2020-07-07 PPS School Board Intergovernmental Task Force Meeting

From SunshinePPS Wiki
District Portland Public Schools
Date 2020-07-07
Time 16:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing
Load video
YouTube


Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

None

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Intergovernmental Task Force Meeting 7/07/2020

00h 00m 00s
um so the first item on the agenda is the recap of this first special session courtney um do you want to give us just a yeah run down yeah i i emailed you guys um ahead of time but just to kind of revisit it um it was a short three-day session there were just 24 bills that passed it was pretty bipartisan which is not what we are used to hearing in our legislature um but it was it went pretty smoothly under the circumstances the real focus of course was on police accountability and uh response to covet 19. um and there were a couple really technical fixes that were left over from last session that got um you know prioritized so yeah it was i don't want to say it was innocuous because big things were done but they were pretty watered down by the end of it you know to cut that's what we do in policymaking right we have to compromise so um the the covid response omnibus bill passed and that had a lot of things around um the you know housing moratorium um that kind of stuff and then in the police accountability uh measure or set of measures there was you know there were a few one few that we'd heard a lot about like restricting the use of choke holds and um uh the disciplinary disciplinary records issue for um for police officers or you know law enforcement and then the arbitration issue around um kind of making sure that uh with misconduct cases that it's harder to overturn them um so that was all about it it was mostly policy stuff you know everybody's now pivoting to the budget conversation which is likely to come in the next month i would say is a safe bet no real indication on dates yet but all this the swirling rumor mill as it is um is you know sometime in late july early august so i'll keep you guys updated on you know as i hear more but the big issues for us are going to be preserving the state school fund which we're getting indications from the governor's office that she wants to preserve the 9 billion which is what we're budgeting toward anyway and then the questions become around you know what does it cost districts to reopen what additional funds are coming from the federal government which is one of the reasons that the special the second special session is coming later is because congress hasn't acted yet on any additional stimulus and so um everyone's kind of waiting for that nod and there's not a lot coming out about that yet i mean there's obviously the heroes act in the house but everybody knows that things that are coming out of the house are often doa in the senate without a lot of adjustments so we shall see but i feel confident that the legislature is going to do something on budgets in the next month so so the timing is contingent on federal action that's what i've heard i mean that's a lot of it i think there's been the the focus the punt to later and not doing it all at once is related to um what we were hearing from the feds which was it wasn't going to happen before the july 4th recess because they always take a week off so um now that we're after that i think we'll start to hear more about timing but again your guess is as good as mine is in terms of when the when congress will pass additional stimulus but that is the conversation that's happening right now what does that look like do dis you know what do local governments get out of there um if anything i i i know that our federal delegation is pushing on that we've you know we have regular i have regular communication with them but um so does every other district in the country everyone wants more support it's not just portland so it's helpful that we're all singing um you know speaking from the same playbook mixed metaphors um well we're in the era of hamilton so just singing from the same playbook is probably the appropriate metaphor um yeah i've been singing the soundtrack all week i'm guessing you're not alone um so i'm curious about how people think they're going to preserve the 9 billion state school fund well it's it's i think where i think there's an understanding that in order to do that there will be have to be some tapping into the uh education stability fund it sounds like the governor's okay with that i know that this i was texting with the speaker last week and she was confirming that that is that number is what we've been budgeting for towards um so it sounds like there is support for
00h 05m 00s
that from where you need to have support but how much are they talking about taking from that and are they thinking about the projections that this downturn is gonna have a long tail i don't know that level of detail i know that claire is participating with the other what we call 10k or 13k school districts the other big ones to think through all of this and also on top of that think through reopening costs and what that really looks like because that's a piece of this it's not the same bucket but it's all related to funding schools and how that looks so i don't know the dollar amount from the stability fund all i know is what i've been told um from various people around the nine billion number and that seems pretty safe at this point based on conversation with conversations with ode and with cosa and we have regular conversations with them about all of this so are you hearing in those conversations are you hearing people talk about you know we gotta think about this in the context of the next two or three years as well like if we blow the whole we're not no no no no so let me be clear and again i don't know numbers there's no um nobody is talking about tapping heavily into the reserves to get to nine billion okay and there is a lot of you know that that you're not alone in being concerned about that everyone knows that we're just in the beginning of all of this and that we need to you know we we can't just go spending all of our savings as you know in in other words um before we know what what we're dealing with and i have not heard anybody wanting to just blow through it okay so um we'll i'll keep you posted on the numbers that i hear but i have not heard that anyone is is uh eager to uh to dig too deep into that okay okay i i think i need constant validation that other people are as pessimistic as i am so just i think i think that everyone is concerned about the future and we need to be paid okay um nathaniel uh you're gonna have to i know you have to leave it in a minute or three minutes so do you have any questions or anything that you want to say before you leave um don't believe at this moment no okay thank you though you know where to find me this is amy hi um i'm on the phone um i just wanted to reiterate um you know andrew brought up the other night that we've been approached he was informally approached by the city about somehow collaborating on some of these renaming activities around buildings or programs and i think our approach as a district is to just support those efforts as they come forward led by students and um community members but i just wanted to kind of restate support to you and to the dsc um as far as those renaming efforts go and um you can i know young is primed to work with you guys and just be sure to ask for what you need or what you think people need to support those processes all right thank you yeah it's good to hear okay um amy did you have any questions about the two sessions um i don't think so no i kind of been checking in on that and now i appreciate the update courtney um okay so do we have a um so looking ahead to this second special session um do we have an agenda um is it gonna be do you know if it's gonna be anything other than budget no idea okay yeah there's not a lot of information right now other than it's likely i wish i knew more but it's it seems like you know if the information is slowly slowly trickles out lately from there because there's all these conversations happening on zoom and on the phone and there's not a lot of um and i'm not trying to be critical but it's hard to have public a lot of public discussion
00h 10m 00s
right now because of the virtual world we're living in and so a lot of these conversations are not happening with people like me in in every room which is fine because it does leak out we we also have access to our members it's not hard to get information but a lot of them don't even know they're um i think everyone is um doing it doing the best that they can under the circumstances and trying to like orchestrate it before they share information you know deliberately do do we meaning pps have a um are we pushing for anything do we have an agenda the only thing that we have been public about and i shared it with you guys a while back but we've been pretty clear that any budget decisions and discussions need to be centered in equity um we sent a letter back in may kind of kind of assuming there would be more of a budget discussion earlier but the letter is still relevant um and it's you know it was written with the hope that other districts would sign on and they did um and so that was shared with leadership to just underscore the need to really be thoughtful in how we make decisions um because you know our students of color and our students that are homeless and all of our folks who are really struggling are going to be struggling even more and it's exacerbated by all of this so we just wanted to make that point if it wasn't clear enough um so that's that's been our main focus um and figuring out and you know obviously the student success act and thinking about um you know we we have based our kind of our numbers our budget numbers on some dip in that in the tax coming in the incoming um revenue so i think we're feeling okay about that right now and that's more of a clear conversation but um there is still a commitment to the student success act and it's just going to look a little different coming going forward but it's still you know to be an optimist it's still new money and it's dedicated guys this morning i participated in our um re-entry work group call and they're finalizing the blueprint or submission to ode and of course our own plans i mean the what's required by ode is um much less intricate than what we need to do to successfully reopen but one of the things one of the questions i had in conversations we had was that um i was asking claire if they were specifically tracking costs related to covid um for reopening and for example you know there's there's operational things like janitorial services and cleaning supplies and all that but there's also specific things within the ode blueprint requirements like how you need to serve medically fragile students that's just one example but there are a lot of um you know very specific requirements and so her answer was yes that we are really tracking exactly what those costs are so i i want us to be very vocal in expressing to the legislature what the cost of doing business in this new environment yeah that's a really good point amy and i've been in touch with claire about you know trying to get specific numbers because the sooner i can get specific numbers the sooner we can you know run around and figuratively run around and let our delegation and others know what that number what what that what the reality is on the ground and not just it's going to cost more to do business differently they need to see numbers and i know that you know our other kind of counterparts and other districts are thinking about this too and i've been i have a weekly call with uh folks in the you know in the metro region and it's on everyone's mind and we need and collectively we are there we just need we need a little data to support it well the other good thing too is that since the big five school districts are collaborating on this and they're actually they're actually structuring their re-opening plans in the same way like the same work groups the same way of breaking down activities yeah it'll be really easy for us all to collectively provide that because i think we need to assume that we're going to specifically request reimbursement for all of those additional costs and a lot of them are just there are disproportionate additional costs for our highest needs students yeah yeah no it's very very true and um top of mind so um i'll don't worry it's on my it's on my list
00h 15m 00s
constantly to check in and get closer to those numbers so i'm i'm guessing that transportation costs alone yeah are going to be what double probably i don't know if you can only have half a bus full of kids well and it but it depends on whether there are some families that decide to just transport their own kids and there's a lot of unknowns i mean i think we could all make a lot of assumptions but we really don't know and so you know everything is based on assumptions at this point right right but i mean if if i were running the state budget i'd probably i'd probably have to assume that transportation costs are going to double and are they still going to stand by the 70 reimbursement rate yeah i haven't heard anything different on that front but but the transportation uh the increase in transportation cost is very it's a very common refrain right now because no one player other than it's going to be bigger different labor groups are talking about hazard pay too and back to transportation um you know yes to additional costs but the other consideration there is that our most of our many of our drivers are in high-risk groups and i think there's an assumption that we won't be able to fill the positions that we need especially if we need to expand okay so courtney the bottom line is we don't want anybody to think that we can just do this based with our uh that's the message allocations let alone our reduced allocation eight point whatever that we got from the cares act is like yeah okay that's great but that's not gonna cover it that's only four times more than kanye got from the cares act oh my god um okay so keep that light amy um okay so will you keep us posted on on you know as you read entrails can you just keep us posted and if there's any it may be another letter you know once we get a little better handle um another joint letter with the other districts that we're working with to say hey this is no joke this is going to cost us x or you know a range which is more likely to be a range and then um you know because that's a good way to communicate right now so um in terms of reopening beyond the state um are we talking to any other local entities um so my understanding is that we did not apply for any any of the coveted money from the city is that true there wasn't an opt i'll give you a little sense of what they were dealing with so i gotta go back to my notes and make sure um i'm giving you the right numbers but basically after the way that it all came down the county you know i don't know if you're familiar with the issue with the county dollars um but because because portland is in multnomah county right and the way that the karzak dollars were going out to local governments cities and counties qualify for a population population based allocation so if you have 500 000 people or more you get a certain allocation of the of that those dollars then the treasury they didn't want to disqualify counties with large cities within them us being a good example in milwaukee those kinds of places so if you're a county with a big city they calculated the allocation based on the remaining population after you took that portland out so all that to say the way that the money broke down multnomah to give you a sense portland got 114 million washington county got 104 million multnomah county got 28 million so i think you know from what i heard from the city because of the basically that there was this focus on getting some of those dollars to multnomah county and so once you start doing dollars to multnomah county dollars to east county cities dollars to emergency operations it was going really fast and when i talked to them they kind of laughed at me well i won't say they laughed but they were like yeah there's not like there's so much need and people you know the money's basically spent so i just wanted that um reality to set in a little bit because it's not like they're just rolling in
00h 20m 00s
karzak dollars that they're going to start distributing to us it's a good question worth asking but you know maybe there will be an opportunity at a later date but it does not seem like um it's not a priority to also then share it with the district because there are these other priorities that they had to get it out to including some some grants for um technology and those kinds of things and the one thing i wanted to mention back going back to the legislative session going back to the legislative session there was do you remember the rural broadband bill and i told scott there were very there are very few opportunities within that because of just the the sheer need in um in areas that are just not covered at all but there was a second bucket that we learned about pretty late around covid response like so there was the you know expanding access issue to rural areas that don't have any so that was the big part there's also a little bit left a second piece that we could apply for if you wanted um to respond to the crisis so we found out about that and we were able to get an application in before the deadline so don worked on getting that in before um i think thursday was the deadline so that's good news i don't know what we'll get but you know there was they were they want they need to get that money out the door and i think we're you know in a good position good people definitely keep you posted on that but um so that was helpful i mean you know every little bit right million here a million they're pretty stock pretty soon you're talking real money only a few more zeros to make it real exactly um and rita back to your initial question about coordination the only piece i know is that leslie o'dell is working really closely with the county and fun program on child care options both for our families and for our staff yeah and we um we also i've been talking with leslie and emily and uh and nancy how about that as well and kind of trying to you know go to every source about it and we um we were able to prep the superintendent yesterday just because he he's got a call with chair kafori coming up to check in with superintendents and we wanted him to be prepared to talk about that if if it came up and to bring it up um so we're trying to hit it from all angles because that's a real concern um i also mentioned it to lindsay capps on a call last week um so that we can get on the phone with him and his deputy to talk further about how we can push on that a bit and and is there you know there's sort of multi multiple layers there's a space issue around like just having a place to put kids there's the licensing issue right because right now the sun program is not they're not less not licensed child care and then there's the issue around well if we're only doing a hybrid model you know and and obviously this is all still in flux but the reality is likely so you know then all of a sudden you have a bunch of kids on a full day that don't just need child care they also need educational support so it's complicated as you know and we need to partner and collaborate as much as possible so we're just going to talk about it with everyone we can to figure out how we can make it better okay um not easy no it's a it's like a rubik's cube and i don't know if i can solve it i mean i can't solve it but i don't know if we can solve it completely but we can we can address issues as they come up and do the best we can and try to work with our partners to make it as you know to make it the best we can make it in the situation hey courtney this is kind of a tangent but um we have had some inquiries amongst our board about meeting in person so will you just um give a little shout out to rita just check in with us when you see if you see any other jurisdictions go into in-person meetings i haven't heard i know some small school districts in eastern oregon are doing it as far as school boards go and obviously the legislature did it and a lot of people thought that was extremely dicey but just um if you see something about like bodies reconvening just let us know yeah i will um i know yeah i've been i've been hearing a lot of that too from folks who think you know if you're not meeting in person then why should we send our kids back so i can tell you that boston county is meeting in person what'd you say stephanie washington county board of commissioners has been meeting in person for quite a while now
00h 25m 00s
that's still what i'm aware of yeah um should we move on rita sure um so i was going to give a quick update on some of the local regional stuff just um for for your edification and i think julia's on as well i know she has some information um about some of these topics so i know she was interested in sharing if i can't hit it all but um you probably read about you know everybody knows that parks is in really bad shape um because they're based on people paying fees for things and nobody's going to anything so um there have there's a council session on july 22nd where they're going to decide whether they're going to do a levy or a bond um an operating lobby or a bond so that you know it's likely that they'll be on the ballot in november obviously that's um uh that's you know it impacts our bond measure but it's a you know it's a reality that we should just be aware of um especially because many of our families benefit from the services that parks offers and we have a you know a long-standing relationship with parks whether whether it's always positive i know we've had some concerns about um share you know sharing space but we enjoy working with them we want to make sure they're successful so i just wanted you to know that that that conversation is happening towards the end of the month i did i did talk to the mayor about that about a week ago and um one of the things we talked about which was kind of interesting is um i made a plug for the recreation part of parks and recreation and we talked about middle school athletics and equity and that if they're really going to lead with an equity lens on their measure that it would be i made a real push for seeing some support for equitable kids opportunities there whether it's fee reduction or new programming or you know collaboration and partnership with smp he has to talk about wanting to collaborate closely on that kind of stuff that's great um and then the other one and um i'll share what i know which is not a whole lot the transportation measure i don't know if julia wants to share anything that she's heard from her other perch but um you know that one is really it's unclear to me what what's happening over there um i don't know first of all i don't know if we're i don't believe we're exempt from the payroll tax um the youth transit piece i mentioned in a previous email rita um that the youth transit pass would be is sort of predicated on the fact that we have a youth pass and that brings the cost down for the measure which was more palatable this is my understanding um it would also be phased in to you know to impact high school aged kids first eight you know ultimately 18 and under would ride for free the question i still don't have an answer to um is what happens in the months where for example you know we're not a full year pass where a school year pass so do our kids then get a free pass over the summer and so it's it gets into the weeds a bit but that's a question we would want to know the answer to so it relates to our students um so i know i i know you've given me an answer before and i'm not sure that i remember what your answer was but um so the youth pa the the pps youth pass is not free to pps absolutely the way that it works is we you know the city's out it's us we've had an idea the last two years with them we pay 1.9 they pay a million uh we get 70 reimbursement so no it's not free to us but it is significantly cheaper to do it this way because of the state support okay i get that um are they going to be making the same deal with other school districts that i don't know i don't believe that's part of the plan um but that's what i have a problem with yeah i understand and and i would like us to play a little bit of hardball on that um and i understand that we have more money than other districts but it's not like we we have deep pockets um so um i i think equitable treatments would be in order here like if we're gonna if we're gonna have to do cost savings uh cost sharing then other districts should too um i'll have to i'll have to dig into it a little bit this is a it gets a little bit complicated because of
00h 30m 00s
the way in which basically this isn't just for for high school students it's going to be more than that and i i just don't i'm just going to pretend i'm just going to say it i don't know enough about the why we got to that point um with trump with this measure i gotta dig into it a little bit i haven't had the time um but i will and i'll i'll provide more information as i get it okay thank you i reached out to andy shaw at metro um last week and i haven't heard back therefore this is julia for one thing i think that measure is going to have they're actually having a work session on it right now as we speak from two to five today and i actually think it's in um big trouble because they're pulling um of all the potential measures that are going to be on the ballot this fall it's the one that has the lowest level of support and they're going to have an active opposition campaign against it um and so they're like uh just today there was a conversation about it with the business coyote and they're still like wavering out like the number that actually the percentage has gone way up it's a huge payroll tax it's almost comparable to the trimet tax um and like the impact on public employers because it's not just businesses and then it's um it looks like they're not gonna be able to raise the amount of money they thought which means they'll have to raise the rate anyway it's um we look at the the seven potential measures on the ballot this fall it has the lowest amount of support among voters and from our polling that we we've done in my other life it looks like voters are going to like sift through and they're not going to do the work for everything or we're against everything they're going to be for pps this is a good thing they're going to be you know look at each of the measures and kind of weigh them but they're not going to just do a wholesale yes everything but the transportation one is the lowest um after pbs the one suspected entity that has the most support for any of its measures is parts and they're actually going to do just your earlier reference courtney they're going to be doing a levy versus a bond because one of the things parks is it's sort of like metro and there's a fee dependent well it's very dependent on fees so like all the community centers um all their revenue from that they've all lost it and so if they don't pass the levy i mean this lovely is really what's going to keep parks and quote because they're not getting any of their community center revenue or their classes revenue that's all gone um so they're really focused on even though they maybe could pass a bond in a levy just being able to have some programming at all that's helpful julia thank you um hi this is amy i talked to lynn peterson a couple days ago and they're formerly going to ask for our support as a board for the transportation packet for the transportation bill or the transportation measure and um you know leaning heavily on the um you passed piece of it it also includes some money in there for um affordable housing on transit corridors several of which in the uh the regional hubs are within our district i told her we had a pretty um tried to hew to a pretty narrow process around what we would endorse and that obviously our focus is on our own measure so um you know i was a little pessimistic that that would be forthcoming but she sent a letter i think actually just yesterday and i'm sorry i didn't forward it yet to you guys i'm on the road but um just formally laying it out and asking for our support um but uh yeah i don't know i don't know about community support but i know that there's a fair bit of business support uh lining up against it which they had not originally anticipated yeah just i think uh the timing of it is like i talked to passports the other day and they've laid off a third of their their workforce um and just well everybody like he's been happily off i mean just it's a hard time to be adding new tax on for and
00h 35m 00s
i think they're going to have a pretty easy they may not even refer it but i think amy your response is the right one because i think we do need to focus on our measure and it may be like hey individual board members um can take positions on other measures like people might want to take positions on the preschool measure or the library measure and the library measures is going to tie in nicely to the jefferson project because they're going to be doing the albina branch but i think as a group it probably would be wise for us to stay laser focused on our measure well i would also i mean if if we're even going to contemplate um giving um a board endorsement of the metro measure i would need to see some benefit to us i mean for the youth pass it just sounds like we're gonna do what we're doing now so there's no real benefit there and on the housing are they going to be working with the district to coordinate um location of housing in terms of you know school school facilities and all that well i'm sure they're working with the population research center at psu to figure out where those places will be well i would hope so but i don't think there's any guarantee i mean i have i've been asking about what level of coordination is happening around planning for housing and in schools and i have not heard anything that gives me great confidence that any of that is happening well you know they're there just through to your point their primary project that they're looking at is the south porter that goes to bridgeport village so it's not even really a like their primary project is focused on connecting down to bridgeport village and they were saying there was a conversation about um housing and how it fit into the larger plan and one of the things that andy shaw had said that they you know what they one of the things they found is that while you've had some economic development you've also had displacement because you put in for example rail line and property value increase and just makes it more challenging for formal housing anyway there's a lot of dynamics that if we were to take a position we need to know a lot a lot more but i think we should try and stay focused on ours just just like we don't go around to other entities and ask we don't like to ask them on the county commission to support our measures we ask you know deborah and jessica and you know individual members and it's just easier that way and seems like might be a good thing for us to do as well um i know rita you haven't had thank you are you getting your pulling briefing tomorrow yes yeah yeah so we we have a we have a path and um but i think you know just in uncertain times well we should not take anything for granted okay because i think everybody's gonna want to affiliate with us because we have the easiest measure to pass because it's not a new tax unlike everybody else right okay um should we move on to the next one the rose quarter project update yeah sorry i was on mute my dog was going nuts the joys of working from home um so yeah so rita last week there's a lot of activity on the i5 project when the albino vision trust folks backed out of the project and pulled their support and quickly thereafter the mayor and chloe daly's office pulled their support as well jessica vega peterson as well and i think metro's looking like they might too um so we wanted to have this car i wanted to have this conversation because i think we need to strategize on what's next for our role in all of this but i want to be really clear and i did i think send you an email to this effect but we've never supported it
00h 40m 00s
we've been neutral we've been trying to get the best situation for our school and been we've been laser focused on tubman and the role of you know the that building and all of this um so i'm i have concerns about us backing off completely because i think this is a really opportunity good opportunity right now for us um as it relates to that school and so i just i just wanted to have that conversation and get your thinking around it all of you so um i mean my my thoughts are this i sort of um parallel with yours courtney and that they um we never unlike the city and the county and lots of other entities that you know actively lobbied the legislature for this i mean this is a huge project that they got behind um so i think when albino vision which you know has hadn't been never like you know this is our project they're lobbied for it but they made a decision that they weren't going to engage anymore and i think at that point the city and the county were in a position of they had actually been very strong active supporters and you know felt they needed to do something to indicate that their position was different i say i think from pts's standpoint i don't think anybody would ever describe our our position as like hey we were one of the primary advocates i mean i think we reviewed sort of somewhat obstructionist um and it's not clear what is going to happen with the project so like i think it would be good if we waited to see what happened uh what happened because there is this increment of money i think it's like now six to seven hundred million um like is is the legislature just gonna say fine for you guys we're gonna um i'm sorry it might just say fine portland we're gonna send that money out to another like suburban district that wants it if you guys don't want the money we'll just redirect it it's not it's not clear that that's what they're going to do so um even if the city out and the county out they may still um decide to proceed because that money is earmarked and they there is and i think that a dynamic that would be good for us to hear from is from the minority contracting um group because nate mccoy and rolando simpson who is the head of the executive advisory group have been you know very strong advocates of the project and i think they have been doing a lot to try and bring you know alpine vision and the minority contracting community in together because this is you know potentially a win for albina so i'm sure it was disappointing for albino division to pull out it seems like tps we're not in the same position the city and county were so i don't think we should feel compelled to do something right away they were pretty exposed because they had been pretty pretty far out there but it seems we may still want an unlocked for tubman and that may be still the way to do it but i i didn't hear that we may still want to what for tubman there may still be an unlock of funds for tubman through the process um what does an unlock mean what does that mean like i mean you scott and i from the very beginning put on the table like you should pay to move to school if you're going to i think if she's out of cell phone range i can pick up what she said from the beginning there's there has been a clear like you could just pay to move the school potentially if the project goes forward uh which it you know still potentially could you know we've got that asset and courtney i agree with your general orientation of just to watch and wait um uh attitude here um and just pay close attention i mean you know the interesting thing with the whole fulfillment of the albino vision trust plan is that many years down the road if their development schemes come to
00h 45m 00s
fruition that that property where kevin is could be some of the most valuable property in the city so um you know i think we i think or or if they owed out real proceeds you know maybe we see if we can get top dollar for it but i think um you know this is pretty peripheral to our um our mission now and there's nothing immediately um at jeopardy which was our why we got involved in the first place because we were concerned about the health and well-being of our kids um so courtney you're you're on point to to tell us when we need to start paying closer attention but until then we focus on um you know what what's more what's more important yeah and i had a really good conversation with brendan finn who's the new um director of the region the mega projects office at odot who used to be with the governor and is spearheading this um i had a good conversation with him last week and um so that's an ongoing you know we didn't there were no decisions or any hey yes we'll give you all the money but i think he understands the sort of the moment we're in and i think if anything's gonna change he's gonna be a part of that and so i i will keep talking to him and uh i i'll keep you posted on what i'm what i'm learning i mean i think he was as blindsided by the activities of last week as any of us were so um i i think he's he's trying to figure out how to how to keep this thing moving forward so i will i will keep talking to him um okay can you keep us posted as things develop yes i will um okay so the last item is on a federal update is there anything to update us on not much other than what i already told you which is you know there's the reason that we the budget session got pushed is to kind of wait and see what the federal government decides to do um in terms of a an additional stimulus package um i don't know what the timing of that is i just know that they are back after the fourth of july recess and that uh now is when those conversations are happening so i'll continue to let you guys know what i hear um i i can't even say i'm optimistic that there will be another one i i feel like i would be surprised if there wasn't i just don't know what it's going to look like i mean you know the house is doing their thing but like i said it's a very different environment over there so just because it passes one chamber doesn't mean it's gonna translate in the senate um in the same way i mean obviously it won't be the same but i i talked to congressman blumenthal last week and he his assumption is that the current package is doa in the senate but that the house is going to take another crack at something that has a better shot getting through the senate and that there is some appetite in the senate even to specifically to include public school support so they are going to take it up again okay okay um i don't think any of us should hold our breath on that but um fingers might be crossed occasionally um but back to the beginning of our conversation reader the good thing is um it'll be a lot easier to advocate when districts are able to to express exactly what their costs are right which are we're so much closer to now with reopening plants taking shape right so can i can i ask a um i mean this is driven by tweets so i'm i just feel compelled to ask um is there any um so the trump administration is weighing in now about school reopening have you heard anything about that it does is that gonna have any legs is that gonna you know what i mean or do they have any jurisdiction no no i mean states are going to do what they're going to do and he's just i mean this is all i have to say i'm just i i'm it's a lot of noise right now rita
00h 50m 00s
um i think we're gonna continue on the path that we're on and um i'm frankly i hope we ignore it okay but yeah it'll depend on what you know and i think it's going to depend on it's going to be state by state like it always is okay um well hopefully anyway um okay is there anything else that that you wanted to update us on or you'd like some no not at the moment i think you know it's there's a little lull right now in between sessions and i mean i know it's there's not a lull at the district it's a busy summer there's a lot going on but in terms of all the things we've gone over today i mean right now we're just waiting for more information i feel like it's a wait you know hurry up and wait but i'll continue to update you guys as i learn more and um if you hear something and i'm not always the first person to hear so if you hear something and you don't think i know let me know and maybe i do but probably not okay it was not that big um i get it's not on the agenda but i should probably ask just in case um cara did anybody ask to do public comment no okay um anybody have any other questions or thoughts okay um thanks all i'm gonna give you 34 minutes okay all right thank you thank you okay talk to you later


Sources

Retrieved from "https://wiki.sunshinepps.org/index.php?title=2020-07-07_PPS_School_Board_Intergovernmental_Task_Force_Meeting&oldid=10089"
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Center for Transparent Analysis and Policy
Powered by MediaWiki
Powered by Semantic MediaWiki