2020-09-08 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2020-09-08
Time 18:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type regular
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting 9/08/2020

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for us that we had board overview memos but the overview memos weren't actually posted with the rest of the meeting materials um so um i just a transparency issue of if we're going to have a consent agenda we should have all the materials just posted here unless they're confident obviously confidential board overview memos and then there are several um items on this uh contracts on this agenda that um we didn't get the recorded reports of the year-end reports um i'd like to have those also um the board cover memos uh didn't actually list the performance goals rather they referenced the contract and just from the terms of transparency and again to move things through a consent agenda to have actually that that dropped into the board the board cover memo versus having it go having board members having to go to the contracts because often they're hundreds of pages as long to try and to try and find what what they are um and then the last piece is when you do go there it actually says on some of them that they're not going to be finalized the performance goals aren't going to be finalized until september till the end of september um and since we are going to be voting on some of these contracts which could be a four-year um approval because they've got one-year automatic renewals that don't come back to the board that when those performance goals are finalized that they in september that they'd be reported to the board thank you director ben edwards is there any further discussion i would like to say that we are having ongoing conversations about our materials and how we are communicating with one another and i know that um the folks creating those contracts and leading them are continuing to work for increasing transparency to make that easier for both board members and members of the public to access so thank you for those comments dr brown edwards i know it's a work in process um all right are we ready to vote the board will now vote on resolution 6167-6172 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions the consent agenda is proved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative shu voting yes all right thank you we turn now to student and public comment before we begin i would like to review our guidelines for comments
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the board thanks the community for taking the time to attend this meeting and provide your comments public input informs our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen board members and the superintendent will not respond to comments or questions during public comment but our board office will follow up on board related issues raised during public testimony we request that complaints about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter if you have additional materials or items you would like to provide to the board or superintendent we ask that you email them to publiccomment pps.net please make sure when you begin your comment that you clearly state your name and spell your last name you will have three minutes to speak you will hear a sound after three minutes which means it is time to conclude your comments ms bradshaw do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment we do not okay i'll move on then i think that's the first time that that's happened since i've been on the board nathaniel student representative shu would you like to provide us with your report this evening uh yes um yeah so uh let's see i was hoping that this would be my first normal report where i'd get to in where i'd get input from and update you on the dsc as well as students more generally however this hasn't been the case largely because of the chaos of the last few days with many dealing with issues such as the extreme winds and the ensuing power outages in fact my power went out early this morning and has yet to return and i'm currently speaking to you from an alternative location which does have power for the time being nevertheless there is one thing that i'd like to say uh soft start has been incredibly helpful besides giving everyone a chance to get acquainted with our new virtual environments which would be critical in its own right we have been able to adapt to the widespread power outages with relative ease in any case i'm hopeful that we should be there that i should be able to begin my regular reports at our next meeting which should be more substantive and insightful thank you all right i just got a text message from director constand that she is in the waiting room i believe kara i just admitted her oh great okay it's just you know um i really want to appreciate cara who is i was not expecting to be hosting alone this meeting tonight and we are on a brand new platform so thank you miss bradshaw for your adaptability and um i know that as nathaniel said this soft start has been helpful unfortunately you don't get a soft start cara you get to use this technology and play videos and everything live on pps tv so know that we extend you lots of patience and grace as we all figure this out and know i know that you had to take on this role rather unexpectedly over the weekend so thank you for doing that and for helping us function today with zoom all right superintendent guerrero are you ready to share your report with us tonight thank you chair lowry and good evening directors staff colleagues and to everyone who's tuned in this evening and watching our live stream well the new school year is finally here we're a few days into our soft start before we launch into our comprehensive distance learning model i think you all can recognize that this has been atypical a rather unusual school year as if the pandemic weren't enough to nathaniel's point now we have wins we have power outages thank you everyone for your patience today that was rather unexpected for many of our students staff and school campuses where that that made a day already just another obstacle to overcome but as you know these first two weeks are considered our soft start the focus is really on a re-engaging our students and reconnecting with families providing an introduction to new teachers and classmates and really assessing which support students may still need to successfully participate as we launch into courses and distance learning so this includes investing time getting familiar with identified technology platforms and
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resources that will be used for for teaching and learning so my hat's off to our school leaders our educators and support staff who have really just dove in uh and started making those connections with with our students now while our grade one through twelfth graders started last week it was our kindergarten students first day today one of my favorite occasions is meeting our new kindergartners for the first time and well that didn't happen in person today but i do want to recognize it was their first day of their pps career and i know their teachers were also excited to start making connections with our younger students in the spirit of connecting with students and families and with our colleagues as district leaders we also want to maintain some consistency so this past weekend we prepared and recorded a back to school message which will be shared with all of our families and staff tomorrow so in lieu of the usual superintendents report i thought i would provide directors with an advanced preview tonight so with your indulgence we'd like to play a video clip for you here and so here's the world premiere of a back to school message and just a second while i figure out how to switch from one thing to another cheers is this sound garbled for other people [Music] sounds like there's no horsepower in the broadband connection let me see i'm not sure what to do about it but let me just give me a sec it looks like you're still buffering maybe if you rewind you can we can make sense of the beginning and you might want to turn on original sound cara if you either under more or on the top left if you turn on original sound then your computer won't try to suppress it as background noise arrived once again at the beginning of a new school year no matter how unusual this fall might be some things remain the same from welcoming our youngest students to their first learning experiences to supporting our high school students as they prepare and think about their post-secondary lives it is my privilege to commence my fourth year serving as your superintendent and to oversee our school system's efforts and work to support every pps student in every grade level at every school it's important to acknowledge that we live work and play on the traditional land of indigenous people who once made their homes along the columbia and willamette rivers we must continue to acknowledge celebrate and honor native american history and heritage native people continue to make our city and our region a more dynamic and thriving place for all those traditional lands include where i stand here outside of harriet tubman middle school like so many other schools classrooms gyms hallways and playgrounds in portland right now tubman remains quiet we miss our students dearly but we will always act first in the interest of their health and wellness and that of our staff and educators i know we all look forward to that wonderful day when we can all open our classrooms again
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while our school campuses are unusually still the homes of our students and educators are now buzzing with activity as they are re-engaging and reconnecting for the first time in months these daily changes are not the only differences as we begin this school year not only are we teaching and learning from our kitchen tables and living rooms we are doing so amid a global pandemic an economic crisis and a racial uprising portland families have suffered the loss of loved ones parents are struggling to find work and those who have jobs are balancing work-life demands they could not have imagined just several months ago and a reckoning of racial injustices that have plagued this country and our community for far too long is taking place across america and on the streets of portland our young people are among those leading the fight for change and how black citizens are treated and valued they move us they demonstrate their power and moral authority and causes to think about the immense role and responsibility we have as the adult whether that be as a parent grandparent aunt or uncle to love encourage and support our youth or as educators and staff recognizing the privilege we have in standing with our broader community including our culturally specific partners and social services organizations in these challenging times i am grateful for how our young people are carrying on the work of so many before them they are remarkable fighting for justice while navigating the unprecedented circumstances that surround us all of course we have a role to play here too but our young people are already making our community a better one the many new realities we are now facing call upon us to come together to rely on each other when we recognize our interdependence our school community grows stronger and we are able to rise to the challenges in front of us this summer educators from across pps along with central office leaders public health professionals and community leaders came together to build a comprehensive plan that strive to ensure that at this time of distance learning every one of our pps students has the resources and support they need to learn as we have since we closed campuses last march we will continue to make sure every student has access to the digital tools they need to experience success in our comprehensive distance learning model during the last six months our outstanding nutrition services team has distributed well over a million meals to students and will continue to make meals available to any child ages 1 to 18 expanding our distribution sites to over 40 schools this fall our bus drivers are also delivering meals to the homes of 700 students and counting like the best school systems always do we are meeting our students where they are we know that our students and families need us now more than ever and in coordination with culturally specific partners community-based organizations multnomah county and so many others we are making available an expanding array of services and supports i want to invite everyone to visit our district website to learn more about our comprehensive set of student and family supports listed school by school these programs are intended to be responsive to student and family needs across the district and are particularly weighted towards supporting our students and families of color especially our black and native american families who have been disproportionately impacted by the fallout of the pandemic and ensuing economic crisis in fact this school year we are deepening our partnerships and investments with culturally specific organizations while we are redoubling our efforts to provide support and access to basic services during these unusually challenging times we are also continuing to follow harriet tubman's directive you have within you the strength the patience and the passion to reach for the stars this pandemic is not going to stop us from being ambitious from doing what we know is best for students or from ultimately realizing our district's vision for example despite a statewide budget deficit pps is one of the few districts who will begin this school year with an increased number of school counselors and social workers across our schools that is due in large part because so many of you especially our labor partners fought so hard for a historic increase in public education funding by the state of oregon with the student success act and as a result of the innovative
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and transformative leadership of our teaching and learning teams we will be piloting a very unique elective class i am particularly proud of this summer dozens of high school teachers students and community partners gathered to develop the first of its kind climate change and climate justice high school elective course pps is becoming recognized for being a national leader on climate justice and we are just getting started construction continues on safe state-of-the-art learning environments as we modernize campuses at madison and lincoln high schools and finished construction at a brand new kellogg middle school which will open in the fall of 2021 and just as we are constructing new campuses we are also building on the talented workforce here at portland public schools i want to wish a warm welcome to our new staff educators and leaders for the last few years school principals and central office leaders have gathered at our annual summer leadership institute to prepare to launch into the new school year and every year we have a theme this year's theme is together we will as i've made my way through a number of video calls over the summer with students staff and community members one of the things that has made me the proudest to be superintendent has been the together we will attitude that even in the midst of a pandemic we remain committed to our students and our families and determined to make the learning experience both transformative and joyful i know this fall is not like any we've experienced before it is not going to be without its challenges but after meeting and working and being inspired by so many of you i also know this we might be challenged but we will not be defeated together we will make this year a memorable one filled with engagement and inspiration as we continue to keep the love of learning alive for the nearly fifty thousand students of the portland public schools thank you directors i hope the audio was clear enough to to get that back-to-school message looking forward to our families and our employees having a chance to view that tomorrow morning but i wanted to give you a little bit of a preview apologies about the choppiness of the video and the lip syncing on my part um but i do want to welcome everybody back uh it it's working as well as it as well as it's working because of the commitment of all of our folks so a big kudos applause to everybody doing their best to to make it work so welcome back uh to our uh our our upper grade students and welcome to your school career kindergartners today that concludes my report sir thank you superintendent guerrero um it was lovely to get to see some of those images and i know that i'm missing the opportunity to be in our buildings to be in our schools and so it was great to be able to see you uh in those spaces and then to see some of our students as well um the back to i took a back to school picture of my daughter sitting at her desk ignoring me while she you know whispered under her breath mom my camera's on um it was not quite the same as the back to school photo in front of our one of our beautiful school buildings so i think we're all adjusting to the strangeness of this season um speaking of that we are adjusting to the strangeness of this school year and um still doing our business as a board and so we it is that time of year when we discuss um the superintendent's evaluation so that we can communicate clearly with superintendent guerrero our expectations as a board as as the board members know but i'm not sure everyone does the board's role um is really the to be the governor's body and to set the vision for the district to approve the budget to communicate with the community and to employ the superintendent that's one of our really important functions and so as as that relationship we want to make sure we're clearly communicating and so we begin a conversation about how we are going to evaluate superintendent guerrero tonight um and so i've asked director scott not director bailey but director scott the other scott to lead us in that process and hopefully his phone connection uh will last uh for him to be able to get through that but actually as i'm entering this i'm realizing that i've been sitting in this chair for an hour and a half and i know that many of our our board members all were in a meeting and some of our staff before um we hopped in here so i'm gonna have us all stand up and do a two-minute break and then we'll turn it over to director scott to lead us into a discussion of superintendent aguero's
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evaluation so take a two minute break we'll be back at 6 34. break because i could feel myself hunching over the computer screen so i hope uh you all took a chance to stand up and if you didn't stand up superintendent guerrero that you at least stretched a little bit um we have an ongoing uh discussion about needing to stand up so uh director scott are you there yes can you hear me okay yes i invite you to go ahead and begin our conversation about the evaluation great and you might hear the rest of the family as well but i have told them that this is this is the moment they need to mute themselves so we'll see how it goes uh no i appreciated your setup actually director uh chair lowry um about the superintendent evaluation template i mean i think it's you know something we know the role of the superintendent is really critical to ensuring the success of our students and and the on your annual evaluation of the superintendent's performance is one of the responsibilities we have as board members so each fall um the board in collaboration with the superintendent adopts an evaluation template for last for the upcoming year um last year as you may recall we met over several different retreats and meetings we identified four board goals um and the metrics by which we would monitor the progress of those goals and the intention of that process was really to anchor part of the superintendent's population to those goals um however as with a lot of things with covet 19 it's sort of a new world and um as a result this year even though we still have our four board goals we don't have the metrics required to measure the progress against the academic milestones we identified in those goals so you know others we set these board goals and we had um all these metrics but what we don't have now as a result of distance learning is a sense of where the baseline should be and so um given the pandemic and the unprecedented changes in the education we're have we're we're figuring out what a new proposal should be um for the 2021 school year um and you know in talking to staff um you know the ideas that could we use this year this current academic year to gather baseline data on those student performance goals which we could then use to set targets for the upcoming academic year in 2021 20-22 um and come back to those more goals i think one of the things that at least is important to me as a board member we spent a lot of time on that last year and and and you know those were three-year goals we don't want to lose sight of that and i think one of the important things of this process right now is making sure it's really clear to board members and also the public that those board goals are still very much um you know um in action they're very much something that we're going to be focusing on and we're going to be reporting the data this year even with distance learning
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we're going to be showing where our students are and um the you know the key question is not um we're not moving away from those goals the key question is is can we set sort of targets around those and i think i think the the you know essentially we can't and what we can do this year is reset the baseline um and you know hopefully with with covid and with distance learning we won't see a dramatic decline in terms of student performance but we also know in terms of of talking to education experts nationwide that there is somewhat of an expectation that this moment and distance learning may have an impact um on our students and and um you know and their and their overall performance so we really need to take a look at that so um as a result um we're still going to receive all the data from those board goals in the 20 21 22 22 uh sorry in this 2020 2021 school year um but because we can't set baseline data we're coming up with a new proposal and so the proposal that we're talking about um is instead of using those bore goals for the superintendent's evaluation focusing on the leadership standards identified by the oregon school board association and the coalition of oregon school administrators these leadership standards were recently updated to reflect a strong focus on racial equity and social justice which is something that we as a board talked about wanting to see more of last year um we did use five of these standards in the superintendent's evaluation over this last year so their proposal is to use um all eight of the standards um in this upcoming year to evaluate superintendent's performance reset the baseline come back next year with a focus on those student outcomes student achievement goals so with that um sir lowry i'll turn it back over to you for discussion great sorry that my video was off earlier i with you know forgot to push all the buttons when we came back from breaking wow you know it was that was just a long enough pause that i assumed i had been cut off about 30 seconds in all right we actually miraculously heard all of that andrew so i will share that director scott um is not it is in a place where he has lost uh what power and wi-fi so he is um making do as are many of us today in in uh this kind of chaotic uh chaotic day yes by phone by phone only by phone only so we don't we don't get to uh to see you as we convert um so i'm gonna go ahead and um so the proposal before the board is to um focus the superintendent's evaluation on the eight osba standards we're gonna have a discussion tonight about that and share our initial thoughts questions responses we are not voting on the evaluation tonight but andrew is going to listen intently hopefully if the phone doesn't give out to our conversation here we'll also have our meeting minutes and i will also be taking notes um and then we will bring back he will bring back before us on september 22nd for a vote um the proposed evaluation template um so we're gonna go through alphabetical order just to give everybody a chance to share initial questions and thoughts and then we'll move into a more free-flowing discussion um i talked to nathaniel a little while ago and um he because he's shoe he's always either first or last so we thought we would um mix things up this time and go in alphabetical order by first name and of course i forgot to make the list of that um so i think andrew is actually first so um uh since we already heard him sort of introduce this amy would you be willing to be the first person to speak and i would because also last time i checked m came before n agreed great now this is what happens when i'm trying to type out the list yes m does come before n correct amy is first i apologize be without talking about our abc's um actually i don't really have much to say i support the approach i think it's a good way to go to lean on the osba leadership standards we're not going to forego our student achievement focus and our orientation on metrics but as far as the evaluation template i i support what we've arrived at all right that was the perfect amount of time because it allowed me to type out the alphabetical order for the rest of the time uh andrew did you want to add any personal thoughts to the statement you already made nope nope i think you heard it from me and we never know when your phone's gonna cut out um i'm next uh and then uh read the rest of the list
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so you're all prepared so it's it's amy andrew ailey julia michelle nathaniel rita scott i think i got it all right and before n um so i think you know i i really think our board goals are vitally important and i think we as a board are doing a lot of work to focus um on student outcomes as the essentials of what we're about and i know we have made a commitment to especially focus the name um outcomes for our black and native students and that that is a huge priority and deeply important and that we have no way this year to know um where we are or what we can expect um because of the pandemic and so um i think we really need to um look at how do we evaluate this school year knowing that data is going to be radically different than the trajectory we were on of closing the achievement gap and improving third grade reading fifth grade math secondary readiness and post-secondary readiness and i know that we as a district are committed to all those things um and and yet we still need to evaluate the superintendent on very concrete and clear standards and i just don't feel like we'll have concrete and clear standards where when it comes to those four four board goals for this year um so i really think those osba leadership standards capture the pieces of you know a high performing superintendent and i think you know as we saw last year on those standards it gave us a lot to engage with superintendent guerrero around places where he was excelling and places where he um and his leadership team could do some more work and and have some more potential growth so i really found them helpful last year the before we did five we did and really see them as in this crazy year uh a great stopgap measure as we kind of figure out where the ground is um in our work together uh julia what are your thoughts well since this is a perf first public discussion we've had of it i had some questions um so one just and i gotta pose it and we can come back to it but was for director scott that he said that we would have data um but that we wouldn't because it would be um based on um obviously a different set of circumstances that we we wouldn't be using it to measure and i would like to hear at some point tonight from dr brown on what data we will have um just from my i'm not a big fan of the um osba um evaluation tool um we spent a lot of time over a year and a half um talking with um the council of great city schools consultant aj craigo about um a using student-focused outcomes and then just even last month um and we settled on the evaluation template and then last month as a board we kind of reaffirmed our own usage of it for our own evaluation and so i'm interested in knowing when i look at the osba standards to me they seem more adult focused and activity focused versus in terms of what is considered accomplished versus such a far i think um stretch from the student goal so i'd be interested in um hearing both from dr brown but also i think we should ask um the uh council great city city schools consultant aj about what other districts are doing um because we're not the we're not the only ones who adopted student-focused metrics we're not the only ones around the country that obviously are facing a very different environment i do think parents still expect us to be sort of measuring both ourselves and the whole leadership of the district through um how students are progressing and um recognizing that we're in very unusual times like what what that might look like and i just i don't see it in the current standard so those are those are the questions i have in in my mind and as i approach the to thinking about the evaluation thank you director edwards i think we'll have uh director uh russ dr brown are you a doctor russ i think super smart man phd probably like eight phds i don't know um we'll have dr brown respond to that and director scott um after we've had a chance for everyone to sort of share their initial thoughts
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i also just was reminded that unfortunately our student rep doesn't weigh in on the superintendent's evaluation it's one of those weird quirks of all of the the legal parts of how we do this and so um we're going in a different order today and we'll practice this again and we'll have nathaniel weigh in another time on another topic um so after julia comes uh michelle so michelle what thoughts do you have director depos yes hi so i'm um i'm generally i'm i'm happy that we're using you know um the sorry i'm i'm having a hard time articulating tonight um the osba's osba's standards in lieu of a better tool evaluation tool um i think that we have to be adaptive in this time it's just such a strange year i'm happy that we're starting earlier than we did last year and my only concern is really if we uh if we find halfway through the year that we're seeing enormous um you know decreases in achievement um i'm wondering if we have a a plan for course correcting mid-year um based on the data that we're seeing from dr brown and we'll have um superintendent guerrero and maybe uh dr brown respond to that at the end of our time but that's a great question uh director depos um okay so we're skipping nathaniel sorry and then we'll move on to rita can you hear me can you hear okay um and i can't guarantee that if i talk for more than 30 seconds i can't guarantee my internet will hold but anyway um so let me start with a general um i think this evaluation template is much improved um i i think it um it shows well i'm gonna i'm gonna make a guess that um cosa um contributed mightily to a number of these changes and um and and i think they're i think a lot of them are really good and in particular the um the the clear emphasis on equity um throughout this template that was largely absent previously so that i think that's great um i guess i would um make one suggestion uh i'm looking at the workbook that is attached to this um of which this this evaluation template is a piece um but there are other pieces as well and i think a number of the pieces are worth looking at um for uh well i don't know adoption as well or at least um i think they i think they're useful um to make the evaluation process more comprehensive and more um objective um and in particular i would point out um there are a number of appendices and appendix c it provides um what they're calling um i can pull it up here um there it it provides um [Music] guidelines for how the superintendent can write his self-evaluation that's part of the evaluation process and it provides um a kind of um suggestion for um artifacts of evidence that can be used in in the superintendent self-evaluation um and i think a lot of those are are really good um [Music] and well may well make it easier for the superintendent to write his self-evaluation um which over the last three years has tended to be pretty uh pretty substantive and and pretty long um and i think this might make it a little a little uh more manageable for the superintendent um and i guess that's all i would say um i uh we are we are not abandoning the goals we are having to recalibrate the baseline um and um i look forward to dr brown's explanation of how other districts are approaching it and and what we can expect when we get
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some actual numbers so that's it thank you and miraculously your internet held out for all of that director moore all right director bailey uh scott i think you need to unmute correct uh when echo previous comments made um let's keep track of the metrics but uh it's really not proper to use them in any kind of evaluation at this point um i want to second director pasa's comment about as we keep track of the metrics uh and especially around how our students of color are doing um we know there's going to be students regardless of their background who may not do well in a virtual environment and what kind of interventions will we have when we see that happening over the next couple of months i think it's going to be one of the key things for us to watch this year finally in terms of the eight principles i would like to see more emphasis put on operations [Music] buildings sustainability in particular uh that's that's the one kind of i don't know if it's an addition or there there is one piece on i think on operations um but i i'd like to see us pay a little more attention to that in terms of um our evaluation did you i'm not i there was a motorcycle and funky internet so i didn't quite catch all of that so i heard you say building sustainability and my brain goes to like 80 places is that like a climate justice thing where we're looking at sustainability of physical places is that building sustainability of the district growth like could you elaborate on what what you're looking for specifically with with that um yes the sustainability in particular although i think sustainability growth in general is a good idea in particular around energy efficiency [Music] and in terms of buildings in particular around better integrating the edu quote the education side of the house with the building design [Music] side of things that's that's been an issue since the first bond and i think it's it's time we we stepped up and addressed that that makes sense i'm glad i asked because i was not quite tracking with you um so we had a couple of questions raised um so let's hear from dr brown for a little bit and then we can circle back into a more open conversation um about these pieces dr brown um could you give us sort of an overview of um how data will be gathered what that will look like for this year and kind of some of your thoughts on our board goals uh but before i do that i i'd like to allow the the superintendent an opportunity to speak if he so desires or if he wants me to pick up and run i can but i'd like at least afford him the opportunity i appreciate your sense of deference there dr brown you really are the expert in this in this field i think what we're hearing in the conversation here and i know staff is making note as we we certainly this is an important exercise for the board to engage in annually uh it's important for anybody to be clear about the expectations for one's per performance and what you might consider you know doing that adequately uh or satisfactorily or at an excellent level uh i think it's true uh it is an atypical year because as much as we love performance management uh that's a little tough to do when you actually don't have students in front of you to collect data um of course we're going to be interested in implementing whatever we can even if it's virtual or over distance so that we know how to best identify and support our students which is our primary concern at this time understanding that it won't surprise anybody that our
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students given the more limited instructional time likely aren't at the level that we would hope and so how we accelerate learning for all of our students especially those who are being disproportionately impacted i know are going to be the basis for uh most of our conversations at the school level and at the district level but i'll have dr brown expand a little bit more on what some of our internal conversations have been on this topic already so i'd like to start with uh director de pasa's question about mid-year correction i think i think one of the things that the pandemic has required of us is to collect and respond to data fairly quickly and to make adjustments fairly rapidly based on that data and we're certainly in one of those cycles right now as we look forward throughout this year and try to anticipate you know having students back in buildings and what what we need to do to be able to move towards that target over time in a normal academic year the purpose of a mid-year assessment a very reliable benchmark assessment mid-year is is exactly for the the point that director depos uh brought up which is to give an opportunity for our buildings and central office to do a mid-year correction and to adjust um we will certainly be doing that but i think we're going to be making adjustments throughout the fall as we gather information and as we we look uh to the implementation both of the comprehensive distance learning and as we begin to look at expanding opportunities for students to be in buildings uh this fall so that yeah that's an absolutely critical part of moving forward um you know looking back um director brim edwards in terms of what data will we have it that depends a little bit so we're going to offer a map assessment window this fall it's going to be done remotely we're going to be asking children to do that in their homes at this point i don't know what the participation rate for that will will be we i think a lot of parents are going to be very interested in that data they're going to want to know where their students are starting this academic year there's a lot of evidence across the country i've seen a couple studies done that say that parents are very very interested in where their students are starting as the superintendent pointed out there there is concern about uh learning loss uh you know certainly the spring was less than ideal across this country none of us wish to be in the circumstances where uh where we're doing distance learning uh so you know i anticipate having map data uh for at least two points this year there is some question about what um you know the state assessment will look like in the spring and whether or not there will be an sat window in the spring and what that will look like so there there are things that will be contingent on whether or not we can have students in buildings uh in order to be able to do them or whether or not the vendors uh create a pathway forward that we can can use that data so what we do have control over at this point in time again is is the map assessment windows we we do want to have those because it will give us a reliable start point for the year and give us some sense of growth during the course of the year i also expect us to be gathering some data tied to student perceptions as well we will be using the successful school survey yet again this year and we're going to use it with a more comprehensive representation of our student population going from grade 3 through through grade 11 so i think we'll have some additional data there as well but i think as several of the directors have pointed out the challenge this year isn't necessarily whether or not we have data but what what will the data mean and what will it mean with respect to what it has in the past because the circumstances under which we're providing education right now are vastly different than what they were in the past and i i don't think many of us would think that they're equivalent and so even when we look at a an assessment like map which gives us growth information over time that growth is based on what normally happens in in a brick and mortar setting not in remote education so um a little little different to try to make inferences about how much growth would be enough in this course of this year because frankly no one has that normative data at this point in time and to base accountability decisions on data that we don't really have a norm or a baseline for doesn't seem appropriate to me that being said
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you know i think the board last year came to a really nice evaluation tool a balanced evaluation tool one that that uh put more weight on student metrics but also acknowledge that there are these characteristics of leadership that really matter um and and that act as a complement to that student performance information and you know we are committed to to making that data public this year and working towards being able to set goals that are anchored to this new baseline as we move forward um director grimm edwards did you have uh did that answer your question do you further thought yeah so i'm curious what about the high school data um we'll be able to collect that that's not map related will we be able to collect high school data yes i i just frankly i was mainly weighing into assessment data at this point i am concerned uh with some of the high school data that is contingent upon assessment that it may not be available so that's why i mentioned s.a.t but that's also applicable though to um the language assessments that are used for the seal by literacy so i'm a little a little concerned about the availability for those as well this year what are other districts doing that you know of to keep the focus on student focus versus adult activity in terms of if it's not test data is there are there other indicators of academic progress and i i'm just asking these questions i mean this is the big question that i get asked by parents or concerns it's concerning to get expressed of just a sense of like how how we know where our kids are and whether what we're doing is is working and they're actually advancing so again i i think that the framework that the board put in place last year was unique and balanced in its nature and unfortunately you know the the data that was used for that um doesn't mean the same thing this year that that's that's the challenge i am not aware of too many folks who are working to use um assessment data as part of an accountability framework right now because again there's a challenge in in the inference about meaning um a lot of systems frankly use rubrics like the one that the state provides it it's it's based on standards it's based on competencies tied to superintendent and it's meant to to cover a range of uh functions of the of an organization of our size and how the superintendent manages those that's a fairly common approach realistically when i talk with my colleagues across the country they're just busy trying to get things up and running trying to make sure that we're serving kids and solving the logistical problems necessary to be able to make sure that that students are fed um that they have devices that the curriculum has been updated so frankly a lot of those are inputs but they're incredibly important inputs in an environment like we're in right now where you know we're essentially turning education on a dime to go from face to face uh to a comprehensive distance learning model and it's just you know that is where the lion's share of the work and what i would consider meaningful work right now aimed at at basic services towards kids great um we have about 10 minutes left of our time for this discussion um dr deposit i wanted to make sure you felt like you got your question answered that you had asked about um uh how to change course and the monitoring of that um i know dr brown spoke to that but did you feel like it it was answered yeah i i did for the most part um i know that we i mean we're just in such extraordinary times um i if i have questions i'll follow up with you directly thank you for asking thanks uh michelle um are there other comments i know um director com sam you had raised a question about should we do all eight is that still your thinking or are there other thoughts no you're good anyone else sorry go ahead amy anyone else have any other additional comments uh or questions about um the proposed
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evaluation the osba leadership guidelines can i just um echo what um dr brown just said about um all of the you know the inputs um being critically important um i i just want to highlight that um schools for a very long time have been expected to take on um the burden of of dealing with um students the the well-being needs of students and families um and i think that one of the things that this pandemic has revealed unmistakably is that the social safety net has has been shredded over the years and that once again school districts are being asked to um pick up the ball to mix metaphors um and that um all of the things that the that portland public schools and other school districts are being asked to provide for students are critically important and i don't think any of us would want to do otherwise but people need to realize what school districts are taking on that go well beyond the court you know the alleged core mission of educating students we we are not to put too fine a point on it i think in many cases we are keeping families alive or at least helping to by providing food for families that are otherwise up against the wall economically um so i think everybody is going to have to be um forgiving about some of the things that the district will not be able to do or will not be able to um to document and personally if it comes down to a choice between child well-being and test scores i'll take the well-being every day so that's it thanks all right any uh other thoughts from any other board members i know we haven't heard from director bailey on this um again or dr scott um i'll jump i'll jump in just um no i i really appreciate this is a great conversation and and i really appreciate the thoughts of a lot of my fellow board members i mean i think um getting back to dr um brown's comment about you know getting the district up and running it's is vitally important and and those are inputs right and and when we talk about performance measurement we often um there's this tendency to sort of ignore the inputs but this is one of those moments where i think the inputs are are really important and um and uh you know and and so i one of the things about you know i i getting back to um secretary edward's comments i completely agree we don't want to lose focus on the student outcomes and and i think osb standards you know they're good and i think they spend a lot of time developing them they are a little bit more adult-centric and we've been trying to move beyond that towards these student-centered outcomes which is really important and and i want to stress that we're not losing that right we're going to come back to that in 2122 um and i think the osba standards actually allow us to focus a little bit on some of those really important things about how well are we as a district getting things up and running in this moment and you know i've been really impressed with a lot of the work um but i think it's it's it's good for us as a board to keep our focus during this whole year on on you know how is the superintendent and staff how are they responding to this moment um you know and are they advising to it and so so i think we get some of that through through the usb osba standards and we've got to come back to the student outcome focused standards um in the 2020 20 21 22 um school year so anyway it's a really good conversation and um i just yeah i really appreciate the thoughts that people have had sorry i was making notes and i realized i was not muted so i apologize if you heard a bunch of clicking there um ah zoom yeah i think i've seen lots of places that the quote for 2020 is you're still on mute um which is probably something i either say every day or have said to me so thank you for those thoughts director scott um anything else before we end this discussion remember that
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um i've been taking some notes kara's been taking the minutes uh director scott has been listening and we'll go ahead and take those thoughts make any amendments as needed and then come back to you with an evaluation proposal for a vote on october 22nd and that will it will be given to you in your package for thursday before director moore did you have an additional comment i i just wanted to clarify the date so did you just say september 22nd okay i misheard it the first time so oh good i was like i'm like in a brain fog because of you know the whole monday is a holiday thing i think it's sunday today and i should be at church instead of at a school board meeting so i'm just very confused um and keep feeling like i'm making little mistakes like that so yeah september 22nd is what i think the next board meeting is but maybe not so so one thought i had is how when we come back to look at these um how we are more explicit within the framework about sort of the concept of targeted universalism and i know in our board goals we were really explicit about talking about black and indigenous and students of color and osba is well they've changed it somewhat and there is in the standard um standard number two ethics and professional norms um some discussion about that but it seems like um if there's a way that we can continue to use that lens whether it's for inputs or a different sort of building out the framework that we be explicit about the students that we are focused on and i'd have to give it more thought to think about how that might work but i just it that's one thing that strikes me between where we were if you take away that the outcomes and the the measurements but like just how we framed it up it really was a focus on a specific set of students knowing that if we did well with those students that we did well uh we're going to do well for all students and i'd be happy to come up with some thoughts about how we might we might do that using the osba framework um i i would suggest um i mean i don't think standard two is is um fully responsive to your concerns i um i think you want to look at leadership standard number four culturally responsive instructional leadership and improvement yeah it was in a couple different places it just seemed like like they kind of talked about it generic generally and we were super specific with a very defined point of view um so i'm wondering if there could be some carryover from our focus on a set of students that pps has not um you know served well over the years then that's to bring that sort of focus or lens into this document more but yeah i think you're right director moore that there's a number of places where you could could do that all right well i wanted to offer i would be willing to work on that i noticed that too i couldn't um i don't have it printed out in front of me whether it was leadership standard three or four um i thought that the language could be strengthened and since we have we're using all eight of those standards perhaps um we could present something at our next reading so our next meeting is when we're gonna we're gonna go ahead and vote so michelle i'll ask you to connect with um director scott about um crafting some language and having that uh ready for our packet next thursday uh director bailey did you have something else to add yeah just i had i was going to bring up that same point as director to pass um that that particular standard great great title but uh it didn't seem to carry through to the specific points uh below it so yeah totally agree michelle yeah and i think that's a very strong point going off of what director berm edward said around our focus and our intentionality about naming black and native students as a priority i think if we can strengthen that language in our um in those osba standards that that would make sense for the direction that we want to go as a board so director depos if you're willing to work with andrew on some of that that would be
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ideal yeah thank you okay is there anything else that needs to be said about this evaluation conversation before we move on to committee reports seeing and hearing none um i'm going to ask director moore to share anything she has from the policy committee uh we haven't uh met as a i don't think we've met as a committee since the last meeting um and our next meeting is scheduled and this is where i usually turn to roseanne um monday september 14th thank you well my space says you know we'll have a policy report so that was your possible career that the next meeting is the 14th so that's perfect are there any other committee uh reports or conference reports that we need to share yes um and director to pass i would ask you to jump in um since we um co-chaired a um audit and school improvement bond committee meeting in the last week in which we um received the or had the audit presented at the 2017 bond program and it was the performance audit for fiscal year 2019 because it was a combined committee we had a majority of the board members there and we also had i think four or five students participating and they add excellent questions um as part of the the meeting and um i really appreciate that we've um nathanael year worked with the district council to have students on committees because they are some very insightful uh pointed questions that were great but anyway we had the audit presented basically we have a independent external performance auditor sec that does that did the audit they use the basically generally accepted government auditing standards and one of the focus there they focused on several areas but health and safety construction management contracts and procurement and then prior audit recommendations and all the documents from that meeting um are posted on the district website also um on the sort of audit committee page but if i were to summarize and again i've asked the director to pass as the chair of the school bond improvement committee but in general they found that the district is making good progress on the health and safety improvements that were on a key part of the 2017 bond and provided some school by school information they they had some recommendations and findings that um i don't think we're that are material to the progress on the bond but ones that would um even element elevate the work even more um and essentially it also they also found that the district staff has been implementing the recommendations that came out of the the audits from the 2012 bond and the 2017 bond and um in most cases are substantially complete or on their way to completing completing them director to pass what what did i miss i'm searching for my notes and not finding them and i have a massive migraine right now so i appreciate you taking the lead on that and yeah i can't find my i i'm thinking i might not have saved my onenote from that uh meeting um i think the universal universal board sign of migraine is put on your sunglasses dr devos during the meeting they're not handy right now but yeah that's a that's a great um reminder i'm sorry i've had those doing meetings before and it's just the worst thank you for sticking with us tonight was there anything else you had to add director depos no i would just say you know really the office of the school modernization the business and operations team dan young's team have really done a good job at reviewing the findings and implementing any recommendations again no no major deviations from what was
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promised in the bonds and i would say to taxpayers and community members that there's a high level of scrutiny of all the bond fund expenditures a good job to the osm and extended team all right any other committee or conference reports that we need to make all right well i um uh do we have any other business that we need to address before we adjourn all right i believe that this is then my second meeting that we're ending ahead of time not that i'm keeping track or keeping score or anything uh but we're three minutes ahead of schedule um so uh be careful out there everybody make sure you have an evacuation bag packed if you're in a green area that's a number one evacuation level um be safe i hear that clackamas county is a little rough tonight and i know that we've got um students and and folks staff and others who live in clackamas county so be safe director bailey did you have something to add last note remember in november we will be voting on our bond renewal program so i just want to remind folks that this bond will go a long ways towards keeping our existing buildings safe warm and dry um it will allow us to complete benson actually rebuild benson it will fund the planning all the way up to construction for wilson and cleveland and will include for the first time important curriculum improvements including uh funding ethnic studies development curriculum development uh and finally we'll have i think a historically unprecedented investment in the jefferson cluster um to rebuild jefferson high school and uh improve buildings there uh yet to be determined by a community engagement process can i just add to that thank you director bailey i also noticed that now that we're on the other side of labor day things are in full swing with the bond campaign and um there'll be announcements up this next week but um over the last week the bond has gathered the support of lots of community groups from albino vision trust latino network the oregon food bank stand for children and about two dozen community and regional elected leaders so we'll be announcing those and also other developments with the campaign separately and we also have there's a website up and uh additional information um on all the components of the bond that director bailey mentioned as well on that website and i wish i had it on hand right now i think it's is it yes for pdx uh director bailey can you help me is it yes for pdx dot schools the i think though isn't it yes for portland public schools it their website is yes pdxschools.com okay and the it's formally measured 26-215 and you can also okay great all right well i counted my chickens before they were hatched it's now 7 25. one detail also in the bond is planning for a potential future expansion of roosevelt high school yes it's important to remember all the amazing things this bond is going to do for our students and our communities as well so our next meeting will be september 22nd and we'll be uh voting on the superintendent's evaluation as well as lots of other fun items um and so and hope to see you all back here again


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