2020-09-16 PPS School Board Audit Committee Meeting
District | Portland Public Schools |
---|---|
Date | 2020-09-16 |
Time | 16:30:00 |
Venue | Virtual/Online |
Meeting Type | committee |
Directors Present | missing |
Documents / Media
Notices/Agendas
Materials
2020 09 08 OIPA Status Update (2f46b1377604eded).pdf 2020_09_08_OIPA Status Update
PerformanceMeasuresForAuditOrganizationsTOOL (ac4d6a5e72ea5888).pdf PerformanceMeasuresForAuditOrganizationsTOOL
2020 09 16 Draft AC 2020-2021 Agenda (adbbb45e297e03ab).pdf 2020_09_16_Draft AC 2020-2021 Agenda
SoS Response tracking September 2020 (5fd7f2be20e3cf6a).pdf SoS Response tracking September 2020
2020 09 16 Community Member for the PPS Audit Committee draft.pdf (9753d09d67986007).pdf 2020_09_16_Community Member for the PPS Audit Committee_draft.pdf
Minutes
None
Transcripts
Event 1: PPS Audit Committee 9/16/2020
00h 00m 00s
open the meeting and i'm going to ask
the uh mary katherine
um well i'm going to ask if we can take
the first agenda item move it later in
the agenda so that
we can move the secretary of state's
audit to the beginning is that okay with
you
you all janice and mary katherine yes
okay
um claire
i don't know if you if you have the
ability to put up on the screen the
um the audit documents
or how how would you like to to do this
it might be useful
to um put from the screen so just for
background
uh the secretary of state had an audit
uh pps
that they unveiled in january of 2019
is that correct yes january 2019
there is an implementation plan
that we are working with we have a
template
that has all the findings and
recommendations and the action items
and um claire on behalf
of the district has been coordinating
the
district response there also are some
board items which
we can talk about after
we have a discussion about the rest of
the item so claire i'll turn over to you
it might be useful
to have the i don't know if everybody
has access
to the document that maybe put it up on
the screen as we
so i'm wondering if cara or roseanne
could do that um
put up the scorecard up on the screen
and then what i'm going to do is um sean
has
um uh just he could speak to
item number 17 and 19. um
and luis if you want to think about
thank you for joining us we're just
um i'm thinking that rather than going
through the whole scorecard in order
because the two of you
have a short window this evening before
you have to go back to another meeting
what i'd like to do is get you to speak
to your
items in particular and if you look
at the email that i sent to luis you'll
see the
link to the scorecard there as well as
the original audit and the audit
responses that we sent
that were published in january of 19 but
you will
know just by the um scorecard
because you're so involved in in the
work you'll be able to pick up from
there
so i'm going to start with sean because
he's prepared to speak to item number 17
and number 19. so i'm going to go out of
order i know
some of you are used to linear things
but tonight we're going to be a little
out of order
and i can go ahead and show that hold on
just a moment
great thank you claire i'm sorry it's
actually not uh 19 and 20 not 17.
sorry okay 19 20.
now you're really trying to get me on
linear yeah
so if we would start with item number 19
and then um that is on target
and but i would like um
for sean to um tell us the latest
and greatest of what we're doing in that
area yeah
so we've got larger yeah
i'll i'll read the i'll read the kind of
america
um so good evening everyone john bird
chief of schools recognition 19 was
really to prioritize the development
and stability of effective principles by
providing incentives and additional
support particularly high poverty
schools
uh including reducing turnover of
principal supervisors
stabilizing district leadership
improving collaboration between
principals and central administrators
improving hiring practices streamlining
initiatives and increasing collaboration
between central office departments
so there's uh this is actually a mix of
departments involved in this but i'll
just tell you kind of the
the highlight of what we're doing so we
have uh changed the structure of the
supervision
uh for particularly in this case cs high
schools
they all report to one uh assistance
or rather area senior director and uh
they have
they are participating in very targeted
professional development uh
with our partnership with the university
of virginia that is a school turnaround
work
so they are they have begun that uh
training
this past summer and they'll be
participating in that uh it's
this is a research-based uh turnaround
work many districts in the country
partner with uva
and so this principal supervisor as well
as the principals have gone through
uh have begun the training and then
their school teams are getting
targeted for professional development
based on
data that we have further in terms of
the uh
retention and incentives for principles
we are uh
about to be engaged with
successive bargaining and so we'll um
00h 05m 00s
be looking at some different uh things
for those group of schools for csi
schools in terms of principles though
we uh the selection process um
we use to staff those buildings is uh
you know we're looking for certain
characteristics and people preferably
people with uh turnaround experience so
a couple of them that are currently
in those schools have had turnaround
experience in other school districts
and then um we'll be uh gearing
the future selection process will be
based on a competency based model based
on these uva
uh principles that they are um that the
schools are going through now
this is the uh highlight of um
those and then the coordination of
central office departments and those
schools
i just had a meeting today with uh
with uh perhaps the leaders and uh we
did talk about
um for for those particular schools
about assigning
uh you know a central point of contact
from each of the major divisions so i'll
be talking to the chiefs
about this for just for those csi
schools so they have fewer people to
deal with
we have some things set aside for them
in hr in terms of teacher recruitment
they um you know they have uh
you know more targeted recruitment
efforts to all those schools because
they are harder to staff
uh in in many cases so we are working
out
on this uh the improving schools from
many different angles and so it kind of
crosses over uh there's hr work
that's done there's uh business and
operations and there's office of school
performance
obviously teaching them any questions
about 19
you have a question um
and um i asked this uh knowing that we
have a lot of new leaders in the central
office so
um i want to acknowledge that um
but i would ask what what would
pbs consider as evidence of successfully
um you know retaining or reducing
turnover principles and principal
supervisors
would that be we have stability for x
number of years
or um if the leadership changes
it's because of an intentional strategy
and
the reason yeah and have we targeted a
specific set of schools
is it the csi schools
yeah so csi schools are are always where
we
look first uh we're talking about
resource allocation and we talk about
uh improvement charges it's always those
csi schools that we look at first
because they are
the schools that are historically
underperforming and have the
our students who have the um greatest
need
concentrated great of course we have
students across the district that
have different needs and we want to be
sensitive to that but in our
csi schools yeah we we do want to make
sure that uh we have
so the the area senior director that is
assigned to those schools
it was very purposeful because of her
background and instructional leadership
but she's made a commitment to
stay with those schools she has a
smaller caseload of schools than the
other area senior directors and that's
purposeful
so that she can support those principles
and give them more attention
uh and give to provide more different
more and different levels of support so
that's one of the
so she has only uh seven schools for
that in her case
so shawn who are you referring to uh
christie lindholm
okay the area senior director for uh for
those schools
she's so she has seven schools she uh
has
participated in intensive training
herself with uva before the principals
did so she got some
uh front loaded uh training for that as
well as the regional superintendent
keeley simpson
so you know in terms of so that was that
was a
very targeted move for their super for
the supervision of those schools
in terms of their principles we are
trying to provide them more support
because we know from
um well just general research in the
field of
employee turnover the employees
sometimes leave when they don't feel
supported so we want to make sure we're
providing
high levels of support to these schools
so that um
you know they don't want to leave so
they want to stay in and um and stay
with the school
sometimes and that's also it goes into
the whole
identification of the right person for
the right uh the right school
because our turnaround school work is
very different than
um some principles could be very
successful in a school
that is not high poverty and high need
and
they just can't you know it's not
necessarily a transferable uh
skill so you look for the
characteristics and the principles that
we're looking for so
um we've been uh fortunate that we have
some very strong uh principles in
uh our first high schools and and um
that have come from other places they've
had turnaround work for example the
principal of sitton
was trained in dc public schools and dc
public schools has a long history of
very strong principle training for
turnaround we also have somebody from
chicago public schools who worked in
some
and turn around so we have gotten some
people from the outside that
can share their expertise with this with
our system um
and and those unique challenges so uh
00h 10m 00s
i don't think we haven't put like a year
like you need to be here this many years
before we say it's a success but that's
our goal is to keep people
in the same position until the school
improves to a degree that the systems
are in place because the leader can
change once the systems are in place
is the theory
i have a quick question too um dr bird
thank you for that um
that uh explanation because i am trying
to understand
um the system that you know especially
with the csi schools
and wondering if in addition to the
tracking that we're doing the
professional development if
we're also tracking um
net gain or not loss in in our
principles of color
yeah that are you know we they're going
to other neighboring districts and
to the extent that we can encourage them
to stay
are we tracking that on a separate
separate track
um and i know you know chicago and
washington dc
both you know school districts that have
high numbers of
kids of color particularly black kids um
so i wonder how that will
play out here in portland yes so we are
um that is an area
that we are paying close attention to in
terms of both recruitment and retention
so
you know we did excuse me we have lost
as you mentioned a number of people
to surrounding districts so um when that
happens
we are looking at ways to improve the
support systems we have for our leaders
of color
and also uh the the path for which uh
good because one of the things that i've
know since i've been here is we need to
build a bench
of our own people so they're not always
recruiting from the outside so
we have some programs in place for that
aspiring principles program
is in place and we initially recruited
uh have potentially recruited
leaders of color for that program in
fact one of them is currently serving as
an interim
uh interim principal uh so if we pulled
her from that program she's
serving in that role and and then we
also hired more uh leaders of color uh
this year
uh so but you know you could hiring is
just the first part of it then you have
to do the part for retention so uh what
are the supports that we're putting in
place
to to make that happen that's an ongoing
conversation we're having with the
group which is the principal's um
organization and also with hr sharon and
i have uh
talked uh about some different kinds of
strategies that we can use to
make sure that uh employees feel
supported at every level so that they
want to stay and
continue to grow in the organization so
there's that's tied to the
racial equity social justice framework
that we have that's district-wide
and you know i think you know we've
talked about this the superintendent has
talked about the theory of action of
racial equity and social justice is not
something over here on the side we have
to make that part of the fabric of the
school district and so creating those
strategies throughout the work that we
do will
improve student achievement it will
improve uh
employee retention will improve lots of
things so i think that's uh that's the
that's the work that we have ahead of us
um but yeah it's it's something we pay
attention to
and then just one more final comment and
that's that
um i'm not sure if we do this or not i
would hope we do but are we um
offering exit interviews to principals
that are leaving
um it's just a way to you know gather
more data
we i i don't i can't wait to hr kind of
a hr
yeah i can't answer the question whether
that's a formal process but i do talk to
administrator every eventually that
leaves i do have a conversation with
them about why they're leaving and what
what we could do better to retain them
in the future since i've been here
and so i think you do gain a lot of
information from those conversations
so thank you sorry um
those are great questions uh directed to
pass
one of the things that the board in
terms of the
the findings and recommendations that
we're responding to
the sort of structure that we're putting
in place
because this is likely what the
secretary of state's office
will do when they do their sort of
return visit is
like what's what's the evidence um
to suggest that versus the activity so
for example in number 19
um i can imagine them looking at the
data
and saying so you have and i don't know
if these are
csi schools but you have ocala green
harriet tubman middle school and roseway
heights all three of those schools
in the last three years having um
leadership changes
um and again those just um
they may be the three outliers but
if you look at all the csi schools
i think will be looking for the evidence
and i think the secretary of state will
of
um what are those csi schools are
and recognizing that there may be
changes that we want to make or we think
00h 15m 00s
this is like this person's ready for the
next step in their
career pipeline but you know what what
does the data show
in terms of are we actually retaining
the principles we want again that's a
very important phase the principles in
those um csi schools on a sustained
basis and if somebody leaves um is it
because it was an
intention it was an intentional strategy
either a move up
or a lateral move or you know a level
move
um but i think
that's what we'll be looking for is like
in the answer to 19 is
like in addition to all the things
you're doing like what does the actual
evidence show
whether we've had no change in the you
know the principal
supervisors or here's our longer term
plan
you know we think for somebody to make a
you know turn around to school
or to provide stability it's you know a
four to five year
stint that's our theory of action but it
would be good to get
have more detail and i
feel like that's what the secretary of
state is also going
to be asking for and i don't so i don't
know if we're looking at that
in that in that way yeah i think i think
some of the things that we have put in
place this year
we will be able to then point to say
these are the systems we put in place so
uh and and you know the it's not it the
principle is a critical part of it but
it's also about
uh putting those making sure the systems
are in place in the school community so
that
if there's a change in leadership there
are teacher leaders that are still
making making sure that work is
happening
and so i think yes we will be able to go
into more depth as this
moves along and these systems are put in
place
and and by the way these are just uh in
some way systems for that all schools
should have in place uh you know it's
good communication skills good
um strong teacher collaboration and
planning
so some of these are kind of system-wide
strategies that were you and some of
them were very specific for csi for
school turnaround so
it's a combination of those things and
we would be able to be more detailed
about that as we see
evidence of implementation right
welcome superintendent guerrero
glad you could join us today good
evening everybody
and it looks like you're on a line item
here that's
very much my cup of tea i think of the
visitors that we had from the secretary
of state you know when you understand
the research around
conditions to transform and turn around
schools and improve outcomes
you know it's a whole litany of things
good stability uh certainly is a
variable
um but but certainly having the right
interventions and evidence-based
practices uh in place you know are among
those things that
really make the difference you know you
can have a school going on the way up
and have a different leader every year
depends what that leader is bringing
to that community just in time
for instance but to dr byrd's point
you know these are all attributes we
want to see in all of our schools and i
think each year
we're getting stronger and certainly at
documenting
uh many of those things oftentimes those
don't have
the public wouldn't have visibility into
them but we have to have a clinical way
of knowing
um that some of these characteristics
are in fact moving along
uh the continuum so you know i'll be
interested in sort of
how we substantiate uh for this area
thank you okay so i think
then uh we want to actually have a
question okay okay
go ahead um i'm wondering so they
this recommendation lists quite a few
supports and i'm wondering
if um your departments have taken action
on all of them some of them and like
which ones
haven't we taken actionable are you
talking about
all the whole list are you no just 19
19 okay so um
so i would say that hold on sorry i lost
my play so
um i would say we yeah we've taken
action on
uh on several of them including the uba
partnership uh
improving collaboration between
principals and central administrators
that's something that's in
in process um the streamlining of
initiatives that's really the uva
partnership so that has
that has definitely begun and um and
then
a lot of it is around uh the partnership
work and
uh reducing the the
number of super number of principles
that that principal supervisor works
with
as i said before most area senior
directors have between 12 and 14 schools
she has seven so she has uh that was
00h 20m 00s
as part of the recommendation to to make
sure they have
adequate support so some of them are
many of them are in process
and some of them you'll see evidence of
them as we go along
we'll have some data to produce to show
evidence of implementation
okay and then kind of bouncing off that
above it says that
62 of principal respondents felt thrown
under the bus
and 79 percent were concerned with
retaliation from the district office
i'm just wondering how this culture of i
guess fear of
the district office has been addressed
i'm not i i don't
i don't clear i don't have the same
document yet but uh that was above when
it was describing why this
recommendation was made
um
so i mean i will say that obviously one
of the um
biggest reasons uh or one of the key
features of retention is that
people feel supported and and they feel
like they have a voice we're doing
lots of things with our principal
organization to make sure that
they have multiple channels to provide
feedback to the district so for example
i meet with
the perhaps the president on a weekly
basis we just left a meeting where the
superintendent
and all the senior leadership was with
the board members two-way communication
uh uh tool that we have
so and we are involving principles in
more decision making
uh processes throughout um so principal
side on the budget committee principal
said on the when we had sia
conversations that's when i first
arrived in the district principals were
key and that
part principles are involved in
enrollment balancing and
enrollment program balancing so we have
principals at
many different levels of the district
that are able to
express their input and
and all the school reopening that we've
talked about since covet has happened
principles have been integral in that
so um you know i would say that we're
making great strides in
working to include principles and
decision making across the district and
that will reduce them those feelings of
not being supported like they're under
the bus because they feel like they have
different opportunities any principal
can call me anytime they want you to
talk to me about
uh any concerns that they have and that
is what my team
understands that principles call the
superintendent uh all the time to talk
to them when he when they feel
they need to so i think um that's that's
been something that we've been working
uh hard on
i i want to add to that too jackson that
was a a really interesting question
um it speaks to a like a culture of
safety um in reporting and
and also being supported and so i'm
wondering if if we've done any work
on in that area you know operationally
some things you can do or things such as
you know having a um like a virtual
suggestion box
you know that a third party addresses um
for instance
or some of those other controls that
could happen organizationally
for people to um make it make a
complaint
um have an address have it addressed um
in the moment
um without that fear of retaliation yeah
so i
um i think well actually just today we
talked about this is that
there's uh some areas that the pastor
group would like to work on some kind of
broad areas for improvement
in uh the district and so we're gonna be
putting together a needs assessment for
their for principals and school site
administrators to complete
so that we can inform our principals are
also now i have a principal's advisory
committee one person from every cohort
is involved in that so that is
another feedback mechanism it's also an
opportunity for them to inform their own
pd
so it's not pd's not something that's
done to them but something that comes
from
them it's something that they so it's
really about improving
i mean i sort of think of them as the um
our customers so that's about improving
the customer experience and um
that's the approach that we're taking
with it so i think again you'll see
evidence of that implementation as we go
along and you should start to see
a reduction in those kinds of comments
being made
but we'll have some needs assessment
data to answer we'll have some
so that will be rather shortly wide
so i'm hoping that we can move to
item number 16 curriculum for
dr valentino to update us on our core
curriculum
that he's gotten in place with the
comprehensive distance learning
so hi good evening every board member
superintendent
um so this this particular one
is one that continues to evolve um
and in many ways it it it evolved
because
um we had i have been better at
identifying where
our challenges are in terms of
curriculum development and
guidance and support for our teachers
and our side leaders
and so as we've evolved we've learned a
lot about
expectations but also around how best to
00h 25m 00s
guide and support to those expectations
and so the curriculum
development process has been a
three-year process to get us to this
point
where we made the decision uh to ensure
that
we provided standards-based
comprehensive rigorous and supported
curriculum
and so one of the learnings at the time
was how outdated a lot of our resources
were
and because of your support we've been
able to continuously
improve on that and so we're hoping to
continue to do that
but part of that then required that we
align to current practices
that outdated curriculum for example in
math and science that is
quite ancient and so through the
professional development
process we were able to provide support
teachers on
standards-based instruction but also on
the scope and sequence that we were
putting in place for every grade
so that what was taught was consistent
across the district
that the practices that they applied
were consistent across the district
and the resources they used were common
across and we were we considered them
the foundation to
teaching and learning part of the
culture has been to provide flexibility
so that teachers and schools
could better meet the local context uh
and so
they can always enhance and have been
always uh have always had the
opportunity to also
improve upon the the content that that
is available
that the district has has procured uh
for for the instructional program and so
the scope and sequence then has led to
the development of units and lessons
and so that three-year process has
really caused us to pivot though
as of march because we have moved to
online to
virtual what that did it um
it really threw us for a loop in march
as you can imagine
on how we were going to provide access
to teachers and students with content
that was
actually designed for in-person practice
and so we had to re readjust by
re reviewing the scope and sequence and
then looking at how the curriculum we
have
would be adjusted to align with any
shifts that we needed
to make knowing that their day was going
to be different
their week was going to be adjusted
because of the number of hours there
that they were going to be in practice
and so
we then as we moved to into the summer
we really needed to think about
how we were going to adjust in the more
permanent way
how comprehensive distance learning was
going to look
for our teachers and our students and so
part of the curriculum
implementation has taken
a shift and in many cases we have paused
because there was
a little bit more learning we needed and
one of the learnings was how are we
going to ensure that the publishers we
work with
will have or will be able to pivot in a
more virtual environment
this year because while we are in full
full
virtual possibly till november december
when we move into hybrid there is still
going to be that need
for curriculum that is flexible enough
to work both
in the in-person environment and in the
digital space
and so what we've done in that is we are
working with our publishers as we
identify
and learn more about the direction that
we're headed that we are beginning to
provide
more resources that are more
student-centered
that students can navigate so that when
they are working independently they have
access to additional tools
and so the digital backpack has grown
extensively so we have
more than 50 uh resources available that
are that can be used by both the teacher
and the student
across all disciplines including visual
and performing arts
physical education and so in addition to
the core content areas there are other
areas where we have identified
um applications and and platforms
that give students greater access to
self-directed learning
when needed so that when teachers make
assignments um
visible to students they are the
students are then able to take those
and integrate some of the some of the
tools that we have made available to
them
that previously were not so as you can
imagine that has required extensive
professional development
especially for our newer teachers coming
in but also our more experienced
teachers
who didn't spend a great deal of time
working with the technology
and so since march all the way through
to now we have been providing continuous
professional development
on not only the content in our core
content areas
because we need to make sure we meet
those expectations
but also on what's new which are the
platforms that they will need to use
like atlas
which is our content management system
canvas and seesaw
which is our instructional delivery
system and so we have provided both
synchronous
input live and asynchronous
uh modules that teachers and
00h 30m 00s
administrators can actually
access through our through pepper which
is our learning management system and
they can register for and
go through the learnings 24 7 on most
devices
uh with the expectation that as they
gain greater experience in using some of
those platforms
they will be more effective in using the
digital content that we have made
available
in the atlas curriculum content
management system
at the same time as i said we are
working to identify
as for example as all of you know math
is a priority
um in in the way that you've described
even your own goals
the way that math shows up but also the
way foundational skills show up
have neat have needed a reworking
because the way that we're accessing
that content for teachers and for
students is
is is different now it's different now
and so
we really need to ensure that whatever
resources we
we move forward actually have the the
the possibility of working in in both
environments like i said earlier
and so the professional development will
be
very quickly begin to move to not only
how to teach in a digital environment
but how do we teach in a hybrid
environment
and so we're learning a lot from those
districts that are actually
right now doing hybrid and so the larger
districts
um like houston florida and others
that actually can provide us some
insight on how to think about some of
these things that were
that we're thinking about when we're
thinking about curriculum
when we're thinking about teaching
practices
and learning tasks but also how are we
going to
make sure that we are able to monitor
for progress and growth in this kind of
environment
which you can imagine is quite
challenging um
so that we are able to better align the
support for teachers
and the and the content that we make
available not only for good first
instruction but also for the
intervention
uh and a lot of it right now will be
digital and
later it will be in in both in both
model in both platforms
and so that's so that's where we are so
i'll take any questions
any questions from committee members or
others
uh i have one question um
i was wondering if there were any
subjects that have been identified as
particularly
uh sort of difficult in lending
themselves to either a mix
model or a virtual model um
and what what sort of special attention
um
things like i guess visual or performing
arts have been given
well that is actually you've identified
one of those subject areas right the
performing arts um the digital arts has
not been
that that difficult uh the visual arts
has not been that difficult either but
when it comes to um dance for example
when it comes to um music in particular
instruments
that has become some of the challenge
physical education
is one that is um a big challenge
um and also because um also just our
structure
in how um those specials come in to the
core
work just navigating a a
a schedule right a navigating access
um so those are those are two examples
the other one that is huge is science at
the high school level
um so you can imagine parker if you're
doing a lab all of a sudden
and you're in a in a biology class and
you know you're
you're you're doing life science how
exactly are you going to carry out some
of those labs
and so we're working through that right
now there are
there are applications and platforms
that that simulate
so we do have and we are working to
provide
simulated experiences but it's not the
same thing
and so uh as as sean and hr
work through agreements with our
bargaining units and with our labor
partners what are the what are the
possibilities
of teachers accessing so that
either the labs can be recorded and then
students have access to them
um and and and so that would be one the
other area is cte
right some of them are very difficult to
auto body
uh auto mechanics um right
uh those are all challenging and so
those are
very particular areas that we're going
to need to pay attention to because
in many school districts they're not
even going to go there because it is
more complex
but i think if we don't go there then
we're we're creating a built-in inequity
on how we're providing access to certain
groups of students who are participating
in certain programs
and so we are going to be working um we
were really working
uh parker um on establishing what the
00h 35m 00s
core was going to be
and uh and where we're getting there and
then building out
all of the the areas that you identified
and the ones that i was sharing with you
because those are critical part of the
of the program if you're in a
ct program or an ib program there are
certain expectations
from the program itself and that you as
a student have
in being able to meet certain outcomes
and you can meet those outcomes if you
don't have access to certain learning
opportunities
and so again part of our learning is
what is not going to be working well in
a digital environment that we're going
to figure out
alternatives to that because that can
only go so far and we're hoping that
sooner rather than later we're able to
resolve some of those by the way that we
give students access to
to those learning experiences great
question thank you parker
yeah thank you um and just sort of a
follow-up question to that
um you mentioned things like cte uh
coming from benson i i know exactly what
you're
talking about um is there a
specialized uh professional development
um for cte teachers or for other
teachers uh
in subjects and in areas that you
mentioned previously um
in in what is what is general
are practices in teaching um
in a digital environment specific to to
cte
we are working through those because as
you know
you know those um those particular um
apps and and applications that you use
in cte many of them
are our subscriptions they're not uh
purchases and so we're working
to navigate those because now that
everyone is in virtual
the cost all of a sudden has gone above
half a million dollars
to ensure that we we continue to provide
that that that we continue to provide
that access to both teachers and
students
for the teacher it is the professional
development piece of that for the
student is access
to the curriculum that goes with
whatever pathway
they're working within and so working
with
our providers our partners we're working
to identify how best
to access that for our teachers as part
of their very
specialized professional development
need and for the students who are
participating
um in that pathway all right
thank you um along with adopting new
curriculum have
you guys um developed a scope and
sequence for
um along with these curriculums yes the
so the school the scope and sequence um
in many ways is is content agnostic and
the reason is because
our our belief is that it's the teaching
practices that are part of the
instructional core which is the teacher
the student and the content right and so
if we develop the capacity of the
teacher
and ensure that students are provided
with
comprehensive and rigorous tasks that
are supported by the teacher
then the content serves as a leverage to
the activities that the student is
engaged in so
we are not driving our curriculum by
what book we buy
but by how well we've developed teachers
to teach
and so we teach to standards and so the
scope and sequence
is based on the oregon content standards
in language arts math science social
studies
even dance and the curriculum
is designed as a leverage to give the
what
are we teaching from to the teacher but
the how
is really what the teacher is doing with
you as a student jackson
to ensure that the standards are being
met and so
part of what the curriculum includes is
a
content management system that we call
atlas and that is where
the scope and sequence can be found that
is a progression for the year
at in k8 or for the course so jackson if
you are in
english 10 um whatever course you're
taking
there would be a scope and a sequence
for that course and then a set of
resources
and it could be a textbook it could be a
novel
right but all of those resources support
this
from support you and getting from point
a
to point b which is the end of the
course and inside of that
opportunities for you to engage in the
learning and
also you will be tested on some of those
things along the way
and so what should not change is the
rigor in that scope and sequence
but what could change is the book you're
using
you know what i mean uh and so that's
why we are not
uh putting the the the textbook adoption
in front of our curriculum design
because it should be driven
by the by the state standards and the
curriculum design that aligns with
the portland philosophy of how students
teach and learn
but also our beliefs about what kind of
student we want
to graduate through our graduate
00h 40m 00s
portrait what kind of student we want
to emerge out of portland public schools
so we have a question
yes about um so i believe under the
the board section is that we're supposed
to ensure that the
the district has um
deployed a common curriculum across the
schools
yes would your with the evidence that
you would be providing would it be
what's in the atlas system and then
what would be your evidence that like
this is
so if it's um
pick a subject in a and a grade um that
how would how would you know that
actually that's what's happening
you know like uh junior english
at madison is the same as junior english
at roosevelt i mean the same in the
terms of
what is expected from like curricular
content like what evidence
so when the secretary of state comes
back and asks the board
um you know how how did you know that
the district
offered a common curriculum
and that wasn't dependent upon your
school of the classroom you're in
right so the the way that i think about
that question would be
in two ways one is inputs and outputs
right common inputs would be that
every school and every teacher is
teaching to the standard in that
in that in that english class um
for and that that course is designed
based on the on
on on those standards for that course
and that there is a scope and sequence
that takes that that takes the students
from day one all the way to
the last day of the course and that
inside of that is a progression
of skills that the student learns
certain concepts
and an academic language is developed
along the way to prepare them for the
next course
right so that is one of the inputs
inside in order for
that to happen in that scope and
sequence there are units that are taught
that are also in atlas the units are
taught
and then there are lessons that are
taught within each unit so
some units could be four lessons five
lessons some are
six seven depending on the course
students then go through some formative
assessment measures
that sort of give an indication of how
they're progressing through that course
right um the teacher developed
assessment that is common
uh to the course being taught should
give them an indication on how to pivot
if a kid is not doing well uh three
six eight weeks in but there's also the
benchmarking of the student
through an assessment that is common
across
the system that will allow us to see
patterns
and trends right and so that helps us
in better supporting teachers through
our professional development
through guidance by having them look at
their own own data sets
and reviewing them a lot of time has
been dedicated
especially this year to site-based
professional development through their
professional learning communities and
other ways that would allow them to
engage in some of some of that data
gathering
and meaning making that will help them
adjust and
as they need but at the same time we
would come in and provide additional
support as needed so those are the
inputs
the outputs would be across if we look
at data across
across the district uh and i'll talk
about both hard data and soft data
if we're looking at the hard data how
did our students perform are
there places in the district where some
particular strands of that standard
just show up it's glaring that clearly
in this school those were not taught or
that
consistently there's a problem
consistently then that's on us to say
we did not do an effective job of either
presenting these these particular
concepts within those standards for
teachers to use
or we need to make sure
that that becomes part of the next
course not this course because it
doesn't really align and that's why
students were having problems
during the assessment but in a more
formative way it's important to get
feedback
when teachers are talking about they
implemented
this particular unit or at the end of
this course what i realized was
right so we need to have both for uh
hard data
and and the more um
the feedback data in the more formative
way that gives us a sense of
how did students perform based on what
those expectations were
but clearly we can't really normalize
that
until we agree as this as a school
district
that we're all going to implement
consistently and comprehensively
the scope and sequence because it's
standards based and that we're going to
apply the lessons because
they're inside of a unit that aligns
00h 45m 00s
with the scope and sequence
great thank you uh
deputy superintendent hurts i just want
to be cognizant of the of the
time i don't know what else what you
wanted to cover
so i i am fine we've gone in depth in a
couple of areas
and i'm fine with stopping there and but
i'm also fine
um you know if you there's a certain
areas that you would like to ask
questions about but i am cognizant that
we were
we're past our amount of time for this
topic
director to pass do you have anything
before we
i don't yeah um
i think the thing that i um
want to make sure that's not necessarily
for this meeting but
the the rigor of the standard of
evidence that when the secretary of
state comes back that they're going to
ask us for that
um we need to be thinking about the
frame in which we respond and i know
on the there are a number of items i
think it's 26 that are
a through effort g that are board
related
standards but they're they're basically
has the board ensured that
the district has done you know a through
f
um and
this is it's not a conversation for the
audit committee it's more of a
conversation
for the full board so i'm hoping that it
gets scheduled soon but
i think part of that just from the the
district staff standpoint is
that almost all of them there's a
codependency of the board's answer
except for the policy ones which are
really sort of more in the policy in the
board's wheelhouse but most of the rest
of them
are has the board insured
x and i don't know if whoever has
control of the screen can move down
just uh the la very last
item
i think it's 26 yeah um
i know if it's possible to make a little
bit larger um
we're getting better and better at this
i have sympathy every day for
the teachers um
so here's here's an example 26a you know
making sure that the district
administration you know
is building an effective common core
curriculum so the way that
so really there's this co-dependency
between the board and
um staff and sort of the board what
evidence
has been supplied to the board that we
can say
check um and again many of them link to
items that are the district ones and
just knowing that the at a certain point
the secretary said they were going to
come back to spring but coming back
later
um that document with evidence
we should be making sure that we have
that lockdown but
again that's a full board responsibility
versus
just an audit committee
so hopefully that discussion is going to
happen sooner rather than later
anything else claire that you want to
share
or superintendent guerrero before we
move
off of this topic i don't have anything
else
thank you i i would only add i think it
is important to make sure that we
substantiate some
um progress uh
it does talk about we've prioritized key
steps i think
clearly over the last three years we've
taken a lot of important steps to start
to
uh remediate for a decade of not
focusing in these areas
so i think as you heard dr valentino who
could give a five-day seminar on this
talk about
sort of all the ways that we're trying
to build that academic muscle
uh and core in the district and
another key way is continuing to
prioritize
investments in these key areas which i'm
which is why
and bring that rfp now to go
out
i was wondering if there was uh any sort
of timeline on that
um i don't have it with me but it is um
i know later this fall it will go it
00h 50m 00s
will
be advertised and put out um to our
you know to what to transportation
carriers
okay thank you and then what is
your guys's best estimate on implement
like full implementation of
all these recommendations just like your
best guess
i'm going to have this be the wrap up
question just go ahead
it's a great rap question so you're
talking about all
you know number three through 26.
so some of these are continuous and
because we're always in a continuous
improvement mode
so we can say we've gone
through it but i would never want to say
we're done with professional development
of our teachers and how they deliver our
curriculum
that's something that we're always going
to refine and hone and
continue to get to the best practice for
teaching in the classroom
so um in terms of
these aren't like switches you turn on
and it's happening and then
you you're done right um it's there is
definitely more of a continuous
improvement component to this
but agreed that we need to make sure
that we're making progress
in in all of them as we move forward
right thank you deputy superintendent
hertz
and also i think i
appreciate you it looks like dr
valentino and byrd have
um left for their other appointments but
please extend our thanks for them to
come
give us a little bit drop down on uh the
work that's underway
well so with that i'm going to move to
the
next agenda item like um i said before
there's some board work that needs to be
done and
i would encourage you we should get it
asked
the for leadership to get that on the
larger board agenda sooner rather than
later
um the next item we're going to go back
to
um what was the first item and this is
the report from the office of internal
performance auditors i'm going to ask um
our auditors uh janice hansen and mary
katherine moore
to give us an update on the activity
director's brilliant pass i'm going to
excuse myself as well
i was just keeping an eye on dr burb and
dr valentino but have a good day
they did a nice job
hi everyone um in case you
missed it mary katherine and i are
working together today
at my house and so we're wearing masks
um so i wanted to
just give you a brief update on what's
going on right now
for oip activity and
um one thing that i
forgot to kind of put on the agenda but
i wanted to
quickly draw your attention to is the
audit committee's website
um kara has been so fabulous
lately and has really gotten the the
last
kind of pieces of the audit report
um page updated with even the most
recent
bond audit report that was issued the
contracts audit
report and highlight is there so
just don't forget about um the website
it's there
and it's being updated and it looks
really good thanks to
cara's great work um so the
next thing i wanted to kind of just talk
about
briefly is the ach audit
so right now um we are working
on on that audit and we've had just
a little bit of delays um nothing
significant or anything
but um just kind of with year and wrap
up and
um accounting staff has had a few
vacations and then i was out of the
office as well so we're just a little
behind here but we're really making
progress
and um we had a status meeting today
actually
with um the finance manager
and one of the things we were
kind of working through with the ach
audit is that the district
has not started the process of
adding new vendors to their ach
process so they're not making
ach payments to new vendors they're not
setting new vendors
up over the last year since we had the
issue in the past
and and part of that um but they
per our conversation today they have
their
process and procedure all dialed in and
they
are going to get the sign up
00h 55m 00s
um kind of
sheet to us next week and so we'll be
able to look at that but we're
actually not going to be able to test
that piece of it um so there's there's a
little bit of nuances here we're working
through them
staff has been really awesome keeping us
updated and everything
but it's a little bit delayed so we're
working through it just wanted to kind
of
touch on that so i'd like to can i ask a
question about that
this is a more question for deputy
superintendent hertz
um the the purpose behind
the audit was we had a transaction that
potentially
could have had a significant financial
impact on the district
um because of a sort of
uh change of fraudulent activity
and i'm curious are we
not doing those transactions um
because we're changing our processes or
our
training and then we're gonna eventually
start doing them again
or are we is something else happening
one of the things is i thought the audit
was actually
going to be looking at whether um
as we start brought in new vendors or
made changes that
the auditors would be looking at whether
those
um whether the training and the
procedures were actually being followed
so i'm just curious about why
why we're not doing those or what what
the
sort of strategy or position of the
district is
so i would say we initially when the
event occurred a year ago um we
turned everything off we turned all ach
off
and then um we can confirm that any
changes that have been made to the
system that we had valid
verified um um we went through a process
of verification to make sure that
no other vendors had any possibilities
of
fraud so once we had those verifications
in place then we turned
back on the the vendors that we had been
paying via
ach and then we were not adding
new ones um it
in the beginning because we needed to
update our process
so that we could ensure there would be
uh signific significant fraud prevention
practices in place
so at the same time we also gave um
training to every person that was on our
financial system
that um so that they had fraud
prevention training in place before they
access the
finance system again so we have put
that in place that anyone that is new
that comes in they have to go through
that training
before they get access to the financial
system
and so um
we we went through the government
finance officers association gfoa
and they have um best practices for
especially in these ach payments they're
they've been a highly targeted area if
you
do a search in the headlines you'll see
that it happens in every state in many
entities it's very common and so we
don't want to be
it to be common in pps we're holding
firm
in in terms of our our practice and
putting the best practices in place
and so we stopped and we've created a
system
now that um to ensure um the best
practices are in place
and we're about to go through another
training with staff with those new
best practices and and then we'll have
um we'll turn that back on so we're
almost there
but um kovid came along the way we had
to retrain secretaries how do they
run all their budgetary and student body
books and everything from
home right so we retooled our practices
and
we're working on other things for the
past six months and now we're
we're coming back into to this work and
making it a priority
it what we were still paying all vendors
this
it wasn't harming anyone from getting
paid it just um
was a service we weren't ready to um
complete that upgrade and
in process until we had uh you know we
needed to make sure we were serving all
of our
schools um during this time serving them
well
so when you eventually turn it back on
for
sort of new transactions
my understanding was that's what that's
what we want to test to make sure that
want the auditors to test so when is
that going to be
that switch going to flip so that the
auditors
can review whether or not
um do a sampling of that those controls
are in place
01h 00m 00s
so the training i i want to say is later
this month
um so we're getting very close so within
30 days we'll we'll
be completed with the process okay so
then i'll be flipped on and then mary
katherine and janice would do
another set of um
random sample random sampling of those
transactions
is that okay great
so just to clarify um we'll have
everything else
done for the ach in this last piece
that we just talked to tracy with today
and she's getting it to us next week was
just the enrollment form that they made
updates few
so she's just finalizing it she said
she's ready it's
so it's really ready now and she'll send
that over so we'll be able to have
everything else done and then once they
flip that
on you know we actually have to get a
couple vendors sign up
and go through the process in order for
us to
have some transactions to actually test
so it's it's not going to be an
immediate just because they turn it on
then we have to there's going to be a
little bit of lag time because some
vendors are going to sign up for it
so it's not going to be a perfect um
time wise but what we are planning to do
is do everything other than just that
tiny
testing piece we'll look at all their
controls we'll look at their forms
the way they're planning to process it
and then
be done with that piece of it and then
once we actually have some vendor sign
up we'll come back later
and kind of do that last piece of the
test great thank you
all right awesome so in the meantime we
are also working
on the p-card audit and we
are making progress we we reached out
and
we're gathering the background
information about
all the trainings related to pcard and
talking to some of the district
administration staff about their
processes and procedures
kind of the early phases of the planning
um and we're kind of working on that you
know
at the same time we're working on the
ach on it so
when we're waiting on something for the
ach audit we're filling our time with
the
the p card audit um the
next item on my discussion topic
is the risk assessment and proposed
audit plan
and um so this is something that
we've been working on over the summer
and i was hoping to get it done and
by september but um not done yet
so so many risks around the district but
i am planning to so i have
kind of a rough list and i'm betting
need to vet that list with um
district management so i talked to
claire
in one of our you know status meetings
so i'm going to provide
management with kind of my draft and
get some feedback on on that and then
hopefully be ready to bring that draft
proposal
um to the audit committee in our next
meeting
in october the
the last item that we have i have
is related to performance measures for
the office of pub you know internal
performance audit
so you know the audit committee has kind
of
led the the drafting of my personal
performance evaluation but i think it's
really important to establish
performance measures for the office how
will the district know whether or not
the office of internal performance audit
is being successful
and how can we measure that success
so i have provided a very scary looking
document
so i i'm acknowledging up front it's
very scary looking
but um you know that document is from
the alga
it's the association of local government
auditors if they're really industry
standard
performance measures and there's a bunch
of options listed in the document
so kara circulated that document
as an excel document in
in the board um documents it's in there
as a pdf
so this is just my first um
bringing it to the the committee and
saying
hey the these are the one the
performance measures
that i'd like to kind of work
through and so this is a tool that you
guys can click in
look at some of the the options that are
available
and if anybody has specific ones that
they really feel
confident that they like oh this is the
great performance measure i'd love to
01h 05m 00s
see you at this one
do me an email and um i will kind of
incorporate that and then for the
october
um audit committee meeting
what i'd like to do is come to that and
present
some of those performance measures for
consideration for adopting for the
performance audit does that kind of make
sense
um what i'm looking to do so right now
you have the tool you can look at it
you can see which performance measures
if you feel strongly about any of them
send me an email um and and next
audit committee meeting i will be
prepared to say
from this list these are the ones that
i'm proposing
adoption and we can talk about them um
but i will have incorporated anything
you would have already emailed me
in the meantime so that makes sense for
everybody
awesome so that is
everything um that i kind of have an
update for you guys
on are there any questions about any of
those things
no okay great
then my part's dead
great thank you so much um i just want
to double check i'm sure we don't
just i'm looking at the agenda and what
we um
have time to cover um because i want us
i want to be respectful of everybody's
time this evening
here we didn't have any public comment
right so we don't
have to allow for that great thanks um
so i'd like um if it's possible um
cara to pull up the
committee work plan draft work plan
rosanna do you have that and do you want
me to do it or roseanne
i can do it just give me a second
i was going to say i could do it as well
i have it up
i'm impressed
so just as a funny note while she's
looking for that earlier today
mary catherine had her face mac mask on
and then she went to go drink some water
like this it was so and we were skyping
with some
other district staff at the same time
and they were on mute but they like all
of a sudden they just started cracking
up
laughing and i didn't know what they
they were on mute and then
anyways it was really funny that mary
kathy was trying to drink
through her ice cream today
that speaks how light and transparent
and you know you forget you're wearing
it yeah fabulous
exactly just to share that one um
so roseanne could you make that a little
bit larger um
for me to get the whole thing do i need
to make my
um just change
how it's the layout
roseanne if you click on the three dots
up kind of in the corner of the document
you can make the entire document the
full screen
perfect not that i don't not that i
don't want to see everybody but it just
would be easier
on a planning document to be able to no
like it makes like
her entire see it's only like part of
her like
uh browser so
right there no um on like the actual
like board book
like there's the little pen and then
yeah full screen
thank you
um can you go to the top
so um
the the audit committee has a number of
charges
um we review and recommend actions um
around um the
um the district's comprehensive annual
fisc
uh financial report the kaffir um
and the audit of the district
expenditures and federal awards
we support um
engage with the office of the
independent
independent performance auditor um as we
did today
we have ongoing work reviewing the
district's response the secretary of
state's audit
uh recommend external auditors the board
and oversight of the
01h 10m 00s
annual internal performance auditor's
audit plan
so uh as we put together
and then we have some responsibilities
um due to the fact that the opposite
internal performance auditor
uniquely other than the superintendent
that they report to the board so we try
to put together
is a work plan for the draft work plan
for the year
that um will allow us to
uh work through our
um responsibilities uh to the
to the board and hopefully we'll this is
like year two
of a pretty regular cadence um i expect
um and hope that probably after january
of this year that
or maybe it's this next spring that at a
certain point the
secretary of state's audit drops off as
a
a one-time event and that we're into a
much more regular
cadence of both the district performance
audit plan but also the
um just regular um other auditing that
occurs
um in the district so have drafted a
roseanne could you drop down to
so i have put in a created like a month
by month
community calendar we don't meet every
month but to try and give
everybody insight into
uh the super exciting um auditing
calendar we have sorry no offense
uh mary katherine and janice um the
super
um exciting uh calendar we have
for the year and i say we you know
hopefully um
the audit committee's work becomes
a um just a regular predictive
it's not like hey we've got this big
audit that's i'm gonna change all these
practices but it's just part of the
ongoing
um district
part of the district systems to
improve accountability and operations
through through an internal performance
auditing function
but also providing sort of uh external
uh oversight and engagement with the
external uh auditors
so that we're providing uh
recommendations to
to the board when the full board needs
to take audit action
so as you can see um we've uh
working with um janice and
mary catherine i believe claire has also
looked at the draft um looked at what
the
calendar of activities are and had a
proposed set of
activities and i i don't know if people
had a chance to
uh review the um
the proposed plan or if people have
additions or questions
one question i had today was
how we overlay because we don't yet have
an audit plan
how we would overlay when that would
come back to
things we come back to the the board so
um at a certain point in time i think in
november
you can see that that would be the
presentation of the audit plan to the
full board that would be a
recommendation from this committee
um but at a certain point in time we'd
want to layer in
the the proposed audits and when
um both that they would be the topics
introduced but then
also when they come back and the audit
findings and recommendations come to the
committee
so that's not currently part of the plan
but it's not currently part of the plan
because we don't yet
have the audit plan um
and michelle i'm going to look to you to
see if there's anything from last year
that
since last year was a sort of launching
year whether there was anything that you
felt
um we could do differently or better
this year
sure um so one of the questions i had
first of all i'm
i'm really happy to see that there is
kind of a calendar of expected events
i think that's really great um my
question was
not only about the the audit schedule
like when how that would be plugged in
but um
how how we account for um real-time
issues that come up that might need
attention
faster than when this calendar would
you know what would make it look like
i'm trying to think of a good example
but um
i i think that it'd be important for me
to see that we have some flexibility in
the timing of when we
address things um
curious about how that schedule is going
01h 15m 00s
to fit in here
and then also um just kind of noticing
the cadence of our
meetings and wanting to have a
discussion about
you know how often we're meeting and
yeah so um
that's a great question on the
flexibility and i think
we uh
we have the ability to create some our
own flex so for example
and either claire mary catherine or
janice correct me but
we were scheduled to have the p-card
audit as the second online after the
contracts audit
and when the issue with the ach um
transaction came up that
uh claire asked if
um there could be this sort
you of clicker audit um inserted into
the schedule and so
those got those were changed in the
order and i think
we should have flexibility and it could
be a you know it's a conversation the
committee members and certainly
you know we'd want to get the input of
staff
on the level of importance in terms of
anything that
may like come up and sort of the
existing work
that we have we should never be so
inflexible that it's like hey we're not
going to do that to a point in time in
which
uh like a small risk has become a huge
risk
yeah and that was that was actually a
perfect example of
um our flexibility in addressing i mean
that was
very important to address as quickly as
possible
the ach procedures
um and it looks like we're not meeting
every single month and so i wanted
you know i don't know that we have that
necessarily in our discussion tonight
but um
i think that'd be um something great to
work out
um yeah it was roughly
um and cara correct me if i'm wrong it's
roughly every six weeks
um but there were some just
holidays and other things that we had to
work work around so it's not
exactly exactly that is that
a correct description care of how we
landed on these set of dates
yes that that's a yes um
and you know i think one of the things
that we should just be clear is like
um if we have a meeting scheduled and
either like an audit isn't ready
or we don't have um
an urgency in the meeting like you know
i think we can
make that call that we we don't need to
meet
i from my thinking we last
last year we had it we had quarterly
meetings
but then we added some other meetings in
when we had
presentation times and it seems like
quarterly wasn't enough
especially in a year in which we had
gone to the voters to ask for
a local option we were getting a
significant infusion of money in
through this student success act and
then
um the issues related to the 2017 bond
that it was important for there to be
um more regular
um engagement
with the external auditors in addition
and again i want to
sort of repeat what jana said at the
very beginning about the
really great work that cara has done
working with janice and mary katherine
on the web page i think
there is so much information now about
auditing
on the district web page again
part of it was standing it up finding
the right cadence but uh
we don't need to have meetings if if
there's not an urgency but it seemed
like quarterly wasn't
enough and then if it wasn't often
enough when we had to schedule a
separate meeting it was too hard to
then try and find time on calendars when
other committees schedules another
district business had said so yeah and i
i
i think it's great i also yeah i'm
concerned that we
um sometimes we have really big
topics that require some discussion and
so it would be important to
um to see those spaced out
so we're not having four hour meetings
well this is one's going to end in four
minutes so um
one of the things i'm going to try and
do is i you know i think an hour and a
half
or 90 minutes is um more than adequate
we should be able to get our work done
so that's the other commitment
is like we're not going to have two hour
or
you know once meetings that go over so
we should be able to get our work
done within the time period and work
01h 20m 00s
that if we don't complete all the work
during the time period i think we can do
written reports out
so i just had a couple of thoughts that
um
on this on the regularness of the
meeting and
and because we do have
more consistent regular meetings this
time i think it is really
really great because what you guys had
today
was the secretary of state
recommendation
to kind of review in advance well next
audit meeting
you'll have you won't have that same
because they're just going to
report quarterly but you're going to
have the contracts audit implementation
plan to review
and some of these things that audit
committee members
have to review are very content heavy
so if you were to get a report
like what the district provided today
as far as the update from the secretary
of state's audit report
in combination with the contracts audit
implementation plan all in the same
meeting i think that would just
be really overwhelming so i the the idea
of having the meetings a little bit more
regularly
breaks out some of those content-heavy
topics
so they're not all in the same meeting
and then also um like
what julia pointed out we don't have the
audit plan yet um
but because we're meeting so regularly
now
once that plan is in place and and the
audit report is ready
instead of needing to do a special
meeting as long as you know
there's another meeting within a couple
weeks we will
present at that meeting um
so it makes it a little bit timely and
and the not
probably not going to be a need to have
a special meeting
depending on the timing so just some
thoughts
parker and jackson yeah i just had a
quick question last year on the
audit committee plan you
included like oversight of
implementation of the 2017
bond audit um are we going to keep doing
that
so um this is a discussion that
claire and i of course we had our
meeting last week in which the
um the audit presentation
was made to the joint committees um
in the in the past um
prior to 2017
17 um those all went to
the bond accountability committee
which is not a committee of the of the
board
um it is a committee um
of the is community members that also
have some professional expertise i don't
know if you all have
um either jackson or parker you have um
particularly what paid in one of their
meetings
i have a point of view that um
on because the board ref
refers bonds to the um
to the community for adoption
that and that there's an expectation
then that we're also
the board and district leadership
accountable for
the expenditure of those funds
so i feel strongly that there's a
component that
um the board should be um
the recipient of the performance audit
and the audit committee's
the natural place to have that happen um
claire has raised a good point that the
bac has done that in the past and one of
the things that i
i think we could do this year
i think we demonstrated last week we can
bring two committees together i don't
think there's any reason why
we just can't have a you know again the
two the two committees and the bac
um one presentation um
on at least the sort of formal audit
and then we'll also get sort of the
ongoing implementation
updates um but i do feel like there
especially with what happened in 2017
with the cost
estimates that there's an expectation
that
um we can't point to the bond
accountability committee as like hey
they're accountable if
you know things are implemented or not
but there's the accountability is within
the district both
the board and the staff and so um
and the long answer question is i think
we should
bring together both our out external
committee but also
um the board audit committee
and the school improvement bond
committee as the place where we receive
that and i think there's a way to do it
so that it's not
01h 25m 00s
you know they're having to present to a
whole bunch of different committees
and is that a quarterly report or a
yearly report
well we just got the yearly report they
do do annual reports and they
um i don't know claire if you want to
speak speak to what the past practice
has been
so the um the audit comes annually
and the district responds and then later
on
usually there's more of a check-in
around implementation of the practices
and it has not always been the same
every year i could i can say that but um
it usually uh because some of the
um improvements every requesting
there's a cycle especially in
construction work where
that you put out when your projects are
happening over the summer you're putting
your design work happens at one point
and then you're actually putting out the
bid or the rfp request for proposal
is in a different time frame so there's
only certain times of the year that
you can um check in to see if the
improvements have been made so it's it's
not something that you're going to check
monthly
in in a it's more of a
more of an annual process to check in on
the implementation of the improvements
yeah i could say i think you know thanks
to all the work that's happened with the
website i do think there's a high level
if if somebody's interested there's lots
of information that's organized in a
very
um logical way that's
transparent and and available and i
really
appreciate all the work that's um both
osm
and the board office has done to get
that uploaded because
i think that's a huge process
improvement and again i think over time
as we become more efficient that a lot
of the
save quarterly updates or whatever the
updates are can be easily up
uploaded and distributed and um less of
a
um sort of a you know
an onerous process for staff to report
in
or it seems like it's not done on a
regular basis to the broader community
so i think we're in a much much better
place so that
we're very transparent in what has been
audited what the audit
has said what the findings are the
recommendations the implementation
and the progress for implementation
which is exactly sort of the continuous
improvement cycle you should have
anything else i want to be cognizant of
the time and the
promise to end on time um we just had
one more
um item and that's at the very bottom of
our agenda about um
seeking a committee member um
i would really like to uh and you know
we've got someone
um kari guy is leaving the committee and
so we have an opening on the audit
committee i'd
i would really personally love to see
some um some diverse representation on
the committee
um and to that end i see that the
attachment is
kind of a little a couple paragraphs um
roseanne
with people responding to you that are
interested
i won't just let everybody know i've
connected with the multnomah county
auditor and the auditor's office
of the city of portland asking them to
forward some names of diverse candidates
that are interested
you know what um if everybody can bear
with
us for just two more minutes um rosanna
could you bring up that two-paragraph
um document because that
is um that's a holdover from
two years ago when we recruited um
and had an opening
on the committee and i was looking at it
today
and i'm interested in
um input from
everybody on the um
current description of what it is we
need because we
um so so one of the things about louis
lousinkari
that uh will be hard since she's been a
long time member of the committee is she
brings a lot of auditing experience
which has been great for i think
well it's been super helpful for me it's
been good for
mary katherine and janice uh so we're
gonna lose that
on the committee itself so we don't have
any
um auditors per se um we have people who
are interested in auditing but not
auditors
um so losing kari and like this actually
has i think a bias towards
individuals who have auditing
backgrounds and the question is see the
second to last sentence if you have
auditing experience would like to apply
so the question is do we want to make
that
more of uh it's great if you have
auditing experience
but we also would um but that's that's
01h 30m 00s
not a requirement because it may filter
out
other candidates for the community
members who um
aren't auditors and so how important
is that um and i so i agree with it i
agree with what you just said that you
know it says do you have um experience
with performing audits but
um i'll also share that i developed a
form it would be an inter
it's a google form that um people could
use to like
say here's my name here's what i do for
a day job um
here's the best contact information for
me but it asks some voluntary questions
about
gender and about race um
i i don't have it up in front of me but
um i think that
using that form is gonna hopefully
signal to people that those things
matter
not that anybody cares but i think that
we want to be able to say that at least
in this committee we've
operationalized racial equity we know
who's made up of
who the members are um we know they're
either gender pronouns
you know we know that they're diverse
candidates in whatever
dimension that that takes um and if we
don't ask then then we have no way of
knowing um
i've been really impressed with some of
our local non-profit boards that
say our board is made up of you know we
have two members of lgbt community
we've got um one person identifies as
transgender
two people african-american one asian
pacific islander
two native americans one single mother
and uh again it's not that anybody cares
but i think that we can at least in this
committee
model best practices for um being
inclusive and reporting out on it
um and so i'm hoping that we can use
that form as a way to intake
and sift through applicants i also think
that the
question about you know do we have
experience with performing audits
um is a barrier to people that might be
interested
and i think it's really important that
we get members that can ask good
questions and have time to do
the background work rather than being an
experienced
auditor even though i realize that we
are you know that that's what we're
losing on this committee is we're losing
a seasoned auditor um
but i'd like to keep open our minds open
to
you know younger browner skinned
you know just a more diverse candidate
pool
yeah so i'm gonna suggest
can you mind parker if i just make a
suggestion and then i'll
pass it to you is that we drop that
first sentence
we also modify uh make it sound more
interesting because i know it is
um it's a little bit dry um take out the
if you have auditing experience and
would like to apply take that qualifier
out because i think
agree that you're right um and
then also marry it with that intake form
um michelle and so
and then we could circulate it among a
broader a broader
group but so that we take we take around
take out the
filter of you have to be an auditor
because one of the great things about
kari is she did say that
she's happy to continue to be a resource
she's still a pps parent
so i'm happy to be a resource for janice
and mary catherine but
also to the committee
does that sound michelle like does that
um if it would be okay with everybody i
wouldn't mind taking a look at this when
i'm not talking
and read through it give some edits and
then
include the link to that google form um
which
roseanne that looks like you're the
person that would be collecting those
responses those i'll make sure that you
that the the the link to that form is
shared with you and then you'll be able
to see
the the responses and sift through them
it looks like megan's listed as the
person on there
megan salvador oh um i saw one that had
your name on it
maybe i'm looking at it i can a
different doesn't matter
so on the actual website it lists
roseanne
but i'm not sure this one doesn't
so okay
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 - Committee Meetings" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk0IYRijyKDVmokTZiuGv_HR3Qv7kkmJU (accessed: 2023-10-14T00:59:52.903034Z)