2020-09-28 PPS School Board Intergovernmental Committee Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2020-09-28
Time 17:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: Board of Education’s Intergovernmental Committee 9/28/2020

00h 00m 00s
um staff and student representatives let's go ahead and dive in um this is the first meeting of the intergovernmental committee which i think will name the igc unless anybody has more creative acronyms than that um and we've got an hour tonight uh we'll be here until six o'clock and um courtney is the lead staffer and is gonna help walk us through tonight's agenda um before we get to that um i'll just say so i um only watched one i apologize for this i only watched one of the intergovernmental work group meetings last year um got updates obviously from all of you in the board meetings but only sort of watched one so i am relatively new to this um committee and would be curious um sort of now or as we go through this next hour hearing from both staff and board members about specific things that um this committee has talked about in the past or that we'd really like to see on the agenda for uh either in the near term or further out in the year as we go through it it feels like the type of committee that could be very very expansive um and and maybe almost too much right sort of hard to put sideboards on um since since almost everything we do has an intergovernmental component so just sort of thinking about how do we define what this committee does versus what other committees are or the full board does so that's a rhetorical question at this point but it'll become real as we get into specific subject matters so with that i hope everyone has seen um the agenda let me make sure i've got it up here we are going to get an update on legislative committee days we're going to have a discussion about the 2021 legislative platform agenda um which you should all have received in board books and a state revenue update and then we have other items at the end and i would love in that other items to come back and talk about sort of what i just mentioned what are the things that the board members would like to see or staff for that matter would like to see this committee tackle as we go through the year i've got a couple other ideas things that have come up prior board meetings and so forth so maybe we'll save that conversation for the very end um of the meeting and sort of brainstorm a little bit about upcoming ideas julia arita do you guys have anything else to add before we jump in so uh chair scott one thing that might be useful is um there's going to be a briefing for legislators on um the start of school and it'd be great to get at least a high level of what that is or um sort of the follow up out of that at the end of the meeting great sounds good okay courtney take it away yeah um hello everybody good evening um i'm just for the record i'm happy this is a committee i i think sometimes we um you're right it's an expansive list of items and there's a lot to cover and so i'm appreciative of the fact that we're going to maybe zero in on that a little bit but historically this group whether it was called a committee or a task force we really focused on the legislature obviously and then we talked you know when needed we would talk about initiatives happening at other local agencies that are connected to us so you know early on before the um for example before the transportation measure was a measure we would talk about the ways that it would impact pps or our students so there's a lot of as you said andrew a lot of connectedness to our partners in other at other agencies and around the area the metro area but also at the state level so we've we've had conversations about legislative activities federal activities what's happening in our regional partner agencies and then anything that kind of falls in there even if it's maybe a stretch so those are the kinds of things we've talked about before the other thing i want to and i don't want to put julia on the spot but if there is a chance at the end if we have time um just touch on the i5 project since i know she just came off a meeting i was listening to as well um so that's another i think example of a relationship we have with odot on and how it affects one of our schools so that's something that i would consider throwing into the bucket of future issues to discuss and maybe if there's time tonight can i just add to that we have on occasion talked about um shared issues with the city yes that's a big topic too yep and that's actually on my sort of brainstormed list of things that i've heard from from from board members as well so we'll we'll go through that a little bit at the end of some of those other issues we might want to dive into um well i'll kick us off if everybody wants to go into the agenda so kind of kept it broad but last week was committee days for the legislators
00h 05m 00s
um they do this during the interim they always have every couple months they do um a series usually typically it's three days um this year they extended it to five to accommodate sort of the zoom the zoom world we're living in and to allow for people to join um for a little bit longer a longer week of meetings and and what they do is they meet in their committees to hear people it's presentations they don't make decisions they're not voting during committee days they're just listening um usually september before a long session which is coming up in january i always want to say february but they changed it it's two weeks earlier now so the long session starts in january of 2021 um so there were a lot of discussions about the potential measures or bills that are going to be presented coming forward in the in the session um the committees the education committees met and mostly talked about covid response and how districts are doing in um and ode presented there were no school districts uh highlighted but um and we'll get to this per uh julia's recommendation suggestion to talk about the legislative briefing that's coming up on wednesday but most of the talk was about you know just how school districts pivoted and how they're doing um here this fall as they you know as as we acclimate to the world of comprehensive distance learning and then of course you know we're different than other districts there are districts around the state that are able to open because their metrics look different than ours they're more rural they have fewer students they have more spaces to spread out um so it does look different across the 197 districts in oregon but you know as you know we've been partnering with um with other large districts in the in the region and so are we connected in that way to other school districts um they also had joint transportation committee had a um had a meeting about the i5 project so there's a lot of the stuff we're talking about locally is also being talked about at the state level obviously because that's where the funding is coming from and then midway through the legislative legislative days last week they also highlighted the revenue forecast which i sent an email out to the board about kind of the big takeaway um on that so i'll get to that later we can we can actually talk about that now if you guys are okay with it um but i think i want to sorry i'm jumping all over the place uh going back to the education committees um one of the presentations that came up during those days was around equity concerns during the distance learning we all have those concerns it's something that i know the board talks about a lot i know that we've one of our guiding principles throughout all of our comprehensive distance learning discussions and rollout has been about you know how do we serve all of our students and especially our black and students of color black indigenous students of color um and um i think there's also a continued focus on the oha guidelines and how the how school districts and ode are working with oha to make the make decisions that are based in science and based on metrics um and you know as we go along here you know we have our own internal deadline that we set as a district when we're going to make decisions and and communicate those out to families but uh just a general uh conversation about what those what the governor's metrics look like and how that impacts school districts um what else can i tell you obviously technology is another hot topic access to devices access to broadband i think the broadband issue you know we've we know that we can get hot spots to students if they if they ask for it we can get it to them if we can identify those who those students are based on principals and teachers we can get that to them but the larger issue is you know is there decent wi-fi at their house is there um is there uh bandwidth for multiple students in a in a house to access their um their platforms so that's another issue that's come up a lot and it continues to come up i think um we've brought it up certainly with um my colleagues you know we we talk about it but that's another kind of well probably one of the hotter topics i think and and obviously the statewide broadband conversations about any of that is much larger than one session and and you know that's going to be an ongoing conversation but i think it's important to continue to highlight um that this has really showcased the need um for high quality you know comprehensive broadband services around the state and that's just it's not something we can snap our fingers in and achieve but um and and of course it's unfortunate that we had to have a pandemic to highlight it but it's a topic that is ongoing um and then of course the revenue forecast um you all saw my email um i think the big takeaway is that it wasn't as bad as folks were expecting now i'm not i'm not like you know getting excited about it because we know that the next biennium is just gonna look very different um but at least
00h 10m 00s
going into the second year of this biennium it's um it's it was uh i guess there's some cautious optimism but also um a lot of under an understanding that as we have to make some additional um if the federal for example if the feds don't do anything what will that look like for the state and how will we adjust based on that information and then how does that trickle down to local school districts um and so we were fortunate to get the full funding of the or the you know to maintain the state school fund allotment which is good for this next half of the biennium um but what what it will look like in january coming down um with the governor's budget and the legislative budget it we're just you know it's too soon to tell so you know whether it's gonna be flat or what it will look like yeah courtney i haven't had a chance to dig into the revenue forecast um yet i mean was it was it was it more positive just based off of the economic um decline wasn't as steep as fear because of the shutdowns and lockdown so there was just more economic activity than expected yeah i think also you know one thing that was not talked about as much beforehand but that was um stressed earlier stressed last week was you know unemployment benefits are taxable so there has been an uptick like people they're still collecting taxes on all those you know all those folks who are on unemployment and that was something that i don't think i don't think it was un that they i don't think that it was unexpected but just i don't know just didn't make that like didn't get highlighted early on like people didn't talk about it so i think that was a surprise um i think there's been some economic growth in recent months even though we're technically in a recession um you know the people have gone back to work from temporary layoffs people are you know they're people are wearing masks and buildings so they're some people are going back to the office or they're going back to in-person jobs that um you know previously had shut down so i think some of that is is to is you know credited with some of this um uh some of this uh economic growth but it's um you know it's a it's a it's a whole bunch of stuff that when you put it all together it wasn't it wasn't that bad um but again what it looks like going forward into the next biennium is unknown were the state economists quite as negative i mean when they released the last forecast sort of the beginning i mean they had this just doomsday we're not recovering until 2026 which seemed a little you know out there for me but um are they still sort of maintaining that or if they backed off that a little bit like like the uncertainty of we don't really know if this is a two-year problem or a four-year problem um i don't know if john i yeah john john eames is um one of our contract lobbyists who has been a little bit more seeped in this than i have been and he um he can probably talk to that point better than i can so i'm gonna you bet it was actually hey everybody um it was actually quite interesting because the state economist the headlines were they were shocked and i think they were shocked because there were a couple different factors that really played into why we see still high unemployment and we still are seeing an uptick in the revenue forecast couple things that really do affect that first lottery funds i think they overshot or over negative it were over negative on lottery um it's come back i guess you could say sadly or however you want to talk about with abandon and so the lottery revenues were significantly higher than they thought um or it came back faster than they thought the other thing is that the um what they also have found is that the folks that have lost their jobs are in the lower strata of the income of income and so their contribution to their state revenue forecast was not as great then uh you would see if there was a number of higher income uh folks that um and they have not seen this significant job loss that we've seen in the lower income and so the impact to the state budget is less because the folks in the that lower strata that are you know having a really high hard time with the job loss that's not affecting the state revenue picture so when we had been talking with the co-chairs and folks we were getting this sentiment i think over the last month that they were being a lot more positive and i think they were saying the state of common is probably overshot and we're too conservative which is what you want you would rather have that than have to go in and cut again so they overshot it so that the first two special sessions they were in the right mindset of okay what is the size of the problem and it's much better to add back than it is to take away so i think those were kind of factors that were affecting why it looked so significantly different for both this biennium which i think that's the most shocking and then also 21-23
00h 15m 00s
that's great thanks john other questions about legislative days or the state forecast revenue forecast okay um the other thing really quick before i forget um the the corporate activity tax or the the funds of student success act um is projected to net um about 2.2 billion during the 2123 biennium which is significantly more um or at least it looks appears to look like it would be significant more significantly more funding for the student investment account in the next two year budget but i think that will be and that's sort of pivoting towards the class our platform and thinking about how do we preserve the student investment account and the student success act because as things get less rosy going forward it's going to be a grab you know where can we get money to fill other pots and so i think that's going to be a really key piece and so maybe that's a good segue into the pla the the pps platform but i do think that's going to be something that we have to really um work with our partners to maintain and to and to preserve can i um ask a question about um the revenue um do they anticipate that the corporate kicker will will kick and if so does that mean anything for us they do they do project that it is the corporate kicker will kick but not the personal income tax as far as the impact obviously that flows to um education the corporate kicker is assigned to that so it does that does help um to have it flow into there so and they are projecting that which is i think quite a bit different than they thought they were going to have some great okay um courtney let's yeah let's segue into the 2021 legislative agenda yeah so i um i thought we could start so here's here's the timing that i was thinking that we should focus we should use as a guide um typically we've had a legislative agenda or a platform you guys can decide what you want to call it it doesn't really matter a one pager that shows what uh you know what pps cares about what we're what we're lobbying for and buddy i'm sending my child out of the room hang on two seconds i i tried to get my dog out of the room and i left the door open okay bye-bye see ya um they just got home uh so um okay re-centering here so the platform in the past has been you know a list of items that we want to focus on and um and lobby hard for in salem many of them are things we work in con you know in concert with our partners at cosa and the school boards association and um and sometimes oea depending on the issue so we have a lot of really good relationships and partnerships where we come together and and um and work hard on a certain topic so last for example do you guys have the um the platform from 20 uh from 19 so that one that's the one you sent us is the one from yeah i kind of wanted to use that as a guide to a remind you what we did last time for those of you who are um you know veteran board members but also for those who are new who may not have been here during that process um the uh you know back in 19 the big focus was of course on the student success act and getting more money for schools because we had you know historically been under funding um for many many many many many many years and uh so the big focus in 19 was to you know to secure robust funding so that was accomplished um of course now we have a wrench in things because of the pandemic but um that was a big that took a lot of the air out of the room in salem quite frankly it was all about how to and julia you know thank you for all of your work that was a huge effort and a huge focus for um education lobbyists last session and of course we wanted to get the state school fund to a um to a higher number so that we could because that's just you know that's the admw that's the per pupil funding and that is something that we can't like lose sight of that that's the the base and the basics that we need and the student investment account goes beyond that to you know focus on equity and social emotional issues and that kind of thing which you're all familiar with at this point probably um you know more than you want to be sometimes it's a lot but it's exciting now we have to continue to um to protect it so going back to the 19 legislative session funding was a big one we talked a lot about like grow your own pipeline you know teaching workforce issues we talked about making sure that we don't have carve-outs and take money away from the state school fund to do other special things
00h 20m 00s
we talked a lot about renewing some of the programs that work well for school districts like the seismic retrofit grant program the school modernization grant program um we talked about tax reform but that was really you know more more coupled with the higher investment in schools so it was the corporate activity tax essentially is what it came down to be we talked a lot about safe schools whether that be safe for um all of our students no matter what they how they identify or it was safe like security so we talk about safe in different ways um and then of course measure 98 was another one you know we've seen good success with that that resource and so making sure that we're protecting that it got um pulled into this statewide education initiatives part of the student success act so that was a good way to do it and that's fully funded for this biennium so that will be another thing that we'll want to talk about protecting um and then i mentioned the workforce issues diverse workforce issues those are going to continue to be i think the things that we want to advocate for in our district and then um yeah you guys can see it uh there's a lot there's a lot there's always a lot i think in this particular session going forward we're going to be doing a lot of what we've done before protecting the resources that we already have and that we rely on and then also you know how does in terms of budget how has the coronavirus impacted our our school district's budget what what kind of expenses and i know we're tracking it but what are the expenses that our district has um has made to uh to um respond to the pandemic and what is that done to our overall you know what does that look like can we get reimbursed you know what is there anything we can do there to be made whole are the federal resources of course are going to be another thing we want to pay attention to and how that impacts the state's budget because it always does um the cares act was helpful but it wasn't enough we know that and it you know we needed we need another version we need 2.0 3.0 4.0 um and right now because it's an election year and they're all gone running for reelection or running and then you have the lame duck and a lot just slows down in that process so i don't know when we'll know more at the federal level but we want to watch that carefully because that will impact what we do as a state so i think that's another item that we want to think about how we fold into the to the larger kind of focus of pps um i'm trying to think of coordination this is a kind of a specific question and then i have a more general question um the the 2019 agenda it had um sort of under funding you had you know like bullet number two which was advocating for major revenue reform to support investments in education like you were talking about and then i think bullet number uh five advocate for major tax reform to provide revenue sufficient for the state to fill its responsibilities those sounded very the same but then bullet five goes on to then talk about uh reasonable measures to bring greater control over things like you know pers um health insurance et cetera but was there a was there a they seemed a little duplicative to me but i thought maybe there was a nuance there that i was missing um it yeah i mean you're right they were and we went back and forth about it because we didn't want to have a lot you know too many bullets but i think there was the there was sort of the dedicated funding streams for schools and then there are the other pieces that drive costs for the state and that was the pers those kinds of health care pers the things that don't just drive costs up for schools but they drive costs up for other employers and so it's a little bit nuanced you're right talking about the other cost drivers that impact how we fund services in oregon and how that impacts the education budget so i think i think going forward we could collapse them i think those are you're getting at the same problem which is underfunding our our social services um our services and so we were just talking about in a different way and you know maybe that's a good segue into my more general question so this the legislative agenda for 2019 seemed pretty broad to me and i appreciate your outline of of why i mean revenue reform you know and and and additional funding was the the key focus but um it's a lot of pretty high level principles um which is which is fine right and i've seen legislative agendas that are you know these are the principles that we're gonna sort of sort of go into the session with and then you know we'll we'll apply those to various bills and then there are also legislative agendas that are much more specific right like we want to get you know you know this bill from last session you know reintroduced and passed and what it would do does pps have i mean do we have a consistent practice in terms of how we've approached this or do we sort of go back and forth and and i would also maybe open it up to to the other committee members in terms of prefer it's a really i'm really glad you're bringing this up because it's been a um an ongoing saga it's my own saga
00h 25m 00s
is how best to do it we do have you know in my former life before i came to pps i was at the oregon health authority and we had a very different way of collecting um collecting legislative inventory for lack of a better word we had it was you know it's a large state agency so you went through the state agency process with the state where you come up with your pops which are the policy proposals that are funded then funded um and then you you would kind of go you'd go around to each department each you know you had the media well you know you know your wife knows this um you had the you know you had the um uh the state hospital and you had medicaid and you had um the ombud you know the um ombudsman's office for um this was um for elderly although that's from bhs now but anyway you get my point you went from department to department and shopped around this form and you said hey what are the issues that make your job harder um or that we you know are there things that we can do to alleviate a barricade that's making it hard to serve our families and serve our serve oregonians for example so i've thought about this over the years and it always sort of ends up being more broad because um we don't want what i don't want to end up is with a laundry list of things that aren't really doable um you know if you go to everybody's got something and everything is in a statutory change and so what i've thought about doing this time and what i'm planning to do this week is and i have the form but i have to upload it into a google form was to go to our senior leadership team and ask them to um populate like come up with what are the things in your department that are um legends that you see could be legislatively adjusted or fixed i know for example well here's an example in last session in 2019 we dealt with senate bill 155 which is all about sexual misconduct in schools um i know i can tell you right now we are already running into some problems i don't even know them all but i've heard from osba that they had a problem i know that mary kane and i are going to talk this week about some stuff so and that that's typical right there's stuff that we don't catch the first time and we come back and we have to adjust it later and that's you know so we do there's stuff all the time that'll come up that you need to go fix the legislative fix so i anticipate some of that with with um with 155. another example um hopefully claire doesn't get mad at me for saying this but the tscc is a sometimes a you know something that maybe we could do without it's just another thing that we have to go through and so she she's hoping to fix it whether that's doable or not is a whole other matter but hey let's have that conversation let's talk about it you know what are what are the things that make it hard for our finance team um to go through that process is that something that we want to you know to advocate for i don't know yet we're not there quite yet but it's something that's on my list of running my running list of the things that um are are statutorily in place that we maybe um want to think about the other one that you guys are very familiar with or at least i know rita and julia are um because they've been around a little longer um is the um the contra what is it the the um custodials what is the board it's a civil service civil service board yeah so that i hear about that every year every other year at least and how it's um you know just having to go through that process because it's an a statute that's been in place for so many years that we've never tried to adjust um and what we've tried it's been met with some resistance from some of our labor partners and so you know how do we have the conversation with them to see if there's a way to maybe not get rid of it but to make it better and make it work for us because that's often the problem so there's a lot of little things like that around the edges that yeah they're probably not as sexy for you know most school districts but for us it's something that's somehow in statute and um maybe got it it's just been many years since it's been reviewed or um or you know nobody's taken a look at it in a long time so i guess my point is we're trying to what i'm trying to do this next few weeks is take a bit of an inventory from our senior leadership team from departments to say hey what is it that could make things better in your piece of the pps world and i and i can expect that we'll hear about the ones i've just mentioned um probably from dawn on technology probably from claire on covet response you know there's there's stuff that and some of that is going to be relevant to all school districts but certainly the ones the aforementioned ones are more tps specific can i throw another one in for your list i'm pretty sure you'll hear about this from liz but um reconciling state statute and federal statute and rigs on title ix i just i just fell off on accident i tried to unmute myself and i hung up so i wasn't that was not a uh no
00h 30m 00s
disrespect intended rita you want to say it again um yeah another issue that i'm pretty sure you're going to hear about from liz is around title nine reconciling state and federal statutes and regulations i i already heard from her and we have a meeting set up so yeah yeah that's a big one too but that you know because often we get something the feds do something and it doesn't mesh well with what we have in state statute so we have to go and fix it and often those are not that hard to fix but i don't want to say they never they're never um they're never hard because sometimes they are we'll see so my impression is that this one is not going to be easy but we have a um i know about this because we're going to have to deal with this in the policy committee and the district the state has established a um a deadline by which we have to make policy changes and uh it's going to be a very difficult deadline for that because the state and the feds they're not talking to each other okay so another thing and i don't know what specifically it looked like legislatively but the issue of you know we're still going to be even if there's a vaccine sort of in the midst of covid and the general inclination i think in salem is to like hey just the formula or per student and you know just based on what we're seeing so far with like community spread and um density and the fact that for example multnomah county has you know most of the major health institutions in the state here that um it's going to be different on multnomah for for districts in mumbai county and from london county generally so what implications that have in terms of cost that will be different from other districts and you know that what and funding and all sorts of um requirements so again i don't know exactly what it is but it seems like that may be a you know whether it's like suspending some requirements or it's you know block grants from the state to support districts and then portland having a disproportionate impact given the the density and the fact that we have a lot of uh health care institution or most of the health care institutions um in the state so you know what what does that entail i think we're going to just be flexible and um but it seems like there's going to be a play gonna be a play there and um i think we're going to be probably in session just about the point in time when people are just like they can't stand it anymore especially those people who are our parents and like what what implications are those going to exactly have and how can the state actually help and i think you just mentioned i think the other thing that's going to come up um because it's very um it's a real challenge everywhere is child care i think that will be an issue that comes up um loudly in salem in january and just how do we you know more subsidize obviously there are measures on the ballot but that's that's local and there's a there's a statewide issue around child care so that that's something i expect will come up as well are there other things that folks i mean i know there's the you know the um staff level conversations that we'll have um and and we'll bring those back to our next meeting um but are there other bigger things or things that you can think of that um maybe that they don't keep you up at night that they are on your mind um that could be addressed in some way at the state level or you know maybe we focus on another you know maybe we can move to i don't know andrew what you're what you want to um timewise what you want to focus on next but yeah um maybe and actually i had one quick process question so do we um this this committee working with staff develops the legislative agenda uh i'm gonna call the agenda unless someone wants to call something different i'm open to that idea but um um develops legislative agenda does the board approve that um traditionally yeah so usually it goes back i'll bring another version back to the committee you guys will bless it and then it'll go to the full board for discussion and approval and usually at the full board you know as as everything that we do it's pretty deliberative so by the time it reaches the full board there's been a you know the puts and takes and we've got it to a pretty decent place and then there's questions and maybe some tweaks but um it's pretty pretty much ready to go and that's just historical i mean we can do it a different way but it's worked okay and when when is the timing usually for
00h 35m 00s
report approval i think we should have this approved in november um it can get kicked to december but november gives us time to shop it around i mean we will want to shop the draft around to some of our partners but i think by but if we can get it approved before thanksgiving then we can um use december as an opportunity to just have further discussions about the items that we've um settled on so courtney what about oh i'm sorry well i just wanted to add um andrew your process question um so in 2019 we added another thing um and i'd like to hear from courtney about whether she thought it was helpful um we worked with other districts in multnomah county to develop a common legislative agenda and then we had a meeting with the area representatives and senators area legislators to talk about this common agenda and that meeting happened while i was i missed the one board meeting i've ever missed but um but my understanding is that that process was well received by um legislators and and other districts found it helpful um is that something that courtney you would recommend we do again yeah yeah i haven't talked i have thought about it i haven't talked to stacy at mesd about it we've talked about it i should say we've talked about it we just haven't talked about the when and the like the details um yes i thought it was good too and you know you can never catch everybody you can have a meeting and you get as many as you can i still think it's worth doing you can't you can't assume that everybody's going to be able to be at every meeting but i i have found that the joint the joint multnomah county district leaders meeting with the legislature or let the appropriate legislators is a a good relationship building tool and just a good way to stay in touch but also an opportunity to think about how we um how we work together on some of the shared goals because we have many and then there are those things that are pps specific that you know centennial or gresham borrow probably don't care about um so maybe they do i add a couple other things that i thought places where we made the um find pieces of legislation or initiatives that we want to be supportive of things we might want to oppose is just like a quick review of anything that's been pre pre-session filed um again for either like somebody else's idea that we either want to get on or get and get behind or whether we want to build coalitions against um it seems like it might also um it would be a good idea to uh touch base with like osba's um equity committee or the board members um i forget their group's name but the the school board members of color whether they have some agenda for example i know their last session of the session before they had that bill that allowed um it was around how school board members get elected to increase the diverse representation of boards um so it seems like that might be another place would just touch base with community partners with urban league coalition of communities of color and find out if there's something that they have that we should you know put our muscle behind yeah that's a good point yeah we've we have um we do we do work very closely with our education partners but there are some other groups that we have definitely worked closely with especially on the student success act um various um various partners with with a more specific um equity lens although cosa does a pretty good job by using that their committee at whatever they are i'm not sure if it's a committee or what they call it but to um bring that into their main legislative agenda and i can tell you there are a couple things that they're thinking about right now they're thinking about um uh i think diversity diversifying the educator pipeline because and we talked about that and we obviously care about that linguistic inclusion um there's some other stuff that they're thinking about they're you know not maybe on our radar yet so we have a very regular meeting with our with i have a very regular meeting with my counterparts at those at those organizations and we talk about you know how we can support each other's um uh priorities and many of them are the same but some of them aren't and some of them are very much connected so it's even if it's not you know number one on our list it's something that we want to be supportive of so we'll continue to do that and i'll continue to bring that stuff up to you and frankly on the the next iteration of this agenda and i'm so glad you're calling it an agenda and not a platform because platform just is like pie in the sky lucy kind of
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thing so agenda seems more concrete and doable um a uh you know how do we there are some things that they're working on that may be relevant to us i can include those on the next iteration for your review and that way we're in sync with them even from the beginning can i mention something um that i've become much more aware of in the last year it's around the workforce development and diversifying the educator pipeline [Music] i think it is important that we start talking in public about the need for higher education to be working very closely with k-12 um around teacher education yeah yep um because it's i mean i was on that um what did they call it the i don't know it was for workforce equity i forget what the name of it was um and it was um kind of the elephant in the room that never got a dress um the um the disconnect between um what's being taught to our educators and and what k-12 needs yep okay i'll put that around one other thing and then and then uh transition but any um i'd like us to stay sort of focused and hopefully supportive of any efforts coming out of the state legislature about diversity and contracting um and particularly in the construction trades i mean that it's been a big push but given our bond program even the existing bond program but hopefully a a you know a new one in 2020 um we just have a huge opportunity to be a big player in that um but also making sure that whatever is passed i think we should be supportive of making sure it's workable and achievable so i think i think we're going to see something out of the state legislature um along those lines so and if it's in well with but with something you've already um supported which is the c2p2 work so it's exactly yeah it goes well with that and that's another topic we've discussed in this committee by by the way historically so that's just an example of something that we would discuss um that's not the state legislature but more of a metro initiative so can i mention one last thing because i told john john texted to me to remind me and i can't believe i forgot it because i know rita's brought it up to me a few times is the liability issue um and so that's another one that's on the docket for for the session and liability for schools but also you know everybody else that wants liability right now and for backgrounds there was a there was a task force or a work group that was working through that and then you know when we went into comprehensive distance learning it became less of a concern so they sort of that they're not backing away from it those conversations are ongoing but there was not um there was not an interest in bringing forward a measure during a special session so just for background so let's um let's do this we've got about 12 minutes so let's do about four minutes um per item i'd like to just do a quick i'm going to talk a little bit about what i've heard from board members about other things this committee might tackle and i'd love to hear from from uh rita and julia and and courtney your staff if there are other ideas that are on there um then we wanted to do a quick update on the i5 corridor meeting and then a quick update on the briefing for legislators so let's see if we can sort of rapid fire through these things what i heard um in my informal conversations um about sort of the intergovernment committee the igc what we should tackle so legislative agenda which is what we're doing right now um there was also um this question that came up about criteria for when the board um passes resolutions in support of political measures i think that's an important issue i think we're too late in this election cycle right because we're already already done so in some ways that's good because it gives us a little bit more time to sort of think about it outside of an election and just sort of going forward so i i would put that on our on our docket for some time next spring um you know in terms of just just do we want to have criteria what does that look like the issue that rita brought up earlier that she and i talked about a few weeks ago you know how do we work with our partner jurisdictions and that's pretty broad but um sort of thinking about you know and maybe thinking about it from a relationship standpoint where where are the relationships working pretty well that we want to just nurture those along where the relationships a little bit more broken that we want to focus on and and do some repair um and and sort of thinking about it you know i mean the city is obviously a huge relationship that that on the one you know in some aspects i think we work really well in other aspects maybe you're on like permitting you know it it's it's more problematic right and so so maybe that's something this this committee can tackle just even a
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strategy for how do we how do we do that and some of that permitting work just you know we did have we have had a quite a series of meetings in the last year um with bds and others or bps and others and we're making some progress in relationship building over there and so that's been something that we've been i would call it nurturing but also improving that's great um another issue that came up and this is where the sideboards i think are gonna come in handy and so i'm open to sort of push back on this but there is this issue of the district boundaries and and sort of sort of tackling that and and and what are we as a district going to do um are we going to change the way we do elections and and the boundaries and move from uh you know um um uh from the at-large to you know to to zones how do we even um start a process like that um that feels like something that could be in uh start here in an intergovernmental committee it could also start somewhere else so um i would just throw that out it feels like it's an important work that um i think we as a board are gonna have to take a lead on um sooner rather than later and and i guess the other question there is purely a timing question is it sooner rather than later you know with elections coming up next year or is it something that we wait till after that and i frankly need a briefing at some point about the legislation that passed i know i've heard people talk about it but i haven't read it or been briefed on it we didn't organize that osda folks who who are pretty well seeked in it they worked on it other ideas um i don't think we have time um to do discussion on those things but i'd love to hear from you if you have other things that this committee might want to address this year or things you don't want the community to address this year um well i would like to um so a couple years ago and it was a couple of years ago um courtney you came up with um like a a spreadsheet with um county and city sort of joint venture like the relationship what exactly are we doing with these different jurisdictions um and i can resurrect that bad boy for you yeah i mean as i recall it was a pretty long list um which was enlightening for me certainly um so i think it would be helpful to um to resurrect that and um and i think if we could kind of if this committee or some version of it is going to continue in perpetuity um that might be a a good way to track issues as they arise and and that would help us sort of prioritize what are the issue areas that we need to be looking at with our partner jurisdictions and and maybe you know keep keep a running tally of um problems and possible solutions and you know that sort of thing um because i think there are some some things with the city that um i i would certainly like to get more information on um and i i think um sorry i don't mean to cut you no i was just gonna say i think that's a great a great it's a great time to think about how we resurrect that um tracker or uh document and we can make it better to serve about serve our purpose better um but i think you know because of the timing it'd be great to have that conversation once the bureaus are handed out again after the election um because that that will give us an opportunity to start fresh with the new um the new commissioner um and build those relationships from that you know rather than a lame duck lack of a better word so i'll add that to my calendar to think about post november 3rd um you know once and obviously the bureaus don't get handed out right away but we can think about how we strategize um and you know how we like plan for attack after they get handed out well not attacked necessarily you know you know offensive strategy julian yeah there you go yeah i guess um and andrew you know this haven't been in the belly of the beast but um with sort of the ongoing changes and i'm not sure i'm not sure if i it's we're going to have a lot of long-term bureau assignments um that they've shifted a lot but it seems like the city
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just like how it's functioning right now they're fairly disconnected from um our work and um it seemed instead of i mean here's just a maybe an additive thought isn't like whoever wherever the assignments for the commissioners land and but that we also make sure that we're talking to everybody because as those bureaus change hands and then we get somebody a commissioner maybe who's not familiar with our issue so maybe think about how it is that we given all the newnesses in city hall of doing some briefings that are on all our issues so that we have a more informed council on a variety of issues versus just like hey this is a parks issue for the parks commissioner and this is the you know peabot uh commissioner's role but that because that's that just seems like there's a big disconnect and i don't think it's on pbs's side but i think this i think that's a great idea i think you're right i think it's a great idea and we have you know our issues are global they don't always affect one bureau um and we're we're serving the same people and we talk about that a lot but it's it part of this is you know we do have a very strange city structure um and so it makes it a little harder to go you know we often are whacking moles which is you know very exhausting i think for staff not not me necessarily but like i think about the team um that deals with permitting and it's just and parks you know we have we have so many assets that we share and that we um contract for it's just really it's a lot of work for the staff okay just thought of another huge one um i think it's i think they named it oregon reimagined or reimagined oregon but there was a big kickoff with the governor and a whole host of local elected officials and like they had a couple things in education i mean there was a lot of conversation about education and like the only government entity whose elected officials weren't included in that document was the school districts um and yet they had a whole host of education initiatives and so i think we should go through that document i think sushila was the point person on some of the education um initiatives but go through it and get ourselves integrated into that as well and that was part of the imagine county commissioner reimagine oregon yeah julia that is a fantastic suggestion and and actually i want to just i i didn't yes i'm sad i didn't think about i think we elevate that to the top of our list for this year because you're right i was surprised that school districts weren't invited but there is so much there and it's it's it's such an important topic an issue right now we need to we need to catch up and then start meeting on some of that stuff so thanks yeah i mean but we should we'd be the natural leaders versus the county running the education initiative so um yeah no that's really good and there was some discussion of that during the senate education so i can share some of that that documentation this is a little bit of a of a secondary issue but i think tracking portland starter reform um you know as as they move forward it's it's not directly impacting us but it will have some indirect impacts on us um depending on what comes out of that so i would put that lower on the list but something we want to just be tracking and sort of seeing what's what's going on there because a big change in the form of government will have an impact on on our schools okay we are we are rapidly running out of time i did want to give um parker and nathaniel a chance i know we've got a couple quick briefings we're going to get in a second but um did you have anything else you wanted to add to what we're talking about in terms of overall issues that this committee should focus on things at the state legislature etc um sure i think um sort of a more general introduction would be greatly appreciated other than in a committee meeting um maybe from courtney if you'd be uh willing to do that absolutely i did that with nathaniel and it was great yeah i would greatly appreciate something similar to that um and just so i could sort of get a more general scope on what are the issues that the subcommittee has tackled uh in previous years and what are sort of the things you know what are what are our sites sort of on uh as a committee um but other than that i don't have anything to add currently um there are some other student reps uh in this meeting i think we have tay um and a few others which i saw joined um but that's that's all for me i'd be happy to come come to a uh dfc meeting as well if that's of interest yeah i'll i'll mention it to the uh staff liaison and uh that could probably
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be an immense resource thank you courtney and i can also do like i can give you guys a training on the legislative information system and show you how to use it because it's really user friendly and you might might like it yeah i would appreciate that a lot thank you thanks parker um great we had two uh things that um uh committee members wanted to get here a little bit more on one was just an update on the i5 corridor conversation and then two was um a little summary of what's going on with the legislative briefing on wednesday in terms of i think overall themes and what we expect from that um do you want me to start on the legislative briefing um okay so we um we're pulling together a legislative briefing wednesday with portland area legislators who are available and interested i know some are going to send their staff because they can't visit you know they can't be there themselves um the the hope for this is just to give them a better sense of our comprehensive distance learning plan and how things are going and what um you know what adjustments have already been made and just that so that they're aware you know they've been i've shared a lot of information with them but um they get a lot of emails and we haven't had that face time so it's a good opportunity to have the superintendent um a couple i think there are some board members joining um craig and dr byrd are also going to be um on there answering any questions we're going to do like a few slides just to stuff this we're just condensing what's been presented you know in previous board meetings about re-entry um but just you know focusing on the the types of things that we've been um prioritizing and then um and then opening it up for questions it's just an hour it's um it's on a really busy day it's you know leadership for the principals and um so we're just trying to to fit it in um before it gets into you know too far into the next months and um yeah so i think it'll be a good conversation it was um senator dembrow who's the chair of the senate education committee and an ally of ours and um just a really great you know great person to have in our corner um he um he suggested it after there was a concern brought up by another legislator and so i think i see this as just a great opportunity to share information and see what they're thinking about and then um you know just keep that that uh dialogue going courtney can can we um whatever materials are shared with uh legislators can you um also make sure that all the board members have them just so you know as we're uh running into or hearing from from them that we know what the district has shared with them it'd be great to also get a recap after the meeting yeah i'm happy to send a board uh a recap to the board and i'll attach the documents that we share we're just doing like three or four slides um because they don't they didn't want a long presentation and then working on putting together probably gonna end up being a two-page um you know digest of the kinds of things that we've been working on from spring summer planning and then fall and fall re-entry so yes i will share all of that with you guys afterwards no that's great and i am glad we're doing it i mean i think it's one of those things of making sure they're aware of sort of all the work and planning you know it's always really easy at the end of the process to sort of poke a couple holes but recognizing the months and months and and hundreds of hours you know that went into to planning um i think it'll be good to share that yeah and that that the district is you know doing the best they can in the moment you know this is not anything anyone expected nobody wants to be in this situation some sympathy and some understanding is um you know welcome great i think it would be um i think this would be a great topic if we get together with other districts in the county and then meet with legislators i think it would be great to have kind of a common um a common view of shared issues and then individual districts might point out um specific issues that are unique to them again we could um frame up the kind of pre-session huddle with legislators we could also it could also be a mid-year um briefing you know we can do both great thank you um i'm gonna give this an update on the i5 corridor conversation yeah i'm sure i can do that as courtney said we just um had uh the executive advisory committee uh meeting this afternoon and uh we haven't met for several months this was a bit of a like reset heading into the fall we adopted a values and charter document and kind of walk through the the structure of how we're going to move ahead by the meat of the meeting was worth noting is there was a dis discussion about the whole issue the issue of caps and the work is happening on that front as people might recall this was a major
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issue for the albino vision trust and they have really pushed in order to make the albino vision um happen that you need to have some sort of capping of portions of the freeway so that you can have a continue some um contiguous land over the over the freeway to connect the neighborhoods so that was the majority of the conversation um there i say pretty much it was a reset from the summer the community advisory group has been reformulated and we now have i think a very positive thing for pps is that the governor brendan finn has moved moved from the city of portland to the state to odot and now he's really um playing a leadership role in this overall project so he knows portland well he knows portland public schools uh he knows the issue with harriet tubman so i think we're well positioned for the conversation moving ahead um and on the freeway covers um separately scott director bailey has been involved in that discussion as well so we have somebody at the table during those discussions because that could have an impact on besc and potentially um tubman as well and um and i'll just add that there's also a couple other groups formed on this topic there's a project management group which is basically staff me and metro and trimet just getting updates on the project from megan channel the project manager so that's been helpful just to keep track of everything there's a lot of you know so there's the political stuff and then there's the design and um construction work and so it's there's a lot going on but um so i'm tracking it there i'm also i've been sitting on the highway cover advisory group that's also staff and it's mostly just letting us know like when their meetings are and kind of blessing their their calendar um so they're riveting meetings but they are helpful to keep keep track of everything um and then the uh um and then julia serves on the esc which is amazing and then there's this uh the the new newly formed as julia mentioned the historic albino advisory board so there's a lot of groups and actually i was on a call earlier this week with dan and some of the more technical staff in um in operations meeting with the project um like the engineering team just to go over some of the technical stuff because we just really weren't caught up and that was also a helpful meeting and so we have some follow-ups to do just to better understand what's like what the next step is in terms of um you know do they what kind of access they would need to do any kind of testing so it's it's happening at all levels can can we have um can we have some visibility on the materials that are being developed um i mean if there was a charter and a value statement um you know i'm finding out about all of this stuff around i-5 more from the newspaper and twitter and facebook than anyone i'm happy to share what we've seen um i i think part of it is not knowing what what level of detail you all want so that's helpful to know and i am happy to share it we can we can send that out um they they haven't met i say there's a little bit of a pause while odot restructured um things this summer so i think the last one we met was in in june um but we can we can share the documents today they're super high level right now andrew there there's one other issue that i guess that for the committee that um i'm interested in um and it's a little bit the good news is it's not really an issue right now because we don't have students in school but the issue of the school resource officers that there was an mou that superintendent had negotiated with the police chief we clearly aren't and don't have no mou wasn't um adopted and the last thing that happened on this issue was the superintendent appointing a task force or announcing the task force and one of their work products was to make sure that um we could minimize the you know police police officers in schools but i'd just like to get an update on so they're no we're no longer having school resource officers but what is what is the role because there are cases in which the police get called um to our schools and it would be good to understand what our position is is going to be as as a district
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maybe um uh courtney can we put that on the agenda for the next meeting to get uh just a briefing update i don't know i don't know who the appropriate person it would be jonathan and i can i can connect with him i think you know in the midst of everything that's going on sorry my dogs in the background um in the midst of everything that's been going on in the last few months it's it's um it just hasn't been the number one priority but it's definitely on his radar and he i know he's um he's thinking about it so i'll touch base with him and get caught up and then i'll bring it forward for the next meeting and maybe um it's also with um molly um just because there's this aspect of yes we've made a decision that there's not going to be sort of regular school resource officers but we still there is still a safety component um and so what what does that look like how does pps how does molly and the rest of the pps security team interact with not just ppb but um other law enforcement agencies or dhs and when we do have things that come up great that's a good flag um okay we are about 10 minutes over so i want to bring this to a close um we have our next meeting on october 22nd um courtney it sounds like your next steps uh you're circling back uh to get ideas from senior leadership team um we'll be coming back i think at that october 22nd meeting with uh uh relatively yeah i'd like to refine refine our agenda um and send it around well ahead of time so that you all can offer feedback and tell me it's totally not the direction you wanted to go or the opposite hopefully and then we can just you know continue to refine it ahead of that 22nd meeting and then it'll be you know in better shape for um for you guys to have some more discussion we can make any more adjustments and then bring it to the full board in november and i can't i'll talk to roseanne about the november board meeting schedule and work on getting some time great and then um and then i think we can talk a little bit of of the items that people have brought up we want to talk about um you and i could talk a little bit about sort of scheduling those out over our community meetings you know that sounds great so good and then i'll connect with parker and others offline perfect any other closing uh nathaniel did you have a question uh no just a note um courtney if you want to get in contact with me i can um tell you about the dsc agenda and all that thank you i love it perfect all right any other closing comments from julia rita courtney anyone else nope thank you everybody great meeting enjoy your monday thank you


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