2020-06-25 PPS School Board Public Hearing

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2020-06-25
Time	18:00:00
Venue	Virtual/Online
Meeting Type	town-hall
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Bond Town Hall - 6/25/2020

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good evening and welcome to tonight's virtual Bonn Town Hall this meeting is being audio stream live on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our PBS TV Services website this November voters may be asked to consider a 2020 school bond renewal that would maintain the current tax rate and continued investments in our schools the PBS Board of Education has proposed three options for a 2020 bond renewal at the current tax rate and is seeking community input on these options through July 3rd we're excited to welcome you and others in our community to provide a space for feedback chair and our collective discoveries and explore the questions that matter for the future of our city's public school infrastructure your insight will be will provide ample opinion to the PBS Board of Education as we consider a bond package referral to voters in November night's Town Hall will include three 30-minute breakout sessions during which participants will be able to enter virtual rooms that will cover our educational investments health and safety projects modernisations and rebuilds and bond options at 6:30 you'll be asked to connect to your first breakout session we encourage you to visit the room and topic you previously RSVP to if you do not remember feel free to pick one one of the four options links will be shared closer to 6:30 p.m. please know that these sessions will be recorded and available for public viewing after tonight's event you're welcome to stay in this one session for the entirety of the 30 minutes or jump between rooms we kindly ask that if you do jump between rooms that you quietly enter the conversation most likely already in progress before we transition to a presentation by Dan Young chief operating officer and Danny ledesma senior advisor on racial equity and social justice on the 2020 bond renewal we will start this evening by grounding today's conversation at Portland Public Schools we know that in order to address pernicious opportunity gaps we have to be explicit about race we also know that we must be aware of our history past present so we can be intentional to not embed oppression into our culture and our classrooms our history of inadequately serving black and Native American and many students of color does not reflect the type of community we aspire to be stead we strive to be a community that expresses the fundamental right to human dignity for every person and every student especially in our plans and in our actions we also know and believe that by generating an equitable world we must build an educational system that identifies and ends all means of oppression we're on public schools recognizes that racist violence both physical emotional and systemic are daily and justices for black indigenous and people of color in our community racism institutional cultural and individual continues to impact all of our lives on a daily basis and as a result we must one constantly recognize and respect indigenous peoples as traditional stewards of this land and the enduring relationship that exists between indigenous people and their traditional territories and - we must also continue to say the names of victims lost to racist violence bringing light and demanding racial justice today and every day to provide this land acknowledgement and to say their names I'd like to introduce Danny Ledesma senior advisor on racial equity and social justice and Claire Hertz our deputy superintendent of business and operations good evening my name is Danny ledesma and I'm latina and from the Hickory band of the Apaches and Multnomah County in Portland have been my home for 18 years I'm proud that our community strives to strengthen our relationships with the Native community and Native Nations a symbol of this commitment is a land acknowledgement these statements bring visibility to the first peoples of our collective home this statement is meant to provide information and context while also encouraging all of us to reflect on our current day relationship with Native people in native experiences we acknowledge that we live work and play on the traditional land of the Chinook clack Kali Puja multnomah Vasco Kathlyn Etowah Latin and Lola we also know that many other tribes made their homes along the Columbia and Willamette rivers we honor their history and acknowledge the sacrifices they made let us also acknowledge the robust present-day federally recognized tribes of this area the Grande Ronde selects and calots in addition I would like to acknowledge the Chinook Nation who has been seeking
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federal recognition for many years the urban Indian community is made up of a tribal diversity that originates from around the country representing four hundred tribes the urban Indian community has a vivid history made up of people whose journeys have brought them to Portland by ways of forced displacements or seeking more opportunities today these tribes and communities celebrate our heritage showing resilience and tenacity that would be greatly admired by our ancestors we encourage every person to reflect on their own history understand the history of colonization and genocide and support indigenous sovereignty priorities and actions this acknowledgement is one step that we can take to improve our support of indigenous communities in this area Claire you're muted superintendent Hertz okay is that better yeah okay okay my apologies we also say their names we would also like to start this evening by saying and remembering the names of black lives that have been lost to racist violence in this country George Floyd a mod are Bree titi gully Michael Brown Stephan Clarke Sandra bland Kendra James Trayvon Martin Tamir rice bunnies Hayes Eric garner Deonte Keller Keaton Otis Jason Washington Patrick Kimmons here at Portland Public Schools we know and demand that we continue our steadfast strong and united commitment towards making it absolutely clear in our words and actions that black lives matter we we remember these names and so many other black people here in Portland and across the country who are no longer with us physically these names serve as a reminder that we must do our part to create the equitable conditions we need so that every black person in our community is seen heard and supported we stand in solidarity with black communities here in Portland and across this country who once again finds itself heartbroken angered and we are compelled to act in response to the continued murder of black people across the US as a school system we are committed to living into our commitments of racial equity and social justice one that centers our black and Native American students we are committed to calling out and eradicating systems and oppression and correcting the wrongs of our country's racial sin which stemmed back to the founding of these united states we are ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with our black community who continue to be central to building this nation and who have fought and continue to fight for a more just and equitable opportunity here in Portland and across the United States within PBS we will learn and partner with our black elders and listen to our young people to address the wrongs that originated 153 years ago when the Portland Public Schools Board of Education denied access to one of two portland public elementary schools - william brown's children becoming the first known recorded case of racism against black children in the Portland Public Schools yesterday today and tomorrow let us live up to these three important words black lives matter now I'm gonna turn it over to Dan young chief operating officer and Danny Ledesma senior advisor for racial equity Thank You Claire and we want to express our welcome again to everyone for joining us here tonight I believe everyone can see our slideshow that we're starting and thank you to the very fabulous Roseann Powell who's helping us with a slideshow
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tonight but we are here because we are here to discuss our future and we want to make sure that folks know that that at our town hall that this meeting is going to be recorded and also me to the public if we could move to the next slide please that the that this will be made to the public for future reference we're here to to talk today about how we can through the use of a tool of a bond create flexible and future-focused environments and I want to just return back to the agenda for tonight and let you know that we are going to do some framing so if we could go to the next slide we're going to do some framing at the top here we're gonna go into breakout rooms where we can have some more in-depth conversations with you all that'll be facilitated by members of our teams and then we'll have a closing and so that's that's what we're gonna do tonight so let's start with the framing we are here today at PBS and we're excited about the future of PBS because we've had an opportunity over the last over the last year to really be anchored in our vision and so we go to the next slide we had the opportunity to engage with our community in a deep and meaningful way to chart our North Star and we were able to over the course of 18 months collect over 12 to 16 thousand different pieces of information we really engaged with our community to ask the question what is the what is the what is it that we want for our students into the future and as part of our and what came out of that that engagement process is our vision which is PBS reimagined where we were we were able to articulate our core values a graduate portrait that is not only clear but really an ambitious ideal of what we really want our students to be able to know to be and be able to do so that they are able to thrive into the future but also included in our graduate portrait were the essentials that we want every adult every educator to be able to support our graduate profile we also identified system shifts that we're going to need to be able to create the conditions so that our system is optimized and being able to help realize a graduate profile or every student's so if we go to our next slide or our chief of operations dan young is going to talk about sort of what how a bond program can help us realize our vision yeah Thank You Danny and good evening so what capital bond allows us to do is realize our vision and our goals through the built environments by allocating significant capital funds to our sites into our portfolio which includes over a hundred sites over 250 buildings and over nine million square feet we do this by focusing on a few categories of work one is educational improvements which includes critical technology and curriculum improvements our health and safety projects what those do is allow us to do important and critical work like fixing broke our leaking roofs our broken mechanical systems but also doing upgrades to systems like fire alarms and our security and then our modernizations and rebuilds or we are fully updating and retrofitting our site please so as we embark upon this journey to think about our bond program we're really guided by three three key principles the first being racial equity and social justice at PBS we want to make sure that our value of racial equity and social justice is something it's not just that we talk about because embedded into all that we do and that it's not just seen as something that happens in one place or over there or that's something that is physical or theoretical but that it's embedded throughout our entire system and suppose we think about our approach of targeted universalism we're really trying to Center our work around our experiences and communities that experienced the most barriers we believe that if we sort of if we if we focus there that that will help us by building a system that will eventually be able to serve every student and focus is on our black and our Native students and so we want to make sure
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that as we think about applying our approach of targeted universalism and our racial equity and social justice value to the bond that we're really thinking about a set of upgrades a set of physical physical improvements that can strengthen our buildings in ways so that we can achieve the graduate profile for our students the next the next the next principle is is we really want to engage with the community in a different way we want to sort of have community be part of the of the the decision making of the of the thought process that helps us get to the very best outcomes and so built into our process of the bond is a bond accountability committee which is an independent panel of community members who have expertise in various fields and they are really charged with reporting to our school board on sort of how well PBS delivers on our on our voter approved projects but we also want to really invite folks in in venues such as this town hall and more in focus groups or getting the experience the expertise of our students of our educators of our community members so that we can have a really strong program and then our last principle is that we really believe in independent professional oversight and accountability as stewards of such a significant public resource we want to make sure that we are that we are performing to our to our maximum that we are thinking about impact and that we are accountable not only to the bond accountability committee and the school board but to our larger community public of which these funds come from I think the next slide now more than ever engagement with students and families is critical to learn priorities for the 2020 bond especially our black and Native families outside this Town Hall we will hear from students and families through a community-wide survey focus group and public meetings next slide please thanks to voters the district has passed two large capital improvement bonds in the last handful of years first in 2012 and in 2017 these bonds have allowed us to accelerate a many of the important improvements within the district including full modernisations of Roosevelt Franklin and Grant High School and a newly constructed fabien pre-k 8 Madison High School is under construction right now and that is on schedule to be opened in fall of 2021 as is the new Kellogg middle school that will open next year as well Lincoln High School continues into construction and it'll be growing very much more vertical here and the coming months and design on the fence and Polytech high school continues as well next slide please in addition to our larger projects we have done lots and lots of work in our more targeted areas including security upgrades that are continuing to go on we replace four to five roofs every summer we are focusing on critical areas such as asbestos abatement and lead paint remediation within all of our schools we have updated fire alarms and sprinkler systems and continue with accessibility seismic improvements and that completed science lab upgrade that our middle school next slide please an important note is that the options that we are looking looking towards for 2020 will be a renewal of the current tax rate we're not looking to increase that rate over what is currently in place next slide please so when we think about the proposed investments we want to make sure that folks know that we have some options so there are educational investments we can utilize funding to support items like curriculum or special education classrooms and technology infrastructure another is health and safety project so we think about how we can improve on different maintenance on some of the critical life cycles of buildings to ensure that they are up to upkept and movie and sort of helping to make sure that that folks are safe and these
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include improvements such as new roofs upgrades to mechanical systems seismic upgrades to just sort of to prepare in case of earthquakes increased security systems to promote safety for students and educators and also greater greater accessibility for folks who are experiencing disabilities and then we also have the option of modernizations and rebuilds similar to what we've seen and so there are a couple of options and looking at completion of the Benson campus that includes the multiple pathways for graduation building also where you get rebuilding and planning for our high schools Cleveland Jefferson and Wilson so the next slide is going to tell us where we're going so we're going to break out into into town into breakout rooms and we're gonna ask folks to go into four groups and you will be able to sort of travel after each group so between between 6:30 and 7:00 oops sorry I think I'm on I think we might have skipped a slide about the breakout groups but that's okay well so we're gonna go into a breakout group for educational investments health and safety projects Thank You modernisations and rebuilds and then also the bond options and you'll be facilitated and join a congregation there'll be three half-hour sessions and so you'll be able to travel to amongst those things and you should have links to those and I think I skipped a slide so I'm sorry Rosanna if you wouldn't mind going to the slide before which is sort of how to stay engaged so if you wouldn't mind we would love or if you are not able to get everything out or to be able to say everything that you need to say in the discussion group that there are still more ways to provide feedback one is our survey and we're hoping that to hold that survey open until July 3rd at 5 p.m. and there's a link to that there's also you can email us at school bond at PBS and then we want to let folks know that in terms of next steps there will be a work session on July 9th at 6:00 p.m. for the board of education to discuss community inputs there will be a another meeting at to be determined in July we'll have a public hearing on the final bond option as folks get closer to a decision and then on July 28th there will be a board meeting on a vote to refer a final bond renewal option to voters and that's that's still tentative but we think that that will happen and then on November 3rd is election day when voters bondas record voters will have an option to vote for that so what we're gonna do now is we're gonna ask folks to hopefully you've been invited to a breakout session and you have those links we're gonna ask folks to travel to your breakout session and then we will we will begin shortly and for the for the next between 6:30 and 7 we have about five minutes to the transition between 6:30 and 7:00 we'll begin the discussions and then you can travel to breakout 2 which is 7:00 to 7:00 7:00 p.m. to 7:30 and then our breakout 3 which is 7:30 to 8:00 which gives us about a half hour for each one I want to thank everyone for your participation and for your engagement I know I'm speaking on behalf of our Board of Education our superintendent and all of the staff over here we're really excited to hear to hear your thoughts and your inputs and and really just thankful for the opportunity to serve as stop partners with you and we're really excited to listen so thank you and I think I'm going to invite you all to go

Event 2: Bond Town Hall 6/25/2020 Breakout Session #1 Education Investments

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lays out the three options that the board is considering right now just for your edification I'm gonna walk through what the educational investments could look like again this is still very very rough and people are going to you know weigh in and then the board is going to decide what they want to do so this is just early on in the process and this isn't a really important part of the process so I really appreciate everyone being here and I believe we have pink ice on a Lee joins so we have a board member Lee Lowry is in the room and I am going to talk about the educational investments so in option one you'll see it in the shaded box there is a technology curriculum and special education classrooms each of those have a dollar figure attached to it for this auction so you'll see technology 127 point five million curriculum twenty four point nine million and special education classrooms four point five if you look to the left there's a little bit more detail about what would be included under that amount of money if you look down at the next option in the blue box same thing except there's a fourth bucket called other improvements and the special education classrooms amount is increased to twenty two point three the other improvements piece of all of this if you look at the fourth bullet to the left it's really about different other spaces like for physical education some schools have covered outdoor play area as others don't and some schools have enough space to accommodate the PE requirements that have been mandated by the state and some fell so there's a lot of kind of that's just a bucket for other things that are not dedicated to technology curriculum or split classrooms and then the third in yellow the third option has those same technology curriculum and special education classroom buckets they're all the same as the first one except the minute all check that I'm right yeah okay and except that the under the on the first one you'll see a little bit less for curriculum I'm just gonna make sure that I'm right is it yeah no let's see what is the difference I remember that yeah sorry it's a little bit more for curriculum and compared to the first one it's that 22 9.2 number versus the 24 24 point nine so I know that's a lot of information but I just want you to you can take a look at that in the link you saw before that I shared in the chat I'll keep it up on this option actually I'm going to keep it on option two because it has the four buckets versus the three and then I'm going to ask some questions and you know this is pretty informal so you know speak your mind tell us what you think what are your reactions after seeing the investments possible for education in the 2020 bond how would they impact your student or the students in your neighborhood or in your school and then on technology curriculum and special education they're identified as the top education investment needs how could an investment in these areas be beneficial again to you to your school to your child to your community so I'm going to mute myself and let others speak just have take the floor and if someone wants us to go next you can put your name in the chat and I'll make sure to line you up in the queue don't be shy or if you are shy you can put it in the chat and that's fun too I'll started off again Courtney so in the last 30 minutes I was just asking specifics around what the ability for adding classrooms to schools that don't have the full continuum of special education services so that students who experience disability don't have to be outside of their neighborhood and outside of their neighborhood schools to be able to receive those services so that special education was less of a place and more of a service right so I think on top of that as a parent of a child with significant disabilities and as a within a PBS and as a PBS employee serving as a special education and advocate and an engagement person I work in all schools so I'm district-wide and I would
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definitely support the or encourage the 82 classroom update because being in classrooms throughout the districts I can definitely see the need for that and I don't know what the specifications around what those updates would look like or what those supports would look like but the alternative being a four million something amount just for internal and let me see if I can find it the purchase and installation of furniture only I would not see that as a equitable use of supporting special education because I think that especially when you add an equity lens to our students with disability who intersect between having a disability in being a student of color and it is even more impactful when and and being a student maybe whose family does not speak a language other English it is even more impactful when that student has to go elsewhere outside of their neighborhood school just to receive an education and so I think if there's any initiative within this amount the proposed amount of the 82 classrooms I think that would be an amazing investment and an amazing vision to have so that our students with disabilities can stay in their community Thank You Noel thank you for all the work that you do so Courtney there's a there's a comment in the chat from Korea's town that is a very broad general question about how we came to this and how this might be considered in this pandemic pandemic efforts so just want to take a moment to kind of address that when we when we looked at going for a bond issue I'm done well if I'm sorry for those I'm the chief technology officer for Portland Public Schools and my department put together the ask we've got in the technology piece there much the same way that the curriculum department and the special edge of Education Office did is looking at what are the severe needs that we have in the district right now where where are we failing to meet the needs of our students where are we failing to meet the needs of the overall infrastructure and being able to provide a quality education and an educational environment so it it I've been working on this for probably nine months to try and put together a package that deals with the historical debt we have around technology in Portland Public Schools I won't speak for Halloween stood his butt he knows you know the curriculum side of the house and so we went about putting these together on what our needs are and are now trying to see does this resonate does this fit with what our community says are our priorities for us when we talk about addressing the pandemic and this is a capital bond effort so the dollars are very specific we can't hire people out of this it's not for FTE or people or teachers or things like that it's very specific on how we invest this money so it eventually impacts what we what will happen as a reason a responder the pandemic that's going to be more of the federal government responding and providing backfill and how we allocate our general fund budget so I'm going to stop there but I just want to try and give a broad overview on how some of this came about I'll also say to Karina and thank you for joining us as a new parent in the system we we are as Dan said I don't know if you were in the main room at the beginning that kind of laid out some context but we are we have past bonds for the last about nine years and we have kind of a 30-year vision for modern modernizing our schools because most of them were built before 1920 and they you know have all kinds of issues you know not even talking about technology and curriculum in some of the other spaces tonight talking about roofs and seismic and all kinds of other facilities needs so there's a lot I mean you know we could do we need a lot more than were even proposing here to do everything and so we're trying to figure out what is it that we can start taking bites of to get us you know to a more modern school system and and then you know you throw a pandemic into it and that's a whole other layer so is that my computer on sorry this be done if you can get yourself knocking thank you so I just wanted to share that as well there's there's not there's never going to be
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enough in this bond to do everything but how can we get solve some of the critical needs in all the different areas and find some kind of balance there I think that's the that's the hard part and that what that's what makes the you know the board's job really hard and I should say their volunteer job because they're all volunteers so I just wanted to lay that that context as well I think I didn't ever ask some of the questions in the chat I was going to just say on to the couple that have jumped in there or the reefs do you want to go talk about the curriculum decisions right so when the things I want to do was to write behind what you said on that and with Courtney said the Panda the pandemic really caused us to reflect back on how we were going to re-enter and how education was going to look different for students to be the experience and so when we've been thinking about curriculum and technology Don and I work very closely together we're really trying to capture people's experiences from teachers to students to parents and think about how will it look different so that we leverage what was positive about it and but also so that we address what was challenging about that at the same time the question on the question around race has a totally different look right now it is much more authentic to what it is that we can do now because it wasn't just oh I'm excited I'm angry this weekend I'm out no it's been sustainable and that's forcing all school districts across the country and including us to think about how are we teaching our students to learn what they learn right not just math and reading science but how they view the world and so if I as the chief academic officer and working with my team we really have to go back and rethink what instruction will mean for us needs moving forward given everything that they've been experiencing over the past few months and that includes how do we audit the curriculum that we are actually seeking to purchase for our students so that it is reflective of the kind of feature that we're trying to create for our students and so technology is created until that because we really want to individualize to create more authentic experiences for our students multiple ways of allowing them to enter the learning and to demonstrate the proficiency and so that requires not only the the book itself but also requires technology that exposes them to experiences that that can't be had just by in the end the lock space of a classroom Thank You Louise and Don I don't know if you had something to respond to that but there are a couple of questions specifically about what's included in the hundred twenty seven million in the chat and what is equitable access to technology mean and I know you're you're the best to answering these questions yes not at that so yes equitable access to technology means a couple of things one part of what part of that hundred twenty seven million dollars will be looking to to use that to purchase devices for a are are launched into a one to one program across the district in grades three through 12 and looking at a to the one with more specific touch enabled devices in the lower grades PK to two as well as making sure we provide assistive technology specific devices that's something the district has never centrally provided and made sure that they help maintain and support so figured out what what those most devices are but that's only part of it there's the the other part is specifically when we talk about equitable access is we've done a beautiful job of modernizing some of our buildings and they've come out beautiful and every classroom you walk into has technology that's available and accessible to students as soon as they walk into the classroom the other eighty schools don't have that so part of what we're trying to do is build a baseline of what a technology enabled classroom would look like a mountain projector and projector in every classroom wireless access only about thirty three of our buildings have what we would call education already wireless access in the buildings which means everything where you go any learning space across the district in that room only thirty three of those buildings could support that so we've got about sixty six buildings we need to go in and complete our wireless infrastructure so that that is available we also want to put a wireless display so students can share their work and students can be able to project what they're working on so that their classmates can comment and have it have an insight and including in voice amplification so that it's the piece of technology that actually is tied to student improvement in growth academically just in and of itself they're the parts of that is we've got a huge backlog of all of this information
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runs on a core backboard the plumbing of a digital infrastructure the switching infrastructure the fiber infrastructure that connects the different wiring closets across our buildings back to the district office all of that has been ignored for over a decade so we're getting to the point where we're concerned that things are going to start failing over and we won't have replacement gear so we've got to look at almost rebuilding the entire infrastructure and and this is this is the one way we can do in our general fund the way we're in is currently funding schools it's it's not available to the school district this size so it includes a lot of those pieces of just being able to stand up a digital infrastructure and being able to support all of the instruction that that we're moving into so I'm hoping that answers the questions efficiently without taking too much time or rolling anybody's eyes back because I can do that I'll just I think Pat and Thomas where the to and the chat that asked those questions so if you have more or follow up you can take yourself off mute or throw it in the chat and Thomas says awesome thanks it's what I always say love it who else has comment or feedback to offer on the educational investments topic I took the screen share off just because you know there's like a voice talking at you but I just smiled at you and thank you again for being here tonight on a beautiful night I can see on my window its no else laughing at me because she's outside enjoying the weather I'll let folks weigh in here I'm and on terms of time we've got a few more minutes and then we'll swap again to the third opportunity and again you can stay here as long as you want you're welcome to be here but there's also three other breakout rooms you trying to think if there's anybody else oh they got a lien here see Cynthia is the new principal at Forest Park is that what I saw today congratulations and I see Margaret is in here a little Margaret Haley hey I just again want to thank everybody for being here there's a lot that our schools need and so we're trying to discern what all that is and so having your feedback and your questions helps us know how to ask deeper questions of the staff but also what we need to communicate as we're going forward with this bond so thank you for your time tonight and I'll just them one other reminder and tell all your friends this is a straight renewal so we are not asking people to pay more in property taxes to renew this bond this is a an opportunity bonding is complicated and I am in no way an expert I think that's the theme here I'm not an expert but with bonds we're asking for more capacity to do more with what's already been approved by voters in 2017 and 2012 so I could go into all the subway-tile details but I won't bore you and I'll probably get it wrong what you should know is this is not gonna increase your property taxes and I know that right now especially in the recession that we're heading you know deep into that's a real concern for people they don't necessarily want to pay more so this is a really great talking point for you in the community to say this won't increase your taxes or it won't increase the rate I don't know what the value of your home is so I don't know what that looks like but it will not increase or change the rate that you're currently paying and I know that that is a helpful message for some folks especially right now so I just wanted to make sure I didn't forget to tell you that and then also we do have a website I plopped it into the chat earlier I'll put it in again it has a link to our survey I'm going to put it in right now please share far and wide we want to get as many people as possible to weigh in on their opinions and feedback posted on your social media do whatever it is that you do to share information with your friends and family but we would love to share far and wide it also has all the information around the different options that I'm showing you tonight and hopefully is a good place to land to give information but there's also a email address and that is listed on that website and I'm in the chat you can also encourage folks to send an email so that you know undress we're checking that regularly as another opportunity because we're in such a compressed amount of time here and because we're doing all this virtually
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we're trying to get as many options as possible for folks to share how they feel and it's hard because there's never enough time and there's never a you know enough opportunities for town halls because people are busy but we're doing the best we can in the short amount of time so thank you all for as I said earlier taking the time tonight to be here I think I will well you're free any of you are free to go at any time but I will officially say go forth find another room if you want to stay with us I should have like heaven music or something now that made this even more fun but I really appreciate it and we do have another question in terms of curriculum what are some of the proposals made especially with special education so when looking at the curriculum if you look at the bond we're focusing on the core subject areas which are language arts and math and that includes basically the resources necessary for students in special education programs to access those resources and we're looking at resources not only in in textbook textbook form but we're also using the digital digital backpack resources we're actually going to provide similar resources in the digital format and and they have to be they have to be of made available to students with with special needs in various in various capacities they will be available so one of the things that we're doing that we're working with our publishers to ask the questions that given how we're going to be provided instruction in a hybrid model how are the resources going to be available to all students including students with IDPs thank you dr. Valentino hoping that answered your question Karina so we'll just hang out and take a little break and wait for others to join our last group thanks for letting me be here it was so good to see you all I'm gonna happen to another one so make other people jealous of your location they know my jealousy will go away everyone yeah mr. Roy good to see you good to see you Courtney how are ya good good hey Greg I painted I haven't got to tell you hi I haven't seen you in a long time Akili good to see enjoying the golden hour outside I say yes I am so nice out here so nice thanks I don't because it's the mess and spiders live in it it's pretty but that's it so it's 7:30 so we're gonna start welcoming folks into our oh my gosh Gabrielle I love your your muted video picture at your high school graduation so anyway we're gonna wait a few minutes and let people join in and then we'll get started college
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welcome to those who just joined we'll give it a few more minutes hi Danna how are you welcome Michelle hello hey another person to make me jealous it sitting outside and I'm in a stuffy bedroom I had two tonight so nice it looks beautiful so I think we'll get started welcome everybody and I'm sure some others will join us but I'm going to get started in the interest of time to respect all of your time I'm Courtney Wessling I'm the director of government relations for PBS and doing some internal project management of the bond the bond work we are in you guys are all in the educational investments room just in case you thought you were in some other room and tonight we're gonna go through I'm gonna screen share a document that we'll go through a little bit and then I'm also going to plop it into the chat so you can go through it on your own time or alongside us and then I'll also give you a link to the whole first I'll start with the link to the debond website which includes a link to the survey in case you want to dig deeper and and I encourage you to please go ahead and take the survey and share it with everyone you know and and then this is the document I'm flopping in there now is the document that we're gonna that I'm going to share that just is a pretty detailed document that outlines each of the three options that are currently under consideration by the board they don't have to adopt one of each of these as they're written they can make adjustments based on feedback so that's why it's really important that you all are here I really appreciate it I know it's it's nice that you can be doing lots of other things so thank you for dedicating your time and for being committed to this work and to the district okay and Mary you're back I thought you might come back it's good to see you let's see I'm going to present I'm getting really good at this dawn watch out okay does everybody see something on let's see does everybody see almost something on your screen okay great yes perfect okay so I'm going to walk through this quickly on the first page that I'll show you you'll see a green shaded box at the top is educational improvements 156 point nine million within that there are three buckets technology for one twenty seven point five million curriculum twenty four point nine million and special education classrooms for four point five to the left are three bullets that detail what that money would be spent on we'll come back to all this but I want to walk you through that one first below that is the blue option option two you'll see the same list of bucketed items the dollars change a bit the
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curriculum amount goes up slightly to twenty nine point two the special education classrooms dollar amount goes up to twenty two point three and then there's a fourth bucket other improvements for ten million if you look to the left you'll see what all that is detailed to suspend the theater that we would spend it on on that new bucket is is a bunch of stuff that couldn't be included the one I often share is around the PE spaces a lot of our schools don't have enough dedicated space to accommodate the states mandate mandated minutes for PE instruction we have mandates at the K five and six eighth level not a high school level and then on option three the yellow option you'll see those same buckets minus the 10 million other items and the special education classrooms is back to four point five the curriculum number stays at twenty nine point two and the technology is number is the same throughout as you've all been more than well aware of the distance learning challenges and that just the shift to distance learning I should say has been you know been a big a big focus of the district over the last few months and I'm sure if you're a parent or a family number with a student in your house you've been much of what well aware of those issues in the challenge that it is switch switch gears mid-year so thank you to all of you thank you dawn I'll give him a shout out here publicly because he worked really hard on all of this and everyone's been um then really I'm amazing to see the switch mid-year it's not easy so enough for that I'll move on but I just want to make sure I acknowledge that so I'm gonna open the floor and I want to give people an opportunity you can feel free to speak I will try to queue you up if people's more the one person wants to speak at a time you can put your name in the chat if you didn't get the first word and you want to be next you can also ask questions within the chat if you're not if you're not feeling bold tonight or you're a little shy and that's no problem I get it and and we'll try to cover what you what you plop into the chat I'm also gonna add those links again because I know we've had some folks join us a few minutes after I did that so I'm just gonna share the document that I just that I am sharing and I'll share the bond renewal website as well but at this point please how about it well tell us what you think tell us what you want on to know more about and it's really we're informal so speak your mind and thank you for being here and maybe I'll just start us off with Brad's question where can we go to see the detail of what the 120 7.5 comprises so see here I was just going to the website to see if that had been posted we have a lot of documents and I don't know if that was on here Don do you see it on there I'm having a hard time with copying and pasting but if you want I can give a high level answer and this is you know still there's a number of things that we have to do we have decade's worth of technical debt in terms of just our core infrastructure the switching backbone of the fiber interconnects in our buildings phone system that is no longer supported key key components just to keep a the plumbing up and running the other components that are critical right now is part of this will will allow us to launch a 1:1 program in grades 3 through 12 which would be a hopefully a take home program so students would have access outside of school to the device as well as a two-to-one in grades PK 2 with some focus on assistive technology for our students who need very specific devices to be able to participate interact with with their instructional processes and curriculum the other part is in part of those infrastructure upgrades it comes as a surprise to a number of folks that not all of our buildings have wireless access throughout the building only 33 of our buildings are are currently up to a standard that we would say or educationally ready which means it doesn't matter which classroom or which learning air you walk into there's wireless access available 66 of our buildings don't meet that standard so when we look at a one-to-one program weren't we're gonna have problems with connectivity and a lot of those buildings until we we build that
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infrastructure out we also have inequities in what's available in terms of technology in our classrooms basic things like a mounted projector voice amplification and dedicated computing in the classroom so we want to make sure that every classroom doesn't matter which school you're at student can walk in and have at least the same baseline experience from wherever they go or whatever when they transition from k5 into middle school or middle school to high school so not just focusing on the modernization efforts but making sure that we've built out a baseline for all of our students Don and Gabrielle is gonna ask her a question next I just wanted to let you know that I did find that document it's on a it was in the bond committee we'll move it over to the bond website but it includes some more detail about what those dollars will go toward um to answer Brad's question Brad if you need more information let us know Gabrielle detail document may perhaps answer some of my questions when I look at the proposed educational investment some of the questions I have around the 120 7.5 million and also just to clarify some of this has be in relation to the pandemic so as the parent of a student that receives special education one of the challenge this is around how to use technology when it wasn't available as a special education student so my question is with the changes that may be happening going into the school year do some of these investments recognize that specific to our special education students there needs to be better access to adaptive technology and training around that and staffing around that so that when students are not able to access the school or one-on-one instruction that they're able to still access that instruction does that make sense yeah Danah what i was going to say builds off like Gregory L is saying I also have a daughter and special education and you know it just is whenever you make an investment in curriculum or technology in the bond it's just gonna have to go hand in hand with that operating dollars investment in high-quality professional development coaches and buildings family engagement staff all those pieces that are going to work together to make that curriculum and technology actually shift what's happening in classrooms so that's just my I don't think it's really a question just a comment that both of these budgets need to be considered together which I know the district team knows in order for the bond investments to have the greatest impact on kids of color kids with disabilities etc in our in our district Thank You Gabrielle did we get to your question I want to make sure that we I mean did that help I don't know if you want to restate the last part oh you're listening okay so I will say from from my standpoint when we talk about the investment in technology there is a component of that for assistive technology and you know the that we're looking at more adaptive technology however you want to refer to that and we have been on a path to look at how we invest in our professional funds in our professional development in our training and we had a beautiful budget for this before the pandemic we were we were going down a path with si8 investments and there was a three to five-year plan that we were developing that weren't going to have to come back and where were these two things were weird of tailing beautifully together we're going to have to come back in and relook at how we make those investments right now the district has said we are going to continue to embed our core values which is how do we serve our our black and our Native students and make sure that they are getting what they need and so that this budget reflects that but it continues to be on our minds on how do we do that because you're right the things don't move anything forward it's the people combined with any devices or any infrastructure that we can put together I'm gonna oh good okay thanks Gabrielle and thanks stand up for the questions that's a really good they're really good points
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I thought Donna thought you left I was gonna cry cuz you're very helpful I'm gonna get the Florida Jack Jacqueline and then Clara thank you very much my question is about the specifications on what is meant by a special education classroom I think as dr. clay are still here know maybe he can answer that and I know he's had up he has a voice issue tonight so maybe he can throw that into the chat if he's still here and if he's not obvious still here okay if he wouldn't mind what does what does it mean to have what's what's the special ed classroom what is that so we'll give give that a minute in the meantime Clara do you want to ask your question and Jacqueline I'll make sure we come back if we don't see something in the chat okay I'm a student at Cleveland High School and talking about curriculum then it wasn't until I was in high school that I got substantial curriculum about climate change sexual education health education surrounding like drugs and alcohol as well as history curriculum around black history native history and history beyond Oregon and the United States especially history be covering beyond state just simple US history I am not received any of that and same with a lot of my classmates about climate change and then at Cleveland then drug education and sexual education and even middle school is too late and so I understand parent concerns that it's too early in elementary school to teach students about this but it's not really protecting the students to not know about these things instead they need to know where they can find resources instead of simply being sheltered so I'm wondering what is this curriculum investment looking like will that help expand the curriculum to these areas or like what's going to be covered so the initial investment will be a replacement of curriculum that has been missing as part of the adoption in language arts in math one of the things that we are dr. Valentina you hit your mute button is the intersectionality of this curriculum so that it's not only about the content itself but about it extending the opportunity for students to learn more about themselves and discover more about themselves within the discipline so that a lot of that will happen with the digital aspects of the technology of the curriculum that we are purchasing and so when we are looking for example in the literacy program we are becoming much more aware I think as an institution the public education of the value of have equality literature that actually addresses not only the current but but the future aspects of what what a learner is or what a member of society will become and so we are working more closely with publishers to address a component that historically hasn't been there in mathematics it's about developing math skills right concepts math language but now we realize that it has to go beyond that right it's about helping them to understand because it can access the information by just googling it right so it's it's less about where the information is and how to help us students use the information beyond just the the content of the discipline as we move beyond just language arts and math we're also looking at social studies that includes ethnic studies right and and so we're expanding that option now that we have standards from the state of Oregon we are really looking deeply at what it means to be a citizen not only of the city the state but of the world and what are the elements that contribute to developing that kind of individual and so we're expanding in our view of the world as educators so we have to have students expand their view of the world and their place in it and so we're becoming much more diligent in working with our publish to ensure that the curriculum does some of the things that you're talking about and so to the question earlier about the special ed classroom so a special ed classroom by definition normally k5 k-8 or k12 is a classroom that supports students who have special education needs new to and identified disability as described in the individual education plan or the IEP and so the students are placed the children are placed in that setting of those needs so that those needs are
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specifically addressed by the teacher and support and support staff or the teacher support staff and specialized equipment as some of you heard earlier about access to content by ensuring that special equipment is made available so it's really about the containment of the supports to ensure that they are integrated and targeted okay thank you dr. Valentino so you're talking about containing classrooms I thought that Portland Public Schools was moving she was fully inclusive model for education we are moving towards tomorrow but it is a process so there are a there are schools and classrooms that actually have opened up to be more inclusive of that so we have full inclusion classrooms but we need to be more expensive in how we are implementing that model and so in working with if the office is gluten support services the office of teaching and learning and Otis the office of technology were what we are going to continue to work together to ensure that we open up avenues for students to be to work more closely in the mainstream classroom and and that is why one of the things that we are doing is ensuring that the curriculum is aligned so that it's not a curriculum for the special ed classroom it's a curriculum for every student and what we have to do is to ensure that the supports are made available so that they can have the same kind of success than their peers in the regular education classroom and so one of the things that we have to make sure is you can imagine is to ensure that we provide the kind of professional development that will support the teacher in being able to apply the strategies and the practice that will help ensure that the student is successful in the mainstream environment yes I apologize I'll just say this ammaji and I'm done if if the money is being spent to maximize and redevelop special education classrooms how then will there be money to support professional development teacher training making para educators more in alignment with their profession as opposed to only being helpers but really being able to go in and serve inside of classrooms and we've helped hold to the teachers in the class it's like I feel like a Kalani's gonna be spent to upgrade to contain classrooms then I'll be really never gonna move children mainly that's it sorry not a question thanks dr. Cuellar for adding that into the chat Jacqueline if you can take a look at the chat there is some state money dedicated I wanted to pass off to Don to address what Brad mentioned around distance learning as I you know as we all been experiencing it's a real challenge and we're heading into you know an environment where just a lot of uncertainty but I want dawn to I will ask other members of senior leadership to chime in because they've all haven't been involved with this we have been planning for weeks and weeks on what is this going to look like we know there's going to be remote learning that continues to move forward in the fall to what extent how we bring students back in in a in a safe fashion and whatnot we just earlier this month got guidelines from from the Oregon Department of Education at least what some of those requirements are Communications should have started coming out today at least outlining some of the plans of what we're looking at what does it look like in a hybrid a fully back inline school or a school that's that is completely remote we know that not all of our students we don't have the space to address bring all of our students in all at once and have them there safely so we're working on getting that developed making sure that we have a plan that we can communicate to families and then bringing that out there once we have a better idea I'm going to open it up to David into it to Schaumburg maybe if they want to chime in a little bit more deeply on where we're at and done about the communication of what's what it's going to look like so I'll defer to Sean I know that the last few days I have
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been I have been offline the last couple of days for a personal reason but I know we are working to support that you know the what is important right like we can put a communication out every day we need to know we say but our instructional teams our Academic Teams our school office of school performance teams are working really hard and we do we have committed to a weekly cadence a family communication so let you know where we are progress we're making to update you next steps next milestones that sort of things so to Dan's point you know we've had a couple of those out already that we're fairly general as we you know the first one is we had just received guidance from OD e and now as we are continuing to mesh that guidance with our own plans and own capabilities I'll let Sean give a little more detail on that but Don you're right I think regular communication in much more detailed communication as we go over the coming days and weeks good evening everyone I'm John Brad chief of schools so we have been working in five work teams to implement our to plan for the reopening of schools based on guidance from the Oregon Department of Education and of course it's guided by the Oregon Health Authority so we are those teams are meeting there are multiple stakeholders involved in those groups and next week on the 30th we well he'll be more guidance coming out so we will have we're 400 different scenarios of what opening school would look like so I Persian up opening school for example where some children begins all children be in school at some point in the week but they wouldn't go necessarily to the building five days a week there would be some distance learning so or did modeling different dumb scenarios for that because we have to keep social distancing in in place well until we you know have some therapy for the virus that we are dealing with so I would say that um more detailed communication will be coming out each week there'll be show sharing with you different scenarios that we're looking at and so all the teams are working and we're also working in in collaboration with our labor partners to plant it there so both plan but the complete plan is due by August 15 to the part of Education but we will have something out well before then different scenarios so coming staging so I think I think the concern is what Shawn just told me there is significantly more than I received in any email from from the district and has there been something out that's actually said that there's going to be you know limited you know limited time in the schools there's gonna be you know roughly half - you know a third of the time I have seen requests to take surveys I've seen requests for feedback I've seen requests I guess not even requests it's been that information would be coming out did I miss it or is know what you just said there Shawn didn't has that gone out to anybody prior to this no so that well we did talk at the board meeting Tuesday if we did give a presentation at the board meeting on Tuesday with some of this information I mean and no decisions final decisions haven't been made yet but we just know that we are going to have to plan for multiple scenarios so we're you know we have scenario a B and C that were you know so far that we're looking at and of course we're prioritizing well we think about how which children need to prioritize to being in schools first of the youngest children kindergarten first second grade because it's very difficult for kindergarteners who've never been in school obviously to do distance learning full-time sorry for all children but particularly the youngest ones also the children in our most underserved communities that have problems accessing technology so we want to make sure that we're mindful all of those two things scenarios but we want all students to have to be in the school as much as possible so have an urgent teacher so that's the those are the scenarios that were working through but it's all edited by the Oregon Health Authority and CDC so so I would say that in the next week there'll be more information we have surveys that as you said Nelson and and then we'll have more I think every week you'll see more information coming out as plans are more developed and we you know we have to do for example it's a new capacity study of all our abilities to see each classroom how many children we could fit in there so if we have to there there are certain requirements like having a stable cohort so that kids are kind of like quote/unquote social bubble you know you're out the bay so we had to see how many children can fit in each classroom and every building is different because you can imagine so there's just a lot of background work that's been done so far and now that's all coming together to
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hopefully hopefully that work is not just starting now I mean that has been going on for months and I think the other the other relying on people to watch at best 200 people turn into a board meeting I mean relying on the board meeting to get you know plans out for you know the livestream of the board meeting you know with two or three hundred people maybe watch and it's not a good communication strategy so the district should not rely on that you need to get emails out to people and let them know what to expect what's going to happen there how we look at things and I think it's pretty frustrating because you know we have not seen anything other than we'll give you information eventually and take a survey right I'll make a comment this is director D pass I the screen that I'm looking at just has a recording button and a picture of a woman graduation hat with a happy expression is there a way I don't know if the moderator can I can't see who's talking and that's that's it's a hard for me to follow along and it was the speaker that part me at the top of your screen you might be able to click on sorry at the bottom of your screen there's three dots there we go okay yes layout part I like my that didn't do it for me um let me try to get but I wanted to just respond to the speaker that just spoke about the communication and I guess I'm having a hard time because I don't know who you're who you are it doesn't really matter but um I want to acknowledge that I've heard what you're talking about your I've heard that you're needing more information I want to agree with you and also also state that you know I know that the staff is working at the top of their capacity right now and so anyway I just want to acknowledge what I just heard and and you know be willing to be a problem solver in the space rather than you know I don't I don't could see is what you said as a complaint I I see it as like solid feedback which I appreciate your stepping up I just love to have a discussion further about it and about about getting communications out yes important people are on edge right now we don't know what September is gonna look like so I just wanted to acknowledge that I heard that thank you and I don't mean to jump in I want to just be mindful of time we can stay on and keep taking feedback for more minutes I'm happy to do that we can also have you enter more information into the chat that we can preserve and get feedback back we have you have a survey available online I posted the website in the early part of the chat I'm going to put it back in because sometimes when you doing late it's no longer there I don't like to cut people off so I'm happy to keep going I just want to make sure that we're mindful but this is scheduled for 8 p.m. and I want people to go about their evenings if they want to so I put that in there I wanted to make one more comment immediate in the last group but just as you're talking to people around town or you know from a phone or a chat this renewal this is a renewal so this is not going to change the tax rate so I just want to be clear about that I know this is a really tough time right now economically for for folks and the idea that this could be an additional property tax hit is one that is a real concern but this bond would not do that this bond would renew what is currently has passed for 2017 in 2012 it's a capacity issue it's adding capacity to do more projects so I just want to be clear about that I said I put the information in the chat you can go online there's a survey available in all of our supported languages please share that widely if you'd like Clara and love for you to share that with more students if you want to do that for us that'd be awesome it's really great to have you here thank you for your feedback and for your your technical expertise in the chat so folks please share that go to the website there's an email address school bond at PBS net I'm going to put that in here as well feel free to email that with more feedback or questions we just we want to be able to answer the questions that are lingering and also if you have thoughts or ideas be we welcome them so thank you all very much for being here tonight feel free to hang out a little bit longer if you have questions we'll go another 5 minutes and then we'll shut it down thank you
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this is where I wish I had a really good playlist thank you oh I'm gonna jump into another room if I can thanks Michelle Thank You Courtney hariya thank you for taking notes Thank You Courtney I'm sworn out over not an easy task I had it all for sure thank you although I wish next time definitely have a playlist I'm seeing the folks are stepping out so what I'm getting do there's no more questions I will stop recording just for the purpose of this but just a final call before I do that yeah I think everybody except for Jacqueline is a staff person do I see anybody yeah I think so Jacqueline if you have anything else you'd like to ask or add to the chat feel free otherwise we can start recording thank you so much I'm good

Event 3: Bond Town Hall 6/25/2020 Breakout Session #2 Health and Safety Projects

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my name is shanece Brittany Clark I'm the director of community engagement at PPS and I am looking forward to hearing what y'all have to share and and bring perspectives as we kind of think about what this Memphis package should look like coming in November so we've got a few folks with us Megan is helping out and this this breakout room is being recorded so I wanted to let folks know before we got rolling in the discussion and we'll also be taking some some notes and so we might also have a board member director Lowry here with us and I'd love to create some space for you to give an introduction and then for each of us to give a introduction in maybe the name of the school that you might be associated with and maybe we can start with hi my name is Rashmi I wasn't sure if you wanted us to jump in so I just have problems with awkward silences so I just start talking okay great I'm a parent and the school that my child will be affiliated with is our Hospital Cleveland I've lived in all different neighborhoods throughout Portland but this were in currently in the southeast I also enjoyed sitting in on the PBS campus master plan conversation for Cleveland recently which was a really great learning experience so appreciate having that perspective and I didn't know really what to expect in the these conversations so it's kind of partially coming here to hear what people had to say so hoping to to learn as as well as participate thank you well I'll introduce myself I'm Patrick Labov and I'm the director of projects and construction and facilities so my backgrounds and construction that's really what we focus on on projects and construction and I've been with PBS for 10 years started as a project manager in facilities jumped over the ball and and managed the Roosevelt modernization project for a little bit and then took this position a couple years ago so I'm happy to be here and I can answer I'll try to answer questions related to the type of projects that would be looking at for this bond and any other questions that you might have try Felicia how can you introduce yourself next I'm going to Smith and I worked at Farmington school and I am a school secretary I can go next Fisher I'm a student at Cleveland High School and I'm going to be a junior next year um I'm a leave Ari and I have a daughter who's a than be a sophomore next year at
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Cleveland and I also serve on the school board as a board director Thaddius I think you were muted before oh I was me while I was talking about somebody something else to say when I'll go I'll go uh my name is values tonight I am in my approaching my third year as the head cross-country and distance track coach at Jefferson High School Doh demo how do you like that track Thaddius uh well when they finish it it'll be great okay what do they need to do it well the pole vault is is not the bolt holes for the Stantons aren't in aren't in place and there are no markings for the 3k or the 1500 the surface is okay is I mean it's better than Lincoln's was I guess higher yeah you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say it doesn't need some attention it probably I know that there's a route coming up in one corner Oh underneath the track that will be an increasing problem you know I haven't run on it it's it's okay I mean it's okay it's I wouldn't say it's state-of-the-art or anything but it's it could be a lot worse yeah we we replaced it I think four or five years ago yeah yeah it was absolutely horrible then so you know definitely an improvement but yeah very serious yeah yeah thank you so I know we will have a series of breakout groups tonight and for a period at this time just want to give you all of the space to provide feedback and thoughts and I'm going to share my screen in a moment there is a quick handout that gives you an overview of what kind of investment could look like in terms of our health and safety and targeted areas I know we potentially have someone who just joined us Lakeisha we just went around and did introduction and a few wouldn't mind it would be great if you also introduce yourself and then we could kind of just roll right into taking a look about that one pager and hearing your feedback hi everybody my name is Leticia I work for self enhancement I'm just here to listen and see what's going on what kind of input I can get to you guys wonderful folks um so I'm going to present now represent a tab and so hopefully you all can see my screen I can't see you at this point but I wanted to ask you what your reactions basically are to to what you're looking at and I'm going to tell you what that is I think we've got three options that we are really curious about how they resonate and how they meet the needs of students and folks who who need support in the corium your community so the second and third options for health and safety that are kind of being presented tonight are similar so I want to talk to you about the first one as I start of our conversation and get your reactions but essentially the main areas of all of these investments will be roof seismic improvement mechanical systems kind of those things that Danni and she's young were describing in our previous presentation but in this first scenario you will see that there is about 53 million in investment to support a roof and a large number 45 million to repair
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mechanical systems and these numbers you'll see you bottom-left are also going towards things like classroom door locks in retrofitting and really really supporting the rusyn infrastructure of our building so now I'll pause I want to make sure that you all have the time to share your feedback in just first get your reactions and how they might impact you or your student especially as you might be in a scenario that may need some some improvements and so I'll mean that the temperatures of our buildings might be things that are greatly impacted by by these kinds of improvements and so if you're feeling an extreme temperature for example and school or in your classroom that this would probably be something that would largely impact the ways in which you experience that environment so I'll pause what are your what are your reactions I'm curious what one of the primary concerns about the Roos are they do they need to be updated to meet code as it's a part of a traditional cycle of you know improvement that you know it's just it's time to look at the roof sort of thing what's what's motivating us to take a look at that so that is great question it's more towards your second comment we need to keep renewing our roofs they have about a 20 year to 25 year lifespan and we've got 100 buildings actually 250 buildings 100 sites so it's just a continual process to keep up with the deteriorating room we had we hired a facility condition assessment firm to go assess all of the routes in the district which they completed their work three or four months ago and they help prioritize for us which roofs are and nearing the end of their life cycle and so but when we do a roof replacement it's not only the roof that we touch and we touch the mechanical equipment on top of the roof the curves the skylights if there's any unreinforced masonry like parapet walls we're going to reinforce those if it doesn't have a plywood seismic structural diaphragm on the roof we'll add that typically a new plywood layers will run strength and stability for the building during that seismic event there's a whole lot that go into these roofer places which is great it's a great time to do all this work which which how about stop your head which roofs are most in need or closest to the end of their life cycle it looks like the FCA ranked Dunaway rice Richmond as kind of the worst but not far behind that are 22 other roofs I mean so they're almost there's like 25 rooms that need attention of course we can't fit all 25 into this bond but we'll fit the what we think are the worst out of those well not the high schools are the only schools to be considered but within the high schools is there a school or two or three that stand out not including the high schools but within the category of the high schools oh well Cleveland to me that it did get a lot of roofing work a while back but it still got issues we do as part of this roofing number you see in the bond documents that doesn't include any high schools because the high schools are gonna get the modernization work which when you do a modernization you just replace the entire roof okay thank you yeah so this Alisha and I'm at Irving Tain's cool and every and I'm just curious about where we are on a list because every it seems like every time we have a hard rain it rains in our gym which then can rule in the floor and then the kids you know they don't if
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they can't go outside they don't have a place to play absolutely about where herbing tonie's on that list see if I can pull that out you Thank You Patrick for taking a look at that and providing some insight to you on how you know high schools might be impacted versus the rest of our folk with this particular investment and I mean oh I'll pause did you find I'm sorry I found it yeah it's a it's included in that say 25 roof category and then you know the next phase is to winnow that down and see what we want to tackle if this bond passes then would that be one of the ones that that makes the final cut if you will so but it's one of the highest priority what do we do in the meantime well in the meantime it's like you're talking to the right person if you've got a roof leak the the process is to submit a basically a work order with the custodian you can either do it that way that's the traditional way to submit a work work that goes into our maintenance department I'm in the projects department that goes the maintenance it's separate and then they if they can't handle it with with our one roofer for 250 buildings which is kind of a decline roofer we have one one maybe two full-time people to patch roofs which you know Wow then it comes over to my group that we contract out the repair so it's up to us to get a hold of a contractor go out in the value a to get a contract and repair that group that's up that's that's how it should work and you can talk with your principal and you can ask your principal to submit a PDR and that comes right to our group and then we get back with your principal or whoever submits the PDR and we follow up well that's great I'm gonna put it on my list or bourbon to Jim right now so at least I have it it's good info to have and maybe we can take care of this oh yes great thing before the rain starts hey I'm sorry how long would that process take to go to not chained so if the principal submits a PDR our time frame is to get back with a decision within seven business days if it becomes a project it sounds like if it's a roof likud automatically goes to the top of the list along with heating issues so then it's a question of getting a contractor out to give us a cross proposal and then getting a contract issue to start the work so it could be a month before we get the contractor out there to do the work or it could be a little longer depending on the contractors available okay my people would that's for a repair type work not a complete roof replacement right we used adjusting that there might be some alternate route yeah so for issues with the building the kind of traditional path is to go through the custodian the custodian will go into the work order system and submit a work order and that will go to our maintenance department they will evaluate it and if it's too large of a project for them to get to or they don't have the capacity or whatever then it typically they get a hold of our department say hey we can handle this it's too big for our internal working staff can you guys take this on then it comes to us I'm done the other path that I just explained is to submit what we call a project development request form to our group and that's in we've tried to inform all the principals some are new that that's another avenue for a lot larger projects as if a school wants to tackle say they have a PTA group or community group that wants to install a garden or fundraise for another type of project at this school that's kind of the the path for those sorts of things I think I don't know what I'm thinking of the clean wood project but like we met with the principal recently about adding some security cameras and there's a group that wanted to raise some funds
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for security cameras for people and that was a PDR process that came in their group I'll stop talking you like them please yeah and I don't want to talk too much if somebody else wants to jump in Patrick is there is there an opportunity to talk to you further about I've got a space at Jefferson that that we've been talking about and maybe you could give me some insight I mean if this is the form to do that then I'll do it but if maybe we want to give some other folks a chance to talk to him absolutely yeah and you know I can put in a link in the chat which is there PR for that you could they used to fill out okay would you also put your email in the chat folks like Thaddeus can follow up with you thank you thank you thank you all so we have about nine more minutes before we transition to the second breakout group and want to just make sure especially for folks as we're thinking about health and safety in these ways of these kinds of replacements that they do those kind of make sense and/or align with with what you need and I know we have some other folks Clara Letitia and Rashmi who and just want to hold some space in case there's something lingering or that you want to lift up hi this is Rashmi thanks for the opportunity I was wondering how the the amounts for the different buckets have had been established and I guess I was asking because I know seismic retrofits are a huge concern since we've been identified as being in a high seismic zone and prone to a very major earthquake and many of our buildings are unreinforced masonry and that number seems very small in comparison with some of the other budget numbers I thought I saw like 15 million or something and I know that that's partially probably a topic for the major the the full modernization because I know it's hard to just come in and do a little bit of seismic work but I guess I was wondering how how that kind of seems to fall lower on the list that's all that's that good feedback um I know for each of the bond options you'll see that at least that same level generally I know a goal was to maintain the same renewal rate and to not increase that tax rate in potentially there's some more context that Patrick might be able to share on what that might look like for you know being a conservative number shirts or those kinds of repairs and and but ultimately this is some good feedback to understand that we might need to rethink and or you know are being asked to do that I'm also really concerned about the seismic work I saw the 2019 summary had said that most of the seismic work has been done not all that has been mostly ruse or really minor work and I'm concerned because I know it's it often ranks lower because there's more press and work like leaking roofs but I'm wondering what are the barriers that you face to getting the kind of funding that would get the full seismic safety for the for the bricks schools great great questions seismic is a hot topic a sticky issue it's complicated it's very expensive so I'll speak to what the number I think we've got 15 million right now targeted which is it is low and the thought mean for the 15 million ones let's get the biggest bang for our buck and so we tried to target schools that needed their roof replaced and also we're on the Portland this the city the bureau of development services I believe the unreinforced masonry list
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the the city has a list of buildings in Portland proper that have what they've identified this unreinforced masonry so we wanted to target schools that are on that list also our schedule to get a roof replacement and it and so we came up with just a few school that's not very many I think it's three to four for fifteen million which is partial seismic improvements not a full and so I think some of the barriers for full seismic improvements are a cost be if you do a full seismic retrofit on a school and bring it up to immediate occupancy so after a big quake it's immediately available for people to go into and use you're gonna have to shut that school down for six to eight to twelve months to do the construction work so it's a major impact to operations of a school and we we don't have a lot of swing site schools where we could just move kids over and staff over to hold school while we do work at this building and then I think it's its cost and complexity and we overall impact to a school I think those are the major barriers Patrick this is a li Lowry um I'm on school board and I know one of the things we on the board have talked about is that you know long term we want to modernize all of our school buildings yeah so it's sort of weighing I think this goes to the question from the Cleveland student sorry I don't remember your first name um in that you know how much if it's gonna cause us to shut down a school and do all this complex work just for seismic and that's not modernizing the building and any other way maybe doing a roof it you know is it worth it can what stopgap things can we do so that we can buy some time in that building and then down the road modernize it so it's always that tension I think what safety we know we're gonna update all of our buildings you know roofs are failing if you know things are not safe how do we get those up to a safe standard so that they lack stuff long enough to get to the next modernization level high schools first middle schools and then elementary schools is the long term plan but with you know a hundred sites it's just gonna take us a long time to work through that list Thank You director Lowry I want to also add that since we started the bond in 2012 on any roof that got replaced we did roof level seismic improvements which is big it improves the diaphragm of the building so it does provide some stability so that it's good it's not great but it it's an improvement and we've we've replaced a whole bunch of our roots and done those reef level seismic work a bunch of our building so it's an improvement but we could definitely do a lot more guess for me the wall like the walls of the unreinforced masonry building that's still the most concerning because looking at magnitude 8 or greater earthquake it seems far off in the future but it could happen in a hundred years or tomorrow and so if a school collapsed like captained in Mexico and 2017 well they lost a lot of students lives so I'm really worried about that having multiple PPS school buildings that thousands of kids go into every day and the possibility of that collapsing in an earthquake including Cleveland and that's really concerning Patrick do we have a number on I know like you know Ellen got a seismic update because it was on the it would be a pile of rubble list do we have a list of schools you know that like I know they we upgraded Llewellyn so that it was survivable they could run out to be you know I just Kyra Chiara his hands point what's what is our list right now of schools we think would would be able to be evacuated and do we have a list of schools that we think would be a pile of rubble and is that how we decide what gets seismic upgrades I knew we do have a list of schools that we've made seismic improvements on over the years and a list that has ranked the schools from let's call it best to worst if you will I don't know I don't know if we have a list of schools that are qualifiers can be evacuated but let me let me see what I can pull up I'd be happy to send it to you what I can find
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talk to the meetings then I think we talked about seismic it's a it's a range it is we've got Megan taking notes of what folks shared and this was recorded so we definitely want to make note of of every everything that was surfaced here tonight in and make sure we kind of respond to that moving forward so I think we're kind of in transition time now what I'm going to do is temporarily share my screen and so you get a chance to see a link once again if you need to transition to another breakout room and we're going to give folks one to two minutes to kind of make this transition happening so thank you thank you for sharing your feedback and perspectives and suggestions on what what investment should look like for health is safety and we will continue to engage with folks throughout the evening for a couple more sessions thank you thank you all so I know a couple of folks we're trickling in as we were finishing up we'll probably wait a minute or two to see if we have any folks who come along and just get the discussion right right on [Music] we can go ahead and get started not stealing a lot of movement in a balloon so welcome folks my name is shanece Clark my knee and I'm the director of community engagement at PPS I think we've got about 12 of us here I know there are few PPS das with us who are on the line and also Megan is helping out with taking note for us and this is a recorded so I wanted to let you all know before we got started with our discussion but I want to give you all just the most space to share your feedback and thoughts and questions and we'll try our best to make sure we recreate some space for for everyone who has a reaction to give to us and so what we will probably do initially is I'm going to share my screen with you and so you can get a visual of kind of what what I'm about to share so let me present my domain so we're presenting and so this is the breakout room for Health and Safety so hopefully this is what you wanted to talk about but what you kind of heard an initial presentation was kind of the areas of reefs mechanical security seismic improvements ABA accessibility those are the kinds of things that were kind of grappling with for health and safety are proposed and we want to hear what what you think about that um what I will say across the
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few options that you'll that you're kind of hearing about tonight that the the second and third one for health and safety are quite similar so what the screen what you're seeing here on my scene is the first option which has roofing repairs and replacements at a level of 53 million in that mechanical at forty five million which which might be that largest distinction between the other options and so I'll scroll down it's a nice I think you're on your screen is showing the Rawat it's just a breakout rooms so you might need to change it to the actual presentation you gotcha so I'm going to move my tab Thank You Megan for letting me know um that I've been sharing the wrong the wrong tab so we're going to we're going to try that once again um now are you all seeing a screen with a lot of words on the bottom left it should say proposed health and safety investments do you see that yes thank you shiny beautiful beautiful so essentially what I said is what is on this page you have 53 million allocated for repairing and replacing roof forty five million allocated proposed for repairing or replacing those mechanical systems those things that keep that management temperature right in our building and we want to hear your reaction book below you'll see a few more items listed here that are allocated for security seismic improvements retrofitting some of our smallest schools and thinking about removing barriers that that will make our schools just more accessible row scrolling to the next bond option you'll see these amounts that I talked about initially be a little bit higher at 71 million for risks and 75 million for mechanical systems but these other levels are similar and so I'll let you sit with with that and just want to hear your generally your reactions are these the kinds of things that that make sense for you and what might be a priority and also yes I'll pause here and let you take a look at the screen we'll scroll up to this little table here on your right you'll see our health and safety project and then in a condensed version if that might be a bit of better glance to take a look at these bond options and the levels and which will impact health and safety um and so um just generally um what reactions might be especially thinking about the kind of conditions that your classrooms or skilled school buildings might have and and how a health and safety investment might might might support
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that environment I see nice this is Mike Rosen I don't have a question but I have a comment so it looks like in all the options ad accessibility is is funded at 11 million dollars and I've read in some of the supporting material that the estimate for the total cost to upgrade the district is a hundred million dollars for all the aga improvements that are needed and so my comment is I think we can invest more now in the bond energy improvements and make a more significant dent than just 10% of the work and so when I look at the options I'd like to see some of the money moved around into a da accessibility so thank you - each this is less called a branch I'm a retired teacher from Portland Public Schools and I would agree with Mike Rosen I need to see I would like to see increases in to making schools more accessible for students with alternative abilities in terms of travel all being able to access classrooms widening doors there's a lot I know I haven't been in the district in a while but uh but many of the schools have not been upgraded since I don't even know when in terms of that and what the real needs are for the students in so I would just like to see a better investment or at least a consideration of moving some of those dollars around and I was kind of looking at like where you could move it from the stack that you have now the budgets that you have now and I think it can be moved around from a little bit from mechanical and also from security so that's just my input [Music] and that's where if you saw in the chat Gabrielle a comment about under this option doesn't exclude Jefferson High School and remaining pools from rebuild and or modernization could you speak to that Patrick yes is it excluding the a DAR we talked about the ad a scope of work or that health and safety in general typically if we do a modernization project we're going to touch everything so it's going to be completely upgraded ad a wise health and safety wise it it's going to be upgraded to code I mean that's that's the general rule of thumb so Jefferson high school modernization estimate should include all of those things in it on its own so it shouldn't nothing in this health and safety portion should be Jefferson related I hope that answers the question Lauren Lewis I guess I may have an extension to that - Gabriel's question good question Gabriel in terms of like you were saying with the modernization that's another reason why I think some of it can shift more dollars into 88 at this point from the bond itself to just make those enhancements are those improvements even more or to be able to make even more improvements if you understand what I'm saying yeah it's it's definitely a balance arts that I know everyone tries to strike with the modernization and then all the other needs that we have yeah and then my question to you to Patrick is well duh want the security and all that with the modernization also be improved yeah so if Jefferson was modernized the security portion everything would be all the health and safety were small Arsenal would be brought up to her in code and fully modernized so securing the room I can't resist a brand new everything where you go so can I ask a question for clarification so when we talk about the ATA I'll make it I'll make it specific to my family so having a brother that's been in a wheelchair since birth he
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cannot access Jefferson High School through a main entrance to see my kids perform in anything so when we talk about the ATA is this separate is this an add-on like is it you have that door over there what what is it I need a little bit of help visualizing what that means and I agree with what Liz was saying that we really need to think about and Mike about how much we're going to put into this and ensuring that we're not uttering individuals and how we do this modernization and that because Jefferson is one of the high schools identified as needing to be rebuilt at some point that we're not putting money into something that we will then redo when that is past for the rebuild John do you want to talk a little bit about ABA scope absolutely so the 11 million dollars that you see there currently includes Jefferson if we move forward with the Jefferson modernization and that money would be reallocated to other ad8 needs so that that's one important point that we need to be clear about Jefferson architectural II is a mess we have about three million dollars in a da improvements at that school so I definitely hear you I understand your frustration Shanice and I are working really hard right now on the district's ad a transition plan and we're we're targeting at least the salient C in Universal Design so oftentimes you'll see the accessible entrance moved around to the side where the service entrance is now we can't continue to do that we need to support our main entrances get our kids into the the kind of urban drama of entering and exiting the schools for accessibility so I'll just say where we're really working hard to support those needs and they'll also comment I know I will definitely take note for folks in this in this breakout room there will be opportunities for input especially for the ad a transition plan in particular I'll and so not only this space can can inform those kinds of decisions and but it's really good to know that's something that y'all are you know raising as a priority all right we have another question from Paul he said health and safety includes mental physical and medical health is there money allocated to expanding clinics and schools and mental health services it's a good question I think as we look at the different bond options there are some educational investment health and safety and modernization and I think what you'll see especially with the Benson campus that there will be kind of this proposed model will meet the diverse and specific needs of students and have specified services that are really wraparound but in terms of you know what this can really look like especially as we're thinking about special education investment and investing in the social and emotional kind of an instructional core and those educational investments though there might might be some spaces where I see those called out and absolutely if there are is there some feedback and or things that might resonate for you as you think about your experience or your students we definitely are are wanting to to engage in one and what that could look like as we sit with these options I have a lot of questions for this area sorry when we were talking about those wraparound services is that going to be also consideration for culturally specific or is this not the place to talk about that when we're talking about
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space and safety or just having access to space or are we talking about what type of services we're looking to have well I would say it's kind of a both and and what we are also doing is having conversations or focus groups that will absolutely inform services that impact our black students and Native students and so I think I definitely would be more than willing to follow up and share those specific opportunities that are happening in the next couple weeks but yes I think there's space to have that conversation and that's absolutely important and thinking about our vision and how we are building these environments that serves our students needs especially especially now when we're coming into this bond referral and November we want to hear from folks are blogging indigenous families in folks of color especially today and as we continue along in the process and so yes there is about nine minutes left in the focus group I know there there might be a couple of folks who haven't shared but really generally what might be sitting with what folks after hearing what we've discussed or anything that that you might not have gotten a chance to share yet want to hold space for that before for example also I want to say our superintendent has joined of the the Yi session and don't know especially after year hearing from some folks and what they might say are important as we're as we're talking about the bond what you might share after after hearing some of our comments tonight so I have another question in terms of the outreach I understand from the last session breakout session that the board is going to make a decision on which of these options is what will be on the November bond sometime in July and I have several questions one is how how are you collecting the data on who is responding to the survey and who's represented it represented in that survey and whose voices are missing I just want to make sure we're looking at this and and collecting voices that are important in this process both from our student perspective and from our students that experience differences and our families thank you for that question I I know our survey something that we are looking at is by race and and other identities of folks who are responding and have gotten about I think 900 or so responses but I think we do acknowledge as we're transitioning especially into a next phase of serving our students we think the decision-making processes and the ways in which their design might need additional avenues and space to engage with our spanish-speaking families and our black Native and students of color and indigenous families and black elders so those are the kinds of focus groups that we'll be having in the next couple of weeks in addition to reaching our community partners who are working with those schools that we've talked about and in addition to the neighborhoods that they reside around and so those might be some other pathways that we are taking in addition to breaking up maybe the survey data by by identity and and thinking about our racial equity and social justice values and commitments through this process I think might might look like trying to
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engage with folks directly in multiple ways but absolutely I think your feedback on how we we can kind of grow in collectively in doing that better I think it's part part of the work to you are there efforts being made to and to make sure that we're receiving feedback from specific communities within our community for example I'm on the PTSA at Jefferson my kids attend Jefferson I'm also former student and I'm just wanting to make sure that because we're in a pandemic these are very strange times I get that so there's a lot of challenges but I want to make sure voices are people are given an opportunity for their voice to be heard and how that's going to be done by this July board meeting is is really important absolutely um I think a couple of ways of that might look are reaching a group at our school our principals and partners that that might support the school directly and indirectly and and so if we have an opportunity especially with you all to share that those opportunities and I saw the question and the chat here around a focus group for the ad a community and yes and so those are in the process of kind of being confirmed and so we we expect the in the next couple of weeks to for those to take place before on the next board work session and I will be absolutely able to share with this group with this group of you all the dates and opportunities for for you all to share with other students or folks for joining and participate or self we have a few more minutes and are there in a couple questions about shan't there are good questions so I want to make sure we talked a little bit about what we're working through and and also can continue to do that outreach this is Paul I thought you had mentioned that the superintendent joined us is that the case in this in this breakout if so I just wanted to say please please really look at the expanding CTE with this bond you know if you have to build out space or or you know expand curriculum hands-on learning is proven to be a way that engages students then you can increase graduation rates people will be more inclined to come to school and stay with Portland Public Schools adopting the c2p2 framework for the projects which is as initiative to afford more opportunities for women and people of color we need those opportunities also for the students so that when they are when they graduate they have a basic level of knowledge for those careers and they can jump in and be very successful so I just wanted to say that before we're done I'll offer a really quick response appreciate the plug for CTE you don't have to convince this administration or board that that is invaluable that we offer as pathway options for our students for those that have been following our high school success plan included an inventory of our CTE pathways and we noticed that there were a lot of there were a lot of holes in they're not all comprehensive high schools had access to the same array of pathways so we've really been making incremental and steady improvements there so that no matter what high school you go to you do have CTE pathways built out as choices to you in the same way that we're championing completing arts pathways which we're doing in the Jefferson cluster for the first time so appreciate the making sure that is we contemplate a bond that the edge specs which they do exist include enough facility support for those CTE programs to be housed
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thank you I appreciate that feedback you know me being a representative for the Carpenters Union I know that we you many schools in pbx have adopted our Career Connections program and you know if you ever need anything as far as helping getting more schools with that curriculum I will gladly share my contact information thank you you stay connected with dr. Aurora would I know who leads our CTE program and I'm sure she will appreciate that partnership just looking at time I think we're right at 7:30 um I appreciate you all and sharing that your feedback and perspectives and we have taken notes of everything that that you shared with us tonight and so what I'm going to do now is make sure you have the link to make your next move and present my screen I know folks have already joined us who are here for the third breakout session but will give probably a good 30 seconds 31 32 ish for folks to come and go I'm not feeling a ton of movement so I think we can just go ahead and hop right in I am going to change the tab I'm sharing I'm learning a lot tonight about about sharing tab my name is shanece Clark in the director of community engagement I'm going to walk you quickly through what you might be getting to look at tonight for Health and Safety proposed investments and I want to make sure that you all have the space to give feedback and reactions for our final 30 minutes and as we wrap up since the night miss evening so thank you for writing it all the way out we are looking at a health and safety investment and on the bottom left of my screen you'll see some bullet points but on the right side there highlight so whatever works for you but 53 million essentially are the allocated amount for four routes those repairs or replacements up to nine sites and as we're processing in some of our previous focus groups that when when a high school is modernized that that a lot of these health and safety investments are a part of that package so just fit in with that you know as we as we continue forty five million and the first bond option is also going to impact repairs or replacements ten mechanical systems and those levels below I'll just highlight here on my screen you'll see these allocated levels for security seismic and ABA accessibility and so those might look like locks to your classrooms they might look like retrofitting our small schools or thinking about making a classroom and building more accessible to students with different abilities and so I'll see really quickly before we get into discussion to hear your reactions about this the second and third option for Health and Safety are similar they are allocated at this level of 71 million for roof those roof repairs or replacements 75
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million for mechanical system replacements and so you'll notice this table here in those levels below are similar or similar to the ones we just what that so um thinking about your school your classrooms do these kinds of investments make make sense for you and what might be a priority you can pause now and and just jump right in for discussion and I put this in the chat and shinee's I know you've said this in all the other meetings so I'm just going to rewrite this but I know we've all known all these meetings have been recorded but just another reminder that this is being reported thank you Thank You Megan for for reminding us that this is being recorded before we got started and also we have some some experts in the room we've got a board members our superintendent and folks who are specializing and some of this work for our schools and special education and overall building organization so ask away share your thoughts um what do you what do you need don't be shy I got and so I just came from the meeting before and I'm Noel Fisk I am a parent of four and my oldest daughter experiences a significant disability and then I also worked for PBS as a special education engagement coordinator as well as a special education advocate I kind of wear two hats when I come to these meetings so my my comment would be on the ad aap is that the right spot we're in for this one the option for the bond funding to remove barriers and make one k5 of one middle school and one high school per district fully accessible is that accurate that's right okay so I think that when I was responding earlier to the options within the educational investment it was talking about updating eighty-two classrooms I'm someone who believes in inclusion and I also believe that students need different things so when I talk about inclusive practices it is definitely that students with disabilities need to be accessing general education to the maximum extent appropriate which is of course their right per law but when you look at that within our building and I don't believe it's due to any a desire to not give its best at practice I think it's due to funding when if we were to be able to have fully accessible schools and if we were able to have the full continuum in each school we wouldn't have the need for students who to be bused to other communities and other neighborhoods people to access their education and like I said in the last meeting applying a racial justice and equity to that as a as a person as a white woman who looks at hard to keep her daughter in a neighborhood school and I was able to succeed at that I served many families who speak a language other than English and families who have black children that we are shipping out of their neighborhoods to other schools the two and out of their communities to receive special education services because either their neighborhood school doesn't have the continuum of service to
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support them or their neighborhood school is not accessible and that is doubly impacting and I just don't feel that I feel like with an investment like this we can make such a big change in that piece of it around the students with disabilities and when that intersects with race thank you so I would support that piece of making sure that each cluster has fully accessible schools so that they don't have to leave their communities thank you for lifting that up no Ellen right with the impact of needing to of transportation right when when that's not happening and our cluster offering schools and and so for folks who are processing there the feeder pattern is something that we might say in it the school that's associated with where you live in the pathway that you take to to a high school from starting from the beginning so making sure that each one of those at least in your neighborhood right have have what you need what a reaction where the folks has these kinds of investment resonates with what the kinds of things their school needs shinee's could you summarize some of the comments you heard in the first two sessions absolutely yeah um so we talked a little bit about the idea and Patrick was also with us talking a little bit about these nuances but the modernization of high schools will really have a lot of these investments that we're talking about in health and safety and so there's discussion about the levels that were identified for masonry being conservative and what that might look like in the context of a long term plan as they might be supported with with other kinds of projects and I think another higher level thing was more articulating that the ATA investments are our priority and that those things have a great impact for for students and and so the levels in which folk might see in each of the bond options or we're kind of processing what it might look like to think about EDA accessibility differently so that's I think some some highlights from our from our breakout rooms yeah and if I can just add on to shanece his comments director Bailey we also talked a little bit about seismic upgrades to some of the buildings and there were some questions around what might be included in the 15 million and then the great need we have seismic we throughout the that was also talking about thanks I am a new parent can you hear me yes so I guess I was just wondering I noticed there was a lot of money dedicated to security like he said locks on doors I guess I'm wondering if there is an issue like what what problem is that mitigating I guess and I guess I don't quite understand like what that chunk of money would be going like what solutions with that problems that be trying to solve I guess I'll take a stab at answering this question it's not my area of expertise but I'll give it a shot I believe it centers around having locks on doors so in the case of it's more security related so in the case of saying a lockdown scenario and the teacher of the classroom needs to close
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her door and lock it currently many classrooms have a keyed lock so there's really no way to quickly lock your door with a key this would replace that lock set with a push button on the inside of the classroom if you can lock it or quickly and be secure in a lockdown scenario and also it might take into account converting some of our door hardware to levers to meet ATM requirements we have a lot of just doorknobs in our classrooms and buildings hopefully that that helped and hopefully I'm not completely off on that that answer I'll add just a little bit in that hmm sometimes some of our locks actually at require the staff member to go outside of the classroom to to lock it with the key on the outside so that's when you have a lockdown that's the last thing you want to do is go outside of the classroom so it's really a safe it's a significant safety concern and the a da handles is also a great benefit to improving all of our facilities and I believe there's some lights and video cameras involved in that yes for example I know regular portables have been vandalized a number of times in past years and they didn't have any any video camera so it was repeated vandalization x' and yes my life as a high school teacher and her door is exactly like that there's there's no way for her to get it locked in any kind of safe way if there was some kind of emergency it makes me really sad to talk about this I toured schools in Finland where they are designed to be open to the community and we have to design our schools with all the gun dangers to be secure and it's it's it's not as welcoming and entrances we could have to our schools thanks guys um I have one more question it's kind of unrelated also um I was already why if there was consideration for kind of adding like health centers or healthcare professionals into the schools so there's kind of increased access to health care and to health services and this portion of the bond because it's under Health and Safety or if that's maybe under another part I'll share really briefly and maybe a Claire Patrick can can pop in what I will say is something that we're processing especially with the Benson option is having a campus that would really support the diverse and specific needs of students and really having kind of wraparound services all centralized and what we might see in our education investments might also impact our students and in different ways like social and emotional kind of core curricular investments in addition to what a special education specific infrastructure might look like but yeah I think there is definitely space in here and/or capture more perspective or insight on on what what the could look like for for your school community and if Claire Patrick would add anything to shanece I don't know everything to add to that we don't have anything specific under health and safety physical improvements on the health centers or things like that but I think you really really well so our our high school our high schools are designed to have a health center we don't have the funds to provide more than I think it's a shared school nurse in many many schools in the past the county supplied staffing for those health centers they've been cutting that back and shifting it to
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more lower income high schools in East County and in our again crazy health care system we it's hard to get a a private-sector provider to come in and staff those clinics so I believe the new Grant High School has room that we haven't found a provider yet Lincoln we had a big debate about whether to include space because space is precious in designing a new high school and again getting a provider to actually provide services and those are really important services for our students has been really tough and against the crazy thing where we don't have a guaranteed accessible to all healthcare system in this country like most of the rest of the world does but that's just where we are we can only hope that sometime in the future we have that and that we will have on-site services for at least all our high school students so though the great questions that you've been asking thank you we have about nine minutes left and I know folk have participated in a couple other groups and appreciate you all for for joining this one to share perspectives on health and safety and I knew we might have a couple people who might have might haven't had a chance to share just reactions or anything you're sitting with and so what I'll hold some space for that and just anyone I'm sitting with with any questions as we are transitioning and know there's opportunities to engage with us beyond tonight the school bond at PBS email is a way to connect with us we have a survey that is open as well and they're engaging in in focus group in the next couple of weeks but and if you have any questions that come up later there's there's space for that and always feel free you can't contact word members I do have a question I'm wondering my name is Tamara Hickok with self-enhancement so wondering if how student voice and their perspective is going to be considered if the focus groups are scheduled to be right around July 7th and the voting for a lot of these things is going to be happening July 28th so I want to know how are you guys plan to incorporate the student voice and things about safety what they feel makes them safe about the bond measures about how to have an impact on their education and curriculum how is their voice going to be heard within that and then a part of your voting process and that two and a half we got thank you for that question on how students especially our black and Native students are expressing their [Music] suggestions and feedback on on these options is a priority for us and I know we are in the process of making outreach to groups and principals but particularly calling out some specific space for black and Native students and so those spaces are in the works of being confirmed but yeah we're kind of in the middle of a holiday if you will and a lot of other things that are impacting our communities and in ways that are really personal so I think we have the capacity to engage with our partners especially folks who are serving the Jefferson community and so I hope to also potentially if this is of interest and/or connected already to engage with you in those but student voice in more than one of those focus groups are for student and then we have
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a student council who has a student rep who sits on our board of directors and they will also have some space and have been engaging and giving feedback on the bond all previously but that's how we're making sense of it now but especially you all the people who are closest and in supporting our students every day what that looks like to reach them we absolutely have space to to think about that and the ninth is only the day where we're reviewing feedback but you know we know that this is a continuous process especially with our budget calendar and other large bodies of work that are connected connected to our school environment and the things that bastard there thank you for that so my follow-up question I you may have answered it but I'm not sure I mentioned in the first group I was in with the building modernization about the outreach the true outreach being done it's like to start by applauding PBS by reaching out to some of their CBO's to get students of color and other student just have student voice present during some of these conversations for the focus groups but I would like to know if there's going to be another community outreach effort done in order to hear more community voices on behalf of these bond measures because as I said before I was a part of what was supposed to have been a community outreach effort around the Jefferson concept and there were you know 20 people in the room and when I think it was the number of alumni the number of current students and the number of Jefferson supporters into themselves the number goes well beyond 20 and many people said they just heard about it stumbled across the information so my concern is what all outreach are you guys going to do to receive the student voice yeah absolutely um so there are probably six different pathways that we're taking to engage students elders and uh native and black communities and just general space for for parent and spanish-speaking folks in a dedicated space we'll have for folks of different abilities or who are accessing special education and I think those are just the focus group but we're definitely invested in thinking about those different mechanisms that look like this town hall tonight in making outreach to our partners that both serve students and families and so yes there might be some space for our district student council and our black and Native students but we're also engaging our families and communities and leaders and and so I think I would say we're in the process of probably confirming and making those connections with partners around the bond but know that there are especially engagement opportunities around our decision-making that inform the in very investments we're talking about tonight that that look like the bond that look like the budget that are in our ad a transition plan for example which will have some engagement in the next month and so we're finding those conversations to be very they're separate but have some relationship and I'm happy to take feedback and hear what what other steps might be more helpful as we're making sense of the bond package in addition to these other layers but but yes I think that it's important to you have more space outside of our student engagement but the promenading more broadly and especially our parent and partner organizations I'm gonna put my email in the chat but I'm gonna follow up with y'all though to make sure you know what what next steps look like and especially if you want to continue to be connected in the process
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I mean I have a question I don't think that I kind of got what you said about how are we gonna let the families know that there are discussions that they need to come to this or hear about this bond I don't think I've followed you said a whole lot of stuff but you I don't think I heard that you said this is what we're going to do you just kept saying about partners and yes and I don't I don't I'm sorry I don't get it thank you for for following up to clarify that what what we're trying to do is to connect with folks who have relationships and Trust built with these communities that we're talking about so that might look like principles directly to connect with families and students and it might look like connecting with some of those groups but we absolutely have mechanisms like our emails and messaging and might find that outside of the school community where families and students might have relationships built with with their principal that having the outside relationship with partnerships and then we have our communication through through the district that is looking like sending surveys and emails and polls to folks to gain their perspective and inside and outside of some of these other ways that we might be reaching and having conversations sauron and it's reaching people that have kids that are in Portland Public Schools with the email and communication what about those that are in the community that don't have any children in Portland Public Schools but they've gone to like Tamara was saying Jefferson they've gone to Jefferson you know what what about how are you getting things to them absolutely um I'd say our engagement especially as we look at the time now up until on November is is definitely very outward-facing and we might start with students and our families and folks who are are close in these communities to think through what options might make sense and continue that conversation and in a greater context and so you might see things like mailers especially going out to have continued engagement and feedback on these on these options we're grappling with but ultimately that that referral will be really informed by what by the needs of students and families and I'm not sure of clear if you would add anything for that was there there's absolutely continued I'd say a continued timeline for engagement through the year and we might be starting insular and then engaging our broader community the entire time but that energy really goes I think more broadly as we talk about as we talk to voters and engage the broader community in addition to our partners and student okay thank you the board does have additional engagement in public meetings and opportunities for public comment and certainly we have more meetings is specifically for the bond program as they're making a decision so there are additional sessions you can attend and and let your thoughts be known and if you have others that you'd like to come and join in the input it would be most welcome and can I add this Claire I just noticed that David Maine just joined our group the bond communications person David I hate to put you on the spot but Felicia had a question and her question was centered around what if we have like a person that maybe went to Jefferson but doesn't have any kids how are they going to find out about the bond outreach to bring in the community members to provide comments on things before the vote on the bond in July but I hate to put you on the spot David and maybe maybe you
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can answer with maybe not but I just thought I saw you so we all also have a polling going out to of community members where they'll be contacted at home and getting their opinions so there's going to be and those won't just you know those will be we're like connecting with registered voters in those polls so there are many ways and you're right that the summertime is a hard time to connect and covin delayed this process two months at the same time if we wait it's a whole other year before we have to where we can do projects so it seems that we should be going forward because we have such great needs for our schools hi Patrick I put something in the chat but there'll be links to the schedule for engagement meetings on the main PBS website once those are finalized I know we're a few minutes past time a really good question especially this last one and I think it's a good one especially we're in a space where we we have the capacity to have conversations but I think that the the people were calling out and the people involved Rett raising their insight on these buildings will greatly inform our work so I appreciate you all take riding it out with us even past 8 o'clock but right these things are important in inform our day to day lives and so we know just the thought partnership that you're giving us and this work will make the bond stronger so appreciate you all tonight from being here and you you will be receiving follow-up information on next steps on the proper lack of good links Canada website is for people through oh sorry thanks everybody I heard of all right for people to connect thank you thanks everybody thank you thank you all Denise I got to start and end my day with you girl that's tough I know that last we've been on this since 9:00 a.m. have a wonderful night everyone thanks everybody thank you extra knees for

Event 4: Bond Town Hall 6/25/2020 Breakout Session #3 Modernization and Builds

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you can certainly unmute it speak there's also in the upper right hand corner there is a chat feature in there and if you can if you click on the chat feature you can type in if you have a question or comment and Natasha grant is here is going to help manage the bad chat feature so if there's questions in there she's going to help me see those and also at the top towards the left you should see an option to raise your hand so if you would like to provide a comment and there's some discussion going on feel free to raise your hand and then we'll call on you and comment that way so I have an introductory statement in question and then we're going to open this up and it look to get some really quality feedback today so let me start from public schools has a long-range plan to modernize and rebuild Portland schools the best way to comprehensively address outdated school buildings that weren't built for current health and safety codes or modern educational needs to previous voter approved bonds have funded modernization or rebuilding of six high schools Franklin Grant and Roosevelt were are complete Benson Lincoln and Madison high schools are in progress in addition fabien pre-k eight in Northeast Portland was fully rebuilt in a new Kellogg middle school in Southeast Portland is under construction so with that in mind and if people have seen some of the options that are put forward for potential November 2020 bond what should the PBS Board of Education prioritized as they decide on a proposed bond renewal package for voters consideration you this the part where we talk back to you this is a poem for plain silent game look if you would like to provide comments just logistical e as far as I understand of the three that haven't been on a bond yet Cleveland Jefferson and Wilson Cleveland is the only one that would need to swing to the Marshall site during the reconstruction of those high schools and so my opinion just purely from a logistical lens it would make sense to do Benson at Marshall and then leave one at Marshall and then do Jefferson and Wilson on site I guess if somebody's gonna say something start that's my piece okay I appreciate that is there any any comments on on the sequencing starting with Cleveland High School versus other high schools it looks like Ms Cohen let's Coney believe you're muted at the bottom there if you're having trouble finding it there should be a little microphone let if you click on you should be able to unmute all right so can hi Tamra Hickok with self-enhancement solves a part of the cp/m gee I think that's what I'd like remember the initials for the whole redesign for Jefferson and I don't recall that that and that meeting that we were talking about a redesigned for Jefferson way way off this was talking about a future plan coming up soon and in your list and your original list that you named off schools Jefferson wasn't that list just now so I'm just wondering is it is it Jefferson getting pushed back off the list or there's an afterthought or whatever because we spent that was like eight eight evenings that that group of people of partners came together and we worked hard on different ideas as far as what's important to the community the the the what's the thought process behind building what would be the thing to build the school around as far as the Heritage the community and all these different things I just I guess I'm confused on how at this point right now we're not it's not even a one of the top
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schools were talking about redoing yeah that is a great question so little context for everyone as a part of actually the 2017 bond one of the scopes of work was two conceptual master plans for the three school high schools that had not yet been a part of a bond so that was Jefferson High School Cleveland High School and Wilson High School so all three of those schools went through a fairly high-level effort of taking a look at if we were to modernize those schools what might that look like so what might the layout of the schools be what might the school look like a little bit laying out the grounds and then getting a cost estimate of what what the pricing would be in budget would be for those schools so all three of those are options that's our potential for on November 20 25 what the survey is looking at now is three specific bond package options and what I'm going to do for this group let's see if I can't present and quickly show you those options and walk through them okay if you cannot see my screen please yell I mean so this is a document that's on our website and I certainly won't read it all but what it highlights are three options that the district is getting feedback on and when I say three options it's not a pick one two or three it's just three different options to get some feedback from the community one of the options is this one you see in front of here for 548 million dollars all of the options including this one include educational improvements such as technology upgrades curriculum upgrades and improvements to our special ed classrooms health and safety updates including roof mechanical security upgrades and others and funds to modernize the finish the modernization and rebuild of the Benson high school project including the multiple pathways building that has on the fence and campus so we look at those as one project so option number one is the smallest dollar amount option at 550 48 million option number two is substantially similar to option number one it has some more of the educational provements and health and safety projects and also includes funding to do planning and design of those three high schools that have yet to be approved in front for full organization so again that's Jefferson Cleveland and Wilson what that would do is put some significant funds to furthering though the design of those in anticipation of another bond in the future that would pay for the construction and the final option is the largest at 1 billion dollars is substantially so much number to accept it includes funds to complete Jefferson High School now so the completion of construction would be included in the 2020 bond if this option or an option similar to this or selected so I hope I hope that answers Tamra a little bit of your question about the timing of book Justin and where that it could be in the 2020 bond of course if that if that is the option or substantially similar that is put forward by the board it does answer part of my question but I'm hoping that the exposure of this information can go beyond this room because I think about the recruitment first people to participate in that conceptualization group and I remember that it was a the reach out was not very broad I remember there was a lot of students who wanted to participate and didn't get a chance to because they say they didn't know we had a couple of community members who came because they heard at the last minute but just saying if there was not enough outreach done to get opinions in and have people speak on behalf of Jefferson at that moment of what they thought the design would look like and so if that comes down to this whole modernization comes down to people's opinion and people ain't aware of it I just hope that we make sure that PBS does the work through the outreach to get the amount of voices that need that I need it just to speak on behalf of Jefferson yeah thank you I appreciate that and that was something a part of the process that we definitely heard that there needed to be more outreach there needs to be more community engagement
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and helping for that vision and design Jefferson High School if this is an example if this option goes for as is and Jefferson is included in the bond there will be a more robust engagement process that will happen with community and stakeholders before the project moves into the formal design phases so we definitely want to have more of those conversations but appreciate that feedback if any other thoughts about this that since it's on the screen that's option number three or any other options but is there any initial feedback or sort of visceral response Dan there's a comment in the chat if you want to open that up and possibly read that out loud and/or respond let's do that I will stop sharing uh we have a question here when the bonds were first first I think is put to the public for support we were told that high schools would be first because it impacts the largest percentage of students at once has this change if it has how can you explain the option choice how the option choice will be made if it's possible Jefferson in the reading high schools may not be in the November bond at all that is a great question well try to make it as short of an answer as possible the district has a long range facilities plan document and that was first adopted in 2012 and that document shows and lays out this plan for a multi-decade multi-billion dollar capital program and how that might work it doesn't go into a ton of detail but it does say that the focus would start with modernizing the high schools so that's kind of like a guidance document what happens when we come come forward with general obligation bonds that is one of the documents that guides the district and to get these guys leadership in the board about how to decide what scope go into the bond but it does not commit specific schools or specific amounts so what this process does here is we take a number of things into account one or deciding on what goes into a bond what are our guiding documents what criteria have we used in the past what our current needs we look at educational needs we look at facility needs but also this community input what is the community saying that they're valuing so we have all this historical data and now is the time when we put forward a colligative general obligation bond do we continue down that path or is there a reason to deviate from that so I certainly appreciate bringing that forward saying this is what the path has been so that's the question that's in front of the district is do we continue down that path or is there a reason to deviate from that and and would love to hear some comments of does that seem like the right path just stick with the high school or is there something else compelling or reason that that we would want to go down a different path may I ask a question about that absolutely okay so having been around a former PBS student current PBS parent of two Jefferson High School students my frustration is that John Isaac's back in 2012 had told me specifically that Jefferson would be on the bond and it wasn't and then we were told it would be on the next bond and it wasn't and now I have some fear that I'm being told again that there's a possibility it won't beyond the bond so my kid my youngest who wasn't even at school at the time who is now in an incoming rising sixth grader dhokli may never have a high school part of my other concern is that I was told by many people at the district that the only way Jefferson would get on the bond as if it was placed on the bond at the time with Lincoln High School so my concern is what how do we in what confidence do you have that Jefferson will be on a bond and that it will pass it just seems like a more affluent schools keep going on the bonds and I wonder if you're looking at this through an equity lens and the impact of the students and my and my and my daughter who also goes to Jefferson is sitting with me listening to this yeah that's great feedback I would love to hear what are other people's impressions about how decisions are made around the scope of work and what you would would like to see in an upcoming ballot my my visceral reaction to that was that there is no choice but option
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three that includes the rebuild of Jefferson and the other thoughts looking at the options yeah hi I have just some quick input um just as far as I'm here with self enhancement I'm just as far as like community wise I think it it's just kind of obvious that being able to commit to Jefferson would really just kind of build this trust in this community that you know people people care about us not only in the community but the students as well you know Jefferson is a great high school and it can compete with other schools because you know we have the middle college and yeah I think like now more than ever people need to feel unified and like we do need to look at it through an equity lens you know these students have it's not only community members that have heard that this has been you know on the bond for so many years but students know that as well and being able to instill trust in those students as many of us know being you know educators is huge and it goes a really long way and I think that's something to really really strongly consider yeah as we make decisions moving forward farther comments or impressions about some of the other scope I think we're hearing pretty strongly Jefferson is an important or the critical scope for the board to consider putting in the November bond are there other scopes that that you feel strongly about that that might be prioritized whether that be the educational improvements with technology improvements were in a virtual learning environment that is new this is highlighted to staff in the district that there's a need there for upgrading our technology similarly our curriculum much of our curriculum is outdated this is an opportunity to take one bite at the Apple and very quickly update our curriculum district-wide does that resonate with anyone here yeah if I could take a second my name is Paul I'm with the Carpenters Union and I would really like to see more hands-on learning for the students you know expanded CTE programs stem programs you know manufacturing building things like that you know there are lots of information out there that when students get their hands working their hands on things and they're not just looking at a book or a screen all data that they have an enhanced learning environment and I think we need to to look at that and expand the spaces where they can do that kind of education and another quick thought is thinking about attaching a community benefits agreement to this work so that there's hard goals for women and people of color to have opportunities to build these buildings and work in this field and earn living wages and have full family benefits so thank you thank you Paul the Qashqai see every hand raised yes just a quick time check I don't know you guys are definitely more than welcome to stay in this room but at seven o'clock in about ten minutes the other rooms will be available thank you hello my name is Cara stottlemyre Phillips just community member and I put them up a question in the chat we just wanted to bring it forward here what is the timeline for the board vote on these three options just so we have some clarification around them what we're working with here yeah that's a great question it's coming up rapidly effectively it will need to be made in the month of July a decision about what the scope of work is where there's going to be a couple meetings board meetings work sessions importantly that are going to be scheduled in July I I think we're targeting children for the referrals oh don't hold me to that all but it just it is coming up a bill I'm giving a yes July July that's context I can affirm that Dad okay okay thank you so you'll let us so we're gonna find out what is going to be the sequence moving forward as far as what meetings are gonna be taking place so this is not the last of this
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discussion sure there will be a work session I know but the data is confirmed it'll be the week after next is what we're looking at so about there will be another work session where there is discussion there there could be even more but then the July 28th is the target for referral for the board to approve the scope thank you Dan oh sorry Julia I just wanted to jump in back to Phil's question about it community benefits agreements and I just wanted to make sure people knew that PPS has signed on to the construction of careers pathways project which is a regional collaborative specifically focusing on getting women and people of color into the trades and so those are those standards will be adopted with projects moving forward I was just gonna add Dan I don't know if it's possible to drop the survey link into the chat so if people haven't filled up the survey because that would be another another way to provide feedback or to circulate with people who for example could have come to tonight's meeting a way for people to share their priorities and what we should do we've had about a thousand respondents already but certainly you know that's that's another way for people if they don't want to come to a meeting or can't provide your reasons yeah that's great Natasha do you mind going to our website and grabbing that survey link and pasting it in here I don't know just give me a few minutes I have to find it no worries it is on our website if you go to PBS net one of the first things that will pop up there will be a banner about the bond you can click there and get to the survey if I made Nicole I think I maybe saw you reacting a little bit some of the Scopes when we were walking through did you have any comments or thoughts on that are you talking to me yes I have a lot of feelings I'm trying to listen thank you are there any comments or questions about the potential health and safety scope in there so what we're looking at as priorities for the facility improvements include roof replacements mechanical so heating and cooling system upgrades seismic improvements new security upgrades as well and accessibility so there any thoughts or ideas about how those could or should be prioritized I guess I would just chime in and say and some of those can be prioritized in a way where it brings the costs of running the building down to where that money can be spent in enhancing the experience of the students that that's got to be something that should be priority if we can get more efficient equipment to run the facilities and and then put that money to where the students really get a much better experience you're gonna have more engaged students you're gonna have higher graduation rates and we can really start to uplift our students in this time yeah that's great at reducing operational costs is certainly an important objective what about accessibility improvements to schools outside our newer schools few of them fully comply with eighty eight and accessibility requirements including ramps elevators does that resonate with this crew hi so I'm Amanda a counsellor at Cleveland High School and uh what I just heard from Paul really resonates because my understanding of our school is that number one our HVAC system is really awful and a lot of money it's been attempting to continue to have it hobble along and and so I do think it would probably be it would make sense in the long run to fix it um I don't know understood as the cases we don't invest money in school right now because we're going to be re we're gonna be rebuilding it at some point in the meantime our accessibility is really poor for students or faculty members who are not
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able to negotiate the space it's it's something that I noticed a lot for for adults and students in the building that it's it's very challenging to even get in and certainly to get around the building in the current I guess in the current state of the building so so I guess I would just advocate for all of the high schools to to have that updating because I I worry that if we have a building that someday is going to be fixed that in the meantime the the safety in terms of earthquake and certainly in terms of accessibility and heat and everything else is just kind of like waiting for the rebuild yeah that was great thank you for those comments time check we have just a couple of minutes left is there anything else who'd like to speak miss going yes oh it was a browser don't use edge the Roosevelt build was not completed because it was planned for less pure students than all the other comprehensive high schools and as you know plan for hundreds fewer than what we are having and will have in the next year or two and we are going to need a whole additional building for those classrooms so that's one really important thing and then of course the other thing was that we fought to have a proper stimulus ility and in 2016 the board authorized a building that is now being built that was supposed to be half of it for stem but again because of the tremendous classroom shortage we have there a PPS is taking the stem space from that building to use the classrooms so although we have a small space it's going to be used in the long run when we get the additional classroom building which needs to be in a bond we also need to plan to finally have the proper stand space that we fought for so we can't we can't ignore these legs we don't want to keep building doing Renoir remodels and have them be insufficient and then turn around and say well we're done with you now I mean Roosevelt is a school that is of all the comprehensive high schools the most diverse and possibly the lowest income and PBS talks that we talk about equity and yet Roosevelt has been neglected that's been acknowledged we need to correct that and it need to be needs to be corrected in the bond if you want the support of the community thank you for that and done I think I'll let you have the last word on this session I think we're going to start a new session so if everyone has a minute or two to switch rooms if they would like feel free to do that now thank you for your input thank you
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okay welcome everyone it looks like we've got quite a few new people for our second group just a quick refresh you probably heard this before there's a couple ways to provide comments certainly you can just unmute any time and let us know what your comments are the Google meeting also has a chat feature so up at the right hand corner you'll see what looks like a little talk box from a cartoon or something which if you click on there you can type in a comment or question Natacha grayness who is online she's going to be monitoring that for me and so if there's a question or comment she's going to help point that out to the group also there the top left you'll see a person with their hand raised that's an option if you click on that you can raise your hand I will see it and then if you have your hand raised we'll call on you if there's other people talking at the time so I appreciate everyone being here we're very much looking forward to your feedback on this potential bond package I have a little opening statement that some of you heard already but you'll get to hear it again and then happy to answer questions or take the feedback that you might have so Portland Public Schools has a long-range plan to modernize and rebuild Portland schools the best way to comprehensively address outdated school buildings that weren't built for current health and safety codes or modern educational needs is to modernize fully modernized those structures to previous voter proof bonds have funded modernization or rebuilding of six high schools Franklin grant and Roosevelt are complete Benson Lincoln and Madison high schools are in progress in addition fabien pre-k in Northeast Portland was fully rebuilt several years ago in a new Kellogg middle school in Southeast Portland is currently under construction and will be open for all of 2021 so here's the first question that's the bigger question what should the PBS Board of Education prioritize as they decide on a proposed bond renewal package for voters to consider so I'll stop there so if anyone has any comments ready to go we are happy to hear them again you've got and just speak up if you'd like or use the chat feature or raise your hand okay hearing no initial comments what I'll do is I'll share in the survey that is live right now were we've shown three potential options for a bond so what I'll do these are just potential options that doesn't mean that these are the only three options let me share my screen and I will briefly walk through those options if there's any feedback okay one can see my screen and so that means that you can't see this is a document on our website and it's it's four pages it's got a lot of words so I'm not going to read it to you by any means but the the meat and potatoes of it is it shows three options for a potential bond in November a small medium and large if you will all of the options include funds to complete the fencin high school project that is currently underway including the multiple pathways building which is its own separate building but also on the Benson campus all of the options include some level of educational improvements specifically what we classify under educational are technology improvements curriculum new curriculum for the classrooms and special ed class classroom upgrades they also include health and safety project improvements specifically roof replacements which is a big deed in the district mechanical system upgrades so heating and cooling either replacements or fixes that is another large need in the district security upgrades throughout the district seismic improvements at some schools and a TA or assess abilities at schools as well so option number one which totals 584 million includes all those improvements option number two the
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middle of the road also include as similar includes all those improvements but really includes more of the improvements so more of the health and safety be able to get more roof tons done more mechanical systems upgraded it also includes design and construction for the three high schools that have yet to be in a bond and those high schools are Jefferson Cleveland and Wilson so what this option as developed here proposes is spending sixty two million dollars so the significant amount of funds to design those schools with the anticipation that the next bond will include the construction to complete those schools an option number three the largest one at 1 billion dollars is very similar to the second option in including that it has planning and design funds for Cleveland and Wilson High School but also includes funds to fully complete so the design and construction of Jefferson High School in this bond that is the primary difference between that one so those are the three that we are looking for feedback on at the moment again those are the only three those are just three to get some feedback on so now that people have seen those if you haven't seen them before and got a very quick primer on them are there any thoughts comments a clear priorities Vishal this relates to any one of those I'd like to see something I'm my name is eliana mature I'm from Jefferson High School I'm actually sitting here with it an infant so I might get a little crazy but I guess I just want to say it I think it's really important that Jefferson is fully rebuilt teaching there for the past six years and and then also being part of the conversations last year with the bonds sort of like vision visioning sessions and then trying to engage with students in my classroom around it students felt very much like are you sorry seriousness with you go they're not going to fund us they don't do this it's not going to happen so there's a sense from Jefferson students that the district does not prioritize or care about them um at being a predominantly african-american high school and I think they have internalized this feeling and I think it is so important and because Jefferson has been neglected for so long and has been passed up over time where they feel like they're one of the oldest schools and why are they being passed up time and time again to yet again have kind of kick it down the road I think just confirms what they're feeling um and I think it is it really is the time to fully invest in Jefferson High School I'm looking at the comments just in the you know a few minutes that we've started it seems like that that is resonating with people so I just I do want to say that like not only is it resonating here but from a teacher and experience in the classrooms like students really want it but they're afraid to even believe in it and so I think that's something and like you know trying to engage them trying to look like you know and giving having them come into the process that's kind of where they're standing and they believe that it needs to happen but they don't believe do it and that's breaks my heart for them Eliana I want to thank you for for saying all that I absolutely agree I want to I want to say the same I think I haven't been I'm going in my third year over Jeff and you can clearly see that the school campus the buildings and and in fact the soon entirely has been neglected dramatically and I think historically going back to the 80s and into the late nineties ended 2010 2014 here we are again I really feels like this has to be the time when Jefferson moves to the top of the list and that as important as all other projects may be I think historically this community is owed the utmost taste of preparing that school in that campus where a comprehensive high school environment and opportunity thank you other other thoughts on that do people feel largely aligned with that or are there other opinions this is a Mike Alexander can you hear me okay yes yeah Mike thank you and Dan you might have been in the previous group but I yeah I
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think there's not only alignment but there's you know the Jefferson has historically represented a unique role in the city's educational history and certainly in the history of service to the african-american community our students our children our families that role is going to be called upon to evolve based on the very shifting demographics in our city and the time that we're in right now we are at a pivotal moment where we have the opportunity to reinvigorate Jefferson can play and anchoring the educational experience for the children in the district but particularly centering on african-american children enjoying on that history I mentioned in the previous breakout group that there is an opportunity for the district and the city to bring together not only the work of Portland Public Schools in stabilizing and revitalizing Jefferson but purposing it to serving almost as the academic hub for a center of black acts within the city to pull together the work of sei and the black united fund and Kairos so that there is a birth to higher ed or a birth to professional development pathway that is a shared government Portland Public Schools City Industry focus modeling some of the same work that's done by the Harlem School District Geoffrey Canada's work in New York City you know once you define the role of this zone in supporting the development of our children in and out of school buildings in and out of faith communities in and out of nonprofits it becomes a collective commitment and I can't think of a better place to house that zone than Jeff the late I mean there's a fabric that can be created by weaving together each of these threads in a very intentional way that can only benefit the children who have most been neglected but also model what we can do when we actually begin to think about ourselves and these children as assets and not so much have them reflect where we have fallen short so I think the first step of that concentric circle is making sure that we have an institution that is not only geared and prepared for the day but getting prepared to the next 25 years so I I can't imagine a better more pivotal time for this to be a part of a prioritization where we can begin to make the kind of monumental change that won't be viewed as incremental when somebody looks back five years from now hi my name is Mary Merriweather and in full agreement with what has been spoken I want to I'm a community member here in North and Northeast Portland all of my life and have been on actually I was the PTA PTSA president at Jefferson High School back in 2008 through 2013 or so and we were having these discussions then I was actually on sat on the advisory board for the redesign when we negotiated and Jefferson became the middle college just to keep it in moving there's a reason why there's such passion and stake in Jefferson High School because it is the center of african-american pride in our community there was it's the school that once was very vibrant and you go through students that have graduated from Jefferson High School and they're all across the nation contributing in major major ways but also right here in our own City and community major major contributors and that's why students continue to be attracted but they're not getting the same experience and so there's a lots of things that we have been neglected and as the instructor the teachers spoke before even the students have really kind of lost confidence that anyone would care that the district would care enough about them to invest so they begin to believe the narrative that they see I want to encourage and challenge our school district in our communities to not just look at investing in schools but to see that we have opportunities to invest in generations we have an
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opportunity to invest not in buildings we have an opportunity to invest and a mandate to invest in a generation if we want to see a different outcome we're seeing it every day played out before us on the news and everything right now what happens when you don't invest not in buildings but in a generation in student people in students and specifically now the lights are coming on Wow we have neglect did black students we neglected black children so they've grown up in these areas and in these spaces we have not opened gateways for them to do better to learn better so I wanted I want to challenge us this is a moment right here I mean I've been in these meetings we've been around this block but we're back here again saying we still believe and are wanting to have confidence and Bunnell you maybe you hear us maybe you're weird but let's not look at buildings let's look at we have an opportunity by expanding by creating the kinds of environments that allow children and students to learn and to thrive and to be empowered I think that's key empowered in who they are so that means we don't limit it to what we think they should be but we empower them for how they're wired to be and we invest in a generation so with all of that said I am highly expecting and anticipating that Jefferson is high on the priority for the rebuild on this vine because I've already sat at the table where we were given the blueprints and everything and it never happened and our kids are seeing other schools being built around them so if we want to see change let's invest in this generation so I think I think I hear from from the last couple of comments no I think a lot of comments are yes prior to Jefferson but I think I'm also hearing a little bit go beyond just that not just what we see here an option to be but go beyond on that are there other thoughts or comments about that is that is that a common theme where's that a priority of this group who's here today Dan there's a few questions in the queue that we might want to get to now that we have about 10 minutes left Clara asked option 1 Benson high school completion list of or eyes 138 million in mpg is listed as 75 million which off which is on option 2 is reversed which is correct I didn't see that so the short answer is the the total budget for the multipath ways building is 62 million and then the remainder if you will for Benson is the 138 looks like okay and there's another comment in here I said can option in - sorry can option to be adjusted to make some things away a part of that option but keep the amount or around 800 million rather than 1 billion this means PPS does all of just as a part of 2020 bond measure but is included in changes I'm not sure if this person is still here if they want to or their common yeah I think that as a general comment of trade-offs is there enough to you for trade-offs and the short answer to that is yes there is those are the tough decisions that's that that leadership is in the board you know have to make when they finally decide on a scope of work that will go into a bond package as important as we all know roof roof replacements are I think you're hearing a lot of emotion around this idea that there's been a kind of history of neglect in the lower Albina in the Albina community and specifically in the black community and i think to the extent that you link a strategy that has to do with this notion of something programmatic and something powerful in in every option is something that you know is is is has a nexus to the depth and the breadth of the problem that we're facing as a society and so I would encourage your leadership to think about
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how that might be incorporated into into all of the options and you know this is a time to to inspire people and I think do something bigger than then then simply buildings as Miss Merriweather said Tom and I just want to clarify for everyone that these options as they're presented now this is director constan these options are just a way of thinking about the different components that could go into a bond it doesn't mean that it's a B or C final option could be reconstituted in any way and that's part of what we're doing here tonight is hearing from everybody about what those elements should be thank you I know I know that we may not have a whole lot of time for me to jump in a second time but I do I do want to say that my primary motivation for being here is is Jefferson High School it is everything we've already discussed and coming on definitely recognizes the internalization of the feeling that maybe the district had left Jefferson behind and has continued to do so why should they do something different now hearing the specific comments from several official voices at the beginning of this disappearing talking about race talking about equity talking about what our role should be and that it's not just words and it's action and hearing mr. Merriwether say that we need to go beyond I realize it that even I've been thinking well maybe this is all we can get but I definitely changed my mind I think I think we absolutely have to go further than what we think we can get we got a we got a and now is the time and it's got to be the time and without delay and without future delay and without you know use your option to hold off or back off or maybe we try to close the up again or whatever else absolutely this can be the absolute diamond of our of our district it can be the peak of high school excellence and it can be something special for every student in our district to look up to as a opportunity or it can be need follow that's just yeah which I don't think it to be I don't think that's fair well I appreciate the chance to myself to be able to say that and the words of others to reiterate that I wish I had the time to just say more and get more out but I don't want to be rude so this is Julia Verne Edwards on the board and I wanted to add to one thing that is maybe another piece of context in addition there was a discussion about the high schools being sort of first in the largest scope of the long range facilities plan but the board five or six years ago when they were setting with the bond packages had two primary filters and one was the condition of the building and the second was with a racial equity and social justice lens and if you look at the Romanian high schools certainly Jefferson being Belle tonight to note 1909 fits that criteria and the students that they serve so I don't want that to get lost at that that is criteria that is also part of how the district is looking at the package not just new high schools go first or in what order but also with the condition of the facilities which obviously Jefferson is given its age and the condition is top of the list Southwest resident remember the Sweeney schools to me I'm a member of a streak that while we obviously love Wilson High School I think we're very supportive of
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technology Thank You mr. Smith and also your comments mr. Knight MS medic Merriweather and mr. Alexander is so good to see you here um I'm Michele de Paz and I'm a I'm a school board member in a north-northeast Portland resident that attended Jefferson High School in the dance program during the days when you had to live in the district and I didn't and so I had to move din with my grandmother who did on a home home in the neighborhood and I've said this in another group but I want to say it again I'm rereading Peter sengai who's a management expert and he has five disciplines that he he talks about in terms of like building an optimal team for moving forward those disciplines are systems thinking and mental models and building a shared vision and the mental model piece is really important in this conversation because we're we're a district that has not had a lot of people of color at the leadership level and and that what that means is these leaders as awesome as they are bringing their own mental models their own assumptions about things their own lived experience to their and and have not listened to the voices that we've been like listening to for literally for years for decades I feel like right now is a time to step back the youth are talking out in the streets every single night and we have an opportunity right now to be excellent and I'm also very competitive I want to win like the urban school district I want to win Portland we're in the whitest city in in this country of its size and we can we can be a tad assembler a model for addressing race and education and the educational gap that moment is right now like there there is no better moment two weeks ago wasn't a moment a month ago wasn't a moment but right now right now we have opportunity we have people listening that have never never listened before we have all kinds of people challenging those mental models and I just I hope that we what we build as a community with a shared vision includes Jefferson it could an ocean of black excellence that we haven't had demonstrated and we have we don't have a model of that let's let's create that in Portland if we can do it in Portland we can do it in Galveston we can do it in you know Florida we can do it everywhere let's do it in Portland like I want to be awesome you guys I want to be awesome and I want to win what that is I want to win this game this is Clara from a student at Cleveland High School and I definitely agree that we should prioritize Jefferson and do as much as we can for modernization at Jefferson and hopefully looking ahead to Cleveland and other schools I know at Cleveland the general sentiment is nobody really thinks that the modernization is going to happen on a jr. and I know that it's not going to happen while I'm at this school but then we're still knowing that we're in a school and so it's Jefferson and there's a whole list of PS schools that if the Cascadia earthquake came over a magnitude earthquake that our school would likely collapse and so just knowing that we're sending thousands of students to school every day in buildings that if the earthquake came which is there is a high likelihood that it could come then they could all be killed by collapsing school buildings so I think that is a big motivator as well just the structural integrity to modernize as many buildings as possible as well as in other areas like technologies and for equity than just prioritizing communities like Jefferson that has been without modernization and detention by the district for so long this is Danna I'll jump in as well thanks for this opportunity to weigh in I'm a parent of two children and rising second raising fifth grader in the Cleveland catchment area and I'm also a I'm Cleveland High School graduate when I went to Cleveland it was it had the most number of different languages spoken at a school of any school in the district in the 90s obviously at the neighborhood's feeding to Cleveland have changed dramatically in the last 30
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years since I attended and it wasn't a very functional learning space then and I understand have been sitting on the Planning Committee and those really hot and really cold really crammed rooms there in Cleveland hasn't gotten any better we haven't made those investments yet I don't want us to wait to renovate Jefferson and tell the neighborhood is Jennifer gentrified we should be renovating it we should have renovated it in the last fun we should prioritize renovation in this bond and I just hope we get ready to make all of the spaces in the district like quo baseline functional ideally quality learning spaces dan there's one comment in here from director Edwards can you speak can you speak to the design and planning funds for Cleveland and Wilson we also are at 7:32 so I don't know you everyone is more than welcome to stay but the other work groups are beginning right now yeah I'll answer that question quickly and then we'll we'll take a minute for transition time so two of the options include funds for planning and design of the high schools that are not included the construction is not included in the bond option so what it signifies is the intentionality of moving forward with the design of those schools in anticipation of the next bond that would then include the full construction cost to allow the high school momentum to continue to move forward for all that so I very much appreciate everyone's comments this is super helpful to stab this is super helpful to the board it allows us to make a much more informed decision about what a bond would look like going forward so I think everyone and I will let everyone now move to another room if they like and we'll just take a pause and start in just one day thank you thank you thank you thanks everybody thank you okay we're we're gonna jump right in as people come in and join thank you for everyone you see we got some new faces coming into this room so thank you for joining us as you probably heard in the others well cover it real quick or if the other rooms worked a little bit differently there are multiple ways to provide comments you can always argue and just speak and let us hear your comments the google also has a chat feature if you're able to see it up on the right-hand corner where you can click and then type in a question or comment Natacha grannies who is here helping out she's going to help you monitor that so if there are comments or questions we can make sure to catch those and then the upper left-hand corner you should see a little person with the hand raised if you click on that I will see a little hand raised and there's someone speaking at the time we'll wait til the right moment and then I'll call on you and you can provide your comments so thank you for joining this group for those who have been here for the first two you're going to hear me do the same intro for the third time so you blow do a quick intro and then really just would love to hear any and everyone's comments about what a future bond could look like for the district so Portland Public Schools has a long-range plan to modernize and rebuild Portland schools the best way to comprehensively address outdated school buildings that weren't built for current health and safety codes or modern educational needs is to fully modernize them to previous voter approved bonds have funded modernization or rebuilding of six high schools Franklin Grant and Roosevelt are complete Benson Lincoln and Madison are in progress in addition fabien pre-k 8 in Northeast Portland was fully rebuilt and a new Cleveland Middle School in Southeast Portland is under construction will be open next year so the big broad question all throughout there and I'll let people provide their feedback especially if you've got some ready what should the PPS Board of Education prioritized as they decide on a proposed bond renewal package for voters to consider Oh pods I'm happy to answer questions -
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okay there is a trend here in these meetings what I will do is some of you may have seen we have a survey out now we are inviting feedback on three potential bond options so I'll show your screen and I'll walk through those quickly and that might get some thoughts going about what scope might look like for a future bonding and these aren't the only three options they are simply a small medium and larger option that we're using to get feedback a future bond could be any one of them could be anything in between could be smaller could be larger could be different so let me share my screen and then find the right document here we go okay I trust everyone can see my screen if you can't someone please yell at me here's a document that is on our website that explains some of the options that are being considered for a future bond in here there is discussion and it highlights the three potential options this first one here is the smallest of 584 million all of the options include funds to complete the Benson high school project and that's both the Benson proper building and the multiple pathways to graduation which is a new construction building on the Benson campus so all the options include that they also all include some level of educational improvements and what has been prioritized to date are technology improvements in this current virtual learning environment we've seen and really highlighted the need for tech ecology upgrades throughout the district curricular improvements or curriculum funds that are included there is a potential here for one big bite of the Apple that would really raise up the entire district in aging and outdated curriculum and bring that up to current standards and in our special ed classrooms looking at improvements in classrooms throughout the district our health and safety projects roof replacements that is a big need we do have leaking and old and deteriorating groups throughout the district and we need to address those our mechanical systems for people who have been in our buildings in the winter often fail during the winter and that is a big capital need that we need to address so gary improvements security upgrades is something that we prioritize seismic improvements and accessibility improvements whether that be ramps into the school or elevators or other ad hoc improvements option number two is similar to option one it really just includes in part lot more of those improvements more roofs more mechanical systems but also includes funds to do the planning and design of the three high schools that have yet to be in a bomb so that is Jefferson Cleveland and Wilson so what this signifies is even though the total amount to complete those projects is not in this bond the amount to do planning and design is with the anticipation of the next bond will include the construction funds to complete those projects and the last and the largest option at 1 billion is very similar to the previous option and it also includes planning and design but just for Wilson and Cleveland because includes the total funds to complete the chairperson high school project so that is the one modernization project that would move forward in the in this bond option so I'll pause there and ask if there are any visceral reactions or comments or if there looks to be an option or a scope that seems to be preferred or that should be prioritized as these decisions are made hi my name is Liz Alda branch I am a retired teacher from PBS I'm also a Jefferson graduate so selfishly I would like to see Jefferson prioritize simply because it was a high priority at the beginning of all of these projects and even the last bond last do bonds last bond anyway nevertheless and I don't think putting it off any longer is going to be beneficial as it also has all of the issues that you were talking about that need to be fixed like the leaky roof and so on and so forth so for me no matter what we do with the bonds I
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just would like to see Jefferson prioritized and not put off again I think even just knowing the high schools I know Wilson I also know Cleveland they've had some work done in more previous years than Jefferson and I think that they could they could stand to wait a little bit and maybe go out to that later bond but I'm not sure Jefferson can continue to wait just my preference hmm Thank You Liz are there other comments or questions hi this is Mike Rosen dan I had a question about the pre development work that might happen on Cleveland and Wilson and so when the pre development work is done that means in the next Bond it's ready to build or is there more construction planning that needs to happen yeah that's a great question and that is what the concept is with those funds is to allocate enough that the project's can really get up to that point of construction and so if a future bond includes the funds for the construction they can make be ready and move right into that face so the momentum this this concept of prioritizing high schools that momentum can continue thank you any other comments or questions about the options there is a comment in the chat it's from Thomas but he said which mpg programs are gonna be housed in the new building at Benson that is a great question I feel I would fearful I'll missed one or two if I rattle them off but so I will say the programs that are currently in Benson proper some of them will stay in the Benson building the majority of them will move to multiple pathways also the Alliance program will move with a multiple pathways building and the Alliance that niek program will leave meek once construction is complete and move into the multiple pathways building and Natasha if you have a moment maybe you could go on the website on our website for Benson there is the plan and it lays out all the programs I've been there seven or eight others feel bad if I miss one maybe we can put the link in there so you can see exactly what was our comments I love that yep I will pull it up just give me a few minutes I'm gonna do some circle can I ask you ask an extension of that same question was the new building for those programs which i think is a good idea an add-on to Benson's original bond or was it part of or did it come later and that's why it's costing more to get Benson done that is a great question the the Benson project was a part of the 2017 bond at that time it did not include the multiple pathways programs in the multiple pathways building as we move through planning of Benson the need became you know very spotlighted that there needed to be a solution for this so motions were looked at of where the multiple pathway programs could go a long story short keeping them you know some of them with Benson or adjacent to Benson was the best option so that is what was before as a recommendation and ultimately approved and then added on to the Benson project dan yes if I could just speak to that this is julie abram edwards a board member so i came on the board after the bond had passed but the bond is my recollection is it said that the students would move out of the benson program but it didn't designate where they would go so you essentially had the Alliance at Benson students and program along with a number of other programs that had been cited that Benson without a place to go so this was the solution after the bond that was developed in concert with the Benson staff and also the staff at all the other programs but the bond said they're going to move out of the Benson program but it didn't provide them with
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a new home exactly that's correct Danny yes that is correct got it I was just wondering yeah when did it come up and how did it come up I know a couple of the programs were already housed in Vinson is Benson keeping it's Polytechnic status as it is that's coming from a binson I talked to my best friend went to Benson so she said I want them to keep that program so there you go my Jefferson my Benson there you go they are keeping the program and even as they move to the Marshall campus during construction they will still keep those programs other questions or thoughts or reactions to the bond options specifically about the modernisations is that the right priority for funds is to focus on prioritizations we have any other thoughts I dan this is sandy reg nettie I'm a Wilson to be parent my daughter just graduated from Robert gray so I'm still learning about high schools but I don't see how option one really gets us anywhere you know it delays a lot of stuff that's kind of in the works I proposed you know something on par with you know option 3 if that's you know where most of the people land and it provides you know some momentum especially right now and they don't see how we can't include Jefferson in a matters of modernization since they've been put off year and year again so someone that's not associated with Jefferson I still think that it should be prioritized so I just want to give that feedback thank you are their reactions to the idea of putting the planning and design Funds in this bond with the intention of completing that work and in a future bond does that seem the right way to prioritize funds or would someone see other work as a higher priority this is Mike Rosen and I'm a former Cleveland parent and board member I think that's the right thing to do to put the planning letting in because it creates momentum for those schools and I think that if they're disappointed that they're not included in this bond it shows that there's a commitment in the next bond and then the next one will be ready to go ahead which leads me to a quick question I'm confused about the term of the bond my understanding is we haven't decided and maybe this is a question for the board members on the in the room we haven't my understanding is we haven't decided yet whether it's a two-year or a four-year bond and how when will that decision be made and how will that decision be me Dan are you gonna try and answer or I mean I can I could start off I mean first of all the decision on the size of the package will be decided over the next month and I think one thing that there's general agreement upon is the rate the tax rate is not going to change and so then really the the big factor then is how how long if you have the same tax rate and you're raising greater mint money it just takes a longer period of time it's sort of that that the broad general answer so it depends on where we land on how how big of a package it is and then how long with the existing tax rate it would take to spend and raise that money dan do you want to refine that well that that was very good and there's also when we talk about term of bonds that may be a little bit confusing because it's I mean we will sometimes depending on the conversation use it differently largely when we're talking about it in this context it
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means how long until the next fall and so that doesn't have to be of course decided right now there are multiple variables that could change this so what we we've talked about what most of these options is either a two or four year before we go out for another one it doesn't mean that the work that's in the bond has to be completed in that time we we regularly overlap scope of work with bonds so it's not how much work we can complete over that duration it has to do of when do we want to go out and exactly as directed remembered said the financing and even the financing of how we finance a bond that is approved in 2020 we don't have to fully decide this year the financing can change as we sell the bond so the approval November give us authorization to sell a certain amount that we sell in increments and then as we sell it in increments that's where the decisions are made of how long the term then is of the payback period so that's that's getting a little bit messy but it's also why you'll see these ranges of two to four years because there are different variables that can change over time and we can make different decisions over time but the one of the important things to point out as director met or did is the tax rate staying constant over time so if we go into that we if we pick a package we go out in November this year that's going to stay the same rate whether we go back again in two or four years what we'll do is we'll just change how we finance it when we sell them let's seem very wordy anything so just to collect light does that mean that the range is set for the next bond it's either going to be two years or four years or could it be longer than four years hey it could be longer general thinking right now is that's probably if there if there aren't unforeseen circumstances probably what we would look at is a two or a four year but if if something changes it could be three years it could be five it could be six I'm just a quick time that you have about seven minutes until the end of our search Thank You Natasha I wonder this is we're in the modernization group and I think I touched on very lightly that the the three high schools that have yet to be in a bond Jefferson Cleveland and Wilson have all gone through a conceptual master planning process so what we have done here in the last year is met with stakeholders met with community members to put together what we call a conceptual master plan and why we call conceptualize the intent of that effort was to get a general scope of what each of those schools might look like going forward and then we gave us go to a professional Cost Estimator and then they gave us their estimates for what those what those are if one or more of them are we have package three and Jefferson is included in this bond and it's approved we will then do a more in-depth outreach process I engaged community engaged stakeholders and finalize what that plan is which ultimately is approved by the board and then we move into the design phases with the architect so I'm curious if anyone in this group has had experience or has maybe seen some of those master plans that they have about what that process is or how they look or if the district seems to be heading in the right way as far as what these high schools look like or if there's any other questions or feedback I say committee for Jefferson for the conceptual planning and I thought it was I liked the process a lot we sort of pipedream it and it's sort of out there if we get everything we want that'd be fantastic because it brings a lot of what was Jefferson back to Jefferson again I know that we probably won't get everything that we want but even if we got just some of the main gritty pieces of making that school work and keeping it alive which was which is the hope of everybody that ever I think was sitting on that committee teachers the principal and the community then you know I just I
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like the idea I like the way they went through the process Thank You Liz other thoughts or comments well with our last couple of minutes I think I'll do a quick wrap-up and since we've been through three of these sessions and this was the session specifically talked about Mars ation I'll just I'll just look folks here know that we got a lot of feedback and some very eloquent and impassioned feedback and what we heard in this group about Jefferson being the priority was very much the sentiment through all the groups that would that we heard I think we were very little otherwise maybe a little bit that was the clear number-one priority and then I think something we also heard quite a bit was even the plane we average Jefferson that might not even be enough you might even go go big or go further dream bigger about what we can do at that site so that is that is a primary takeaway that that I heard from today's session and we'll wrap it up here but I don't know if anyone wants to react aback but that seems to be the majority of the feedback that we're hearing here today okay no oh yes Andi hey I have a question I was on a different call and I'm not familiar with the group but there was an Albina plan that was mentioned and they talked about you know centralizing some other services so like your children's museum and some other programs so is there a possibility of giving funds that aren't from the bond to make that happen as far as like how much money can outside organizations companies help in building that because that seems more of a community you need more than just a school which I think should always be integrated but is there a possibility of getting private funds some way of fundraising so that it does become that overall larger vision yeah I'll give a short answer to that and that is yes there absolutely is opportunity for the district to partner with outside organizations to plan to work on a unifying vision and then to carry out that vision a bond is a great way to get capital resources to support a vision and so we can see in the built environment but it's not the only way there are other ways that components of capital projects can be funded and can be completed and using our community partners is one great way to do that two great way to leverage funds and it's a great way to build consensus around a goal and a vision okay I would like to thank everyone for their feedback this has been super helpful this is helpful to staff this is helpful for the board to hear firsthand what community priorities are and I would encourage people to go on the website and fill out the survey as well and thank everyone for the and further their thoughts today I have eight and the chat feature along with what you present earlier so if you guys wanted to open that before you leave please feel free

Event 5: Bond Town Hall 6/25/2020 Breakout Session #4 Bond Options 2020

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okay we're starting I just want to let folks that the recording has started so I think we're gonna go ahead and get started my name is Danny Ledesma and I'm with PBS and I see some familiar faces and I'm so excited to have her in here I want to acknowledge that we have that we have our board member director Michelle the pass is here so thank you for thank you for for for being here with us and thank you to everyone for for tonight before we start getting feedback from folks I have some some questions I'd like to ask you but prior to ask any questions this is the group where we're really sort of asking folks to to drill down on our sort of three proposed options and so what I'd like to do is go through the three options and so we have we have some of those options up there on screen and I believe our fabulous chief engagement officer might also be able to to share this the link in the chat as well so that you can follow along on your own computers or on the screen whichever is easier for you and then we are so lucky because we have a little bit more detail and a proposal from our community members to help fill out our option number three so we'll be will be doing some we'll take a little bit of break from the screen and allow our guests to present a little bit more so why don't we jump into the first option which is option one and this option is the proposed amounts and I Jonathan I think we're on option 2 on the screen sorry about that if you could scroll up a little bit so option 1 there you go option 1 is a proposed referral for 584 million dollars it includes educational improvements health and safety projects as well as modernization rebuilds to these amounts so it would improve technology investments curriculum in special education classrooms at a hundred and fifty six point nine million it includes safety health and safety projects to the amount of a hundred and fifty point five million and then modernization in rebuilds at two hundred million and this would include the completion of Benson and the rebuild as well as additional funding for management and program contingency and so you'll notice on that page there's a little bit more detail the second option Thank You Jonathan the second option is option two this one is for incrementally more so this is another close to two hundred fifty million dollars more this option includes is for a seven hundred and eighty five million dollar bond option the educational improvements would include one hundred and eighty nine million of technology curriculum special education classroom improvements as well as other other investments the ten million dollars of sort of like other improvements that's different than what was proposed in the other one allows for some flexibility to include upgrades for gym or physical education or sort of like outdoor areas that need to be covered and as well as upgrades to performing arts so the option for Health and Safety is two hundred and eight point five million dollars so this also includes what we had seen before but also additional investments in flexible funding to think about critical facility projects that include critical facility projects that include you know more more sort of plumbing systems electrical systems like remediation of bestest some ways to increase some energy savings replacement of floors and also foundation and some structure play structure the proposed modernization in rebuilds portion is 285 million dollars this includes the completion of Benson the multiple pathways to graduation building that's on the Benson campus it also includes some design and
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pre-construction of three high schools as well as 10 million dollars in flexible funding to think about future capacity or enrollment needs through school confer reconfiguration the design and creek construction of planning would include cleveland Jefferson and Wilson High School's okay so option 3 is for 1 billion dollars so another 250 million dollar increment I'm gonna describe this and then ask our guests to kind of fill out a little bit of a vision for a piece of this and we'll talk about that in a moment so this 1 billion dollars includes upgrades to technology curriculum and special education classrooms for 161 million dollars it includes health and safety projects for one hundred and ninety eight point five million dollars and the majority of the increase comes from increases to moderate modernization and rebuilds at five hundred and sixty million dollars so this is inclusive of a Benson and multiple pathways to graduation completion and new building it includes design and pre-construction of two of the high schools so it includes Cleveland and Wilson's design but it proposes three hundred and twenty million dollars for Jefferson High School modernization and so I'm gonna turn it over and to our guests I believe we have ruqaiya Adams from Alpena vision Trust who's gonna be able to provide us some really exciting and more detail about a proposal from our community around what what this Jefferson project could potentially look like I'd also like to welcome our our board member uh Scott Bailey who also joined us so thank you so ruqaiya yeah Thank You Danny I assume everyone can hear me just fine we'll share a presentation with you but first I want to say thank you to the board members who are here all the community members doing so much good work for us and the parents and students who are on the call also want to acknowledge the amount of work that has gone into the three different options that have been presented here I can see I can only imagine how much work has gone into it so thank you to the staff for doing that and before I got in I want to be clear that of the three options I think Jefferson's renovation should be included in all of them so I don't want to make that ambiguous I'm making the case for a broader vision and in that regard I want to share some of us share presentation with you right now I'm sure can you see my screen give me a verbal yes or no not not yet or kind of yeah okay somebody let me know when you can okay now no we oh yeah it's happening now thank you retire okay great so at a high level I want to introduce the idea that we're proposing here today first before we dive into the details and the idea is that PPS and this bond issue and its mission is at the center of a very important civic moment that is a part of a longer civil rights movement your mission to educate children and inspire them to go on to excellence is exactly what's happening in the streets right now right now that the teaching and learning direction has been turned on its head and we have young people teaching us a civics lesson and teaching us how to be brave in order to take better care of each other and as I listened to the opening statement today in support of the movement for black lives and hearing the description of what happened to William Brown's children what's clear to me is I would like to encourage the PBS board and all of the folks who serve on the various committees to move from talking about supporting black lives to investing with intention and action toward putting money toward capital and community investments that actually demonstrate that commitment not just with words but with actions and what we're proposing here is building a model that will generate shared prosperity and Commonwealth specifically focused on excellence for black children so the pie level idea is a distributed model for black excellence that is anchored by Portland Public Schools and and we want three components to that the first is
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for you to bond for transformation not just maintenance and incremental change the second is that we'd like you to think about the places that PBS creates and occupies and we want and occupies and we want you to think about how we can build centers for children in those places that PBS occupies and the third is that I'd like you to think about the various ways that PBS can engage with the city in advocating for the life of the black child in the city so the first ideas that we'd like to create a Center for black excellence with a distributed model based on schools that are in lower Albina at a high level we want you to imagine that black and brown boys in particular are not criminalized from infancy but encouraged to be excellent that we displace the school to Prison Pipeline with an intentional early pre-k through college pipeline toward excellence we want you to imagine that a bond issue could help to create the play that would enable that the way that we think that can be done sorry we have a having a little challenge my computer he is to envision a Center for black excellence that would be anchored by Jefferson High School Kairos PDX at Humboldt elementary school Harriet Tubman middle school and connect with those schools the community based organization that provide the wraparound services to the youth and their families to enable success those community-based organizations would include sei the gordly house Albina headstart several churches in the area of the Urban League as well as P OIC and PCC in order to drive academic excellent excellence for these young people you'll see in the far right edge of this slide we would like to present the idea of the PPS headquarters becoming a children's quarter we're in the life of children the role of children and and all their needs in LA and their lives our focus will have a slide on that next and you also see we think that the black United fund would be an important part of anchoring the Center for black excellence the point of the center would be to create an intentional and comprehensive learning infrastructure in Albina anchored at Jefferson in order to unify and elevate black learning from pre-k through higher education this illustrates an abstraction of what we're saying which is that we want to create an ecosystem and concentric circles of support to to provide belts and suspenders around the academic programs at schools in order to ensure success of black children again if we support the movement for black lives and we want to undo some of the early discrimination against kids like William Brown's kids and the things that we see every day we have to intentionally design systems around these kids and support them and I'd like you to think long and hard about the way that a bond issue can begin to do this this is the idea for a children's quarter we think that where the PPS headquarters is whether it's the BES seaside or some other side something like Concordia ours or somewhere else would be a wonderful place to think about placing the Children's Theatre a Children's Museum having consolidated athletic facilities that are an excellent standard for all kids in the district we'd like to have an opportunity to provide continuing education for teachers and in the case of Concordia and maybe the B ESC redevelopment there's lots of space for affordable housing for the teachers who serve the children that are in PPS classrooms third part of the idea which is innovate is that we would like in this process of thinking about transformational investments for the benefit of black lives for the PBS board and professional staff to consider reusing or REIT renovating the BES C site so that we can redevelop it with the life of the child within the city at the center of the design we imagine that that work might look something like the images in the bottom right corner of this slide we think that if we redevelop the BTB ESC site and find a way to move the headquarters out of that site to rebuild it that we could have space for another public school for healthy food
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within the urban boundary affordable housing park blocks and places of worship this is a big idea at its inner we're saying if we are serious about supporting the movement for black lives we have to move capital in support of that and the capital shouldn't just be for buildings it should be for providing the supports that these young people need to survive to to thrive part one is bonding for transfer transformation part two is thinking about PBS's place and whether there can be a children's quarter built around it and part three would be re-envisioning the BSC site for the life of the child in the city this is a big idea it's complicated but I'm excited to put forward put forth something that we can all do that would be exceptional in these exceptional times young people are telling us to use our imaginations and to throw off tradition and bureaucracy in order to do something important this is what we think might be important there are a number of next steps it's very complicated but we think it's doable and exciting so that's what I wanted to share with you today thank you rakaia and thanks for thanks for participating tonight I think that's really helpful so what I'd like to do with our remaining time is to ask participants to reflect on a couple of questions the first question is as you think about our three options which bond option is closest to what you would like to see on the November ballot for voters to consider and also I'd like you to think and reflect on what investments make this bond option more aligned with you or your sort you or your students needs and so what I'd like to do now is there is a raise your hand function and so if you don't mind we'd like to kind of listen and hear what folks have to say people are also making comments in the chat and that's that is fantastic because we are we're also you know sort of able to record what's in the the chat so is there someone outside of Portland Public Schools who'd like to maybe provide some reflection or start our conversation about these options first of all I wanna say I appreciated the presentation that rakaia gave I think when we think about big that is certainly big but at these days and times I think big exactly what we need to be thinking I would be in favor of option 3 I know it is the largest I know there was some thought about that being difficult to get a billion dollar bond passed at this point in time but I just think people are ready for change they're ready for something very different and I think if we were to provide the appropriate narrative around the type of plan that Rukiya just presented to us I think folks could get very very excited about something of that scale and be willing to support it at a high level anything in my opinion that does not include Jefferson high school right now with the environment that we're in I think is very very problematic for any bond and very problematic for the district so if Jefferson is not involved I think we're dead in the water you're not going to find black folks supporting anything that does not include Jefferson if we do option 3 then you we don't have the challenge of Ben what happens at Cleveland what happens at Wilson because that particular option gives everybody a chance to win and for us at the Jefferson and albino community to really win in a big way for the first time and here's be a dis district thank you Tony thanks for thanks for kicking us off and thanks for the great points that you made are there other folks who would like to share their reflections I am tempted to speak up but I'd like to hear from people that aren't connected to the district first I actually also here just to listen but it's hard for me to sit on my hands at this book you know it can be hard any other anybody else hi this is Tom can you hear me yes thank you so much for your leadership and
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tackling these complex issues one of the things that I find very compelling about something that considers multiple locations and how they work together kind of separate from the level of investment is is the idea that there's an analysis of optimizing the real estate and the various properties that that are correlated to one another and and I'm very moved by this ecosystem notion you know something that's not just physical but its programmatic and that there's this support system for our children that is bigger than any one one place it's centered by Jefferson but it but it includes a constellation of of learning institutions and educators that are distributed around the city because I feel like that will make it harder for for our kids to fall through the cracks and I really like that idea combined with the notion of of looking at the district's current facilities and and trying to realize their fullest potential so thank you thanks thanks Tom so I'm hearing a lot of excitement about the sort of modernization particularly for Jefferson I'm hearing folks really liking something that is catalytic something that is transformational other folks who want to join in the conversation share some input we think about the November ballot what is an option that you'd like to see voters vote on I also want to encourage folks that maybe if you haven't landed on one option maybe just reflecting or sharing maybe elements of the bond options that are that speak to your student or your your needs and sort of how how that is important I think I just saw an option three Thank You Debbie Mon Terina thank you another vote for option three more more for option three I'm wondering did option three for the folks that are up voting for option three you know there's some components maybe not included in what with kiya shared so I looked at maybe those folks that said option three is that drawing the line at what you heard earlier or is it expanding on what ruqaiya shared vote for me certainly at least that and we recognized that what macaé is offering in that presentation goes well beyond that so as you said it's complicated it's difficult there may be additional things that we'd have to come up with so I don't know that I'm assuming that in option three is inclusive with resources to cover what mkhaya was outlining but at the very least everything that's listed there with the thought that that's the direction the district would be heading if in fact that money isn't there right now we would be looking for ways to find resources to include the things that require outline so so speaking to that Tony I think Debbie had a question around a financial study on the option that Rukia mentioned were kind did you want to speak to that there hasn't been a financial study yet I can eyeball incremental additions they're sort of you know what costs are and I think it could be another 50 to 100 million dollars in there so it's not insubstantial but I again I don't know that in these times incremental maintenance is what will inspire voters I mean with more what will inspire the kids in the schools so we don't have a financial study yet and I understand
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that this idea splashing into a process that is pretty well baked but if there was ever a time to pivot and really think about why we educate these children and the message they're sending us it's now so I think that those ideas we could probably come up with with a study relatively quickly to support whatever decision the board would make Thank You rakaia and the other sort of conversation or discussion on this we're starting to we've got about four more minutes together before we transfer over and we want to make sure that folks have a good opportunity to be in dialogue and to share their what they would they believe I also really appreciate everyone that's using the chat function but while we're here any other comments for us so I I have to ask is there a role for voice daily at Humboldt in division yes so the initial thinking is that the humble campus is a place for early pre-k pre-k and K through 5 so yes it's a it's a really important location and we really like it for this Center for black excellence because enlivening humble will allow us to create pedestrian pathways and some urban design and support of children in the city to make sure that they're stayed navigating the neighborhood as they move between the campuses so absolutely both Boise Elliott and and humbled okay kiss you you hadn't called that boy salient before so I didn't know yeah I just made a mistake yeah I would make the assumption that whether or not we're talking about this from a financial standpoint there are a number of school in and closer around Jefferson High School that I think with ultimately we would want to be a part of this you got off the green that's very close you got King that's very close so I don't know that we would would be doing this without including some of those other schools to be a part of the overall vision the resources that we're talking about may support the ones that are identified here potently but I would assume that others would come alongside for this to have the kind of impact okay can ice yeah and actually Michelle if you want to go first because you were because if nobody no nobody else off the board wants to say something Michelle if you want to chime in I had a couple things to add and one of the things is that some of you heard me say I'm revisiting the reading of Peter sengai he's a management an organizational development expert and they they read it's required reading and graduates Business School so some of you familiar with it and he has these concepts about the fifth discipline that includes systems thinking mental models and building a shared vision among the five disciplines that he says you know are needed to move through team learning together and and we have an opportunity to kind of operationalize those concepts here with this with this with this concept the other thing is that Albert Einstein has a quote I use it on the back of one of my business cards and it says imagination is more important than knowledge and and coming from a creative thinker type I feel like it's very important to vision what you want and not not make yourself small in that visioning space and and figure out and think like an artist so we have this vision that's not going to be done in two years it might be a 20 year process but to put the concept in the master planning in place right now requires the vision of the community coming together and and actually like putting that investment in that Commission commitment and that vision as our North Star as our as our guiding as our guiding principle and and and demonstrating not just talking about equity but a way to actually operationalize and and and see this vision right so I just wanted to put out there that the visioning piece is really important you cannot have if somebody gave me AB lump of clay today and said in six weeks it needs to look different I would envision something in my mind it's going to be a vessel some kind and I would have six weeks to get it from the lump of clay to my
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vision and so I'm saying that with this project and these concepts that Miss Adams put forward gives us the opportunity to be creative as a community and also demonstrate our commitment to black lives matter so we've never really had any demonstration of that we've talked about that a lot in our community but we don't really have a lot of on-the-ground demonstration of what that looks like and we don't have an we don't have we haven't demonstrated to the community what black excellence looks like and we haven't funded it and so I just want to put that Peter Sunde thing out there because it's on my nightstand I read a little bit every night and I love the visuals that you presented miss Adams and and that we need to think big as a community this is an opportunity that we like like no other and I'm hoping that we as a community build a shared vision around what we envision for our black children thank you director to pass I'm so sorry director Bailey I'm gonna have to just put us on pause for a moment and invite folks who would like to stay to kind of continue this conversation you're more than welcome to stay but also we have some new folks who are joining but there are three other three other breakout groups we'd like we'd love to hear your opinions about those as well so we're gonna get started for some folks who have started who've just arrived we'll go ahead and get started in just a moment allow people to transition out and in and for folks who provided comments and the chats and everything thank you so much for your engagement and listening and we will we will continue to hopefully hear more from you in this process thank you very much thank you and welcome everybody so we're gonna give a couple more moments for folks to to join us and for folks who we have to leave go to the next one we'll let folks do that [Music] okay everyone I'm going to go ahead and get us started because there's a lot of information to share and we'd like to get as much comment from you as possible so my name is Danny ledesma this is the breakout group about the bond options we're going to have a discussion about those before we're going to share everything with you I do want to acknowledge that we have we have quite a few board members with us that were really excited to have we have director Scott Andrew Scott we have director Bailey Scott Bailey we have director to pass and I believe we have that might be that might be all of our our board of directors so thanks for joining us so as we began Jonathan is going to share on the chat a document that has us go through three options and then we are really fortunate that we have a part community community partner who's also here to give a little bit more detail to one of the options so what we're here to discuss today are three bond options the first option and Jonathan will pull that up on the on the screen the first option is a referral for 584 million dollars and it includes it includes investments in in three areas so educational improvements at one hundred and fifty six point nine million dollars health and safety projects at one hundred and fifty million and then modernization and rebuilds at two hundred million this is sort of like the the base level if you will so it includes technology curriculum in special education classrooms at that one hundred fifty six million for educational improvements it includes roofs mechanical seismic and ABA accessibility at the hundred and fifty million level and on the modernization in rebuilds it assumes a completion of Benson High School as well as the new building on the same campus for multiple pathways to graduation the completion of those for 200 million there's also the sort of management and program contingency items the next
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option is option 2 and so this is you know 785 million dollars and so it includes the investments for educational improvements at 189 million dollars this adds 10 million dollars of other improvements and those include flexible funding for additional investments such as gyms for physical education outdoor play and Visual and Performing Arts paces under the health and safety projects there's additional ten million dollars for other improvements and these are critical facilities issues such as plumbing systems and electrical systems remediation of asbestos energy savings flooring and some foundation and also play structure it includes investment for modernization and rebuilds at 285 million and so what's included in here is 62 million dollars of some design and pre-construction work for the construction of three high schools and these include Cleveland Jefferson and Wilson high schools as well as 10 million dollars in fund funding to address future capacity or enrollment needs as things get reconfigured so then our third option and we'll have our special guests present a little bit but I want to sort of go through this is the 1 billion dollar option this includes investments in educational improvements investments in health and safety projects the key difference is including three hundred and twenty million dollars under modernization and rebuilds for Jefferson high school modernization as well as forty million dollars for some design and pre-construction for Wilson and Cleveland High School and you know one thing that in this document is that when we talked about the Rema of modernization of high schools Jefferson was ranked higher than other schools and so this this one acknowledges that ranking I'm really thrilled to be able to invite our community partner ruqaiya Adams with L by division Trust who would like to share some pretty visionary options that would probably fall under this third option that would be open for your consideration and so gonna turn this over to or kaya thank you so much for being with us thank you Danny it's so nice to have the time before I jump in there are a few other people on the call from the team if someone else from the team can drop the PDF into the comment section that would be great so before I dive in I wanna say thank you to the staff and to the to the board and all the folks at PPS who are doing all this amazing work it's it's incredible to see it's also incredible to be here thinking about a bond issue at a time when an important moment in American history is dovetailing with the mission that PPS has and educating children one of the things that I see in thinking about this bond issue is that the teaching-learning directionality is being turned on its head and we're learning a lot about civics bravery taking care of each other from the teenagers who are in the classroom and in that regard they're essentially saying to us if we're supporting the movement for black lives if we're serious about undoing some of the institutional racism that has played out in our classrooms in our schools and we need to move some of our resources in support of building communities and and places that are important for children so one of the ideas that's circulating in the community is to use this bond issue to do three things the first is to build a Center for black excellence that's anchored by PBS schools starting Scott can you hear me is there something you were you wanting to say something couldn't tell if there was a question there no okay wanting to start with a complete renovation of Jefferson High School design work for new Harriet Tubman some renovation on Humboldt where early pre-k pre-k and elementary school students can be investing in Boise Boise Eliot connecting those schools with King and some other schools in the area and then building into the center for black excellence the support of community-based organizations in Albina that have historically done a wonderful job in helping those children to achieve
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academic excellence we want to create a center for black excellence because we want to displace the school to Prison Pipeline that threatens the the vitality of our communities we want to replace that with an intentional system of early pre-k through college for those same children so we call that the Center for black excellence that's the first idea the second part of it is that we'd like PBS in this bond issue to think about how its headquarters space and the spaces that you occupy can become places for children we'd like you to create a children's quarter a place where the Children's Museum the Children's Theater pio sports maybe a health clinic and other services that are specifically centered around the life of the child can be co-located and benefit children the third big idea that we're proposing for the song and bond issue is that you consider a joint venture with Albina vision to redevelop the land where the BES C building is in order to design a part of the city around the life of the child that means we think about intersections at child height we think about lighting on black and brown skin we think about the needs of children and neighborhoods and family scaled housing so in this bond issue of the three options that are presented I want to be clear that in any choice that you use support or recommend or put forth I would very much like the renovation of Jefferson to be included but I'm saying that's not enough in this moment as young people are telling us to think big to take care of each other to be serious about our support of black lives I would implore all of you to think about how we can use the bond issue in order to really drive transformational and catalytic change in the community so what we will do is share in the comments section a slide deck that provides a little bit more detail on this idea but I really really really would like you to think about this moment and how brave we can be for the young kids in the street Thank You Danny thank you so much for kaya so um folks got a really quick overview of the three bond options and so what I'd like to do is open it up to the group to have some discussion I'd like to invite everyone to reflect on two questions we'd really like to hear from each of you to understand which bond option is closest to what you would like to see on the November ballot for voters to consider and then as part of that reflection we'd love to hear what investments make this bond more aligned with you or your students needs and I want to invite folks to do a couple of things like us to make sure that we're really focused on these three bond options and then to ask folks to if just go ahead and raise your hand and we'll do that and then also don't be shy to use the chat function as well I don't know if you can see but we've got lots of folks who are engaging on the chat function so who would like to think we've got someone go ahead Dee Cohen yeah hi I'm Donna Cohen and I point out here that in terms of the racial equity and social justice and working with connected in the last session I heard that the Roosevelt build was done and I want to emphasize the Roosevelt has not been completed Roosevelt is comprehensive high school that is the most verse I believe Jefferson has it is not a category of not comprehensive it's also possibly in a lowest income community if certainly one of the lowest income communities when it was remodeled it was under built it was consciously built for hundreds less fewer students than we are having and will have in the next couple of years consequently we paid an additional building for those classrooms and it was not built with the proper stem facility that was to be corrected in 2016 when the board passed a resolution and said we're going to build a building and have that now this is important because we should not go and just pretend as though we have done an adequate job and let's move on and leave not only something that's incomplete but that's incomplete in in one of the communities my community that needs the most and that has been acknowledged by PBS as neglected so if that needs to be in the bond and if you just go ahead and ignore
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the needs of Roosevelt then there's gonna be you know that's gonna have its consequences I think thank you and Stephanie chase you wanted to add something yes any case and I'm the parent of PBS students that have been at pioneer which was basically being closed at Benson which has repeatedly been put off for renovation so I'm pleased to see it in this that an incoming freshman at Jefferson and to me I would just say the only bond option if we're going to focus on these three options that make sense is the expensive one is option three because it's the only one that really starts to make noticeable discernible change in some of our communities certainly not all of them as the last speaker is products that need significant investment I continue to be disappointed by PBS's investment in our majority white high school that already have significant experiences and resources available for students students at what feels like the expense of students who do not live in those communities so to me I just want to say because the only option that has Jefferson received the attention that it deserves began being high up on the list and continuously pushed off the only one that makes sense in the three options is the option that includes the build for Jefferson thank you Thank You Brad Nelson yeah thanks very much I think to echo what Stephanie just said I am in a lot of ways very shocked that Jefferson is not included in all three options it seems like the district is forgetting the narrative that was played out or and we have been providing to people over the last several Bond campaigns is that we would address the high schools in an order we would go through and deal with each of the the high schools I think option number one you know Willie forgets that promise option two pretends that it kind of remembers it and option three at least remembers the school that needs it the most I think there is it's a very difficult situation to try and win a campaign or win a bond measure and if you now are coming back I've heard in another room that maybe we need to focus on other things you know things other than high schools you got to think about what this you know what that narrative was leading up to this people have been promised certain things and now what it feels like is that you're going back and those promises so one I'm shocked that Jefferson is not on each one of these that's very very disappointing and two I'm not I'm disappointed that the other schools are not at least provided you know significant funding to go to the next phases of the study so all right thank you very much thank you are there other folks that would like to a share sort of which bond option you'd like to see on the November ballot or sort of key into a specific investments that you'd like that you think is a more aligned with your students needs we've got about 11 more minutes before we transition and for folks who you know may want to share their items in the chat feel free to do that also want to invite us to sort of be in dialogue we've certainly had a lot of really really interesting discussion so far we also have our three board members here with us who are who are really interested in hearing because ultimately they'll be providing this direction to - to staff about sort of what gets referred so we'd love to hear your love to hear your voices or read your opinions on this I have a question mm-hmm yes this is Jacqueline Roebuck Sacco I have two children at Jefferson High School and one that just graduated so I wanted I looked over all four options and my question is why do we need a multi
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pathways high school when Jefferson is already situated to do just that so with their connection to PCC it would seem to me it would save more money because of course option four is the most expensive which means it's probably not even going to be considered but it's more expensive because included in that option is still the creating of the new multiple pathways high school so why isn't Jefferson being considered for that it would save money and it would also get Jefferson read it we have the construction done and the school abroad a standard thank you that is that's a great question are we I don't I don't believe we have anyone give a quick response to that if that's okay hi Jacqueline so the multiple pathways to graduation building is a building that will be comprised of a number of alternative programs in our in our school system namely alliance high school and a dart and other kind of alternative offerings for students who who who may not think or have think that traditional the traditional comprehensive schools are are they are you know or useful or beneficial to them so so they're it's a it's about three or it's about four or five different small school high school school communities coming into one that's the multiple pathways to graduation great to see you again Jonathan thank you for that response however it still doesn't quite again if Portland Public Schools I believe has adopted the best practices of inclusion and so if we are to believe that fully inclusive schools work then those students could still be a part of the new Jefferson High School so I still don't understand why we need that much money to create a new high school which puts Jefferson is my passion first but the other three the other two high schools at bay as well it just doesn't make sense to me to have to build put that money into a new structure when again we could connect Jefferson directly to PCC and also Jefferson has enough room that we could house whatever types of alternative education options were needed there's plenty of space there at Jefferson to do that and again if we are to get behind the notion that inclusive education is the way to go in the future and it serves all children then I'm still not understanding why we would isolate some other kiddos thank you I just have a quick question as a follow-up to that that maybe Jonathan you could answer is there a reason that that school the Alliant school is on the Benson campus and again I have a student to attend Benson high school but how much integration is it that there's integration with the CTE programs at present is there a reason that that schooling couldn't be offered at Jack you know at Jefferson as Jacqueline suggested yeah I'm happy to do a response on the chat so we could hear more folks articulate I'll answer both responses both questions thank you thank you for thank you for those questions um other feedback or thoughts or questions hey Danny this is Andrew um I was wondering if I could just jump in so this the the vision that's being put out there for sort of a Center for black Excellence is really exciting and and you know one of the things that one of things I commented on a couple weeks ago at our board meeting was a concern I had about whether the community had sufficiently had time to weigh in on what sort of the ultimate vision was for the Jefferson campus and potentially beyond that and one of the things that I've been really convinced of prior to this but even hearing the conversations in the last room I was in here is that you know we have to move forward with Jefferson and I'm really intrigued by this idea of Jefferson Plus right that that not just modernized in the high school but but building something else and I guess a question I would have for folks on the call what um what do we need to do because one of the things in the campaign I heard constantly was people the community doesn't want the board making decisions for them they want to co-create those solutions with the board and and what do we need to do to include this so that we actually have the time not just to modernize Jefferson but to sort of coalesce around this vision
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because what I buy to provide a vision trusts the coal work to Lord hacen a ting and I would just love to hear like what should we include in this bond and make sure that we have that back that time and we can we can get to something that that the community wants to see is there anyone who'd like to respond or add to that conversation I'll just say sorry this is Jacqueline psycho again that it doesn't seem to me that moving forward without this understanding around why a new building as a code you know that would knock out the idea of Jefferson being given as proper dude and I think that the board would have to consider that first you know because again that would take off that exuberant amount of money that option 4 is calling for it you know that allows all of all three of the high schools to be given their proper due but Jefferson for sure as it was put off in 2014 and promised in 2020 I don't know in these days and times it just seems to me that to move and push Jennifer sent back again would be calling for I don't know maybe a socio-cultural atmosphere that we're not ready for Jacqueline thank you so much for for for your comments it's you're really helping move this along so I really appreciate it and you're bringing a really good question so thank you thank you very much well we're pretty close to sort of an opportunity for folks to go to another breakout group so I want to encourage folks to kind of continue to use the chat and sandy had a question about option 4 and so I think I think there may have been a little bit of confusion option 4 could be something I think the way that we've sort of conceived of this is that the option that ruqaiya the concept that ruqaiya brought up would be sort of like part of an option 3 but it was sort of like a 1/4 presentation so hopefully that doesn't add to confusion thanks for question and sorry asking that question um so can I make a and Andrew feel free to chime in so we've got different options out there with different dollar amounts and the different dollar amounts implied difference how long the bond would be for and how long before we go out for a next bond so way back when our original attention intention our original concept was an 8-year bond for about I think one point four billion dollars that we would do three high schools and then do roofs and all the other stuff when we looked at what was going on with her buildings it became apparent that we couldn't do that we've we've had stuff that we've put off in our buildings that we can't ignore anymore it's not just roofs it's HVAC systems we don't want to see heating go out in the middle of winter in our buildings and we're looking at those kind of things happening very possibly in the next couple of years it's really apparent our technology is old and it needs a lot of work so some new things new needs became front and center that said we we can't do three high schools and those kind of basic things that we need in an eighth year 1.4 billion bond so that's what the board has been struggling with and then kovat hit so that option one that 580 million dollar one was meant to be a two-year placeholder to get some stuff done while we kind of took a step back to see what would be coming next in any case whichever our high schools and I think Jefferson is clearly
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recognized by the community as our number one next high school priority work on that wouldn't start until 2022 we need two years solid planning on the building and construction wouldn't start until 2022 at the earliest so that's why we ended up with as a potential option - that would include the planning money so that if we came back in 2022 for another bond that would be the construction funds and Jefferson would be ready to go boom as soon as the bond passed construction could start so I just wanted to give that some of that in context of where the board was coming from hopefully for you to understand the other observation I would have is looking over history the window for making big changes only stays open so long so I just want to thank rakaia and her group and other members of the community for saying the windows open now we got a strike now because in two years who knows so I appreciate that the challenge for the board is that that 320 million for Jefferson in option 3 was really kind of a placeholder and the community in the past broadly has demanded that our bonds have a dollar and cent if we know where every dollar and cent of that bond is supposed to go right now we're in a in a more aspirational moment which is great which means we don't know exactly what you know that broad Jefferson project is so if we go and ask voters for a chunk of money to do good things at Jefferson we don't know exactly what that means and we would need some help with the community to convince the bra voters to say this is the way to go it will be developed and in hand with the community a comprehensive plan going forward that we certainly don't have that comprehensive plan it's not something we're going to pull together in the next month to get on the ballot Thank You director Bailey I have the I have the charge of sort of asking folks to first welcome new folks who are coming in this is the breakout deception the breakout session for bond options for folks who were in our session I want to invite you to join one of the other breakout groups if you'd like you're also welcome to stay of course we're going to give folks maybe a few more maybe like a minute and 20 seconds to to join and sort of as we transition this will be our last and final breakout group and we'll start with just a little bit of a presentation about the options and then open it up for discussion asked folks to kind of reflect on these options and then share share all the things that you have I want to encourage folks as people are coming in to go ahead and feel free to use the chat function that will be there and then we are going to be looking at the three bond options and Jonathan Garcia is going to also share that again in our chats because folks who've just joined it won't have access to it before so we'll be going over this document and just just maybe 40 more seconds as people join and while people are joining I want to acknowledge that we have we're really fortunate to have members of our Board of Education who are really here to listen and really excited to hear what people's feedback is and so we have director Rita Moore we have Chair Amy Kahn soon we have director Andrew Scott's and I believe that might be that might be all of our board members so now that we have our board members set we want to have a discussion about breakout session number four which are the bond options so on your screen we have three options that
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are here the first option is for option one is 584 million dollars it proposes investments in educational improvements such as technology curriculum special education classrooms for one hundred and fifty six point nine million it also proposes investments in health and safety projects at a hundred and fifty point five million dollars option one includes modernization and rebuilds at two hundred million dollars this is inclusive of Benson's reach completion as well as the multiple pathways to graduation a building that's part of the Benson campus rebuild so this is the sort of like first option this is the option with the with the smallest dollar amount our next option is option two this option is for seven hundred and eighty five million dollars this includes a hundred and eighty nine million for educational improvements it also includes a ten million dollars of other flexible funding support to be able to address educational facility investments so upgraded gyms for physical education outdoor covered outdoor spaces for play as well as spaces for Visual and Performing Arts the health and safety projects also includes an additional ten million dollars so we are proposing to invest two hundred eight point five million in health and safety projects this includes other improvements ten million dollars that is flexible funding to address critical or essential facilities this includes plumbing electrical plumbing and electrical systems remediation of bestest energy savings fluorine replacement as well as repair of play structures as well and foundation work the modernization and rebuild investment is at 285 million this includes the critical pre-construction and design for our three high schools that includes the Cleveland Jefferson and Wilson High School's it also includes 10 million dollars of flexible funding to address future capacity or enrollment needs the third option and I'm gonna invite what our Community Partner in just a moment to add to this option three but this proposes 1 billion dollars in in for the bond this option has a hundred and sixty-one million dollars for educational improvements so it includes that sort of base level of technology curriculum special ed classrooms it includes the same sort of base level of health and safety projects at 198 point five million dollars what's different about this one is that in addition to the recompression and the building of the MGP the multiple pathways to graduation building on the Benson campus it also includes 320 million dollars for a Jefferson High School modernization which was ranked higher than the other high schools on some of the modernization criterias when we were first prioritizing this earlier it also includes the sort of design and pre-construction for for Cleveland and Wilson so those are the three options I'd like to invite one of our fantastic community partners ruqaiya Adam rukia's with Albina vision trust and she would like to propose she would like to share with you a pretty exciting presentation about sort of ways that we can reimagine the Jefferson campus so I'm gonna turn over to Akaya thank you for being here with us tonight Thank You Danny I wanna say thank you to the spending their evening thinking about how we can educate children is really exciting to see you also when I acknowledge how much work is done on to guide to the three options that we're discussing and acknowledge right here cheers you that's splashing into a process that that has been going for a long time but given the monumental civil engagement that young people are demonstrating on the street and the deep questions and inquiries that we're having as Americans it felt like this moment was the moment for the outline of visions he needed to share some of our highest aspirations so before I share couple slides with you I'd like to say that but we're asking or Pat's parents
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to think about is what is the opportunity for us to unite and make transformational investments in support of black lives but something we've heard at the start of the program that I guess is committed to that with words well it's time for us to stop the talk and walk the walk and walk means committing us and committing resources to capital projects and to community-based solutions that help young people push it's outside the school to Prison Pipeline with something that will help them go from pre-k to professional life without success so that's that's the high-level issue I understand it's a good idea but how much of the open for it so before I show you the slide that the big idea is that the bondage can be used to create a Center for black excellence that anchored in jeferson cluster put the school's adjacent to it to Jefferson High School some design work for Tubman middle school and some design work for the improvement of Humboldt where Kairos curling pre-k and could be located connecting the work and the wraparound services there with king school - boys yelling at school and pulling in the incredible work of community-based organizations that serve those youth and their families including SDI the black United fund and a number of other community-based organizations in the neighborhood so what I'm going to show you now is a slide things you might like and someone tell me not yet would you like jonathan to share it would that be easier let's have jonathan share your slides so jonathan if you will go to the slack for the center for life excellent that would be great it's the third slide so the big idea is to connect the impact of these institutions and anchor them in schools using bond proceeds and improving the capital that making capital investments in the schools in order to to connect students and unify the african-american community to elegantly success and educational outcomes for black children so these brown spots indicate either schools or institutions that support young people's alive so this bond issue and committing to Jefferson I want to say that no matter which option is chosen one two or three I believe the Jefferson renovation should be included but it shouldn't hiss be about improving the building it should be about improving outcomes and improving outcomes means we have to be more intentional about creating a center for black excellence so it's about connecting these geographies done for the next slide an abstraction of what we're saying and investing for the Center for black excellence is putting why on the outcomes we want and connecting all of these organizations together India another big idea number one Center for black X means the big idea number two is think about the ways that the PBS campus where the headquarters building is can be used to create unique experiences for the life of the child we'd like you to think about creating a children's quarter connected to the PBS headquarters that would allow a children's theatre to be placed there a Children's Museum in place there we can have sports facilities there are a number of options around town including the DES seaside and some of the other campuses that have been vacated for all of these services can come together including continuing education for teachers the third part of this big idea again for option number three or greater is to contribute to using the bes c site to create a kid city meaning a part of the city that is designed around the life of the child and their families that means family sized house affordable housing that means streetscapes that are designed to be safe for children thinking about street signs in corners whether someone who's four feet tall can see around important dangerous corners it means thinking about the color of streetlights on the street and whether that blue spectrum light illuminates dark rooms when at night or doesn't illuminate brown-skinned at night so the big idea is to use the PSC site to build a part of the rebuild a part of the city and so that's the high level idea and it is option 3 plus but I'm presenting this knowing that that this process is half way through because the kids in the street are telling us it's time to be brave it's time for us to think big and
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make catalytic investments in their long term success if we don't then the civics lesson that they're giving us in the street it will be shameful that we will not have stepped up to the expectations that they've set so that's all I have to share let's be thank you thank you so much ruqaiya and I see a lot of heads nodding and I see a lot of folks that I know who are gonna really help ignite our conversation so I'm really excited so I'd like to just sort of throw out two questions to help get our conversation started I'm asked you to reflect on which bond option is closest to what you would like to see what you would like to recommend to the board on the November ballot for voters to consider and then as part of that are there investments or pieces of the option that are more aligned with what you or your student needs and so I'd like to just kind of open up the question our board members are here our board chairs here we'd love to have the dialogue be with community members so that we can really listen and and then also encourage people if you're if you're shy I see maybe a few shied people but if you're shy feel free to also use the the chat so go ahead and invite folks to kind of enter into the space and share your reflections well first I just want to say thank you so much rakaia for that presentation and to see those slides and to see these ideas come together and see it presented in that such a coherent way it's extremely exciting to think about what we can do for our kids so thank you for your advocacy Thank You Turk on Sam other I believe Tony hops in me one I saw him wanting me to speak so I don't know oh yeah Tony please you're not me oh so you don't want to speak okay other folks who would like to speak I'll speak hi my name is Mary Merriweather in the last two sessions I attended also got to express long-term all my life community member here very vested in our community our family generations are very vested in this community was PTA president at Jefferson High School from about a meter smaller to 2013 what's the part of the redesign program that sat with Carol Smith at the time and many of us when we actually did negotiate around Jefferson becoming Jefferson middle college in such ok so been in several of these meetings and attempts to really look at investing in Jefferson High School and at the time that I was PTSA president actually was even given blueprints of what our building would look like and could look like so we've been here several times and once again we're here but we are believing that our voices will be heard and we have faith and confidence that us coming around this mountain again at this particular time that there's something significant about that as well I want to thank you require for that amazing presentation that you brought something not with just words but you've given us a vision and when I shared in the last two sessions is that I really am challenging our paradigm that we're not just looking at investing in buildings but we're looking at investing in generations we're looking at investing in our students we're looking at investing in very high potential of students that we're raising up right now and this is the moment that we can shift some things and make a difference our kids are black kids have seen these kinds of investments built all around them and then being neglected long enough it has become something that they have really almost become their narrative and we're seeing we're trying really hard to keep them encouraged to keep them empowered to keep them believing that they can move forward but when they look around and they don't see
01h 20m 00s
that kind of investment coming from outside of their community in giving them the kind of environments that they can thrive in and I'm really excited about requires what she's bringing to the table because our our kids deserve to have environments that nurture who they are and the potential that's in them their creativity and such also including in that that we cannot move forward without making sure that when we look at the curriculum we're talking about being culturally specific we must along with the buildings we must include African American history in the curriculum for all students we're seeing that now that everyone now is like wow we didn't know we want to know we want to learn I have people coming to me every day where do I start to educate myself about African American history let's not let this generation have to do the same thing this is a moment that we want to invest in general energy in the generations coming up behind us not just buildings yet we need the buildings we definitely need our children to be in environments that encouraging fired the best that's in them it makes room for what's in them not just what we want to put on them so so I'm going to now appreciate that I'm smelling whether I mean I don't know what else I need to say after that that was wonderful but given the presentation and the concept of black excellence I mean that is a beautiful concept I know there's some concern about a billion dollars from the board's perspective as to whether or not we can pass that I feel like if we can't pass it now we'll never be able to pass it I don't know whether y'all notice but black is in right now you ain't never had for a long time but black is black is in right now I mean everybody's saying black is beautiful so now is the opportunity for us to push forward with something that is unique and different for the public school has made incremental changes for years it is now time for something bold something transformational and we have the opportunity to do this with the concept that rakaia is put before us I don't think that you'll get nothing but much much love around something that big that beautiful that bowl for black folks but goes so much beyond that it is very inclusive and as we do this for the Jefferson community there are other communities that are now part of this that will be able to take advantage of this in the same way so I think the the option the four million is the one and we should collectively rally around that concept and if we put the narrative out there that we're capable of pushing and in this environment I just think it'll be a tremendous success not only immediately but long-term and we rarely get a chance to talk about the long term vision when it relates to black people because we're always dealing with the issues and the challenges of today and not be able to think about 5 10 15 20 years down the road and this particular option gives us that that that window that opportunity thank you Mary thank you Tony other folks like to add I don't think I can say anything better than anybody else has said it but I do want to say that the main reason why I'm here is because I work at Jeff I've only been there for a little while I've only lived in Portland for a little part of my life did not grow up here I didn't grow up in the in the neighborhood or anything like that but I can already see in the short time that I've been here that everything that has been said sounds absolutely 100% right on to me and I think whichever option we choose whatever pieces and parts we we yeah we have to call out because of funding or whatever we think we can and can't get I think Jefferson absolutely in my mind has to be fully funded at the very top just it historically and and even even if you just look at it today in a vacuum that building that those grounds those kids absolutely need our attention and I I'm very encouraged by some of the some of the responses that I've heard on in the different breakouts it's my hope that the board is listening under percent to what was being said and that absolutely you know ride this wave if if we can if we can catch it right now when the the
01h 25m 00s
community is you know in support then put that in front of them community and ask them to pay pay the money to get it done because it absolutely positively must must in my in my opinion and it seems like that's the opinion of several other people here and throughout the community needs to get done just has to and I I feel a little in eloquent trying to say it you know I'm feeling a little emotional about it but it it just seems like when when they when other schools have gotten attention and Jefferson's been passed over it seems like you just can't happen again as important as all the other schools all the other schools in this district are Jefferson we have an absolute splendid opportunity to do thee to do the the best thing possible I think so thank y'all for having us I would like to chime in this is Nicole Watson good evening everyone um I just want to echo I hope it's I'm pronouncing it correctly Thaddeus and Miss Mary came with the word today we appreciate that and mr. Hobson I think that you know one of it being one of the educators in this district I am I am always trying to to understand that we're operating at the speed of trust and there's been a lot of harm and a lot of pain at the hands of this district and as one of your educators in it we are a part of the the the brick bling and the brick building that that that attempts to sue some of that pain but our budgets are moral documents and it is time that we we put our children our black children at the forefront of our budgets and it is a paramount that we do that in this moment well I think if we are honest about what it says if we do I think I'm more afraid of what it will mean if we don't this plan this option it looks like bond three the option three is the only option that includes fully funding our black children and they need it we need it I needed it as one of the as a product of PBS and an sei alum we need it and it's been past time due the fact that we're still talking about this in 2020 says that the leaders before us I've got us to this point and now it's our opportunity to its take us into the next iteration of someone and it is really paramount that we do that in this moment and that we are a part of the many hands that make this work light so I hope that that also just as one of your educators saying I am behind what rakaia has laid out the AI by a vision I can't wait to get behind it dig into the details a little bit more and figure out how I as an educator can fully support thank you all for your time tonight I can jump in here the neighborhood concerned because I think it's important to make sure those are in the next round of funding on the other hand however much prefer Jefferson move forward and as long as wasn't good be taken care of in due time so I guess that's why I come down I'm okay with a whole four year
01h 30m 00s
pretty ticket one major I just wish that holding those little pass think new I want to be respectful of people's time and just talk a little bit about next steps and then if folks have any other closing comments I do want to note that there's still opportunities for for folks who were not able to make it tonight virtually that there's a survey that's out there there's a there's only you received the links to places that where you can do feedback I also want to let folks know that we're working with some of our partners including sei and other other partners to also create a series of focus groups because we well we do believe in the power of a broad townhall like this we want to be able to also create some more detailed detailed and and focused place so that we can really hear the voices of our students of color of our parents of our community members who are who are part of of our community that and we really want to sort of make sure that we're living out our focused on black and Native students and so we want our focus groups to make sure that we're really reflecting that commitment to Sutter Center the experiences and our plans on on our students of color so more to come the board I just wanted maybe turn it over to the board and maybe close us out or if there's any other comments I want to thank everyone for your time and for your words and for your for the the shared sense of hope about where we can what we can do for our for our community I'm really excited so I'll turn that over to our chair Khan so do you want to take it away well said Danny and thank you everybody for showing up and participating and just really being so inspirational and and prodding us to think big because I happen to agree now is the time we have an amazing opportunity before us for our kids so thank you for being part of that thank you everyone we're not going to go back into the to the big group so you're welcome to stay if you have any more comments also get get back to this Portland summer night so thank you thank you thank you thank you yeah thanks very much nice to see you Margaret Danny I'm not gonna try to hold you up but I know that there was that question or the comment from mr. Smith about concern about what the public is gonna be willing to fund do we do we have a sense of of what you know I mean I we were doing polling or whatever you know to get a good sense of like what the public will find and is that something you're willing to share so um so there's a campaign piece to this that's separate because of the the rules around sort of like what we can do is like in public employees so we can certainly connect you with our campaign folks the board really oversees that but I will say that there there is a plan to release the poll I think we're you know it's like a it's like a fast-moving train right we're trying to get more input to make it to make sure that what gets referred is really robust and and helpful and also kind of get more information from from all our different channels and so I'm not sure when the poll is gonna go out but there there is some polling that's that's there and and that will certainly be one point of information what I know of our board is that they're also really really intensely interested in some of our focus groups and so we're gonna I'm really excited about some of the focus groups that we're gonna have I know students are out of school so we have asked sort of high schools to kind of connect us with students but we are also working with like our partners like sei step up some other Latino Network to to sort of like pull pull students and then we're also doing a very specific family a sort of family group so we have a need a family group a spanish-speaking group and then a sort of like black community leader and black family group as well so hopefully so that'll be another point of him for me you know what I mean so it's that so it is safe to say that that has gone into the the three options as listed with the the totals you know being suggested and that and those or what III know I've heard that maybe this isn't
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the end of it so it could just all get you know rearranged or rewritten option four or five or ten or whatever is that is that safe to say that at all that those are connected yeah I mean my sense is that the the options are we're trying to coalesce around some options but they're gonna continuous in you know kind of keep adding and and so like for example the presentation that we had from ruqaiya today like you know that was something that is that's a fast moving train and that's emerging so we're trying to respond to be able to think about what an option would would sort of more fully fleshed-out look like so um I think there's there's probably some more sausage-making I hate that term but there's some more soft than making around the options and there's still some time to kind of take all this input to inform it do you mind do you mind sharing how recently the by a vision trust and the Center for black Excellence came across to the board and was that been something that's been going on for a while or is it something that's more recent well so the Albina Trust has the they'll bind a vision as an entity has been sort of like in talks for for several for several years I think in the last two to three years they've gotten a little bit more robust I don't know if you remember their you know the the sort of the BES see that's been around that sort of like what do we do with that building that's been around as well I I don't trust my sense of time because of our pandemic timeline has got me really messed up but I think that there have been lots of kick my understand is that these concepts have been in the african-american community for quite some time I think you heard you know Miss Mary talk about that I think it's it's literally bit it feels like it's literally been and maybe the past you know one to two weeks where people have been coalescing around the bonds the opportunity and and sort of having a conversation with board members so it's been it feels like it's been and both things sort of like this has been an idea that's been around for some time and also this feels like a really new conversation and so we're trying to be both transparent as possible about all of those things cara knott well I appreciate y'all doing this and appreciate your extra time no I think things work like I'm always excited when we've got educators at our town halls it makes it really exciting for me so thanks for your your extra time and hopefully you get some some time to kind of rest and recuperate over the summer cuz next year is gonna be okay mixer is gonna continue to be interesting and yeah like what's the next opportunity to participate in something a lot along these lines like for the bonds you know for myself I guess the next thing would probably be the July 6th work session and if you'd like I can try to I can send you that will actually hold hold please it's right oh shoot I just got out of that slide but it's the July 6th board work session and there will be some more you know we'll have a lot of updates by even just a week and then we're still doing some of the dates because the works the focus groups are for the 6th 7th and 8th there will be another sort of like place where the board can consider that information as well ok yeah I hope to be in on some of the the planning discussion kind of curtains up either drafting for the Jefferson you know you know planning but modernization planning but but I was unavailable to be able to get involved with that so I'm hoping to to be present on whatever comes up next and and so on so will that come will that be communicated in PPS emails yes and I can I'm gonna send an email over to to our folks who handle all the emails to make sure that you're on that list sometimes I depending on where you are in the organization sometimes you're in lessons times you're not so sometimes it's just something very what seem that way I think something's coming my way and some things don't yeah I feel the same and you've got you got my email there I'm assumed that you've kind of your I know your name and so I'm just gonna look you up in the in the system in a note see real quick okay great there it's all as the usual oh yeah awesome hey alright thank you so much thanks to

Sources

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