2020-08-27 PPS School Board Retreat

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2020-08-27
Time	16:00:00
Venue	Virtual/Online
Meeting Type	retreat
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education, Board Retreat 8/27/2020

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all filled out ahead of time two okay i'm getting an echo trainings rita is going to walk us through the powerpoint that michael casserly and aj crabill brought to us before the time when michelle andrew and i were on the board this really is an outgrowth of the work that we've done through the harvard institute and through the council of great city schools and our work with aj um i just wanna if anyone's watching wanna be clear that what we're evaluating ourselves on as a board is how we function as a board relating to our four board goals and that are all student outcome focused and those four goals are around third grade reading fifth grade math high school readiness and post-secondary readiness um so when we're looking at things like monitoring and accountability we're looking at specifically what the board's role is in accountability and monitoring of the goals and the goal outcomes not the other accountability and monitoring functions we have as a board i also did just want to remind everybody that our board goals are grounded in our vision um the pps vision pbs reimagined um and i thought it was really helpful for me to review what our graduate portrait was those nine traits of a graduate that we really want to think about as what a product of the portland public school system look like so a graduate this is the these are the nine areas graduates are inclusive collaborative problem solvers inquisitive critical thinkers with deep core knowledge transformative racial equity leaders resilient and adaptable lifelong learners powerful and effective communicators positive confident and connected sense of self which is the only one that doesn't have like um a noun at the end which is weird or like a descriptor anyway influential and informed global stewards reflective empathetic and empowered graduates and optimistic future oriented graduates um so you know we had i think um michelle i remember at the end of our session um that we had a couple weeks ago around um our racial equity healing work that you had highlighted again the need for self-evaluation and i know amy has talked about it and rita and scott and that this is something we've all been saying like how do we function better how do we do this work more efficiently more collaboratively and so the idea was to really spend this year doing some of the stuff we've talked about from our learnings at harvard the way the best practices from osba and so i you know i don't think any one of us actually has the capacity to do all the things and so um i knew as board chair that i didn't have the ability to take on this role and so this was something rita was really passionate about this idea of how do we work together to become a more effective board and so i asked her to kind of take the lead on this because i knew that like today has been one of those crazy insane church days when like nothing went right and i feel um really inadequate and kind of crappy and so i'm really glad that i can turn over some of this to rita to be like okay i don't have to do it all there are other people who have skills and investment and passion around this um so that's why rita is going to be leading us today and leading us through some of this board development work because um you know it's a it's a big lift the things we have to do and so we all need to do our pieces um the other part is that rita is retired and basically you know has nothing but time on her hands so we've gotta give her a project to keep her out of trouble um so she's gonna kind of lead us through
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this instrument um and kind of how the conversation is gonna go we are gonna stop at seven just to honor everyone's time um and know that this is part of an ongoing conversation so um we don't have to get it all out tonight but it gives us a chance to like begin some of this self-evaluation work and uh board improvement and with that i will let rita take it away uh just real quick uh do we have breaks scheduled you know the two minutes stand up and walk around in 45 minutes kind of a break yes okay well we we don't have a formal time set up for breaks but i've asked ailey to um kind of be a time keeper and um as we get to kind of natural transition points if if you could remind us to take a little break um but i want to keep it a little fluid to see how you know so that we're not interrupting in the middle of a sentence i i appreciate that but i also been in you know the last time we've gathered like this we didn't get a break and i think it's important to honor strict breaks uh if you can set a timer or i might be a b type keeper i won't interrupt anybody in the middle of a sentence i promise or an idea we have all the technology here to settle a timer for 45 minutes okay i mean yeah let's say roughly in 45 every 45 minutes we'll have a break that's yeah militaristic yes thank you okay so one thing also i have a i do have a hard stop at seven so i would ask that we as we get closer to the seven o'clock hour start landing the plane if we're still flying i do too okay i have a hard time at six and i'm giving you all an extra hour thank you michelle okay okay and um and i don't think that anybody who's tuning in heard this um andrew scott is um is going to be joining us in a few minutes he got hung up at work so um he should be joining us shortly but he asked us not to wait on him so um so i think uh what we're i think the point of today is to um to come to a sort of um this is an opportunity for all of us on the board to kind of calibrate where we think we are individually and collectively in terms of how we're um andrew we just started so yeah perfect timing okay sorry i was late except for if you want to negotiate different breaks it's too late yeah and you missed my amazing introduction so just be sad okay i'll go back and watch the video okay so um so i think this is a an opportunity for us to do some self-reflection and it's something that [Music] those of us who've been on the board since 2017 have talked about pretty regularly that this is something we ought to do um but we have not done it and um i am not aware of any previous pps school boards um going through a real self-evaluation either so this is going to be um we're going to be piloting this thing and um it's it may feel a little awkward it's a brand new instrument um and i think one of the things that we can do tonight keep in mind as we're walking through it um is this instrument getting us the information that we want to have and um and should we continue to use it going forward um so that's going to be one of the things that i will ask as we approach the end of today's meeting um but it's an opportunity to kind of do some self-assessments and what's working what's not working as well as we would like it to uh what would we what do we want to improve on and ultimately like what do we want to how do we as a board define um high functioning you know what would success look like if um if we could address some of the um some of the things that are not working as well as we would like um and then ultimately by the end of tonight um i think it would be helpful if we could identify some next steps
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so i'm hoping that we'll have roughly half an hour at the end to to kind of work through what you thought of the instrument and ideas that have come up over the course of the discussion that we'd like to pursue and what we want to focus on in terms of board development for this school year um so to start us off um i wanted to uh i wanted to try to um put on the screen um the powerpoint that um those of us who were here in the spring of 2019 went through with mike casterly and aj craybill it's their their um kind of introductory powerpoint on um the evidence-based for the council of great city schools uh governance model for school boards um and there some of us have already seen this for some of you it's going to be new but i'm hoping it won't be completely unfamiliar because it's kind of the basis for the training that we've had so far so even if you haven't seen the actual powerpoint it should be it should be relatively comfortable for you i think um okay so i have not done a presentation using google before so bear with me i'm going to try to make this work so while you're trying to make that work i'm just going to apologize for the meaning if it looks like i'm not looking directly at my screen at all of you it's because i don't have any ability to print anything out so i'm having to look at the documents on another computer so it's not that i'm not paying attention okay all right so no paper can you see that no okay you see the button on the on the bottom left that says pre now right that's what i did and it's not hang on come on all right let me back out start all over again that's good we're modeling good learning organization behavior right now so when you figure it out maybe you can share it with us okay i keep clicking on the share button and nothing is happening come on rita i think you're referring to the same document that you emailed us so we can look at it from our email i am okay this is this is not working so okay so um do somebody else want to just put it up if can anybody do it it's not letting me do it is somebody [Music] was drawing did that work did that work that worked oh okay all right it's finicky well now i think michelle is actually presenting okay um you're watching me full time and no one can hear me so yeah okay all right well um i wanted to let me see if um okay do you have i just switched to a slide that says conclusions based on are you seeing that yeah it's small but we can see it we can see that it's it's it looks like uh the frames all you have to do is put you guys uh hit the pin and it will make it the screen see if you see that if you see the little pin on
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your on that that slide hit the pin and it should make it your whole screen how's that network that worked for me okay all right so so roseanne just helped us out thank you okay so i don't know whose screen you're saying um okay so um this is i'm gonna blow through some of these slides and just focus on like four that i think are actually relevant to what we're doing tonight um and it's just worth noting this is um this is the background that went into their um this is the evidence that they're using for their for their model and for all of the training coaching that they do and this one i'm sharing this through a chromebook and it's a it's a powerpoint so some of the things didn't translate the next few slides are just showing um where different school districts show up on um like quantitative data for student outcomes um and we're not on this are we no no we're not on um but the the details are less important than the the concept that there's wide variations in um the student outcomes across different districts um okay so uh the things that based on the research that they've done um the council has decided that there are certain characteristics for districts and boards that are associated with better student outcomes and i'm going to read it in case people can't see it on their screen so leadership and governance goals accountability tiered strategy district school and groups instructional program capacity building and data so those are the components of um that they think are associated with um higher performing school school districts um leadership and governance um are people able to see this screen and read it or yes yes we can it's got the bullet points there that starts with leadership and government's evidence ends with data when you're ready to move forward if you'll just let her know so she can move to the next slide so so whose screen is are is people whose screen are people seeing mine or roseanne's they're singles okay all right so okay so roseanne i think i'm on i'm looking at page slide seven i think it's the next slide roseanne there we go all right so let me okay um so if everybody can read this i don't think i need to to read off the bullet points but essentially i think the the point is that leadership and governance the school board has a role the superintendent has a role both both of those both the board and the superintendent and his staff um need to understand what the role is what each each each other's role is um and i think the the main takeaway here is that um we're supposed to be working in concerts and trying to keep the main thing the main thing if we're really focused on student outcomes then everything that the board does and the superintendent staff do should be kind of specifically designed to advance the cause of improving student outcomes and i and i think what we're trying to achieve is um consistency and predictability in approach and in focus um roxanne next slide
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next slide oh we got it okay um so sorry so the goals um and we we did an exercise last year where we came up with the four goals for both the board and the district that were specifically focused on um student outcomes and um and provided kind of interim measures their three to five year goals with interim measures quantifiable interim measures that um that will allow us to hold ourselves accountable hold the district accountable um allow the community to hold all of us accountable and and allow us to see how we're making progress or not and then make any course corrections that might be necessary um okay next slide okay accountability um so one of the there are a number of ways that um the the board the superintendent and the district um should be held accountable and i think pps is is really kind of on the early in the early stages of creating and maintaining um accountability structures and mechanisms that um that will allow us to to measure progress and identify places where we need to change the way we're doing things and allow us to focus in particular on the goals that we have chosen uh very explicitly focus on student groups that have been historically underserved um and and that ties in with a theory of action where if we can make progress in the outcomes for those student groups the theory is that we should be also making progress in outcomes for all other student groups [Music] but the reverse is not necessarily the case if we just take aggregate numbers it we can be the um the measures that we use could be indicating progress but the progress may be because of the um because the demographics uh may be skewing the results to to make um improvements appear larger than they are so the for example middle class white students could be making great progress but we may still be leaving behind students who are students of color students living in poverty students with special needs um so we're making an attempt to disaggregate all of the information that we're using and um and using the data to establish common goals and and um monitoring systems to to make sure that we're actually pursuing a goal okay next slide um rita i have a question um so i know this is a data-driven process and you just talked about disaggregating data to get a finer point on on on where we where we actually are do we have um outcome do we have outcomes particularly um with students of color um i what you said about um the demographic the mix of who who were who we're talking about may skew one way or the other might skew higher by the presence of white middle class students but what what are we looking at in terms of outcomes you know does the council for great city schools have any examples of school districts that have adopted these practices where the black and brown students have have actually improved yes yeah there's cities that we can look to to to find that data are there links or well it's not just it's not just the urban school district there's a lot of other um there there's other information that feeds into these these statistics um i just i'd be interested in being pointed to some studies that um that show positive outcomes for students of color so if um if you look at
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the the packets that um that i said the student outcomes focused governance the continuing continuous improvement framework that that we used for the um for the self-assessment at the back of it is a fairly extensive bibliography um that you can you can look at with um that has the provides a lot of the evidence base for the um for what i'm going to right now i mean this this part is um this is coming from the council so these are the components that the council has determined are are correlated with student improvement okay so these are kind of broad general statements about if if you want to see improvements in student outcomes um these are the elements of an improvement plan that is associated with the outcomes that people want right it does and i did find the bibliography thank you um but if that data is not it disaggregated by race then then we don't know as you just mentioned whether that the data is skewing you know or over to the right if if we're getting improvements for white middle-class kids and not everybody else so so that's why i was wondering i i haven't looked into this bibliography and i probably won't for a few days um i'm curious anyway it's just a question i have and it'll be an ongoing question okay um i'll dive into the bibliography when we're off the call okay okay um i think what you're going to find is that the districts that have actually made the most progress are precisely the ones that disaggregate yeah and focused on they focus on the student groups that have historically been underserved and underperforming under quote unquote underperformed um okay so um so this tiered strategy this is mostly about what the district does in terms of um how it kind of tears out the work on a day-to-day basis um next slide um and this is all of the info around the instructional program again this is primarily the district work next slide um building capacity um this uh in pps this is a very big item because there was very little central office capacity to do most of the work that is associated with improvement next slide data next slide i just want to focus on a couple of the slides that that really focus on the board stuff um so all of these all of these components are part of a they have to fit together to have um a a district that is uh kind of fully aligned and has the has the wherewithal to make the improvements that people want and in particular the board and the district need to be working in tandem next slide okay so these are the things that [Music] these are the kind of tasks that the council is saying the boards should focus on vision goals um representation of the larger community in terms of values and priorities um making sure it hires the the right superintendent um setting a culture and clear expectation the board prioritizing what you know where the focus ought to be and making sure that everybody understands um what those priorities are uh focusing its own work on those priorities um making sure that we're
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creating um sustainability in the the priorities that we have the goals all of us and then making sure that we have a monitoring process to keep both us and the administration focused on student outcomes okay next slide i think that's it okay all right i i just thought it was worth spending a few minutes going through that slide um as to to kind of ground the discussion that we're going to have for the rest of it because the instrument that we used is directly coming out of that governance model that the council promotes so um hey rita can i i wanted to rita can i say something for a second about instrument i mean i i personally would like to think of this exercise as sort of our first opportunity to reflect on um how we want to hold ourselves accountable going forward um i think it was not very useful to to rate ourselves or to go through this exercise with this instrument because this instrument is intended for boards that have discussed it at the outset that these were going to be the goals and then structured meetings and structured governance according to the very explicit criteria that it that it puts forward most of which weren't really applicable to us because we hadn't um we hadn't used it as our our guiding path before so um i would just like like to put in a plug for determining whether we want to use this framework going forward in which case we really will need to change how we structure our meetings and um then just generally talk about the values in each of them and and i would caution against putting too much weight on um our performance relative to the criteria because that doesn't doesn't really make sense i i agree i think i think this is great the reflective self-reflection is excellent but when i was looking through this it made me realize that we didn't have we hadn't established a baseline measurement from which to sort of evaluate on and so um i was hoping tonight that we would kind of establish that baseline and set some goals around some of the criteria that appeared in that in that um evaluative tool so i would just sorry rita before i would just jump in to say i found it useful because it showed me how how far away we are from this and so i agree i mean we didn't talk about it we didn't structure it so we shouldn't expect to have done well um i thought it was interesting michelle you and i have exactly the same scores which i thought was interesting and they're both very low um but but what i found most most helpful at least for me as a starting point for this conversation was okay so this is what the council's great city schools is saying an effective board should be and this is how far away we are from that which to me makes a really hopefully really robust conversation tonight about do we want to be there or do we want to make some changes to what they think and and the extent we are going to deviate let's be really explicit about it about why we're deviating and what that means i andrew i think those are uh and actually three previous speakers uh good good points all um i think it would be interesting um and there are some points in here that aren't it isn't immediately obvious to me why we would go down a particular path that that are embedded in these criteria it would be interesting to circle back with somebody from the council to say you know like i don't get the safeguard thing why is it important um and to get some you know real world experience of well in denver they didn't have a safeguard and x happened um or when and when in particular it was useful for moving a district forward so um i'm all for a critical review on what's what seems useful to us and whatnot and also circling back with the council uh because there may be something uh in their experience that we're missing so can i just explain um why i i suggested using this tool um i looked at we've been talking about
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coming up with some some mechanism to do a self-evaluation for a long time and um and we really hadn't even we hadn't talked about any of it aside from yeah we ought to do it um so when ailey asked me to um to help with coming up with some kind of process for um ford professional development um i started looking at the available self-evaluation instruments that are out there in the world and and i have to say most of them were very not impressive um they were they tended to be just a kind of series of questions somewhat random it seemed to me um there was no rubric to understand like what most of them were very long the osb is 72 questions long and there's no rubric provided to you know what does it mean that on question number 32 you answered a no but on question 15 you answered a yes are those at all related it was very very unsatisfying as any kind of evaluation tool um [Music] the the council one is the most of the ones that i looked at and i looked at at least a dozen of them um it's the one that actually is coherent um has has a model that it is aligned with and if you subscribe to the model it gives you um you know a real rubric to to evaluate where you are in the different categories and then kind of identifies a pathway for improvement now we may or may not decide to go forward with using this instrument but we got to stop someplace if we're going to do this at all we've got to start someplace this seemed like the most reasonable tool to use and we can decide at the end of tonight whether it was useful or not and if it was useful do we want to continue with it under what circumstances how often what do we want to do with this um but i think it is uh it's a starting place and i'm hoping it'll get some um it'll prompt some conversations some discussions that will uh allow us to kind of pinpoint some areas that we might want to focus on and then you know suggest some concrete actions that we could take so um i know we haven't had a full-on discussion about this particular instrument before trying to apply it but it is consistent with the training that we've done over the last year and a half so um so anyway so there it is um i guess um yeah guys i was just gonna say sort of um having gone through several sessions with aj where he did like walk through our agenda and like how much does this match the time i mean i i think there's some really strong elements to it um but there can also some be some rigidity to like hey we're only doing this it's like oh yeah but we have this you know legal obligation to do these other things that sometimes if it's too rigidly adhered to um then you're not going to be able to meet your other legal obligations that you need to do so for for me having just the past time that we've worked with it seems like the essence of it is worthwhile and a good guide for activities but how it gets implemented in the rigidity or flexibility is um i think a good topic for us to discuss and i i think the hope from tonight is that you know we have been talking about i think a sense that we all have that things are going well and we're moving in the right direction with the exceptional leadership we have as a district and like you said michelle there's a long way still to go we still have a very wide achievement gap we know i think there's all things that we get irritated at about how our processes are and how we show up and and communication and the way we function and so you know this whole year of board development is this attempt to say okay the seven of us have have had a year together now as a team and so we're ready to really talk about
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what do we know what's not working and how do we improve and so you know this tool has its has its strengths and has its minuses and i think julia what you just said is you know that rigid adherence and michelle i think you've said some things about like um the way white supremacy sometimes shows up and i think there's some elements of rigid adherence to a set of rules that kind of fall into that so i think just exactly like andrew said this is a great launching off point for us to really i think every single person on this on the board wants to be a high performing district we give of our time we give of our energy to do that and it's like okay let's let's start taking the steps that we need to do to really begin to be what we think we could be together um and you know we're gonna disagree and we're gonna have different understandings of things which is why this conversation tonight is super important so that we can really really do that work um i'm looking at the clock and seeing that it's 4 43 so michelle i'm wondering if now would be a good time for a couple minute stretch break it's a it's an ending time between one part of rita's presentation and the next which i happen to know because i have her notes um so does that sound like a good thing to take a moment here to do a stretch break it does um yeah and i appreciate that the the cadence of the meeting here is great my timer says it's still 11 minutes off but that's probably because i got it started late i started the timer late it didn't come time so can we can i can i offer a process improvement just a suggestion that after someone gets done talking and presenting we say are there any questions here here because that way it's more of a it's a discussion not it's like i'm telling you this and this is how we're doing it does anyone have any questions after what i just said just as best practice so we make sure that every voice in the room introvert extrovert whomever has an opportunity to in their own time present a question okay so do we want to take a break or do we want to wait ten minutes let's take a break now i think it's a good timing okay two minutes or how long two two minutes okay [Music] [Music] sorry i'm at the mountain my son's
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working up here so spending a lot of time up here that's great just a pretty background behind you with those trees it is that rita why don't you go ahead and uh start at the next section and i know andrew will be with us in a moment okay so in the spirit of being responsive um before we move on any questions so far so um so the next the next thing i i thought um i'd like to move right into the instrument and um in our responses so if you if you can take a look i'm not going to bother trying to share my screen so um if you can take a look at the um the scoring sheet that i sent out that compiled everybody's results um i think it would be helpful if we just take a couple of minutes to look at the overall results and does anything leap out at you is anything surprising about this does anything confirm your suspicions or what do you see in this i i feel like uh this holds my uh my reputation as the board optimist um because i gave higher scores on the values and guard rails and on the continuous improvement than the rest of y'all although amy's out front there on the communication and collaboration so um that was a piece and i think whenever we score something you know we all have our own internal sort of uh way we score things um so that's part of it but i do like that michelle and andrew are are in agreement on everything that's that's pretty awesome i also um i hadn't responded that i scored a zero on uh guard rails and the other one i responded that just not applicable because none of the criteria were anything that we had committed to monitoring i just want to say andrew and i are more alike than you would think so i noticed that right away too but i also noticed the range of scores which i think that if you have a diverse group you're going to expect a range um so i think that's a good i think that's a good marker of diversity but i was i was the people graded like everything's great like on the on the higher end um it was concerning i i felt like i had maybe had missed some conversations or something um we are grading on things such as do we set time at each board meeting to discuss where we're at and we we actually don't really have those things regularly put on the agenda so and some of the things also weren't applicable as well yeah i think michelle you know i'm looking at it on every single one except for one we're all in the in the two adjoining columns so like on vision and goals we all either say we're approaching our meeting on values and guardrails we either say not student focused or approaching you know um there's only communication collaboration is the only one where we're spread across three columns so while i do see diversity i think we all we all have a sense that we're not there yet um no matter where we are on the um how high we scored i think another interesting thing looking at it and maybe this is um maybe to the conversation or the point you just raised michelle is one of the patterns i see is maybe a little bit difference between people who have been on the board for a longer period of time i'm seeing just in sort of the middle column more board members
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who have been longer so when i looked at it i wasn't just thinking of the last year it's like a little bit of a continuum um so maybe that's um reflective as well as we all are like starting with different bass lines anything else so i think just second read to sorry i was muted i think also we can kind of look at it as a little bit of a chronological continuum going down the categories because to me the first one the vision and goals is foundational and that is the piece that we've worked on and i think we've made a dramatic shift um over the last year slightly year plus um on being much more student achievement focused um but the after that first criterion the other ones were so specific about you know monitoring tools that we hadn't talked about that you know it's hard to focus on but i think it's like you're committed to the first and then you each of them is a building block where you say okay how are we to hold ourselves accountable for the general aspirations under each of these and then build from there okay so one more thing i would like to say too about this the vision and goals um some of our members rated that as meeting student outcome focus so at what point are we looking at actual outcomes we still have like a large number of black boys that aren't meeting you know the vision and the goals that we set out you know a year and a half ago or whatever are are we at some point i mean we have this intention but at some point are we what are we looking at in terms of that's not an outcome it says we're meeting student outcomes focus the focus is is focused on student outcomes yet the actual student outcomes at what point do we look at that to grade ourselves on how well we're doing in that area and i understand that might be it might be um the tool that we're using might not have you know might be a failing of the tool and that we're not saying how are kids actually doing compared to this vision that we have of course we have a vision you know that all could succeed how close are we getting to that so michelle monitoring the outcomes is is our board goals themselves and this is our tool for kind of checking on our governance but we need to make sure that we're actually having fidelity to our board goals and that we're monitoring those on a quarterly basis right which which we were and then covet happened and that's kind of not things but just when we were setting in settling into that rhythm so i michelle my interpretation of that is as are we as a board did we set up measurable goals that are focused on student achievement and again particularly on african-american and native american students and then secondarily then do we have an administration that has a plan for actually beginning to meet those goals do we have interim goals that show progress towards that ultimate goal and are we as a board focusing most of our time on how are we doing as a district uh and on that you know we set up a quarterly monitoring specifically around the map tests and the other indicators that that we're using um so it's not nobody thinks we're meeting our goals it's are our meetings oriented towards focusing on those goals with the theory being that the more we focus on those goals the more our uh our staff will be focused on meeting those goals because that's how we're going to evaluate the superintendent right i think maybe what is that and i'm sorry if that was man's planning okay thank you for being here thank you for being conscious about that no it wasn't at all i and that's how i i mean that's how i use the tool okay and and yeah you're right i mean covet has interrupted some of that reporting and i i understand i've gotten reports from from russ brown for instance on how
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we're how we're looking at progress um i think maybe at state michelle's point a slightly different way is like even if we were like met all the criteria of the mastering student outcomes focus we shouldn't pat ourselves in the back if actually the outcomes have not um so we have to be careful just thinking that it's a tool like hey we're doing all these things we're all in the right hand column we've you know are in the high performance in the governance state but like if it actually doesn't hasn't translated to growth and performance uh better performance than it doesn't then we've got to think about the tool so i think is that michelle a different way of looking at it or yeah yes thank you um it's interesting that i need a translator on the board but but i but yeah it is thank you for clarifying sorry i didn't and scott too so i didn't mean to clarify i just want to make is it was that the point you were making yes it was the point i was trying to make okay then i got it thank you so i i thank you i mean i i think this is going to be the dilemma really no matter what tool we use um and no matter which category we look at um that there's a there's a distinction between um [Music] like when we're talking about the goals there's a distinction between what the board's piece of accomplishing the goals can be um versus accomplishment of the goals which is actually going to happen at the district level so so this is for for the board piece of this um how how did we do how are we doing um so even if we you know even if we all marked ourselves you know gave us the highest grade on vision and goals because we have them um it doesn't necessarily mean that we've accomplished the goals um but it's i think this tool is and this tool is new for me too so it's like i'm interpreting it along with everybody else but it seems to me that it's trying to get the board to focus on our focus like what is it that we're spending our time and energy and muscle on as opposed to other things so um so for the vision and goal you know i mocked us as meeting minus sort of um because we actually we actually have goals we actually adopted a vision like they exist and that's that's not nothing um have we but it says nothing about the progress we've made toward achieving the goal it's just are we do we have goals and are we paying attention to them so so i think we're going to have to keep going backing back and forth as we go through this thing to distinguish between you know the district outcomes versus our the way we're doing our work does that i agree it does i i completely agree the the presence of the vision and goals is what we're evaluating ourselves on that we have we have that yeah yeah so when we get to the accountability and measuring piece is where we're holding the super we're holding ourselves and the superintendent accountable to meeting those goals and and visions right like that's the number four or whatever on this list okay let's let's hold off on that until we get there because because i think it gets i think that's where it really gets tricky and how to figure out how to answer these things okay so um so let's go through the um let's go through the different categories kind of one by one um and we've talked a fair amount about vision and goals does anybody feel the need to continue on that okay so so let's move on to the next one values and guardrails and i i'm going to actually actually that is pretty important could we could we spend a few minutes on that
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yeah what i think i think would be uh important i i think we within some nuances we're reasonably close to a shared assessment but it would be worth it to kind of talk that through a little bit and also to identify if we wanted to move up a step one is is that far right uh far right column where we want to go to and if so what's the next step we could take to get there okay yeah i i'm proposing that and if if others agree great if you don't we'll keep going i i think the fine idea does somebody want to weigh in yeah i i'm uh scott maybe i i might have missed the nuance of what you just said could you could you repeat it one more time i'm also trying to bring it up so i have it on a separate tab so okay um yeah i think it's worthwhile with all of these to look at the far right column which is the i functioning board see if that's where we want to go or if what part of that we or all of it that we immediately embrace and then figure out what's a concrete next step or steps that we can take to move us closer if that's where we want to go yes i think that's a really good suggestion and and i think and i think particularly spending some time on this one just because it is by far the the highest value um and again that based on research right from the center for great city schools so i you know i'll just i wrote some comments down um so i'll just if it's okay i'll i'll start with those um when i was going through and scoring this one and i'm jumping back and forth because i don't have things printed out um between tabs but you know i i i thought we were in the first you know the the the approaching student outcomes focus um because i thought this was one area where we've adopted there is a vision we do have goals um um and you know we we we understand inputs outputs and outcomes um and you know we've we have hosted a whole you know visioning session with the community the district did what what sort of stuck out the reason why um we it's for me we couldn't get sort of above sort of that second column um was you know that i wasn't interim goals were as well defined um we have some in-room goals but and and as i recall and i didn't have a chance to go back and look at them all because i recall there there is still a little bit of um lack of clarity around those interim goals and and whether they're they're defined for each one of our of our board goals um i also thought engagement comes up a lot in this um and while our engagement around the vision was inclusive it wasn't we didn't actually have much of an engagement around goal setting i i also made a comment here that might be controversial but um i'm not sure there's much value in engagement around goal setting um i i think the value from it in in my experience um comes from you get a little bit more buy-in from the community but this is one of those moments where and again this is not necessarily a popularly held belief but having done performance management for government for a long time vision is really important vision the public has a has a sense of specific measures and where we should be on the specific measures the public doesn't nor should we necessarily expect them to this in what representative democracy is about we elect people who are intended to you know get smart on these things and work with district staff and go to harvard and do all these things to then set the goals for the district um asking whether we should achieve a goal community whether we should achieve a goal in two years or three years or five years i i don't know if we're going to get a whole lot of value from that type of engagement but that said i'm disagreeing with what um you know with what the the the academics you know um say is really important um which is that you've done a lot of that a lot of that community i did my last comment i did feel like we could get to mastery on this one without too much effort i feel like we are on our way and if we really uh put focus on on getting to column three and four i think we could do that within one or two years hey andrew back to your point about interim goals i think we were um extremely pragmatic in our goal setting to the point where i know several of us were cringing because um it doesn't feel great to aspire to
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you know something less than proficiency so in a sense to me our goals our ultimate goal is eliminating our achievement in opportunity gap and getting all of our kids to proficiency at every grade level i mean that that's not a smart goal which is why we didn't adopt it but to me that probably should be our goal and then if we're goal setting for three to five years each of the goals that we've actually laid out are really interim goals like this is the incremental progress um it's just a different way of looking at it but i i know that it doesn't feel great for a lot of us to sort of have such overly pragmatic goals that don't speak to the full potential of every child in every school year i so my understanding of what we've kind of agreed to do in this moment is to look at each of the categories and sort of say what we think around sort of how do we get to number four or if we even agree with that fourth column is that correct okay yeah just make sure i'm tracking with where we are anyone else want to weigh in on this category in what way is this when we're going to talk about it i mean i wasn't sure how like what process we were going to use um so you know i i was um sometimes i can be a tougher grader depending on things and one of the reasons like i think we've done great work but um a couple things that i was going back to and so like do i feel like we're approaching it right i i really still think um the the marrying um of the growth with proficiency um is a missing piece and it's i'm just looking at it through through my view as a parent is growth is important um proficiency is always like that that end goal um and then the other thing is and this is a and maybe just falls into scott's category of like what would we do to what would what would it take for me to feel like we moved to the next category and so in addition to adding the proficiency as the sort of knowing where we're going would be the fleshing out of the middle school um the middle grades because we talked about that but we still have an s back um heavy uh goal and then the the data on the high school um that sub data on uh the various components um of it is just getting the baseline data i felt like to me that would feel like moving towards the next evolution of our goals which i think on the the basis is we have we have the right base and just sort of filling it out more fully can you say that last thing again i didn't quite catch it i think we had the right basis of focusing on growth i think that it's more complicated but i to explain to the public and i think but i think we have the right base but i do think to evolve it further [Music] we need to uh finish some pieces to it that we had talked about the we'd need to have a more fleshed out middle school goal that's not just dependent upon s back because that doesn't really get us to the it doesn't get us to what the vision um a student uh portrait and then we don't we don't marry this with proficiency which is i think is what most parents right and most students it's sort of that's that's where we're heading and the growth is what gets us there and that's what we want to measure because it can't just be proficiency but keep that as baseline and then the third piece is on that last goal which was the high school goal we never had the baseline data dropped in so again to scott's question of how would we evolve to the next column that's that's how i would see that happening okay yeah um julie i want to uh agree with you that uh that's one reason i didn't put us in that in that in a four or whatever that category is is those uh the middle school and the high school goals still need uh need some refinement
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that that was probably the the biggest reason and and i think our our interim goals were fairly crude um it was like okay if we want to go from here to here uh well here here here um they're they're not they're they're good good for starting but uh i'd be interested if there's other uh other ways to do interim goals um and that's again maybe a question we can go back to the council on to get some if there's uh some better examples of interim goals and i don't know maybe maybe what we have is is fine it's just a question idea so i i tend to agree i i think i think amy mentioned this um i think what we have now are actually interim goals that should be under a little more um aspirational logical um proficiency so i i i disagree with that this is making me really i feel like we're revisiting the goal setting conversation and i think you know we did yeoman's work to come up with these goals and i'm very and you know we agreed that they would be three year goals and i'm very very hesitant i think we can do some refining of like the middle school and the high school goal we can talk about how how we see proficiency is relating to growth but i think i don't want us to redo the goals i think that we need to we need to be moving forward not backwards um i do hear what you're saying rita about more aspirational and i think that's where the vision and the graduate portrait come in of this is where we're going and this is the first set of goals that are going to get us there and in three years when we've closed the achievement gap the the next board is going to set another set of goals that get us closer to those those aspirational sort of exciting hope filled things but i mean i don't i i think we have a tendency to let the perfect get in the way of the good and i think the goals we have now are good and i think we need to spend our time working working on how do we as a board organize and support one another and the district and hold them accountable right and and push to get us to meet those goals right instead of perfecting i'd rather refine than perfect if that makes sense right haley you beat me to it okay always do okay so are we ready to move on to the next okay so the the next category is values and guardrails the board will in collaboration with the superintendent adopted guardrails aligned with the vision and goals and i think we were universally no ailee you had you thought we had something the rest of us pretty much thought we had nothing um so um can i put you on the spot and ask you what you're seeing that the rest of us are not well i don't think we have formal guardrails that we've adopted right we haven't done that but i think we've done work with the theory of action um and the sort of um working with our staff that also went to harvard to sort of have a shared sense of like what does um what are the values of how we get to where we're going so i rated us a little higher because while we don't have formal guard rails adopted i think we've been sort of cohesive in adopting the sort of shared set of this is our theory of action this is what we're going to focus on this is is how we're going to behave um so that's why i gave it a little higher score but we don't have any formal guard rails and i wonder i wonder um if we need those i mean again research based and harvard people know more than me but but what would that look like and how do we we create those and is that really the best use of our time but amy it looks like you might have a contribution there well i was just gonna say i wouldn't mind chucking this one um i think the intention of it is to um hold us accountable for not doing the things that we're not supposed to do which is basically uh interfering with management and operations um and focusing on governance but i it was hard for me to wrap my head around um how spending time establishing guardrails could really be very helpful so to me i'd be happy to just get rid of it and i read the guard rails as pertaining to what the board is telling the superintendent that they can't do that the guardrails are not necessarily for the board they're more for the superintendent but maybe i misunderstood
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that the examples they gave were definitely seem to be oriented towards the superintendent the only one i could think of today that would make sense uh and this isn't really related to our current superintendent but to and are almost higher from a couple of years ago was thou shalt not have consulting business on the side um but i feel no no need to lay that down now as a marker so rails um and i mean the the one the examples that they give i don't i don't think they add much so but but i it did occur to me that um there is a god rail that that i would kind of like to see um and because all of our because our goals are very quantitative um and of necessity focused on testing of one kind or another and you know racking up um racking up credits and that kind of thing um i would i would be interested in having a guardrail thing something like um the pursuit of of i'm going to be really crude here you know the pursuit of good test scores should not come at the expense of um a um you know a promotion of whole child well-being something like that um because i think it might it might help allay some of the fears that people have related to tests because i i mean frankly i'm pretty confident that the current administration isn't just test focused um but but that's that's because i i spent time around them and i know them and i couldn't imagine them doing that but people who don't have the benefit of that it might be comforting anyway that's that's the only thing i could think of that um that would make me want to spend time on this i i thought we were using this as a like this is a research-based data-driven tool so are we saying we can kind of pick and choose localize it i guess for for our own use that we can pick and choose what's important to us i think that was julia's point about strict adherence so we're having the conversation right now about is this metric one we feel it has value to pps and yes you know the research has said this has been helpful for other school districts do we think is helpful for us is this something we want to invest our time in so i i think this is uh sorry andrew were you you were cute um yeah i think this is something that um we should talk to the council about to see if we're missing something and if we aren't you know there's plenty of other plenty of other work to do that we can work on so getting back because i think michelle just just made a really good point um and better than i think i made it at the very beginning i i i think it's fine for us to adapt it but i think we need to be very very careful when we do and scott you get the follow-up point which you just made again of like if we are going to adapt it let's check in with the experts and talk about the risks because dropping some of these things will create its own set of risks and it might feel good to us because that's what we do but we might actually find out that there as you said earlier that there's you know school districts that have tried that and really failed so so yes i'm okay adapting it as long as we're explicit about it and there's some see what the risks that we're creating are specifically on guardrail rated to zero because we don't have any guardrails um and and i was struggling a little and but it just now occurred to me um you know a guard we didn't formalize it but a guardrail that i think julia put in place um with our with our data was as we were talking about increasing the you know um um children of color you know you know achieving these benchmarks um you know she said look i want to see the disaggregated data and even though that isn't in our formal goal we made it really clear to the superintendent that we don't want to see one group you know accelerate the other groups you know one group go up by 20
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points but other groups drop by five and guess what you had a 15 point increase and isn't that great so like that is the type of guardrail we haven't formally adopted but i would be interested in you know obviously just ailee said tonight's not the night to talk about the specifics but i would be interested in talking about do we want to formally adopt some of those moving forward you and rita have converted me to we it would be a good thing to have a couple of guard rails like that that help articulate you know exactly that and i think you're right that's what i why i scored us a little higher i think we've informally done it but i don't think we have explicitly done it and i think that being explicit matters and i think we should get i think scott's suggestion also of getting some more examples because it's like i gave it a low score because like we don't have any but it's sort of and then i was trying to think like what would they be and i was like okay i think um we just got so focused on you know the the goals that we didn't spend as much time there and it's not at all i think a criticism it's just like maybe that's the next evolution um the one thing i would say is the other reason why i couldn't get in that next column was that um you know we made a decision and i'm not this isn't like bad good or whatever but we also didn't um evaluate the superintendent solely on the district performance goals we added that those other competencies um and again not saying good or bad but again this is the a little bit like are we going to be flexible or rigid and and those aren't one's not better than the other but it's like which ones are which ones are is it okay to be flexible on and which ones are we like compromising um on you know maybe student outcomes so that's where i landed so could i do a process check here and see uh with rita our fearless leader on this are we making progress in terms of what you had in mind for the session i think so i mean it's i'll be perfectly honest with you i mean this is the first time any of us is tackling this instrument so i mean we need to figure out if this is working you know does this make sense is it useful um i think it's mostly um a tool to generate discussion that we can you know kind of codify in in some logical way um but it's not like i had any i don't have any illusions that by the end of today we're going to have actual decisions made about specific things i think what we can try to do at the end of it is come up with things we want to look at more closely you know things we other things we might want to explore um in in any categories are there concrete actions that we want to take in order to make a move to the next column um you know but but i i mean this is mostly discussion and trying to figure out how to how to do a self-evaluation of a board function um and and see kind of how how we all match each other's perceptions about where we are and where we want to be so that's the best that i was hoping for to me that seemed like not easy to me this seemed like the easiest one because most of it it's almost like most of it is like calendaring for us to move across and then just being disciplined to do it i mean it's less culture shift and more like a calendar like discipline it seemed are you talking about the monitoring and accountability one julia yeah okay i actually wanted to clarify so yeah because i think julia you had mentioned the superintendent's evaluation which is on the monitoring accountability which i was still on the guard rails once so apologies if we were testing different things sorry no no i just wanted to make sure that we that we were on the same page but yeah are we moving on to that one i guess we're moving on okay i'm just trying to see if amy had something to say because she leaned forward i'm trying to read zoom body language um no that's because i'm literally trying to read so i have to get closer to my computer oh my gosh you guys are all hysterical because we all just did like ridiculous
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body language so it's great okay next one um monitoring and accountability but the board will devote significant time monthly to monitoring progress toward the vision and so i just want to clarify um this is we're not talking about the the disc like the district level accountability this is board level accountability like are we spending our time on the things that we say matter okay so i would say we've got a ways to go but we've gotten immensely better at this and and now it is a practice whereas it didn't used to be so we were split looking at the at the um scoring sheet we were split between the first two columns um so three were in not student focused four were in approaching student outcomes focused with with julia being a minus there so splitting the difference so for those of you who i mean no minus was an option say a little bit about why they graded the way they did go ahead bailey i was just teasing julia i was saying i didn't know minus was an option i'm totally teasing because you know i think we get to use this tool as we would see fit well it's also thinking outside of the box which maybe we could use more of well three of us took it as an option so there you go i'll i'll jump in i mean i i took the tool very literally so when it you know when it said you have to to move on you you have to sort of have everything in the column before and everything in the column you're in um there are things in the second column that we have done but getting back to julia's point she just made about the superintendent being evaluated only on performance regarding the you know the board's goals and guardrails well we didn't do that and we very explicitly didn't do that so that for me meant we couldn't be in that column because because we didn't achieve that because we chose not to moving forward if we choose to adapt that and and take some other things then then i think we can the other comments i wrote down about this um tracking of board time i love the concept um i think i i don't have a historical but i i think we absolutely have been talking about that over this last year so i think actually tracking it would be great i don't love the goal of spending 50 of our board time monitoring goals um that's the sort of the mastery that seemed too high to me so again i hate to disagree with the experts but um that just felt like like like that's that's a lot even if we have shorter board meetings it's still a lot of time on on monitoring goals um and i also and this is actually a repeat i think of what julia said earlier so apologies for just um taking her talking points but um i'll send you some more yeah i know i assume um but i really i don't i don't agree that that anything not legally mandated or part of the goal monitoring is is by definition the superintendent's work um i think one goal this is what i wrote down last night late uh one goal of representative democracy is to present information as well as some pomp and circumstance to the public and so um i felt like this framework really devalued the importance of that work and it might surprise some of you um to hear me say that because i'm generally the one sort of pushing back a little bit but i i think we do spend too much time on that but i don't think that time should be zero um and so finding that middle ground so what i wrote is that i think that is important i do think we should have some guardrails around how much time you know we we bring in you know the winners of the band competitions and other things that that's important but it shouldn't be the main focus um but i also don't want to say and things like last night the presentation on the reopening that was not so much for us as it was for the public and and that that's an important moment that our meetings can provide there are a lot of parents who contacted me who watched because i said oh hey they're going to talk more and here's the slide and they were like oh okay that's really useful so i don't i don't want to lose i don't want to lose that so this this category for me i i'd like to have some conversation going forward about what we want to take from it and what we may not so i think it would be useful to monitor our agenda time um come up with some sort of categories you know three or four categories to put agenda items in kind of keep track of how much time we spend on just as a feedback tool not over the
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next couple of months not as a we're trying to hit 25 or 50 or whatever but just to get that kind of baseline um i i i think that that could be interesting just to give us some information okay can i do an fyi here um on the time um apparently karen used to track how much time we spent on the different agenda items so we we have the you know the aspirational time for each agenda item she used to actually used to track the actual time um since karen left that has not been done but it could be done so it's imminently doable and i think i think it could be useful info yeah i i don't i think we should track it too um i know a lot of non-profits do track their volunteer hours and it would be you know it might give us some daylight into you know are we working harder not smarter which i think happens sometimes with our work also i think also moving forward it could be you know as we as we have to diversify the board over time um we'd be able to explain what time commitments look like and maybe be if it's not so all-consuming or open to different types of people volunteering for this position which is a personal a personal goal of mine you know you shouldn't have to be retired to do this job could not agree more michelle just just tired not retired just just tired tired it's fine but retired you know i mean that's something that i think about all the time like who who can actually do this job and do it well and it's not set up for um diverse candidates to come in and do this work that are working full-time necessarily i think that's a great point and um michelle i don't know if you guys saw the wednesday weekly update i sent out um yesterday but we're trying to make sure that executive sessions go on the first week and um learning sessions go on the second week just to try to have a more regular rhythm to try to honor people's time and um you know so i think you know amy last year there were so many times things popped up and it's like we have to get this scheduled and um we'll see how well you know life does with our plans but it's it's trying to make things a little more regular if we can um but i know amy you've i've only experienced it for like a month but all those times you know you got a phone call it's like we need to schedule an executive session this week when are you available and it's like okay no i agree that's kind of unreasonable but we've come a long way since our weekly meetings though oh god so to look at this um the monitoring and accountability um and not get caught up in the i overall i think this is this is a good a good thing uh not to get caught up in the 50 or 25 i'm thinking about next steps that we can take um and so looking down the that column on the right as being aspirational one is just starting to monitor our time at board meetings so how much that is focused on uh student outcomes uh and uh i agree with andrew that there's there's a lot of important things that we do that aren't um aren't strictly you know cut cut and dried on those on our goals um that uh that the third point there is that we stay pretty consistent with our goals and our guard rails um and i i think we so far so good uh the fourth point has achieved the annual ending point i i think has to do with actually is the district achieving making progress on the four goals that we've laid out and in this environment that's just going to be tough but we should at least monitor that and
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you know check where we are we might have to do you know if the superintendent has suggested we might have to do a reset on our metrics because of covet and it is what it is um and that uh last point i think was uh our resources prioritized towards our goals um and uh and that may be um means that as we adopt and after we adopt the budget that we go back and and do a kind of an evaluation session because we all know in the heat of the moment you know this last year and this coming year could be the same thing of a very compressed decision-making timeline it's it's imperfect and i don't think it would be a bad thing right now to go back and look um yeah and that is i mean that's some of the work we tasked with cbrc with doing scott is you know we actually asked them to look at our goals and to look at the budget through the the lens of the board goals and through the lens of the vision um and to say are we allocating resources in a way that is that is in line with what the board has stated our goals are so that we do have that you know community uh collaboration on that area is that something that we can get feedback on like in the next month two months well you did give us but i know that as things are shifting um they're just ramping up for their next year and haven't quite established yet yeah so it's um [Music] that's something we should get before we start the next budget session ideally okay so um i i i think i have two things to say um i think we need to be thinking also about committee not just the regular board meetings but also the committee time and what we're spending that time on um and then i think in terms of next steps um getting getting a clear monitoring calendar that we adopt um i think will help a lot and that's that's coming down the pike right yeah okay um yeah and uh andrew at pingu a couple of days ago so if you could check in with me on that um and uh i think julia you were gonna send me something we talked um amy was this like an accountability session now well it is now yeah uh and michelle i want to touch base with you again i've there's been four or five uh really good suggestions that i want oh we've already had coffee though i i'm all i'm caught up but i i wouldn't be happy to do that with you but again as soon as i get everybody's suggestions i'll feed them back out again so we see all those good ideas and um and then ailee and i will do our best to uh work with staff to to massage the tweak the work sessions just to let you all know scott and i are meeting every monday at 11 um to just touch base and talk to each other about what's going on and what we know and it really helps when i turn the volume on on my computer so i can actually hear him because sometimes you don't it's only happened twice it's fine he's talking i'm like i can't hear you and it's because i didn't turn my volume on okay are we ready to move on to the next category i was wondering myself we could if we're time for a break again yeah it's been an hour it's in three minutes and 49 seconds we can take it now i just is that okay if we do it before we transition to the next section i think that's fantastic yes okay two minutes do some music do some dancing
01h 40m 00s
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] that was a good thigh amy oh was that a heavy sigh yeah i do heavy size a lot and so does my daughter and one time i'm like oh she's size a lot and my husband was like she comes by it honestly i think it's because i'm hungry it's also oxygenating that's good i didn't really it was really just pranayama not a heavy side there you go i forgot to eat lunch today so i solved the problem by getting a merry and berry shake at burgerville which which seemed to be a really good choice tis the season
01h 45m 00s
julia you're right you're muted julia i'm saying something really important like what about the walla walla onion rings because it's the season as well they were out they didn't have anymore they said they're done i ordered some two weeks ago they were amazing at a dollar a piece they better be [Laughter] all right where in town can you get them though i mean like tad's chicken and dumplings is the best that uh commercial brought to you by ted's chicken and dumplings and now we'll resume with section four of our board evaluation okay uh communication and collaboration the board will lead transparently and include stakeholders in the pursuit of the vision and goal so we had um this was one of the categories where we had a bigger range than in other ones [Music] so does somebody want to stop with why you scored the way you did amy lee lead with the positive you you were uh you were our leader out there what what was i approaching i'm not looking at that right now you were meeting um [Music] i mean maybe i'm just that was kind of coming from a ptsd place that we've made a lot of improvement um but it's looking a little generous right now well and amy i do want to say like you know your leadership over this last year as our board chair i think you know you worked really hard to continue to move us forward towards these goals and and did an excellent job at that and so i can see why like the ptsd of like negotiating all of that you know you see how far we've come in a way that like i don't necessarily because i wasn't on the board before and wasn't the chair last year so so thank you for all you've done to really help us move forward on this yeah i i pray sorry michelle go ahead i was going to say um a couple of the things that came in the not student outcomes focus that i think i rated on was um any meeting of the board lasted more than eight hours during the previous 12 month period i mean we got one that approached i think it was six hours um and that the board did not receive the final version of materials to be voted on at least three calendar days which has happened a couple times yeah and so i thought you know that was enough for me tomorrow that we were uh in the not student outcomes focused category there yeah i mean god has just if we have that that starts at six o'clock i mean that's just terribly inefficient no we yeah we used to go to like 11 or 12 routinely and i think it is i guess all i want to say about that is just that i do feel like this is something that's really important to pay attention to and that um it's it's easier than um as julia was saying before some of the things that require a more nuanced culture shift like this just requires discipline in my opinion which is a culture shift for some of us so one of the reasons why i rated this lower is this issue of getting the documents in advance um not only for us but the community and it just almost every meeting we have something that isn't isn't ready um and sometimes there's a totally valid reason but we consistently just have things that aren't aren't posted and a lot of times the board doesn't get it until late and the public doesn't really get it at all so people comment so to me that's a that's more like a staff discipline than a board a board discipline on that sorry julia i didn't mean to cut you off but i on that point because i i i think you're right there are definitely times when that's happened
01h 50m 00s
we also as a district invest very very little in staff support for the board and and i that's been a conscious decision of boards uh for probably a long time i can't really speak to the history of it um and when you compare the staff supporting the board to any other government that i'm aware of regionally i don't know about other school districts right but um we are also the largest school district um it's very very small so for me the question there becomes not so much a staff discipline because i don't think we can ask you anymore okay time out because um that's not a statement at all about the board office because i i know personally that roseanne and cara like are they you know they haven't been on board leadership they said here's the materials you need to be getting here's the process they need to go through because they have got to you know go cut they come to the board office they get they've been approved by the superintendent so i want to make clear this is not a reflection it's they don't get to the board office um so i i don't i don't want it to be at all yeah because i know they work overtime and right no that's an important distinction and i guess what i would say is because we don't have additional staff supporting the board that that role of providing materials to the board falls to staff who who have other jobs right so i mean their their job is to run their unit their division their department whatever it is and and then by the way the board needs this that the other thing and so i i found it interesting that this one is i i would be interested in hearing more from the people who created this why this is student focused student outcome focus because my concern is that actually we spend a tremendous amount of time preparing materials for the board rather than actually improving student outcomes and those things are not they don't they don't they don't go together and and i i made this comment to um stephanie just the other day in our check-in about like the materials we do get are very high quality very professional um you know powerpoint sly i mean very thorough and i i can't help but think to myself every time i see them wow this is like five ten maybe 15 hours right of work that went into this that did not go into improving student outcomes it just went into informing the board and and also informing the public and as we talked about earlier that's something so i guess i just want to be careful on this one to me um we do get a lot of last minute things if we each had i mean i'm just going to let you know metro counselors are part-time so they they get paid part-time and they each have a full-time staff person assigned to them each one of them has a full-time staff person assigned to them um those people do a lot of the work that we currently put on our staff our senior staff right outside of the board office so there is a resource allocation question here i would not advocate for that i am not advocating for that but i think we need to be really careful before we get too critical of not getting these materials are we actually funding the people who could help pull that stuff together to provide and i think instead we've we've directed those resources to to the place where it's going to have more of an impact on student outcomes or another alternative is have more realistic timelines so like if that contract isn't actually ready on thursday just move it to the next board meeting i mean so that's i mean that's a alternative in a way that like hey we don't you know if you don't if we don't get it in then um just put it on the next the next board meeting versus doing something that short circuits a process and this is kind of why i kiddingly said let's uh let's let's tell staff when we're going to have a meeting and actually meet a week after that so we get out of the hamster wheel but because i think there is there is that sense of we're caught in this our staff is caught in this wheel but i think um also it's an interesting idea whether we want to invest in maybe one other staff person who's has a primary job of putting together those presentations or gathering that material as a as opposed to you know louise or his staff putting together something um i think that's a good question to ask the superintendent about whether that makes sense um and it might end up being uh a real cost saving uh if that turns out to be a more efficient way of doing things so we we free up those those senior leaders and um their next level their reports to do the work
01h 55m 00s
as opposed to what do we have to do to present to the board the other the other thing i'll jump in on here um uh is that what what definitely kept me out of the second column was um all consent eligible items were placed on the consent agenda and all but a few were voted on using a consent agenda and i just think it's worth pointing out that we have consented gender items pulled every single week that's a practice uh as as a board that we have and so i think this is one we should have a conversation as a board um do we want consent agenda to be consent agenda or or not um and if it is we're not following best practice when it comes to that so what is worth andrew um as one of the primary um it used to be called the business agenda um so like just you know it had it's like here's the business agenda and i do think one of the things is if you have everything on the business agenda um four days or whatever the thursday before you have the opportunity to ask a question then you have a lot fewer things pulled from their business agenda and that doesn't always happen i mean the other night we had the whole you know we've had several board meetings where things are coming in or the resolution change has changed um so i i do think there is it's a good conversation to have i also think there are some reasons why things get bold from agendas it's also moved it used to be at the end of the end of the meeting at the beginning of the meeting sometimes things got resolved by the end of the meeting um so so the alternative now is um like the recent practice and i think it's i think it's good to try different things but the reason practice is if you want to have a discussion about something then you have to pull it versus you could ask a question and then just vote on it um and again i think it's good to try a number of different ways what what ends up working but we've made a number of changes that in some ways have changed that have changed the practice and julia you told me once that that one of the reasons you sometimes pull things from the consent agenda is because one of the findings in the secretary of state's audit was about the board you know paying attention to contracts and so one of the one of the things you're trying to honor is what you what that audit said and so i think this also goes into our conversation as a board that we're going to be having soon about our response to the secretary of state audit and i know scott's going to reach out to you to talk more about that so we can you know because i think if we're clear around why we're doing what we're doing and what we need to be doing to make each board member feel like we're honoring the things we need to be honoring in the secretary of state's audit and with the public and those pieces and i think that that leads to a better understanding of how we're operating so this is i think the consent agenda and the contracts are part of a bigger conversation that we're working on having as a board i totally agree with the statement that you made and i think um and it's not just secretary of state i think also like what what um items get on the consent agenda because it's sort of decided by somebody else and i'm not quite sure what criteria is the what makes it a consent agenda item versus something else um and like i say it used to be called the business agenda and it was generally contracts and then it got to be settlements and and then things didn't get posted you know three days before so there's there's a variety of reasons i think it's i think it merits a longer conversa a longer conversation i i think the question about what gets on the consent agenda goes back to the heart of our exercise right now which is that if it's not student achievement focused um then just about everything that's not student achievement focus should go on in a consent agenda i mean that's the premise here in terms of good governance we can discuss whether or not we all agree with that or not again probably a longer conversation because there's a fair number of things that you know um like it for example in these number of resolutions we do may not be student student focus but we do it for a purpose outside of the business agenda um and i think we all want to be really clear that we're not like julie we're not criticizing staff we know that cara and roseanne are amazing they work really hard our senior staff staff is amazing and work really hard it's it's the whole i think you know this piece around communication and collaboration is just exactly that like if we aren't
02h 00m 00s
if we aren't feeling like we're getting the communication we need to do our work as a board in the time we need to do it then it is a little inherent on us to say do we need different staff do we need to set our consent agenda differently you know how can we set ourselves up for success and and to be high performing um and i think you know this conversation isn't isn't intended to be an attack on staff or any criticism of that but for us to really say like what's working for us around these metrics and and how do we we improve that yeah i mean i just really struggle with because usually my mondays at work are super busy um and for some reason tuesday tuesdays are really bad as well if we had our board meetings on wednesday it'd be much better so like when i don't get things till monday or tuesday it's hard for me to not think like this is intentional or like don't they understand like i'm in the midst of like back-to-back meetings all day um and it's so it's hard and i know that's not it how it thinks but it that's how it like lands it's like yeah you know if i had this thursday i would have like totally tried to respect go through it thursday night send off questions friday so the people aren't working over the weekends versus like everybody having a mad scramble on monday and tuesday so i i think um you know the right hand column says seven days ahead of the board meeting i think this this is a really good discussion for maybe it's board leadership or this subcommittee task force to sit down with staff and say and and to brainstorm ideas for how do we go from you know and some of it is things are totally crazy right now and and that's that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about over the longer term how do we get closer to seven um what are the steps we need to take um i i think one of the things that will help a lot um will be having that monitoring calendar because um i know when i've been involved with agenda setting it it's been pretty ad hoc and um and very often staff are finding out only you know two maybe three weeks ahead of time that they're going to be up for some major presentation which means that everybody's doing everything at the last minute you know while trying to deal with everything that comes in over the transom um so i think i'm hoping that having a calendar will allow staff to kind of plan out their time more more deliberately and people have a heads up they'll know a month in advance or two months or however long so i'm hoping that will work um but i also think that we we need to have a discussion as a board about what we mean by transparency like what qualifies as transparency what needs to be what needs to have a fulsome discussion in the midst of a board meeting as opposed to something that's available online or in a memo format or something like that um because like yeah because i i'm not sure we're on the same page on that one don't miss michelle i'd be really interested in hearing your thought on this one because i think you were touching on this when you talked about some of the barriers for um folks to be board members and and this one talks about some of those that communication and collaboration so just i wanted to hear your thoughts about this area if you wouldn't mind you're muted thank you scott uh i said i'm trying to get back to the scoring tool um yeah just on zero a zero so in other words not student focused and let me see if i can scroll to the grading matrix let's see um i think i already said it so the board we're talking about communication and collaboration piece um the board did not receive the final version of materials was one thing that stuck out to me um there was a meeting that the board lasted this is more than eight hours but i feel like the one that we when we did the board leadership change [Music] in july qualified as a meeting that just went on way too long
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um and and those are the reasons those are the reasons i rated uh in that zero um you you talked about what i'd said earlier around um diversifying the board i mean we're a board of um of people that are making decisions on on the kids in our district that are are being failed and um and one of the theories of action i have about that is um that we that we and and as the largest school district in the state um my hope would be that we would eventually become more diverse and more representative of the kids that we're serving um and i i come up against i mean i'm aware of barriers to this type of service for for people of color and um i i don't necessarily that think that the communication collaboration piece falls falls into that um so i'm not sure what you were referencing really when you said to talk about that again um again the reasons i voted as a zero were because of the length of some of our meetings and that we did not receive final version of materials until sometimes the day of i was thinking about what you'd said earlier about the length length of the meetings and um and when we're in one of the other pieces you had just talked about like people having the time and so it's it's it's about like what julia said if you get um materials on mondays but you're working full-time monday tuesday you know i would assume that that's a barrier and if you know meetings run really late and you know you have to get up for work the next morning i think that's a barrier for a lot of us so that's what i just i had made some assumptions that there might be some some barriers here for folks and so just wanted to check in with you about that yeah i mean time commitment is definitely one especially if we know that um the people of color in our city um largely aren't different income levels um so yeah i mean i think i i i'm thinking continually about ways in which we can be more welcoming so it's one thing to say you know we should focus on equity it's another thing for us to like model those values and that that would include all of us like you know understanding the seats that we're in and in questioning like are we the right people at the right times in those seats so is there anything else on this one just a couple quick things um i thought the policy discussion in column three was really really interesting and you know it says the board limits its adoption of board policies regarding district operations to matters that are either required by law or an appropriate exercise of the board's oversight as defined by the board's adopted goals or guard rails every other policy um is stricken as a board policy and may be retained as administrative policy or directive i think that warrants some conversation and it doesn't not a quick but over time in terms of i think we have a lot of policies that don't adhere to that and and i think it'd be a good philosophical conversation as a board to sort of talk about why and should they be board policies or should they be administrative directives and i think sometimes there's a real desire to make it a board policy because then as board members we can say we adopted it and we get credit for that and maybe it gets us reelected or maybe it gets us defeated in the next election you know but there's a political benefit or cost um but but i'm not sure i i i just i find it really interesting that they're pretty strong on this right that if it if it doesn't have to do with the the student goals or you're required by a law to do it don't don't do it and and adopt administrative directives so that was one thing i thought was interesting worthy of further discussion and then i kind of disagreed the last column you know fully achieving it that you'd be limited to two meetings per month and that includes committee meetings i don't know if everyone saw that in the definition but when they say board authorized meetings they mean committee meetings as well um that doesn't seem okay to me um um but i do think limiting us to two board meetings a month you know is is is appropriate i don't think we should go beyond that but but i do think that i don't i i wrote down including committees is kind of ridiculous because i think there's a lot of good work that gets done there um and then two more these are just my own sort of observations um one is is just as we talk about time management and what we spend our time on thinking about whether we can move through items more quickly and i think some of that is just um speaking and thinking more quickly um and i don't i really hesitate to say that because i don't want to short circuit any of the conversations and and i don't want to impose my own um you know sort of sort of values or or or biases or or um you know white dominant culture perspectives onto the board so i want to say this with with all that context and and totally open to pushback but but there are times we discuss agenda items where board members literally sort of start by saying well you know i have some thoughts on this that kind of goes on for like two minutes or three minutes before we actually
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start hearing what those thoughts are and i'm not i'm not trying to be funny about it but more think of when that's repeated five or six times you know for a particular item i mean that can burn 20 30 minutes and and it's not so much about my time or the board's time this is i think about the public's time one of the comments before i got on the board i heard real frustration was people were like well here they're going to talk about that well when well who knows because it could be any time between 6 00 p.m and 11 p.m and there was a frustration there so i i think there's a there's a public accountability aspect around around keeping a short enough agenda and keeping to our times where um you know the public actually knows oh okay i want to hear that item so if i tune in at 7 15 i'm going to hear that item and i don't have to give up my entire evening waiting for it like we're going to get through it so that's just something to think about and then the very last thing getting back to rita's comment about what what deserves transparency and i think there's some up i think there's some disagreement on the board with me on this but i don't think we should be reviewing anywhere near the contracts that we are reviewing i think the secretary of state was flat out wrong i think it's bad governance when you put contracts into the hands of elected officials because elected officials don't add value to that conversation we add politics to that conversation and so having been on the other side of it um almost every time that elected officials get involved um it's because they want to make a political point or we want to make you know there's some there's some constituent that has contacted us or a group that's contacted us or whatever i i just i actually think it's i think it's the opposite of good governance um so for me i think dramatically increasing the authority of the superintendent to wish contracts only bringing very very large things to the district or to the to the board um would be better um for us um overall i think it'd be better for the district and and again our our role there is not we have a role the role is to set those those policy parameters around what we expect to see so do we expect to see contracts with performance measures in them let's let's state that and then it's a superintendent's job to do that but it is not our job in a board meeting to talk about whether or not performance measures were included in the contract um because that that's that's 100 percent the superintendent's job uh so i'm just going to respond for a moment because julia coming to respond to his comment about the board time before we get to the contract piece my favorite thing we do that i've done too is we say i'm going to echo what director bruh edward said and then we repeat it and then rita will say i'm going to echo what director lowry and director brave edward said and so it just we do that and i think it's hilarious um but it's maybe something we need to think about all right girl with contracts julia okay i mean i was just gonna say i wanna echo what uh you said and sorry go ahead julia yeah i was just gonna say um andrew i think you should be careful assigning motives to other people um because that's your interpretation um so i just there was a whole long statement about why people do things making some assumptions so i just want to state that i think that's a that's a good conversation to have with somebody after the meeting if you think that somebody's doing something for a particular reason and have a conversation about it um one of the things i would say about the meetings is i think when i look at the people on the board i know there's a lot of wisdom and different expertise and experience and i think we spend too much time just sitting there having presentations in which we um if we've read the materials in advance we have them and it's good to have just the highlights of like here's what it is and then jump into it into a discussion um because i feel sometimes it's an hour and 15 minutes before there's an even board discussion it's all we're just sitting there being presented to it's like i turn off my camera and i could go do something else because i read the materials um and so i think that's another thing we could look at because sometimes it's not it's not student focused as well and if we're going to look at the whole meeting i think that's one thing we should look at because i i want to hear i want to pressure test other people's ideas i want them to pressure test my thinking on things i want to you know hear what people are hearing from their you know the people that they get information from because i think we have a richer discussion so to me if i were looking at the board meetings that's what i would want to focus on just really quickly sorry just really quickly want to jump in my mind can we andrew can we hear from michelle first and then come back to you because we haven't heard from her on this yet i'm responding very directly and very quickly to a comment um my my comments about motives is based on 20 years
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of staffing government board officials so i actually feel pretty confident in that observation um during my career so that that's that's where that comments coming from i just want to make sure that we're not limiting how who talks and how long we talk um some of us talk a lot longer than others i don't think that means you're any smarter i think it might mean that it takes longer to get the thoughts out um best practices for being welcome and inclusive are where you allow everyone that's around the table to contribute um in in the best way they can and um and not to limit that um input that that is that is a that is a white supremacy actually um it's one of the characteristics that shows up in in workplaces and organizations so um i mean i think to the extent that we can we should model best practices in terms of making sure everyone speaks make sure making sure everyone's heard acknowledging what people say um you know not trying to win any olympics for talking longer you know um but and try to be you know we can try to be quick our statements but i think sometimes the best way we can show up also is um by having those discussions because otherwise it's like julia was saying we might as well be out gardening or doing something else so i hope that we wouldn't limit people's contributions so um just just want to say as soon as we get the topics for the syllabus work sessions calendared out hopefully in the next week the stage two of that conversation is is to work on how we structure those conversations um and well julie i don't know if you realize you just put something right in front of your camera and it's like oh okay i guess but i'm just re-plugging in my other computer because they're all the batteries are dying yeah it was very sporty yeah so i again responding to what uh you brought up and michelle brought up um how do we structure this both in a way that we all have different ways of processing uh and also to uh you know to allow um our discussion can help the public understand get to a deeper point of understanding on some of the topics um and also to be very clear that when we're talking about these we're not talking about micromanaging um we're we're talking about understanding and communicating but uh more more on that later yeah can i can i interrupt here because um it's already 6 20. um we have two more categories to go through and and i want to make sure no we've got unity and trust and continuous improvement so i want to make sure that we have time at the end to kind of do a what do we do now um so um i think what i'm hearing from this conversation is that this is this is the category that we need to have more conversation about um i've got lots of notes about how we need to have conversations so um so if you don't mind can i move us along to the next category which is unity and trust the board will lead with one voice in its pursuit of the vision and goals so um on this one um yeah people want to talk about why they scored the way they did in this one can you just say what they are rita so we don't have to toggle back to them okay uh so uh michelle ailey scott andrew and i uh scored it a zero um amy and julia escorted a approaching approaching student outcome spoke so for one thing i haven't memorized uh where we are in terms of achieving our goals that that was in column four well you should that's your homework for tonight a little more um seriously is that we've talked off and on and probably have a list somewhere of board operating agreements and protocols uh but we really we really don't have them
02h 20m 00s
i don't i just sent that around um this week to everybody but it hasn't been formally adopted and i think we all agree that um it needs some tweaking and it's something we should spend some time on yeah and that's that's kind of a first order of business i think for us going forward from here is to nail those down and on something of a regular basis um mention them at board meetings and it's scott the corollary to that that's mentioned here is that we do not have an ethics and conflict of interest statement this is the only board i've ever served on where i didn't have a formal conflict of interest statement which is kind of interesting given the the uh value and seriousness of so many of the things we deal with well actually as public officials um i mean one thing i think this is different from so i signed a lot of those serving on boards and i think one thing that's different why why i was assumed that we hadn't signed one is like there there is a set of ethics rules that do apply to elected officials um so that's sort of the overarching um could we also adopt one specific to pps i think that yes that's the case but we do have a framework that we all need to operate it under um as elected officials and you know through the it's enforced by and monitored by the government standards and ethics commission it's pretty pretty broad i think it would be good i mean the risk of not having one probably in place is is is pretty great yeah most schools um is that something the policy committee would come up with or could we just adopt i bet osba probably has a conflict of interest or some some language already established that we could look at and and tweak there's a lot of prototypes for ethics um statements from most most big school districts have ethics statements and the and the state the one that governs all elected officials really only pertains to financial conflict of interest doesn't address anything else i also gave this a zero because we weren't didn't have we don't have that um ethics statement that we sign and then we also um the the thing about the staff where it says all board members agree that if the board has committees their role is only to by the board not to advise the staff and and sometimes i feel like being on the policy committee that was it it was kind of curricular sometimes and so some of those boundaries aren't as clear to me maybe they're clear to other board members but but it feels like sometimes there's some shadowiness there sorry which which number are you looking at haley i'm looking at the bottom of the second column on the unity and trust one that says all board members agree that if the board has committees their rule is only to advise the board not to advise the staff so i i think on the policy committee um and really sometimes other committees as well is um that's where i i i'm willing to argue for a little flexibility around that if uh for example on the policy committee if we're doing public process as we should on rewriting a policy the staff needs to be kind of guided by us i think that's that's kind of the one exception to hey the superintendent is the only one we work with uh and maybe maybe maybe i'm wrong in this but that's my inclination is if word if we're not overseeing that public engagement process then we can you know we can go sideways on it and that's not not a happy place to be so i just want to say that's something to talk about not not here but as in in the future so i i think um i think the where the line is between um board interactions with staff and versus board i don't want to use micromanaging but that's the only word i can think of staff i i think it's i i don't think we have a common
02h 25m 00s
understanding of where that line is and there may actually not be one line there may be different lines depending on the circumstance i mean i can see there is a difference between committee work and you know like full board work um kind of of necessity a committee is intended to be deeper and weak um i i think that i don't know how else to do it and bother having a committee so so there may be i don't know i i think i think there's room for discussion about um how the board is interacting with staff at various levels is there an oxford comment comma in there i i said was there an oxford comma in there i know i think it was just a run-on sentence just plain old run-on i think rita one of the words you were looking for too is directing staff but they uh the language says it includes advising staff i i actually noted that that it's you know because i thought that was an important inclusion is that is that um you know we would you know to get to column three we've we've adopted a a statement requiring that board members do not give operational advice or instructions to staff members um i think i think we need to talk about that as if that's a value we we want to you know adopt and adhere to yeah so i i mean i'm just thinking you know when we were putting together the bond package and if we said the staff can you give us an estimate on x that's that's kind of giving direction to staff in a sense and i don't see any way around that um so anyway i'll i'll back off of that just say that's a fruitful topic and and what else do we need to talk about here in this yeah and i think that's i was just going to say i'm sorry michelle were you going to speak i was just thinking about the audit committee and how how that functions and you know the auditors the the expert but she's one of the stuff that's supervised you know by the board so i was just wondering how that would impact um our work i mean that we it says you know the board members don't give operational advice we we don't necessarily but it's sort of a like mini working relationship that's it's kind of give and take i don't think by the audit committee this is what i'm saying i see though that's different because those are our staff directly those are directly direct reports to us as opposed to everybody else reporting to the superintendent i think this would be a great topic to have with staff because a lot of times they do ask i mean i think when there's politically hot issues um you know we all get the call around like hey are you okay with this um i was like oh you're asking like what like directionally is okay or when we're executive session so i think there is sometimes places where like you know staff for the superintendent aren't going to want to um that they're going to want the elected members of the board to um you know set a direction that if it's a political issue so i think that's a it's a good discussion to have like what sort of parameters would would staff put on it like here's where we could use your your help or advice and here's when like it's you know we don't need it and have that be a better so you have a better definition of like i'm confused you're asking you know you're calling like are we vote sometimes like i get a call and they're saying like here's what we're gonna do what do you think and i'm like are we voting on it because like i didn't see that on an agenda it's like no we're just trying to get a sense of like where the board is and it's like okay well here's my point of view um but we won't vote on it so i i i think to avoid misunderstandings of where what what what issues that apply to and where is it helpful or where is it solicited to have a conversation with staff okay so i've got in my notes this is another area where um we need to have further discussion and we're not gonna we're not gonna resolve it tonight so um okay uh i'm feeling a little anxious about the time um so the last category is continuous improvement
02h 30m 00s
the board will invest time and resources toward improving its focus on the vision and goals can you just go over our scores so uh six of us were in zero and ali was in um approaching so you want to defend your position ali or i am the clock-eyed optimist um i mean i think i i i felt like we were [Music] further than maybe i should have used a minus again i didn't think outside the box as michelle pointed out um i didn't feel like we were as low as a zero and i felt like we were moving towards one so that's why i put us in the one that we are beginning these things of of of um trying to improve like tonight doing the self-evaluation is part of that we have been in in government team trainings um we are recognizing accomplishments um we are doing a self-evaluation so all of those pieces i think were why i didn't ran it radius is a zero so again i'm i'm more generous of a greater than some of you and i'll just have to live with that can i ask a question the rubric referred to a governance focused retreat or meeting or training or uh what that was board co-led or had students co-leading or help help me out here what what exactly they have in mind right now the short answer is i i'm not sure i mean i i've got what you get so um where's the conversation i think i was going to venture a guess which is if you if you actually did were over in the green column it would be radically different than what any other school board in oregon is doing and that there'd be value in walking the community members through why the board meetings look differently because we're using a student outcomes focused governance system and that's why it's not like what you're used to seeing that's just my guess and that the more the community buys into it you get a much more uh sustainable uh culture of student focus versus hey why didn't you have this on your agenda or why didn't you recognize you know this group or you know what whatever it is i like i like uh i i can subscribe to um each of those items in the mastering column there i am i really liked the um in the second column um the board tracks the average annual cost of staff time invested in governance during its annual self-evaluation including time of staff members invested in preparing for attending and debriefing after meetings um that's difficult so sometimes the data the gathering of the data actually costs more than it's worth to actually have the data but kind of having that focus i think we would be shocked i think we would be truly shocked at the cost staffing our meetings because it's not just our board staff it's everyone and every hour they've spent throughout the year preparing for it um and again i don't know i'm not necessarily advocating to do it because you know again sometimes that actually gathering the data is is more trouble than it's worth but being cognizant of that you know how many hours went into this week's staff meeting was it 20 was it 100 um you know and and and you know multiply that out by an average cost i mean that's that's quite a few teachers that we could be funding um you know in our classrooms right if we if we weren't spending that time you know on that and so finding that balance right what what's the are we um years ago my one of my um my deputy budget director put together the daily cost of the city budget office this is not a big office it was 17 of us and you know i want to say with something like 30 to 33 000 a day which is kind of a shocking number right when you think but you know 17 people over the course of a year all the materials and services and everything but he did it in advance of a retreat so that we started talking as a staff about have we added 33 000 worth of value today right as an office did we provide that value to the taxpayer i think as a board asking that question wow have we provided whatever that cost is right did this board meeting
02h 35m 00s
um did it justify fifteen thousand dollars of staff time right um you know being spent to prepare and staff for it um because it needs to right and if we're not we need to really rethink you know sort of sort of what we're doing so anyway that jumped out at me i liked it i think so point that you mentioned andrew about um you know not just talking for talking sake but to actually be you know a little bit more disciplined in our in our use of time meetings yes yeah i hate when staff feel like they have to hang around just in case yeah and then it's and then it's 10 o'clock and they have to get up in the morning and do it all over again um i in the past i've had the feeling that staff wants to make a presentation to us on x and they're kind of guessing what we want to hear and sometimes it hits the mark it hit the mark and sometimes it didn't and i'm hoping that we can do some better communication up front so um that when they do spend time to put something together for us it's high value and and meets our needs and i think what we perceive the public needs are as well for communicating on a topic because i know like you know i know people were frustrated that we got our reentry presentation late um but i know that multiple of our senior staff were working on that over the weekend so how many staff hours to get that presentation out and um you know is that again it's that balance of staff time and staff resources and what we need to be effective but also i think sometimes the word discipline i think was amy um how can we be disciplined board to know where those boundaries are i mean i always want more information i always want it earlier um but recognizing that that's sometimes not possible and maybe it's not the best you should it's hard but i think that's a further conversation for us to have as we look at resources in this area so one thing i want to make a positive can i make a positive comment uh sure this is um please back back to scott's um earlier question about what would you like to move to to move to the next column on this particular one in the second column i really like the one the board has provided time during regularly scheduled board authorized public meetings to recognize the accomplishments of students and staff regarding progress to our goals and interim goals and i think to me we have lots of examples of success and recognizing that is i think a really important way in which um we acknowledge and reaffirm um in a positive way that we're focused on student student outcomes um i think it's also motivational for us to be disciplined when we see like the success okay like we want more of that anyway i'd love if we could accomplish that in the next that next column okay i'm gonna um it's now 6 41. um and can we power through till for another 19 minutes yep okay um well i think um i think a best practice is a summarization yeah so i have that so i was gonna i i wanted to leave the next 20 minutes to talk about okay well now what like what have you heard what you want to do next you know now what right and my taking notes while we've all been talking and i've also made like a parking lot of next steps just hearing what people have said so what i'd like to do just because we have less time than we thought we might have at this section is to read what i already have and then if there's additional things to add into that is that cool yeah that's great okay i've also been keeping a list so awesome you can add add to this okay i think rita has as well so okay so the list i have is we need to look at refining the goals especially as it relates to high school and middle school um we need to formalize some of the guard rails that we already have um one thing that i added that i noticed to help us move to the next column on those first area was to add quarterly reports on the goals and we do have those in the calendar
02h 40m 00s
we need to look at a monitoring calendar we need to have a further conversation at the board about the consent agenda i made a note for me to connect with liz around the conflict of interest statement and ethic statements based on the examples in the columns and using some of her advice about all the resources that are out there like michelle said from osba and then that we as a board need to have a further conversation about direction and advising of staff what else uh scott and rita what do you have from your list monitoring our time and talking with staff about would it be more efficient to for example to have a another board staff person to free up time for senior staff um around preparing for board meetings but that that whole interaction uh how to make that more efficient uh and effective hey haley i think on that piece around directing staff um i think a nuance there is that there's a fine line between um an information request and directing of staff and so we need to get tighter on um you know making sure that information that's requested if it's owners to provide that it's truly information that the whole board needs because that verges into directing and eating up significant staff time um fairly easily i think we're a lot better than we used to in some ways but um i think it's still an issue yeah and i like uh andrew at least a year ago brought up the metro practice around um information requests and how long they take and if it's a big info request then the full board really needs to say yeah this is important to all of us whether we end up adopting that i think that's that's a good idea to look at i mean that's sort of been our guard rail but i don't think we i don't think we're very clear on it and i don't think it's adhered to very consistently uh other things i had on my list were how do we get to a seven day lead time policy simplification you know we had talked about that last year about uh just looking at i've got that whole history that's it's like an overgrown garden let's add another policy here um nobody's done the big meta step back and look at it we were going to have osba do that and i'm not quite sure what happened with that but in process okay okay now that you're on the policy committee you'll know in great detail yeah court i think uh board quarterly self-evaluation is an easy easy thing to add to our calendar [Music] and whoever vice chair will will lead that effort yeah happy too i didn't record your name very loudly i was just curious i i think we're gonna let rita run with the self-evaluation piece as part of her development uh role there because scott has about 87 other things that he's doing right now and he's still working yeah did we have consent agenda down on the list as as a discussion item yeah okay and then that last thing that i said about the board led slash student-led governance focus whatever that is finding it figuring out what what they actually meant by that what that an example what that might look like and then we can decide whether that's something we want to engage in or not as as a best practice that's something you can't go back to the council on can i have a couple things and julia's suggestion around recognizing uh where we're hitting the mark students and staff best practices kind of successes this is a awesome work i mean i think i think we've been really productive in this okay can i add can i add just a couple things that that i took
02h 45m 00s
um so i i did them by categories we went through and under the um monitoring and accountability [Music] there was some discussion about we need we need a conversation about what we think a monitoring and accountability function would look like um under communication collaboration uh conversation about what what things need to be discussed about what things need public transparency in the form of um a board agenda item or discussion um what these what needs a board policy uh how many meetings per month of all kinds are we willing to have um under continuous improvement ask the council what it would look like to include students and community in um in the what the uh in the having student outcomes focused government what would that look like um and um getting some accounting some even rough accounting of staff time um spent in responding to board stuff um okay so so that's a very long list of things um and and they're kind of all over the place so in the next uh what nine minutes ten minutes um can i ask a couple of concrete questions just to sort of start off on uh okay well now what um so let me ask you for i would actually like to ask if there were any things that ui or scott missed that people felt were important things to add to that list is that okay have we we collectively agreed that we're going to um adopt this tool and monitor regularly um with fidelity to the the way that they have laid out the goals no we have not and that was that was my next question so was this exercise helpful i think so yes okay was this tool helpful yeah i mean i don't know what other tools are out there but i trust that you did a really thorough job i think it's enough okay i think especially you know i think it's a good starting point and it'll be more helpful when we know what we're aspiring to and we organize ourselves accordingly right um and can i just say um i um i don't think it's problematic in any way that we scored ourselves the way we did because this is um you know we've been acknowledging for at least two years that we're trying to pivot so we're trying to do things differently and whenever you're trying to change things up it's there's there's a pretty significant lead time that you need um we've never used this tool before um we have we haven't been as diligent and consistent in uh engaging in you know any kind of training in the council model so i think we're fine and the other thing i would say is a friend of mine who does um system improvement in healthcare he was advising a doctor's group someplace alaska you know middle of nowhere alaska and they did a self-assessment and their numbers were terrible and they were all bent out of shape and he said here's the thing if you have a baseline that's really low it's really easy to show really quick and significant improvement so so there you go um okay so if if we think that this tool is going to be helpful i think the next question is um do we want to continue to try to do this just using our own resources um or do you think it would be helpful to have consultation with a council facilitator who has been trained in the instrument
02h 50m 00s
to help us help us work through the process how much do you think that would be helpful okay depend so they retreat three trained facilitators um aj is one of them and then there are two other people who um one is in idaho and i can't remember where the other one is um so those are the only three trained facilitators um aj would be free as part of our council dues the other two we would have to um we have to do a contract with and and i didn't i didn't want to pursue it until we had talked about whether we even want to go there um but so just an in-principle question do you think it would be helpful to have somebody actually trained in using this tool for system improvement i would find it helpful um and i also like free value considering you know our budget constraints not just now but into the next year and and aj if he's um trained in the tool would be would be great prices prices yeah brings a very good price um but the others may be very reasonable so you know i i would suggest that we leave it open but i mean the general question is do you think it would be helpful to have a trained facilitator rather than somebody like me where i'm just making it up i think it would be helpful i think it'd be helpful but that's no disrespect to you really rita i mean i just i i also would allow you probably to more freely engage in the conference and i frequently hit them um okay all this because this is a lot of work and a lot of digging and a lot of like assessing and tabulating so i appreciate the time you put in um and who would like the phd to help walk us i mean it does yeah because three weddings should be good for something right like that's hd comes in handy like three times a year if that yeah exactly exactly um so yeah exactly so um so i will explore the facilitator angle um i think then the next the next question i think is based on kind of the overall discussion tonight are there any and we went through this very long list at the end about things we could focus on in the short term um of that long list are there any categories or specific actions that you would like to like us as a group to focus on in the short term like over the over the next quarter so rita i'm seeing that it's we have four minutes left and i know several of us have hard stops so i think what i'm going to do is i'm going to email out to the group the list that i kind of cobbled together just now and have people maybe respond um to me so it's not like a quorum with just one or two things that you'd like to prioritize um and i think some of the things on there y'all have given me some marching orders about how you'd like meetings to look and some things i can do as board chair um to kind of get running on some of those and scott can do as vice chair and rita can do with the development piece um so does that feel like that would be a better honoring of time and give us all a chance to really think about what we want to prioritize sure so i i think as uh to take that thought i think that's great daily um and there's some some pieces on there that are pretty cut and dried they're kind of low hanging fruit you know get an ethic statement uh conflict of interest uh that's not a lot of uh that's not messy work that's just getting something and we could sort of have a checklist through the year that we move through those like one at a time um and then there are other things that are that are messy and i think that's where a facilitator might really help us out yeah and i don't mean messy i mean complex um messy in in the best possible way so thumbs up to have a facilitator lead us through the next iteration of this okay in the last three minutes um i'm gonna
02h 55m 00s
ask a question and ask for you to get back to i don't know me ali somebody um with ideas okay we'll send it to ailey she'll be the she'll be the point person on this um so there are a lot of different directions we can take around board development one of them is doing a self-evaluation and doing it kind of with fidelity on a regular basis but there are lots of other things we could do as well and if anybody has any ideas about what you would like please let me know can i throw out one idea that i had and see if there's any any interest um i think it would be very helpful for us to have sort of peer-to-peer contact with other school board members um i've talked to the council and they're sort of intrigued at the idea there's been a little bit of it recently around the covid stuff but um i think it would be really interesting and and helpful to have contact with a school board that either has has already gone through the kind of system-wide transformation that we're talking about and come out in the other side or is currently going through something of similar scope so that we could sort of compare notes and like you know am i crazy but i think that um is there any interest in in trying to set something like that out are you talking about i remember yeah i'm gonna call us at time wait it's like 6 59 so i will send that email out and y'all can respond to me via email about whether or not that's something you'd be interested in so it facilitate that and explore that people want to try to match up i think it'd be interesting to match up by um committee or job alike thank you i just want to say appreciation to you all for giving your time tonight to this i think it's really important i think everyone showed up really authentically in really great ways um thank you all for your hard work and especially thanks to rita for she looked through tons of self evaluations did tons of work around us trying to find the best jumping off point and i want to be clear any of the scores we gave are not an indictment of anything in the district but really just for us to start to think about where do we go next i think we can all recognize how far we've come we have an incredible staff you know we worked really hard as a board um together for this past year and and i know that we are all interested in how we can continue to be better all right seven o'clock everybody have a great night and we'll see you september 8th if not before in other ways thank you good night

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)

2020-08-27 PPS School Board Retreat

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education, Board Retreat 8/27/2020

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