2020-08-11 PPS School Board Regular Meeting
District | Portland Public Schools |
---|---|
Date | 2020-08-11 |
Time | 18:00:00 |
Venue | Virtual/Online |
Meeting Type | regular |
Directors Present | missing |
Documents / Media
Notices/Agendas
Materials
Resolution 6154 Green Thumb PSU Lease Request for 90 Day Termination Clause (46ed22fe106df42c).pdf Resolution 6154_Green Thumb PSU Lease_Request for 90 Day Termination Clause
Staff Report Green Thumb PSU Lease Request for 90 Day Termination Clause (a52a492277697264).pdf Staff Report_ Green Thumb PSU Lease_Request for 90 Day Termination Clause
Resolution 6155 FINAL Amended Lincoln ROW (3a0bc0abe9000147).pdf Resolution 6155 FINAL Amended Lincoln ROW
2020 07 28 Meeting Minutes Revised (42c98d2fb373599d).pdf 2020_07_28_Meeting Minutes_Revised
2020 07 28 SPECIAL Meeting Minutes (4b42c107e96e85d9).pdf 2020_07_28_SPECIAL Meeting Minutes
2020 08 03 Special Meeting Minutes (81792a7c01a4ee48).pdf 2020_08_03_Special Meeting Minutes
Resolution 6157 2020 08 11 Settlement Board Resolution (6dd12664e8b3151f).pdf Resolution 6157_2020_08_11_Settlement Board Resolution
Resolution 6158 student settlement agreement (c7dbb0eb0a537525).pdf Resolution 6158_student settlement agreement
Resolution 6159 Intergovernmental Agreement Trimet Student Transit Pass (d46f9a87aad03707).pdf Resolution 6159 Intergovernmental Agreement Trimet Student Transit Pass
Staff Report-Transit Passes 8.3.20 (1) (355fae5c9e24d75c).pdf Staff Report-Transit Passes 8.3.20 (1)
2020 08 11 Expenditure Contracts (f832541a9c74f178).pdf 2020_08_11_Expenditure Contracts
Resolution 6161 Correcting Resolution No. 6153 (d299cbcb4481c524).pdf Resolution 6161_Correcting Resolution No. 6153
PPS Reopening Board Presentation 8 11 20 (6dfaaaa32361ca30).pdf PPS Reopening Board Presentation 8_11_20
Minutes
Transcripts
Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting 8/11/2020
00h 00m 00s
this board meeting of the board of
education
for august 11 2020
any item on this has been posted as
required by state law
this meeting is being streamed live on
channel 28
and will be replayed throughout the next
two weeks please check the district
website for replay times
this meeting is also being streamed live
on our pps tv services website
welcome everybody and thank you for
joining us this evening
tonight we look forward to an overview
of the district's blueprint for re-entry
and to hear in more detail about how
students will experience distance
learning this fall
i know there's been a lot of interest in
the high school schedule
and i know that we don't quite have
finalized information about what the
high school schedule will look like
but we will be getting that shortly
we begin with the board consent agenda
board members if there are any items
you would like to pull we will set those
aside for discussion and vote at the end
of the meeting
are there any items you would like to
pull from the consent agenda
so i would like to pull the
uh portland state um
iga senior inquiry courses question
or agenda item sorry my dog's chosen the
park
of course the they the dogs know
all right um do we need to
have a motion and second that or can we
just pull that off the consent agenda
it can just be pulled off and then you
vote on the consent agenda it's modified
okay consent agenda and consider that at
the end of the meeting
are there any other items to pull from
the consent agenda
i just want to make sure that we have
the right numbers listed in the consent
agenda since we
have some edits today
cara can you make sure that we have can
you tell uh director
chair lowry what the numbers are on the
consent agenda
resolution numbers
yes
we are six one
sorry
six one five four through six one
six one and the resolution
for portland state
is resolution six one five four so we'll
just
the casino general will be six one five
five through six one six one
great thank you okay
um is there any board uh
sorry i've scrolled down my script and
i'm lost
okay miss bradshaw are there any other
changes to the consent agenda
there was a resolution added about four
o'clock which was posted
okay um do i have a motion and a second
to adopt the consent agenda
second all right so director brim
edwards moves and dr scott's seconds
uh
is there any board discussion on the
consent agenda
no but i will send my question clearly
on the season okay dr
um
great the board will now vote on
resolution
6155-6161
in the consent agenda all in favor
please indicate by saying yes yes
yes
all opposed please indicate by saying no
are there any abstentions
the consent agenda is approved by a vote
of seven
to zero with student representative shu
voting
i know i saw nathaniel on here
student representative shu how are you
voting
all right i can't hear him can other
people hear nathaniel
no give give us a thumbs up if you're in
favor
okay everybody
okay yes i'm sorry director broome
edwards was the item you pulled
00h 05m 00s
regarding the
green thumb agreement with psu or
regarding the senior inquiry
project senior inquiry
so i think that is actually item um
six one five one six one and
uh or i forget the first two numbers
five four is the green thumb
okay so okay so
um 6154 should have been on the consent
agenda
it sounds like we made an error there in
our resolution numbers
sorry i'm trying to flip between screens
and i i didn't have that uh
can you confirm the resolution number of
the psu
um senior inc uh
so that is six one six one
um i show that six one six one is the
resolution correcting the scrivener's
error in resolution six five
well maybe it's not up to date
but i'm i'm looking at board book
i'm as well it's six one six zero
that's part of the there you go six one
six zero
oh it's part of the contracts okay okay
so let's can liz how do we uh say
that last vote didn't count we made an
error so
i think you could just re-vote
have a motion start over with a correct
enunciate the correct resolution numbers
and we will deem those to be the
approval of the consent agenda
okay so we are gonna now vote on the
consent agenda once i get a motion
and that's gonna be six one five four
through six one five nine and six
one six one because six one six zero is
the one that has been pulled
so moved great so director constant
should i have a second second
okay is there any discussion
all right the board will not vote on the
board will now vote on resolutions
six one five four six one five nine
and 6.61 in the consent agenda
all in flavor please indicate by saying
yes
yes yes yes yes
all please indicate by saying no
are there any abstentions
the consent agenda is approved by a vote
of seven to zero with student
representative shu
voting
all right we're gonna go with yes based
on thumbs up
all right we now turn to student and
public comment
before we begin i would like to review
our guidelines for comment
the board thanks the community for
taking the time to attend this meeting
and provide your comments
public input informs our work
and we look forward to hearing your
thoughts reflections and
concerns our responsibility as a board
is to actively listen
board members and the superintendent
will not respond to comments or
questions during public comment but our
board office will follow up on
board-related issues raised during
public testimony
we request that complaints about
individual employees
be directed to the superintendent's
office as a personnel matter
if you have additional materials or you
would like to provide to the board or
superintendent
we ask that you email them to
publiccomment
pps.net again that is public comment
at pps.net please make sure when you
begin
your comment that you clearly state your
name and spell your last name for the
record
you won't have three minutes to speak
you will hear a sound at the three
minute mark which means it is time to
conclude your comments
ms bradshaw do we have anyone signed up
for student or public comment tonight
yes we have taviandre thomas
i don't see his name in the list but i
wanted to call him
make sure
taviando thomas are you here with us
tonight
i've been in contact with tay he says he
can't make it
because his dsc meeting ran long
okay you're next on the list so ian
simpson
00h 10m 00s
all right superintendent guerrero
chairperson lowry
school board members and community
members thank you for hearing my
testimony tonight
my name is ian simpson s-i-n-p-s-o-n
and i'm here today representing
cleveland high school and the student
voice for the arts to testify against
the switch to the four by four schedule
instead of the normal eight period a b
schedule well this would have been favor
favorable for online school earlier this
year when no teacher had a plan for
online learning
and how it would work it is not
favorable for the upcoming school year
students already spend the three months
of summer break with no material
to keep them up and i can personally say
that i along with many other students
forget a decent amount of what i was
taught in that time
now imagine if that time was expanded to
more than seven months
art and music are not subjects that you
can cram for they require weeks
months and years of practice and
guidance from teachers that can
not be provided in just a few months
time just to be abruptly stopped in the
middle of the year
i would much rather be online with an
eight period schedule than be at school
with the 4x4
i'm here to advocate for the arts but
this impact
but this impacts all students no matter
what their aspirations are
i learned just today that cleveland high
school and lincoln high school have been
exempted from the 4x4 schedule due to
conflicts with the ib
program and i applaud that however there
are still many other schools out there
who have amazing art programs
and whose students would be hurt by the
4x4 schedule
bandit cleveland would not be the same
if it weren't for our constant
competition against grant or franklin
in the short time the student voice for
the arts has been operating alongsi
alongside the district's master arts
education program we have made huge
huge advances towards giving all
students an equitable opportunity to
receive arts education
let's not intentionally backtrack now
that we have accomplished so much
thank you
thank you miss bradshaw is there further
public comment
yes stewart
dear members of the board and community
my name is lilly stewart
s-t-e-w-a-r-t and i'm a rising junior at
grant
i've attended pbs school since
kindergarten in the past few months i
found myself frequently worried
in worrying about a looming pandemic the
rights and safety of bypoc peers
and the state of the world at large i
have also found time
to worry at length about the future of
my education and the system of education
in general
i see this time as an opportunity to
rethink what's really important
but also as a chance to vastly expand
inequality
that has always surrounded our school
system it is with this lens that i ask
the district to commit to specifics on
what middle and high school will look
like
in my house i know that i will be
responsible for helping my younger
brother
a rising sixth grader navigate his
transition to middle school
as my mom works to independently support
our household
with this in mind families like mine
need to know how to plan for the year
ahead
high schoolers need to schedule asap and
an opportunity to revisit the courses we
forecasted for last spring
this must include the ability to ask for
a lighter course load
for me that means evaluating whether i
can really manage five college level
courses from my house
and care for my little brother at the
same time for others it means reworking
schedules at jobs they've obtained
for all students it means having the
tools to create rhythm and structure
and be better prepared for the year
ahead as the schedule is created please
do not give up on the idea of an eight
course layout
visual and performing arts sciences
world language and math programs
all work best when students have the
ability to learn consistently rather
than trying to cram everything into a
small window
these courses give students an
opportunity to build deeper
relationships with teachers and peers
that have already been stretched thin by
the pandemic they give students like me
something to look forward to and
opportunities to see long-term growth
condensing classes only provides more
chances for struggling students to fall
behind
in addition to these requests please
consider transitioning to zoom
instead of google meets as a student
who's relied on section 504 to
participate fully in school
zoom is a better option for me and my
peers it has been consistently deemed
more accessible and less overwhelming
provides more options and flexibility
for students and teachers
and has updated security and encryption
to protect students and data
the interface means that students can
ask questions privately and have a
teacher answer them publicly or
individually
it gives students and teachers the
ability to see anyone in class has
elected to turn their video on
rather than watching as each pass of a
maps shifts the positions of my
classmates in google meets
while online learning cannot replicate
in classroom instruction
it offers new possibilities to work most
effectively it must include ways for me
to build relationships and check in with
my teachers
about how i'm doing not only in school
but in the rest of my life
there are many things that will be
different about the upcoming school year
but it is
imperative that details arrive in a
consistent and timely fashion
00h 15m 00s
for the sake of all students and
families thank you
thank you is there further student
comment ms bradshaw
yes you have adam calvary
hi my name is adam calverley c-a-l-v-e-r
and i'm an 8th grader at jackson middle
school in zone 1.
i attended stevenson elementary school
and at this point of time i plan on
attending wilson high school for my high
school years
thank you so much for the opportunity
for me to talk to all of you guys today
i want to give an additional thank you
to principal cosmella miss barnes miss
venture and of course my mom for the
help you guys have given me
i'm here today to ask you to accept our
committee request
to explore the renaming of jackson a
committee is very crucial to get
community data
and input this committee would include
the voices of educators
parents and students as you know this
committee would be one of the first
steps in the renaming process
this summer i was already able to get
community
to get community input with my petition
on change.org with over
500 signatures and over 600 comments
supporting the renaming of jackson the
importance of time was a concern voiced
in many of the comments
people in her life have also expressed
concern about the importance of time
personally to me
many people believe this is the time
district to start the process instead of
the 2021 year
personally i would like to get this
committee started as soon as possible
the sooner the better
the renaming is important to me because
i would like to leave jackson better
than i found it
also i would like to decrease the amount
of racial discrimination among ppf
schools including jackson
a building named after andrew jackson
gives off a message saying pps and the
community honors slavery
oppression racism removing people from
their land and genocide
i hope this is not what portland public
schools stands for as these are ideas we
stand against
to recap i'm asking the board today to
honor our committee request to begin the
renaming process
of jackson middle school as in one of
your last board meetings it was stated
the community should take the lead and
the board should support
thank you
thank you ms bradshaw is there any more
student or public comment
yes erica come there
thank you for um adding me to the
schedule to speak tonight my name is
erica compares about c-o-m-p-e-r-e
i recognize this is a challenging time
things are moving quickly and we're all
improvising to provide the best we can
with the information available
plans a and b are being judged with c
and d
juggled around and me personally i'm
preparing for plan e which is whatever
erica can figure out in this time of
uncertainty
that said there is one clear and present
concern i have regarding equity and
learning
in order to do my best as a parent
teacher i need to know what
concrete actions pps is taking to combat
the threat of widening
pre-kovid disparities between bypass
scholars and whites
if we don't have an immediate response
on the front end of planning
we risk tipping over into the abyss that
separates who gets what
and how much as a passionate lifelong
learner i feel it is my
civic duty to declare that now is the
time
to revolutionize the public school
system if we
ever hope to thrive as a sustainable
society
we are at a point in the story of
american education where we either shrug
our shoulders and just do the best that
we can until we get back to normal
which wasn't great in the first place or
seize the opportunity to open the doors
of learning and
transform education as we know it and it
can start with just
one action i am a solution-focused kind
of person
i don't plan to fail i'm not here to
complain and i wholeheartedly support
honest efforts in fact i was pleased to
read that you are expanding the ways we
support our students for the upcoming
school year
with trained social workers and
trauma-informed care and racial equity
and social justice
expanding partnerships with mental
health community agencies
to help support our most marginalized
students is also a good plan
i am curious to learn more about the
ways in which we can creatively support
our bipoc students and families
these intentions cited in the august 7
fall 2020 update
read nicely but i wonder about the
execution
words are inert without direct action
and right now
we as parents are the first line of
defense as guardians for our children's
learning
the execution of online learning will
ultimately fall on our shoulders
and the trenches are hellish right now
trusting our own skill as facilitators
of learning is too much to ask without
in-person support
00h 20m 00s
i have a master's degree from an ivy
league institution and 25 years
experience in the field of education
and i struggled to teach my second
grader through the last quarter of
school
the tradition of disenfranchising
communities
will continue without extra support but
few of us can afford additional
resources to pay tutors
or learning pod facilitators that could
support equitable education
so here's my question will pps
proactively partner with parents
by providing funds to hire tutors to
facilitate learning pods
intentionally designed for bypass
scholars and learners with special needs
if the answer is no what is your plan to
prevent the widening gap
that will inevitably result in from an
action
plan f for yet another failure is not an
option
my children matter and deserve to
succeed
thank you ms bradshaw is there further
public comment
no
well i want to thank you again for your
comments and i um
i like plan e a lee with an e erica with
an e
um and i know that um we have many many
people who
are anxiously awaiting for us to get to
the re-entry plans and some more of
those details about how specifically pps
is responding
if you have any other follow-up or
comments
you can send those to us and follow up
with our board manager roseanne powell
if you have something specific that you
want to follow up with on your comments
we turn now to our student
representative shu nathaniel would you
like to provide us with your report this
evening
uh yes can you hear me
yes yes you know ah great
sorry about earlier um my microphones
not really
reliable at the moment um there really
isn't
much to report at this time as um
i just gave one uh last week and of
course it is summer
um so i'm just going to keep this wheel
brief um
a few quick updates on what i said last
meeting
um just got out of a dsc meeting as you
heard it ran a bit long
and um i'm happy to say that we have
finalized
a um schedule for committees
um we now have each committee and
task force and i believe advisory
council
with a rep from the dsc
most have two some have one some have
three
um and chair lowry that is the link that
i sent you earlier today
um also about 1.20.012
p our governing policy
we have set up a meeting later this week
to discuss our engagement policy
our engagement strategy um as we
as i mentioned um in the last meeting
and finally members of the dsc
thought that it was important to note
that there have been a great number of
students who have been
really engaged in trying to figure out
what this next year
schedule is going to look like and that
that is
truly critical um but that i believe
that's it
um so thank you
thank you student representative shu
superintendent guerrero do you
have a report to share with us tonight
i do chair lowry good evening directors
and to those watching
our live stream a few areas
i'd like to focus on um this evening we
have
as a main entree another regular update
to the board
on our re-entry plans
hopefully a board members and community
have continued to hear
evolving and continued details around
some of our planning
so in a few moments our team is going to
provide yet another update on fall 2020
planning
they're going to walk directors uh
through some of the key parts of our
school district's plan
for reentry this fall which is expected
to be captured in an oregon department
of education template referred to as a
blueprint
we're in good shape there and even as we
continue
to make adjustments to department of
education guidance
today superintendents receive some
additional
changes modifications and new guidance
so we continue to incorporate those
each week our directors should know that
school districts up and down
uh the willamette corridor in the state
are all
in real time uh supporting one another
uh
in developing their plans for for
re-entry so
uh and that includes all aspects whether
it's instruction
our nutrition our supports uh health and
00h 25m 00s
safety protocols
etc so directors will get it this
evening another dose of information and
details
and we'll make sure to make plenty of uh
time and staff available
for for your questions normally i want
to acknowledge
august is always a busy month getting
ready for the launch of the school year
and this is not a typical
back to school and but i want to
recognize students families and staff
have many questions at this time
for example and we've already heard
again this evening and thank you those
who have written in
uh folks want everyone wants a firm
understanding of what to unders
what to expect with our school schedules
so we're continuing
uh to work with school leaders educators
and our labor partners
we'll be sharing this evening some
sample schedules for certain grade
levels this evening
and we look forward to sharing some of
the flexibilities
for secondary students that also
accommodates
high schools with ib programming as well
as some of the arts program you heard
advocacy for
earlier from from our students wherever
possible
and just to keep up to pace with the
adjustments
and uh and planning and implementation
for the school year
just to let the directors know this week
i've also transitioned
some of our internal work to focus on
firming up our goal of identifying
things like a menu an array of supports
for our students
and families appreciated the advocacy
earlier i also want to thank
all those parents in particular from
communities of color who provided
input um throughout the summer and
participated in some of our focus groups
we're looking forward to incorporating
many of those
good ideas and suggestions so encourage
everyone to stay
up to date with information posted on
our website
we try to get out a community-wide
news update uh uh as we collect
substantive information
and uh many more details will continue
revealing themselves
uh and they even come in the coming week
before the next regular board meeting so
uh you'll hear more from the team in
just a moment
second thing i wanted to talk about
because in the midst of even this
pandemic
the school calendar where calendar moves
on and
one of our traditional milestones is to
always welcome back
our school leaders our principals and
assistant principals
we did have our leadership institute not
the typical
leadership institute that's typically
almost a week long and
a really nice culture and professional
learning builder for us
this year we went with the virtual
abbreviated two-day version
oriented to our school leaders a theme
of which for this 2020 institute is
together we will
i have the privilege of welcoming back
our school leaders and making a few
opening remarks
and these couple days were an important
opportunity for our school leaders to
come back together recalibrate engage in
some
very targeted and specific professional
development and training
that will help prepare them for the
launch of comprehensive distance
learning on all of our
um sessions and i want to thank all the
staff who
provided uh these sessions hopefully uh
have helped to provide our
administrators
uh with some of the nuts and bolts uh
regarding our learning platforms and
some of the digital resources
uh which we're going to give directors a
little bit of a taste and preview of uh
this evening
so um so i'm truly hoping that the next
leadership institute will have us
all back together again in person
including with our directors
uh which we always like to to have
present along with many of our community
stakeholders
uh i also want to give a shout out to
last year last week was focused on our
administrators
this week is focused on our teachers so
we also have
uh over 150 teachers yesterday who were
participating in numerous sessions
related to our digital resources
uh as well and uh we're going to
continue to make
much of those learnings available uh
asynchronously
as well for our teachers so
speaking of school leaders uh a number
of the
participants at the leadership institute
were there
as new uh pps school leaders
some were actually new in their roles
and some not necessarily new to portland
public schools
but in fact 14
of the administrators on this slide and
the next
uh have received uh promotional
leadership appointments our folks who
have
been in our school district and continue
to grow
in their career pathway so we're really
proud of our
our leadership appointments folks may
have caught these individually announced
i just wanted to make sure you see them
listed here
and on the next slide just a few
highlights
uh five of these leaders began their
00h 30m 00s
education careers at pps
uh four of these new principals have
uh particular backgrounds and special
education
uh and not to be outdone two of them
have a strong background
as as music educators so we're
we're all with that's for your channel
we always aim to
and now that's my dog we always aim to
draw the best and the brightest
from both inside and outside the
community and
uh a handful of our new leaders are
coming from
uh many miles away including places like
michigan
georgia and even the people's republic
of china
and i also want to share a listing of
the names of
our new assistants and vice principals
also
finding themselves in new leadership
appointments we all recognize they play
a really critical role
in the success of our schools and our
students uh and we're really pleased to
welcome them in their new roles so
all of these leaders are preparing uh
for what will be a beginning of the
school year
unlike any other uh but i have great
confidence that they
will be up to the task uh i think uh all
of them spoke to to some extent in our
interviews
about uh the aspirational vision and
their role
in galvanizing their school communities
towards that graduate portrait so i hope
you will all join me in congratulating
them and
stand ready to support them uh we look
forward to kicking off the school year
with our new leaders
so i'm going to pause it there and that
concludes my report for this evening
chair larry and directors
thank you thank you superintendent
um it is 6 37 some of us have been in a
meeting since five tonight so we are
going gonna take a three-minute stretch
uh bio break um we'll get back at 6 40
to move on to our reentry plan so
um i encourage everyone even if you
don't leave where you are to
stand up it is good for your brain to
move your body a little bit during these
long meetings so let's go with our three
minute break
you
you
which according to my agenda
means that it is time for us to start
our re-entry update
superintendent guerrero are you there
great
did you stand up um i confessed that i
did not
00h 35m 00s
i also want to put out the disclaimer
that no animals were harmed
sorry that's all right my my cat uh
sometimes when i was filming worship at
home still
decided to like meow in the middle of my
sermon so it happens to all of us
the breather uh i think this evening uh
board's looking forward to yet another
re-entry update
uh so we're going to go ahead and do
that next
uh i do want to say we're going to try
to hold the staff to 20 minutes because
the board has lots of questions we're
eager to ask and we want to have the
full 30 for the board to ask those
i'm positive there are stop watches
being set the moment i stopped talking
uh but i did want to start off by saying
in advance i want to appreciate
chief brenda bartnick who has served to
sort of facilitate and convene
an advisory committee in numerous work
groups and as
we allow our chiefs to get back to the
core functions of their work
uh and we streamline on our
implementation phase i just want to
thank kern all of the other work group
leads
who have been working and collaborating
with other districts and other technical
assistants that's been supporting our
district so thank you for your
leadership and i'm looking forward to
having directors here from our other
senior level staff that are going to
talk about all the important components
that continue to take shape okay start
the stock watch
take it away chief martin thank you
superintendent
uh thank you board chair the board our
families in our community
tonight we're going to focus on the
draft of
our ode blueprint submission to ode
and we're going to share some of the
main components of the plan
next slide
we continue to ground all of our
discussions and our actions
in our racial equity and social justice
work our theory of action
and our strategic plan so as you can see
i'm not going to go through these
again tonight but this is how we have
been
using our guiding principles to plan all
of our work
and that is not my dog that is a
neighbor's dog
so next slide
uh so we're going to be submitting our
ode blueprint
uh in regards to our comprehensive
distance learning plan which is our
virtual learning plan
and that's going to be submitted on this
friday there's a number of parts to the
blueprint
such as community engagement operations
nutrition or meal sites uh professional
development
and attendance but tonight we're going
to focus on four
main pieces of our virtual learning or
our comprehensive distance learning
there they are our academic conditions
our digital learning needs our racial
equity and access
and student and family supports so right
now i'm going to go ahead
and turn the time over to uh dr luis
valentino good evening
um board charlarry superintendent
guerrero uh board members
community um can you please um go to the
next slide please
so to ensure comprehensive distance
learning we have to
be clear that there's a premise that
informs our work
and one is that every student each and
every student will receive an engaging
and comprehensive rigorous
academic experience every day of the
week um and every week during the
the closure and even after the learning
day will be organized so that the
teacher
the time that the educators spend
directly interacting with students will
be of high quality
and focused on meaningful learning tasks
families will receive focused support
and training for digital learning tools
and you will hear more about this
in a second and the comprehensive
distance learning
planning and instruction will include
centrally and teacher design
lessons and there will be integrated
district-wide
support services available to the
students the teachers and
and staff and um i will
when we think about the kindergartners
and the re-entry we really have to think
about
the the early learner and so emily
glasgow director of early learning will
share information
that actually focuses on that group of
students
thank you dr valentino and we can go on
to the next slide
so we did want to pause and take a
minute to talk about the kindergarten
transition and the kindergarten
experience
the early learning department always
puts extra extra attention and extra
support and extra planning into kinder
transition and we know that this year
that's even more necessary than ever
so we wanted to just highlight some of
the things we're working on
in the spring we launched online
registration for kindergarten
that continues to be open and has made
it possible for families to
register and continue to register in a
digital environment
we're working with our technology
department to make sure that there are
developmentally appropriate devices that
will be available to kindergarten
students whose family need them for home
00h 40m 00s
learning
and also working on physical material
backpacks that we can get out to
households
to support families and students with
learning
we're working on community meet and
greets both at the central
level and at the school level we're
hoping to organize a kindergarten family
town hall at the central level
sometime before the end of august and
we're working with principals
to make sure that schools are also
hosting unique meet and greet
virtual opportunities for kindergarten
families to connect
we are working on orientation to the
virtual platforms
that are going to be in place for
kindergarten families um
that that will begin as soon hopefully
as next week when principals will have
a kindergarten specific document they
can start sending out to families to
start orienting families
to the digital platforms that they'll
need familiarity with to do learning at
home
and then we have a team that's working
centrally on creating
multilingual videos and graphics to
support
families um through the end of august
and ends of september so that they know
how to use the tools that
their kids will need to use to access
learning we're also asking
that teachers um take the time in the
first couple of weeks of school
um to make a one-to-one connection with
every family
that might look like a call it might
look like a video chat
or it might look like a virtual or a
distance home visit
as we're thinking about the actual
learning program for kindergartners this
year
we're leaning heavily on our new early
learner core values you can see that
document here and it's also linked in
the presentation
last year we convened a p3 advisory
council of 35
people including central office
leadership school-based people
community partners and we work to
backward map
the graduate portrait to an early
learner portrait to really flesh out
what do early learners need to be able
to meet the graduate portrait by the
time they
they graduate from high school and pps
so we're using that document this year
to drive our planning and thinking
we're using it to think about the soft
start that will be kind of the entry
into kindergarten this year which will
really focus on building community and
relationships with both our
kindergartners and their families
we're leaning in to make sure that our
kindergartners are getting small group
instruction that's appropriate
for their developmental needs and we'll
be doing some specific kindergarten
teacher and ea professional development
in early september and throughout the
year
focused on how do you apply these core
values
to create developmentally appropriate
practices in a digital learning
environment
so i'm going to pass now to kevin
crotchet from learning technologies to
share a little bit more about the
specific platforms that i've referenced
good evening to all uh next slide please
uh there we are
um you know as we continue to discuss
and plan and work towards the opening
school year
we truly wanted to provide community and
board the board with um
a visual for two of our virtual entry
points um
for our students this year um before i
do that i do want to thank um
alexandra sagan who is a tech smart
coach and teacher
as well as chris bartlow uh math
computer science at wilson as well as
sarita flores and doug miller who
have just spent some time over the
weekend wanting to and being willing to
share
their virtual spaces with us um our
our first um look into this space as you
know
uh this fall our k5 classrooms will
provide
instruction and content in a digital
platform known as seesaw next slide
um this clip comes to us from
alexandria fagan and it's just a short
two and a half minute clip to introduce
us a little bit to what seesaw looks
like
from both teachers and student
standpoints
will it play
i'm just waiting to know if we have a a
solution to uh the technical difficulty
or
you know the video will play
roseanne are you able to get when i
click on it on board books it opens a
youtube link
so i'm not sure if that's the issue
you're running into
so i'm not sure
do you hear the video play i don't know
roseanne
so when i hit it i hear it play i'm not
quite sure
why that's not working yeah just uh
roseanne i've tried this before often
youtube videos won't you can hear them
but they don't um project through
um the video call there is a way to
embed it but i don't know how to do it
00h 45m 00s
okay um i just couldn't ask
link was embedded in the powerpoint
because that can be a way to get around
what andrew just mentioned it is
embedded in the powerpoint
it is okay
um i can try closing in this powerpoint
and sharing my screen instead
let's try it okay in just a moment
[Music]
i don't think that's the video i think
that is that the neighbor's dog again
brenda
no i'm actually on mute and i'm
wondering
do does our 20 minutes keep counting
no i'm gonna be nice and not count the
technical difficulties in your 20
minutes but i do think i mean this is
perfectly illustrating
the challenges that we're all facing and
that i think our students are also
facing of
um this is a lot to navigate and even
for us to
use computers all the time and do these
things a lot it is challenging so we
will we'll give you credit we'll show
grace which i know is
is part of what we all will be doing
with our students this year all right
man are we ready okay let's give another
try
you'll need to play
unfortunately the video is not uh the
audio is not coming
i had to unmute it when i played it on
mine roseanne so
on the like uh on the bottom yes about
how
students would be thinking of different
animal traits that they would compare
themselves to
can you start that over roseanne at the
beginning
yes
we started the lesson with a google me
invite
it was sent out through seesaw for the
students learning management system
i shared this slide deck and defined
what a simile was
i provided a sentence stem i am as
blank as a blank and we talked about
how students would be thinking of
different animal traits
that they would compare themselves to
then
we zoomed in on our learning targets we
talked about
animal simile examples so that the
students could start to get some ideas
for their own simile this was an
opportunity for guided practice
with teacher support as well as class
brainstorming so that
kids could learn from each other and get
ideas
from each other and i told the students
that they would be creating
their animal simile in seesaw
and that would be the asynchronous part
of the learning
when students logged into seesaw later
in the day
they saw the activity at the top of
their feet i
embedded a video to model use of
each of the tech tools the students were
expected to use
in this activity i modeled how to take a
picture with the camera
how to use the drawing tools to draw my
animal
and then finally how to record my simile
using the microphone and they would
click on add response as you see in the
directions
in order to finish their
simile students submitted their similes
and when they first submit a post
only the teacher and that student can
view it once the teacher approves the
post it can be viewed by the family but
since this was a collaborative learning
experience we talked about how we wanted
to share
our similes with everyone in the class
and also to get
feedback from teachers and peers so as i
scroll down you'll see i changed the
viewing to everyone
and here is a little guy who took his
picture outside
and here's his simile i'm as quick as a
chica
so this guy is quick as a cheetah and he
receives some feedback from me
00h 50m 00s
and you can see many people have viewed
his post
thank you um next slide um our second
clip also about two and a half minutes
um
takes us from kindergarten to uh high
school
with chris bartlow's classroom in canvas
canvas is the platform that will be used
in our 6th through 12th grades
howdy folks my name is chris partland i
teach computer science over at wilson
high school and i'm here to talk a
little bit about
canvas um so this video i'm going to
talk about
my my canvas course and how it's set up
for students
last spring when we switched over to
covid this right here is the student
view so when the students click on
computer science in this case
six they they are loaded up to this page
and this is how i organize and show it
to everyone
um right here i put
my main announcements so i always have a
module at the top that's sort of like
the first thing you see so that you you
don't miss anything i organize it into
weeks you'll notice that the dates don't
correspond exactly when we started
um because i tried out some different um
methods so
it turned out that a weekly schedule
worked out a lot better for the students
that they could um
lay out their week and so you give them
everything right at the beginning of the
week and then they
sort of divvied it out so this one is a
embedded page here so they click on this
and you can see that there's a page that
has the content that i want them to go
through so
i've linked to a couple of videos that i
want them to
watch here and so these are three
videos relating to the machine and alan
turing
and so that's kind of the one content
that i want and then i give them
um here is an assignment you can tell
it's an assignment because it has this
little
paper and pencil on it um i didn't
assign things at points i was just
marking them completed or not
and so here um you can see here that
this is
just a you know did you did you do it i
didn't use the rupert chronicles this
was our first one
i just wanted them to do it i gave them
a few points that i wanted on the topic
so they could see exactly what they
wanted
and then they click on the submit
assignment button which gives them a
text entry box
and then they can submit it and then it
shows up in my my grading
where then i can have a dialogue with
them you know through the chat on
the side you can see i i also added some
messages and things like that so these
are links to um
uh you know i it was really important
for me to to do
all of the content asynchronously it's
it's so
essential for the kids to have the
content
be available asynchronously they cannot
access this material
live very often mostly kids have a very
disruptive schedules
um poor internet connections things like
that and so being able to
see a video from me or or see the
content written down was was pretty
essential for them
um then we have a couple this is it was
a multi-week assignment so
here we did some skill building
activities learning about
um interactive fiction and then we had
the the final weeks be about building
that and turning in um like an actual
prototype of interaction
piece so thank you
um thank you so much for getting the
videos working um and honoring
the teachers as well um i just uh note
that the links there are to the full
videos which are
five to ten minutes long from both
teachers are available for your uh
post session review with that
i turn to dr bird and scheduling
considerations thank you
before dr bird comes on i would just say
that you know after our kids are able
to go through all of this and have the
teachers show them how to do the
pictures and draw
and record themselves they are going to
be so seamless at this tech that what
they're sitting in these seats in
you know 10 20 years they they won't
have these hiccups we have because
they'll they'll have mastered it for
sure
dr bird all right thank you chair lowry
we get the slide show back up
oh it's coming back up i just want to
just talk to you about the schedule
considerations that we
uh used when we were creating the
schedule so we used the guiding
principle that we're going to center the
needs of our black and native
uh students we wanted uh small
we had small groups of uh teachers and
principals work on the schedules for
elementary middle and high school
we want this to look different than the
spring so and we it needs to because
there are some guidelines from ode that
we need to follow and including daily
uh engagement and attendance and grades
will be taken
we want to make sure that there's
opportunities for both small group
instruction and that we're prioritizing
engagement
for both in-person and applied learning
okay next step
so i want to just show you a couple of
uh sample schedules so if you're a first
grade student
so what we're basically saying to to
school leaders is
uh here's the box these are the things
that need to go in the box and uh
then you can arrange the time uh that
you want to do things so not everybody
00h 55m 00s
will do necessarily
literacy in the first thing in the
morning some people will do math first
so we just are providing the the
framework for it and then um
certain elements need to be there so in
this first grade student uh they'll have
some time in the morning at all levels
uh elementary middle and high school to
go to nutrition hubs to get their food
uh their breakfast and lunch so that
they'll have uninterrupted time
during the day to learn because we
needed to schedule a lunch period in the
middle of the day but you'll see here
that this
uh first grader will start out with a
class meeting after they go and get
their
breakfast they'll have their breakfast
have their classroom meeting then
they'll go into a language arts block
they'll have a break for recess
going to math uh and their specials
classes
and then another break so you'll see in
the what what i would just point out
about the first
creator's schedule is that there is um
there are breaks in there so they're not
in front of a computer screen for hours
on end so we wanted to provide some
breaks in the day
when they come in from recess they'll
have maybe they'll have some small group
work or intervention work for those
children that need it quite enrichment
work for the children who
need that then they'll finish out the
day with science or health so you'll see
that the
the and they'll be doing some uh
synchronous meaning
live work as well as asynchronous work
in in these blocks
so they will not be necessarily on the
computer from 9 30 to 11
they might be breaking to do some
asynchronous work okay next schedule
the next one is an eighth grade student
so eighth grade students uh this
would be one day and then i'll explain
the next day so they too are going to
have time in the morning to prepare
for their day and access nutrition so
school
for them will actually they'll have some
time to to get ready and this is
uh as kids get older because they are
tired in the morning so they will start
their first class at 9 30
and these classes will be comprised of
whole group and small group instruction
all throughout the day
so this would be one in the morning the
middle school schedule works in the
morning that they have their synchronous
or
live class time with teachers then they
have a break for lunch
break to stretch and then the afternoon
they're doing applied learning
so they're applying what they learned in
the in the morning
there are also opportunities for uh
teachers to check in with them
uh in the afternoon and there's an
advisory which is a very important
component of middle school
or other small group opportunities and
there's also time
built in these schedules when students
are doing their apply learning for
teachers to evaluate and give feedback
do planning
so we built in uh additional time for
planning for teachers and these um
schedules
so this would be a monday for an eighth
grade student the tuesday would be
periods uh
four five and six on the opposite day so
they'll see all their classes in the in
the morning hours
okay and then uh the the uh schedule
that we are finalizing right now is the
high school schedule i know there are
lots of questions about that which i'm
happy to address at the
questioning part of the uh of the
presentation but
i do want you to know that we'll have we
are very close to finalizing that and
we'll have that done
uh uh this week and we'll have
communication out and i'll
turn it over to danny ledezma to talk
about racial equity and social justice
hi everyone uh so uh i wanted to
uh let you know uh give you a little bit
more information
uh like two weeks ago i uh the
superintendent and i
uh provided a memo just a short memo uh
about this redesign work
uh and so what we thought we could do
today is talk a little bit more in depth
about the specific strategies
that we hope to employ uh tell you more
about our partners
and then uh talk about how we're working
with them to do some
uh aligned and collaborative planning
going into re-entry
so in our theory of action we talk a lot
about the sort of
um racial equity social justice
strategies right it is these strategies
that are combined with
uh the the work around uh the
instructional core
and so we wanted to be really clear that
when we're talking about those
strategies we're talking about these
five
strategies um and so we will be
partnering with culturally specific
organizations
to engage in this really important
research backed
strategies that have been proven to be
effective with specifically with
students of color to really help
catalyze and boost student achievement
so the first uh strategy is culturally
specific family engagement
uh we've worked to align this so that
it's really focused in on making sure
that our families are connected and
supported
at an early age so as early as possible
in terms of pre-k to k-5
and our research shows that like when
we're building dual capacity both at the
system level and within families that uh
students do much better when their
parents are not only
sort of aware of what's going on in
their in their students lives but really
are empowered to be
uh to be advocates and have some agency
and their students learning
so our partners for culturally specific
family engagement include
organizations like black parent
initiative immigrant and refugee
community organization erco
latino network uh sort of deploying the
junto software demos program
self-enhancement inc or sei horizon's
counseling
um kairos pdx and native american youth
and family center
01h 00m 00s
our second strategy is wrap around
services and this is really
uh it is what it says it is but i want
to be really clear that when we're
talking about wrap around services we're
talking about a specific model
that at a bare minimum includes
academic supports and the wrap around is
what are in addition to academic
supports
what are the other uh suite of service
needs and or referrals
to ensure that not only the student is
doing well but they're family supported
and these services are really focused in
at the high school level so that we're
helping students get across
across the stage for graduation and into
the
career and college of their choice and
our partners for wraparound
services include erco
latino network in early escala as an
escalara as well as
collegio de padres um open school the
step-up program
uh portland opportunities
industrialization center or poic
sei and neha family center and then our
last
three strategies are really focused in
on providing
direct services to middle school
students in three key areas as you think
about like the adolescent and the
pre-adolescent
uh student who's really important that
we're supporting
their uh development in terms of a
positive cultural and cultural
identification as well as
developing that agency so that they're
taking charge of their learning
uh actively engaged in their learning
and setting them up for high school
success
um and so we're engaging in mentoring
and leadership development
extended learning and enrichment and
positive cultural identity
development programming and our partners
include
uh the center for intercultural
organizing the coalition of black men
erco latino network michael greis and
the ambassadors program
poic reap incorporated the im academy
horizons counseling
chess for success urban league black
parent initiative
mia family center erko we really have a
robust set of culturally specific
partners
the reason why i want to just key in on
culturally specific partners and why we
think that's really important
is when we talk about culturally
specific partners these are
organizations that
not only have culturally responsive or
targeted
programming aimed at a specific
population they have expertise they have
experience
same lived and shared lived experiences
are students of color
but they have a deeper level of
accountability to the communities that
they serve
so they're bored their staff their
leadership teams are all reflective of
those communities and they have what i
like to call grocery store
accountability
so when they're in the grocery store
they see the families and the students
that they're serving
and they are they're held accountable
because they're in community with folks
and there is that that structure
so overall we're partnering with 16
culturally specific partners
we're prioritizing services in our csi
tsi and title schools
and we're uh in the process of
finalizing our contracts
you'll see those coming up over the next
couple of board meetings as we move into
the school year
at the same time we're also meeting with
our partners
in three sort of key groups where we're
looking at ways that we can really
collaborate across all of the
departments at
portland public schools to make sure
that our re-entry plans are successful
and that we have some alignment not only
in services
but we're thinking about how we can
continue to collaborate so last friday
from 4 to 5 p.m on a friday
we had just amazing folks from pbs who
met with our high school
providers to identify places where we
can collaborate
uh this friday at noon not at four not
at five we're gonna meet with our
culturally specific family providers
to talk about that access to technology
to devices
to think about how we can support uh
through professional development for
our partners so that it's aligned so
that they can really support our parents
in terms of the learning and the new the
new
technology platforms um and then we'll
be meeting with our middle school
providers to really sort of key into
how they can leverage a lot of the a lot
of the work that you're gonna hear
james talk about next around really
solidifying those connections between
school and community students and
families and
their their school sites so i'm really
uh looking forward to
to continue to work with our partners
you'll hear
a much more robust update once we've got
all of our
all of our contracts negotiated and our
uh our work
uh solidified but we are in um we are in
a lot of alignment and it's been really
thrilling to see
how all the different departments are
coming together at pps to really
make sure that we're not just talking
about the partnerships which is a very
key but we're really going keying into
those key strategies that are going to
support our instructional core
so that our students are succeeding in
the fall so i'm going to turn it over to
our senior director
james loveland who's going to talk about
some of our internal supports we have at
pbs
and james this is chair lowry and we
want to hear what you have to say and i
know it's vitally important but i would
also say that you guys are already at
half an hour of your 20 minute
presentation and i know that that
included technical difficulties
so just want to ask you to be sustained
as succinct as possible with all the
details we need
if if that's not too big of an ask
01h 05m 00s
absolutely chair
i will try to try to be succinct um good
evening everyone uh
so glad to be here to speak a little bit
about plans for mental health and
wellness supports
as we move towards reopening in
september i think i'd like to start with
what i think is the most substantial way
that we will be able to provide enhanced
support to our students
and that comes in the form of adding a
additional
student support staff directly to our
schools
as a result of the student investment
accounts
funded through the student success act
thank you to
continued support from superintendent
guerrero his cabinet and the school
board and prioritizing building-based
supports
we are in the fortunate position to be
able to add 55 new ftp
in the form of social workers counselors
and qualified mental health
professionals to our buildings
to the extent that every pps school will
will receive additional support and
on top of that we are adding uh
additional school psychologist fde
to our csi or our comprehensive support
uh
improvement schools we're not taking
this opportunity lightly
afforded to us by the student success
act we're working hard to develop
guidance
uh for our new support staff that will
help them serve students across
multi-tiered systems of support
i just want to talk you know i'll try to
be brief here but just wanted to give a
picture of
how it might looks for a student a pps
student returning to distance learning
in the fall
with the addition of this new support
staff at tier one
that that looks like coordination with
with our our teachers
in re-establishing relationship um
building connections and delivery of
social emotional learning content
throughout the soft start and into the
fall at tier 2 that may involve
participation in student intervention
teams
with the task of identifying students at
risk or students who may not be
responding to this learning and
connecting them with with intervention
that also looks like delivery of small
group supports
sometimes in collaboration with
community partners
that dandy described in detail we know
often that
especially for students of color our
community partners have relationship
and trust that results in much
successful and enhanced support
beyond individual counseling and
therapeutic support at tier three
pps will continue to contract with our
mental health providers
all of whom which all of whom stand
ready to to provide uh teletherapy
uh throughout the fall um we have we are
working to expand uh and fund expanded
partnership with culturally specific uh
mental health providers
which we're thrilled about we've also
expanded our
crisis recovery capacity to include
community partners
particularly around our response to acts
of discrimination and hate in our
buildings
lastly as we prepare to implement
senate bill 52 addie's act um
a new policy will be presented to the
board this fall
that includes uh building on
pre-existing work around suicide
prevention
um that really targets uh district-wide
uh
training for for all pps educators uh
that includes foundational information
around identifying warning signs
uh connecting students to support um and
really working to amplify
students strengths and identities not
just pathologizing
with that i turn it back to chief
martineck
thank you i won't go ahead and
go through the next areas but as you can
see
on the powerpoint these will be the next
things that we
really focus on in our next board
presentation which will be in two weeks
and so i will turn it back over to you
chair lowry
uh in case you have any questions for us
thanks all right well i know that board
members have lots of questions we've
been getting public comment
and um there's lots of of interest so
i'm gonna
have us go in reverse alphabetical order
tonight
um trying to mix it up so the same
people aren't always first
so we're going to start with student
representative shu nathaniel do you have
a question
for the staff
yes i do can you hear me now
great uh yeah so um
as i think i've mentioned in the past
the dsc and i
have uh substantial concerns about the
4x4
schedule and um i guess this is a kind
of following up on my question from last
meeting
um how was it that
how was the decision to switch to this
schedule
reached and i guess who made it and why
that makes sense yep so a lot of things
went into
the decision to change the schedule as i
said at the outset we were really
centering the needs of our
native black students and students who
01h 10m 00s
we know at the end of last school year
we had high school students we had 2 500
high school students who
had a incomplete eight classes is a lot
to juggle in a distance environment
and so we want to make sure that
students who
actually heard from a speaker tonight
who is also
going to be going to be watching a
younger sibling and helping
younger siblings manage their their
education while their parents are at
work so there's lots of factors that go
into that decision about lightening the
load for
for students high school students and
the 4x4 schedule is it's being widely
adopted across the country
so we also look to districts that are
similar to ours and
in making that decision but it is so 4x4
schedule you take
four classes in one semester and then
four classes another semester eight
credit opportunities
the same as an a b schedule except that
it's compressed into much like a college
schedule so it's 18
uh weeks and um and there are
flexibilities in that schedule though
and that's what i think
maybe has not been illuminated for
people
so we are giving principals
flexibilities to make
adjustments to that schedule as needed
so for example
there are students who took world
language last year they may have taken
spanish one and two
last year they could be scheduled for
spanish three and four
in the fall semester and so then there
they have their two years if they want
to go on you can
schedule in the spring you could take
world language all year if you wanted to
you could take
two years of it in one year students who
there are principals who are double
blocking math for some subset of
students who
are struggling with math so there's an
opportunity to double block
students who are taking ap classes so
i'll tell you that um i taught on this
schedule 22 years ago as a teacher i
taught
ap english lit and um and
then i'm at the school i taught at
switched to an a b schedule there was no
there's no significant difference in the
scores that's just one i'm just one
person but
there are uh options that the college
board has developed because they have
been dealing with the schedule for
many many years and so there are review
modules that the college board has
available
there's opportunities for students to
take lab classes uh to
in the spring semester if they take the
class in the fall uh there are we've
also given principals the opportunity to
uh to to uh uh a b block
you know two classes so if the student
was taking two ap classes they could
uh do that in the schedule so that's why
the high school schedule is not exactly
finalized yet because there's still some
modifications that we're working on
there's one um
oh so you asked me yeah so i think i i
think i answered
the question yes but there's there's
lots of options for that schedule that
you can
uh make work but you know and in terms
of why we made that decision
um it was you know we really have to be
sensitive to the
needs of students and um there's no you
know i guess there's there's probably no
perfect schedule because some
people are very happy with the 4x4 some
people want a period but we have to do
uh what we think is in the best interest
of of uh
you know the student body in general and
at large
thank you dr byrd uh director scott did
you have a question
um thanks sir larry um it's uh
maybe more of a comment that might lead
to a question later
but i really appreciated um nathaniel's
question
and and dr bird's um response and i
guess sort of a comment
um which might be a little stream of
consciousness so i apologize but i'll
try and keep it quick
uh sure lowry um i really appreciate
that explanation of why we're going to
the 4x4 and and i think a lot of us are
getting
and i'm sure staff are getting emails as
well from parents and students you know
who are really concerned
and i think really um it's gonna be
important for the district to articulate
the reason and the rationale um i've
engaged with a few parents um
in terms of some of the rationale and
they've been a little surprised they
said oh we hadn't
thought about it quite like that um so i
think you know making sure that in our
communications we're being really clear
about that
um and i think centering equity in the
conversation
and and particularly racial equity is is
really important and it it doesn't
surprise me at all that the staff were
doing that
that's part of our res j policy um but i
think being really explicit about that
moving forward is going to be important
i i will say that i
every email i've gotten whether it's in
support of the 4x4
or or um or in support of going to the
you know back to the class schedule um
always talks about
equity and and and you can sort of apply
that lens anywhere and
i think this is one of those policy
issues where it's really important for
us to be very clear about what we are
trying to do and
you know um i'm getting a lot of there's
a lot of attention right now being spent
on
on ap and ib and that's important right
and i think that to the extent we can
accommodate
those programs and those students that's
really important and i'm glad that that
staff are working really hard to do that
but i'm going to be really frank and
maybe this is a little bit more for
for parents or public words listening or
even some of its teachers and principals
i wish i was getting as many
emails about the 2500 students who had
01h 15m 00s
incompletes in high school
over this last semester um and i'm not
really seeing that
right from the community and i think
this is one of those moments where
what i think i hear you saying is um
we're making this decision in the best
interest of the student body
in total it doesn't necessarily mean
it's going to be in the best interest of
every single student in the district
because
unfortunately we have to make decisions
for everybody and
and it's not going to be the best for
everyone but we do need to think about
who
the students are that we're helping and
again if there's a win-win here i think
i'm really interested in finding it and
it sounds like like there may be and
we're going to get more details about
that as we go through the week
um and over the next couple weeks i
think really talking about why we're
doing it we really are doing it to focus
on those students who
who are you know desperately in need of
the help and and really frankly at risk
of not completing high school at all um
if we don't have some interventions
there so so
again not a question just a comment
thanks
thanks dr scott director moore did you
have a question
um yes uh
well i have many many questions um
but you get to start with one and then
we'll go from there okay
um so i wanna
um i wanna just echo uh what ms compare
was saying during the public comment um
can can somebody speak to the kinds of
um supports that are going to be
available to
students receiving special education
services
and their families to ensure that they
um
make best use of the uh
you know whatever is available during
the distance learning environments
uh thank you uh chairmoor
uh this is brenda and we will be
providing special education services as
per
the students ieps what we will be doing
is
we will be having to meet with families
for students ieps that we cannot meet in
a comprehensive distance learning model
one example might be
for students who receive one-on-one
paraeducator support
since it's in a virtual learning setting
we will be able to
support uh in a individual
way in person however we are working
with
our instructional technology department
to see how we will be able to
individualize student supports in small
group settings within the classroom or
during the instruction
time additionally we are working with
our
speech pathologists our occupational
therapy our occupational therapists and
our physical therapists
to provide some of that small group or
individualized
support we did provide
training for our speech paths so that
they are
able to provide the teletherapy supports
for students in a virtual setting and
so those are some examples of things
that we will be doing
for students in our learning center
classrooms they will participate
in their general education classrooms
right along with their
typical peers and then we will be
providing additional supports with our
learning center teachers
with our in partnership with our general
education teachers
and then when uh dr byrd showed you some
of the specialized instructional time
or uh uh electives or other
different areas during the day that's
when we would provide some of those
extra supports not just for our students
with special needs
but also students in our tier two and
tier
three of our mtss needing additional
interventions or supports
all right my my question i'm next in the
alphabetical order is um
i know that the governor has said that
um
we want to prioritize k-3 and special
education students as we look at
reopening
and re-entry and i'm wondering if
there's any thought about
um november and bringing or before then
bringing back
any cohorts of students to provide extra
supports in buildings in person
outdoors however we figure it out
so the governor has specifically
identified thresholds
for us to be able to open up hybrid
learning
01h 20m 00s
for our students in our pk through three
and our students with special needs
and so we're still not meeting those so
we will continue to
follow the health and safety guidelines
from from the governor and then we would
apply
those metrics and then look to
see how we can open up schools through
a hybrid model within ode's
parameters and so what we would do is
look at that pre-k to 3 model and
special ed which actually
is the hybrid model scenario that we had
started uh planning around
actually about eight or nine weeks ago
uh
before uh the the infection rates
uh got higher and higher so so it is
something that we've actually already
started planning for
we've done the building capacity maps uh
already
so we have um a list of that
our special ed classrooms have already
designed what that would look like in a
hybrid
model and we have ordered and actually
have
in the warehouse some of the ppe
and the the protective equipment
for for us to be able to to open that up
in a fairly quick fashion uh if that
were to happen
thank you sure um next
is uh director constance
i just had a couple quick questions one
was for james james that's amazing to
hear that
every single school will see
additional mental health supports um
in some way or another which is just so
incredible given the climate that we're
in but i just
was wondering um
[Music]
what your professional development looks
like for your mental health
professionals
right now um around
the particular needs in distance
learning
and in fact you know when kids when
teachers don't see
kids who need help before they ask and
when counselor
kids aren't accessing their counselors
as they otherwise would have
um what does that sort of pro-active
outreach look like in remote learning
for mental health supports
uh absolutely director constance so you
know i think
one of the things we will be preparing
our support staff for as they as they
return to work
especially our new our new folks is is
is just making sure that we are
taking time to honor uh acknowledge and
meet students where they're at uh
having suffered the collective trauma of
this of this uh past spring
and summer through through the coveted
crisis um
and so you know we will we have worked
really hard with
uh hr to identify dates for
individual training of of each of each
group our our counselors
and social workers especially the new
folks in preparing them
to to you know address the you know the
very substantial need that our students
are facing
with increased rates of anxiety and
depression as a result of of cover 19.
so that guidance really looks like
making sure we are
um working continuously to make
connections
with with our teaching staff who will be
uh you know the
the key points of contact uh for our
students
make sure we're reaching out and
connecting in a way that's that's that's
organized
um and fluid so we don't get you know
families receiving uh inquiries and
calls and
and uh from from various educators all
at once um
and so i think it's it's really just
guidance like i was speaking to uh
earlier about
making sure that at each tier where
we're we're working
to to support students really really
being a a key player in delivery
of social emotional content that uh our
jill bryant in our mtss department has
has worked tirelessly to develop
uh over the year um and then you know
just
like i said staying it's it's case
coordination um
staying attached to to other educators
um working through our
our student intervention teams to to
continually track and progress monitor
um so that yeah does that answer your
question or
um keep it posted
i was gonna ask director to pass to ask
her next question and then we'll come
back around
okay uh yes i do i actually have a
couple of them but i'll keep it to one
for now
um i'm curious if the district has any
uh plans for uh a pay to play
you know what i'm curious about what
we're doing with kids that are you know
say fifth grade and under
um whose parents need to leave to go to
work
01h 25m 00s
what we're proposing for those kids and
um the other thing i'm curious about
is how our contracts with those
culturally specific providers
um stack up how they compare to last
year and the year before are they
are those increased contracts i also
want to
echo um and and support what andrew said
about those
families of the 2500 high schoolers
um that got incomplete and i think that
we i just want to say
a comment that i think we need to do a
little bit better um trying to reach
those parents and i would i would
benefit by hearing uh more from those
parents
um however that we can get that
information from them because those are
the people
that we that we want to serve right
thank you uh i'll go ahead and talk
about
i i think this uh might answer your
question but please let me know if it
doesn't
uh in regards to child care what we have
done is we have
provided a survey to parents and to
staff
in regards to what their child care
needs are
we will be talking with the
superintendent tomorrow
in regards to what our recommendations
are based on those two surveys
and from that work uh we will
move forward from there to see what is
feasible
how we can partner with different
agencies
and our community partners uh to provide
some supports
for working uh parents and for our staff
and um so hopefully that answers answers
your question it doesn't give you a
specific answer but
uh we are working on it and then uh
i'll pass it over to danny in regards to
your uh
and and like my question about that
piece
um really was about this
thousand dollar a month option um
i'm trying to square that with the
families that that you know the black
and native families
and frankly any family that might not be
able to afford
a thousand dollars a month and and how
we're how we're looking at squaring that
uh for families it's for those of you
a few nights ago you heard your
superintendent speak on this topic
and goal of making sure we offer an
array
of supports for students and families
and so there was some initial surveying
and focusing group around what are the
express needs
of our families because we're very
conscious of the fact that for some
people the need might be
paying a fee to a licensed child care
provider for others we may need to
establish some learning hubs
for some it might be a culturally
specific partner or mentoring and
checking in
with a student or maybe it's with one of
our classified staff
tutoring a student online during
indirect uh
time with their teacher so uh you notice
on the last slide
smartneck ran out of time to describe
for you this is one of the topics we're
actually going to
come back to the board and describe as
soon as we have you know some additional
moments
to really sort of talk about what is
that menu of supports that we want to
make sure and are very conscious of
uh in our underserved communities that
they have access to
for for sure
all right ms ledesma did you want to
respond and then we'll move on
um to we've got director medwards and
director bailey who haven't had a chance
to ask any questions yet
uh yeah the answer i'll be sure the the
answer is is true these contracts are
uh increased thank you to the board and
to uh
the the legislature as part of our uh as
part of our investment
package we increased these uh contracts
by about sixty percent
of the total of the total funds so uh
through after our
aria rfp process um we're seeing that
most uh
you know all of our contractors are
getting some some level of increase
thank you uh director brim edwards did
you have an initial question
i do thank you um so just the staff i
want to say i appreciate and i'm sure a
lot of parents appreciated seeing
the sample schedules um both at the
elementary level and then the middle
grades level because i think it gives us
a better
a better sense of kind of what that day
looks like because i think we're all
grappling with
um the question of uh it's going to be
different from last spring but
what does what does that mean so really
appreciate the staff doing that and then
also
i think complementing that with the
information that was presented on the
culturally specific strategies
um and the counselors and the social
workers adding those things together
um i think i can start envisioning um
a what what that universe might look
like so i
want to thank staff for that um
obviously strong consistent
implementation with lots of supports
will be key
um and so my question really revolves
01h 30m 00s
around
uh supports and i think it sort of
complements some of the other questions
that have already been asked but
one of the things i know as a parent
when my
kids were struggling with an assignment
or
learning to read that as somebody who's
not an educator um
there was how do you best support your
student i know this fall
because i heard about it this spring
there's going to be lots of parents in
that same position
and there's going to be a variety of
reasons why they may or may not be able
to help
their students and it won't be any
deficiency on the parents
part because they're not educators
so the question that i um
had and it sounds like maybe this is
going to be teased out in the future but
you know have we considered sort of um
the idea of paid tutors um it sounds
like our learning hub is the same thing
as the micro schools and would we
provide some sort of additional
um educator support for those
sort of micropods or the places where
people
where parents are looking for how they
can better help their their students or
support their students
um or you know to director to pass
pass's question about
parents and who are essential workers
and aren't going to be able to be
home so i'm just interested like how
we're thinking very specifically
about supporting parents supporting
their kids
knowing there's going to be a huge
variety of needs and
i guess the last piece is also have we
considered like open sourcing
all the curriculum so that um we have
people have the ability to grab that so
we have like the whole village
helping out um with this sort of i think
monumental challenge i guess i'll start
with
the question for the superintendent and
um you can go from there or pass it off
to somebody else
well so repeat what i said in my last
response that's exactly the kind of
package of
menu of supports and options we want to
make available
for our families um so we've launched uh
well we've done a little bit of
reconfiguring internally by
jonathan garcia to talk about some of
those ideas that we did here that we do
want to make available to our families
it's the right question
uh it might be a week early and being
able to offer you
a concrete response quiet on it but we
are
aware of sort of those questions and
some of those desired explorations that
the families want us to be able to make
um
jonathan thank you superintendent
guerrero
uh jonathan garcia chief engagement
officer so
as part of our efforts this summer we
have been working and and partnering
with uh parents
with our culturally specific providers
to bring together parents
uh uh in small focus groups
and in some of those focus groups uh our
our parents have generated
really interesting ideas that we're
currently pursuing
uh and looking at as as viable options
so
uh director burnhead words to your point
about uh you know
tutoring and uh those types of supports
we're looking at a variety of means
right now
uh with danny ledesma uh we're we're
going to be meeting with
uh the county uh uh to look at
the way in which the sun system can
really
uh you know augment and support the work
that uh
that uh our educators are are providing
uh so we're in conversations
uh around that um and then really
thinking about how we might
uh in enlist uh college age
uh students to to mentor or not mentor
apologize to tutor uh provide academic
tutor
and support to to to ours to some of our
students
uh so uh and and we're also exploring
the idea of uh physical locations for
um uh for families who need
that extra support or that extra
handholding
uh to navigate you know the complexities
of
uh of this uh of this work uh
uh so they they have the support so so
um
uh i guess what i'm i'm trying to allude
to
is that we have a number of uh of ideas
that we are
uh looking to um that we're exploring
and and we're
aggressively working to to talk to our
community
community partners to ensure that um
that that we're not overlapping in
services but we're uh
we're really uh augmenting and
supporting one another
as we're supporting our students thank
01h 35m 00s
you
director bailey do you have a question
uh yes like everybody else i have a
number of questions but here's my
top of mind uh when i want to thank
director scott
for emphasizing that the
four period high school day
came about due to our focus on equity
and our highest priority for those
students
um and i i think we need to uh
i agree with them we need to continue to
articulate that strongly
going forward there's no perfect
solution there
and um i have a question about the
middle school schedule
um are we expecting middle school and
middle grade students to do
six periods or six classes or
seven classes uh wouldn't that same
principle in terms of high school
students
apply at the middle grades as well
that's my question yeah so thank you for
that question so they are
middle school students are pure middle
school students are on a six
period uh schedule but there are
electives built in so they're not all
they're not six
academic you know like homework every
night and those kind of things so
they're also on a shorter time block so
their classes are 45 minutes instead
where high school classes meet 75
minutes in this
model so um they will uh and they're not
credit bearing classes so
uh we needed to get the four core
classes which language arts math social
data science and we didn't want to not
provide any elective choices for middle
grade
uh students and we would pretty much
have taken their electives away if we
if we didn't offer them their uh the
schedule that they have now
all right uh that's been almost half an
hour and half an hour is about enough
time for us to each get through one
question
which to me does not feel very
satisfactory i know that we all have
lots more questions um so let's
run through the list again and see if we
can do that quickly
instead of half an hour so student uh
representative shu did you have another
question
uh yeah can you come back to me in a
minute i need to um get something set up
yeah um so andrew did you
have anything else it sounded like you
kind of made your statement and are good
yep i'll pass this round thanks okay um
next is rita did you have another
question
uh i did um
and i don't know who would be able to
answer this um
so how will we be assessing
um students um engagement
um not just attendance but engagement
and
will we be doing it in a way that will
permit
course corrections if necessary
dr brown do you want to offer a response
yes um so one of the things that we're
um well good evening uh director moore
um pleasure to be able to speak with you
um engagement is one of the things that
we're very much interested in at this
point in time and like you said
not just attendance and so
like a couple of you have mentioned this
evening
we are very much interested in
trying to ensure that we engage with all
our students and iteratively work to
to engage with those students that we
weren't able to
to effectively engage with in the spring
beyond just simply making contact and
trying to get them in
in the process we're also as you saw
today with the learning management
systems we're looking to
leverage the information within the
learning management systems to
understand the degree to which
kids are participating in activities as
they move forward
and we're currently working on being
able to use that to have some
some sense of the proportional
engagement of students over time
so that we can course correct and again
iteratively go back to
reaching out to families and one of the
strategies that we work
through this spring that i think was
particularly effective uh was working
with our community partners to
to further uh engage and get kids back
on track so
um working through that plan right now
so that we can again leverage all the
resources we have to
get kids back in school and get them
back on track
all right i am next after director moore
and my question is
um about music and i know that you know
a lot of
i've been hearing from music advocates
about the 4x4 schedule but i also
um i just for me it's this whole
question about is music even going to be
safe right if we
our students can be able to play their
01h 40m 00s
clarinet or their trumpet in a classroom
full of others given what we know about
um airborne particles spreading the
virus and and higher risk activities
students not being able to be masked
so just wanted to ask what is the
thinking around that
um and i'm i'm sort of wondering if the
4x4 schedule isn't better for music so
students can take music when they are
remote and it's safe to play their
instrument rather than
in in person when they'd be sitting in
the classroom without
it being able to sing or being able to
play their instrument so could
someone talk to me about music so that
was a um
consideration of course the viners are
critical to a student's well-rounded
education and we think they're very
important but there are
um you know we have seen the the story
of the choir person that uh
they were singing together and then
multiple infections happen and we know
that just
the distancing that you need to have for
choir and is
is problematic in a in a school setting
uh when we have
we do come back in a hybrid manner um
and
it is possible still to take those uh
courses on a 4x4 there's nothing that
precludes them
and and when you see the schedule that
we are
making up for high school particularly
uh there's nothing that precludes them
from working like on there
there are times built in the schedule
for sort of flex time so there's nothing
that precludes them from taking uh
working with their teachers at times
when they're not necessarily enrolled in
the class
and that's a consideration that we have
talked about with poor music teachers
and particularly music and coral and
band
class thank
you all right um i've lost my list
next up is um
director constance just a quick
follow-up again dr byrd on the schedule
so
if it sounds like you are
looking at making some accommodations
for
some of our schools particularly ib
would that mean a hybrid schedule so
that they would have
um you know two or three of their
subjects condensed and then one
say one ib class through the whole year
or would it be just going to an eight
period schedule for all
yeah thank you for that question we've
looked at a lot of different options for
ib
and we even we talked to the head of
north american ib schools
uh last week and because of the number
of students
that take ib classes which is a good
problem to have
the number of students that are going
for the full diploma it does present uh
unique challenges
the ib is is unlike ap
in one major way it's really a two-year
program that you have to think about
so students start the journey for a
ib diploma well they actually started
their freshman year but they really uh
the junior and senior year are there are
two critical years there are
requirements for minutes for those
classes there are
extended uh assignments that they do and
really ib teaches
the habits of mind so it's really about
kind of reflection and
and how kids are going through the world
uh how children are going through the
world
and thinking critically so we uh could
not find a way
to with the number of students that we
had to uh limit that to
to a four by four so it just it just
couldn't work so we are going to
uh for those two ib schools that's
cleveland and lincoln
allow them to run a period of schedule
but there's going to be there will be
uh guard rails up for that so um
there have to be support classes so
they're not eight academic classes
they'll have there have to be support
classes in place for students that are
uh in those iv um seeking the ib diploma
there have to be for freshmen and
sophomores that are not taking heavy
loads of ib
there are they're going to have to be
some modifications to their schedule so
that
they're not uh taking a full eighth
classes
people have asked me about uh well why
don't you just let the ones who need
eight periods take eight periods and
then
schedule everybody else differently that
that is problematic in a couple of ways
the
first way is problematic is the teachers
don't just teach one grade level in high
school so you often have times have a
ninth grade
and an eleventh grade teacher so you
can't run two different versions of a
schedule
because with the staffing that we have
the second problem
is that um we uh
i can't remember the second problem
anyway i'll think of in just a second
but um
there is uh there just it's just
problematic in a couple ways
that doesn't mean though i want to be
clear about this that we're not
concerned about students who take ap
classes that is also a rigorous program
and we can
accommodate those those students in a
4x4 schedule
so um we are we're
making that modification for ib schools
and we're going to make sure though i've
talked to both principals
and uh they have to do a couple of
things they have to um
review every schedule to make sure that
students have support classes in place
and
will be monitoring that and they have to
have a plan to intervene if students if
they see that students are um
are falling off uh are not keeping up
with the work there has to be plans in
place to support
those students uh along the way so i
01h 45m 00s
feel
um you know the every schedule oh i know
that's second thing
every schedule has trade-offs and and so
besides
having teachers teaching at different
levels you know the the trade-off for
the cleveland and lincoln is they're not
going to
meet face-to-face as often because they
have more classes
so that's the trade-off that ib schools
have to now uh they have to they have to
deal with that because we only have i
told you at the beginning we have a box
these are the things that have to be in
the box we have to follow ode guidelines
and so you have to make your schedule
fit in that box so um
so there's sort of some built-in
guardrails just because the constraints
of time that we have
thank you dr byrd for explaining that um
we're gonna hear from directors depos
brim edwards and bailey and then i'm
going to open it up for
any lingering questions after we get
through those three i've already talked
to liz and roseanne and we're going to
push the executive session a little bit
so we can get through all of our
questions so director depos do you have
another question you'd like answered
i don't have a question at this point um
but just a comment that um this is a
terrible time for woodwinds
uh really hard to play saxophone with a
mask on but an excellent time to take up
a string instrument
um i think music is really an important
part of a well-rounded education and so
i'm i'm sad that uh for kids that are
invested that way but um take up a
string instrument or the drums
yeah grass is bad but you can do like
you said
uh and i know that guadalupe is the um
advocate for violin
so yeah yes
all right director permit should you
have any other question another question
do um so i'm
interested thanks for the last question
for answering
that i guess we'll have a preview on
what the some of these additional
supports will be before the start of the
school year because i think that will
also
um really put parents um
in a better place that is like the big
question i get asked about these days
um so the the question i have a question
and then also uh
just data request um my
i'll just state what my data request is
um
and this is for future but the 2500
students who had incompletes
last spring like who those students were
what schools are they are they actually
making up the classes
now or is that why we're going to four
by four
but just getting more data because um i
think it sounds like we
um they'll we'll be moving to two
schools to an a-class period
jefferson is fine because they are
connected to pcc
you have the the other you know six
uh schools that have ib pro i'm sorry ap
programs and just
how that works and um i'd like to see
current data of
how successful students um are
if they take a class in the fall but
don't take
the test of the spring or they take the
class in the spring but don't get all
the way through
the material before that the test so
that's like just a data request i'd like
to see in terms of like how
across the high schools we're setting
kids up to be successful and be able to
obtain
college credit my question that i have
is on
the feedback loops and
of uh i know everybody gets um
because i get it it is on an um informal
feedback
through like when you're at the grocery
store or you're out walking
or are you at work um you run into
parents and staff who give provide
feedback
i'm this is going to be something
unprecedented time
um that i think we need to absorb
feedback and
as a system of adjust and so um
i'm interested in superintendent
guerrero um in
how you see the district
absorbing feedback from you know 50
50 000 focus groups that's going to be
happening across the district
in in homes and how we're going to
incorporate that
to stay agile and nimble and make
adjustments for our families and
students
well i'll start off by saying i have a
great confidence
in our school leaders and our school
communities and our educators
who are going to be working closely even
if it's virtually
with our students to to see what those
actual and expressed needs are and
i'm well aware of the feedback i'm i'm
receiving it
on power all day long all night long so
uh i'm sure i'm hearing from our
constituents
as often as probably each of our
directors are so not unfamiliar with the
themes and concerns
that are on uh our family's minds and
those are exactly the kinds of
conversations that we're
having so that we can
develop an approach that's that's both
01h 50m 00s
responsive to the express
need but um that observes a lot of sort
of
other uh over overlapping
uh considerations that we have to uh
take take into account so um
i'll just say that but uh i don't know
if you want to add anything there dr
clare or dr bird
yeah i i would say that um i'm certainly
getting that feedback about the high
school schedule and um
and we are and i do want to be clear
that uh
i understand people's concern and we are
i'm meeting with high school principals
tomorrow again to talk about uh how we
can make
modifications uh to the schedule and so
we will do that and we will
we have also time set in the schedule
that the teachers can meet with small
groups of students
so it's not just you know the typical
class where you're where you're there
and to teach you know
and and then you don't see the teacher
so all throughout the week whether
they're seeing the teacher whether
they're attending their first period
class for example or not
there are times uh each day of the week
that there are opportunities for
them to meet with uh with their students
and
um so yeah i think we have built in some
things we will continue to be reflective
and modify as we go along but
i've talked to principals uh just to
give you a couple of examples
director brim edwards there are
principals
who are scheduling ap classes
all in the fall so stu you know students
are
taking maybe two classes ap scheduling
those in the fall and then they'll put
them in a lab class in the spring to
prepare for the test that's a very
common thing on the 4x4
um and the same with math there are
principles that are double blocking
students in that so there are some you
know i'm i'm counting on our principles
also
to work within the constraints of the
schedule but to look at
student data and understand uh how you
need to creatively uh
schedule because all of these schedules
the the research is clear you can find
research on any schedule and the one
that works is the one that is well
supported by the school leadership
and the teachers and so we need to be
very mindful of how we support
uh teachers in this endeavor
and if i may add this is jonathan garcia
again chief engagement officer we're
also
uh and i appreciate the question
director from edwards we as a
we're also looking uh from a as a system
uh we're doing some analysis and we're
actually having a meeting
later this week to look at some systems
that we can build
within the organization to really
capture in real time
that feedback and ensure that we are uh
really
you know being able to absorb all that
data so
hopefully we'll have more information to
share with the directors
if these meetings pan out in terms of
our
ongoing conversations to to look at that
but that is a
an area that we are definitely wanting
to
uh to look at just as a as an
organization
right how do we capture uh feedback
uh on a continued basis uh and use it to
to be responsive to the needs of our
community
i know we have a lot of questions and um
you know it's it's always one of those
uh pieces for us as we're hearing from
constituents and people like me who are
a parent
to want to get in all the details but i
want to remind us to
to keep our questions at that board
level governance um
place as we kind of think about the
operational piece of all of this
um director bailey did you have another
question yes i did
um so first i want to say um
i've taught community college uh using
canvas
and it's a great tool and uh
i i could tell uh when i
gave out an assignment who was on that
assignment right away
and who left it until 11 o'clock at
night the day before it was due
um so it's a
great tool for tracking engagement in
that sense
um along with you can have group
discussions and
all sorts of good stuff with um
a question director bailey if the
board staff to use canvas who do you
think would be the board members that
were first to engage
[Laughter]
you don't have to answer that i'm just
teasing all right continue with your
question it would be the last because i
am an a1 procrastinator
um i'm not recommending that challenge
i'm not recommending that as a way of
life um
i know michelle and i were pretty
superior that we turned in our uh stuff
for gigi's evaluation first
so uh michelle and i gave ourselves gold
stars there we go
again uh how do i mute you um
okay a question um i'd like answered in
another venue
is i'd love to volunteer as an economics
tutor
um uh and i know there's probably a lot
of
other retired teachers for example out
01h 55m 00s
there who would love to volunteer
um so that's that's a later question
um i'm happy to provide a
quick response director bailey that's
not my question though
he's trying to ask a few questions at
once jonathan but he's only going to
claim the second one
i'm just following uh director to pass
as example
i'd also like to hear more about the
supports at lincoln and cleveland for
a little bit more detail on that for
the students who need those supports
and sean i love you but i didn't quite
grasp your answer around middle uh
grade schedule so i want to check in
with you later on that
my question is i've gotten a couple of
questions uh
from parents about hey my rising senior
is just three credits away
uh from graduation why not just enroll
them for three credits
um and then we've got more resources for
everybody
else and my response
up the top was i get what you're saying
and that means your student would miss
out on a half a year
of education uh that's valuable stuff
um you know why would you
not why would you want that but that
that's something to consider
but uh i wanted to know if that was
under consideration or not
and i'm guessing director brim edwards
among others might be having
a little attack right now but
i appreciate your answer to that
okay so i want to um
so i want to be clear he's the only
question he's legitimately asked is
about
the graduating early and the other stuff
you guys can follow up with offline if
that is that
just to honor our time so i would have
to absolutely
i'd have to follow with all of them
offline probably
director bailey i
i asked the uh graduation uh question
earlier today
scott and got an email back saying we're
working on that we'll get back to you
so um all right so i wanna i know
there's more questions from some of us
so i wanna just kind of open it up if
there's any else
anything else burning question or
statement that needs to be made as we
head into re-entry and again
just wanting to remind us that i know we
all like i i want to know
like my daughter's schedule and what all
is going to happen and she's at
cleveland
um but knowing that some of this is is
operational
we we are going to continue to wait on
so what other questions do you have
before we move on since i didn't get a
question
really um what's our what's our current
state of
connectivity uh do we expect to have
a good wi-fi connectivity
with every student by the time
that those first two weeks of opening
are up
we have that capacity
that's exactly the operational goal that
we're striving for
director bailey we want every student to
be able to
have the device have the connectivity
with enough bandwidth to access
the platform and the instruction this
afternoon our
deputy superintendent hurts our cto
participated in a statewide meeting with
telecom
executives and internet providers
because every district has this exact
same challenge even in here in the city
of portland
uh different providers are wired to
different communities and neighborhoods
differently and so we're having to
navigate how we make sure
our students don't have that digital
divider barrier so
as of right now we have a healthy
stockpile
of laptops uh as well as mobile hot
spots from different providers
we're encouraging our principals to
continue to message their
students if anyone is still lacking
please let us know please don't wait
till the date before
we don't need any lines at each of our
schools um
get them get them while they're
available early so we're still working
that out
um and we're following up on some of the
initial survey results
where families had indicated they were
going to need support in these areas but
uh trust me this is uh this is a daily
uh topic of conversation
for us so uh i don't know if i don't see
uh cto wolf on on the screen here
uh if he wants to add anything
superintendent guerrero i think you
covered it yeah i think we're initially
set for
a big push and we want to get that word
out early and
um and give us time should we be
overwhelmed so
02h 00m 00s
yeah it's it's a primary concern right
now
is data usage an issue for some families
and do we have a solution
around that um no so
the hot spots we are using and we have
confirmed with
with comcast uh there are no caps
immunity
on any of the hot spots that we're
getting so they are
they are not capped we don't have any
issues with those comcast
does cap the the
limit at 1.2 terabytes which it would
take 364 days
of seven hours a day of streaming
um streaming meetings to to reach that
1.2 terabytes
of data on some rough numbers so we
don't feel like that's going to be an
issue either
all right i i feel like we're getting
really operational in our questions so
i'm going to go ahead and have us
move on to the um our next parts of our
agenda and if
if school board members do have further
questions please feel free to email
staff
and we can get some of those details and
get the rest of our questions answered
as we move forward does that sound good
to everybody
maybe just just maybe as a wrap
the district can provide or somebody
from the district can provide
the web page information about where the
frequently asked questions are
and the resources so that um some of
those questions that have already been
answered that are posted
um i don't have it on hand but
maybe thank you
it was linked in the last
slide of our powerpoint and so it is on
the
main webpage and so if you go to the
the last part of our slide presentation
we didn't get through
the last slide it'll be there and you
can also just go to pps.net
and look for the re-entry logo great so
the average parent they can go there
there's frequently asked questions a lot
of resources for them to tap into
yes pbs.net thanks yes and director brim
edwards is david roy i would add
that uh some of the things covered this
evening were things that
were finalized this afternoon and so you
may find a couple of things that are not
there
right now but will be by tomorrow
morning awesome thank you
uh what time tomorrow david i'd say
about 802.
okay i'll be checking no i i will not be
checking at that time
um a couple of things as we move on uh
one is that i'm hearing rumors that the
timbers won
um so congratulations uh to the timbers
if i'm spoiling that for anyone and the
blazers
and the blazers ones firmly in
eighth place so let's go dame
portland it looks like representative
shu had something you wanted to add
nathaniel yeah i never got my question
in
could i ask that yeah go ahead
all right great thank you um yeah
i'm i'm sorry to focus on this so much
but um i'd like to
go back to the 4x4 schedule um just
briefly
um could could someone clarify
how specifically it is intended to
benefit
students who have been struggling in
this environment
because i'm concerned that given that
it's got
twice the intense twice the intensity
per class per week that
it would be much easier to fall behind
and more difficult
to dig yourself out
sure so uh it's in it's intended because
you to
help students because they only have to
uh have four teachers instead of eight
and so you're meeting every day for 75
minutes instead of
every for 18 weeks instead of every
other day for 75 minutes so
the the minute the time is exactly the
same and so yes
is it um is it uh and is it condensed
yes but you will see that teachers are
able to uh adjust their
um you know their instructional um
uh strategies to meet the needs of
students
but it's based really on the the need of
so many of our high school students that
have to
either care for a younger sibling
perhaps they have a job perhaps
and so they're not going to be in front
of a teacher every day like they would
normally be
so while it may seem like oh it's fine
because it's online but
you know you're juggling eight of those
classes and you're doing these other
things like
perhaps you're watching younger excuse
me watching a younger sibling or perhaps
you're
you have to work part of the day so it
really is desi is designed
to focus on the students who uh
our two data shows us uh need um
you know some some support and um and as
i said at the outset every schedule has
um
has its uh setbacks and has its
advantages i know that you and i are
scheduled to talk i think later this
02h 05m 00s
week so i think we can go
more in depth in it and i'll show you
some different um things that we can do
to
make it flexible thank you
and thanks for taking the time dr bird
to really answer that question with
nathaniel later this week
um danny texted me that lulard scored 61
points tonight so
we can have portland pride with the
timbers with the blazers with all the
amazing things happening um i think
there's a lot of amazing things
happening that we've just heard about
tonight
and again um i think our commentator
erica compare talked about um
nice words um and i think that what
we're seeing
especially with things like our four by
four schedule is really trying to live
into the racial equity
policy that we have and the language
we've put out there and i
i appreciate your questions nathaniel
trying to help us really fully
understand
why um district leadership is letting us
know that
the four by four um they think will
benefit
our students who have most struggled um
and it's one of those times i think to
director echo what director scott said
to
um really um line up behind what we say
we're about i mean i think
we are getting a lot of pressure to move
to an eight by eight schedule and to
consider that
and i think we are trying to go for that
win-win and look at
being flexible when it comes to ib and
really appreciate that and at the same
time
how do we really center our by box
students
and really make sure the choices we're
making um are
benefiting them in that idea of targeted
universalism and this feels like
one of those first big moments where we
have a decision to make that is going to
impact a lot of students
and how do we make it in a way that is
in alignment with our stated values
so thank you to staff for a
comprehensive
review tonight for answering all of our
questions and i know you're available to
continue
answering our questions the other thing
i want to
celebrate um tonight is um
it was about three years ago uh exactly
i think that we hired um superintendent
guerrero
i think you started in october but i
think the decision was made in august am
i correct in that
um superintendent guerrero yep
i'm not very good at uh calendar
milestones if i could keep my
anniversary straight then
that's a plus but i think you're right i
think we're
i like to say finishing the three years
and going into my fourth school year
um staff earlier was pointing out the
same
uh anniversary so uh i hope there's no
buyer's remarks
uh we're trying to give it our all here
uh and looking forward to yet another
school year with fresh challenges
it was august 10th okay well
director broome edwards would know yeah
and yeah julia we have you to thank for
doing a lot of the work to get
superintendent guerrero here
um and i want to say thank you for three
great years
and um here's to at least a few more
as we continue in the pps reimagined
vision and the work that we're doing
i know that when you came three years
ago you did not sign up to be
superintendent during a pandemic but
um i honestly can't imagine a better
leader for us to have had during this
incredibly stressful and chaotic time so
yeah i will follow dr
o and give a round of applause to i know
he doesn't like this but to
superintendent grow and to all of our
amazing staff
thank you for that
and just remember i wanted to hire you a
week earlier than that but
everybody else wanted to go through the
whole process
all right before i completely lose
control of this meeting we need to move
on to the items we pulled from the
consent agenda
um so director from edwards what uh
question did you have about um do i need
to
move the item first list and then we
need to have discussion
i think that is the correct i'm looking
for liz's nodding yes okay
so um before us now is a
resolution number i have to scroll back
up to find
the correct number because we don't want
to have to do that again
6160
do i have a motion to bring this
resolution before us
don't move do i have a second
second okay director constant moves and
director brim edwards seconds
resolution 6160 is there any board
discussion
dr bim edwards thank you i also have
just a couple questions
um and this is something that's come up
um quite a bit over the especially
parents of seniors um and when their
whole issue of college credit came up
and so we on this particular agenda item
it's
um we're paying about 250 000
for psu classes for um
02h 10m 00s
for students from three schools to take
a senior inquiry and so the
question i had for dr crayar was
how many credits if the students who
take these classes how many college
credits they get
and whether they also get high school
credits that's the first question
yes ma'am they get a total of two pps
credits
and they will also receive 15 psu
credits
and then um so given that that's
three of our high schools and i know and
jefferson has of course their
partnership with pcc so the other
the other high school students um would
this be something they'd have access to
or what do they have that's comparable
would be comparable
right so we have a roughly about
um over 400 students combined through
jefferson madison and roosevelt
um that are involved in the senior
inquiry program through psu
and through pcc and through you know you
asked the question specifically for
benson franklin grant
do they have access well they have they
have a variety of different courses
they have like a ela a variety of ela
level course work through you know dual
credit they have ap
courses um and and then of course
there's a 125
student fee if they wanted to access
that program um
that was not connected through what we
discussed through the psu program
so if other students wanted to access it
their alternative would be they have
something in their in their school
already
sorry correct
okay um
um this is just flagging and maybe i
could take this
offline um dr bird
the whole question of uh
whether we have a a solution um
that works for the students taking ap
classes those those students are at the
ap schools
sounds like there's a solution for the
ib schools and for the other ones um so
i'd be interested in having a
conversation
offline about that i'm supportive of the
class for
[Music]
the psu class for these students i'm
just also curious just in the
changed environment about other schools
students having access to it yeah all
right
oh sorry i'm sorry i will
follow up with you because we have some
information about how we're doing for
those challenger students
i have some information for you thank
you dr bird
um is there any further discussion on
61.60
well just want to reiterate one thing um
chair lowry doc
um director brent edwards also with ap
it's important to know that that's also
free
um so i just wanted to make sure that um
you know we also were aware of that that
was not an added expense for our
students
taking taking that advantage of our ap
program
great thank you and dr cuellar sorry
haley one second um so the dual credit
uh is subsidized and the ap is
subsidized but iv
testing is not is that correct
dr bird i i uh i have to find out i'll
get back with you
about that and we need to review
with our res j lens because historically
students in doing ib testing i've had to
pay
um i don't know if this is still the
case but
um when my son was in high school a
while back
um any student on frio reduced lunch
was subsidized by the state for the ib
tests
i don't know if that's still the case
so it was best
we can check into that i do know that
in college and career readiness we do
have a budget for subsidies
and i know that pps has historically
found
creative ways to help also in testing
costs but we can absolutely give you a
definitive answer response to that
tomorrow
all right is there any further board
discussion on resolution 6160
all right the board will now vote on
resolution 6160.
all in favor please indicate by saying
yes
yes yes
all opposed please indicate by saying no
are there any abstentions
02h 15m 00s
all right resolution 6160 is approved by
a vote of seven to zero with student
representative shu voting
yes all right
excellent is there any other
business before we adjourn tonight
i can give a very brief uh update from
the
lincoln high school steering committee
uh just
that everything is proceeding swimmingly
they've done their first big
concrete pour they're waiting for their
first
second set of major permits
they are they negotiated their
guaranteed maximum price
at below the budget estimate um
they're on budget uh have have
uh 95 of contingency
remaining um just
check it out if you're ever on that side
of town everybody it's looking good it's
looking like a real high school is being
born
any other board reports or comments
this is julia i'm just a
some on the kellogg dag and one of the
big issues with the dag that has
come up is or that is now rising to the
surface
is the issue of setting the enrollment
boundaries and i know that
um director scott and depas
have been um engaged in the conversation
about that
and i think it would be great um at a
future meeting to get
um support from that committee so people
can see you can see the physical
building of this
of the school happening um and how's
that
so at some point that would be great to
share with the broader community about
just the process and everything else
slight correction director bailey i'm
director scott
i'm sorry if you guys could if you guys
could change your names to be more
different that'd be great
i was just interested as well
yeah i'm sure director scott was worried
about that report he was gonna have to
give
i was trying to figure out i was having
to study up real quick so
all right anything else before we
adjourn
uh just a a note that the next uh
meeting of the policy committee is on
august 24th all right um
student which coincidentally is my
birthday in case anybody's
interested happy almost birthday um i
did want to make the announcement that
director moore shared with me earlier
when we were talking about sports that
the red sox lost tonight and that they
are in dead last in the al east
so you can just you know um commiserate
with her
or cheer like jonathan depending on your
your um
sports preferences there rita you really
want to draw attention to that
[Music]
i don't know that she meant for me to
read that text but
yeah i think it just helps explain when
she's grumpy that it's
we can always just blame it on the red
sox so
all right um nothing else we are going
to go ahead
and adjourn our meeting the next meeting
of the board will be held august 25th
at 6 pm um and this meeting is now
adjourned and i will see all my board
colleagues in our next executive session
um let's give ourselves a five-minute
break and we will start at
8 30. all right thanks everyone
[Music]
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)