2020-09-22 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2020-09-22
Time	18:00:00
Venue	Virtual/Online
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting 9/22/2020

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so this board meeting of the board of education for september 22nd 2020 is called order for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on has been posted as required by state law this meeting is being streamed live on pbs tv services and on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times good evening everyone and welcome hopefully you're enjoying the fresh air tonight we have a very full agenda and after tonight's meeting we have a learning session for the board members so tonight in addition to voting on an amendment the fiscal year budget for the 2021 school year we will discuss a draft of the 21 22 budget calendar and adopt the superintendent's evaluation framework and then like i said we'll go to our study session where we'll have an opportunity to learn more about the district's climate justice and climate change curriculum which feels after what we experience the last 10 days even more urgent if that's possible and then we'll also hear about the district's community engagement framework but to begin tonight in recognition of hispanic heritage month we will vote on a resolution proclaiming the celebration of national hispanic heritage month heritage month in portland public schools and it is vitally important that our spanish-speaking students families and community hear our proclamation in their native language and so often as we do in our work i have requested support from our language access services team um the superintendent and i had talked about having each board member uh read a line in spanish and and that is something we thought about attempting um but it felt uh good to honor america and all the work that she does it with this important team in pps and to show that um it's not only our families that need translation services but our board sometimes needs those as well um mayor first team ensures that families always have language translation and interpretation services available i also want to congratulate her on her recent completion and graduation from the leadership program with the hispanic metropolitan chamber so many footer on behalf of the board would you please recite the proclamation thank you so much good evening everybody the solution for solution number 6 resolution proclamation and latinos
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[Music] thank you um chair director constance would you please read the um proclamation in english i would be happy to gracias resolution 6173 in celebration of latinx heritage in portland public schools hispanic heritage week which began in 1968 under president lyndon johnson was expanded to national hispanic heritage month by president ronald reagan and enacted into law in 1988 to cover a 30-day period starting on september 15 the day that represents the anniversary of independence for five latin american countries hispanics and latinos have enriched and positively shaped our community from those whose roots trace back generations to those who have recently arrived to pursue the promise of the united states they represent the spirit of our american dream with hard work and an education you can build a better life for yourself and a better future for your children hispanics and latinos make profound contributions and continue to make advances in education medicine art culture and public service and have been a consistent and vital influence in our communities growth and prosperity more than 16 percent of enrolled students in the portland public schools are hispanic and or latino hispanics and or latinos comprise over 8 percent of our employees and contribute to the accomplishment of pps's mission at every level within every department and division of the district our schools honor and preserve the
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linguistic and cultural assets of students through student clubs like mecha and enrichment programs such as our dual language immersion ethnic studies critical race theory courses and the option to obtain a seal by literacy upon graduation that honor and enrich the diverse backgrounds of our heritage spanish speakers while exposing non-spanish speakers to diverse multilingual and multicultural perspectives our district and community is strengthened by the support and advocacy of organizations like latino network hacienda cdc the hispanic metropolitan chamber verde milagro theater and el programa hispano we recognize that when we lift up hispanic latino students staff families and community members we strengthen our entire district when we create more pathways to educational opportunity we provide the chance for all students to reach their greatest potential understanding recognizing and promoting the assets of our hispanic and latino students staff families and community is an important part of celebrating hispanic heritage month portland public schools core value of racial equity and social justice is that we believe in the fundamental right to human dignity and that generating an equitable world requires an educational system that intentionally disrupts and builds leaders to disrupt systems of oppression portland public schools reimagined our district's vision and north star articulates a portrait of a graduate of portland public schools as a compassionate critical thinker able to able to collaborate and solve problems and prepare to lead a more socially just world graduates will be transformational equity leaders educators will be racial equity and social justice centered and the school district will advance racial equity aligned systems and structures portland public schools has a racial equity policy that states our commitment to affirmatively overcome the educational barriers that have resulted in a persistent unacceptable gap for students of color and to give each student the opportunity to support the opportunity and support to meet his or her highest potential closing opportunity gaps while raising achievement for all students is the top priority of the board of education the superintendent and all district staff and the portland public schools board of education believes each and every student is to be celebrated and appreciated for the distinct and vibrant contributions made by sharing cultures language ideas beliefs and values within a school community the portland public schools board of education hereby promotes september 15th through october 15th as hispanic heritage month and encourages staff students and community to observe recognize and celebrate the culture heritage and economic contributions of hispanics and latinos in portland oregon in the united states through culturally relevant activity and to learn from the past and understand the experiences that have shaped the united states so be it resolved thank you director constance we're now going to uh vote on resolution 6173 proclaiming the celebration of national hispanic heritage month in portland public schools do i have a motion for this resolution so moved second second i think that was director bailey and then director depos great um director bailey moved and directed to pass seconds the motion to adopt resolution six one seven three ms brazza miss bradshaw is there any citizen comment on resolution 6173 no is there any board discussion on this resolution all right uh let us go ahead and vote on resolution 6173 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6173 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative shu voting yes all right thank you we now turn to our consent agenda and board members if there are any items you would like to pool we will set those aside for discussion and vote at the end of the meeting so are there any items anyone would like to pull from the consent agenda all right ms bradshaw are there any changes to the consent agenda um it just came to my attention that the contract for delta connects has a typo in the resolution the documents that support it had the correct amount um and so the resolution reads 2 million and it actually needs to be three which
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will need um an amendment there are no other changes though all right excellent um so uh who would move the amendment to change the delta contract resolution from two million to the correct three million do i have someone that'll make that amendment so moved all right so i heard i think director from edwards moved it and we'll count director moore's as a second there um all right and so john can we vote on the whole package or do we need to vote on the amendment separately commitment first okay we'll do the amendment first so bring before us the amendment on the contract with uh delta from two to three million all those in favor please say yes yes yes all those opposed please say no any abstentions student representative shu yes all right it passes 7-0 with student representative shu also voting yes and so now uh who would like to move the entire consent agenda included the amended delta line so moved all right dr konstam and director scott seconds we will is there any board discussion on the consent agenda there is um so i um over the last two meetings i have uh not necessarily pulled or voted against contracts but i want to just flag my continuing concern that we're being asked to vote on contracts where we haven't posted the board memos which are public materials and that the performance goals are not yet set and um i've raised this the last two meetings and i have that people ask me why i haven't voted against the contract but i don't why don't i don't vote against the contracts if i have a concern but i don't really view this as at all the contractors issue i think this is a district side of the issue that needs to be addressed and i've raised it with on the chief of staff and the deputy superintendent for business operations um and while there's been a fair amount of back and forth and it's still being worked on i just want to flag that i'm not entirely comfortable that we continued to um this practice into this into the school year all right any further discussion i know that i have also spoken with um folks around the contracts and continuing to find ways to um both share information but also to protect the district as we know there was a um fraud issue last year and so trying to find this pathway of how do we um also respect staff time and navigate transparency so this is an ongoing conversation that we're having um as board leadership also with our staff to make sure that we are um transparent and clear in what we're agreeing to and also um like director broome edward said recognizing that this is a procedure on process um kink that we are working as a district and not a reflection on our contractors in any way all right um seeing no more discussion we'll go ahead and move on to um voting the board will now vote on resolution 6174-6177 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions the consent agenda is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative shu voting yes excellent i would like to leave a little bit of suspense in the way i asked that question nathaniel so we're just ready to hear your response there um we have a brief moment to do um some cheerleading for our bond and so i'm going to invite uh director depos to share with us some of her joy and energy around the bond that is before us on the ballot in november michelle thank you yes so i'm going to talk a brief um commercial here for our 20 or 20 20 bond i'm really excited to support this and be part of the creation of this bond for a couple of a couple of reasons one is it's a renewal on the tax rate not a brand new tax rate so it's a tax rate that we're already paying um it's a 1.2 billion dollar investment that we can make as portlanders without raising taxes and i think that's really great additionally we can invest in
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historically underserved black community particularly at the jefferson high school complete modernization of jefferson the development of a center for black student excellence and invest investments in curriculum and technology improvements i'm really particularly excited about the curriculum improvements because i think our history needs to be told from a 21st century lens so this gives us an opportunity to make improvements there um technology as well um kovid surprised all of us this uh bond will give us the opportunity to make investments in technology to make sure all students have access to online and virtual learning platforms and that's it awesome vote november 3rd director moore do you have some thoughts to share about the bond yes um i will continue the commercial um i'm very proud to advocate for passage of this this bond on the november ballot this is the third bond in a series starting in 2012 as part of a 30-year plus plan to modernize all of our schools this bond represents historic levels of investment in multiple areas that will directly improve the educational opportunities available to pps students throughout the district there's a lot to be excited about here i'll i'll talk about just two first with this bond the district's alternative ed programs will enjoy a brand new facility the multiple pathways to graduation learning center located on the benson high school campus this facility will be designed to respond to the unique needs of students in multiple programs and will allow the unification of the alliance high school program for the first time in many years um and then secondly i just want to highlight that with this bond we'll be continuing the modernization of all of our high schools with this bond we'll be modernizing jefferson high school and it also includes planning and design for cleveland high school wilson high school and the extension to the existing roosevelt high school in order to respond to enrollment increases so this is a very big number 1.2 billion dollars but we're going to be doing an enormous number of projects and i strongly encourage the voters to continue supporting portland public schools thank you all right and when is election day november 3rd so your ballots will be coming make sure you sit down with your voters pamphlet look at them um and vote and vote yes on the pps bond all right we turn now to one of the most important parts of our gatherings which is our student and public comment um before we begin i just want to review our guidelines for everyone we are deeply grateful to the community for taking the time to attend this meeting and to provide your comments public input informs our work as a district and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen board members and the superintendents 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 and we request that complaints about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter if you have any additional materials or items you would like to provide to the board or superintendent we ask that you email them to public comment that's all one word public comment at pbs.net please make sure that when you begin tonight uh you clearly state and spell your name for the record you will have three minutes to speak and you will hear a sound after three minutes which means that it is time to conclude your comments and we respectfully ask that you do conclude at that point ms bradshaw do you have anyone signed up for student comment tonight yes we have quite a few we'll start with caroline racinos all right caroline welcome hi thank you um my name is caroline racinos c-a-r-o-l-i-n-e r e c i n o s um hello pbs board members i go to grant high school i wanted to talk to you today about the role you play in enacting climate justice specifically in making sustainable
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choices for school lunches as board members you have the power and responsibility to make ecologically healthy changes on behalf of the portland public schools i understand that since the new school year has started you are very busy however we are asking you consider some new modifications i should say that all these requests are in reference to the school lunches the information and statistics are found on the pps website unfortunately the only report is one for the 2015-2016 season the focus national district procurement report pbs school year 2015 2016. accordingly some of my information could be incorrect due to the fact that there is no information from recent years requests as follows post a more recent nutrition services procurement report unless one already exists in which case it should be put somewhere more accessible and the old report removed the report states that 32 percent of school lunches are locally sourced if that number were to be increased hopefully we would decrease the number of processed foods coming from far away and the amount of plastic packaging that comes with it in 2015 53 of beef was locally sourced and only five percent was sustainably produced we would hope that you could raise those statistics in 2015 none of the cheese produced was sustainably sourced which i hope could be improved also i would like to understand why this hasn't happened before in school year 2015 2016 you did increase the amount of chicken that was sustainably produced from less than one percent to 15 but you lower the amount that was to locally sourced from two percent to zero percent so i think that should also be raised in conclusion i hope you will consider discussing some of these points we all have to do our part against climate change and i hope you can use your power to create changes for the better and adopt a policy for taking action on climate change thank you thank you we have tasman higgs yeah hi my name is taz higgs higgs and i'm a 7th grader at da vinci middle school and i use he him pronouns when you all were kids did you ever have to worry about having a safe planet when you all grew up i do i have asthma and have been struggling with the forest fires over the past couple weeks when our house got too smoky we had to evacuate to a hotel till the smoke cleared out in portland these fires keep getting worse each year and the carbon emissions are rising drastically one of the themes of 2020 is i can't breathe from kovan 19 to george floyd to tear gas in our own city and now the wildfires all make it harder for some people to breathe 2020 is a warning to us that our ability to breathe our survival is at risk these problems weren't caused by an unlucky 20 20. they were caused by people not wanting to change i know there's lots of problems in pps that you guys are trying to solve kind of like firefighters using your limited water to spray down the worst fires but spraying down the fires isn't enough clearly it's not enough even my kindergarten cousin knows that we have to stop burning fossil fuels the district could buy electricity from wind and solar you could buy recycled paper instead of paper from cutting down trees that seems easy instead of gas vehicles you guys could switch to electric cafeterias could serve a lot less meat from the carbon emissions it takes to make one single hamburger you could serve 90 whole kids with a serving of just peas instead for the same amount of protein don't leave this problem to us kids to solve because it'll just get worse by the time we grow up instead of just spraying down more fires in pps you can work together to prevent emissions from 81 whole schools you have that power you do by passing on the climate crisis response policy i hope you talk about this at your october policy meeting the climate crisis is happening now and if we all work together we'll all be able to breathe easier thank you thank you next we have luna avedia hello my name is luna abadia that is l-u-n-a-a-b-a-d-i-a i use she her pronouns and i'm a student at lincoln high school
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i'm here tonight to urge that the pps climate crisis response policy be discussed at the october 16 26th policy meeting as a 16 year old i fear for my future in the face of climate change this is why i decided to create the effective climate action project an organization focused on increasing awareness of effective climate solutions through youth advocacy and leadership pursuing this project has helped me channel the worry i feel about climate change and turn it into motivation however i shouldn't have to be doing this teenagers shouldn't have to carry the burden of the lack of action taken by the adults in power i'm actually speaking to you right now from arizona where we evacuated because the air in my house is too toxic to breathe while skies have cleared in portland and many will return for their lives what we have experienced these past few weeks is a testament to what our new normal will look like that is unless we take significant and immediate action on climate change the truth is the conversation is rapidly changing from how to stop climate change to how to mitigate its worst effects this is why the pps climate crisis response policy is critical to our communities adaptation in this changing world i find it astounding that the board has not yet brought it up for consideration i understand that you are grappling as we all are with the many issues and important decisions this year has thrown at us however reviewing and implementing this policy demonstrates your recognition of the intersectionality climate change holds with racial justice kobe 19 and wildfires schools are where so much of a student's values abilities and understandings are solidified as the pps vision statement says quote a graduate of portland public schools will be a compassionate critical thinker able to collaborate and solve problems and be prepared to lead a more socially just world growing up in schools that actively work to create the lowest possible carbon emissions facilitate green infrastructure and transportation and teach environmental justice will help students see the possibilities of an environmentally responsible future please consider the pps climate crisis response policy this october this is just the beginning this is just the beginning steps towards the true climate action that we need we cannot delay this any longer and if i or others in my organization can help you in furthering this policy we stand ready to do so thank you very much thank you you've anna starman hi that's me all right so hi my name is anna storman i it's spelled a-n-n-a-s-t-a-r-m-a-n and today i want to talk about the lack of art supplies at our school so i go to roosevelt high school and i'm a junior and i go by pronouns of she her so my classmates deserve art supplies art should be valued at the same level as the sciences or mass things that are prioritized in our country over over art you know why art is important and it has the same importance as other subjects that are better funded artistic as an extension of our creativity it's how we are coping right now through all this art is how we can express ourselves i cannot express myself through my math work or research paper art is an expression of who we are and my classmates are more than just these maths and research papers and why are they valued differently thank you thank you you have edmy bickley um pardon one moment hello my name is edmegeo e-d-m-e-g-u-e-t s-c-h-o-w and my pronouns are she her i am currently a senior at roosevelt high school and for a very long time in my life art has been an intrinsic part of my self-expression it has the ability to articulate habits that are outside of my own
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it is something i truly believe is vitally important and we have the wonderful art classes at our in our pps schools they are taught by amazing teachers and they have students who are so so passionate about them but at this time especially it is incredibly difficult to fully participate in class from internet glitches to screen fatigue everything is draining i found it hard to stay focused and to stay motivated but truthfully i cannot imagine how much that would be amplified if i did not have the ability to access materials necessary to my classes unfortunately that is what a large part of my community is facing students do not have supplies to the do not have access to the supplies that are needed for an arts education program and a vast number of low-income families are having difficulty paying for their housing food and other necessities they should not be asked to find money to provide for their child's education at this time of crisis it is an onerous burden to ask families to pay for their children's educational tools and it will disproportionately impact families and students who are in an unstable financial situation it is an equity issue and and teachers began this year with the hope that they would be able to provide students with the supplies that they need if they needed them unfortunately due to the withdrawal of funds they are now left scrambling and in the uncomfortable position of leaving students hanging in my photography class that i'm taking this year a class that we have not had access to at roosevelt before my teacher thought she would be able to provide cameras to students who did not have access to phones or other digital cameras and she no longer knows if she has that option just like math english science and history art is an intrinsic part of education it is a right and access to it should not rely on financial situation our time at home right now quarantined is an opportunity to allow students the chance to explore art in their own homes to express the complicated thoughts and feelings that this global crisis and the months of isolation have engendered but it will be wasted if students do not have access to the tools that are necessary to do so please i implore you some budget provision must be made for students so that they have equitable access to the art supplies that they need and by extension arts education thank you thank you mike rosen hi i'm mike rosen r-o-s-e-n and i appreciate the opportunity to comment superintendent guerrero chair lowry and board directors we're certainly living in trying times over half a year of social distancing protests for racial justice happening across the globe and now one of the starkest representations of climate change rampant wildfires driving us into our homes i had been thinking recently how the climate crisis had fallen off out of the press and collective consciousness only in the last two weeks to see it rocket into the forefront of the world's most pressing issues to say the least the sense of fear and hopelessness is striking and palpable it is known however that an effective remedy for this is action action that is as direct as possible for the past year the pps climate justice committee which includes teachers parents students community activists and scientists and the eco school network has been working diligently with pps staff including all department management and led by the district sustainability team and a multitude of stakeholders on drafting a pps climate crisis response policy our remedy our form of direct action and we have made real progress we are ready to engage the board with this work as you may recall the climate crisis response policy is a major revision of the existing resource conservation policy from the early 90s realizing that this policy was woefully out of date we decided to start over and draft a policy that not only addressed sustainability broadly but also connected the district's carbon footprint to the goal of significantly reducing global carbon emissions with the help of pps staff we have addressed all major areas of district-wide carbon consumption and have developed a path to reduction significant reduction to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 this means that we will look at both emissions and engagement and culture under the umbrella of admissions reduction and sequestration the draft policy includes goals in the areas of operations maintenance and facilities grounds and gardens purchasing transportation new
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construction and food and under the umbrella of engagement and culture we've outlined goals in the areas of campus action communication professional development and climate justice curriculum which aligns with the previous resolution this was planned for presentation to the board's policy committee to discuss in april but it was postponed and we've requested again to present it in october i'm here tonight to advocate for the prioritization of this policy work for the policy committee and then the board as a whole in a subsequent implementation plan by staff of this policy i have reviewed the draft board policy committee work plan discussion september 14 2020 and know the climate crisis response policy is listed as content for future meetings rather than a topic of the meeting itself my request is that the policy be prioritized and the climate justice committee and eco school network be invited to present their work at the october 26 policy committee meeting thank you for your consideration of this request and thank you to directors brim edwards and de pass for already acknowledging this request and supporting this policy as priority policy committee thank you sorry can't find the dismiss button um next thank you next we have jane come out hi good evening i'm jane coleman c-o-m-e-a-u-l-t thank you for the opportunity to comment tonight i'm a pps parent and i also serve on the advisory board for the eco school network and i'm here in at capacity the ecoschool network is an organization of parents promoting sustainable practices and raising ecological awareness in schools across oregon our parent leaders are active in 51 pps schools volunteering their time because they want to support staff and students in reducing environmental impacts at school and also to create opportunities for students to be active in building a brighter future one of the things we frequently hear from our parent leaders is a desire to see district-wide action on climate change this makes it a top priority for our organization and over the past year we've been working on a team to create a draft climate crisis response plan to bring in front of the pps board and have dedicated significant time in doing the requisite research writing and meeting with district staff and other collaborators we applaud the developments in climate change and climate justice curriculum at pps and we know that our youth feels the weight of a bleak ecological outlook for the planet collectively we need to show students the concrete actions that pps is taking to reduce its contribution to climate change and create opportunities for students to engage in that work this will help graduates see themselves in the words of the graduate portrait to be prepared to lead a more socially just world and hopefully alleviate some of their anxiety about the state of the planet pps needs a plan a climate crisis response plan to get serious about the urgent need to take action on climate change and the board needs to make it a priority in order to get there the eco school network would like to thank directors brian edwards and de pass for their support in making the development and adoption of a climate crisis response plan a priority for the board and a policy committee thank you thank you kelly may hello i don't know if i can follow those students um my name is kelly may k-e-l-l-i-e-m-a-y um i she her pronouns i'm a visual arts teacher at roosevelt high school and i've worked in the roosevelt cluster for the past about nine years i'm here to represent the visual art teachers across the district and to support our visual arts students in these times that are difficult we have come together and made a statement that i did share but i'd like to share at a later date with a lot of this or all this correct statistics um and in four business days we've collected 320 signatures um from people across the district in support of the statements and i would like to read part of it and then some other things to say um and basically there was promises made to support art materials and right now we do not have a lot of answers or any district support for materials at non-title run schools so after portland public's decision to move to a remote learning environment for fall 2020 many district stakeholders and departments began working to find a solution so that all students could have access to the basic materials they would need in order to establish an equitable baseline for learning in every subject
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the latest message is that title 1 schools will qualify to have some materials including art supplies provided for those students in title 1 schools we greatly appreciate all the work that went into this effort and in general like to say i greatly appreciate the arts being so much more supported in the last few years in portland public and a shout out to our tosa and kristen the head of our vapid department they've worked very hard on this and supporting us um and i will say many have shared that they're in the title one schools even those lists do not end up including the materials that we requested and all the work went into many lists this summer um back to the statement as no pbs high school has designated title 1 all of high schools have lost title 1 status these funds will not be able to provide support for visual arts at the 9 through 12 level nor it will provide materials for students that qualify for free or reduced lunch at any schools in portland public and right now i will tell you that about 70 percent of my art students have expressed that they have either no materials or purely paper and pencil and that has been commonly heard from other teachers in the district the materials in art programs are the instructional core for student learning in a normal scenario over the spring and summer arts teachers and building administrators work very hard very piecemeal approach that is already very inequitable to summarize that part of asking for donations donors choose ptas and that is a wide inequity issue already in the district that we'd like future work towards um but we were told to put all of that on hold and asked not to make any progress towards funding for this year as we were told the district would provide materials for students in distance learning and as another teacher mentioned that we feel hung out to dry especially in remote learning environment there must be a system in place to ensure equity in student access to basic supplies as teachers parents and community members we ask the district provide basic instructional material to 912 students designated for as qualifying for free and reduced meals we recommend a 50 per high school student which is actually low when we've done all the research in the numbers but we're looking for that and 30 per middle school student 20 per k5 um visual arts help foster creativity keep kids in school problem solving and even more so now the much needed time away from screens during distance learning please don't allow students in these programs to be undercut at this moment when we have never needed support more i know this is an extremely complicated issue with more complex solutions than i'm putting forth but i also see it as an amazing opportunity for us to truly reflect on how and where to make necessary change to show our historically underserved students they matter and that they deserve as quality of an art making experience as anyone else attending this public education institution what we are suggesting might not be the best solution but a district solution is needed or best um excuse me sorry um i would really like and i know my many of my colleagues would like to get back to the core of our job of supporting teaching and inspiring students i will say with a long of all the challenges coming up in distance learning um and i'd really like to see my hope is that the district will focus on the responsibility of getting children what they need and what they deserve um please help us support our students and i would like to forward to that email address the statistics we have 320 people 250 at least to which i've added their names um and i have also a statement from a parent if i'm in my three minutes um art acts like arctic a kind of therapy for my daughter it holds her world together without it she is a growing plant without the sun in her almost three years at roosevelt i have seen her flourish academically and personally her mind has expanded in all directions merely for having the nourishment of a proper art education is imperative as she continued to receive that education for it is her chosen path towards adulthood as a community struggles to see kids through to graduation i hope that no aspects of the education they are currently receiving would be seen as unnecessary as that goes against the very task you have sworn to uphold please support our students and help us get back to our jobs teaching i appreciate your time thank you very much thank you um kara kali hi good evening everybody my name is kara khali that's k-a-r-a c-o-l-l-e-y and i use she her pronouns i'm a parent of an ainsworth fourth grader and a west sylvan seventh grader and i'm here to speak about the middle
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school schedule remote schedule um first uh after the first week of learning i'm very pleased with my fourth grader's remote schedule he has three to four hours of live synchronous instruction per day monday through friday sometimes he's working with the whole class sometimes in small groups my son is working hard he struggles sometimes we struggle but he's learning and he's engaged as best he can under these very difficult circumstances i have been to put it mildly very disappointed with my seventh grader's remote schedule this i'm talking about last week on monday she met for 45 minutes with her period 1 period 2 and period 3 teachers on tuesday she met for 45 minutes with period 5 period 6 period 7 teachers on wednesday she met with one teacher the whole day like a half an hour with one teacher on thursday she met only with her advisory homeroom teacher and on friday again she met with one teacher let me tell you very clearly what this asynchronous learning on wednesday thursday and friday looked like for her she was alone in her room looking at her laptop trying to do her work frustrated and i would say most of all sad to be by herself on sunday we received an email from one of her teachers that quote unquote senior leadership has told teachers they are not allowed to hold whole class live meetings on wednesday thursday and friday so even if a teacher wants to hold a meeting on wednesday thursday or friday they are not allowed i was feeling lucky that one of her teachers wanted to teach her on a wednesday and one of her teachers wanted to teach her on a friday and now i learn that this is forbidden by senior leadership i don't really know what senior leadership means but so what i really can't understand is the difference between the middle school and high school schedule friends with high school students tell me that their students receive live synchronous instruction on monday tuesday thursday friday mornings so why are middle schoolers being singled out for less live instruction than their elementary or high school peers please if middle school teachers want to meet with whole class or with the whole class in small groups for live instruction on wednesday thursday and friday please let them my kids don't need fancy asynchronous lectures fancy slick asynchronous power points they need their teachers to check in with them from monday to friday they need to interact with their peers and teachers every day please thank you for your time thank you we have colleen rulin hi my name is colleen rueland r-e-u-l-a-n-d um i am actually perfectly timed to follow the last parent who spoke i have a child in high school and a child in middle school and they have been previously amazingly engaged loving public school they've been in portland public school since kindergarten and their experience is exactly what she just described the only live inspect instruction they have is a half a day on a monday and a tuesday and then it's completely videos and having to look at a computer and self-motivate wednesday through friday these are kids that have been isolated from any type of community since march and who haven't had engaged learning since march i am deeply deeply worried about how this actually meets ode criteria and i am deeply worried about the impact lifelong impact that this is having on children and their engaged learning i know that these are difficult situations but we have to be doing better than saying that one-third of a 12-year-old's education is live interactive and with other students i ask you to please put curriculum and education as a priority because children are being harmed and they're suffering thank you thank you um we have jennifer edler um it's edler ed ler she her okay i am here to ask you to prioritize the climate crisis response policy proposals soon and i speak on behalf of my colleagues at beverly cleary school it would be great if 2020 was
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an anomaly but scientists suspect in 2030 that we will not look back um that we will look back not with despair but with regret that we didn't do anything to heed the warning the wildfires pandemic political movements and strife the awareness that we're on a precipice and we need to change means that this moment is a call to action investing in clean energy will not be cheap but we don't have the luxury of time educators spend time accessing academic resources for students future let's do what we can to access green resources to make sure that future is full of opportunity our students are stressed and anxious and not sure how to prepare as we also focus on equity we need to remember that it's a front line communities of students of color that will be most impacted by the climate crisis so we are adding to that gap of opportunity and access we are not properly addressing the risk around the climate crisis the pandemic was acute but the climate crisis is chronic and it needs immediate attention as well scientists are hoping this difficult year wakes us up our students learning from home are hoping that too no more excuses we need action we appreciate pps's leadership and climate matters our students have access to climate science courses and just this year we arrive to find copy machines automatically are set to double-side copy this matters changing behaviors is key but on the other hand continuing to ask staff to print hard copies of documents seems antiquated and wasteful recycling bins are hard to find and often unlabeled leaving leading to contamination and right now empty buildings could be audited for energy efficiency supply rooms stocked with recycled materials keep in mind our pps buildings are mostly vacant but they are using a precious energy for the few who are working there shouldn't they be working remotely as well this committee lists fairly cost-effective things we could do now de-pave and green up campuses reusable trays and utensils abundant clearly marked recycling bins free student bus passes and safe pathways to school all staff should be educated on the crisis and new policies just as they were with pandemic protocols if we use less we can't afford recycle options we need to make our make being green our ethos at pps we ask that we start implementing more impactful long-term decisions like led lights energy star appliances and heating by building partnerships with community members these proposals put forth by the committee will significantly decrease carbon emissions as outlined in the 2018 ipcc climate report we would like you to also be transparent about the carbon footprint for the district including transportations our students see our students see our hypocrisy as parents and education leaders they want opportunities equality and a clean environment let's invest in their future like we should thank you thank you that concludes everybody that we have signed up for public comment thank you everyone for sharing tonight um just to let you know we as a board have already um received a memo about art supplies um we know that the climate uh justice policy and policy committee are talking to one another and we also it's like what was the other one oh middle school schedule um we are uh meeting and talking about adjustments to the middle school schedule so thank you for sharing those perspectives and reiterating your viewpoints and know that there is movement happening in all of the areas that was brought forward for public comment tonight um so keep on sending emails and speaking and bringing forward your viewpoints and know that the the district is responding i'm lori yeah may i say a few go off protocol and just thank the people that are here i have a comment i'd like to make sure um so i just i want to thank the people that came and testified for climate emergency and sustainability practices and also for the visual arts tools um i'm i'm a supporter of both i benefited greatly from all of the art training i got at irvington school at mlc of course and at the fashion institute of design um and and i believe it's part of a a well-rounded curriculum the climate change emergency right now is so real um you know we experienced the fires and and all that stuff i want to um thank those folks that came from the climate and sustainability communities and also wanted to put a call out
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to recruit and elevate uh people from front-line communities um to be the voice of this movement that's what's happening on the local national and international level um and we can do that in portland here too so i just i want to say that that i'm a big supporter and will do what i can to push these policies forward thanks all right we move on now to student representative shu nathaniel would you like to share your report with us tonight i would yes and um let me just say beforehand that i agree with everything that director depast just said um anyway first off um i would like to update everyone on how the beginning of the school year has been going uh starting this year was always going to be a complex and difficult process what with the considerable task of adjusting to online learning however the challenges of the past few weeks such as wild wildfires smoke power outages and downed trees have complicated this process further as a result many classes are now only commencing in earnest with two teachers truly beginning to cover the content of their courses for many of for those of us at jefferson fall term portland community college classes begin this week as well with many students having had their first virtual class either yesterday or today for this term we are permitted to enroll in classes worth up to a total of five credits personally i'm enrolled in a full credit class on metaphysics and epistemology which begins tomorrow additionally i would like to note that although we are a number of weeks into our school year students continue to face a wide range of issues related to distant long distance learning from the inconsistent or unclear locations of course materials to platforms such as canvas and synergy failing sync next i would like to remark upon the goings-on at the bsc the dsc has decided to undergo its own sort of soft start program for many of the same reasons as our schools have did with the additional hope of allowing new members to join relatively seamlessly in effect this means that we are refraining from taking on any new non-essential duties until october and temporarily uh slowing our work on ongoing projects such as our board policy amending our board policy and writing bylaws however we are moving forward on adding new members to the dsc in the coming days and weeks yen and i plan to reach out to student government advisors and or school admin um of those schools which do not currently have representation on the dsc that is to say lincoln wilson mlc alliance at meek alliance benson pioneer and possibly grant with the goal of working toward democratically electing a representative to the dsc from each of their schools as for board policy um and i believe that concludes my report thank you dear lowry thank you yes let's just say before we move on i'm wondering nathaniel if at some point this fall you could organize a student round table that we could hear from directly from student experiences about um sort of the comprehensive distance learning mod module i think it would be really informative to understand what's what's been helpful what what's working what's not um and just hear directly from students i'm hearing a lot from parents but um a little less from students director edwards could you send an email sort of outlining what you're thinking to roseanne and i so we can add that to our agenda setting meeting tomorrow yep thank you all right thank you nathaniel um and i'm super excited to hear about was it metaphysics and epistemology your class that you're taking that's correct yes i'm excited to hear what you're learning there all right superintendent um would you like to share with us your report about what's been going on these last uh two weeks and longer uh director staff colleagues and everyone who's tuned in this evening watching on the live stream good evening the learning continues um and i'm counting on our our staff to to show the slideshow if they're not there um we're we're on day seven of of our instructional schedule uh this is this is after a two week soft start that prioritized building those student and teacher
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connections making sure there was ample time for professional development for our educators getting familiar with learning technology tools and resources and also taking the time uh important to identify the social emotional supports that many of our students might need given the constraints and and the circumstances under which we're working the first seven days have generally gone smoothly um though i'll be the first to admit there we're still troubleshooting a number of areas um i'm thankful as well to parents and staff who have uh provided feedback uh we recognize that this distance learning experience isn't going perfectly for everyone but i'm glad that we're identifying what the challenges are and we're doing our best to resolve these as best we can we have been able to take care of many of the initial technology needs with the rolling distribution of laptops and hot spots and we'll continue to address concerns that come in to our telephone technology helpline we're also hearing a range of feedback regarding the student learning experience as well we'll continue to calibrate the balance of class schedules so that they are a a good combination of direct instruction or synchronous learning uh and independent learning time or asynchronous time of course this is a new way of teaching and learning and it's dramatically different from our usual delivery model we're attempting to strike the most age and develop developmentally appropriate balance and we're also taking a continued look at how best to meet the needs of our middle school age students for instance um and i heard those comments earlier clearly as well so we're going to continue learning and adjusting as we go uh knowing we've just uh completed our seventh day uh and even in in best case scenario comprehensive distance learning uh you know won't be a substitute for face-to-face instruction but we're certainly going to try to maintain a continuity of learning our commitment is is to provide the best possible learning experience for students while making sure that they feel those important connections to to their teachers and and to each others and there's a next phase to to this work as we settle into our instructional calendar we are simultaneously working on the next phases of a gradual reopening of schools we remain focused on published health metrics and the guidance of the county and our medical experts uh indeed in addition to oregon department of ed guidelines as we start to contemplate introducing limited in-person opportunities while we're anxious to have all of our students back on campus we're going to continue to proceed in a measured and prudent manner that prioritizes the health and safety of our students and our employees our ability to fully open classrooms is dependent on those health metrics in multnomah county specifically which is really dependent on our community following good practices including the wearing and face coverings so we should probably manage our expectations about how soon we can reopen our school buildings even if for hybrid or cohort models as conditions will dictate when we're able to to move forward in the meantime there will be opportunities to bring in smaller groups of students uh for things like assessments and outdoor enrichment activities uh as well as offerings out of our family resource centers so as always we will only roll out in-person opportunities when we believe we can safely do so uh student and staff health and well-being remains our highest priority uh families and employees can expect to hear much more about our expansion of student in-person opportunities over the next couple weeks thank you to our directors for your proclamation this evening recognizing hispanic heritage month as a young man i had the opportunity to travel to the very steps of the church in the small colonial town of dolores mexico where in 1810 el padre miguel hidalgo rang the church bells and gave the call to arms triggering the mexican war of independence so um and we know that latinos or hispanics are a rich and diverse group so today more than ever our schools serve and belong to students and families tied to the traditional land of indigenous people to families who were unjustifiably taken from their native lands to people who saw this country as an opportunity to to thrive so i joined the school board and celebrating recognizing and acknowledging the beauty the rich history of the latinx community this month is both of professional and personal importance to me as the first latino superintendent of
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portland public schools as a chicano a mexican-american a child of an immigrant mother and a paternal family that has lived for generations on land that at one point in history was claimed as american so i often reflect on the gratitude i feel for the journey and sacrifices made by our antepasados or our ancestors so we carry the responsibility to celebrate the struggles the determination and accomplishments of this beautiful and diverse community this month we celebrate the heroes that paved a new road so that we too can continue the cause and charge of preparing every student to lead change and improve the world and if that phrase sounds familiar it's the vision defined by our broader community for our children and youth so while this month gives us an opportunity to pause and reflect we must today and every day continue to celebrate recognize and acknowledge the rich history culture and strength of our latinx students families community members and educators and it's and it's important to recognize that simultaneously there exists many intersectionalities in a diverse latino community including latinos who also identify as black and indigenous so we continue our community effort to make real our commitment to our theory of action and the broader black lives matter agenda to acknowledge and recognize that black and indigenous latinx contribute greatly to our rich culture so as we celebrate recognize and acknowledge the latino community throughout the next month and every day i hope that you join me in learning about and illuminating the way in which afro-latino and indigenous communities help make our community more rich beautiful and resilient so because of the joy of our community that comes from the diversity of our people and as such um we have this moral responsibility to create these conditions so that every one of our students thrives this is especially true for our black and afro-latino members of our community so today i'm excited to join the board of ed in recognizing latino or hispanic heritage month and committed to again living up to these additional important words black lives matter feliz dia de la irancia latina in just a bit we're going to adjourn this regular meeting of the board to hold our first study session of the school year with directors these study sessions are intended for staff to provide a more in-depth understanding of key initiatives and strands of work in pps this evening staff will be sharing and having an interactive dialogue with the board on two topics our community engagement framework and our evolving climate change climate justice curriculum which i'm excited to have you hear about uh i will have something to say about both these items in that meeting but given the all too real and recent display of climate change here in oregon um i also want to address that matter now too we're all familiar with uh how we're confronting a global pandemic struggling with the economic crisis that's ensued uh and attempting to come to terms especially here in portland uh with a racial uprising and injustices and if this weren't enough uh horrific wildfires in oregon and other states have caused so much damage and unfortunate loss of life this past week i had an opportunity to hear from my colleague superintendents around the state that really have been tragically uh had their communities um severely impacted and my thoughts go out to to my to my colleagues and all those families and communities that that really in some cases have lost everything um more locally the choking smoke covered our city for a week disrupted all our lives uh not to the same extent but in each of these scenarios we understand that the pandemic the economics the racial uprising the wildfires they have a disproportionate impact on communities of color and we also see the harm caused when policies and practices deliberately affect one group over another i was dismayed frankly making the observation this past week that the air quality conditions were deemed too hazardous for construction workers to work outdoors but not considered hazardous for agricultural workers to continue working outside in the fields all day all week so i don't know is there something different about the air that's breathed on construction sites versus the air breathed on agricultural fields or is it about something else so a cruel reminder of how racial injustice intersects with issues related to climate justice the existential threat of climate
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warming is still here still happening it's a threat that will not go away unless and until we we demonstrate the will to make it go away so and as educators we have to continue providing our students with a clear and science-based understanding of climate change i invite all of our teachers to begin integrating our newly developed climate justice coursework and units across all grade levels we all need to demonstrate the will to solve this problem i know our students have that will i know this and with the 2016 board resolution pps began to create space and opportunity to cultivate student education and action with regard to climate science and climate justice and here's some ways that pps is operationalizing that commitment we hired a programs manager for climate change and climate justice nicole berg going to walk us through and be our teacher this evening as she walks us through our study station session later this evening we developed a climate justice elective uh at the high school level uh it's a course that now our students will have access to uh in addition are developing a comprehensive and standard space k-12 climate change and climate justice units so that all of our students begin to deepen their knowledge across grade levels and there's much more and we know we have much more to go and we want to operate with as much urgency as possible to our students you have my continued commitment and the commitment i know of our board to provide you what you need to carry out this mission of learning an action but know that we're not leaving it completely to you to solve this massive problem my generation and the generation before me are are responsible for our situation and even with all the student energy in the world we also know our teachers play a critical and central role uh in our success so i want to say to to our educators who in the midst of seemingly endless challenges and changes uh new variables brought on by distance learning um uh there there are many priorities i i want to make sure we we continue to still spotlight uh so superintendent i want to encourage you to start to we have a number of online tools for teaching your students about climate science and climate justice reach out to your curriculum leaders your principal your teaching and learning team at the central office and take a look at what we've posted there at pps.net backslash teacher uh and please do it quickly do it this week uh climate change uh won't wait for any of us climate justice is racial justice climate justice is social justice uh to our students uh you know we're not going to stand by idly we're ready uh to support you and partner with you as uh you take an ever expanding role in solving this crisis that threatens frankly the entirety of our planet and humanity so we look forward to sharing more with you about those lessons and units of study in our study session later and that concludes my report for this evening thank you directors thank you superintendent all right um we are moving now to um our budget and this past june the board adopted the budget for the 2021 school year and at that time when we adopted the budget the legislative session had not been held and the district brought forward a budget that was built on estimated funding levels based on the 2019-2021 biennial budget issued by the oregon department of education on february 26 2020 and this included an expenditure allocation based on anticipated revenue shortfalls now since then a second legislative special session was held on august 10 2020 and this budget amendment that's before us tonight will align resources and requirements with the most current state legislative revenue allocations so superintendent guerrero would you like to introduce this item before us yes chair lowry that was actually a pretty good setup there but i'm going to invite deputy superintendent claire hurts if she wants to add for the reason for the amendment this evening thank you i first i'd like to begin with um introducing our director of budget nicole batson her camera is of course at the last minute um giving us grief but i just want to acknowledge nicole and her team and the work that they've done in track and tracking the most difficult budget process here and they've done exceptional work and i applaud all all of their efforts in and especially reconciling from what we adopted in june and what we bring before you as an amendment
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so in the amendment there are two funds general fund and our special revenue fund that have adjustments in the general fund you'll notice that the beginning fund balance has been updated to reflect the june 30th 2020 ending fund balance and it does include our carryover from furlough savings and our purchasing and hiring freezes and on the expenditure side we have uh moved some expenses that were formerly in the student investment account the special revenue into the resources available in general fund so that we're staying remaining at the same staffing level and we've also had investments in instruction and support services area to support the comprehensive distance learning and hybrid education models so things like ppe technology cleaning supplies software classroom and school setup for when students return in the special revenue we have um what has been allocated through the special session um we've had to reduce the si and special revenue but then it's been offset in the general fund we also have several grants both state and federal in terms of elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds esser fema federal emergency management agency funds and then of course the comprehensive distance learning grants so that all of those are being utilized to help offset the costs of running school and during a pandemic and with that um we staff recommends that the board pass the proposed resolution to amend the 2021 budget okay um i i just flipping between the script and the zoom is apparently too much for me sometimes thank you deputy superintendent hertz do i have a motion and a second to adopt resolution 6178 amendment the fiscal year 2021 budget for school district 1j multnomah county oregon okay i think that was director scott and director depos so i'll give it to director depos moves and director scott seconds the resolution the adoption of resolution 6178 is there any board discussion uh yes this is uh this is rita um i have uh just a couple of comments um one um there are a few typos in the resolution they're not substantive but um i i think they probably ought to be for clarity they ought to be fixed um and then um i think uh i just want to point out and double check my math here um so it appears that measure 98 funding um was funded at 63 of the original estimate and sia was funded only at 32 percent of the original estimates but my understanding is that the investments that we um committed to under the sia funding allocation um we are going we're standing by those commitments um using money out of the general fund budgets is that accurate so when you compare our adopted budget to what has been allocated through the special revenue we received more in general fund than we had adopted so we staffed at a low excuse me we did adopt at the full funding but we had lowered our allocations because we anticipated reduced funding that that money came in at full funding so we had more additional resources available in general fund and then in sia who we had been told would be funded at a certain level so we staffed at that level and then um we found in the special session that we had received less in sia funds so to to keep the same level of staffing overall we were 20 million dollars to the good but we needed to
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move the expenses from one special revenue fund to the general fund in order to have the authority to spend where the resources were allocated through the special session the deputy superintendent sorry this is chair lowry uh director moore so my understanding is that the staffing levels are what we initially approved we're just shifting the buckets for the money claim from based on what the legislative allowances and allocations were which was different than we had predicted because our crystal ball is a little broken but we still have you know the correct funding the same staffing sorry uh director moore if you'd like to continue yeah the only other thing is um so we're we're ending up with a bit more money than we had anticipated um and we're leaving it in reserves in anticipation of some continued economic and fiscal distress in the um in upcoming years correct yes we're anticipating lower revenues in the next biennium in the next two year period and um we are leaving those monies reserved plus we still need to get through a pen you know through the pandemic for the rest of this year as well so between those two things lots of reason okay thank you so uh this is director brim edwards just clarification also along that same lines so at the end of last year we had some furloughs as well i'm wondering if you can tell us what last year's budget that we actually expended after some of the reductions have been made and then with this amendment what the overall budget is the number so last year we um projected that we would save 19 million in based on furloughs purchasing and hiring freezes that occurred between march to june and we did hit that mark and we did have carried that forward into 2021 that's why you're seeing a larger beginning fund balance um for uh the general fund however we are carrying that forward if you will into the next biennium to help offset those costs and your second question director brim edwards was i'm sorry my first question was once you took the savings what did we actually spend last school year and then with this budget amendment what's our sort of all funds number i don't have it right in front of me i don't know the number for last year's total budget spend but we can get that to you but with the uh student success act uh whether the money went into the sia or the into the um larger general fund of the state we're still we're actually receiving an increase which is allowing us to make some critical investments so overall we have 30 million more we we've spent 10 or 11 million on the pandemic related needs for um a one-to-one device ratio and hot spots for internet connectivity so we have made some expenditures due to the pandemic and then we're also so 30 million more um 10 million we've spent and 20 were setting aside um hopefully to the next um biennium the other thing is we will have preliminary financials for our first quarter and the ending which will also reflect the ending of last year at our october 6th um board meeting so the revenue forecast tomorrow we should get some more data but long term we should have um knowing that we have some one time or maybe two years expenses related to covid but long term we should be able to be building a base of supports through the student investment account and then also just the general underlying funds yes all right is there any further discussion on the amendment that's before us sorry nathaniel did i see you raise your hand there all right student representative sue what question or comment do you have
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yeah um i'm sorry if this is a bit of a um rudimentary question um but i was just wondering if there are any areas in which funding would be decreased as the result of the passing of this amendment and not as the result of external external sources of funding decreasing so the only area that we have reduced was in where we didn't receive the sia funding in the special revenue fund so everywhere else has been additional resources and passing this amendment tonight uh deputy superintendent will not change any allocations it just it continues the same funding levels but just moves money from one sort of funding source or moves staffing from one funding source to another that's correct so we are maintaining what was adopted as staffing levels in budget allocations in june what we were adopted then is being carried forward and continued um by by this budget amendment is there any further discussion all right um let us go ahead and uh move forward on a vote for this item uh we will now vote on resolution 6178 amendment to the fiscal year 2021 budget for school district one day multnomah county oregon call in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6178 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative shu voting yes excellent all right we're going to continue on with our theme of budget superintendent guerrero would you like to introduce this next budget item yeah i know the deputy hertz and the team put a lot of thought into the timeline for how we begin to jump into the development process for for next year's school budget and we're anxious to hear what those forecasts are we don't expect them to be rosy and will continue to operate under constraints which is something public education is used to doing uh but i know that uh deputy hertz has put together a proposed calendar so claire so each year our we bring to our board a proposed a budget calendar for your approval and for tonight we're just going to present it to you and get feedback from you and then it you also have the opportunity to send feedback over the next week um in in email form if um there's a changes you'd like to see but the uh what we'll want to do is bring it back on your business agenda for the next board meeting based on on your feedback from this meeting so we anticipate the next um next year's budget to base you know we'll have more information as director brim edwards mentioned we have a quarterly economic forecast tomorrow at the state level so that will help guide us in terms of what the governor will be building her budget on that includes the state school fund which is our largest source of resources so we really are we've left our budget process to where we're wanting to leave it as late as possible so that we can realize the most information as we're recovering from a recession so having said that we start with this fall with we have a community budget review committee that we're looking for members so we'll be working on getting the board to approve our calendar and getting our cbrc membership and getting full membership there and then we will be looking to get draft budget goals from the board in december and then uh and again that will be where we're looking at you know what are you wanting us to maintain as a fund balance um it we have been able to grow it but we need to think about we'll be bringing some modeling to you and some scenarios to show what it happens over the next three years based on what happens with um funding at the state level so we're building those models for you
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to bring back later this fall and then um when you get uh past the initial financial goals then um it turns to time for the superintendent to build start building his proposed budget we'll be working on our strategic plan at the same time um and finalizing that and so all that will get tied together and come back in march well we'll have of a joint work session with the cbrc and the board to review our strategic plan and a multi-year business plan to get us through the next biennium and once we've given you some of those main strategies and the investments we're hoping to make then we'll go into where we're publishing our official notices into the proposed budget that will come out on april 27th we'd come back and engage the community again in the beginning of may and the cbrc would bring a report to the board middle of may and we're asking the board to approve the budget on may 25th again we then would publish a notice and hold the tscc hearing and that would be on june 15th we would adopt the budget and so that's what our proposed timeline is for this next year again we push it out as late as we can so that we can utilize as much information as we can based on it being a legislative year with that i open it to any questions or comments from the board i'm not sure if that's person's speaking but i have a couple um comments and um i want to thank uh deputy superintendent um hertz for the work on this budget calendar and it's such a relief not to have well you know fingers crossed um a super compressed um timeline uh that we almost have a month between the introduction and the board's first approval um so i have so thank you for putting this together i think i would have three comments um one if there's any way to have it be at least a month it just still seems not a long time for the board to have a 700 million dollar budget and then second we have one and i know that's required by law the sort of public engagement session and last year as part of sia we had some great focus group discussion community focus group discussions about the budget um that i thought allowed us to hear some different voices um so and i don't know if that has to be formally built into the calendar but i thought that was really useful um last year and then the third piece is given that the vast majority of the budget is allocated to staffing um it would be useful to see when and i know this generally proceeds april when that staffing um is going to happen so that we can see what the major um where the big chunk of the budget um at least the broad outlines and i think the superintendent has done this in the past were the broad outlines of how what 80 plus percent of the district funds are going to be spent in terms of staffing and how that fits into the timeline because by time we get to april actually the vast majority absent some board action is done so that that would just be another helpful thing i think for the community and and board members to see when that approximately is happening and sort of what the broad outlines of staffing is claire i this is director constance um i don't know if you're gonna respond there if i jumped in or i have just a couple questions just go ahead um so first i wondered um was this proposed calendar uh built in consultation with the cbrc and or have they have they reviewed it i would have to um turn to uh director of budget nicole bassin um to see if that has occurred at this point i know that um um they are aware of the joint committees joint meetings with the board we'd want them to do the one around the strategic plan in march as well as the proposed budget and hearing the budget message from the superintendent so they are aware of both of those but specific dates um i know that their chief financial officer cynthia lay has been working with them and she has helped draft this calendar and i just wasn't in attendance to um but i can confirm
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that for you okay it's not so much specific dates that i'm concerned about it's just um the amount of time allotted for activities and their review and all that so i would be interested in hearing that and then my other question or just wondering is really thinking about our board goals and the student achievement aspirations that we have and it would be nice to maybe build in a particular session where we're talking about the budget proposal just in context of the board goals i think the superintendent did a nice job of framing the budget last year you all did relative to our vision but it would be helpful i think for us as a board to see what strategies are identified and how they're resourced that are important to moving us forward on our board goals and that might mean a particular work session devoted just to that or it might be sign of some kind of a key or a legend that um accompanies the budget proposal so that initial first the beginning of march meeting that's the intent of that is to tie the strategic plan um to a multi-year business plan of what we're investing in and that will be it be a precursor to what we're bringing in the actual proposed budget so we would in it we would have some initial work there to share with you at that point um but i i do hear what you're asking for and um certainly we started with that work last year and as we complete our strategic plan and and roll that out we look forward to having alignment to the district goals and um adopted by the board and um you know tied with the strategic plan and the budget all into one big package with a bow on it so any further comments before we move forward on voting for this item rita actually this is just uh uh we're not voting we're voting next week any further comments before we move on to our break have their cells unmuted so let's do rita first and then andrew um okay so kind of following up on on amy's questions um so as i was comparing this draft budget with last year's draft budget and last year's budget was uh the calendar was um somewhat more detailed and included a lot of you know a lot of meetings um for cbrc um you just included it on the on the draft budget so um is there um is there a particular reason why those meetings are not noted on this calendar um has it just not been determined yet so there are two meetings that will be joined to cbrc board meetings and those are both noted um one is on march 9th and the other is on april 27th and then also on um may 11th is the cbrc would bring their report to the board so there's three times that um the cbrc is connected okay um and i i had a a question about um the two meetings in december around financial goals um and then in march the meeting on the strategic plan and the multi-year business plan um so this is the first time i think that we'll be looking at um budget goals or financial goals is that accurate um i don't think we've done that in the past have we so this is a a good practice um to ask before we are developing our proposed budget is to really look at what is the it's the time for us to have the conversation with the board what are we hoping you know here's some modeling that we've done here let's look at the next three years and what does it look like if we spend um right at you know the just maintaining the same fund balance what if we want to spend it down one percent what if we want to increase at one percent so that we can show you what happens over time when when you do that and so i think that our financial team has not um in recent memory brought multi-year projections
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forward to help the planning process but that's a best practice and it's something that we now have the capacity um to do this work um we are fully staffed in the finance area which as you know a few years ago was not the case and so by having a full staff we're able to develop these models and bring forward more data and information to you as the board so that you can help guide our overall budget goals as we prepare a proposed budget for you to bring back um in in the spring yeah don't get me wrong i i'm i'm not questioning that in any way i'm pointing out that this is this is new and i think it's um i i think it's a good thing so thank you for that um i am wondering though um so that discussion happens in december but we don't get to see the multi-year business plan and the strategic plan until march [Music] the month of january is when we'll be working as an internal staff team to um start uh really um we we have um the where we're building the parts and components to align to the strategies and the strategic plan so it's all coming to culmination there in january in february then we roll it out into models so that we can outlook at allocations to individual schools and looking at staffing so that really is a quite an extensive process in a large budget and then by the first week in march we're bringing you our best thinking and also you know we're completing that strategic plan work and bringing that forward with you to you with um hopefully a multi-year plan um for making investments so it does take time to do that you're giving us the information we need in december and it's taking us two months to build that that's correct okay all right andrew did you have something to follow up with no i just appreciate that um budget adoption's on june 15th it happens to be my birthday which is might be the best birthday present i've ever received and for those of you who think i mean facetious you may not know me very well so i'm very excited about that calendar thank you always good to own your budget nerdiness all right i love it anything further before we move forward to our next item on the agenda which is i would like to say that i hold out hope that those meetings in late spring claire will indeed not be virtual and our children will be back in school and we will be back together yes may it be so girl can dream can she yes all right we are going to we are way behind schedule but that's okay we had amazing robust public comment which is super important um but we also need to tend to our uh bodies and brains and it's been more than 90 minutes so i'm gonna invite everybody to a five minute break it's 7 53 right now we'll come back at 7 59. uh please stand up i know some of you don't but it really does make a difference in your ability to think and react so take a moment stand up stretch and we'll be back in five
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now to voting on the superintendent's evaluation i'm going to invite director scott who led our process to introduce this item to us tonight great thank you water cookie and a cat right haley um so i know we're a little behind i will move pretty quickly so we can get to discussion um on this matter um so just sort of a reminder in terms of where we are in in the overall process so one of the things that the board does is one of our main functions is actually evaluating the superintendent's performance um during the year and so in the fall we adopt um a template and um the goal of that is to be a collaborative process with the superintendent in terms of setting those goals and then in the spring or or sort of after the school year we
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evaluate superintendent last year and i think for the first time the board adopted student center goals around for the superintendent's evaluation and this was based off of um a pretty lengthy process we went through including working with council on great city schools to set student center goals and really use those as the basis of that overall evaluation we also and so we adopted those board goals um there were four of them um third grade reading fifth grade third grade math fifth grade reading um uh high school readiness and uh and and uh post secondary um achievement and and we also added five of the oregon school board association um standards as well for last year's evaluation so as we discussed two weeks ago at our board meeting going into this year um things are a little bit different the the goal coming out of last year had been that we would use those student center goals for a number of years however um with the onset of the pandemic and cobia 19 the goals that we had set um unfortunately need to be reset and so there's a lot of uncertainty in terms of how those student-centered um frankly how the students are going to perform in an online environment so one of the things as we went through the early stages of this process was sort of understanding that that baseline was going to need to be reset and as a result of that we don't actually have um the data that we need to set a goal we will in fact still be using those student center goals and and we will throughout this year um be reporting on the data we'll be talking about it um we as a board i hope will be um you know talking about the impacts whether there's been improvement whether there's been a lack of improvement um or sort of regression on those and what those means what those mean but it is difficult to use those as part of an evaluation given that lack of baseline data so a couple weeks ago we talked about what the alternatives were and the proposal put on the table was to go ahead and use the entire oregon school board association um template for superintendent evaluations um there are eight metrics overall um and we walked through what those eight metrics were and and some of the issues and so coming out of that meeting two weeks ago there were some comments um from board members and some questions and and and issues and so i'm just going to go very quickly through what those were um coming out of that board meeting i took those comments um and the conversation i went back to the template that the oregon school board association has put together and in my view the actual the template that they put together which they did revise this year pretty significantly answers a number of the questions that board members raised so let me go through those quickly so one of the questions that came up um last two weeks ago was that board members wanted to make sure there's a solid connection between the education side of the district and the facility side this is something that director bailey i know has raised last year and and probably previous to that as well and when i went back and looked at the osb leadership template one of the things included in leadership standard number six which is around organizational effective organizational management is that the superintendent will effectively organize and manage operational aspects of the district including finance hr food services transportation underlying maintenance and facilities so that students can attend and learn in quality environment staffed by quality professionals in addition the evaluation criteria includes as a metric for accomplished notes puts in place systems and staff that create environments that inspire learning that are highly reliably safe so it seemed like there was a potential connection there between the learning side of what's going on in the facility side another comment that came from the board was that ensure that we're reporting on and focused on disaggregated data for particularly for our black and native students and one of the things that this template um again was revised pretty significantly this year and osba added quite a bit of racial equity into the existing template in leadership standard number three which is inclusive district culture the standard includes evaluation criteria that address this issue of disaggregated data it specifically notes that data is regularly disaggregated in reporting and planning documents and extends beyond state and federal reporting requirements and includes where appropriate and possible disaggregation that supports understanding of intersectionality in addition uh the oregon school board association artifact section of the template so they have a whole document that goes with this and as part of that they include what they call artifacts which is kind of a funny term but um ways to sort of gauge um overall performance um it includes the following um the evaluation should use data from a variety of sources to inform planning management of resources impact instruction and close and close achievement gaps including disaggregated by subgroups and groups of interest um there was also a comment two weeks ago about making sure that we are centering we as a board and as a district or center in racial equity and social social justice and everything the district does and um one of the things as i mentioned this this revised template um
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and this is something russ brown pointed out as well um i think when you go through the eight different leadership standards they've done osb has done a remarkable job of including racial equity and a really explicit focus on racial equity throughout in a way that i don't think existed before and when we talked about these standards last year that was one of the the comments that had come up and i was um pleased to see that that osba had had added quite a bit in around those issues um another board member had asked a question about whether we should use sort of the entire um osba template including some of the appendices as part of the evaluation process um i i don't know if board members had a chance to go through prior to this meeting but um the overall document the template is pretty thorough and comprehensive and it does include um a number of sort of these concrete concrete artifacts that can be used um at the end of the process as we go through it um and so i think that is something that as we as we get to the end of the year when we're doing our evaluation we can definitely refer back to um in terms of our evaluative process and then there was also a question about what other council of great city school districts are doing given the absence of baseline data in a moment i'm going to turn it over to the superintendent and his staff if they have anything to say about other districts it is worth noting that not all districts have adopted student-centered goals and that was something that again we did last year and i think some districts are moving in that direction but that is not um common practice or i guess i would say it's not universal practice um across all school districts and then the final comment we had from board members was it was how do we ensure that course um that things are going uh how things are going and can we course correct if things are going poorly and one of the things that i think the osba template um actually recommends is quarterly performance check-ins with the superintendent during the year and i think this is something that we should discuss as a board um we we i actually can't speak traditionally i can only speak to the last year we did not do quarterly check-ins but i do think it's an interesting question about whether there's some value in doing check-ins regularly about the performance standards so that again if things are going a little bit off track um we can begin to talk to the superintendent about um resetting that course um so today um with that sort of summary so in again this was just my view and going back through some of the questions that we got from from board members um it seemed like the template um addressed a number of those what we want to do today is open it back up for um further discussion the goal again is to hopefully adopt a template today but um obviously if there's a lot of questions um you know we we can we can delay that if needed um i think what director um lowry uh chair lowry has pointed out is that if um board members have specific issues or concerns um sort of noting what they might want to change in the evaluation template that's in front of us specific language changes or amendments um so that we can get towards a final document i will just sort of um wrap up to say just you know in summary um this is not an ideal process it's not an ideal year and and i think all of us you know we did a lot of work last year spent months developing the student center goals that we adopted as board um we would have liked to prefer using those we are planning to come back and use those again in 21 22 school year so this is really should be viewed as a temporary measure um and really the question for this year is um as a board what do we want to use um to gauge um you know the progress of the district and the superintendent so that we can return to those student center goals as part of next year's process with that maybe uh chair lowry i'll turn it back to you to open up for conversation or or actually maybe see if the superintendent or staff have any comments about what other districts are doing okay i think we actually have uh director con sam and director brim edwards are going to share about some of what they know other drastics are doing unless superintendent guerrero did you have something that you wanted to share about any other districts i'll defer and then chime in afterwards perfect sounds great okay so the first thing we need to do is bring this formally before us so we need to um make a motion and second to adopt resolution 6179 which is the adoption of the superintendent's goals for 2021. do i have a motion so moved second second okay so i was asking for a second not seconding it sorry that was confusing so director constant moves and uh director scott seconds okay is there any board discussion about the superintendent's evaluation um i'm happy to respond to the question that came up about other districts and i also think it'd be interesting to hear from dr brown because i know that he's talked to some of his peers around the country to see what they're doing in this regard but we have a weekly meeting of council great
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city schools representatives usually anywhere between 20 25 different districts represented large urban school districts and in the conversation last week andrew is correct that most districts have not yet tied their superintendent evaluation instrument to student achievement goals even though it is considered best practice and most want to get there most are not there so didn't get a lot of feedback in that regard there are a couple of districts that are looking at um still keeping some um some different student achievement metrics tied to um to the evaluation instrument i think um our friends in philadelphia are planning to include a couple of those but then really the main takeaway was that um this is a year where it makes sense to de-emphasize that even though it is where we ultimately want to be focused on but what is required to deliver education this year is so dramatically different than what any normal year would entail which is you know the understatement of of the century um that it is important to look at what has the superintendent had to do to to basically stand up the delivery model in an in an 100 new way so that was the the main takeaway um and also just that even though our assessment you know we're not our data is going to be different our assessment tools are going to be different there's a lot that's very um suspect about the assessment tools people have questions about the equity of um assessments being administered remotely and students have vastly different environments in which they'll be taking those unproctored tests um there are a lot of people who are are sort of anti-assessment altogether but the the takeaway was we we do need to still keep our eye on where our children are we develop new metrics but um we we want to be able to measure student growth this year and i think even though we are rightfully d emphasizing the um student achievement metric for the evaluation we are still keeping our fidelity to our board goals and to monitoring student achievement and to um you know getting a sense of where our kids are and how they're learning and whether they're progressing through the year through this year um so that was really all that i had to report from those 20-plus member districts um but dr brown i know you've been you've been talking to colleagues as well yes i um i took a moment to reach out to a couple colleagues um one who is the director of research for the council of great city schools dr ray hart he's worked in research for well over 20 years in k-12 as well as higher ed and has been engaged with the rel consortia ran his own research and evaluation network etc he is a colleague that i have known for well over uh a decade and somebody that i turned to for advice and for his insights into the the sort of the national perspective on that as you had described miss constant you know the research teams have been meeting all summer as well on a weekly basis and they've been grappling with assessment issues in the place of assessment uh as we move forward and in the conversation with him one i was impressed with you know that our evaluation framework that the board created and adopted last year i think is is relatively unique and and one that uh you know i look forward to being able to carry forward and provide data and accountability framework moving forward in in the coming year but he was very clear uh as you know i sort of anticipated that um many systems most frankly are taking a hiatus from accountability associated with assessment so as you indicated in the portland community there are diverse opinions about assessment and we're going to be doing some assessment this fall and we really want it as an opportunity for parents and teachers and students to have some sense of where we're the beginning of the school year and how we can align time resources and and professional development better meet their needs across the country about close to 90 percent of parents have expressed some interest in understanding where their students are starting the year
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we want to give them that opportunity we also understand that it's not going to be uniform environment so we're we're describing as not even low stake assessment but no stakes assessments the idea being again can can we gather some data that helps inform where we are and that helps us move forward and plan for students but dr hart was very clear that he didn't think that in either of the assessment consortia across the country that it made sense uh to move forward that uh using assessments for accountability purposes uh be that for teacher evaluation some systems do that we clearly do not uh principal or superintendent evaluations and he is one of the most premier measurement experts that i would would turn to across the country on the other hand i also spoke with dan gordon who is you know the legal and policy advisor for the consortium of large suburban and county districts they represent another 1.8 million students across the country and beaverton for example is a member of that consortium as is charlotte mcmullenburg which actually bridges both uh charlotte system the council of great city schools as well as uh the consortium uh dan was in a similar place and again these are two folks who have national views uh across multiple systems and in both cases you know they they saw a diversity of ways folks were approaching this but uh we're pretty clear that it did not make sense to to connect the dots to accountability this year because frankly the assessment data for all the reasons that you've outlined um doesn't support that because again these these are you know vastly different environments for kids so it's great for planning it's great great for us to be able to align and help help our students as we move forward but it does not make sense from an anchoring to a high stakes or accountability decision making thank you all right i know director brim edwards and director depos talked to some other school boards today did you have any insights you wanted to share from those conversations director to pass do you want to go ahead or do you want me to show um you can go ahead i i'll talk about some just you know um amendments i'd like to bring forth great um you have an amendment as well um and i do you want me um sort of my comments and the reaction with other districts is sort of wrapped up into well if you would like to if you'd like to make an amendment either of you that's fine i just know you had had a conversation today and was creating a space for you to add that into the conversation but we can go ahead and move on yeah i can wrap it into do what you want to do yeah just i'll wrap it into um my comments about the amendment if that's okay do you want me to want me to do that or now or nodding vigorously i'm sorry that wasn't clear but yes go ahead okay um so i've got um an amendment i'm gonna send to um sorry about the challenge of being in a virtual environment i'll send it to kara and roseanne and they can distribute it the board staff and hopefully post it or screen share it so people can see it um so um and this this amendment is based on a discussion that i had today with um several other board members from the districts um but i want to start by saying thanking director scott because while he might get his birthday wish to have a budget pass by the 15th um getting assigned the evaluation template in a year in which um the deleting it through the process in a year in which we've faced multiple challenges i think maybe is a bigger challenge and uh not necessarily uh fair to to give you but i also hope you get your birthday wish um anyway i wanted to as i mentioned at the last board meeting i was interested in what other districts are doing and i was particularly interested in districts that had developed board goals related to student outcomes both proficiency and or growth and had linked their superintendent evaluations to the student outcome so as director constant mentioned and dr scott most districts um haven't um made that um made that connection between i think what is their mostly their goal and their mission and their work which is improving student outcomes but
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connecting that to the superintendent's um evaluation um so as all of us know what two years ago we started developing our goal board goals related to student outcomes with really a focus on black indigenous and students of color and i want to acknowledge the leadership role that chair moore played in that and sort of the board's pivot um as well as chair constant last year who oversaw the process in which two-thirds of the superintendent's evaluation was based on student outcomes for um bypoc students um so the evaluation that we have before us is director scott um explains um defers the student outcomes goals and expectations as part of the superintendent's evaluation until next year um and i had a conversation with aj crabill who was the consultant from the council of great city schools who worked very closely with the board in developing our board goals and our focus on student outcomes and shifting our meetings to have a greater focus on student outcomes and ask him what other districts that he had worked with again were a bit unique um in their the subset of districts who made this connection um so his his response was now's his his point of view is now is not the time to leave our student outcome goals behind the student in the superintendent evaluation um and he provided an introduction to two other districts that um either have already in previous years linked superintendent um the superintendent evaluation to student outcomes or who were actively in the process of doing that and so today i had a chance to speak to six board members from two different districts both houston and philadelphia so large urban districts um then i've worked the council of great city schools and also with aj crabill and um essentially they we the discussion centered around uh sort of wrestling with this issue of you know how do you keep your focus on student outcomes in the covet environment and their general consensus was um that they were gonna going to continue to embed the student outcome goal growth goals in the superintendent evaluation and the major adjustment that they were going to be making is to acknowledge that the baseline is completely different and that their expectation is at school districts they're still going to be focused completely on um student outcomes and student learning because you know that this could be a four months it could be a 12 months or it could be a two-year and the sense that um really they felt that it was important to continue to keep the focus on that but make adjustments um so not high stakes but making make adjustments in what the expectations were and they both were kind of in somewhat uh slightly different places houston is way ahead of us in terms of adopting they have a very rigorous lone star governance model that they use um and philadelphia i would say is we're a little bit ahead of them um so you know when i looked at what um wanting to recognize that we're in this hybrid year again um like somewhat we were at the end of last year when we did the superintendent's evaluation but to continue to use the sorry my computer's about ready to die um continue to use the some of the leadership standards but also not let go of our student outcomes and that we use a new baseline and for example houston what they've decided was they're going to um like make up the loss is the expectation so you had this period of the spring and then you know the summer or six months where kids you know essentially in many cases didn't have instruction and make up that loss um and then use that as the um launching pad for 2122. uh so what i have and i don't know roseanne or cara if you have the the template are you researching i have what you sent over director if you have an amendment just put it forward and we can discuss it and see if we can so that's that's what it's a you have to visually see it's a chart just a second and i'll share it
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so essentially the amendment would be to substitute these pages for these slides for the slide number 10 in the current assessment and it would still have student performance growth as a metric uh with a focus on bypoc students as part of this targeted universalism um there'd be need to be evidence of growth without a specific target of how much growth so let's um let's get that amendment before us and so um so as you can see here the first this page essentially is similar to the page number seven i'm sorry page number ten that's already in the evaluation and then if you go to the next page there is a um you know a pretty simple um set of student growth metrics where it's just growth evidence of growth or no evidence of growth um and then the final page would be a combination score similar to what we did last year so we it would be maintaining our focus on student outcomes but not and on growth without a specific market okay so you're bringing this amendment before us um to make these changes is there a second to this amendment i'll suck at it okay is there any further discussion on this amendment i i would say that i am not in favor of this amendment um i am in favor of keeping our goals at the forefront and focusing on those i think we as a board have deeply committed to that um i don't know that we will see students grow here you may see students decline i think we all know that this everyone i mean teachers are working like crazy i know our admin is working like crazy to make online learning as successful as possible and yet we all know that this is not how students learn best um and so i think we may see declines over the course of this year as online fatigue sets in as we deal with anxiety based on what happens in the election in november um so i don't think we in this crazy unpredictable year i don't think we can hold even the idea of growth as a fair evaluation of the effectiveness of the superintendent so i will not be voting in favor of this amendment are there any other excuse me can we uh ms bradshaw can you shift back to yeah we're paige off and so i haven't been able to really thank you yeah okay go ahead go ahead uh director depos sorry yeah i was going to say i think it would be important for us to track this but not perhaps not use it as as as a part of an evaluation like a performance evaluation knowing what we know about you know the things that director lowry just shared or chair lowry excuse me but i think it's important to track to track where we are um it gives us additional data points um i don't know that it's fair to hold anybody in the system accountable for declines that we know are going to happen um this year just you know i i'd personally rather see a focus on social emotional uh well-being for everyone within the system rather than hard targets on you know are you meeting third grade math are you meeting fifth grade math eighth grade um i do think it's important to track it um it gives us more information for the for the next pandemic that comes um should we be and lucky enough to experiencing that to experience that and and it gives us it gives us in information that we may need to move forward depending on how this um pandemic hasn't been explicit we'll be tracking everything and we will be getting regular desegregated data we'll be getting at least quarterly reports from ross on where we are so we can track it um but so thank you for that director depos that will definitely be happening in this part of the commitment other comments on uh this amendment before us um yes this is director oh sorry if somebody else wants to go ahead thank you um i have a slightly different view i do have expectations of student growth for for all of our students this year and but where my concerns lie are you know if we're talking about accountability my first priority right now for accountability is accountability of
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what's being provided to our students and the universe uniformity of what and how it's being provided because what we are hearing um like much of our public testimony tonight is that all of our students are not getting anywhere near um similar uh even even amount of content let alone quality of instruction and there's been a great deal of work put into you know creating a quality curriculum that's available for teachers um in virtual learning and we seem to have great variability right now in even how much live instruction is happening even though we we have set very clear expectations about that so i want to see us work really hard to make sure that all of our students are getting an equal opportunity in that respect and then just the other nuance that's important to me is that i think this notion of the reliability and equity equitability of our assessments and students environments that they're being assessed in is very very real and i i believe we should still be doing assessments whether it's individual teacher formative assessments that track growth for their own classes or whether um you know it's other larger scale assessments but i think we can't fool ourselves into thinking that we have a reliable set of assessment tools that's going to give us comparable data maybe just a response to that um director constant um so i think you've hit up on you know really important point about how and um the the tools and the platforms and the curriculums that every student has i guess when i look at sort of the from a governance role that the measuring the how is sort of measuring the the board getting into sort of like how the superintendent's doing this job versus like however they do it um since the superintendent is the um actually the the educational leader of the district that what we're measuring is is the what versus how they're doing it and i have to you know trust um i may ask the question about how it's being done but the the the how is not the end outcome that we want for our students it's the what or the student performance of the growth so that's the only reason why i presented it that way because you could create a set of tools to measure you know how many students have accessed online or you know or you know how many classrooms have the curriculum and how many director grim edwards i'm gonna in the honor of time i think we've had three speeches against and your speech for do we have any other people who want to speak for this amendment i want to speak against it okay can you be really briefed i i can try i'm just gonna i'm gonna remind us i'm gonna say remind us that we all said at our board retreat we were gonna be better about not just repeating what other people said and chiming in when the points have already been made so uh i'm gonna hold try to hold us to that as we have this conversation tonight it's important that we all can speak and share our viewpoints but we also need to to be productive so i'm going to trust you director moore in this space i i will try to live up to that trust um i i appreciate director brim edwards making the distinction between the what and how and that our responsibility is around outcomes rather than deliberating on strategies but in our in our attempt to um evaluate the what we have to be concerned about how we are doing that and i think a critical problem um that really cannot be overcome is um we the only way we can assess the what is of necessity deeply flawed under these circumstances and i think completely unreliable so um attaching any evaluative um uh importance to to the results of um i think we're talking about map testing which is new to the district it's new to students it's new to teachers so we
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we don't even we're still rolling out the testing right director made your point about this piece um and i hear you getting into your full flow there so i just want to say is there anything else that you wanted to add that you didn't get a chance to say nope um chair larry i want to just say that the this discussion i mean being on time is really important it's how we keep things moving and this is one of the most important things that we do it's like one of the things we actually have agency over we have two things we do as board members and friends but i'm not please let me finish okay i appreciate that this is one of the most important things we do this is a crazy year no one's expecting traditional growth curves this year and i think it's really important um as board members as community members that live here that we have the time to have a discussion regardless of what says on the clock this is one of the things that we actually have agency over and is one of the two things that we do as board members and i think that it's respectful to give it the time that it needs rather than rushing it through it's a bad look for us if we rush it through i believe voters and constituents and people stakeholders in this community deserve to a fair hearing on on what we're deliberating i think it's this is like the this is what democracy looks like we don't have to all agree but we have to agree to to provide a space for discussion correct and that's why keeping us on task is not providing the the the necessity for a rich discussion that i think that the evaluation deserves it's my opinion i'm one person but i wanted to share that yes well i asked if there were we had i was trying to create space to have equitable discussion um we had had three people speak against the amendment and so i asked if there was anyone who wanted to speak for to create that space and again i'm going to take us back to our board retreat and some of the conversations we had about the ways that we are sometimes dysfunctional is that we we get into the weeds and we repeat our points over and over so i'm trying to hold us to that conversation we had and and i do want to create space for robust discussion and if there had been someone who wanted to speak for the amendment um that of course would have happened uninterrupted but because we've already had now four people speak against um it's the question is are we really having a robust discussion or are we each um speaking to our own sort of need to kind of have screen time um and so that's that's kind of my as chair trying to navigate that to make sure people are heard but that we also are respectful of the public that are watching and are respectful of the staff and of one another um because i think we also still have amendments from you coming ahead and we want to make sure we have space and time and brainpower to fully consider all the amendments before us um so are there and as someone who does not take up a lot of floor time traditionally i've probably talked for two to one hour in the time i've been on the board and and this is an important issue to me and i just i think it's important to be heard that way did you have i'm not speaking for myself by the way i'm speaking you know i'm i'm trying to bring input forward that i hear from community members and interested stakeholders did you want to speak uh for this amendment michelle no but i i don't also want to be chopped off at the at the ankle either um when we're having rich discussion i want to hear from everyone that's uh that's in the room that has an opinion on it all right not to be rushed forward is there any further discussion on this amendment i have a question for russ brown dr brown so um when you talked about um or there's the current evaluation the way that it's um written it says that we're reaffirming i don't have it right in front of me but we're reaffirming our commitment to student outcomes and we're going to get quarterly reports and it sounds like part of the the promise here is that we're gonna have the data we're just not gonna hold the superintendent um accountable i mean that's that's what it sounds like uh we're not gonna put it in his evaluation so i'm wondering from you like when when would we have that first pass of the data are we going to have it for all of our four board goals and then we're going to get it at four what i'm hearing where leadership say or this embedded in this is that we're then going to get we're just going to get the same data it's just going to be just disconnected from the superintendent's evaluation i'm just asking a question because that's what i'm understanding i'm being told actually i i want to jump
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in because i think that's a that's a mischaracterization before dr brown before dr brown answers about when the data will become available um your characterization that we're we're disconnecting this the issue the issue director from edwards is whether we can set a goal and i think with all performance measures this is one of the key questions and i'm going to use an analogy that i thought of last week when i was choking on smoke and it's an air quality analogy right and so you know in a normal time the air quality that i want is like 20 aqi or less i think most of us have been checking those aqi sites you know pretty religiously um and you know if i were setting a goal for the deq and for the governor i would say yeah you know what i think we should be achieving like 20 20 aqi or less however when the air quality was 400 i would have settled for 200 in a heartbeat like that was such a dramatic you know difference that that would have been something that i would have welcomed a 200 day versus the 400 day but we were in the middle of a wildfire and something was very different the pandemic is a wildfire for education and so the question is not whether we're disconnecting these things the question is and and and i want to just go back and reiterate what we said two weeks ago and what i said tonight this data will be available it will be transparent it will be publicly um put out there in terms of how our students are doing we are not moving away from that board goal whatsoever the only question is whether we can set a goal for the district and therefore the superintendent in terms of what we expect that growth to be what i haven't seen in your amendment your proposed amendment is any sense of what that goal should be so what you have here is growth we all want to see growth and to the extent i think all seven of us are very clear about the fact that we'd love to see growth recognizing that in this pandemic in this virtual environment we may in fact not so this is i want to separate out like what's going on in the district is separate from our responsibility as a board is here with the superintendent's evaluation so i just want to make sure that we don't mischaracterize i'm just i'm reading the votes and it seems like the board's not going to support this so i'm trying to understand what it is that is going to be that is going to be provided to to the board and to the to the broader community and i didn't say there had to be any particular number i'm just asking dr brown what it what it is that his understanding of what this board is committing to do s separate from or in complementary to or however you want to phrase it in terms of our board goals or andrew you could just read the preamble to the evaluation i'd like to i'd like to have dr brown answer it because i'm interested in sort of like is he thinking we're everybody's going to do maps and that's what would dr brown speak to this so again i think as we're all acutely aware we can plan for some things this year but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to happen so i have to acknowledge the ambiguity of this situation i would love to have had a psat window this fall but in order to do so students had to be in our high schools and they had to be present for that and we're not in that space so as we are able to perform assessment as we are able to collect data we will make it available to the board we are getting ready to start a map window again uh the the goal of that again is to be a literally a no stakes assessment it's meant to help parents again about 90 percent of parents across the country express interest in knowing where their students are starting to begin to assess some learning loss and and to begin to plan forward and try to to figure out what they need to do to help their their their students uh make most of this years as we move forward i know we have teams internally who are planning on professional development et cetera based on what we learn as well as many of you pointed out this is an assessment environment that doesn't have the controls that we normally would expect to have and so we don't know at this point in time what what assessment participation rates etc will be so as data is available we will make it available to the board i will make it available to the board i to be honest when i came here i was thrilled that the board adopted these board goals i was thrilled with the racial equity explicit racial equity woven into those goals and it's one that i want to see carried forward but realistically this year i don't know how we can make comparable inferences uh to last year and you know ms berm edwards i i just don't understand how we can attach an evaluation a evaluative component to the superintendent with no articulated target and i'm not sure how to articulate a target at this point in time yeah i can commit to make the data
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available as we have it director brian edwards i think one of the questions you're asking is like so what are we doing with the data we receive and superintendent guerrero i know that you have um you know already made adjustments based on information we're getting as far as strategy so is there anything you'd like to say as far as speaking to how we will be using the data on our board goals as we move forward as an organization this year and if not that's okay but i just thought this might be a place for you to share that i appreciate the conversation uh it's one of the most important tasks that my seven bosses have is to come to some consensus around what you think my doing a good job [Music] should should be about [Music] and by extension that evaluation criteria rolls down the hill so and i would want to be really careful about coupling i'm not sure what metrics or assessments or instruments we're talking about because we're still rolling those out across the system uh had we been on track uh with this pandemic not in interrupting things in a different place um to director scott's point you know i don't want to be held responsible for the air quality and i certainly don't want our teachers to feel accountable for formative assessments we want to encourage them to use in a no-stakes fashion to try to make some informed decisions about where students are showing up and where we as a central office might be able to steer resources and supports towards so i agree with dr brown i know he had a rigorous conversation with dr ray hart um second only to dr brown i think uh preeminently on these topics um and so uh we'll continue to be transparent about any metrics uh that we are trying to institutionalize across the organization i've spoken often about having a more robust performance management culture in the district and it takes time to institute those but when it comes to student learning i think the message we should be conveying right now to to our students our families and our educators is um let's take some snapshots of where we think uh or to get some information that might lead to some discussions that might inform our lesson plans that might help um inform where we need to put additional supports and interventions so um i i'm not uh it's not beyond me to sort of make sure that we're looking at those metrics i just want to make sure i'm clear whether we're looking to couple those with what are already a set of eight leadership standards um that call out a lot of effort to try to come out highly rated uh is is already a task in itself and i think is already inclusive uh of a lot of the things that i'm hearing uh directors talk about thank you superintendent all right if are there any other speeches for this amendment i know we like i said we've had four against is there anything else we haven't raised that you feel is critical to speak into the space before we take this vote okay we are going to now vote on the brim edwards amendment to the superintendent's evaluation um all those in favor please indicate so by saying yes yes all those opposed please indicate by saying no no no no do we have any abstentions and nathaniel this is one of those things you don't vote on as the student rep so we'll just wave at you instead okay we are moving now i know that director deposit you have an amendment you'd like to bring forward so would you like to do so now and we'll go ahead and move the whole you can bring all of it as one you need to announce the result of the vote oh it was um one four and six against the brim edwards amendment thank you director bailey all right direction to pass yes so thank you i just had um some i would call them i guess their amendments or suggested additions or or changes in some of the leadership areas and i do that because um i think it's important for us again this is one of the most important functions that that we're charged with and i want to strengthen the language when i can i also look at the critically at this template and and who actually put it together it's the origin school boards association um it's the template is great in the absence of anything else but i i really do as i'm looking through it i think it could be straight strengthened and so i'm going to um suggest three amendments or three changes one of them and they're in different leadership standards and i have shared them out
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i think they're in board books but can i ask ms bradshaw to display them for the public as well so we can see what director depos is bringing forward yeah and i'm going to ask thank you um i i'm also willing to share my screen so leadership standard one is visionary leadership and i wanted to amend um 1.4 to read to to add under makes progress on pps's racial equity and social justice strategy with a focus on the professional development strategies in the res j framework by adding three bullet points hiring and retaining teachers and principals of color is number one two demonstrating an increase in student outcomes for black and indigenous students and three taking a holistic approach across the district in the review of our building names are cultural icons including statuary art and art and artifacts and an adding under the visionary leadership demonstrate a focus on student achievement for black and indigenous students under leadership standard number three inclusive district culture um i would amend 3.1 to read develops and maintains a supportive equitable culturally responsive and inclusive district culture adding that actively recruits and retains teachers administrators and central office staff of color under leadership standard number six effective organizational management amend to add to add 6.5 so we're adding one more standard creates systems which track and improve the environmental sustainability of district practices and i don't know i mean it's it's kind of a package but um it's just i'm throwing it out there because i feel like as a board we have not collectively um we haven't collectively called out that that racial equity and increasing um the number hiring retaining teachers of color is important um we we've talked around that but i think that this is an opportunity now where especially due to our last discussion where we're not going to be um re tracking or evaluating on on on outcomes for students i think this is an opportunity for us to um to provide direction for the superintendent in in terms of what's important to us as a board um all right the deposit amendment is before us did we have a motion and a second on this so moved second okay so director scott moves and uh director brim edwards seconds uh michelle would you like to add anything else uh to speak for this no not at this time sure larry can i yeah ask a question so um director depos i i really appreciate this and and actually i like a lot of what's here because i think what it does is it it takes the template and and refines it a little bit more towards things that that we as a board um want to focus on and particularly that you know hiring retaining um teachers and principals of color is something that we we have talked about um so actually uh and and also the environmental sustainability piece as well so so all of it i i actually i like i do i do want to ask um and maybe we have board comments first and then the superintendent but um one of the best practices around these evaluations is that we we do them collaboratively and so i would like to ask the the superintendent's um perspective you know on these just just to see sort of again where he's where he's coming from um in terms of this the one question i had for you though and the only thing that gives me pause um was in the leadership standard number one visionary leadership um uh bullet number two that we're adding demonstrating an increase in student outcomes for black and indigenous students so i agree that is something i want to see and i think the entire board i don't speak for everybody i think the entire board wants to see that my only issue there though was was again kind of relaying to the conversation we just had given that we don't know a baseline for me the question is as an increase in in what is it is it increased from from last year's scores is it an increase from whatever baseline data we get this fall and so that one makes me a little bit nervous versus higher entertaining teachers and principals of color i feel like gives the superintendent flexibility to come back and say here are all the things i've done right to increase the diversity of staff and um talk about those processes talk about the future and then talk about the outcomes right did it happen did it not why not you know et cetera um so i guess i just it's just that second one again i i want to see that outcome um but my question is just what specifically are you thinking about with
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bullet number two yeah i i think that i'm looking at these three bullet items under the visionary leadership first of all i want to thank you and i i failed to do that earlier um for the work that you've put into this i know this is this is it's a large it's a large amount of work so i want to appreciate you for the time you put into that and i failed to do that earlier these things are things that i think we're already doing um and in fact i know we're already doing the superintendent is already focused on my point in calling it out was to be for us as a board to be specific about what we are asking for when i look at um our the work that's happening in the district through the racial um justice and social um racial equity and social justice lens we um and we do this because it's comforting to white people we we talk around a lot about you know racial equity and and it's a very flowery you know aspirational and visionary and i think that my my point tonight in in bringing this forward is to for us as a as a as a governing body to be specific about what we're asking and and to say that this is important to us also the the superintendent has already is already doing much much of this and and is very important to him but for us as the bosses or you know the the board i think it's important for us to to spell it out it's important for us for the community to see that we we care about these things um and and to your point about demonstrating an increase in student outcomes we we're we're already somewhat focused on that um and i don't have i understand what you're saying about the baseline i think that that's we don't have a baseline for this year but i think that we do know in generally that um black and indigenous students um aren't performing as well or or we're not getting to them as as readily and i want to spell out that i want to be very specific as a board that this is very important to us we can't let those students slide um recognizing that we're in a very we're just in a crazy time right now i mean everyone's gonna slide but i think that we need to still elevate and keep those students that are the the most underserved front and center and send a message that this is important to us so very quick comment and i'll i'll and i'll turn it over to chair loudly i promise i would be more comfortable with the second bullet said um focusing on student outcomes for black and indigenous students because that to me allows the superintendent to talk about how has he focused on that what have we achieved and us as a board in evaluating do we think that focus has been there again i just worry that the demonstrating increase sort of says there's a baseline that we're measuring off but i'll be quiet now i'm sorry yeah i appreciate that and this is i should have said open for discussion um i've changed it in my draft document to focusing i agree with you as a former evaluator that if you don't have anything to evaluate against um it's kind of meaningless um but i also feel like it's important to have it in black and white so i've changed the word to focusing rather than demonstrating based on your comment you'll take that as a friendly amendment that will move that from so your amendment will take the friendly amendment that director scott made and then change number two under 1.4 to be focusing on an increase in student outcomes instead of demonstrate director depos yeah yes that's correct so we will accept that friendly amendment and that means we don't need to vote on it um superintendent guerrero director scott asked superintendent guerrero to respond so i'm going to ask him to do that and then we'll come back to the board for discussion i think we could vote on the friendly amendment do we need to vote john on the friendly amendment yeah i would i think that's best practice so we will vote can i interject here um uh so if we're going to amend the number two bullet point um does that make the addition of a 1.5 um i i mean i i think it obviates the need for a 1.5 so i would suggest that we delete two and just set 1.5 as its own because that carries more weight than having it be a two that would be my friendly amendment i agree so maybe just a slightly different point of view on that is that um number 1.5 doesn't talk about an increase it just talks about focusing on student achievement and to me part of the beauty of number two was it's expressing like our um you know goal which is an increase in student outcomes the problem remains the same that we have no way of measuring in any reliable way so could we say demonstrate
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a focus on increasing student outcomes for black and indigenous students and have that be 1.5 i'm i like that so and removing bullet point two yes remove bullet point two and say demonstrate a focus on increasing student outcomes for black and indigenous students okay if we're copy editing instead of increase can we make it improve because there are student outcomes that we want to improve that are not necessarily um quantifiable dr depos how do you feel about that one i think that's a great addition thank you director moore okay i'm very frustrated trying to edit kara's screen it's not working yes and kara is catching all of these amendments so she's she's got it for us uh maybe not on this screen but in her in her uh notes so we are going to the the group amendment to director de pasa's amendment on this moment is to delete bullet point or to delete number two under 1.4 and to amend 1.5 or add 1.5 saying demonstrate an in demonstrate a focus on increasing student outcomes or improving sorry straight a focus on improving student outcomes for black and indigenous students okay do i have a motion on that amendment so moved second second so director constand moves and director bailey seconds do we have any more discussion on this amendment to the depos amendment all right all in favor please respond by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please say no any abstentions okay the amendment to the depos amendment passes um director or sorry superintendent guerrero did you want to answer director scott's question about your response to any of these amendments as how they would be functional for you to use as benchmarks for your achievement this year well i wouldn't disagree on on the objectives of of course for example i want to see a workforce that's as diverse and representative of the student demographic that that we serve as we've learned over the last three years we also know that there isn't sort of the apparatus necessarily statewide to make sure that candidate pools are sufficient to make sure all school districts uh and this is a conversation i have on a frequent basis with my colleagues and so we've engaged in a lot of behind the curtain work to build out career pathways and human capital pipelines and create support mechanisms to encourage diversity there an initial example of that is our peridot to teacher program for example to get a lot of our classified employees of color uh teaching credentials so they can be leading their own classrooms after sometimes a long time uh being in a support role so that's an example we've been uh bringing working with the higher ed collaborative of institutions in the region you know to talk about these same issues we can't hire them if they don't exist in the graduate programs and so and we can't recruit our way out of this issue so um you know it's it's it's the pleasure of the board to decide what you think a successful year will look like i'll tell you um to devise action plans that are aggressive that may require resources so don't be surprised if i come back to you with an amendment if to do to do these things to an adequate uh level um but i just i just i know that the board understands that the breadth and scale of what you hope that as a leader i accomplish for you besides getting through this pandemic rolling students back in engage in an enrollment balancing process keep construction moving engage in formal curriculum adoptions keep institutionalizing metrics across the disc i can keep going down the list so it is a tall order i'm all for a challenge but i also i also know that we can't do a decade of work in in a school year when we're already not even able to be in our buildings so it's not like you're already doing some of the work that director devos is is lifting up um and i think like she said it's really important to the community to have that in black and white and like you said it's a lot behind the curtains so that people actually know what we're doing and where the opportunities were yeah i think it's a it's a great public dialogue to have what those challenges and constraints have been historically and how we're trying to
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break down those barriers and ease the hoops that oftentimes um candidates and talent have uh in in being uh well postured and to be competitive uh for positions uh in our school system so i think it's a it's a great emphasis and a focus to have we have it already um and it's one we need to keep working on thank you and and we'll support you in doing the work and absolutely this work needs to be resourced we can't pull um time or money for that matter out of thin air especially this year and next thank you are there any further comments on the depos amendment the amended depos amendment i should say all right um we are going to now vote on the depos amendment um all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any abstentions all right the deposit amendment passes seven to zero um we are now back to the main motion before us the superintendent's evaluation is there any further discussion on the superintendent's evaluation template i'm going to be a no vote i don't support decoupling the student outcomes from the [Music] superintendent's evaluation and i appreciate the caveats and the information dr brown that you provided and i know from talking to a lot of parents that this is really a huge concern that progress won't be made that there may be a year of lost learning and um so i my preference would be to have student outcomes to keep the focus on and i understand that other boards members may have a different point of view so um i accept that i just want to comment that um i don't think there were any board members who expressed a different point of view about student outcomes and that that's very clearly embedded in our board goals so let's be really clear in what we're telegraphing to the public which is that um we're talking about tying it to tying uncertain metrics to a performance evaluation we're not talking about whether or not we're committed to seeing growth for our children i want to really echo that i think that's um it's a mischaracterization to say we're decoupling we're not um director medward's amendment did not bring forward a specific metric that which we could tie a superintendent's evaluation to which is why i didn't um support it but i want to be really clear we are very focused on student outcomes that data will be available it will be publicly discussed it will be transparent that is something this district and this board is focused on and will continue to be focused on moving forward and any further comments about the superintendent's valuation before we vote i again want to thank director scott for the huge amount of work he did on this and um for director medwards and director depos for director constand for doing some additional work to get information from other districts and to ask a lot of questions and to make some amendments and to dr brown for always being available to help us understand you know um performance management and evaluation tools um so uh i still remember your first meeting with us and i'm proud of the fact that we have not let up in the intensity of our demands of you in any of these board meetings so um your first meeting was a good indicator of what it was gonna be like for you in portland all right i think we're ready to vote so uh we will vote now on uh resolution 6179 adoption of the superintendent's goals for 2020 21 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no no are there any abstentions resolution 6179 is approved by a vote of six to one all right we are at the end of our time together almost we've got conference and committee reports i didn't want to let you know that um there was some behind-the-scenes maneuvering and our community engagement folks are going to um meet with us another time um so we will just be doing our climate justice curriculum tonight so that um means our learning session will be a little shorter than intended um i so we can all get to sleep at a decent hour um okay committee reports i know that we've got policy audit and bond so um let's see who my script says is first uh rita please provide your policy committee update we had a policy committee meeting a couple of weeks ago we talked
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about a revision of the preservation maintenance and disposition of district property policy and um we talked about the complaint policy reviewing um how it's worked over the last two years and considering some staff recommendations for amendments going forward we made no decision it will be coming back to the committee at our next meeting on october 5th we will also be talking at the next meeting about a work plan for the district um we have a very long list of potential policy works that we can be doing it's probably substantially longer than we can reasonably expect to accomplish so we have to do some prioritization um and uh we will know at the end of that meeting um at least the short list for what policies we'll be taking up um that we know of i mean things will come up over the course of the year um and hopefully some potential timeline for when we'll be talking about those things that's all okay audit committee is next director edwards would you uh go to director to pass first i'm just pulling up the uh some information certainly director depos sure so the school improvement bond committee met um several days ago now um last week and um we had two uh updates from the bond accountability committee their quarterly report we had an office of school management report [Music] we tabled which i think is tradition the subcommittee charter i asked permission if we could table it because we had run out of time i was reminded that it's been tabled at every meeting for the last um amount of time we discussed a committee schedule um most importantly we have uh some upcoming openings on the bond on on the school improvement bond committee we have three people terming off and we have a chair position open we've decided to use a form that i drafted um tailored to you know asking for the skills that are needed on that committee also volunteering out voluntarily asking respondents to report their gender race um some of those demographic information so we can say that we you know are trying to increase the diversity on that on that committee um we're in the process of setting a regular meeting schedule that'll be about every six weeks um looking for input from the community again we have three spots open including a chair position [Music] upcoming and we're recruiting actively for those positions currently uh michelle i'd like to just add one thing to that report from our committee meeting which is to the board members that weren't there i would encourage you to look on board book for the materials that came forward from the office of school modernization and the bond accountability committee um it was their quarterly reports which no longer come to the full board and one of the issues which i intend to follow up on in some form or another is some pretty disturbing news from the osm dashboard about our minority women in small business enterprise contracting statistics um we had been doing so well through the 2012 bond in the early stages of 2017. and now we are well below our goals and um without you know with all the major sub contracts on madison for example basically let so we need to do some work figuring out um how that happened what went wrong um what our relationships and culture is that may be having an impact on that and i encourage everybody to take a closer look at those figures thank you for bringing that forward that's um the utilization rate is something that i reported on when i worked for metro um and i've been involved in this you know for 25 years maybe just 20 i don't know maybe 30. um it's really important that we as a public institution um you know try to meet those aspirational goals of nwesb participation minority women and firms and i think that our our numbers are low probably for a couple of reasons one is that we haven't focused on it and the second may be that the just the sheer amount of work that happened in you know q1 q2 of this year and q4 of last year um public public works projects have
03h 10m 00s
really you know taken available contractors that could be bidding on our work um but but i think we can do better all right director edwards do you have your report on the audit committee i do um thank you um so we had an audit committee meeting um last week and we received from the office of the internal performance auditor an update on the um ach audit and the picar picar audit um of course the ach audit came out of that was a request from district staff to have an audit after the fraudulent transaction uh that occurred uh over a year ago that's almost completed and then um same thing with the p-card audit that was on the audit calendar and is moving ahead we also worked through the audit committee calendar and we have an opening a community community opening on the position open on the audit committee and we discussed um updating the sort of um solicitation for community participation um it had been very focused just on whether you had an auditing background and the sense that uh we wanted them uh candidates that might bring a diverse uh set of skills or diverse perspective um so i want to thank director de pass and roseanne powell who are going to get us a modified um description back and then we'll circulate to the board and people want to share it with people who you think might be interested in serving on the audit committee um i know it's a high profile very attractive um community position uh so we'll have that opening and then we'll bring it to the full board because the full board actually does the appointment um to the audit committee and the person that's cycling off is kari guy who um is a pbs parent but also works for the city of portland and the auditing officer is a one of the managers she's brought invaluable expertise and we're sorry to see her leave the committee but she has offered to continue to be a resource both to our internal performance auditors and to um and to the committee itself and then finally the last item of discussion we had was around the secretary of state's the audit and the basically scorecard of work that we need to have underway um as i've stated before this is something that needs the full board attention because there is um a number of the findings including number 26 which is all which has five or six different parts which is all um board responsibilities not necessarily the audit committee um and that we need to we've got a template and as a board we need to just walk through to see if we are okay and believe the district is on track um and on target or they've completed the work um that we're supposed to oversee so that's i just want to highlight that because i do think um we're over a year out we got a pass this spring from the secretary of state's office about the return for the follow-up and uh we just need to be prepared um that we've done our work as this is as the board staff has fully done that and we had uh dr byrd and dr cuellar um no is that right definitely a dr bird um speak to i'm sorry dr valentino um some of the um changes that they've made or adjustments they've made in terms of fulfilling the recommendations so just a future workout agenda item for the full board that's it all right thank you i know that director more you wanted to do a quick commercial for cbrc yes um we have a number of uh openings on the community budget review committee we are actively soliciting applications even as we speak uh the deadline is the end of september um if you're interested um i it's it's a great community to be on you learn a lot about pps um i was known for six years as was chair lowry uh two and um it's uh it's a really interesting community to be on um and um i encourage everybody who's even vaguely interested to go to the
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community budget review committee web page at pps.net and get your application in asap all right any other committee or conference reports that we need to have before us all right well um i am going to officially adjourn um our session uh the next a meeting of the board will be held october 6th at 6 00 p.m and this meeting is now adjourned we're going to take a five-minute break until 9 25 and then we'll be back here for our study session on climate change curriculum thanks everyone good night

Sources

PPS Board of Education, BoardBook Public View, https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Organization/915 (accessed: 2023-01-25T21:27:49.720701Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)
PPS Communications, "PPS Board of Education Meetings" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbZtlBHJZmkdC_tt72iEiQXsgBxAQRwtM (accessed: 2023-10-14T01:02:33.351363Z)
PPS Board of Education, PPS Board of Education - Full Board Meetings (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk0IYRijyKDW0GVGkV4xIiOAc-j4KVdFh (accessed: 2023-10-11T05:43:28.081119Z)

2020-09-22 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting 9/22/2020

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