the fit assessment tool to kind of guide our learning and so unfortunately we weren't able to get the full year of data so we're trying now to um to compare apples to apples and just go from September to January and um so we're having to uh personally individually manipulate the data um but that that is that's the proof is in the pudding right um and so uh so that's what we need to do we need to keep our students in school specifically our black and brown students um more specifically are boys uh of color we also need to reduce our special ed referrals and um and so uh there's a ton of research that supports mtss and um that is that is our goal and our plan um okay great and um uh uh glad to hear about that structured intervention period so that it's not interfering with the regular day that's actually a similar structure we kicked around a couple of years ago and last week for middle schools um to do that same kind of thing where students would have a shortened period every day where they could either go to an intervention where they're catching it or go to an enrichment um uh and and do both of those during a during a week um so that's a that's a pretty neat little intervention needed there and if I could just jump in this is not a question so much as a comment so I I had an opportunity last October to visit uh regular and spend uh part of the day with principal Munoz and just see and if I'm remembering right um this was actually we we actually were talking through you were talking through um with some of the um uh Specialists who were sort of Designing the curriculum and actually addressing this issue how do we how do we get this training to teachers so it was um for me it was great to just sort of see that that process and it's it's really um amazing to sort of see this presentation and and the outcome so so thank you very much for that work and um it's really a great presentation and and really exciting thank you cute thanks all also for coming to regular it's nice to see you guys I would love to come back yeah I'm we're I think we're all totally missing school visits um which was really key to us getting on the ground information um the other piece I want to ask the team is um again thinking of us as a learning organization um and you mentioned one of the feedbacks you get you got was that 100 yeah we're trying to implement this um what's the other uh methods of feedback that you get uh to say yes teachers are integrating this staff are integrating this into the day-to-day work of the school um Chandra would you like to answer that sure maybe we've got a couple of different answers from or one from each of your team members oh sure yeah so if you um remember Brenda sharing our department really overseas climate and PBIS and discipline and referrals as well as the academics so on the academic side we are looking at that fit as we talked about the fit assessment and so right now we have the Baseline but we'll have our one year of growth data next year um besides the academic or besides the fit we also rely fairly heavily on those survey survey and exit tickets because it's a team of six that's completing them so it's not just the building principle or it's not just one person from that school so it's Fairly reliable on the school climate side we also oversee the successful School survey so we use that data pretty heavily to look at how that can inform School climate plans as well as the culture responsive tiered Fidelity inventory which is also a school climate assessment that we use um so with all of that data it kind of helps us inform not only where schools need support but how we can also tailor our professional development to help schools we are really looking forward to having that fit assessment and have that data because that will be the beginning of showing our implementation growth one one reason we hired the superintendent was because during an
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interview he showed us this incredible display of it data dashboard that just knocked our socks off and I can I look forward to seeing us build that dashboard that would include your work and make that transparent publicly available so we can see exactly the kind of progress we're making in transforming this district for director Mars Manifesto we're just now my Manifesto too since I voted for it thank you so much so much waiting for that deep dive into all the work that's been going on um with mtss um do we have any further discussion board members before we move on no just that I appreciate the um presentation and now I want to go to regular 2. this is uh we'd like to have you come anytime I can't wait if you're nice you'll get a T-shirt oh um well you know I'll go anywhere for a t-shirt um so I I will say even though we haven't uh we're not in the school at regular I think your presentation really captured the energy and the passion and the depth of the work that's happening in regular so thank you I think in a virtual environment it was almost like being there at the school um so thanks for that I want to go back I just want to say it's inspiring to work with people like you so it's why I'm passionate and I'm glad I got to come on this particular night thank you for the opportunity um the other question I had was just about the restorative justice um slides that were presented and you know in some ways um it while we didn't know the resolution was going to be brought um before us tonight and the whole conversation about action um not just words um the restorative justice presentation really um I think fits nicely into our future facing and are action oriented and um I think as a parent and then also looking just at the discipline and then how um police interact sometimes with our students um that this restorative justice piece which de-escalates and gives our students and our staff other tools um to really approach um any challenging environments in our school in a very different way than we traditionally have approached them um so I just wanted to say to the team I'm really excited I'm going to be interested in how it gets rolled out so that everywhere in our in our district that um we all have that that's anchoring our work and I really applaud um the uh Brenda you and your entire team um and everybody presented tonight in sort of leading the way in sort of our new our new practices especially as we sort of close the door on some practices that have we've had historically for a long time it's we're resource officers um and sort of Engagement with law enforcement and pivoting forward so thanks for the presentation I really look forward to how it's going to continue to um Cascade out into the district uh thank you directors um we really appreciate um the feedback uh and I do want to let you know that the superintendent with our reduced Sia funds has still prioritized an additional restorative justice Specialists so we will be adding another FTE of an RJ specialist for next fall so it's really awesome um to have that Edition um and to be led by uh Char and Chandra so so thank you that's great to know and with that I think I'll move us closer to our discussion of the budget um director Moore we're going to LeapFrog the items the policy items and get back to them at the end of the evening if that's all right with you and um move on to ask for a report from our community budget Review Committee um every year the Board of Education uh appoints a community budget Review Committee to assist in the annual budget process and they're important Partners in this process the cbrc is tasked with reviewing evaluating and making recommendations to the board regarding the superintendent's proposed budget and any other budgetary issues the cbrc or the board identify cbrc also monitors and advises the board on the allocation and expenditure of
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local option Levy funds tonight we'll hear a report from committee co-chairs Thomas Lanham and Sarah Kerr I also want to thank board director Lowry for her work as our board representative on the cbrc Sarah and Thomas welcome right thank you can you all see and hear me we can excellent uh thanks thanks so much um so good evening for those of you who don't uh yet know me my name is Sarah Kerr and I've had the privilege of co-chairing uh the uh Community budget Review Committee uh this year as well as the year prior uh importantly I'm also a ppf parent of a rising second grader at Rose City Park Elementary uh and so it's great to be here with you in my capacity as a cbrc member and as a PPS Community member I really appreciate the opportunity uh before I turn things over to Thomas to begin to step us through the report I wanted to take just a few minutes to express our gratitude to you all the board of directors to superintendent Guerrero um to the PPS Finance staff team in particular this year for their incredibly hard work um it's been uh I feel like the word complex is an understatement it's been a really complex and difficult budget year and just climate in general and so I'd like to particularly appreciate the that team Deputy superintendent Hertz uh CFO Cynthia LA and their teams for supporting us while also juggling the really difficult work of developing a budget in this climate and supporting the entire PPS staff to really support the immediate needs of students and and their families during this you know covid related school closures and all of the impact it's had on our students um I'd also like to appreciate director Lowry for her support of us and our committee and finally would like to appreciate my fellow cbrc members um including Thomas my co-chair many of whom are with us this evening um virtually I'd also like to acknowledge upfront our committee's deep appreciation of pps's centering of the proposed budget on our shared our community's shared principles of racial equity and social justice I know this has come up many times in conversation this evening and I just want to underscore our committee's appreciation and recognition of that uh particularly given this moment of both incredible sorrow I would say and hope for our black community members and all community members of color we share your urgency PPS and and board and passing a budget that lifts up the voices of of our underserved students and communities and release centers on them so thank you for that as well and then finally I'd really like to borrow Maxine's words from earlier and just recognize that I too am just a middle class white chick um and I I think I'd be remiss not to take this opportunity to note to the board and those listening in tonight um that communities of color continue to be underrepresented on our committee on the cbrc and I don't think that's okay um and I think that black lives matter and black voices matter and that we need more of them on this committee moving forward and I felt important to underscore that in light of all of the conversations and the moment we find ourselves in and so without further Ado I will turn things over to Thomas to step us through the beginning of our report to you all thank you thank you so much Sarah my name is Thomas Lanham I'm a co-chair of the cbrc uh you've already covered the purpose of the cbrc so I'm I'm just going to step through some limitations uh that we encountered while we while we worked through the budget with uh the finance staff um the focus of our review some observations that we have then I'll turn it back over to Sarah for recommendations and then we'll come back and talk about the operating Levy which is the second piece of what we are charged with doing so the FY 2021 budget review process was incredibly challenging I think you all know that our report reflects the snapshot as of June 8th three days ago which feels like three years ago frankly um there were significant limitations around our ability to provide a comprehensive report and recommendations to the board first the budget itself is a reflection of pre-coveted Revenue assumptions and is therefore overstated by tens of millions of dollars second the budget includes general fund cuts of over 12 million dollars seven million of which are essential services and 5 million in Staffing but we don't have a lot of detail about what those look like yet so it makes it difficult to evaluate the budget overall and then third the uncertainty around how schools will
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reopen this fall makes it very difficult to evaluate whether the budget being proposed will ultimately be responsive to the new reality that we face um of course you know we've heard uh that PPS staff will be working very hard over the next few weeks and months articulate what that looks like and there will be adjustments to come so one of our recommendations will be to continue to engage us as a committee the focus of our review was on the four budget goals uh that were the result of the visioning process that was completed in 2019 as a reminder to every one those four goals were a third grade reading fifth grade mathematics eighth grade snapshot of graduate performance and I'm gonna go oh a post-secondary Readiness and ready for college and career of those four goals we really felt that third grade reading was the most immediately at risk because of coveted limitations and distance distance learning especially for grades K through two that are just really unable to self-direct so the committee's observations and there are 15 members of our committee uh and this is a unanimous report that we're delivering tonight we believe the budget demonstrates substantial support for those four board goals and we applaud Finance staff for really helping us connect the dots about how this proposed budget supports those four goals it wasn't readily apparent in the budget document itself but they they really stepped up and gave us great assistance in in terms of helping to understand what that looked like we also believe the superintendent and Border deeply commit to racial equity and social justice and that the resj lens has improved the district's focus on historically underserved students we believe the board and superintendent have overall crafted a budget that is squarely focused on investing in historically underserved students and specifically black and Native students we have a number of members on the cbrc that have been on the cbrc for years I think it's fair to say although this was not part of our report that this is Far and Away the most equity-centered budget that we have seen the equity allocation of eight percent of the Staffing model at targeted schools has held steady since FY 1617 and we continue to support this shifted investment in those schools we do have concerns about proposed cuts to pre-covid investment account investments in the multi-tiered systems of support mtss that we just heard about and school counselors in K5 and K-8 schools that receive federal Title 1 funding or were identified on low student performance for comprehensive support in Improvement or CSI we also believe that seven million dollars in cuts to Central Services may be on topple the district has a long history and we all understand why we want to make sure that we continue to support Direct Services to students but you may be cutting too deeply into your administrative core services to the point where it makes things difficult in terms of overall coordination um and so that sort of wraps up the the observations that the that the committee had and I'll turn it back over to Sarah for recommendations okay great and I think we agreed we'd be glad to take questions but it may that it made more sense to hold them until after we deliver our recommendations so we'll look forward to those once I share the the following recommendations um so we had a number and I think you'll find that they they tie to our observations pretty closely um so to start um we recommend additional investment the extent it's possible and supporting K3 literacy and well as Thomas noted we recognize that all students have been impacted by the incredible limitations of distance learning and we're particularly concerned about younger students who are often unable as Thomas noted to self-direct um based on Research done just you know right in our own backyard about estimates for learning loss and projections suggest uh that students may lose up to 70 percent of typical learning gains in reading and 50 in math by next fall in those estimates are are typically much Starker for our younger students and lower grades and we are all like think well aware that states are shifting literacy policies to really you know implement the science of reading we know a lot more about what it takes to provide explicit high quality instruction in reading and we know that more resources are needed to really assist PPS if we're to stay on track to meet that first sport adopted goal of 60 of third graders reading proficiently by
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the end of the 21-22 school year within this particular either virtual or hybrid distance learning context a second we recommend the PPS continue to advocate for protecting and enhancing the K-12 budget for Oregon school districts writ large class sizes despite efforts to date and and the passage of the Student Success act investment remain unacceptably high in this state and in our district and the Oregon Department of Education qem recommends the recommended funding levels has still not been achieved I think everyone on this call is aware of that and while the SSA was a big step in the right direction we note that the overall investment in Oregon students is still not adequate so this is really a call for more advocacy on behalf of PPS at the state level uh third we recommend that when clear guidance for opening schools is available that the board sort of revisit and revise the budget to address whatever that new reality is and I very much think that this is the intent of the district but we wanted to underscore the importance um and in particular um no the massive variation in distance learning that has played out across the district by school and even by grade band within a school I can attest to that personally in my own child's experience um and and in some cases that variation just isn't acceptable and if we have the data to tell us I think we were certain as a committee that it would reflect variation broken down around along racial and income demographic lines again unacceptable and so if schools are allowed to open on a limited basis with low student density though through for example block scheduling or hybrid Blended learning the district's budget should reflect a move towards standardized approaches to distance learning teacher training and support for these new systems these budget revisions should be operationalized through the resj lens that we know the district is committed to to ensure that Blended learning offerings are not will not exacerbate inequities regardless of how instruction is delivered so this is really reconsidering the budget in light of whatever the circumstances call for us we get new and more information fourth we recommend increased investment in recruiting supporting and retaining teachers of color even as the district faces budget constraints that could lead to teacher reductions and force moving forward perhaps less starkly this year but next year as we anticipate further Cuts we cannot afford to lose ground on the early progress we've made on this front as a district and to be clear our black and Native students will stand to lose the most if we back off of those commitments fifth we recommend that the district protect or increase funding for services to support students with disabilities next year's special education leaders and teachers will be challenged to provide supports within a Continuum of teaching and learning models distance through distance and or brick and mortar schooling and it will be imperative even more so that they have adequate funding to address critical decisions about whether to provide services in separate settings how to support parents now responsible for more services at home and the complication of following compliance sixth we recommend maintaining support for Diagnostic assessments such as the map and adding student and school-wide measures of social and emotional learning supports to more nimbly and effectively understand students needs and progress now more important than ever we would argue we know that assessments alone won't result in increased support and outcomes for students and so we're also calling on PPS to make sure that we're adequately resourcing um you know teachers and preparing them to be more data literate and be able to use those data that we are collecting both in terms of academic outcomes and health and mental health and wellness outcomes and that they're able to really use those to make more and better informed decisions on behalf of their students and finally we recommend that the PPS board continue to engage us the community budget committee for the very substantial budget amendments that we anticipate to come over the course of the next several weeks and months is the budget is reconciled to final forecasts thank you very much appreciate that um both of you um I'll start out start out with one kind of high level question about your recommendations Sarah um are your recommendations really a statement of principles that the cbrc is expressing or are they directly um related to gaps or um perhaps deficiencies that you noted in the budget framework that's a great question I'm happy to
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feel field it first and then Thomas uh please uh add on um I think probably a mix to be honest I mean in in part um out of necessity because we were reviewing a budget that didn't reflect doesn't reflect reality um and so we we um wanted to focus um in particular on the alignment of proposed um you know expenditures against the four board goals so we we looked at that in principle and then you know to the extent that we had accurate information available that was more reflective of what we are anticipating having available budget wise next year we did try to connect our recommendations to observations specifically or specific line items within the budget so um you know the mtss one is a good example and actually might reflect you know potentially misunderstanding which would be good to unearth over the course of the discussion that you all will have you know a spreadsheet that we saw pretty recently as a committee our understanding was that the original budgeted amount which was close to a million for mtss was reduced by nearly 800 167 thousand dollars um in the revised budget and so to us that our understanding was that that was sending a signal of of a cut um and services or maybe not a cut of services that hadn't been offered but a delay in implementing some of that and so that was an example of us you know making an observation about MC mtss or expressing a concern that was directly tied to a line item that we saw and that was shared with us But to answer your question more explicitly I would say admit and briefly I would say a mix Thomas anything to add I think you're on mute Thomas thank you I thought you covered it well I think the other so so I think that there was some deficiencies although it's very difficult for citizen budget advisors to dive into the tens of thousands of lines of detail of all the Departments across PPS one of the things that I think we felt pretty strongly about was that learning loss K3 in particular around literacy is something like 50 to 70 percent I think that was a report that we saw at one point um and so we didn't see a real strong investment in that area um we had some concerns about that and we felt that that might be an area you want to look at especially given that it's a that it's a a goal that the board specifically called out in just last year so I hope that helps thank you on board questions for our cbrc Representatives so um this is a a little tongue-in-cheek but actually serious as well um and and especially because you're you're versed in the entire budget what would you have us spend less on if we were going to spend more on in any of the uh areas you uh picked out which I am very sympathetic with everything that you said so that's that's not the issue but um you know that's that's our dilemma but I I wondered if there were areas that you saw that you thought and here's an area you might be able to tweak down in in your assessment um with with doing minimal impact on our students I can answer that I mean the answer is no the committee did not go into the budget and attempt to identify shifts that could occur from one area to another um we just felt that that was beyond our capacity in terms of limitations that we have right now it is a very good question you are faced there was a presentation I don't know before the board a couple of board meetings ago about um you know it's not a zero-sum gain environment uh you know the pie doesn't but there really is a pie right I mean you really do have finite decisions you have a finite budget you'll finite resources um the budget the the the the the district cannot do all the things that it wants to do and so when we hear um lofty aspirations that are not backed by resources we we do get a little skeptical um that said to be honest no we were not able to dive in and identify other areas that we would recommend to cut in so
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uh unfortunately that is um your thankless task sorry yeah and again partly that was tongue in Chic because I know yeah it's why we get paid the big bucks though um it's more of a sort of a comment uh Thomas it's good to see you again Thomas and I have worked together a lot of budgets over the years um the um what I really I appreciated the the recommendations in the cbrc report they're very well thought out and very thorough and you say you haven't had time to dive into a lot of line items but I actually was really impressed with with sort of what you did do and and I I just want to call and I think it might come up later um in the conversation as well but your point about the the custom Central Services being untenable I think is a really important one and I wanna I just want to amplify that because um all the things you talk about in terms of literacy third grade literacy and and and advocating you know for more resources Etc are really important but I don't want to lose that that point that um you know when we uh and I'm going to say the same thing in about an hour I'm sure so um just get ready for it again when we talk about Administration when we talk about Central Services that is always and I've gotten about 400 emails over the last two days um saying why don't you cut those services and the the thing that I find most interesting is in a lot of those emails they simultaneously complain about the lack of communication the lack of school support the lack of Engagement um the lack of Maintenance in their school the lack of HR help the lack of you know goal setting and accountability every one of those things they're complaining about are administrative costs and so I think as we look at this budget and we go into this conversation and we have been over the last few weeks and as we go into it and we go into those cuts it's not that we shouldn't cut Administration it's going to have to happen but being really really careful and thoughtful and conscientious about that because those are the things and those are the those those you know Administration has this bad rap but it is actually incredibly important to a successful school system so I just really appreciate that the cbrc included that in your report so thank you can I answer one quick quick comment to that um just to sort of co-sign um two things really and I'll be brief one is um I think what I think that our recommendation around preserving or not sort of being very thoughtful about what cuts are made centrally directly ties in a lot of ways too the the our concerns about K3 literacy given where the district is in in supporting Educators and rolling out a new more rigorous robust curriculum I think that does take a certain level of of support centrally to do that in a in a really high quality effective way from a communication standpoint from a pedagogy standpoint from a training standpoint and so I actually see those things directly connected and I think that's just I wanted to underscore that um and secondly I think it ties to the point we tried to make around variation being unacceptable I'm not someone who wants to go in and tell you know I think school every school has its own Rhythm and rhyme and culture and I'm not I don't think we're suggesting to take away from that but I think the degree of variation that those of us on the committee experience those of us with students in Portland Public Schools experienced over the last several months and the possibility of that continue viewing um over the course of the next you know the coming months is concerning and part of that I do think ties to the level of support you know Common expectations and support that a school system is setting and then following through on and so it's sort of a question about are we a school system implementing something or are we a system of individual schools that are sort of their own fiefdoms and going their own way and making choices and again it's not that one is right and the other is wrong but I think as we're trying you know in this whole new world implementing some sort of distance learning or Hybrid next year it's going to be increasingly important to have support um centrally to do that well and measure it and and continuously improve I think I think that's a really good great remark and I'll make one more and then ask the board if there's other questions I think the last time that the cbrc looked at the staff being for just your central Information Technology shop for example um and forgive me but I'm I'm going off recollection but I'm pretty sure I'm right we saw in the ballpark of around 50 ftes in your central I.T shop um an organization of similar size and complexity uh the city of Portland has I think north of 200 people in that same function and so as we step into a place where distance learning although we don't know we don't like it may become more of a norm um a shop of that size may not be tenable going forward now let me be clear the cbrc is not recommending specifically into you know increased investments in the it shop it's just as
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simply an example of one of the areas that that may that may be cut as a result of the budget being proposed when really an investment in that area would be smart if it was possible and we understand the very difficult and almost impossible trade-offs that are before the board um but I thought I would just highlight that as an example we do need to also cover at some point here briefly the levy but there may be other questions about our budget report itself so I'll stop thank you Thomas Let's do let's um board members do we have more questions about their recommendations before we move on to their Levy report yeah first of all um just real quick I should have let off with a big thank you to you and the committee's work this is Dr Larry with mcbrc as did director Moore back in the day and um I just really appreciate both Sarah and Thomas's leadership and the way that you have worked really hard to try to make sure all voices are heard and they do this cool thing where you have to like move your name tag if you want to speak so there's they're making sure there's room for all voices and I just I want to thank you for your impressive leadership um this past year and the hard work you've done accolades I also just want to say I just want to say thank you to the cbrc as well for uh their commitment uh we had uh they asked great challenging questions in their last meeting which I had a chance to to dialogue with them about I really appreciate the report uh and I appreciate calling out that uh our primary grade level students really do need access to high quality literacy materials and thank you for using technology as another area where we need to make sure we have sufficient resources curriculum and Technology I think those are two areas we've been talking about that we need to find resources for perhaps in our new Bond so thank you well thank you for that and we also we also appreciate the direct engagement of top leadership certainly yourself superintendent as well as directors that have attended over the years so I'm very much appreciate it so moving in I'll be very brief about the the operating Levy report uh which is the second charge of the cbrc uh the cbrc conducted a general review of Portland Public Schools expenditures of the local option Levy funds that were approved by voters and this is November of 2014 the previous Levy not the one that was just approved um in November so measure 26-161 mandates independent citizen oversight to ensure tax dollars are used for purposes approved by the local voters so the review period for this report is expenditures from the prior school year because that's where the books are closed for FY 2019 and 2020. the cbrc found in brief that in fiscal year 2019-2020 all Levy funds were spent as approved by voters with respect to the use of Levy funds from maintaining teacher positions PPS has received a little over 95.3 million dollars as of April 29th 2020 from Multnomah Washington and Clackamas counties based on the 2019-2020 receipts and an average teacher cost of one hundred and six thousand dollars and that includes salaries taxes and benefits Levy funds will support approximately 890 teaching positions for the supported rather uh 890 teachers for the 1920 school year this meets the levy goal of supporting at least 640 teachers uh and at the same time last year the levy in the previous year the levy supported approximately 870 teachers so from year to year there was enough growth in the levy to support an additional 20 teachers so we would be very remiss as a cbrc for not thanking voters for that very substantial contribution to PPS without that contribution there would be absolutely untenable cuts to teachers in the district um in in also a similar increase in in the student-teacher ratio so it's absolutely critical to the success of the district and and it is being suspended the way that it was intended thank you thank you very much and it is unfathomable to think about what our district would look like without that continued generosity of our voters um all right so without any further Ado I think we will move on to our
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um primary discussion of the budget um again I want to recognize um to the cbrc we feel your pain about this difficult process this year there's a lot of things difficult about this year for our school system but the budget process um is just as um challenging and confusing for us given the the constraints um and the unknowns as it was for you so um thank you for for persevering and thank you for your good guidance and we absolutely will um be back to you when we come to the discussions around the amendments um and we we look to your guidance through that process as well thank you all right superintendent uh Guerrero tonight we have uh your proposed budget for the 2021 school year coming to us for approval um as we heard on May 26th um when you first shared the budget proposal with us um it's focused clearly on our core values our theory of action and Concepts outlined in in our Community Driven vision for PPS we've also had the opportunity here directly from our community Through focus groups at the Town Hall last week and from community members who have taken the time to communicate directly with us so superintendent Guerrera would you like to introduce this item yes thank you Karen for recognizing that the input and the development of our priorities uh makes the alignment of resources that much easier when you're upfront about those values so um this is the next step in the process as you know we're simultaneously like most districts moving forward proposed budgets at the same time that we're being proactive about adjustments and amendments that will come later but I'm going to turn the reins over to uh our leader in this effort who's really been quite the task master with all of us our Deputy superintendent Claire Hertz certainly I can appreciate how difficult an abbreviated process is um trying to get all the pieces in in place and I do want to add my um congratulations on an excellent process for the cbrc for Sarah and Thomas I certainly appreciate all the efforts that you've put forward and I look forward to continuing to work with you through probably the month of August as we work all of this through um and so with for tonight you have before you a resolution and we are asking you to approve a budget of 2.7 billion and um 2.725 I should just say 2 billion 725 770 no I'm not saying it right 2 billion 725 million seven hundred and seventy thousand seven thousand dollars it is um for 2021. now that includes um a billion dollar um Bond program that the board is in discussion for um November 2020 election so just wanted you to know that there is a placeholder in for your current discussion there it also includes um full funding that we received pre-covered from Oregon Department of Education for our state school fund and our student investment act or account so while those are so our budget right now is overstated we are we still have not received official um notification from ode of what our funding will be other than that original notification that came to us in early March so we're bringing forward the only notification we have from the Oregon Department of Ed and then that's why we want to come after because we have the June 30th adopted budget deadline for by Statute in order to operate beginning July 1 that we will come back and bring an amended budget once the legislature has their special session and the final funding mechanisms are determined and then we get our reports out of the Oregon Department of Education and then we'll bring you a balanced budget having conversations both with the board and the cvrc as we continue to refine that you as all of you are aware we have been we have estimates of what the funding will be and we are moving forward with the estimates and we will continue to refine is even just this week we've made refinements to the budget so we will
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continue to refine as we hear more information but in the meantime we must bring forward um a budget to adopt we are also asking you um to excuse me a budget to be approved tonight we're also asking you to impose or the approve the tax rates for both our operations our local option Levy and then of course our our Capital Bond program so those rates are in the resolution as well so with that I turn that back to the board chair or discussion thank you so um Deputy superintendent hurts we have had conversations as a board and with the community at our budget Town Hall about the the thinking of the superintendent and the leadership team around um a framework for the the cuts that we will likely need to make after we have our revised budget so um I think you laid it out very clearly that what is before us tonight for approval is um just the the essential framework of the budget at the pre-covered numbers um but as part of our duty as board members we have also been engaged in the thinking behind the priorities and the strategies for the cuts that we know we will need to make and so if you just want to um speak briefly to um what that process moving forward is likely to look like so as we um we understand the legislature is expected to come um in session on June between June 22nd and July 4th so once we um see if they make actions to make changes to what has been brought forward as a proposal from the governor um then we would refine our numbers based on whatever actions they take and then we would wait for of course getting the official estimates from the Oregon Department of Ed we have already had a lot of dialogue on um the you know what our reductions are and how we're balancing the shortfall in general funds the shortfall in measure 98 funding and but then the actual additions in um the student investment act Sia funds so right now we have um investments in the Sia that are in would be considered a grant fund and if if they the legislature decided to move things from the grant fund into our general fund all the Investments that we have there based on our strategic plan would still be eligible to be spent in general fund so it's just meaning we'd have to have a change in appropriation level but we'd still be able to go forward with our current plan that as we have produced and publicly shared and budget focus groups in the budget town hall and um also have you know having multiple meetings with the board acting as our budget committee and as well as through the cbrc process so we will come back and and give a full reconciliation of any changes that in terms of how they move from fund to fund so you understand what the Amendments and the modifications would be not anticipating as long as there isn't an overall change or a loss of funding not anticipating more any more reductions but if there is any additional funding and what we might be able to add back so thank you open it up for board discussion or questions yes Maxine in my hand I think it works a little bit better you know just being in school I know these things um no shade no shade I just no shade we're still Learners um I'm just wondering um I feel like I've also kind of been not as involved in this budget process as maybe I should have um just because it's been busy but um just doing graduation and things but um luckily like we have students who are really involved like um Jackson and Parker and Tay you all know and love them um as our as our little yes we love them uh who are very involved in this process
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um which I'm very appreciative of and we had a conversation in the DSC about um budget stuff um and basically like I have a lot of questions but I feel like you know it's not very productive to just list them all off I'm also really tired now um but I guess like big question um where are students gonna specifically feel the cuts to the budget like I know that um General funding is going to be cut but I don't think I don't specifically know like the number of Staff or admin or teachers um so or like where they'll be cut what schools so I guess I'm just wondering like what how how exactly like will those cuts impact students to start with Matt Maxine I think that is the absolute perfect question to start our um and I I just want to um uh put the motion on the table which we have not yet done oh I'm sorry no no no no no that wasn't my job I should know this by now guys I've been doing it for so long no that was my bad we will come back to discussion begin with your very insightful question that we were moving too fast I got excited I was like it's 9 17. I'm I'm really looking forward to this conversation sorry no absolutely perfect so um the board will now vote we'll soon vote on resolution number 6129 budget committee approval of the 2020-2021 budget and the imposition of property taxes do I have a motion second director Bailey moves and director brim Edwards seconds the motion to adopt resolution six one two nine um Miss Bradshaw is there any public comment yes there are three people great we'll go into public comment and then Maxine we're coming right back at you again I'm very sorry I did not realize what was going on my bad Matt Morton Matt you should be unmuted yep we hear you good evening everyone good evening everyone chair con Sam Vice chair Moore directors superintendent Guerrero pleasure to be here with you my name is Matt Morton m-o-r-t-o-n I'm from the slots and Island Drive in western Washington and I'm also the Equitable education portfolio director at Meyer Memorial Trust in between 2011 and 2015 I had the honor to sit in your hot seat as a member of the Board of Education perhaps most importantly I'm a pts parent my son Marcus just finished fifth grade at faubian I'd like to start my comments by thanking the superintendent and his staff that is thoughtful and intentional ways in which the district has responded to our national crisis the Coronavirus and anti-black racism superintendent thank you so much for hearing the voices of black students and other students of color and continuing continuing to take cues from our young leaders students want school to be safe but they feel a sense of belongings and as their identities are forming and growing they feel Affirmed a recent decision to remove sros is a great example of your values and your commitment to students I want you to know that I'm 100 behind you and I'm rooting for BPS thank you it's really powerful to see decisions like this is Injustice so as I reflected my time on the board I'm struck by how the circumstances we face today are so entirely different than when I served and also really struck by how familiar some of the reactions feel for example when facing its dark realities of the structural inequalities of our system and despite the affirmations of the importance of equity many of our white parents and community members cling to the status quo and despite being card-carrying members of the education Equity clubs around town when Investments are made in organizations from communities of color to serve communities of color these member Advocate members Advocate to defund these Investments based on them not being fair for quote all students so I've watched the budget presentations and I've read over The Proposal and I'm not surprised when just weeks after our nation watched the brutal killing of another black man at the hands of the police to once again see these patterns play
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out in the same exact way those who Proclaim with the loudest voice that they are anti-racist are now claiming that unless you go back to the status quo and funds what has already been in place and what we know is not working for black and Native students but the district is not being equitable I can only imagine the number of phone calls and emails you're receiving right now from people who are all in for Equity just not for black and Native students we must break this pattern and I'm also hopeful because I believe that with the superintendent's leadership combined with your support we can disrupt this nefarious Portland pattern I was thrilled to see the alignment between your strategic Direction and vision and the disc or for the district and your proposed set of Investments and reductions of course no one wants to see reductions it was clear to me that PPS was using your racial equity and social social justice lens to propose its budget admire we're aligned with your strategies and we fund many of the same Partners who are employing culturally specific and culturally responsive strategies to support PPS students our investments are aimed at creating systems change and eliminate disparities so our priorities and your theory of action are deeply tied I want to thank you for the opportunity to share my share just a few of my thoughts today and thank you for your leadership and support of our black students and other students of color I'm confident that with this Focus we'll begin to build a system where every student can succeed thank you thank you very much thank you thank you former director I appreciate that yeah Miss Bradshaw thank you yes please Marcus Moody Marcus you are unmuted welcome Mr Mundy I am on you hello hello hi John thank you so much uh good evening chair constan Vice chair Moore directors and superintendent Guerrero my name is Marcus Mundy and I'm the executive director of the Coalition of communities of color and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak and I'm going to go off script for a minute because every board meeting I've been to before this has been great of course but I have to tell you it's been gripping to hear your board and this budget reflects equity and so many so many different versions of it and I thank director to pass for her comments about discomfort I have frequently been uncomfortable in these discussions on on the other side but I'm I'm so glad that you all are talking about this tonight and dedicating the work of PPS to this work so back on script um the Coalition is an alliance of culturally specific community-based organizations here in Portland whose mission it is to address the socioeconomic disparities institutional races them and inequity of services experienced by our families children and communities our alliance representing the racial and ethnic diversity of our community organizes our community for Collective action resulting in social change to obtain self-determination Wellness Justice and prosperity so for almost 20 years our members and you know them self-enhancement Inc urko Latino Network Native American Youth Association Kairos and many more of our members have stood next to you and the PPS and Portland Public Schools to provide culturally specific services to students and families at BPS we are instrumental in ensuring black native Latino and other students of color at PPS have access to culturally specific family engagement wraparound Services leadership mentoring and Extended Learning opportunities and I will say thanks to the leadership and commitment from superintendent Guerrero and his senior leadership team culturally specific support from our community-based partners will be increasing you all just approve the budget this is the right call and in full alignment with the district's newly articulated Vision which I support and which I was thrilled to participate in and contribute to over those long sessions last year uh together despite many people within and outside of our community questioning the increase of funding whether it's SSA or just the school budget for racial Equity align strategies I'm proud that PPS will provide more support for our communities black and Native children and many more students of color that is absolutely the right leadership move Mr superintendent and thank you for recognizing and being a being about a bold anti-racist agenda one that centers the lived experience of our young people and makes change
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I actually encourage you to be a bit Bolder but maybe that's for the next budget I I had previously written to the community that I my brothers my son my cousins and my friends all black men walked watched an abject horror a few weeks ago as yet another black man died at the hands of yet another policeman and yet another video broadcast to the to the world as if it were some rerun detached from reality it was not detached from reality it is reality our daily inescapable reality as black men in America and so when I heard the superintendent uh his call to eliminate sros I know that he wasn't calling out any one individual instead superintendent you were calling out the structural racism that continues to create gaps for black students and students of color we support that let me be honest as a black man in America as a black man in Portland I am uh as Fannie Lou Hamer said I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired and that is why I'm here today almost at 9 30. thank you uh to speak to you as a black man in America and as the executive director representing this diverse group of black native and community of color-led organizations I would trade a million lawn signs stating black lives matter or in our America for a single day of those epigrams being realized through action so how do black lives matter in PPS what political maneuvering policies or side conversations are you having that do not Center the lived experiences of black and brown lives and I'm talking to board members and staff and anybody that deals with this system what voices are you listening to these are the questions that we have to ask what priorities are you ignoring when you succumb to public pressure from communities with privilege what does that say to black and brown children in this District look this isn't about taking from someone to give to another as a Mr Lanham I think said this isn't a zero-sum game but as you know this District like every public institution in Portland and Oregon was founded on the idea that black lives don't matter so while I know that the public pressure for systemic change is being carried out by Voices on the streets of American cities and protest and agitation is a tool for change I ask that institutions this institution and leaders like you to truly double down on your commitment to Black and Native children I commend and am cautiously encouraged that superintendent Guerrero is proposing a significant increase to support culturally specific work in this district one that centers racial Equity this commitment reflected by increased funding to culturally specific community-based organizations shows me that this is an Administration that's a tough word that this Administration is making strides to listen and truly partner to write historical and current wrongs there is more to be done but as you considered this budget I asked you to join our table sit with us continue to call us our members can help your overwhelmingly professional and yet instilled overwhelmingly White staff build real relationships with black brown students and their families we also know a secret or two about hiring people of color and the next time you're approached by stakeholder groups who are trying to influence you with the social media posts a call or even attempting to speak for me like a white woman did the last time I was here before you call me or my members directly because it took us 401 years to get here and it's only been a mere three weeks since brother George George Floyd was killed we have a long road ahead together but we are your community so thank you for letting me speak this evening just a regular black man in America who's seen enough so thank you very much for your time for joining us tonight and I also want to just thank you personally for your letter that you um wrote um on behalf of the Coalition of communities to collaborate your letter after George Floyd's death your we can't breathe letter and specifically for the very um local and immediate calls to action that you included in that letter so thank you very much bearing with me Lord when we hear commitments like that from someone who represents our communities of color and the organizations that that serve them in partnership with the district so much as
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possible thank you Mr Mundy for your remarks tonight absolutely thank you great can you hear me yes yes great good evening Here Comes Down by Sir Moore directors and superintendent Guerrero my name is Whitney Grubb I'm the executive director of the chalkboard project and foundations for a better Oregon I am also as of Tuesday the proud mom of the Jefferson High School graduate Casper project is a non-profit organization jointly led by a coalition of Oregon's largest philanthropic Foundation working primarily at the state level we collaborate with impacted communities Educators and policy makers to analyze develop and advocate for policy changes and public Investments That ensure every child in Oregon can learn grow and thrive for the past year we have been deeply engaged in implementation of the Student Success act as a critical lever for advancing educational equity like many we celebrated this long-awaited investment in our public schools which targets resources toward improving academic and mental health outcomes for our most underserved students with the covid crisis and resulting Revenue shortfalls our efforts of ensuring the ACT is implemented has shifted to ensuring these critical Investments are preserved this is hard and not what any of us hoped for covid-19 is disproportionately impacting our communities of color when coupled with the violent attacks on our streets and in our schools and communities the sustained trauma that our black indigenous and children of color have borne for centuries is being compounded in late April we at chalkboard project joined over 20 Partners in a letter urging Governor Brown and the legislative leadership to put children first when mapping organs road to recovery start sending the letter we've been convening with state and local leaders education associations and unions community-based organizations and policy makers like you to find common ground we have been energized by the alignment across different groups and inspired by the commitment from local leaders like superintendent Guerrero to making racial Equity targeted investment and partnership with culturally specific organizations making sure that they are not just nice to have when times are good what has emerged are some clear priorities across the state which are represented well in your proposed budget and emerging strategic plan first in the short and long term we must invest state and local Resources with an anti-racist lens we must continue to partner with trusted Community organizations like the ones Marcus mentioned to support the academic and social emotional needs of every child and we must invite and accept the wisdom of the families and students who are currently not being served second we must support our Educators and especially our educators of color who are uniquely positioned to support historically underserved students in this moment we must come together to find ways of ensuring that any necessary layoffs do not disproportionately impact educators of color we are in the midst of seismic shifts there is no returning to the way things work and grappling with the impacts of these fiscal public health and societal challenges you at PPS can lead the state in acting courageously to rebuild a more fundamentally resilient and Equitable public education system as an education Advocate and a PPS parent I've been so inspired by the conversation tonight thank you so much for your leadership superintendent Guerrero and for you to the board in adopting this racial Equity Center's budget thank you thank you very much Miss Bradshaw do we have any further public comment no that's it all right fantastic are you still with us Maxine yes barely I could fall asleep at any moment we hear you so the question you posed I thought was crazy at www.webex.com short commercial break yeah maybe we should just all take a quick stretching commercial break you know it is 9 36 everyone reach your hands up I think we all really need this right now come on everybody I want to see everybody's
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hands up come on get that blood flowing Let's go people what do they call it what is that noodle thing I don't know but we all need a stretch break it is late and I know Andrew wants to be asleep because he always likes to get these things moving all these jokes before superintendent Guerrero do you want to Circle back to Maxine's question which is you want me to repost my question do you want to rephrase it or I don't I don't care I'm just asking if anyone needs a refresher before it okay my question sorry now I have to like go back through my documents um I'm wondering how the cuts are going to impact students like what what what sorry how how are these impacts how are these Cuts going to affect students directly what what will it feel like for students whether it be admin or staff or specific teachers for certain programs what exactly will it feel like for students to experience these cuts well I could give you the technical answer and people could go to our two volume proposed budget and you could go school by school and you could see exactly what the budget proposes in the way of resources for each site and if you wanted to apply an equity lens you could start by looking at the per pupil average school by school and you could ask yourself uh is the funding equitably distributed particularly when you think about underserved community school campuses and what kind of an experience is that going to be able to ensure for students when they come to school every day so the challenge in in school systems Maxine is always how do you provide the best possible high quality day for a student who walks through any one of our schools and I think what we've proposed to do rather miraculously even with a sizable uh budget app is is to still move forward things that we've said are important things that were actually the intention behind things like the Student Success act so even though our general fund took a big hit giving the economy in the state we still had Revenue we had Revenue because the good taxpayers of Portland said a Levy's important for preserving over 650 teachers which keeps our class sizes and other professional serving students but the success act has permitted us to really invest in the way that we haven't been able to before we did hear students early on but we didn't have the capacity to ensure that every school would have access to a social worker a counselor and those additional interventions that made us even more comfortable that uh our first one didn't need to be an armed officer in the hallways at lunchtime so that's what's going to be a little bit different for our students um if if you're a high school student and you're attending a school like Jefferson or Roosevelt or Madison and you are interested in the Arts and maybe you had a chance to do that in Middle School this year because we scraped up the money to add parks there you don't have to find yourself unable to sign up for band at Jefferson because now it's going to be possible because we've invested in closing Pathways for the Arts starting in those clusters and the same thing we for the last year and a half thank you Aurora I'm old so who she inventoried along with our high school team where the gaps were from technical education Pathways and there were gaps there and so we've been filling those in and adding courses as well so for a high school student that's another way that the experience is going to feel different you have expanded CTE offerings available to you but we also you know know that uh the biggest difference we can make is to make sure we have uh well-trained supported professional Educators um who can provide the most differentiated personalized day uh hour to hour for for our students and so we've continued to incrementally make investments that chip away at keeping the adult student ratio as ideal as possible and those were class size goals that we arrived at in partnership with Portland Association of teachers and so each year we've continued to make investments to make sure that for students the daily experience is that the classroom is in this crowded as perhaps it was in years past and particularly at the younger grades and even though we weren't fully funded with Student Success act and I hope that our elected officials are listening
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um we know what it takes resource wise to provide a quality educational model of the school day and we're trying to provide it but just without the qem level of funding and so how do we make sure that our students especially our students of color have access to high quality instructional materials so when they walk into the classroom their experience is they're seeing authentic literature that it reflects their lived experience uh written by authors who look like them we haven't had the ability for a decade to refresh curriculum materials you're going to find in this budget the beginning of an infusion and investing in the right places and support curriculum and instruction so it isn't just about the stuff it's also about investing in our Educators and making sure they have access to the instructional coaching that when they notice that there's a student who's falling behind that there's access to an additional highly trained professional who can provide that intervention so what's different Maxine for a student of color who's struggling in an underserved Community is that this coming September with an approved budget there's going to be an intervention teacher in the hallway who's going to have them in the schedule Who's going to push in to the classroom is going to provide an extra guided reading group lesson who's going to be able to diagnostically assess their reading behavior and really try to accelerate what we know is going to be an academic slide during this pandemic so that's another example of how that experience is going to change and I'll top it off just because I could talk all night about this is if you're a middle grade students none of us have been satisfied and understand that we need to reimagine that middle grade experience it's been a topic on many a night with this board in the community and we have an opportunity to open up the doors at Kellogg middle school I have no interest in mimicking a comprehensive Middle School model that we see throughout the rest of the district this is our opportunity to really demonstrate how we reimagine a Middle grades experience and so I'm looking forward to in the fall as part of students experience and Leadership opportunity to come in and be a part of some focus group and some empathy interviews around what is it that they most need out of those critical years and we know it's things like identity development it's a health and wellness it's beginning to discover your passion and what you might be interested so by the time you transition in ninth grade you have a pretty good idea and you've chosen a school that hosts a program that fits your interests and your future post second daily Commerce that by the end of the eighth grade that your family and all the adults that supportive adults those educator Essentials who've had a chance to work with you that they're going to hear you publicly present how in those three Middle grades years you've grown along all those Essentials those skills and dispositions that we talk about in The Graduate portrait um we talked about it's important to have goals and accountability but it isn't just about test scores it's about let me reflect out loud with my family how I think I've grown in my compassion and my empathy and my agency in the world right now is a beautiful little way that we're seeing our youth demonstrate some of that now so how do we make sure that by the end of those middle grade years that we're well on our way for that student as a graduate portrait to really demonstrate those kinds of skills and dispositions so part of the experience that we hope is different is that even if you do attend a current a comprehensive Middle School that you're going to have an expanded access to electives imagine that even with this major budget cut you're going to have access to not having to choose between a second language that you're trying to learn and playing clues or Corpus or uh any of some other forward-thinking electives yet to be determined until we talk to our students because perhaps it's computer science uh perhaps it's ethnic studies in the Middle grades uh maybe it's black studies uh there's there's no limits to the kinds of learning experiences that we don't have to be so uh constrained by traditional schedules and use of time and space so those are a few ways that I think Maxine the experience might be different and if you're a four-year-old whose family hasn't typically had access to Early Education that is high quality and will prepare you with the foundation you need to come into kindergarten that you're gonna there's gonna be some additional seats and working with the county hopefully we're focusing in those communities that really need to Avail themselves of those opportunities so off the top of my head those are a few examples maximum okay thanks I'll let other people ask questions and then I can come back if there's time and we're all not asleep I've got a question um so first I wanna just acknowledge
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um that the incredible the complex tasks that staff had and putting together a budget in the environment which there's so much volatility um and a very condensed process um so the current budget is uh 780 million which is about a 20 million dollar increase and then of the 780 25 million of that is new money from the Student Success Act and I think that uh superintendent staff have done a great job of aligning it behind our vision the board goals the community help informed both our budget priorities through the shaping Division and the also the Sia funding um invest strategic Investments um so my question would be so I think we say around the Sia we had a lot of community engagement around those Investments and I think that the initial list we had a set of proposals of 39 million um would you know potentially had could have had a transformative impact on the district and now we're down to 25 still I think the potential to make a big investment or a big impact on the district as we head into you know potential um probably like both ups and downs and ups are always easier getting more money it's always it's always easier to um uh figure out what to do with more money but in the case in which either our base budget or um the amount for the Strategic student investment account please go down what's the process going to be for the ads or deletion I know we have um already some Sia funds that have been set aside 13 million that we'd like to invest but how how would we decide to pick what what off that list how would the community be informed and then same thing if the legislature comes in and ends up cutting you know x amount of dollars out of our budget it sounds like there's a process but we also have a lot of community invested in the vision and Investments so we speak a little bit more about what that might look like so it's still aligning to our strategic goals and you know the district goals and the Strategic plan based on our vision we'll still invest in our black and Native students so we have additional things that we have put on hold and so you in the Sia you have 39 million to start 25 million we are bringing forward and then we have another 14 million that that we would like to invest so that those are things that we've turned to first as things that we've already prioritized and gone through a whole Community process in order to do in order to um determine what what how what was important to them well listening to everyone and then also aligning around our theory of action um supporting our black and Native students so we would continue to roll out that same plan it's it's not where we need to do a whole other process we've had very extensive a year of visioning and another year of you know reaching needs assessments and discussing with the community so I think we've had a very extensive process for two years to narrow our Focus onto our black and Native kids anybody may add any of them this is Jonathan Garcia Chief engagement officer uh I I agree with uh Deputy superintendent Hertz uh we've spent uh two uh really incredible years uh building with our community um and I think um and that doesn't mean that we stop that means that we continue uh being in community and being in conversation with our communities using our racial equity and social justice lens uh which you know as as the board uh uh will recall the second you know question is who are the communities most impacted by our decisions and uh and so as we think about about that you know our our leadership under the superintendent's leadership uh he continuously asks us that same question and so uh you know I I will just add that uh Deputy superintendent uh and I will probably work very closely um as these numbers uh are coming in to ensure that that we are having a feedback loop with our community uh especially our students especially our black and Native parents uh who uh we have prioritized uh in our strategic plan and in this budget so one thing that can that whoops
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Jonathan yeah yeah okay you're muted Jonathan well I'm done oh okay sorry I guess it's just my catching up um so one of our constraints is timing and how quickly we have to staff over the summer to have our schools open in August at the end of August so that's one of our constraints in terms of um how much time we have to engage because we are you know need to go forward with our process for hiring teachers and staff for the new year right so for example say if we get some windfall like another five five million on top of the 25 um it's just using the existing 13 million dollars which we had set us that had already been selected and just moving it into the process quickly is that is that how you envision it I think that would be our best way but at the same time we have we also have said we would Circle back with cbrc and I you know working with um our chief engagement officer again with the community and students voice but it will have to be a very shortened process because of the need for Staffing to finish for school to start I think we we also I would hope would uh save some room for um considerations around additional expenditures for to accommodate what the school year is going to look like that is unknown to us whether it's cleaning or virtual learning or whatever but that should be a category into itself can I follow up to that um I I completely agree Amy um I I think we have well I certainly have um only a very dim understanding of um what the what the reopening of school is going to look like um what I think I know with pretty pretty good certainty is that our expenses are going to vastly increase and we're going to have expense lines that we've never had before um you know we're going to have to be providing personal protective equipment um I don't think we've ever done that before um so I mean I'm concerned about the unanticipated expenses that where that we may be looking at um but beyond that um I'm I'm wondering what words how we're going to be looking at any new money um that that might conceivably come down the pike at some point um and are we considering a longer time frame um so I I just want to say I am pretty flabbergasted that the staff has been able to whittle down the 57 million dollar shortfall to 12 million and that um they have not only held harmless most of our programs but they they've actually managed to increase investments in the highest priority items um I I think that's a minor miracle what concerns me is that if the projections for the um this economic downturn play out um we're looking at a budget shortfall that's going to be three to four times worse next year and it's highly unlikely I I assume that we're going to have the benefits of covid related relief from the Congress we're not going to have a workshare program with the you know with the 600 benefits that we use this year um you know that this the state resources are going to continue to decline I mean there are a lot of a lot of things that have allowed us to to kind of mitigate the damage this year that are not going to be available to us next year so I'm I'm a little nervous when I hear that we're we're gonna start spending any new money that comes down the pike um I I I'd like some reassurance that where this we're filling up the piggy bank a little bit um and I know we already have some we have some reserves in pts and the state has a rainy day fund um but if if the projections are accurate
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um the the reserves on either our reserves or the state are going to compail in comparison to the level of the of the shortfall so can you can you put this in a big picture over the you know not just next year but two three years down the pike so the state Economist has made it clear that the revenue shortfall um in the recession is um in terms of job growth getting back to where we started it's estimated to be a four-year process and with um 2021 um being our first year so we do expect the next biennium to be um a shortfall through both years and then the beginning of the next biennium so there is certainly um I think I've been a broken record about saving our reserves and making sure they last over the four years and so that is certainly a possibility addressing covid pandemic needs to reopen schools and um putting leaving something for reserves because next year we will have used some of our one-time money that won't be there um in the following year so I if you're asking me as a financial professional that's what I my recommendation would be we we've made it through this year and and really um pretty pretty good shape and my real concern is the next biennium so Claire we have so with your 63 million go ahead read it with your follow-up I'll go after you well I just I just want to clarify as a finance professional would your recommendation be that any new money that happens to come down the pike in the next you know four to six months we start whittling away at the wish list or we put it in a piggy bank oh and the piggy bank other than what we need to respond to a reopening and during a pandemic yeah so just to follow up um I should clarify when I was talking about the additional funds the Sia funds that my expectation of the legislature gave us more money in that accounts their expectation would be suspended not save it um but going to the um reserves question where I think we'll have more reserves um yes than we've had and probably in 25 years to have nine percent or about 63 million dollars which is a great place for us to be um we look at the potential volatility um just so I understand that the approach would likely be to re keep that in reserves managed through this year and when we get to the next budget cycle where um the the drop in state revenue is supposed to be even larger that's the point in time that we use reserves or um or you have a different approach so there's I just need to um clarify as of June 30th um 2020 we will have nine percent we have said we will spend the um work share dollars next year and we'll spend this um from the hiring and purchasing fees from this year another 9 million so there's 19 million of that um uh nine percent ending fund balance so we expect to use so the nine percent will not be there at June 30th 2021 it's there at June 30th 2020. and we are using some of it we said in the spring when we did these quick things to get uh money to carry over into the next year so that was so we are using part of that nine percent that we're accumulating by June 30th of this year to get us through next year but we'll still have six percent at the end of next year so we'd have mid-40s heading into the 2122 school year which is still a lot but probably not a lot in comparison to the potential goal so we're always gonna try to manage our budget throughout the year to save as much as possible especially we're going to spend some time next year it'll be important an important year for us to have a good understanding of what it looks like to get through a three-year recession so we're going to spend some quality time with our board
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in the fall just um doing a little bit of planning and thinking about how do we get through and having those discussions before we build the budget for 2021 and I just want to jump in quickly on this point nine percent maybe a large amount for PPS the largest amount we've had in 10 or 20 years it's it's just slightly more than half of what the recommended reserves are for government agencies this should be in the 16 to 17 range and so um so it's important to know relatively we're better and yet we're still not where where I would love to see us eventually the other thing to note reserves and it's a kind of a common misperception um there are almost never a time when a reserve or rainy day fund will get used through a crisis what they're good at doing is helping to smooth the reductions um and so instead of really dramatic Cliffs where you're um laying off you know uh dozens if not hundreds of people reserves can make that a little bit easier but um it's often a mistake to think about spending reserves in order to maintain service levels through a recession of the type that we're facing so I I just want to want to reiterate that that um it went to the extent we we spend those down it needs to be in a very planful way and also a plan for building them back up again as we come come back just one last point on that um topic of reserves which Rita and Ailey can attest to I think this is the first year in my memory that the cbrc has not LED with chastising the board about not making a sufficient commitment to building reserves in the budget and even as we have been marching toward that goal for the last um three years with Fidelity in a modest amount um it's still we're nowhere near where we need to be and that has always been their Chief criticism of the budget process and our budget policy um so this is a great discussion to have and as we get better information going forward on Revenue projections uh you're right in the fall it will be a month meeting to look at the ramifications of this over the next couple of years um I I want to ask a couple of specific questions to the budget um because all of us got uh at least one or two letters about PE um so I I think it would be useful to uh quickly summarize where we ended up both with uh Genet PE uh and adaptive PE and in kind of a follow-up to Maxine's what's it going to look like for students um and I think this is true in in a number of areas we're seeing uh and I want to focus on special education uh we're seeing increase expenditures in some parts of uh the sped budget and decreased in others um so I just would like a little more flavor of uh what What's caused some of that shift I mean are we getting uh Less in terms of federal budget dollars for special education for example or is this a a general fund issue um and what kind of shifts are going on so that's kind of three questions in one and the the Adaptive PE is also an opportunity to talk about where we want to go longer term uh with that program so all good questions director Bailey and uh as you know we shared with the board earlier a letter co-signed by our chief academic officer and our chief of student support services so uh I'm gonna let them explain it uh because uh these areas definitely fall under their Direction and and I think uh we have an interesting sort of development moving forward but uh Miss marnick thank you uh thank you uh superintendent and uh thank you director Bailey um so uh what we are doing is uh we are in special education We are continuing to align our practices uh and um and really our uh philosophy around service to students with special needs uh in a more inclusive way uh one way that we're doing that is through the implementation of our tiered supports through mtss
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another way uh as Dr Valentino and I have been working on this as well as Jenny with a come uh who is our PE administrator and Mary Mertz who is our senior director in special ed we really wanted to look towards uh additional ways in which we could provide more inclusive practices and what we believe is uh moving adaptive PE into the PE and Health Department uh will allow that training the cross the cross training uh that will be afforded to our PE teachers and our adaptive PE teachers as well uh and then it really focused on um starting to uh be more inclusive in our physical education classes um both uh socially and uh in the in the physical manner that PE uh provides for our students so I'll go ahead and turn the any additional comments over to Dr Valentino thank you good evening everyone the only thing I would add thank you Brenda that was that's exactly what uh what the work has been um the thing I would add is one of the things that this does is under the fact is that it strengthens both both efforts um it's been a consult model but by actually blending both the uh adapt to p and the regular like P I think both benefit from that opportunity and what it does it aligns with the provision a more of a more Integrated Service model that actually aligns with both the division and the emerging strategic plan that addresses um Equitable access to all of our opportunities in this case it's to a comprehensive PE program so I'm hopeful as that's developed that um parents and um our adaptive PE teachers and our uh gen Ed GE teachers will all be involved in that so that it is a so that the approach is not a surprise but that it's also informed by um our parents and families and services yeah and I do want to be clear because I know that I have had a number of questions from parents of students with special needs uh in regards to if services will look different next year our adaptive PE teachers will continue to provide uh the same supports that they've been providing um as per a student's IEP what we will be doing is really working this year on some more inclusive practices uh really uh including parents and students and PE teachers and adaptive PE teachers into that conversation in how we really start to move more inclusive practices forward this is this is a good conversation in terms of being a microcosm of you know what we were looking at with mtss and what we're looking at in terms of our ability to differentiate in the general education setting for all of our students and their various needs yeah so I just want to say thank you that's uh I think a great direction to go in we're we're be kind where I think all of us would like to be in terms of inclusion and this is a nice step forward and again doing it uh in this way or the next year but there's there's been some history of in this District of trying to implement inclusion uh for all the right reasons but not doing it well in ways that actually backfired um so I'm all for doing it well and um and and we've already seen that this year with the uh you know the development of the family friendly in many languages uh basic information on special education for parents was again a really nice collaborative step forward um so I'm uh I'm confident that this is again one one piece that will Implement well and um be it'll be a great uh great thing for our kids and just parenthetically um Dr quellar loaned me his dissertation uh which looked at the effects of inclusion on general education students right and well it was a small sample um it was just pretty much across the
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board positive impacts um in terms of uh intended attendance was higher uh student achievement was higher um behavior issues will were lower for the general education students who were in a uh an inclusive class as opposed to those who weren't in terms of the two groups that he uh followed so this is again a win-win where we focus on our neediest students and can get outcomes that affect all students targeted associate we talked about um so so thank you can I just build off of please director Raley's comments because I want to thank staff I know that people will see the weekend um and over the last several days to um address the concerns that have been raised about reductions and community and then also um the reduction in the Adaptive treatment staff so I just want to let people know that they're um there are just like there are students who their one thing is art or science or math there's some kids who their one thing is um so I think that um well I guess I'll just say I'm very appreciative of the staff I'm going back through the budget and tried to make it work without having reactions in some basic or classes um a question that came up was whether in the um taking care of those reductions whether there were other staff reductions made to make that happen or was was it addressed in some other way um we in regards to special education there were no additional cuts that were made in order to restore the Adaptive PE staff Dr Valentino you also uh helped in large part to identify some additional resources in your department can you talk about any impact with that you sure so um I I went I went back to talk to some of the senior members of my team um about how we might be able to support this because one could see that the set of lemons given could could possibly turn into some amazing lemonade um but it required some conversation um late late at night and then so I texted the superintendent early in the morning and I think I might be able we might be able to help um and so by talking to that we've identified certain pockets and so what we um decided to do was to sort of um trade off some some of our priorities uh so that we could free up some some money I mean I still have to have a quick conversation with Claire about a couple of things just to make sure that that it's straight but I think we're gonna be fine um but but but I think just like you see the opportunity there is not there was an opportunity there that would that we shouldn't waste right um and otherwise we wouldn't have been able to do this and then it would have looked like well we could and we didn't do anything about it but we also saw the opportunity there so it was more uh uh a function of how can we help this out and so I think that um the team has been and will be uh supportive um uh with moving forward with the decisions that we made to realign some of our priorities so that we could release some of the funds to to place to place in this effort so the combination of uh some of these uh further central office reductions and efficiencies and director Scott's comments earlier resonating now in my head uh combined with some continued uh spending freezes and management level reductions uh we're gonna make up that difference and make sure and let our adaptive PE Educators know that they were secure very much superintendent and everyone and again perspective Dr Valentino and and Ms martnik about Chief martnik about um using this as an opportunity to be more creative and to push our district toward greater inclusion by thinking differently in structuring Services differently um I I want to just quickly note too that um superintendent appreciate with
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regard to sped your commitment to increasing support bilingual sped supports in this budget um really important um to see that as an ad um I'm I'm getting pinged from some of our board members about calling the question on a vote on the budget and we still have two other items after this so I'd like to if we can go around and just have everyone put forward any remaining questions and comments does that sound good okay are you saying we we can ask one one one or two last questions or anything lingering for you or any comments uh you'd like to make um would you like to start director Bailey sure um so uncommon is on on the the PE the the general education PE as opposed to the Adaptive PE we got a lot of letters uh some of them were very passionate first person this is how to PE is so important for my child some of them are form letters which it is what it is but it's as if they were operating from PPS is doing a budget it's the same as last year except they're cutting PE at some schools the commentary was presuming it was all schools right [Music] um and so I think there's another opportunity and I talked to Don about this before the last time we had a ton of letters coming in is is it possible to scrape those and send a reply and one thanks them for their advocacy and two fills in the bigger picture around what we're doing in this budget with Equity um and this is a chance for us to do some education and it kind of goes back to our earlier comments or comments by some people and I I don't think smoke or blind Equity well okay maybe there they weren't advocating against Equity but they were advocating blindly without the big picture and I think this is a chance for us to do some communication to try to move our message forward on this so that's one suggestion out there if we're going to figure out how to do that efficiently a second thing I'd like to know um is uh we've been working on improving our um tag instruction um is there uh and I was wondering what the impacts were on uh rate and level of tag instructions are we are we still on the path that we were set for or um has that been affected at all so so regarding regarding uh this is Luis uh regarding rate and level one of the things we were going through right before uh the pandemic we were going through an audit because we had made agreements with um ode that we would focus rate and level at the middle school on for example compact math as an example as one option but the the agreement we had also made at the beginning of the previous year was that we would continue to provide professional development for our teachers on rate and level and that was going to be ongoing for the next three to five years until we were done and as new teachers came in we would add them to the rotation then at the same time they were going to conduct an audit because um as you know there was uh there was a a level of discomfort by the by the tag committee on what we had agreed on so they filed the um the formal complaint with ode and so we ended in an audit and in the middle of the eye that we had to close our schools the audit is not complete so um in uh Linda Smith who leads the the tech program conversations with ode the agreement is while we worked through the Blended model in preparation for the re-entry um that we would continue to work towards meeting the rate and level agreements while they finished the audit and then they are going to report back on what exactly the expectations will be beyond what our agreement has been thus far okay so no budgetary impacts on that work that would slow that down uh no not not thus far no we um the report may cause that to happen
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um director Bailey but not given what we have in place right now right okay thank you any further question or comment director Bailey oh probably but let's uh let's we I can I can follow up later thank you are we just gonna go around Robin Amy sure I was just going on our Zoom order so how about director to pass I don't have any um big questions I want to appreciate the staff for um being creative and I know you don't like to use creative and budget in the same sentence but um it's really challenging to come up with where we're gonna um do these Cuts this year I guess my only question would be um the city of Portland actually when they asked staff to furlough they initially came out with a everyone in the city needs to take 80 hours of unpaid furlough and then rethought that strategy and so put out a directive for for employees that are making I think the cutoff was like 85 700 just comes to mind people that are earning over that need to need to furlough with the full 80 hours and people that are um that earn less than that you know newer hires younger staff less experienced staff more staff of color um would have a tiered approach to the furloughs so that people at the bottom of the pay scale whatever that is at the city it might be like 15 an hour had to take no furlough and I'm just wondering moving forward into next year if we need to consider that if if we still need to consider furloughs in the 2021-22 would that be something that the district would continue would consider and I could take my answer offline but it's just something I was thinking about I have no other comments or questions of course ironically our lower wage workers in this part of the uh the time period it would think the 600 a week add-on from the feds many of them are making I think more money than they were working their job I remember that in the future yeah after that it's like July July 25th after July 25th when the cares act you know runs out then then it's like into next year is what I was curious about yeah yeah so um also just the mayor also um for um what's the word he's not taking salary at this point either so I'm not suggesting that's a great strategy for everybody um but I just want to put that on the table not for this immediate time right now but for in our in upcoming budget years I think right on that same note um I think um uh director Valentino excuse me Dr Valentina was being um particularly gracious in response to the direct question about where um they sourced the money to restructure the and and re-employ the Adaptive PE and the PE teachers and we do know that some of it is coming from some um some cuts to management pay in the central office and to specifically I believe cost of living increases so we can call that directly and say thank you and recognize that that's baked into a lot of these cost savings is that right Deputy superintendent hurts foreign first there Claire before you correct whatever I say so I proposed budget and there'll be some amendments and changes but we'll proceed with viable fiscal year 21 budget um and the way that we're doing that is because we shared with you a few examples of some of the continued freezes and management level efficiencies we'll call them that but as we think about the next biennium you know all strategies are going to have to be on the table so it is miraculous to uh close this massive budget Gap and to expect that no one is going to lose their job we've come close to doing that um and we will have to employ you know all prudent um saving measures so um I can appreciate the questions record to pass I wasn't sure if you were uh alluding that I should follow the mayor's example but certainly uh everything is uh always an option yeah not not at all just that
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I I appreciated the the imaginations that the staff went through to come up with um ways to save everyone's job in this in this fiscal year and yeah not not recommending anybody take a massive pay cut but just was curious really about the colas the cost of living adjustments and um if that would be something we would consider elevation forward so I think that the executive team has already considered it and and said you know those of us at this level on the second floor of the building may have to hold off uh it's not the time for that not when we're trying to save people's livelihoods and being responsible employer but uh why don't I let our or Wasco International presidents uh round out the response thank you that's appreciated thanks Claire did you want to add anything that I missed no I think you covered it well thank you so just on that particular Point um just based on conversations I've had with legislators and sort of the executive branch um I do think that when they go back into the special session this will be a topic of um various governmental jurisdictions that get um funds from the state of essentially a look at trout out of out-of-state travel um colas pain creases um already you're seeing at the at least the universities in the state um I think for example Oregon state did something similar to sounds like I'm sure that they're happening at um the city of Portland where you have sort of progressive uh not furloughs but pay pay reductions okay just you need something similar and I I can just imagine the conversation with Senator Betsy Johnson about this so I I think you should all be prepared that um there may be some directives from at the state level towards all school districts or other jurisdictions um as they look at how they're going to try and balance the budget and you know make really hard trade-offs between human Human Services education and lots of other places in the budget that are going to be sustaining some larger Cuts than probably education because they don't have the Student Success act so I I for sure think that travel and administrative pay and furloughs are going to be a topic of conversation and maybe even directives from the state level you know I also see this as an opportunity though um I mean the loss of pay is probably not a great topic for anyone but I also see that you know I guess I'm an advocate like what is a four-day work week look like and and how does that transfer to prosperity in terms of you know actually like some of the people on the call that I know don't take days off you know who you are um have that time built into spend more time with your families and you know for those of us that have kids at home still that are doing at home learning to be just to allow some time in the schedule so while while you would be experiencing a pay cut you would still have a job and um just to have more time in your life for things that are important to you spiritual Time family time time to work out Etc so it could be an opportunity is all I'm trying to get at time to spend with your cats uh Brenda's cat is giving years a run for your money Rita um let's continue please with um uh rounding up questions and comments director brim Edwards do you have any remaining thoughts yeah um I think and I want to thank the staff for answering all the questions that I posed I really appreciate that this one's a very truncated process and so we haven't had a lot of opportunities on public discussion or ask questions so thank you um so I guess just my thoughts just on the general budget I'm obviously going to be supportive of the um the approval vote um it's been a really tumultuous year I think nobody could have predicted that we had a pandemic and precedented unemployment an economic recession and then also a moment in which we must address the racial inequity in our country um and I think in a year like that most people would say like this is going to be a business as usual budget or we just got to get by like manage our way through it and I think I'm really proud of the district because um we didn't do that because I think that would have been the easy thing to
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do but instead using the reimagine PPS Vision our racial Equity agenda emergent strap plan um really focusing on the success of our students um so I want to just applaud The District staff of not taking the easy route and it was all very compressed I also want to just recognize the Portland Community because as was noted earlier in the cbrc presentation um this community voluntarily adds an additional tax onto their regular tax burden for the tune of 100 million dollars in our local option and as cbrc noted that was 890 teachers so thank you to Portland voters if we didn't have that 100 million this would be a super painful meeting tonight um also the new business tax um that you know pre-covered and I think we'll eventually get back there we had the largest new business tax in the last 15 years it should be over a billion dollars for education and it will come back so while we're getting less than we thought I think we should recognize um that uh we're on a path to um like three-legged school and a better a better funding model um I also want to just maybe go back to the comment that uh director Moore stated about maybe um about covid and the expenses it um right now based on questions and answers we had there's about 1.8 billion eight million I'm sorry uh dollars for so covid related expenses and the complexity of reopening this fall I don't think can be understated and um just this evening while we were sitting this meeting the governor announced that she's pausing any counties going into their next phase because of the uptick a pretty significant acceleration of cases in Oregon and this is actually true across the country um so the ode guidance if you read it um I think we'll give anybody a true understanding of how hard this is going to be so we're heading into a really really difficult time period And I think we should um you know still get a strategy that around what director Scott's um suggested with the city but also dial up our federal advocacy because the expense the expense to run a school system in a hybrid a regular or a distance learning is going to be more than our regular States and um I think that it's also going to be even more important than ever just back to the individuals who provided public comments tonight is going to be more important than ever if we're in a hybrid or a distance learning model that we have Community Partners that can reach and support all of our families especially those that don't have the privilege of having fast internet parents that I can you know that are available to like start up the the lesson during your time and so I think we really have to be mindful of what the cost is gonna the addition cost is going to be to deliver an equitable model of whatever that may be and it's probably going to switch my guess we'll go through all different all of the three stages at some point next time from distance learning to hybrid to the regular hopefully we'll get to regular um so I guess I guess I want to just put a sort of fine point on that instantly a potential huge category that we don't have enough money set aside to address and the last the last item um has already been discussed that between now and the budget adoption of the special session I'm sure there's going to be conversations about administrative pay into what may be viewed by others as discretionary expenses um that that's just going to be part of it and we may just be told what we're going to be doing so I think that's something to keep our eye on and then the last piece is the Secretary of State's audit had some budget recommendations and I haven't had time to just go back and make sure that we need um address them all so that would be my last thing that I just want to guess include by thanking staff for producing a budget that aligns against our priorities and vision and we're going to need to be nimble to respond to covid the state's economy and we'll also probably need to continue to be strong Advocates
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um during the legislative session with the federal delegation and local as well all right thank you understand thank you um I'll try and be quick because it's late um a few things to follow up on at one uh I want a second um director to pass his suggestion about you know the mayor taking a pickup the vice chair and the entire board absolutely freeze our pay and potentially uh reduce it to zero so ouch that's all in favor um of doing that second yeah I'm willing to throw some pain yeah okay this year I think we are all um you know I I want to thank staff I think that this this um you know we're in the middle I I've said it before and it's it's a weird thing but the pandemic hit at one of the worst times for budgeting possible um and you know thank goodness the state has a biennial budget and they happen to be in the second year of it because it would just be a total chaos right now um if the state was having to budget in this time period but local governments and school districts do um and I just want to thank the staff for for in the midst of a whole set of unknowns putting together a budget and then a plan for how we get to um next year um that I think really makes sense I also want to thank them the staff are working really hard to answer all of director brim Edwards questions uh I'm kidding Julie I think you had three only partially I did have a few myself um but they were uh no there was there was a lot of of really important information that we got and and what I really want to thank staff is sort of responding to um you know Community concerns and and parent concerns over the last few days around PE and adaptive B in particular and finding some of those additional um offsets to restore that I I do want to stress and I'm sure we've lost I hope we've lost all your parents off the call because it's it's already 10 40 but um those those things aren't Costless and well I I really support the decisions um to make those changes um though that that is also and and I think the changes we made um I think those saving those programs for now um makes more sense but that's also flexibility that is no longer in our budget and so things that could have been used to pay for Coronavirus expenses or additional unexpected things or additional programming or just offset future cuts um we we've now used that and and that sort of transitions me into um I've been thinking about how to say this in a way that is even remotely um politically astute so I don't think I'm going to do it you know the 400 plus emails that I received over the last two days all of which are heartfelt I got very few form emails almost everything I got was was personally written emotionally invested I mean these are these are you know parents who really care about their kids and the district and and the education that they're getting um but what it made me realize is the lack of understanding of what we're in for over the next few years and the reality is that saving um you know sort of sort of PE in the elementary school saving the Adaptive Community that's that's great but but sort of how do we reorient our entire Community for this three to four year ride that we're in and um it's it's going to be unpleasant but it doesn't necessarily have to be all negative and if everyone sort of accepts where we are and and and and and works collaboratively to figure out um how do we really um come together as a community and as a district to figure out the best way to get through this and preserve the things we have I actually think we'll we'll have some success you're here um looks like you just faded away but I think you were done come back to you that was a hasty exit uh director Lowry um I just want to again thank staff and I think um you know the to take a what could have been a 57 million dollar shortfall and work that down to 12. and then you know to be responsive to our community when we did get those you know overwhelming number of emails from PE folks to to listen to that as leadership and to to adjust to the express needs of the community I think is a huge amount of work I am deeply troubled by the fact that um a lot of that has been done in um cost of living uh increase is not happening I know how much our senior staff has worked I know how much you already all have sacrificed with the furloughs you have done I know that many of you have taken those furlough days and helped those with good boundaries and I know that many of you have not been able to do that simply because of the not just the pandemic but wanting to be responsive to the unrest that's happening and the protests and the huge
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need in this moment to be leaders for racial Justice and equity and so I I'm worried that we're going to lose some of you I'm worried that some of the remarkable leaders who are forecasting this incredible thing are going to have now and be tired and that if continue to ask you to sacrifice um in such ways that that's going to have a cost that ultimately will um cause suffering for our students um so I just I wanted to shout out the incredible listening work I got to be part of two listening sessions got to watch the other two that staff put together thank you Jonathan and your team for pulling all that together so quickly again thanks everybody for being responsive to the the outcry for the community about PE um and you know again I think this is going to be a long term we are going to have substantially more cuts and I I'm concerned I know we're joking about Guadalupe you know following suit with the mayor but I am concerned about this this perception that we can take from our management and take from our Administration um and like Andrew said uh director Scott said earlier in the night that that all of that communication all of this sort of goal setting that vital work we need to support that so it can continue to happen because that will ultimately have huge impacts on our students um I wrote some notes here so I'd be more organized with my thoughts and it's so not helping um I do also want to say that I I loved what Marcus Mundy had to say and his great wisdom that he shared and I'm hearing from people all around the district that that have been around PBS for a long time that it it feels a little different you know like people are still waiting to see like what director Moore said about can we turn these pretty words into practical lived out reality well what I'm hearing from constituents in the community um and what I'm seeing just having been around PPS for the few years I've been here um is that something is different that we are making change we are making a difference we are going in a New Direction it's going to take a lot of work to get there and and I just so thank the staff for your um adaptability your resilience your incredibly hard work on all of this um and I know you know it's it's uh in Vogue to say well just take it out of admin but um we really need to be clear about what are we fighting for what are we changing and how do we get there in the best strategic way possible and thank you for the amazing work you all did with about your presentation that helped us really focus in on what our priorities are and who we are going to be as PPS thank you thank you director Lowry Rita all right so um yeah I I would um I'll try to keep it brief because I agree with most of what's been said already um you know I think I think this budget is a remarkable document um and I'm deeply grateful for um the imagination and the creativity um and uh and the innovations that went into making it possible to um to survive this this um precipitous shortfall um relatively unscathed um and and even and and still manage to um make investments um I'm I'm especially grateful that um we have a strategic plan and a vision and um an Administration that I think knows what needs to be done and knows how to do it um and I I think that's going to make weathering this economic storm much easier than it would have been you know if this had happened five years ago um and you know I'm I'm well as you can tell from my earlier comments um I think we have a moment here um I am I I would not have wished for a a deficit um I think we could have made amazing progress um if we actually had the um if we actually got the money that we budgeted for um but nevertheless um I also believe in the trait phrase never let a crisis go to waste and um I think there are I I think we have a moment to Galvanize support for some some real progress in areas that might otherwise under different circumstances um I have encountered some resistance so um I think it's probably only a moment
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so I'm hoping that we seize this opportunity um to to really make some progress on things that we've that that this district has talked about for a very long time so anyway thank you appreciate that um I really want to Echo what everyone said just add a few comments um my my most fundamental gratitude is that um we are incredibly fortunate that we have this team in place at this time um both to deal with the transition um with closing our schools and going to a form of of remote learning um it was so quick it was so capable it wasn't perfect it's full of challenges as next year will be too but to see the team um put all of that in place with our kids at the center um so quickly was just incredible and then to see this budget proposal um that first of all um dug us three quarters of the way out of our hole before we even had to start looking at cuts to the general fund is pretty amazing so there was great creativity um and resourcefulness that was shown there and um just to you know go back to our efforts over the last 18 months on really improving our governance the fact that we have board goals in place the fact that we have our Community Driven Vision in place the fact that we have a strategic planning process that is well underway um the fact that we have a really clearly articulated racial equity and social justice framework that we're we're staking our our decisions on makes all the difference in the world I I have to say I have been in this position of making budget decisions in the absence of those and superintendent Guerrero you refer frequently to the the lack of systems that you discovered when you stepped into this place but we've made just tremendous progress in that way and it makes the tough decisions so much easier because we know what we care about out and um how we're going to prioritize things so to me that's that's what's most important here and and we'll follow that through in the years to come um I do I do think it was interesting to hear the comments from a couple of the people in public testimony um that regardless of what our community often says about a commitment to racial equity and social justice it's hard for people to deviate from the status quo and what they have expected in their institutions and what they've expected to see in their school buildings so we need to really um keep engaging our community about why it's important to stay true to those values um even when we have to make significant changes to the status quo um and I think that's it director Scott you dropped off precipitously I think you lost your own net and I'm not sure if you were done with your comments so would you like to close it man I had like I went five minutes it was the best speech I've ever given so no I'll just wrap up I'm not sure where we left off but thank you to the staff for all the work they did I think it's a great budget I said my comments earlier about Central Administration and being very cautious there so I'm going to keep an eye on that as we go forward but I really appreciate the racial Equity focus in the budget and the attention to our goals and um I'm not looking forward to um you know moving forward with the reductions when we get the final numbers and what goes on next year but I'm confident in this team that we're going to do the job final word Maxine okay all right can you talk it's so late that's beautiful um I appreciate the staff yay that's my final comment um let's vote let's vote um then I can go to sleep maybe and the rest of us too the boys will now vote on resolution number 6129 budget committee approval of the 2020-2021 budget and the imposition of property taxes all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any extensions resolution 6129 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student
04h 25m 00s
representative lateral voting yes okay we still have um two more items which I hope we can give their due in the next nine minutes um uh the first is the uh multiple Pathways to graduation master plan which the um School Improvement Bond committee has been considering director Scott would you like to introduce this item uh yes uh so I I and hopefully the internet has to go out again in June of 2019 the board approved the addition of Alliance at Meek programming to the multiple Pathways to graduation building on the Benson campus and the proposed master plan for a new multiple Pathways to graduation high school is the culmination of approximately a year of planning to design work by districts of MPG leadership students staff and stakeholders um earlier uh last month I guess on the 7th the school Improvement Bond committee we reviewed this as a committee unanimously recommended the Master Plan before into the board for approval and that is what you have in front of you tonight um all right the board will now vote on resolution number 6128 authorizing multiple Pathways to graduation master plan do I have a motion second director burm Edwards moves and director to pass seconds the motion to adopt resolution 6128 Miss Bradshaw is there any public comment no okay thank you um do we have board discussion on this resolution so the only thing I want to add is um I've served on the design Advisory Group and I think back to that when we're sitting in Mazama um previous board and this discussion was why can't we put Alliance technique in Alliance at Benson together with these other programs they're all about giving students multiple Pathways to graduation and it seemed like a pretty radical idea at the time um and uh I want to say that I love seeing the spirit of all the programs and staff and leaders come together and really look at their sort of common Mission and design a building that I think is going to do a great job of providing really a customized environments for these students and students again in a case in which they felt the the disrepair they're building or that they were sent it off to sort of the back corner of a building um that's their placement and their facility reflected what the district thought of them and how they prioritize them and I think this building structure will send those students a very different message so I think staff's done a great job at sort of capturing the vision and um just you know I want to thank um senior director wolf and um Warner Smith uh passed back below for their leadership in the process because that we're we're on the path to having a great a great building for students who really deserve it thank you for hanging with us uh Karina and um I very much look forward to uh talking with the voters and advocating for why this is so important for our students as we move forward with the bond it's really really exciting um the board will now vote on resolution 6128 authorizing multiple Pathways to graduation master plan all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes I'll oppose please indicate by saying no any abstentions resolution 6128 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative lateral voting yes all right Max we're getting close to the end but you can drop off at any time you can pull an Andrew no I'm not going to pull on Andrew because search and seizure is important okay that's a great lead in director Morgan you update us on what we're looking at from the policy committee yes uh and I'll talk relatively quickly um so this is the uh second first reading of the search and seizure policy um we had uh we had had a first reading in I believe the fall and then um and thanks to interventions from Maxine and other students um the committee uh took it back and we started to do a a pretty a pretty significant Outreach effort um to talk with students and families stakeholders to uh to kind of reassess the the whole certain seizure policy
04h 30m 00s
um the original policy had not been updated since 2002 and it didn't fully reflect the district's vision of the educational experience we want to provide to students embedded in this policy revision are significant protections for students primarily in the requirement that parents and Guardians must be given notice and give consent prior to student interviews by law enforcement uh the policy also contains a definition section that will explain some of the legal lingo that's important in this in this area um and the policy now requires the district to track all searches conducted on District property um the updates continue the district's goal of protecting students rights while also providing for the safety of all students and the general counsel's office um so um I could go on but I think I'll spare everybody um so the policy amendments will be posted on the board website in the public comment period is 21 days but the last day to comment being July 2nd the board will hold a second reading at the July 14th meeting that's it thank you so much um Maxine thank you for orchestrating a lot of student input really meaningful and important student input on this is there anything you'd like to add no I'm just really glad that I had the experience this year to work on social seizure it wasn't really something I was expecting to work on but um through this work on this policy um I've I really enjoyed learning about policy work um surprisingly even though it's been really hard and long and part of me was really hoping that this policy would be passed before I left um it's fine that it's not really still excited that it's it all the work on it has been done this year and that we've had um such great student engagement and such great Outreach done by um the engagement team which I'm really grateful for so I'm just I'm just glad that we were able to not rush to this process and get all of the um input that we needed from students who this policy would be affecting the most I I think this was um a great example of um how we want to really integrate student feedback into our student Direction and Leadership into our policy making process moving forward um super super important so we look forward to um finalizing that uh in a few weeks um thank you Rita thank you policy committee thank you staff um okay uh lastly do we have any um committee reports that anyone wants to bring forward from the policy committee oh sorry um I I don't somebody's having I don't know whether it's you or me having internet issues um no I think um the the policy committee is continuing to crank through some things um and uh We've we've finally started to tackle some of the general revisions of the you know sort of full portfolio of policies with the help of osba so um a lot of that's going to be happening over the summer I think um so anyway um I think that's all I've got yes so I have um I guess I don't have to do the multiple Pathways to graduation dag because we just uh had a vote on the project um the other dag that I'm serving on is the cut the one for the new Kellogg middle school and um I guess the the short update is you know on time on budget looks great I'm gonna circulate some uh photos so people can see the progress that's been made um and shortly a boundary is going to have to be drawn so that um planning can start for next year um but building standpoints um it's progressing within budget and it looks like it's going to be a great learning environment the perfect place for that newly designed Middle School curriculum and program to go that's fantastic all right um yes
04h 35m 00s
um so I've been writing heard on the Benson process um the design work is moving right along uh they're still dancing and then I don't know if that have they met with the historical um Landmark folks yet work through that uh work through some issues but it looks like that's having a happy ending they've had to make some budget adjustments so uh if you will call a meeting a couple of months ago pre-covered you know it's like BC um we talked about uh emergency shelter as part of the plan due to budget considerations some of that space had to be cut back but the I believe the gym will still be built to that maximum strength for an emergency shelter um and Dan or Marina can correct me if uh I missed anything all right thanks board for um keeping connected to those design advisory groups all right I believe we have concluded again just want to recognize the superintendent for your leadership on this um remarkable budget process and this budget which is um an artifact now to our vision and to your leadership into the phenomenal Senior Team that you have assembled who um poured so much in their heart and soul into this effort and articulating our strategies and priorities so um thank you all uh tomorrow's Friday so that means you get to sleep in and with that this meeting of the board of education is adjourned take care


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