2020-08-24 PPS School Board Policy Committee Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2020-08-24
Time 16:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education -Policy Committee Meeting Aug 24,2020

00h 00m 00s
yeah um okay can are you are you using the computer audio okay can are you are you using the computer audio because i might suggest that you um go out and come back in using the phone audio after the meeting i'll ask you what you did to make that happen but anyway after the meeting i'll ask you what you did to make i'm jillian and i represent roosevelt on the district student council and i use chicago and i represent roosevelt on the district council and i use chicago um is there anybody else um okay is there anybody else all right and then um as um as i'm sorry nathaniel is here as well i'm sorry oh nathaniel are you here daniel's here yeah hi sorry i'm joined are you here okay um do you want to say who you are are you here yeah i'm nathaniel shu i'm thank you um okay and i'm going to ask uh any staff who talk if you can just introduce yourself before you launch into your presentation that would be helpful um okay presentation so um um we have some status updates on some um uh policies that are out for community engagement policies that are um and i think the first one is the uh suicide prevention policy this one is the united states prevention yes i can speak to that one um the team that was working on it in rona uh and her team that was working um met with shanice in july they recognized oh and she's here as well part of the engagement they want to do is more student engagement and uh given that was the summer it was a student it was a difficult time and so um they are asking me with them in september and to develop and their intention is to develop a fuller so the staff will will get together to talk about engagement plans staff will try again we'll talk about engagement will you be able to come back to the committee at the next meeting and report on what the engagement plan is for that just so we can keep this moving the engagement plan is [Music] um amy as um can you when you get some clarity on that can you let me know so that we know whether to put it on the agenda for the next meeting or not so that we know whether on the agenda or not thank you um okay and um okay and yeah um are we engaging with uh i can't speak to that although i um i know that in my conversations with amy they referenced that um lines for life and so i wouldn't be surprised if they haven't already reached out they've talked about it at the last meeting i'm not recalling exactly which uh organizations they have been talking to but um if not chinese might have some information on that um so to my understanding they've been working with some local regional and state partners and so we
00h 05m 00s
can uh in the process of getting that plan to you all and make sure we articulate the organizations they intend to reach um as well articulate the organization because now a lot of our students are involved in sort of the youth component of lines for life our students are involved in sort of the youth component of lines for life okay thanks um okay the next policy we're getting a status update on is the student conducting discipline and student conduct yes uh liz large um district uh general counsel for the district um it's a short one because it's the same one we've had before we are needing to um engage in some bargaining with pat on this and the related student handbook and those connected pieces and frankly everything uh that's not been about the start of school in terms of re-entry and that mou has been put on uh it's not been forgotten but it is coming later in the queue so it's very much still on the agenda but the later terms and conditions of reopening school have been at the forefront so that's where the bargaining efforts have been taking place at the forefront so that's where the bargaining is does that mean the handbook is going for the 21 20 no 2021 school year going to be just the same as last year i don't believe so so one of the changes is that it's going to be digital instead of one of the hard copy right so this this pressure to have everything in place at a date certain that you can't change for a year is off this year and hopefully going forward and mary i don't know if you have the specific information about that part of the handbook um i don't believe that we are currently going to publish in the fall of 20 what was published in the fall of 19 on that issue because of the demand of bargaining but i want to make sure my understanding they have i [Music] they're waiting to get some information about the negotiation so to see whether what so i think psychologically we spent so much time on this and it seems like a long time ago you spent so much time on this it seems like that i'm thinking like oh we're already there but actually we're back to our previous policy and i know and even some of um and i know when you've seen some discipline that got all the way to the board i want to say that we rely we're relying on all the way future thinking of like here's where we're heading future thinking of like where we're heading and this is just it's a similar question so just to be clear even though this is just we went here we're almost done actually what's going to apply to students is what is the current policy is what is the current policy to to the extent the current policy does not violate state law right and policy and collective bargaining agreement and there was been some statutory changes in part so certainly we will comply with state law regardless of contract or policies um and i think the practices that have been in place are far more the practices have been in place are far and i think without necessarily violating the policy i think the practices are very much oriented towards the future trajectory is my understanding so this may be impractical um are there parts of the policy the draft policy that we could uh approve now or is it sort of of a whole cloth in terms of what needs to be negotiated i think that's a good question scott that i can't answer with precision because i haven't looked at it with that lens right before this meeting what we generally find though is that the policy and the handbook and the collective bargaining agreement that safety provision article 9 i think it is it's they're all connected together it's and it's hard to pick off parts of it now there may be parts of
00h 10m 00s
the policy that are that don't relate to article 9 specifically that we might be able to don't relate the board could adopt specifically but i don't know that it's going to be satisfying to do that and then i'm speaking from general memory not going live but change by change because some of the real change by the crux of the changes and what's behind the changes is what's in conflict with parts and what's behind the changes is what's important thanks all right i wouldn't be surprised if that were true thanks so can i make a request um so at the next or uh the next committee meeting um i i would like the committee to talk about um kind of a work plan for for the 2021 year um where we to the extent we can identify policies that we're intending to tackle this year um so that's three weeks from now um i have no idea whether there are going to be any negotiations between now and then um between now and then to the extent possible could you um for that discussion at the next meeting could you give us your best estimate give us on um how extensive the revisions might um like what portions of the policy are in disputes [Music] any insight you can give us going forward about how we're going to be able to handle this during the year [Music] yes i think by the next meeting school have started so presumably the re-entry negotiations are done i know that they are meeting again i've heard big chunk of thursday and i heard all day friday i don't know if someone gave from two different people but at least one big chunk later this week and i know they are making very good progress so i think they will get to the safety article 9 provision which was has thus far been talked about as being separate from full contract bargaining which is will also be happening but i will give you an update on that as these different people as the two sides have been talking they may have changed that menu as well but i know they all know that so yes very fair request whatever info you have available three weeks from now would be helpful um as we try to plan out the work um um the next the next section is um policies or items up for discussion and the first first in line there is um a discussion of the community engagement plan planning process and um hopefully everybody got a chance to read the user guide um and embedded in that was also the community engagement project planning worksheet um as well as some other links to things [Music] [Music] this is rachel lent i'm a paralegal in the general counsel's office and i'll just get started and have shanice jump in on her parts we work together on this document and it was it was written to create an intentional and formulated process for writing policy giving staff guidelines and expectations so that when a policy or an administrative directive comes to the board we work together or the superintendent um all of the boxes have been addressed and checked and it's an it's it's an intentional process so in creating this document i worked with uh jonathan garcia danny shanice um the general counsel's office and this has been uh reviewed and vetted through the senior leadership team um so hopefully you've had a chance to look at it a little bit and i'll just kind of walk through
00h 15m 00s
the phases and and uh it includes um overall guidelines and then we created four specific phases um in the development planning of policy degree so um i'll have shanice talk about phase one um which is the planning phase and includes uh guidance for staff to use the resj lens develop a community engagement plan um shanice developed a pretty comprehensive worksheet to assist staff in that process and um i'll have you shanice i'll have you talk about before you start can i can i just say just a little bit by way of introduction about kind of the origins of this um so i i know i know rachel um has been working on something like this for over a year i think right yeah something like that um and and kind of the the origins of this was um a recognition that this committee in particular the board in general this committee in particular a pre-existing methodology for um soliciting input on the policy process and as a result uh we ended up more often than not having an input process some kind of community engagement process existing um methodology happening well into the the revision process the policy process you know the committee had more often than not um more often than already considered uh and made some preliminary decisions about revisions or creating policies um and then at the very back end we would try to solicit some input you know the committee um so what uh what rachel was trying to do um starting at least a year ago um and in particular in response to some of the uh some lobbying by student representatives especially maxine latterell last year um the staff uh with my encouragement and i know other board members as well um really tried to come up with a system a protocol that would put the community engagement on the front end rather than the back end last year um so um and i i know that rachel came up with the original draft a while back and then over the last we tried to do much with a system i think it's been a while i think it was pre-coded actually wasn't it yeah um so there was a process to make it to elaborate the protocol um much more explicitly um and originally with the idea that if we if we can figure out some i think that some sort of rules of the road around um how community engagement and the policy making process can intersect that it will make the policy making process um more um it'll bring different perspectives to the table that would otherwise be absent and hopefully will make the whole process of you know chewing over policies making revisions and then bringing them to adoption much more uh responsive much shorter uh more timely and so we can kind of make the changes that we need to make in a timely way okay so that's that's the intro um if either you and your niece want to add anything to that feel free but um for for the newbies to the committee i especially wanted to make sure that you've kind of understood the context um yeah that's that's right rita and and to make it intentional and thoughtful and you know transparent and multiple perspectives at the beginning which is why um this is phase one and i'll have shanice talk a little bit
00h 20m 00s
about the committee i especially wanted to make sure that you kind of understood the context yeah you all uh summed that up pretty well i think the the intent is to hold space for uh input from students families and community uh at the forefront of these processes and as we grapple with policies that need to be um written or revised um to think about the phase one process of that revision um also using our racial equity lens but also marrying key steps and considerations to to garner um any areas of input or revision that that are also of interest to to folks um externally so i think um there there are four phases but uh depending um on on the policy you'll see a different level of uh engagement or a different approach and so my myself uh and and this great team here will serve as a resource to folks who will uh serve as the policy holders uh for for these policies that go under review and we'll provide that technical support as needed to to folks who are doing that work and looking to them to really walk through each of these phases um with with the engagement and then creating um that plan um and using that plan to uh propose outcomes in in language to share back to you all i'm getting a knock at my door so i'm a little distracted um so um i think that summarizes it uh the the context was set with the engagement and then creating um that plan um and using that plan so uh i have a question um and it has to do with lines of authority so say uh a policy comes up for review the context uh does shanice do you then prepare an outreach plan related to that policy question and bring it to the committee for approval so we're looking for policyholders who are ultimately the ones uh drafting that language and and driving the work of policy revision to to also um incorporate input into those policies so uh the support in creating that plan um is something that we'll provide to them and uh created worksheet tools steps guides protocols and a number of other resources for staff to be able to build that muscle uh for for their own uh search sort of policies that they're holding so maybe not looking to myself to facilitate everything that comes before you but to provide that technical support and really attention to making sure that the policy uh revision process um is moving to your murals um your standards and the things that you uh are suggesting are critical as we move along so i perceive that to be where we are and and this user guide um really serving as a tool to support um the um the real infrastructure of this process to be sustainable um as we move along and i think um sorry i'm just going to add to i agree 100 with what shinny so eloquently said and some of the feedback we get from the policyholders who have functional oversight or subject matter expertise is that they um they find the process and the expectations a little they have found them ambiguous and confusing and i think and so i really applaud shanice and rachel for this work to try to make clear what the expectations are but to chinese's ultimate point it is not to take over the ownership it's to be pretty robust supports to help them um along the way okay so what i was going to say first was to take a step back and say what i should have started with which is thank you this is great and this is something i'm one of the board members who's been
00h 25m 00s
bringing this up that we need from the get-go to have that community outreach process uh before we start looking at changing language um so thank you this is great work um so let me ask my question again because i didn't understand who policyholders are i'm one of the board members that we need so um so so let's start with that one first so our intention is to publish this right on the staff resources page of the board's uh web page so that when we hear about someone coming to us that's often how it happens if there's been a legislative change or i want to revise this policy then they will automatically be directed to this user guide to begin their work and start reviewing that guide asking questions developing the engagement plan um and so for example you know amy ruona is the subject matter expert on the suicide prevention policy so amy would be guided to this document to start her work and connection with the tools and support that people like shanice and i can provide um claire may be working on a a policy um she will she and her staff will be using that same guide to formulate their work so those when we say policy holder those are the experts that will be bringing this eventually to your committee and i think policy policy owner is some of the phrasing that we've used um but i mean the board owns the policies to be clear the board they are the policies but there is subject matter expertise that resides in the district who are the people who are implementing the policy and work in the arena of the policy the most tend to be the ones who should shepherd that work through to help guide the board in its policy making so so i think it would be it would keep things clear to use terminology along those lines of staff policy expert subject matter this policy holder is like well everybody they're they're in the entire districts and public policies in that sense and secondly so i'm trying to trying to follow this work stream um and there's there's a couple of different ways that we start to consider a policy and one is like there's a change in statute um does that come to this body first to say yeah we need to change it and then to the policy expert trying to follow this from there and liz is shaking your head you know not not necessarily right because i think you should expect uh the substantive um content experts and the legal department uh and the government relations department to be on top of what's coming down the pike from the state of or feds and to be working to address those quickly so it it we have taken a general charge from the committee and we can do it differently if if you all direct us to that our policies need to comply with laws and so we um i'm all for breaking the law so yeah yeah it's all the rage these days anyway uh no that's that's that's not what i i guess meant but it would okay it would a well it it partly it would would not cost anybody much of anything to do a by the way statute changed need to change policy x working on it uh just just uh something to rita along those lines and we try to make that that visible as well we don't need to start our work until we've had a meeting every three weeks necessarily so but it's but we have um at the end of a legislative session i think we do a table these are the changes these are the policies these are the effective dates sometimes they'll be enacted as of july 1 but they won't be effective until the following january we try to prioritize over time but it is mo we most definitely want the committee to have visibility to what's what's being worked on and i'm sure there are ways we can improve that because you know things are flying in all directions but you should expect that of us okay can i just follow on that scott wouldn't it just be dropped onto the committee work plan just to read his earlier point if we have a work plan for the year it's just you know these are ones that automatically get on because their statutory changes then we all just know that like hey somebody's got it
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because it's on the on the list right we just haven't had the formality of a work plan recently but i think i really support rita's effort to have that built for this year and that we we keep a running list of policies that are being worked on um that we have on draft agendas so that there's visibility or what we hear is coming but it should absolutely be in a work plan without a doubt okay i'm also wondering um if community members if they wanted to propose a policy are they required to put together this engagement plan also or is it just staff i think it's just staff i mean we have we working with the trying to understand the interests um and what the proposal is and taking the direction from the policy committee on how they want to how they want how the committee members want it to be handled but i think we would we do not we don't we don't tell or instruct community members what to do and i think frankly we own the engagement with the community to pursue the interests of the policy committee itself which is in service to many other things but i think that's we take our direction from how they want but that is a path for policies to be proposed but you're absolutely right we do not so the uh my second question had to do with um the committee's oversight in terms of engagement because while i think staff and board members [Music] and students are in principle pretty aligned in terms of the principles of community engagement there are going to be times where we're not completely and there's possibilities of something getting pretty far down the line and here's what we did for engagement and for student members or board members to go whoa whoa whoa whoa did you talk to x did you talk to why why did he only talk to z kind of a thing and um and to me this work is and this is a gray area of you know the board's only supposed to oversee the superintendent but this outreach work is in support direct support of the board's work um rewriting policy so it would seem like um and to be glad to know if i'm wrong that the board needs to you know put a stamp of approval on the outreach process for a particular policy rewrite before it gets very far down the track i can see in some cases there's a change in statute the outreach is going to be pretty minimal because we have to change sentence why to read differently but in other cases especially where we're kind of voluntarily taking up a policy to rewrite it i think we need to come just to an understanding for how that's going to work so that we we don't get into an actual policy relay and get it loggerheads it can get does that make sense complicated so i'm just scott actually i'd just build on that a little bit more in the sense that um i guess this is something i would say thanks for putting this together i think it's a good uh framework for discussion um but i do think actually more than just approving the engagement is like i especially i mean some policies that i think are pretty straightforward and there's not really like two opposing sides or there's not um different perspectives it probably is fine just look at the engagement strategy and like yes you know get the summary back but other thing other times i'm going to want to hear the actual voices [Music] and the arguments and the information in order to make decisions on you know where to land on a policy in which there's two legitimate pathways to go um or three or four yeah because i i look at this it's a little bit um it's i think the policy making process is a little bit messier than um than this is like because i think it says at one point that um the community engagement like pps gains insight that positively impacts policy you know by going through these you know
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community engagement um but board members are you know first of all we um bring lived experiences we're in the whole host of different stakeholder communities i just think there's gonna be cases where we're going to want people to come to the committee to provide engagement or to bring board members into focus groups so we can hear directly because it may make perfect sense when you hear from impacted parties or from students because of the examples that are used or you know how things are framed that [Music] in a staff summary get conveyed because it may make so i'm looking for a little more robust board engagement in the examples that are used sort of the big policy where there's sort of values at stake or maybe different potential paths that we can take get conveyed so i i'm looking for a little more uh robust board engagements um rita you're on mute sort of the big policy where there's sort of values at at stake or maybe different potential paths that we can take okay can you hear me now okay sorry um i have a very slow internet so sorry everything takes four times longer than it should um so i just want to piggyback on the two comments um so it seems to me that several people have mentioned this already that um not every policy is going to require or demand the same level of community engagement um some policies either new policies or revisions are going to be pretty um pretty technical in which case you know we wouldn't necessarily need a you know a full-on community engagement process um others others really are gonna require full-on community engagement um and then there's to be policies everywhere in between um so um pretty technical one of the things that i think has um has been engagement process difficult to date is that our analysis of how much community engagement is necessary for a particular policy has been pretty fluid um and it's often changed over time so we started off with relatively little and then decided oh wait we need way more um so let me put this in the form of a question um how does this user guide um accommodate uh different levels of community engagement uh policy by policy and at what point is that decision made and by whom i um that will be determined by phase one which is why it's phase one and maybe shanice and i can get together and think about what that looks like for the committee and what we could bring forward at an early early time um uh just so that you're determined you're not getting all of this at the end um i have to think about that a little bit more but um get together and think about i i think just to add on to that rachel when the when the draft of this was brought now several months ago to the superintendent's leadership team there was quite a bit of discussion about how uh to flex to expand or contract this process based on the the needs of a particular policy i think to the point of all three board members you need to have visibility and weigh in on that because ultimately the engagement is the thing that informs your decision so staff did come with a point of view and i think the question about the staff subject matter experts who presumably are engaging in the community that accesses that policy work needs
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at least um at least a big chunk of it one would hope would have some point of view and shanice will have a point of view and bring her extra expertise but i i think bringing that recommendation to the committee would make sense we at the end of the day this is in furtherance of your work and we want to be sure you have what you need presumably our engagement i don't know if you have anything else yeah of course and i also want to name a critical part of this core team does involve danny ledezma um and as we make sense of the folks in this space who might bring their expertise together in phase one the um i you know represent the engagement team alongside of these good folks um in relationship with danny and i would uh concur with rachel saying phase one it is the space in where we would want to uh gauge the level of impact to students or teachers or folks in the district to make sense of what engagement should look like and i think uh the absence of the user guide um may play a role in uh clear in a lack of clarity or inconsistency um that that folks have experienced in the past so i would look to this tool as something that that might answer or provide some solutions to some of the things we're grappling with um in addition to um looking at uh i think there are some inevitable nuances uh but uh our our team and my uh my contributions um with with the engagement slice i think will be kind of coupled with perspectives um that uh that our policy experts uh are bringing including including the folks uh like rachel and liz who um well ultimately are all putting our brains together to make sense of uh what level of impact a policy might have so the an example that comes to mind is uh the meals uh kind of uh district staff and and how and how we pay for meals in particular that might not be a huge community engagement uh focus for a policy like that and it kind of uh using our work group um space that is a prep a kind of a prep space before these policy meetings um is is kind of a collective area where we will get together and review policies uh that might be uh coming from um down the line from osba or or just being having an intent to be revised uh so hopefully that does clarify some of the lingering questions and and i would just offer uh that the that this user guide um might uh might be a tool or resource as a result of some of these things that we're grappling with and inconsistencies um and questions that we might have and uh my my assumption is that this committee will will have great um knowledge um well in advance of a policy under uh review uh before um you're looking at the final product of all engagement that takes place and so we'll we'll also be working with our staff leads our staff experts uh to um make sure we're documenting um and archiving each step of that process um and keeping it all in one place and i think that will help with consistency as uh as folks continue to present and come forward to the policy committee i wanted to ask a follow-up question in this user guide it includes um like when it references policy it also references administrative directives um typically that's been under the purview of like the superintendent and his staff are we now expecting them to have community engagement around that as folks continue to present around administrative this this committee no around writing around writing the administrative directives um policy committee that we're in right now we'll be reviewing policy and the superintendent reviews and approves ads now there may be times when those things coincide but generally speaking that the superintendent is is the approver of administrative directives and so this this user guide wasn't intended to
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uh do anything but align how you go about the process of revising something and i think rachel what i would add is sometimes a policy change will trigger a need for an administrative directive change and the engagement will have been done at the policy level and it's flowing through to the administrative directive but there may be an administrative directive that needs engagement and so this user guide is to make the thought process about that be at the front end of the work not the back end so i think i think much of the time the administrative directives are modified in response to the policy change or a statutory change but i wouldn't rule out that there's an ad that's getting drafted or amended that would benefit um with some community engagement so it's not a mandate but it's a it's a process it informs the process so i would just say historically when i was a parent activist i've got a number of scars um from pushing for a policy change only to see the aed totally screwing us over so i appreciate the question jackson um and i i do think uh the other thing that would happen is an 80 would be written that looked good and then changed in the dead of night with no notice some kind of transparency around that i know we have some transparency there but just some clarity on when 80s are changed what the public announcement is at a minimum of that changing um would be important going forward i was just going to say there's a new process scott that rachel has that when the ads are done then who would they get distributed out to including the board yeah yeah i i thought that there had been a change and thank you yeah so uh whenever an ad is approved uh i send out a notification to the board and i also send out notification to all of the union uh presidents um just uh this is not included in the user guide and and i know we need to kind of move on rita but um we're also working with um with communications to develop um you know another paragraph or two in this user guide about at the end of the adoption or approval during an ad what is your communication plan and we're going to be asking um staff leads to take their community engagement plan and work with karen wurstein to develop a communica a communication plan at the end of the process so that if you've engaged these five groups throughout this process you'll then be communicating out to them uh at the end so that's not yet included we're still meeting and talking about that but it will be a it will be a part of this user guide but the communication the expectation of development of a communication plan early in the in a more generic sense is already exists like you your communication plan should be part of your front-end planning communicating like in addition to the execution of that at the end right the part of the discussions with karen and developing a plan is to target so that we um our audiences so that we know you know the people who are going to be impacted the most by by the changes whatever changes are being made we'll get notice of it okay thank you i can feel the healing of my scars already so one can i make just one other general comment about the guide um and i don't i don't know how people would access or be told about it but it seems like um changes whatever changes our po our policy over development of policies allows any number of people to draft policies um like a community member can a board member can and if i were like new to pps or new to the central office i might read this and think policies are just written by staff and so i don't know if it's in the preamble there's something that just references that policy proposals can come from a whole host of places and i would expect if the policy committee and the board decides to work on them that they they would then go through this process but it seems like we just it would be
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useful to acknowledge at the front end that policy drafts can come in there's something in a variety of different ways they don't just start at the staff level or just with the or the policy committee or the board policy committee and the board decides certainly i agree with you that that's what the policy on policy says so wherever you think that needs to be stated again we can do that it just seems at the beginning just to give like a framework um in a variety of different ways yeah i mean i i wouldn't it would this th this user guide and engagement plan again are in furtherance of the board's work which which has various interaction with who it brings but i want to be sure we're framing it i wouldn't want a community member to think that they have to suddenly figure this stuff out and check all the boxes on that plan it is it is designed to be a support tool um that's not quite what i meant because i wasn't thinking either i was thinking like a community member could draft a policy or a board member could a draft policy and then get it into the process not that they would have to go through this in order to propose it but more policy concepts could come in a whole variety of different forms before you get to you know i was thinking like phase one a community member could draft a policy absolutely a draft policy yes maybe a statement on the board policy page to that effect um if you have an idea for a policy change feel free to email director more or even if you want to draft some policy feel free and forward that to the policy committee yes something along those lines that allows uh the public including students to go from anything from i have an issue with this too and here's how it should be written exactly even if you want to draft some poems okay so um i i want to bring this discussion to a close so we can move on to other things but um but i also wanted to mention a couple of things um so first um i'm i'm very hopeful that having this um kind of already thought through is gonna bring is gonna produce more um better quality and more um efficient and effective you know i think it's gonna help everybody do the work that needs to be done to make sure that we're making good policies so thank you for everybody who's worked on it um i think this is really going to be helpful [Music] i would say before we leave it um if i could make a couple of friendly suggestions about um things that could be added that i think might help uh the first one is and this is probably in the introduction um i i think it's important to to note that whenever we're doing this policy work of necessity we're having to balance the comprehensive community engagement with timely revisions you know timely changes so if we could just acknowledge that up front i think that that might help sort of set the stage for all of this and also um my understanding is that comprehensive community engagement the intention is to have the subject matter expert kind of be the primary drivers of the community engagement process with the community engagement office providing a system um i'm not sure that comes through in the words here um and i think that's been uh that's been in um kind of an ambiguous principle um to date so it might be helpful to spell it out just a little bit more in here but anyway i'm i'm grateful for everybody who worked on this i know it's been here rachel's been working on this for a long time and um and i'm i'm hoping that this will make it this will clarify um for everybody involved how we're going to move this this work forward so thank you everybody and i just want to say rita that shanice and danny have
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also worked on this for a long time as well the there's been a lot of consultation among all three of them and i don't know who else um have been working on this and danny pretty diligently since what february um even during the coven so um i know it's been i know it's been rough i'm um okay so i want to move on to the next thing which is the um preservation maintenance and disposition of district real property um and we have some requests on the table thank you that um that are um that are suggesting uh that we may need to develop some overall criteria uh that will guide decision making around any any changes to lease arrangement responses to emergency situations so we're not going to talk about the specifics of um any requests that have been made that are kind of prompting this discussion but um we do need to in order to respond in a timely fashion to those requests the board and the district have to establish a standing criteria that would be used to determine when and whether um any any difference in treatment of lessees um would be uh would be appropriate to establish um uh stando i'm gonna take it off to liz are you when and whether and correct anything i said that maybe i i think you uh you teed it up very well um but it's important for the board to think about the criteria it's going to use as it's making decisions about different tenants of different property so that it's transparent and equitable and compliant that's what i would say so i think the the opportunity for the i think right now for this committee is to surface some criteria that that um are the kinds of things you think are important in deciding whether let me just back up the baseline metric in real estate transactions for the district is market rates and maximizing financial return to the district so this is articulating criteria for deviating from that baseline and what are the the real question is what are the things that are important to uh the board in in considering those requests when might the requests be of a certain type or in service of a certain cause values or community where we would the district would think that a below market term we could talk about rents but this will apply to other terms besides rent but i think rent is can be one way to think about it um and it's a question of values i think and priorities um that may come ahead of dollars to the district the district so rita i don't uh we didn't orchestrate this i'm happy to just let the board members uh have some organic discussion i'm happy to throw out some ideas that have been discussed um in preparation of the meeting um staff have gathered some in a brainstorming effort not a necessarily a recommendation um this is director constant i'm sorry i'm not on um video right now but if you could just speak to the language that is already in the policy regarding market rate which says um unless the board makes an express finding that the disposition of district property for less than market rates confers significant benefit to the district and the community it serves the district
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shall pursue maximum market value for any sale lease or disposition under this policy do you want to talk about why that language um is inadequate for us to consider the present request um sure i think it it tells you that it's possible and it tells you that there's a determination to be made but it doesn't tell the community or the board what the criteria are right and so it is it is my recommendation that there be a more explicit discussion of the criteria in play in considering requests as they come in so it can be but it doesn't uh free formed but i don't i think that is not best practice and i think it does not set up the board to consistently necessarily consistently administer that policy said help amy i want to make sure i've answered i just wanted to direct that i just wanted to address that directly because that provision already is in there right so it is in there it tells you you can do it and of course the board can wait policy or change policy any time but it it doesn't tell it doesn't ensure that there's an alignment or a consistency about how to consider those requests and what criteria might be in play [Music] something like the pandemic which is you know affecting a lot of entities that's what criteria might be it could be something like the criteria let me just think about the criteria it could be something that a trigger would be when you have some sort of external event that's impacting lots of different entities a recession could be a pandemic it could be something specific to um it could be something the group they have some sort of catastrophic financial event that ha that happens um in which case it may be that other parties don't have the same set of financial conditions but that particular party has a reason and maybe a reason that the board would find that maybe they could get less than catastrophic finance um they paid less than the market rate that happened for something or that we'd sort of waive the conditions of other parties fair market value don't have the same um and then the third could potentially be pps has something financially that is a reason why it would find that offer a property yet less than market rate below market rate um and that could also be a financial reason so it seems like there may be a third could potentially be for each of those like different sets of different criteria that would be actually important to consider like if say the you're in a recession and maybe you know if the you know unemployment rate is over x amount or so it seems like um you know some other economic indicator that that's sort of a trigger that's like different sets of different maybe across your properties that that you might want to take but look at it but that seems and then there's like things that are unique to and it may be a specific entity you know unemployment rate as well you know it does that that's like one set of criteria and then there's a whole other set of criteria about another economic indicator that that's sort of a trigger that what that would look like by how much um so anyway that just one set of framing i think we should think about things that are unique because it's easy to specific if you just have one in one um entities asking for it but if you get i mean we've got lots of properties and lots of you know it would be easy for a lot of people come to us with a we'd like a reduction on our lease just by the nature of who we used to so it seems like you should think of it in different buckets if you just can't respond to that um um i think ultimately the wording that we use is going to have to be very carefully i guess i i feel compelled to uh to reference what how the current
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policy came to be um and this is from 2018 i think consider it yeah 2018. um and um this is a very substantially revised policy governing um pps's um real estate approach to real estate and property um and when we made the revision um we included some pre-significant governing um pps's kind of guard rails um on the property conditions that would when we made the revision how do i put this um i think that i think the policy revisions were intended to um provide some limitation on um pps's condition uh that would pps looking at individual properties as one-off and instead shift the approach to um district-wide and long-term and and i can tell you where i was coming from when i was asking for some of these changes a few years ago um i think pts is looking uh historically in the time that i've been paying attention um i think pps has made some um very short-sighted decisions around um around its own properties uh both in terms of sales and leases in terms of length of time the you know fiduciary elements of the arrangement and um and i think it has created a situation where pts is constrained in its ability to serve students by past decisions that did not take long-term considerations into account so um i think it's important to acknowledge that up front before we start talking about criteria because i believe that we should continue to have that long-term perspective and to ensure that whatever criteria we come up with or any diversion from this overall policy needs to be likewise consistent with this that the focus on the district-wide and long term so there you go yeah oh sorry so no go ahead okay i just um had a question and i was um is there sort of a i i know that we've it's it's already been talked about as um the specific criteria are going to be discussed um later but is there sort of an application process um either in the current policy or that's being considered um for certain entities to um just sort of able to ask if they can have their their rates lowered um and forgive me if this has already been talked about but um no uh parker they we've just received an email a written request from a tenant so there isn't a more formal process than that as currently defined and that's how these recent requests have played out okay two tenants at the moment okay and and that's just or that's been deemed um adequate for for the current situation and their current needs we've just received i think that's a great question right now we go headless sorry no no um we have also and dana correct me if i'm wrong we've had other tenants inquiries uh during the coveted period as well they have been resolved in other ways but there are two that are still open okay that's correct for the current situation all right thank you so the thing that i was going to say is every um every dollar that we defer taking in from renter leaves for sale is a dollar that we don't have for our students um which we feel sorely so if we were to give up a dollar we need to be very clear about the benefits on the other side that we would be
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indirectly that our students would be indirectly receiving sale is a dollar that we don't have for our students every hundred thousand is a teacher so to if we were to give put a bluntly in we need to be very clear and and then of course if it's if it's more like a sale um that has to do with you know our capital account um and how that money gets used and we all know where we are with building maintenance and any number of other things underfunded i agree with that and read it with what you were saying that i don't think we should tinker with the um foundational changes that we made to this policy that really lay out a bias toward our sort of long-term interest of um maintaining flexibility by by holding on to properties i do think julia when you're talking about um just general uh ways to frame it i do think one of the one of the areas that i would like to address is what's already called out in the policy um as as a interest criterion really is um the communities that they serve i do so so who are the communities being served in our buildings um even when it's under the office of some external partner so one of the things um i guess i'm gonna rip off of two both uh amy's comment rita's comment is i think in our buildings we might want to consider different criteria for rent or lease reductions versus sales of buildings um right because the former likely would be more i think episodic and be tied to something you might want to consider maybe uh but in this particular case like tied to the recession or the pandemic or some something happened that like they they an entity entered into a lease agreement with us and now they would like different terms and to me that's i think those seem to be like economic triggers or something like that but it seems that the conversation about the sale may change and i'm just thinking about some of the buildings um economic triggers so let's just take um the conversation which now has something the community a high school from another is that collins that exists the high school from another district but it's within our own district um and unfortunately that was a lease not a sale because at a certain point in time based on demographics we might want that building and that property a high school from another is that called so it seems to me it so it seems like i think maybe we might want to think about two sets of criteria because to me they they seem like they'd be different and and community and a sale just seems longer term way more permanent than json you know because of the pandemic we couldn't hold our three largest fundraisers this year and you know across the board we're cutting like everything by x amount and that's the criteria you know can we have a lease reduction for that for one year but to me that seems different than a sales disposition of property which is more permanent than i think has has a different set of criteria because of the pandemic may be involved and just because it's more permanent like everything it'd be a higher standard than you know can we have a sort of one-year rent reduction that we may give somebody disposition of property i think that makes sense to separate those clearly has a different set of criteria and i think the existing policy the existing policy says that sales should happen only on rare occasions my personal preference my personal belief is that [Music] public property should not be sold to a
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private entity period short of some extraordinary situation truly extraordinary situation um and personal preference my personal i would like is that i was hoping that this policy would enshrine that principle perhaps the wording there needs to be a little stronger in order to um to make it actually enshrined but um extraordinary so yes i agree um different different criteria for sale versus rethink i would like this [Music] that seems um and they then decide this is a question down the road like oh we're not gonna we're not gonna use it for that purpose so actually doesn't make sense we're going to get it out of our inventory which you know somewhat has happened with the washington high school property where the parks bureau was going to put an east portland community center there um the neighborhood embraced that and in fact lobbied the district like keeping it in public space but then we're not going to use it for that ultimately they backed away from that plan and i don't know if which in a sales if i'm not suggesting you do this but i'm just wondering the possibility like if you sold it to a public entity in one of those rare cases um could a term of the sale be that if they didn't use it for the intended purpose that the district [Music] okay i'm i'm just saying we're talking about general criteria because because because maybe one of the criteria is say you don't ever sell to a private entity well that assumes that you might sell to a public entity but how do you stop the like uh sell throughs so i'm just not suggesting it seeing if that's okay yeah i mean if you really want to stop it you either if you couldn't prevent them from reselling it you wouldn't sell [Music] claire you know another thing that i thought was interesting in further consideration of this policy how it's amended is that there's some fairly clear language in here about our responsibilities for the maintenance of our properties looking at that side of this policy and i think there's a few cases that could be made where we are not meeting our obligations for this policy like for example smith school i mean probably i mean a lot of cases that's kind of the most extreme in here about our responsibilities for the maintenance of our properties looking at that and i think there's a yeah that could be made where we are not meeting um so that you know there might there might be a way for us to think about how do we put into practice evaluation of our portfolio relative to that um obligation that's that's codified in policy because right now i think there's the total disconnect there so isn't that one of the things that the long-range facilities plan strategic plan is supposed to address of our portfolio relative to that um well i think there's just a basic policy about taking care of your property because right now i think there's some there's various languages if you don't take care of the roof you're not taking care of your property and the end of story is supposed to address it well and so i if this is addressed to me i just want to make sure you're asking me the question um certainly it's maintaining our buildings has been something that was put on you know some of the more capital um type repairs uh were put on hold for a long time in this district and certainly our review of our long-term planning process that has started with our facilities team will bring forward areas that we need to get to in in the future 10 years and so more least buildings are also when we're leasing out a building we have a responsibility of maintaining
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roofs and plumbing etc just as if we owned it if we were using it operationally so bring forward um areas that we have and the policy policy does have budgetary constraints as a reality in there uh in terms of so it is definitely i agree with you wholeheartedly that it is absolutely a stated um policy of the board but it also recognizes that there may not be enough funds to do all of it at once because how i read that language um liz do you think it would make sense to um pull in there uh disposition of property sale and property out and have it alone absolutely area and or was that considered when this policy was revised in plain op i think that policy was revised in the main about the sale of property it was a revision of excess property sales and dispositions and it was modified to be broader in terms of least interests as i recall it and i may be uh my recall i've not gone back to look at the prior version um i do think it makes sense uh when you're talking about the criteria for below market considerations that there are some considerations that are unique to sale um that are different than than rent payments so i think making sure the considerations are distinguished do they work in both categories does there need to be something different for uh a sale i think is a worthy distinction you're talking about the criteria so is there a is there a connection between where they rent or a building and any maintenance we have to do for that building including kind of anticipating um you know in five years this thing is going to need a new roof so we're going to build up use that rent to build up connection our maintenance fund for that so that we meet that obligation in a timely fashion and uh a corollary question for any mothball building that we've had kind of anticipating uh you know in five years this thing is going to need a new roof i'll have to look to the real estate team about how they collect and allocate rents uh and how that relates to capital improvements i don't know the answer to that and uh my understanding is that all goes into the general fund and so um then there's obviously some funds that come back for maintenance both on the construction side and the operations and maintenance side we do have now our facility condition assessment and we will be going to capital committee prioritizing that works so that we really understand what our most critical issues are um but depending on to speak to the least part of it what we do for maintenance depends on the terms of belief certainly something like a roof would be that's a capital item that would be our responsibility but i don't know how and maybe there's a way claire man no but how we would take the rents and separate them out into a different separate budget that was meant just for capital improvements of the buildings certainly something like a roof would be certainly certainly that's possible i'm not sure if that's necessarily a recommendation i think it's best for us to look at overall what our building needs are in making a plan accordingly rather than separating out the least buildings i think i think we have that process that's just starting certainly and so look forward to further discussion as we really recommend um take a look at the whole district yeah i i understand that uh claire uh but also i think there's there's some maintenance we can kind of kick the tin can down the road for a year or two or even three but if we're leasing a space um there's we're legally contracted uh there's a legal contract around maintaining it and and so i'd like to leave the question on the table about whether we should be dedicating at least a portion of the rent into some kind of dedicated maintenance fund and just a technical point some some leases are triple net so that the tenant is responsible for repairs too so there are multiple categories of leases just as we're talking about that so can we hold can we hold off on this discussion because it's
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um it's considerably weedier than than the policy level so um and we we have a whole other agenda item that's going to take some time so i want to make sure that we wrap this up can i can i try out a couple of criteria that we might want to think about um uh i think we should probably be considering um what what is happening inside the building um uh by the last couple of [Music] as opposed to unaffiliated organizations and probably direct service to um pps students and prioritize within the building i agree with that read it and i would um i would get even more specific and say that we should probably have specific language language around um charter schools and how we treat charter schools um pps charters or state you know charters within our jurisdictional boundaries so i think it would be good to have some specific language on that and then i would also like to see criteria elaborating on what's already in the policy that speaks to the community that is served and um really apply our risj to that and elaborate that in this policy so i think it would be good to have somebody so can i can i just mention that when we're talking about charter one of the criteria for approval of a charter is fiscal um fiscal stability which includes the ability to um to arrange for their own space though we need to be careful like if we're going to approval we're going to have we may potentially have two policies that could potentially be in conflict so we need to make sure that whatever language we use has to be aligned to be consistent for us to see policies so yeah i don't think i think that lens could be applied to um the charter applications um regardless of where we land on um how we treat charters as potential we need to lessen whatever um criteria i like that affiliated with pps's with pps or affiliated with pps students um where we land uh i think these you know serving are they providing predominantly historically underserved students um check or um using a eligible for free and reduced lunch criteria i think on charters just to draw a finer distinction affiliated with pps students well i i would view them as especially public if they have a charter from pps that they're affiliated with pps but then i would add this other layer into it um as well on the students that they're serving and i'm just i think i'll you know raise it from the if you look at where the charters are mostly um located there yes that they're you know not all but almost all on the other east side and that we start running into well when enrollment was declining it was like fine to have charters in like a former neighborhood school um but then when we needed the space then we had a church then we had kids not being able to go to having to go long distance to go to their neighborhood school so i think we should look at like not all charters serve um the same students and using the um racial equity and social justice ones to me would be an important filter to overlay on the public charter but then when we know because otherwise we could be committing ourselves to potentially having to go along eight buildings or however many charters we have we should look at like not all charters we only have a handful of charters that are in our buildings not very many most of our charters have their own independent lease
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but if they knew they could get one of our buildings i mean this is right having been on the charter committee over the over the years especially when a lot of them got approved in the early 2000s when state law like essentially districts had very little choice but to approve them one of the things was they all were asking for there was a very aggressive position by the state charter school association that districts should provide buildings so i would just be over the years especially again i think it's good to include them but i would want to have the same filter that you have very [Music] way that criteria are helpful to distinguish between tenants you want to make sure that you're not creating then a need to do the same thing for why you're treating some charters differently than others in terms of subsidizing because they're also a tenant so you just want to keep those in mind which which playing field you're on and are how are like uh entities being treated differently or what are the reasons for them to be treated differently if they are you want to make sure that you're not creating that okay can i get in the last comment please just wanted to thank staff for the three examples that you sent along uh from new york seattle and eugene um and that was that was interesting it it looks to me like new york there's basically no exceptions as i read that unless like it goes to a vote can i have the thing comment please seattle had some specific exceptions and a real matrix for how to how that would impact the actual lease terms um but it was interesting how they defined those [Music] it was they had a whole list of student support activities and it was conspicuous that they did not include charters or private schools it was supporting programs um and i'm trying to remember what eugene said so um i i think one of the options here is that we just don't do exceptions and it was concerned thank you and and i think i think we we should leave that as an option on the table [Music] okay i'm gonna i'm gonna draw this to a close because um we've only got 20 minutes left um liz did you get enough to stop crafting some um proposed language i i think we got enough for a direction for you all to consider and chew on at the next meeting um we'll also we'll bring that in the form where we'll redline it into the existing policy i just want to heads up to the committee they're also unrelated to this topic entirely are going to be a couple proposed staff cleanup edits i would say revisions that as we've implemented the policy over the last two years we realized where it may not be working as smoothly as intended i don't think they're going to be highly uh complex but they certainly you need to discuss them and make sure that what you intend as well but we can talk through that so we will we will come in three weeks with a redline policy okay okay cool thank you um okay uh i want to move on to the last agenda which is um the a review of the annual report on the formal public components and start a discussion uh about how the complaint policy has been playing out on the ground over the last two years um two years ago we made some pretty substantial revisions for the [Music] and it's been being implemented um and um i think after two years we're in a position where we ought to think about um [Music] start yeah i'll kick us off but then turn it over to lydia so as um the policy states every year we pull together data and trends from the school year around the formal complaint policy the types the number of complaints um how many get appealed and to what level um and then this year um like in years past our complaint
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coordinator lydia lopez gamboa uh prepared that for you all and sent it to the board um in july at the end of the fiscal year um so i will turn it over to lydia to give you the high point and then we'll open up for a question and answer and to what level thank you stephanie and then this year good afternoon my name is lydia lopez gamboa and i'm the executive assistant to the executive chief of staff stephanie snowden and i also oversee the formal complaint process to ensure that the district adheres to the procedures set forth by the formal public complaints policy as stephanie mentioned we provided you with a copy of the end of the year report it was shared with school board superintendent and his leadership team um the formal complaint policy was adopted in november of 2014 and it has been amended twice i believe and on the report it shows an increase on the number of formal complaints that are filed every school year um it continues to be an appropriate avenue for families to resolve concerns when informal process is not successful uh it has also provided staff with the opportunity to find ways that you can improve experience of families most notably uh providing training for staff who respond to complaints so that communications are authentic and lead with empathy and compassion uh as the complaints were processed during the 2019-2020 school year uh questions emerged that are not explicitly answered in the pps board policy or the associated administrative directive and in an effort to provide clarity we recommend that the board policy and governance committee consider the following recommendations um number one uh board policy on page four section d number two um could provide clarity as to what the district means by assistance in preparing a written complaint for example i had a couple of complaints who thought that the district would be able to provide them with legal assistance so that's one number two uh the policy could be more specific as to who can file from a complaint one example is if a non-resident of portland public schools who has concerns about the district would that person be able to file a formal complaint um and last one is uh the district received numerous formal complaints submitted by the same person that were duplicated for repeats of previously resolved complaints it would be helpful to update the policy to specify that once the board has ruled on a subject matter the complainant cannot file a new formal complaint with the same concern or concerns um stephanie do you have anything back to that repeat i'm getting a lot of background noise um if you're not speaking could you make sure that you're needed stephanie do you have anything so um i have a couple of questions um and a couple places just looking through it based on now that the but not the policy has been put to practice um since this this was a policy where we spent a lot of time on in 2017 and 18. but a couple places where there'd be some additional changes like um under d5 retaliation against any person who files or participates it's like retaliation by whom and a couple places so i think we all thought district staff or you know the people that were within the span of control for the district um 2017 but there's things in here that i think replaces uh are smaller changes but i guess one question i had is um one change we've had this past year is we no longer have an ombudsman and um sort of what impact that has has that had does it just mean that those people who actually use the services of the ombudsman now um just hadn't have any support or have they gone into the public complaint
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process or did it did they actually get their issues resolved at a school level and just you know and um i don't think we you just have a staff person leave and like what happened to the body of their work so i'd be interested in a little analysis of that as like hey these are the types of complaints you know the categories of complaints and you know these ones in this category all now are going to the tile line coordinator or these ones are going to you know the community engagement team you know so getting a little bit of analysis on that and then the second um piece that i think would really be really good practice is for us to complain um you know the categories of complaints and get a you know these ones in this category after the whole process is over um you know what feedback did we have we got from people who engaged in our complaint process and analysis well i think people who go all the way to the final vote by the board um obviously they felt it hasn't gotten resolved which is why they've continued it and so a question would be so why did they feel compelled um to continue the process what what what wasn't tied off to them was it something policy was it a process people could go all the way um did you just get a better understanding for that from having talked to some of the parents um over the last couple years who went through the process there were things that they said like hey this this was super supportive i felt heard um you know this change came out of the process even though i went all the way to the board i feel i feel good about it you know what happened and others like hey i had no idea what was happening in the process or you know it would have been helpful if this had happened so i think getting feedback from like even though it may appear to be critical i think that some of it will be very useful because the point is to try and out of the process even though it went all the way to the board resolve things in a way that we may not agree with them but they don't that they feel like they had an opportunity within our process or to raise an issue of concern and potentially get part of it addressed but one of the things i've been thinking a lot about with the complaint process is that you know in the policy itself it makes very clear that um the the best way to resolve school-based concerns is closest to the experience and closest to the student and so i think i think we've spent a lot of time like on this policy and with the process when things are appealed to the board but we really haven't spent enough time in my opinion downstream in supporting um how parents and families are received when they raise school-based concerns and i think that this has taken us to a place where um the experience is often unsatisfactory to the parents probably because building administrators don't have enough guidance about how they should be um responding what a pro what a what a healthy process is to respond to concerns that parents raise and julia this gets to your point um a little bit about the void of the ombudsman because some things were did benefit from that role it's unsatisfactory a lot for families but it's also really unsatisfactory for administrators because there's a missing link where there we skip this step of like authentic conversation and healing at the most immediate level at the school-based level and it all starts getting into this overly formalistic um process that is frustrating and feels unsatisfying to everybody involved including our administrators who really sincerely want to just conversation try to resolve whatever's not working right for a kid level at the school and you know i think that um i think that we could benefit from you know some type of structured support from the office of of school performance so that there's actually maybe like a mediator embedded within that department um who uh is you know it's different than an ombudsman and part of i think part of what was both positive and negative about the way the ombudsman role was week before was it was independent and they reported to the board but if there was someone that could
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be more responsive who's really within the office of school performance their one of their great values is that they're connected to the teams that can actually make a difference for the kids and families and can probably do it pretty quickly and i suspect from conversations that i've had that there's support for that type of role and position within the office of school performance um partly because it would just be a good investment because right now we've got a lot of really really valuable people who spend an inordinate amount of time tangled up in these overly formal processes instead of people who are able to sit down have a conversation have a restorative process really figure out what's at the heart of a parent's concern um and and because right now be faithful to what we say is the heart of our values around this complaint process which is revolving things resolving things at the most immediate level at the school level so i i would like to work toward creating a mechanism that that builds that in something that's at the heart of the parent's concern um if i could respond i know there's other four committee member members who will want to talk but um it's as if we have a mind meld um amy director constant what you're saying we um we do continue to create a mechanism that uh encouraged that that issues be addressed at the school level closest to the problem and i think deputy superintendent cuellar as chief of schools and as deputy has done a really good job um building in a support team of principal supervisors and above to to support administrators um with this process it's not we're not there yet but it's a lot better than when i first got here um i think they feel the structure and the leadership of that side of the organization has really been built up to serve as sort of customer service delivery um we've also put in um so so we are working on a formal complaints of training for administrators and folks from the osp team like you mentioned and also they've gone through some communications training around how to write how to respond to concerns how to listen authentically how to um communicate with empathy um so there are some efforts underway i totally agree with what you were saying and then we've talked about creating a new position in osp office to school performance that would be um some sort of family resolution coordinator so they would have um they would have an eye to what lydia and the complaints process is but they would hopefully get to some of these in issues informally so it's different than an ombudsman it's within the osp team but it can really track resolution issues and work with administrators and their supervisors above them on these issues so that is a position we are creating hopefully so i just wanted the committee to know so it's different than did you just say that is a position that we are creating like it's happening now yes but it can sweet so one thing that's worth noting is the ombudsman didn't report to the board they reported didn't they report to your office yes [Music] [Music] so real quickly i wanted to reaffirm julia's point of getting some kind of customer satisfaction survey out there and uh that includes both process and content you know you guys treated me great and screwed over my kid or vice versa i ended up getting what i wanted some kind of satisfaction um and i wanted to thank lydia who's our public face and i know has taken some abuse over the years uh thank you thank you thank you i hope uh you've gotten that humongous raise or vice versa thank you very much i better stop there dan i wanted to thank you so um we're we're rapidly running out of time i want to make sure that the students get an opportunity to ask any questions over the years thank you thank you thank you i hope uh you've gotten that thank you big
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question um i have watched the video so speak up if you have something to say i think they were both shaking their heads and i personally just been listening and uh this isn't part of the complaint process um the policy per se but i think um especially when things just having a document that kind of runs through what the actual process is and so like i we don't we only see you when he gets to the step that gets to the board but even then it's like is it public is it private who's in you know or is an executive session who's in the room what's in the range of the board can do it's sort of a mystery and i think and not intentionally so but i mean it's and i think the actual at least for me is i'm going to speak myself as a board meeting especially in this virtual rule world i'm not sure like hey am i in an executive session or if there's a student involved like how do we talk about them so one of the things that i would just encourage so that both the board and the complainant have the same understanding of like here are the discrete sets of the steps of the process especially in this virtue so that i'm not sure like hey am i i think sometimes people get wound up around the process um and then that makes their complaint more urgent or the resolution less satisfactory because i mean it's people get anxious about engaging the process especially when you get to the very end and it's the board so that would just be a process improvement that's not policy related i think sure i appreciate that julia and lydia can speak to this if she wants to i um and thank you director bailey um for commenting on lydia lydia is such a friendly and responsive complaints coordinator she gets back to people when she's on vacation um she is always monitoring and not only really quick to respond and acknowledge something from a complainant but also keeps everyone on their toes getting the deadlines met um but she also does have quite a bit of back and forth such a friend there is back and forth with complainants explaining what the process will be explaining what the board meeting will look like we can always build on what we do now to make that clearer so i appreciate that feedback yeah i mean this is everyone i say as much i think for the board of like um this is the time because we get just different complaints and then there's you know we might be flipping in and out of executive session what can we say what can't we say i think i said this is just me speaking as a board member would be helpful to have that same information knowing what their expectations because i agree almost every complaint i talked to like raves about lydia and i was like how often does that happen that the complaint coordinator is like the most popular person in the process but again just so we all know what the kind of the ground rules thank you director of frame edwards there's always room for improvement and we have created uh you know uh communication between the complainant and us but uh there's always room for before improvement and uh we'll take those and make some adjustments and what i wanted to say the i agree with the uh appreciate the three points that uh staff brought up for uh changing the policy or clarifying the policy i think uh yeah thumbs up let's let's move [Applause] going forward thank you for the report and thank you for all your work lydia um you're welcome i would i would not be good in your job let me just leave it there um so i i appreciate you um out of time so for the future reference um i personally i think it would be helpful to get a little more narrative attached to the wrong numbers um because it's um you know it's hard to know it's hard to interpret what the numbers mean so for example we had a big spike in formal complaints in 2018-19 so that could either mean oh boy
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you know things were not good um or oh look we pps finally has a complaint process that i can navigate so i'm going to put in complaints um one would be not so good one would be better so um so it would be helpful and and especially since you've got contact with everybody you put um i'm guessing you have a sense of where the trends are and it would be helpful to get kind of your sense of how things are going um and if you can marry your subjective interpretation with the objective numbers um now we got something so um and i don't even know if this is possible to get but um i would be very curious to find out um of all of the interpretations families who have complaints and make them known to somebody in the system how many of them actually wind up as a formal complaint as opposed to getting resolved at a much earlier level and i'm hoping that it's a relatively i mean i would assume it's a relatively small percentage of all of the complaints that somebody within ptsd that end up as a formal complaint um and i don't even know if we keep any numbers on that or not but that it would be useful info and i'm hoping um and it would help us identify i mean i would assume it's kind of trend and then i guess the last thing i would say is um when we made the changes in this policy uh one of the things that um i think we explicitly said in the policy um i don't have it right in front of me but um i think we wanted to reframe it as uh policies help the district get better and help us identify you know problem areas and then you know fix this policy um uh one of the things it would be very um i think useful i think if um if we had any examples you know in these annual reports if there you know over the course of a year if you can really point to instances where um a complaint led to some concrete improvement within the district useful i think um um i think it would be instructive examples you know like systemic improvement refraining it's systemic improvement yeah yeah um and i think it would point to if nothing else that would make us all feel better that um you know that led to some pain of the complaint process actually has some good payoff potentially um you know in the days that might help um systemic improvement so anyway um we're now at 604 so um i want to open up again to students amy you have any final word anybody yeah one last thing um so this is like a formal complaint process and you guys were just discussing how it could be resolved at the school level or maybe at the teacher level is there a policy regarding how that should function um i want to open up again i don't think so it's hard to legislate like goodness good listening empathy working together good minds working together how do we how do we make this a win-win i don't know that that's yeah other than i mean it's it sounds like uh like our uh good listening uh forget the role the titles again craig welar is working on you know you know we can do some specific training with our administrators on can we make this a win-win on how to resolve that there is a sentence or two in the policy that says you know whenever possible um issues should be resolved at the lowest possible level you know as close to the classroom and or the school as possible but i think that's the only policy that governs administrators [Music] okay any other um okay so what's going to happen the next steps now um um staff are going to come back with some um language suggestions um based on
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will you have those available for us at the next community um okay okay so um so three weeks from now and whenever that is um roseanne um actual date when the next comments you've [Music] um 9 14 i think rita um september 14th okay so um so at the next committee meeting we're going to have uh a couple of policies that will have actual language revision proposals on the table right um we have at least two policies under consideration do we have uh communication strategy engagement strategies around either of them that's an excellent excellent question bringing us all the way back to the beginning um and i i don't know the answer to that is anybody at least two policies under consideration i i i think we don't these were initiated these are both board requested policies and i think it'd be fair for staff to come with a proposal to the board about that on at the 914 meeting this was a conceptual conversation first but i think the staff can bring that proposal and it can be discussed at the next meeting okay and that'll be that'll be our first opportunity to um execute on the uh this new approach to community engagement conversation um anything else it can be discussed are we good at the next meeting okay i'm going to adjourn the meeting thank you everybody and uh thank you for the song at the beginning happy birthday thank you engagement [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]
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