2020-07-28 PPS School Board Special Meeting
| District | Portland Public Schools |
|---|---|
| Date | 2020-07-28 |
| Time | 17:00:00 |
| Venue | Virtual/Online |
| Meeting Type | special |
| Directors Present | missing |
Documents / Media
Notices/Agendas
Materials
None
Minutes
Transcripts
Event 1: PPS Board of Education Special Meeting 07/28/2020
00h 00m 00s
content raised in the step 3 complaint
may be subject to an executive session
specifically under ors
192.660.2b
for complaints about a public employee
or employees we will first address in
public
the me in a public meeting the
components of the step three appeal that
are not complaints about a public
employee
but if need be we will then move into
executive session under ors
192.6602b
when we discuss those public employee
complaints
following the executive session we will
return to a public meeting to vote on
the appeal
where i'm going to ask uh mrs mayhem for
you to take about five minutes to
provide your comments tonight
and then following those comments will
take about five minutes for the board
members to follow up with questions for
you
um or for staff so mrs makin would you
like to begin
um yeah thank you before i do that i'm
just wondering there's a few people on
the call that i don't recognize
and i'm always curious who's been
invited to a special session
so outside of board members and a few
key staff people
could somebody explain who the other
folks are that are here
okay so um we have terry proctor who is
our
um kind of tech person that runs the
audio and makes sure
that we all can be heard i'm just going
to go up the list of people in the chat
stephanie stodden our
chief of chap chief of staff sean byrd
has some fancy title
no yeah okay um director bailey roseanne
powell who's our board manager sean
what's your title
chief of schools chief of school see i
knew yeah something
i get you and stephanie confused because
i write cos and
she's chief of staff your chief of
schools um you know director moore
director depos
mary kane is with our legal team libra
ford is from sei
kara broadshaw is a part of our board
management team
uh john stillwagen is with our legal
team you know director berm edwards
superintendent guerrero
david roy is head of coms i'm assuming
you know danny
ledezma who's our equity ben kiefer
principal um you and then director scott
constand
thank you so much i appreciate that
you're welcome
all right um so very limited remarks and
i will just keep referring to vernon
as the vernon administration not anyone
specifically by name so we won't have to
go to a separate session
um i'm just going to say at the vernon
elementary black history assembly of
2019 our daughter had her first racist
experience she learned at a structured
school event that white kids play
instruments and black kids play buckets
the question is to the board members
what are you going to do about this
pbs has already defined bucket playing
as not part of black history
i appreciate that and that it will not
appear in future events or programming
for black history month
that's been documented thank you to pps
for that
it violates all the elements of the
racial equity policy of pps
so therefore what are the board members
voting on
you cannot vote to say you agree this
was not a civil rights offense
because this is not a federal courtroom
right what we're voting on
an oregon law says board members are to
vote if this falls
within or if it violates pps policies
so what are you going to do now that we
know that a vernon style black history
assembly is a violation of the racial
equity policies
we're demanding that you ensure students
have a quote high quality
and culturally relevant end quotes black
history assembly we're demanding that
you write
clear and simple policy that pps k
through five schools use the lee
elementary model
for black history month curriculum and
programming we're also demanding you
remove the name of the racist
superintendent from the district offices
and rename it for frederick douglass
that concludes my comments
thank you for listening
thank you mrs menken um board members do
you have any
or sorry staff would do we have any
staff response
at this time
all right board members do you have any
questions for mrs macon
no i might but
um not right now
all right any other questions for mrs
makin
well seeing no questions and no um
need to move into executive session um
now vote on resolution 6152 which is the
resolution that pulled the
00h 05m 00s
superintendent's decision on a step
3 appeal
2008. are you just putting the
resolution
on the on the table or are we actually
voting right now because i have some
questions for staff
so um if you have questions for staff
let's go ahead and do those now and then
i will
make the motion to bring the vote
forward
okay so um
i'm just wondering if um this is a
question
for mary kane uh because the
district response is um
predicated on a outside council's
recommendation
or advice and i'm wondering who that
outside counsel was
and if you could just some summarize for
those of us who
aren't lawyers
um the outside counsel was randy geller
from haranglong
who assisted us in this response
um and i actually i'm gonna
hand it over to john who i think was
better prepared for to discuss
that this evening
but first you have to get off mute john
okay that's fine
so the first part of your question julia
was who the outside counsel was that
is that correct right i think mary
identified that and then the second part
was
just to summarize because um
when i read this this was i read it
initially
um although i have a follow-up question
as a primarily a response
to a um
complaint that we had violated um
both statutes and constitution so
i'm not a lawyer so i'm just wanted to
get from since before
our response is relying on outside
counsel just
a short summary of
from our internal team of
our main response of why it wasn't
um sure so the two
statute constitutional um issues
that would arise are actually addressed
not necessarily
through the constitution but through
title vi and
title 34 which make
it unlawful to discriminate in the
context of providing programs
uh specifically educational programs uh
that require
where the recipients of uh are
recipients of federal financial
assistance with
which pps obviously is and
through that analysis um you know
outside council
i think did a thorough analysis looking
at the statutory language and the
framework around those issues
and determined that there was no
violation of either title vi or
title 34 because
while it may be concerning
the way the assembly was was set up and
the disparities
that may or may not exist there simply
watching
a performance of that nature and seeing
um
issues that that miss macon raises as
concerned
do not necessarily rise to the level of
an actual violation
of either either of those statutory
provisions or the u.s constitution
and so that i guess in a quick summary
is what
legal council provided i would concur uh
with with that summary
and uh that that determination
uh provided by mr geller and herring
long i think it was also sharon rednick
at haraglong
who who assisted in that um
assessment and so that that was the you
know
the view through the legal lens i
suppose uh that was
determined determined at that time by
her angle
so does that fully address it does
answer
it doesn't answer my question and i
guess i i had a follow up
um with miss macon because uh
in your comments tonight the the
complaint that i'm looking at
uh from december 7th
is titled legal violations uh but i
think what you said at the beginning
your comments is that
you're actually now saying that
you want the board to be voting on
whether it's a violation of our policy
versus
the finding of a legal violation
um that's correct we did raise it as a
civil rights
and then throughout the process of the
step responses and our appeals we also
raised and identified
pps racial equity policy and uh
sean byrd mentioned those as well in his
summary here that we feel that it's
clearly a violation of the pps racial
equity policy and that in fact is what
00h 10m 00s
the pps board is tasked with upholding
is the pps policies
julia maybe i could chime in on that
piece i do think
it initially started as a question of a
legal
violation and then there became uh in
the second
step uh more of a question of whether
it's a policy violation and that's
i think is as miss macon addressed that
was addressed by both
uh sean byrd and i think danny probably
can address that racial
equity lens as well if the board has
specific questions to those
uh policies and whether there's
violations that are there like
i think that was addressed again uh in
conjunction with legal counsel through
sean byrd's
response though right and
so just so that i understand um
if we get a complaint that something's a
violation
of the law or the constitution are you
saying that in our complaint process
that's not something the board would
vote on
no i'm not i'm not saying that okay
you're just saying it shifted to a
question about the policy from
okay yeah exactly that's the
the megan's complaint i think evolved or
expanded to address
other issues when they received the
response that
outside council had assessed that there
was not a legal violation they
looked at policy as well and said well
what about you know basically there are
we
we also as miss making just addressed uh
have a belief that there was a a
policy violation as well and we just
then addressed that in the next step
do you want to speak to the policy or
sure i uh it's my opinion uh that the
that the programming offered at vernon
does not is not in violation of the
equity policy
but rather the um that the programming
is in
affirmation of the policy
great can i speak to that just for a
moment
i i think that um you are on record with
your opinion about that mrs macon
and that is the substance of your
complaint um and i think the crux of the
matter is that difference of opinion
and um so i think
i think you've been hurt on that at this
stage are there any other questions
um for uh
theft julia or director brim edwards
yeah so i think maybe the only other
thing i would
say is an observation and
it sounds like this has been remedied by
a school but it
the actual participation numbers that
were in the
in the response
differed somewhat from the makeup of the
participants
in the assembly and my understanding is
part of that was
because the assembly was after hours
that not all students participated
and it sounded like um the
school has acknowledged that so there is
there is a variance between what we're
saying
is the demographic data um which
is fairly representative um
in the choir in the band i don't know if
principal people wants to
comment on that or
yeah i mean i'm happy to clarify so two
things the evening perform
the evening event was not and miss
making can clarify this for us
when she said my daughter was subject to
an assembly the assembly was the daytime
event
um the evening performance which the
pictures were generated for the purpose
of this
complaint at least the ones that i saw
that you had um
that that was the one that had what
looked like the the different
differential representation as compared
to the numbers that you're looking at
and we did specifically move to within
the day
for a lot of the performances because we
were not
having the same rates of participation
for our students in the evening
piece in the jazz band as in the during
the day performance because obviously we
have
all of our kids there at school so um
that was something that
the music teacher had done intentionally
to try and make sure that all the
students
who were in jazz band had a chance to
perform
as a part of jazz band specific to that
part of it julia
great thank you and i just had one last
question um
this this this is primarily for the
record that we
um i'm sorry i can't find it right now
we say
at some point that we're addressing
00h 15m 00s
well this is a was initially a legal
legal response to a legal complaint um
that were
addressing the sorry the exact wording
here
we're we're addressing the issues that
um
many but not all of the issues that have
been raised and
i'm wondering just the person who's
on point for that
work
so i appreciate that question because i
was offered an invitation from
dr byrd on june 16th i replied on june
17th i'll be happy to meet with him
i reached out again on july 1st and um
i'm still awaiting a response
so um you're so happy to be with you mrs
macon
um so i'm we are working with the
principal and the area senior director
uh over the school and as well as the
regional superintendent
uh to address some of the other issues
that were brought up particularly the
achievement issues the student
achievement issues
so we are um and and can talk more about
some of the uh
issues in terms of participation and how
um
those students are how the activities
are selected for the after school
program
but uh yes we are addressing the under
the other issues that were brought up
that are not part of this
complaint but other uh other issues that
have
been uh raised by the makings so ben do
you want to talk about the um after
school programming
yeah uh in in specifically around
participation there's been a number of
different things in terms of
what a normal process that sei goes
through in
evaluating sun programming but also
we've done some really targeted
outreach and um it it definitely has not
gotten to
it's you know around battle of the books
or tests for success to the levels that
we want
but we've been working with teachers to
specifically reach out to
students that are from underserved
populations and also
students of color directly around trying
to just
increase overall levels of participation
in the activities where we don't have
representative participation
the other piece that we've been working
on is trying to work with actual
students
to try and come up with the things that
they're interested in
to try and you know have different
offerings and different things that are
important and relevant to them and
that's
that's a part and i'm sure libra can
speak to this but that's also a part of
what they do as a normal process to try
and
reach out to families sei works closely
with our our families of color and
specifically our black families
to try and hear them and let their
voices be heard in terms
of what is valuable and important to
them and we try and reflect that in the
programming
for the chess club though specifically
in the battle of books like we
recognize a gap between our school's
population the representative population
and where we're at and are committed to
continuing to try and
reach out to try and make those
activities more interesting and engaging
to students of color through a number of
different uh
ways in terms of reaching out to
teachers and also trying to increase
participation of adults
of color in those programs to try and
help see if that helps
recruitment
thank you you're welcome
director from edwards do you have
anything further no that's
all i have mrs macon would you like a
chance to address
um the things you've heard or respond to
this is the desmos comments now at this
time
uh thank you so much and i'll try to
keep it brief in response to ms
ledezma's comment that
everything is seems to be upholding the
policy at vernon i am confused because
we have the document from
i believe it's stephanie skoden saying
that it's acknowledged that
uh the bucket journal will not be taking
place in the black history program in
the future
those two things to me don't seem to go
together i'm in response to mr first
comments about the
um attempts or efforts to get the
programs that have more
participation by black and park latinx
students
in the second year we're looking at this
the percentage rates got worse by about
10
in some of these after school programs
so i think
it's not obviously that's just one piece
of what's happening at the school
there's this major systemic problem
that's not being addressed we'll just be
able to point at some of these issues
but there's something very seriously
missed there
thank you
this is making what my question is what
what um do you envision it looking like
if the
the serious issue that you're um
referring to was able to be addressed
well we see we can see the outcomes
right we can see test scores
and we can see student participation and
the students not feeling like they are
somehow being
encouraged to participate in some
programs and not the others who don't
see themselves represented in some
programs
and not in others and the outcome would
be
black foods are represented in all
programs and black student test scores
are coming are equal or better than what
00h 20m 00s
other students are doing
because the black students are great
are there any other comments before we
move to and consider this resolution
director lowry i might be able to add
some some one more piece for
in response to julia's question i guess
and specifically to the
policy question that miss macon raises
um
just noting the nature of the the racial
educational equity policy which
is obviously an attempt by the board to
set
a framework around addressing disparity
uh throughout the district and setting
goals
and a framework and markers to achieve
those
well there may be a concern that the
makings have appropriately raised about
concerns they have it doesn't
necessarily rise to the
level of a policy violation simply
because
there is an event that they feel uh
demonstrates ongoing disparity that
while there's a policy in place that
sets a framework and sets goals to
achieve
um that's that's different than than um
a policy violation and i just note that
that's
the you know the the framework that the
the board would be reviewing in
in making a determination about whether
there was actually a policy violation
here
related to this event and i guess that's
all i have
unless the board has additional
questions
anything further
all right the board will now vote on
resolution number six one five two
resolution to uphold the
superintendent's decision on a step
three appeal
complaint number chair yeah all right
this is roseanne
i i wanted to just say that the
resolution is a little bit different
the way the resolution is written is
that the board members will either
uphold or overturn the superintendent's
recommendations so they will need to say
which one they are cheating
sorry to interrupt you uh vote by uh
the rule correct so but i need a motion
to put this on the table
and then each person will need to either
uphold or overturn the superintendent
great all right i'm gonna try this again
just uh um i'm sorry
okay i just have a question like a
parliamentary question
can we do that
can we do what um
have a motion in which we're answering
in something other than yet you know
isn't it she just you can frame the
question
to uphold and then just take a year
vote so that's better that's what i
recommend versus having like
an answer other than yes or no unless
i don't know marry a few
i think if we frame it in a yes or no
question we'll be good yeah i think that
would be cleaner as well
so i i think um since this
resolution was posted um i think we're
probably going to have to
put the resolution as written on the
table
and then we would have to revise it and
then vote on the revision
and then vote on the underlying
resolution
on the amended resolution can't we just
vote
yes that we're upholding it
or no we're not upholding it
there's not a substantive difference
there so
john or mary i would defer to you but i
think you can just frame it that way
what was posted
roseanne do you have the language
exactly as it was posted
just give me a moment
okay here here's the uh here's the
resolution as it was posted
um board of education blank
the superintendent's decision of the
step three appeal is the final decision
so i think the chair can just put
forward the question the board of
education
upholds the superintendent's decision
and then we take a vote right right
now great so the board will now vote on
resolution number 6152
resolution to uphold the
superintendent's decision on the set
free appeal
00h 25m 00s
complaint number 2020-08 do i have a
motion
so moved exactly moves and
two seconds director depos director
bailey and director moore all seconds i
think we're more first that y'all got in
there
um all right we're gonna go ahead and
uh is there any further discussion on
the resolution
all right i'm gonna go
was that a sorry i'm flipping back
between this screen and my script so i
can't always see when someone
ending no chair larry i'm sorry i almost
didn't but i know the only thing i'm
going to say is i i just wanted to
to say that um i think there's broad
agreement to
miss makin's um final point she made
about how we all would like to see
increased diversity in the programming
and as a result hopefully of that and
other changes increase test scores
particularly for children of color so i
i appreciated that comment i think
there's broad agreement on that
concur all right um
director bailey yes
director brim edwards yes director
depass
yes director constance yes
director lowry yes director moore
yes director scott yes
and there are no ascensions okay
resolution six one five two
is approved by a vote of seven to zero
thank you all for your time this evening
um
Sources
- PPS Board of Education, BoardBook Public View, https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Organization/915 (accessed: 2023-01-25T21:27:49.720701Z)
- PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)
- PPS Communications, "PPS Board of Education Meetings" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbZtlBHJZmkdC_tt72iEiQXsgBxAQRwtM (accessed: 2023-10-14T01:02:33.351363Z)
- PPS Board of Education, PPS Board of Education - Full Board Meetings (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk0IYRijyKDW0GVGkV4xIiOAc-j4KVdFh (accessed: 2023-10-11T05:43:28.081119Z)
