2020-10-06 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2020-10-06
Time	18:00:00
Venue	Virtual/Online
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting 10/06/20

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king of the board of education for october 6 2020 is called to 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 pps tv services website and on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times good evening and welcome to tonight's board meeting we along with many of our students and families are anxiously awaiting updates on comprehensive distance learning racial equity and social justice and online learning we all are also anxiously awaiting the election that's coming up and so i have two board colleagues tonight who are going to give us a little brief snapshot of the bond that is coming before us on the november 3rd ballot andrew are you ready sure i'll jump i wasn't sure when this when this was happening um yeah no so i just want uh we do have a very important bond uh vote coming up in november and um there's been a lot of work going on um out there board members had either visited in person or did video um presentations at back to school nights um throughout the district um which i think it was mine at least the ones i went to was generally well received got a few uh questions and definitely a lot of interest and directed people out to the website i think probably um this is going to be a little bit wonky but that's who i am um one of the most exciting things for me about this bond is that it maintains the um uh the momentum that the district has around its infrastructure and infrastructure backlog and voters very generously increased their taxes in 2012 and 2017 and right now we have the benefit of being able to extend uh that tax rate in the bond uh without an increase in taxes and still raise 1.2 billion dollars for very very needed investments in our schools and our curriculum and health and safety and so forth so i would encourage voters to find out more um go to the website yes for pdx school yes sorry yes pdxschools.com um and uh and learn all you can and ask questions and vote for the bond in november director constance did you have any thoughts to add to that um sure i just wanted to share that um this is the third bond campaign that i've worked on as a parent volunteer before i was on the board with the 2012 campaign and then 2017 and now and one of the things that's really gratifying is that when i've been talking to people um it's it's very it feels very different because people can see what all those past investments are doing for our communities or their kids are already experiencing learning in these 21st century schools that have been redone so um it's really exciting to think that you know at some point we're going to have invested in our whole portfolio buildings and very soon we will have um uh redone all of our high school buildings so i just wanted to share that aside and also we are we have an event coming up in a week with some leaders in the bipark community who are really excited about the investments in jefferson high school and in the center for black student excellence so it's really great to see that excitement and that recognition of the importance of those elements in this bond um so we're feeling some momentum and the needs of all of our learners hi anyway um and i think that's all i had to say andrew i'm not sure if he mentioned at the very beginning that we do have lawn signs so if anybody out there is listening and they want some lawn signs um hit me up all right thanks those of you who know where i live there's a pile in my front yard to pick up so um the yard signs are great all right we are going to move forward now with our consent agenda um and uh there was a change to the consent agenda um resolution 6186 will be voted on after the consent agenda so are there any other changes to uh are there any other items that people would like to pull from the consent agenda tonight all right ms bradshaw are there any changes to the consent agenda no all right do i have a motion and second to adopt the consent agenda so moved seconded okay director constand moves and director depos seconds the adoption of the consent agenda is there any board discussion on the consent agenda i just have a short comment to make about the contracts on the agenda tonight um at the last couple board meetings i've raised a
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couple raised some issues about some of the contracts that we've had um primarily sort of the formatting and the information contained and i um just want to acknowledge that um working this past week with staff that we now have publicly posted a summary of our student and families contracts which is i think a significant step forward in terms of transparency um instead of just having a brief sentence we um have a summary of the scope of work um who's doing the work and i think that provides important information to our community but also um at the same time protects and maintains the privacy of key financial data and terms that are in the actual contracts which used to be posted so i want to thank staff for coming up with a template which provides transparency and information but at the same time protecting the district's information um i also had raised the last couple weeks uh the last month that some of the contracts that the final performance measures um weren't in the contract so that they were due by the 30th so i'm just in in conversations with um the district staff i'm looking forward to getting those tonight we also have contracts which have the first those performance measures do at the first progress report which is december 1st um so i just want to make sure that at a certain point in time that those um get that those performance final performance measures get married up with the actual contracts and that in this and the summary um and then finally i want to um i appreciate that ms ledezma provided us an overarching summary of the reports that we've the contracts we've had for the last several meetings and understand that the quarterly and annual reports that traveled with the contracts last year are in the process of being produced so just want to thank staff for the follow-up um from the last several meetings all right any further discussion on the consent agenda all right the board will now vote on resolutions 6181-6185 and resolution 6187 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 thank you nathaniel all right do now we move on to resolution 6186 do i have a motion and second to adopt resolution 6186 resolution to approve a cost of living adjustment for non-represented employees for fiscal year 2021 still moved [Music] and i invite you if you're not currently speaking to please mute your audio um so it sounded to me like director scott moved and director bailey seconded correct okay the scots we got it um is there any board discussion on resolution 6186 right the board will now vote on resolution 6186 resolution to approve a cost of living adjustment for non-represented employees for fiscal year uh 2020 through 2021 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no no are there any abstentions resolution 6186 is approved by a vote of six to one with student representative shu voting uh yes all right great thank you and nathaniel um we're gonna go ahead and uh shift the agenda so that you can get to jefferson for back to school night so i invite you now to share your report with us this evening thank you i would like to begin by following up on student government elections across the district and more specifically dsc member elections at those schools which do not currently have representation on the council as you may know the high schools which have student governments post many of the high school which have student governments postponed their elections scheduled in the spring of 2020
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as a response to the shift to distance learning a number of those schools are hosting these elections now for example jefferson is in the process of recruiting candidates to one and similarly wilson is voting this week including for the representative on the dsc also in accordance with what i said last meeting jen and i have begun to reach out to the student government advisors or school admin of the schools which do not currently have a representation on the council thus far we have met with those from wilson and alliance at benson and will meet with mlc tomorrow with hopefully more to come hopefully more schools come ah i would also like to note that quarter one progress reports are due this thursday meaning that for those of us in high school we are halfway through our quarterly classes and a bit under a month away from grades going on our transcripts i for one hope that progress reports give us more concrete insight onto how the student body is overall doing in their classes especially compared to last spring given how many aspects have changed since then um additionally members of the dsc would like me to mention that as the method of taking attendance in classes is at the discretion of individual teachers at many schools there have been certain classes in which there have been unnecessary and inequitable attendance policies such as requiring all students to have their cameras on for live classes and finally as you heard earlier jefferson's open house is currently underway and i will be leaving this meeting for a short time in order to join that one which is of course the final open house of my high school career uh thank you and that concludes my report nathaniel this is director constance i have a quick question so uh about the elections for the dsc do you have um a way for those to happen in every high school now were you able to link them up with their student government elections or are you still trying to work that out there is no standardized model but um to answer that no we have not completed working that out we are in the process of of trying to get representation from every high school um okay let us know if there's anything we can do to help i also have a quick question and that's that is there um anything you can do or the the body can do to try to increase diversity and student leadership levels um i know it's not just on you but um i think i'd like to see you know an effort be being made to you know hear from a wider variety of voices i'm happy to answer that uh or uh director shu happy to step back and have you answer it uh jonathan if you want to um well so the only thing i was going to say director to pass uh jonathan garcia chief engagement officer uh last year we um uh working uh in in conjunction with danny ledesma our racial equity advisor we developed a set of goals uh uh and objectives around the desire to increase leadership opportunities for our students particularly our students of color so we began to identify key strategies uh along those lines on how do we increase diversity so as the ds as nathaniel and ian are working to really unpack the dsc really making sure that uh we have uh you know students of color representative students experiencing disabilities as students with different uh lived experiences that can help shape that conversation and as always as we are embarking on a number of endeavors whether it's strategic planning or any decision making we always try to ensure that we have a good representation and intentional representation of students of color uh and of students across our region so uh not that we're not we haven't solved every single issue but i think we're working towards uh improving the way in which our kids uh in particular our students of color show up uh in our decision making uh abilities so i know that next month we're going to be later this month my office uh is going to be sharing uh as part of our learning uh roadmap uh more on our community engagement so i'm happy to uh when we get to that have a more
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robust conversation about about diverse increasing our our student leadership uh opportunities for our kids of color that's great thank you all right nathaniel uh enjoy your time at the back to school night and i can't believe it's already your last one of your career um time flies doesn't it all right we have some proclamations tonight to celebrate and so um we're going to begin with um recognition of october being dyslexia awareness month um and we're going to be voting on a resolution to designate october 2020 as deluxe dyslexia awareness month and the full resolution is posted on the board website superintendent guerrero would you like to introduce the resolution and the proclamation thank you chair lowry i'd like to invite elizabeth martin who serves as our program administrator for dyslexia to share with the board work that's been underway and i can't think of a better representative for this proclamation elizabeth thank you superintendent guerraro and board directors it is a pleasure to be here tonight i'm going to share my screen because i want to show you oh it looks like it's disabled um let's see could someone share who has hosting capabilities i have um a brochure to share with you that really highlights that further awareness building that we can put forth to our families in pps oh looks like i am ready so let me go ahead and share it as i talk through this so over the past nine months even in the midst of our global pandemic four members of the dyslexia advocacy group have collaborated together on a family brochure to get into our schools and get into our family's hands as you can see here and i'll scroll and show you it's it's a little hard to see because it's going to be a folded brochure of course but um this is really highlighting a few things like what is dyslexia in family friendly language um how to recognize the potential signs and symptoms of dyslexia what a student with dyslexia needs in their instructional day and how to really access resources and support within our community and pps as well as outside of our community at pbs so it will be available to families as early as our conference time um and then it will live in our schools and it will be available to students families to really build that awareness across our system i have to say it's been really fun i learned some graphic design skills and i could not have done this without our advocacy group so i have to give a special shout out to carrie luce jennifer poultz and lisa lyon who collaborated on this to get a product that we feel really proud of so thank you for letting me share this tonight and i look forward to sharing more later this month during our board study session all right thank you very much elizabeth the board will now vote on resolution number 6188 resolution to designate october 2020 as dyslexia awareness month do i have a motion yeah sorry we do have a public comment for this resolution should we do that before the vote yes let's please have the public comment now thank you okay we have moira finnegan hi thank you um good evening chair lowry vice chair bailey superintendent guerrero and members of the school board my name is moira finnegan and i'm a speech language pathologist at franklin high school uh well this has got to be one of the most challenging school years ever i'm here this evening to celebrate and to share my joy about the progress pps has made in serving the needs of students with reading difficulties including dyslexia i came to learn about dyslexia nine years ago during my first year with pps i had a fifth grade student who transferred from the pioneer program to awkward green which was where i was working at the time and at my first meeting with him this student said to me can i tell you a secret and it turns out his secret was i can't read he was a fifth grader but he was reading and writing at a first grade level he had behavior issues which may well have been developed as a way to divert attention from the fact that he couldn't read he was african-american his reading disability coupled with the racial inequities that pervade our society put this student at risk for dire life
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outcomes i tried to teach the student basic reading skills but i quickly realized i was in over my head the student could read simple words like top but when i added an s to create the word stop the student was completely lost and could not read the word i didn't know how to teach him to read because i didn't understand why he was having such a hard time sounding out the words i sought out specialized training on dyslexia and learned that this student was suffering from severe dyslexia due to a lack of training on dyslexia in their teacher preparation programs not a single educator in general education or special education who had worked with the student over the years had picked up on the clear signs of dyslexia something needed to change that was 2012 in 2013 some pps parents and i along with another pps educator started an advocacy group called decoding dyslexia oregon in 2015 our group worked with the oregon legislature to pass laws requiring that all kindergarten and first grade students in our state be screened for signs of dyslexia and at least one teacher in every elementary school be offered appropriate training so they could spot the signs of dyslexia that had been missed in my student this year under the leadership of tonya mckee in the pps humanities department and with the support of superintendent guerrero our district began offering a course on the science of reading called letters this course is an excellent way for pps educators to get the information they need to spot the signs of dyslexia and provide effective instruction for their students who are struggling to learn how to read i am grateful for tanya mckee's passion for ensuring that all students especially our black and indigenous students and students of color get every opportunity to learn to read she puts it so eloquently when she says reading is a civil right it is the skill that empowers our students who are future adult citizens to participate fully in our society it was a dream of mine back in 2013 to see a training like this offered by the district i can confidently say this training has the power to change the life trajectories for some of our most vulnerable students i hope the district will continue to make funding for this program a priority thank you for making this investment in our educators and our students thank you so much and can i just say you have the coolest wallpaper i've ever seen all right so do i have um a motion to um proclaim or to adopt this resolution about dyslexia awareness month so moved second okay so director to pass seconds and i think that was director scott or director depos moves and i think it was director scott who seconded correct okay great um any uh board discussion on this resolution some something i want to say i want to just um thank all the parents and staff who worked on this because having had a child who struggled to read um for the first five years in pps this is a super important unlock for for our students so uh thanks for the parents and staff for persisting um and making it happen because this wasn't in place in the early 2000s and it certainly wasn't in place in the early 1960s when i needed it so you know thank you to everybody and i'm glad that we can have a month in which we recognize and celebrate the progress that's been made and the work that we do for students who need extra help chair lowry if i may thank you for that recognition director brim edwards this has been a quite a collaborative effort i think we all recall the the attention that was that was brought on this really important topic and um it just so happens our next study session for directors will be focused on dyslexia and you'll get to hear all about the amazing progress that that has been done in this area so we're gonna we're gonna pause here on this wonderful proclamation and we'll get to learn a lot more later this month i do think it's very telling of the work that pbs has done that orton gillingham practitioners and educators has recognized the district for the work that we have done and and know that orton gillingham is in a lot of ways leading um some of the educational innovations on dyslexia education so that's a great honor and a real recognition from experts about the work of the district all right let us uh now vote all those in favor of adopting resolute i've lost my script all those in favor of adopting resolution six one eight eight uh please indicate uh so by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate out by saying no are there any abstentions all right resolution 6188 is approved by
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a vote of seven to zero and i think student representative shu has left us correct yes okay so seven to zero all right um if you like proclamations you're going to be super excited because we have like four more because october is a big month and we have a lot of amazing things going on in our district so we are going to recognize that october is also disability awareness month and we're going to be voting on a resolution to proclaim october 2020 as disability awareness month superintendent aguero would you like to introduce this proclamation yes i think you're all uh very familiar with noel sisk who's continues to to be an important uh part of connective tissue with our families and community and it's my great pleasure to introduce to you a partner in this work now to support spanish-speaking families and that's paulina larena so you're going to hear from both of them directors if you recall many of you have accompanied me on a number of important dialogues with spanish-speaking families who really appreciated that important link between school system and our special education families so i can't think of a better pair tonight to to speak a little bit more to the work in this area noel and paulina thank you so much superintendent guerrero um i'm excited because this is the first full year that we've had this resolution and as a parent of a child with a disability and someone who works as a professional advocate for people with disabilities i believe this resolution is something that says we as a district care and believe that our students with disabilities are equal members of their school communities it calls on us as parents advocates and school professionals to continue in action and not in just words and not just awareness the idea is now 45 years old which is what gives our students the right to access an equal education as a student with a disability and beautifully with this bond in uh collaboration with this the ada is now 30 years old and while neither one of those two things are too old because that's around my age i am very excited that we are recognizing this as one of the largest districts in the northwest and we serve so many students with disabilities both invisible and visible and i think that it's very important including our students with mental health needs our students with their own diverse needs and our students with mobility needs that they're not just getting into the buildings but when they are in the building they are welcomed and that they have an investment that we are doing in curriculum to make sure that it's accessible to all students and i think part of this resolution will also call on the general education population of teachers to be equal members in this process and that it's not just landing on the special education and educators who are brilliant and the parent advocates who believe this with all their heart but that we need this to be a collaboration between all of us to make sure that all of our communities are welcoming so i very much thank you for considering this this evening and i'd like to hand it over to my amazing colleague this is her second day and her first main meeting in front of the board so but i can't hear on the screen but i believe paulina she's there buena tardes um good evening yeah my name is larinas i this is my second day so i'm a little bit nervous and i'm not sure exactly what i can say about the job but i'm super excited about working with noel and doing this job for me as a professional i've been doing this job for about seven years and as a parent i have two kids who receive special education services and have a disability so i'm excited to support families i think the special education system is really complex and i'm happy to be here helping families i was once a parent who didn't speak english so i know how difficult can be navigate the system without the language so i'm excited thank you very much thanks paulina gracias uh lowry yes just a quick note for the public uh and and to boost their confidence uh this second position is made possible through a wise investment of the student investment account here at pps and paulina you are in good company we had dr brown and dr o both spoke on their first day with us or one of their early days with us so uh i think uh the same was true of our climate
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curriculum uh person as well so we have a tendency of doing that and then we see amazing work from people so welcome and thank you for being here and for the work you do um as we we consider this proclamation the other good thing to note is the work that the bond will do for accessibility um and thinking about how all of our students can feel welcomed i loved what you said noelle about you know across the spectrum um of lots of different students with lots of different needs how their schools can be places of welcome places of support and places where students get what they need before we have any further discussion on this resolution let's get it before us officially so um do i have a motion on um resolution six one eight nine so moved second does anyone have a second for me all right i heard uh director brim edwards and then director bailey uh so director broome edwards moves and director bailey seconds the motion to adopt resolution 6189 ms bradshaw is there any citizen comment on resolution 6189 no all right i uh saw that michelle had unmuted uh is there any board discussion on this resolution director depos i wanted to just welcome paulina [Music] to your job and and wish you the best i i would like to too and i just wanted to share that last year i had the opportunity to meet with a group of spanish-speaking parents who have children in special education and their advocacy was amazing and it's this is also um i know an area that is near and dear to the superintendent's heart so it's a combination of his commitment and their advocacy that resulted in making these improvements and funding your position but i have to say it was um really heartbreaking for me to talk with those families because to the extent that language was a barrier for them their children were not receiving special education services and they couldn't advocate for them and they couldn't express what their individual needs were and so they were just locked out of educational opportunity and it was really really painful and so i'm especially glad and proud to see the toolbox that we have that's so user friendly for families um really explaining step by step how to navigate the special education process and the iep process so you guys are an amazing team and i'm so grateful that our families have have this access now so go ahead scott no huh you weren't gonna say something okay you look so official there with your tie um so i i wanted to maybe just do a brief um addition to what uh chair lowry mentioned that in addition to um i'm assuming adopting this resolution tonight and supporting um our students and families throughout the year in terms of providing operational support and the work that is done by the the staff team i also want to just make sure that we flag for the whole community that as director lowry mentioned that we have an opportunity with the bond to make a huge step forward in terms of making our facilities accessible to our students we have 39 million dollars in the bond that would allow that provide that every main floor of the of our schools across the city would be accessible um and this is part of um reaching our commitment or making our commitment real when we talk about ada and making our buildings accessible so the bond everybody has an opportunity this november next next month or if you vote early this month to help make our buildings a place that are welcoming and that's the perfect compliment for the staff that will welcome people once they're inside the buildings it helps if i actually hit the unmute button all right um the board will now vote on resolution six oh i'm on the wrong resolution um six one eight nine this resolution reads portland public schools board of education proclaims october 2020 as disability awareness month and galvanizes efforts that will lead our schools and policy makers to create
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real systems change so people with disabilities will enjoy equitable inclusive educational experiences ms larenas would you like to read the resolution in spanish yes let me look it up sorry i can find it out inclusivas i always have a hard time finding things during board meetings because i've got my board books agenda site i've got my script which helps me know what's coming next and then i have the zoom and so i totally understand not being able to find things right at the moment when you need them um i i think my computer just definitely hides the screens uh right at the moment when i need to call up on something so um thank you for your patience with me and i so appreciate ms laurence you're reading that in spanish all right the board will now vote on resolution 6189 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6189 is approved by a vote of seven to zero all right we are ready for our next proclamation uh it is also october is also national substance abuse awareness month and we will be voting on a resolution to recognize october as national substance abuse awareness month superintendent guerrero would you like to introduce this item i'm going to have staff our district coordinator for drug and alcohol supports mary crowe to say a few words about the real initiative which i think you've heard a little bit about uh previously which which is really aimed at providing a full spectrum of care for students who are experiencing uh addiction and mental health issues marry and i would just like to say superintendent aguero from members of the public that real is r-e-a-h-l so if they're looking it up or want more information it's real with an h after the a thank you because it's recovery education and action for healthy living yeah thank you my name is mary crowe and i'm the coordinator of the real continuum and it's my honor to address the superintendent and the school board three years ago chief brenda martnick had the vision that portland public schools should offer a coordinated continuum of substance use services that start in kindergarten with skills-based health education and continue throughout our students academic careers an example of this is last year under the leadership of the health and pe program administrator dr jenny within portland public schools middle schools adopted the botman life skills prevention curriculum which is the national best practice for delivering skills-based substance use prevention education in my role with the student success and health department i get to work to address the needs of our students who are struggling with substance use this includes expanding the range of services after offered under the real continuum recovery education in action for healthy living and that includes intervention acts access to treatment and support for ongoing recovery again under brenda's leadership we've prioritized responding to students with education and connection to services instead of discipline this was accomplished in part with the revision of the healthy substance-free learning environments and buildings board policy that was passed about a year ago to achieve the overall goals of rail we work with a range of community-based providers and district staff to provide culturally responsive and culturally specific services including psycho-education assessment and the delivery of treatment services in our schools i work with my district
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colleague colleagues in particular the counselors social workers and school psychologists to support students with substance use issues and then design systems that are there for our kids and their families our goal is to have a range of interventions that meet students where they are at with school-based services that are seamlessly integrated in to our students overall educational experience and a district-wide student advisory group has been formed to help guide this work this works made possible by the support of james loveland and amy rona and i couldn't do it without them and i'll answer any questions said jeff all right great mary we're going to go ahead and bring the motion before us and then we can ask questions after that so do i have a motion on resolution 6190 to recognize october as national substance abuse prevention awareness month and the full contents of that resolution are posted on our website okay second two seconds all right so director depos moves and director bailey seconds uh ms bradshaw is there any public comment on resolution 6190 no and i believe that was um director constance that seconded oh i'm so sorry so director pam moved and thank you and director bailey seconded all right is there any board discussion on the resolution or do we have any questions for mary i just want to say i'm really glad to see this program in place many many years ago before i was gray i started an outpatient treatment program for youth abusing alcohol probably the first in the state and it was really not recognized that alcoholism can start quite young and and of course uh alcohol abuse which there's there can be kind of a it's hard to tell where one ends and once one starts sometimes is a a huge issue for our particular teenage students dealing with life's issues so i'm just really glad that we have that service system in place all right the board will now vote on this resolution um which reads portland public school board of education hereby declares october 2020 public schools substance abuse prevention month and invites all community members to join us we want to recognize the dedication hard work and efforts of staff to support all portland public schools students kindergarten through 12th grade to live healthy lives with the skills they need to address challenges and the and be prepared to reach their highest goals and aspirations all right the board will now vote on resolution six one nine zero all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all of the pose please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions zero resolution 6190 by a vote of seven to zero i'm always i nathaniel's not here so i'm always ready to say that next part about nathaniel all right if you were excited about those first three resolutions guess what we still have one more it is national principles month and we know that our principals have been working incredibly hard especially during distance learning to figure everything out for us we're going to now be bringing before us a resolution to designate october 2020 as national principals month in portland public schools and my cat max has joined us uh because he's a fan of principals as well so superintendent guerrero would you like to introduce this item for us now i'd like to introduce our chief of schools dr sean byrd who on our behalf is going to share our appreciation for our school leaders sean thank you superintendent october is national principals month and i want to publicly acknowledge and appreciate the work of our school leaders the principalship is a challenging job under normal circumstances when principals are called on to be leaders teachers counselors nurses moms and dads and so many other things and during this global pandemic our principles have shown flexibility creativity and tremendous grace under pressure i couldn't be more proud to be the chief of schools here in pps leading this incredible group of school leaders there's a growing body of research that points to the significance
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of principal leadership on student achievement the only person in the school who is more influential on student outcomes is of course the classroom teacher and it is the principal who creates conditions in schools that allow our teachers to create their magic with students which is why it's important for us to continue to support our principles and continue to develop their skills as instructional leaders i often tell people behind every great school as an outstanding principal who empowers their teachers and communities so thank you board members for adopting this resolution this evening celebrating our principles and please join me throughout the month and thanking them for a job well done thank you dr byrd the board will now vote on resolution 6191 resolution to designate october 2020 as national principals month in portland public schools and this resolution is posted in full on our website do i have a motion so moved second okay i think that was director scott moved and director broome edward seconded great okay um ms bradshaw is there any public comment on resolution 6191 no is there any board discussion on this resolution i guess i just want to acknowledge um all the principals and assistant principals vice principals in our school district um in the 18 years that i had kids in portland public schools i've got to say so many times i learned so much from the principals at my children's school about leadership about being student focused about problem solving about communication about building teams and um i totally agree with dr byrd's um statement that behind i'm gonna paraphrase behind every great school there's a there's a great principal or an amazing leader um so i know we've got uh people working super hard across the district in highly unusual times so i want to just add my thanks to all those building leaders i would i would echo those comments i'm really glad we have this resolution to acknowledge um acknowledge this moment i think in our you know my visits to back to school nights um you know over the last few weeks just either meeting or re-meeting some of these principles and and just hearing them you know talk about what what they've done and gone through just just to you know in this time in this moment to get the schools up and running in a virtual environment i mean principals work really hard all the time i mean this is just an exceptionally um difficult time and and i think the principles are are really coming through and and and i think you know they they really are the heart of school and just even on a personal level um you know my kids have been very fortunate we've been very fortunate to have principals like deanne frolick and aaron bird and philippe reestitch and and just some amazing talent within the district and so i'm glad we get a chance to honor them here here i just will chime in and say i think the defining characteristic of our principles is their phenomenal dedication to their jobs and to their school communities it is a job that doesn't stop at the door it doesn't stop at five o'clock it doesn't stop at the list of responsibilities that someone might have told you you were going to be responsible for it's really all accompanying and accompanying and takes a uh takes a very wide and diverse skill set so here's thanks to our principals and also i'm i want to applaud the district for being a lot more thoughtful and investing a lot of time in the last two years in developing a strong principal pipeline because that has not been the case um in the recent past in portland public schools and so i i like to see us continue to nurture our teachers that are interested in an administrative role and um to bring more of our teachers of color into that and recruit from outside and um just just invest the time and energy needed in developing great principles for the future all right we are going to go ahead and vote on the resolution which reads the board of education designates october 2020 as national principals month and extends sincere appreciation to school principals for their individual and collective commitment to the success of all students in portland public schools all in favor of resolution 6191 please indicate by saying yes yes yes paul opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6191 is approved by a vote of seven to zero all right we turn now to our student and public comment before we begin i would like to review our guidelines for comment the board thanks the community for taking the time to attend this meeting
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and to provide your comments public input informs our work and we've celebrated a great deal of that work tonight with our four proclamations but we know that there is much more for us to reflect on as we hear your your thoughts and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen board members and the superintendent um will not generally respond to comments or questions during public comment but our board office will follow up on issues raised during public testimony we request that complaints about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter rather than brought up during public comment and if you have additional materials or items you would like to provide to the board or superintendent we ask that you email them to publiccomment pps.net and so that's all one word publiccomment pps.net please make sure that tonight when you begin your comment you clearly state your name and spell your last name and you'll each have three minutes to speak you will hear a sound after three minutes which means it is time to conclude your comments now ms bradja i think we have some exciting uh comment signed up for tonight i know several of us have heard from ruby already but uh who all do we have signed up for student comment ms bradshaw we'll start with ruby and her sister essa yeah ruby i'm so glad you're here i saw you on katu and i have received your excellent emails and i look forward to hearing from you again tonight welcome hello my name is ruby wasstrol my last name is spelled w-a-a-s space no hyphen s-h-u-l-l my preferred pronouns are she her and hers i'm currently a fifth grader at bridger school i'm here to talk to you tonight about the possible renaming of kellogg middle school for ruth bader ginsburg i would like to start by saying that this isn't about me or what i work for myself this is about something bigger something we need to see in our community the recognition and celebration of trailblazing female leaders based on the over three thousand five hundred supporters on my channel or petition i know many others also want this i live a few blocks away from what is currently kellogg middle school i can tell just by looking at it that a lot of kids will go there they will really be influenced by the name of the school i think supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg would be a great person to name the school for for many reasons for many years i have been really inspired by who she was and have conducted research about her life and work a few things have really stood out to me i will first talk about her character she was born into a lower middle class family and ended up on the supreme court next she never gave up even when she was told no countless times lastly she still managed to fight for what she believed in even after the death of her mother sister and husband all these things represent her perseverance now i will talk about her influence she has fought for equal rights for women as well as men she has taught us about the importance of equality and she has fought for the opportunity for children to pursue their dreams not limited by their sex or gender assigned to them at birth in this moment we all need hope and inspiration ruth peter ginsberg was a symbol of both thank you for your time and now my sister will speak my name is esawa shaw my last name is spelled w-a-a-s space no hyphen s-a-2-l-l my preferred pronouns are she her and hers i'm in the third grade at richard school ruth was first in her class and very focused on change when marty ginsberg her husband was diagnosed with cancer she attended his classes on top of her she has changed the world and deserves to have a school named after mr joseph keller did many things for the community in his time while he was alive but ruth bader ginsburg is here for our time in this century when ruth was a kid mom stayed home and did the cooking and caregiving while the dads went to work this bitter goodness didn't think this was fair wasn't there so she knew this needed to change she has made our world a better and fairer place so will you please consider ruby and my proposal sincerely essa thank you for your time do you have any questions thank you thank you to both of you thank you very much thank you for public comment we have kelly purdy hi um thank you so much for this opportunity to address the board and superintendent my name is kelly purdy last name spelled p-u-r-d-y i use she her pronouns um i wrote to you on september 16th about prioritizing mental health by simplifying schedules and requirements
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my kids are in third grade and kindergarten so i focus on reaching out to the kindergarten through fifth grade community to come up with a concrete proposal on how to do this and um with the help of my pta president harmony quiroz we sent this proposal out as a petition four days ago and as of 6 p.m tonight 265 people have signed it since i have limited time to speak i will go ahead and present this proposal it reads dear portland public schools administrators we the undersigned parents teachers and staff of pps in the interest of making distance learning more sustainable and improving mental health outcomes for all students families and teachers urgently request that you simplify the k-5 schedule by reducing district requirements while we appreciate your desire to provide students with a robust education despite the pandemic the reality is that now more than ever a trauma-informed approach to education is required as a result of covet 19 and other mounting community crises all students parents and school staff are experiencing trauma because neurobiologically no one can learn unless they feel safe we must prioritize predictability and consistency over typical achievement metrics unfortunately the requirements put forth by the district though well intended result in a chaotic stressful meeting schedule that requires adult intervention at home to maintain and when there are multiple young students with disparate schedules the task is near impossible some teachers are quietly simplifying their schedules in response to community feedback but this puts them in a precarious situation this also creates further inequity between students with a simple regular daily schedule and students whose teachers are still trying to follow the unsustainable schedule required to meet district guidelines for these reasons we are writing to urge pps to update its requirements to allow for a simple daily k-5 schedule as well as empower teachers and principals to make adjustments quickly in response to community feedback i sent this out in an email to all the board members and the superintendent but here is a quick visual of the schedule that we are proposing it's an example simplified schedule and the qualities of this schedule are it is a simple consistent daily schedule for all students k through five same times each day students from all grades transition at the same time for greater ease of managing multiple students at home or in a child care setting students will attend the same small group each day whether it's language arts or math so relationship building predictability and consistency is prioritized over ideal differentiated learning differentiated learning can still be attended to in the asynchronous apps finally the mini lessons are recorded separate from the live meeting to avoid confidentiality concerns and they can be accessed asynchronously for maximum flexibility for students and parents so in summary with simpler goals we contribute positively to the mental health of students parents and teachers so that effective learning can take place during these unprecedented times i welcome your questions and feedback you can reply to the email i sent yesterday thank you thank you thank you we have taylor morrow okay greetings so thank you uh you know board members most of you know me andrew i do not know you michelle i do not know you but everyone else uh i know and many of you have actually a working relationship with um i helped to contribute on the previous bond i support this bond but i'm here to talk about that projected enrollment that was right-sizing with the bonds and the thing that i'm really disappointed with pps which is the failure to do equitable boundary drawing i really find it absurd that we're doing this by the southeast fundamentally my value is and even the value of the law is that we do not have a right to walk ability or write ability for me as a black person that signals that right oh you can have the ability to choose your kid to walk to any school or ride to any school they want i've never had that as a black person in my life i was blessed right so i want you to understand that what you need to put as a value is taking schools that have too many students and dispersing them among other schools that don't have enough students the value should not be placed on whether or not a kid can walk or ride because that is not constitutionally guaranteed and that is not
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guaranteed by any oregon statue right it's something that parents use as an excuse or as a euphemism or as you know a dog whistle to not want to send their kids to school with black and brown students and although i appreciate white parents putting blm signs in your window and on your lawn send your kids to school with my kids in madison don't be afraid to send your kids to my skit where my kids went to school because they're black or brown right understand that you as the parent have the most value to making your kid a successful human in this environment and so regardless of where they're going to go to school they're going to be fine but because of the fear and i want you white parents to know this you fear sending your kids to school with my kid because he's got wide nostrils and and and broad lips but you'll put a sign in your yard right saying you support black lives matter and that hurts right because we're exhausted we're exhausted with the rhetoric we're exhausted with the the the you know you're trying to placate us right i appreciate everything you've done i definitely like i drive every day past like madison like i love it like my heart sings seeing what my kids in the future of my neighborhood has i got a 14 year old so experienced four years i've had a kid that recently graduated but i want the experience regardless of what the physical experience to be that every student and every parent values diversity and that means don't be afraid don't be afraid to come in my house and eat don't be afraid to come come come to our restaurants don't be afraid to hold hands and and send your kids to school with our kids because that's the way i perceive living in portland for 17 years as a transplant living important as a black person so please do something to make equitable boundaries thank you randolph carter good evening thank you for allowing me to speak my name is randolph carter c-a-r-t-e-r preferred pronouns he him his i want to first of all congratulate the board on passing the proclamation with regard to dyslexia i have a seventh grader who attends beverly cleary school who was diagnosed with dyslexia four years ago when we moved to portland he has had up to this point an extraordinary experience with great support from his teachers but we actually found that in order for our son to be academically and socially successful we need to reach out to resources beyond the district we retained a tutor to assist with his reading and writing and that has allowed him to keep pace with other students in his class i might say that that tutor is not exorbitantly expensive but it does require us to spend money to provide that resource he also additionally had to have a mouth tutor so that additional support for our son helped him keep pace but it also caused us to spend money that in retrospect many families do not have i guess tonight what i'm most interested in is pointing out that this kind of support is required our son has an iep and until the pandemic he was receiving support that support has been limited the educational resources that he was getting from the district have been depleted at this moment when our most vulnerable students need our support so and we know that the from the oregon department of education but students of color my son is african-american tend to be in the greatest need of support so thank you for the work you've done but we're in a moment right now when we need to keep those resources up to the requirements of our students let me just add also that decoding dyslexia and the resources they provided me and the district have been extraordinary i'd like to recognize them and the support they've given but i want to say that in this moment i'd like a district to think about how we can work creatively to keep those resources available to our students in greatest need i know it's difficult given the remote learning given the social distancing but these are the students who need both the technical pedagogical support as well as the social support so thank you for the resolution but i'd also like to make sure that those
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resources are made available to our children thank you thank you thank you and then we have colleen kellogg oh hi i'm colleen kellogg last name k-e-l-l-o-g-g and pronouns um she her his thank you for giving me a few moments to speak and thank you to the board i know this is a difficult job or you have a difficult job and you volunteer your time for our community governor brown released return to play guidelines for k-12 students over two weeks ago the guidelines focus on safety and recognize the emotional social and physical impact the extended exclusion from athletics has had on our youth the expectations and structures are clear and align with osa guidance as of today portland public schools has not responded to the proposal from high school athletic directors who worked with coaches outlining their plans for safely complying with the rules and engaging student athletes the community students coaches and parents are anxiously awaiting for the green light in order to safely return or to for safe training opportunities to begin recognizing that our window for good weather is closing as district leadership contemplates when to open portland public schools fields and outdoor facilities i would encourage you to consider these points equity safety and commitment the pandemic has revealed ugly truths opportunities are not equal for our bipark students students are impacted by food scarcity students impacted by houselessness or poverty access to athletics and other activities also falls under this umbrella families across the state have enrolled their children in private clubs sent them to other states for academy training or hired personal trainers all of these require financial resources at public high schools sports are available to all regardless of income equity is also an issue as we talk about the past three weeks and access to school-based athletics in our region neighboring districts have moved forward with providing outdoor training sessions following the government's guidelines tonight salem kaiser announced that their schools will be returning to practice within the week why is portland public schools denying their community an opportunity to engage in sports safely knowing the mental health as well as academic impact sports and activities have on adolescence social emotional learning has been a high priority for districts across the state during cdl involvement in extracurriculars is a large component of the implementation of sel at the high school level perhaps one concern is safety oregon has done a good job managing the pandemic in terms of infection rate remain one of the lowest infected states in the nation this is largely due to many in our state following mass requirements and social distancing as surrounding schools and districts start training and in some cases competing portland public school students will know about it if they have not already many kids will start gathering playing and training while not following protocols they will not have the benefit of their coaches guidance reminders and expectations for safely participating in group sessions lastly i want to mention commitment as an educator i have many students with a variety of needs i cannot address the needs of every student every day but that does not mean i do nothing because it would not be fair i do what i can when i can to the best of my ability if there is a tool that will benefit 45 of my students i use it then i find ways to reach the other 15. now is not the time to divide ourselves and create conflict over who gets to do what if there are activities that can take place outdoors the district has an obligation to allow that to happen rather than focusing on other programs that would be excluded instead strategize how to empower indoor programs and clubs to design ways to meet and gather safely outdoors our students deserve the best decision-making process from us not fear-driven or divisive thinking i'm hopeful that our student-athletes clubs and other activities will be back with their teammates coaches and advisors by the end of the week if portland public schools chooses not to allow practices to resume please make that announcement as well so that individual groups can move forward with discussing other options there are seniors who have already lost their spring season and are losing hope for what ought to be their capstone year and i would just add anecdotally that my daughter when she was playing high school um her coach identified a mental health issue that i would not have seen
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so i have a personal passion for coaches and sports excuse me i'm sorry high school is also different from middle school and elementary there's recreational opportunities for middle school and elementary students for example little league that is that have already put into place because perks and rec have opened up their fields high school students do not have that option high school sports is their one place or clubs where they can perhaps have some semblance of normalcy um i think that's all i have to say so thank you i think sometimes um the the tears or the the emotion really can speak volumes beyond the words that you shared so thank you for your vulnerability and and sharing that little piece of your daughter story tonight and i'm so thankful that there was that coach there to offer that support to your family mr do we have any other public comments nope that concludes so we have signed up thank you all again for your comments um and if you have any follow up uh please contact our board manager roseanne powell i think it takes great courage to to share your thoughts and your stories and so we really appreciate that um hearing what you have to share and the perspectives you all have on the district and the ways that that we can continue to adjust to serve our students um to the best of our abilities so thank you for your time tonight and for um being brave enough to speak up and and to be vulnerable with us tonight we hear now from our superintendent guerrero with an update about um our district superintendent guerrero evening again directors and and staff colleagues buenas tardes uh and good evening to everyone who's tuned in uh this evening i'm waiting for the visuals to come up um but i think that the one of the main topics uh this evening we wanted to make sure and provide you a regular update about uh it includes comprehensive distance learning and where we are uh with our planning there so we have a number of important items uh to share with you as part of our staff updates dr russell brown will be providing his regular update regarding our ongoing implementation but it's the question on everybody's mind and i'm going to get right to the punch line and share right up front here uh and for everyone who's been carefully monitoring uh metrics here in multnomah county um the health metrics just aren't trending in a way that would allow us to consider reopening schools at this time even for hybrid or cohort learning anytime immediately so because of this we've decided we're going to continue with comprehensive distance learning through the second quarter which ends on january 28th we're going to be sending the communication to all of our families tomorrow to announce our decision uh you'll recall that in july we committed to let families know about our second quarter plans by october 10th we need the public health metrics to dramatically improve so uh i'll add my plea that and asking all of us in in the larger community to do our part by continuing to observe safe health practices including and especially wearing masks is going to take all of us to get those metrics where we need them to be to allow us to welcome students back to classrooms which we are anxious to do until then we are focused on continuing to improve our comprehensive distance learning experience for all our students and all grades and concentrating our more short-term focus to increasing the number of limited in-person opportunities for special groups of students and other potential limited school-based activities as has been the case throughout our pandemic decision-making our highest priority remains the health and well-being of our students and staff and we're going to continue monitoring objective health metrics provided by oha and in consultation with our medical advisory team you're going to hear more details on this topic from staff in just a bit tonight's agenda also includes a presentation on how to support welcoming and inclusive online learning so given our new and different ways for delivering educational experiences or as committed as ever to our aspirations particularly around issues of racial equity next slide please which remain particularly relevant as we think about the experience and the impact during this time of covid this includes disruptions to online learning
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involving bullying and hate speech which have which have a disproportionate effect on our students of color especially our black and native american students you will hear from our teams about national trends of online hate speech and how we are working to build healthy online communities you will also learn about the important role of social emotional learning during comprehensive distance learning and how our instructional teams are supporting culturally responsive pedagogy so i look forward to the presentation coming up soon next slide and i think mentioned earlier uh regarding work in the south east uh i also want to provide an update on our enrollment and programming balancing work uh more for the community as i know members of our board have already been heavily involved in in much of this work as it launches so our initial work is focused on schools in southeast portland in advance of the reopening of kellogg middle school which provides us with the opportunity to clarify feeder patterns in this part of the city our southeast guiding coalition made up of parents and principals representing southeast schools has held three virtual meetings to date they concluded last week with the introduction of uh let me underline this a first draft also called a springboard working title proposal key highlights of this initial proposal under discussion include kellogg middle school would reopen with the spanish dual language immersion program that is currently at mount tabor middle school moving there secondly harrison park which is currently a k-8 school would become a middle school a comprehensive middle school and then third other k-8 schools including arlida bridger creston lent and marysville would be converted into k to five schools feeder patterns boundaries and shifts to dli programs were also proposed details can be seen in the first draft document on our website it's important to note that this is a starting point of possible options for the southeast guiding coalition to think about and discuss and members of the coalition thank you again representatives from the various school communities will continue to work together in october to ask questions and develop additional versions of a possible plan later in october and again in december we will host virtual town halls for the broader community so there's much more to come and finally a reminder that enrollment and program balancing uses both the data-driven analysis process and community input to address such needs as equity and inclusion transportation facilities constraints and much more meeting agendas materials minutes and videos are all posted at the enrollment and program balancing on the pps website next slide you might recall us announcing last year that a number of portland public schools applied and were selected to pursue participate in the verizon innovative learning program the chosen schools join others across the country in receiving dedicated tablets for all students and teachers and besides the hardware benefits of the program include free monthly data plans technical project management professional development for educators encouragement of expanded stem opportunities for students next week students and teachers at cesar chavez fabian harrison park lent and marysville schools will receive their tablets free internet access and a number of other resources and we're grateful to verizon for this support now more than ever students need full and uninterrupted access to updated devices and reliable internet i hope that this partnership with verizon will inspire other potential technology companies serving oregon to consider how they might do more to support our students especially right now during comprehensive distance learning and in our next slide i shared a couple of meetings ago that no matter how unique and atypical our circumstances are no matter how busy we might be adjusting to this new reality there are certain things that continue along as before just a moment ago i talked about our commitment to racial equity and social justice which remains a lens by which we continue to critically examine our ongoing work our boundary review work continues that when we finally can welcome students back into classrooms we will have clarity to which campuses students can expect to attend next school year and we also continue to recognize our communities and celebrate our dedicated employees in the last couple of weeks we've joined others around the country calling attention to hispanic heritage month filipino american history month as well as world teachers day and national principles month thank you to all of our educators and leaders out
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there and also it was custodian appreciation day so thank you felipe ruiz who's pictured here who works at irvington elementary for your dedication we appreciate you and your hard-working colleagues across all of our schools for your efforts we have some talented people in portland public schools at our last study session you had a chance to engage in some learning with nicole berg i wanted to share with our directors that earlier today i was in a communication with our former u.s education secretary dr john king who now works at the ed trust and he's leading a very important k-12 climate uh change commission and so we had a wonderful conversation and he shared how much he's been following the work in portland public schools and really admiring the leadership role that we've been taking in a district as he engages in this topic with other school systems around the country and this evening we brought proclamations in support of national substance abuse prevention month disability awareness month and dyslexia awareness month next week another important day of honor indigenous people's day and so despite this nationwide disruption to school our students and educators continue to be recognized i wish i could tell you this evening about another bit of news happening later this week but i'm sworn to secrecy with some embargoed information but you will be hearing about one of our schools and an exciting award that they are being recognized with so please stay tuned and with that cliffhanger that concludes my remarks for this evening thank you thank you superintendent guerrero we'll be sure to stay tuned for that we've been here almost 90 minutes now and so we are going to take a short three-minute break so we'll be back at 7 25 and while we're on break we'll be listening to the grant high school choir
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you had a chance to get up and take a quick stretch it's important for all of us to move a little bit during these meetings to help us with our cognitive abilities and to stay on track um superintendent i believe that our uh next uh portion is going to be a really great update on racial equity and social justice and online learning would you like to introduce this item thank you chair lowry and i confess i did walk in a couple circles around my office so i did get up well the safety and wellness of our students particularly our students of colors is always of concern to us as parents as educators and even now in a virtual environment that's especially important for for us to to be attentive to so this evening uh our senior advisor on racial equity and social justice danny ledesma is is going to share with you some of the work underway in these important areas danny great uh so uh good morning good afternoon no good evening um it's the superintendent mentioned my name is danny and so as the superintendent framed for us uh we are in the midst of really extraordinary circumstances this fall and while we as a district as a system are coming together and being adaptive to new circumstances and new ways of delivering educational opportunities as online you know as a system as a community we are all still committed to aspirations and to hope uh particularly around racial equity and social justice and what we know at pps is that we recognize that our trajectory is not necessarily about returning to a way that was but rather how we can utilize this time as an opportunity to build something different and that is closer to our values and our aspirations so um i'm gonna sort of take us through a little bit of uh just sort of a reminder and some repetition around some of the stuff that we know about racial equity and then my colleagues are going to talk about some specific ways uh that they are uh leading around this work um uh throughout our district so the next slide um we have our vision as as you all know our community came together over two years ago to uh to chart our path to develop our north star um as a district and and one of the things that i think is um is a is a mark to the good for our community is that in every aspect of the vision there's a strong commitment to racial equity and social justice from our core values to the portrait of graduates to educator essentials to the to the required ways that our system needs to shift so that we're much more focused on racial equity and social justice and so in the next slide um we see that uh as a district we are really sort of aligned around this work in several key ways so as we talked about that we always as the district are trying to make sure that we're aligned with our core values um and you all know that in 2011 we were one of the first districts to pass such an overarching and really ambitious race educational racial sorry educational equity policy uh and and plan that really sort of outlines from from a policy level all the way throughout our system ways that we want to make sure that we're continuing to to embed racial equity throughout our work um and uh as you all know that we we use a racial equity and social justice lens uh not only to get to better decision making but as a tool to also help us come up with a shared analysis to help build a culture where we're all thinking critically where we're committed to continuous learning so we can improve the experiences for our students of color and then we have a framework and plan that sort of helps us outline goals to put all of this into practice so in the next slide um one of the ways that we think about our work and we sort of think about how we how we develop as an organization as a as an organization with many moving parts as we think about that individual what does it take for an individual to to grow and learn to build skill and capacity around racial equity and social justice but we also know that an individual can only go so far that it really is about an underlying culture a culture that supports learning a culture that is audacious and committed and a culture that reflects the the beliefs and the norms and the values that are inclusive that seek to shift power in ways that will promote racial equity and social justice so that we can we can deliver a stronger system and so as we think about some of the work that's being done you can start to see how we're trying to not only think about that sort of first and second uh sort of domain there but to also think about how we're delivering the stronger system um so then you all know and have seen this next slide which is our theory of action um this was developed as part of our the development of our emerging strategic plan that really says if we take all of the strategies around racial equity and
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social justice and really embed them and integrate them and braid them with our instructional core that we have a great opportunity to increase um to increase to increase the effectiveness of our system not only for every student but in particular for for our black and native students and so we've committed to really think about how we can center the experiences of black and native students so that we can build a system and develop that muscle so that we can build a system that is much stronger for everyone so um you know it doesn't take a very very few pages into the paper or the internet to understand that we are in the midst of quite a bit of um of a racial reckoning um the wounds and the trauma of our country's history around uh racial equity are right at the forefront and as a school system that's delivering instruction online there's lots of ways that this uh this shows up um and so you'll get to hear from my colleagues who talk about ways that we're trying to uh to trying to contend with some of the ways that this is showing up and to really sort of build a strong uh build a strong system so i'm going to turn it over to dr leanne o'banion who's going to talk with you a little bit about some of our online strategies thank you danny my name is dr leanne o'banion i use she her hers pronouns and i am the district's title 9 director within the office of student success and health as we know our school communities provide the foundation for children's learning growth and development as well as children and staff within our communities have the right to environments that promote mental emotional physical health and safety and well-being harassment discrimination intimidation exclusion and acts of hate or bias are incongruent with the organizational values that danny just out laid out for you and therefore we cannot tolerate those sorts of behaviors with this in mind we appreciate the oregon department of education's recent guidance all students belong enacted on september 18th that specifically calls out hate speech and three broadly recognized symbols of hate and those include the confederate flag swastika and noose these symbols are prohibited in school and thus also prohibited in our comprehensive distance learning environments given the systemic nature and root causes of hate bias and intolerance to be effective any solution must be trauma informed and centered in the needs and healings healing of our most impacted communities so rather than an immediate leap to discipline which does not address those root causes a more comprehensive approach will provide us with opportunities to examine the factors that create intolerance in the first place while avoiding blame and providing opportunities for growth learning and understanding this will also encourage dialogue and most importantly practice empathy building which you will hear more about when dr jill bryant discusses social emotional learning as one way to begin the process of building community and a sense of belonging lastly in order to begin this important work of prevention and harm reduction we must first understand the kinds of behaviors that are occurring within pps online within our school communities and within our classrooms to discuss this further i will hand it off to my colleague alisa shore for more on the ways we're beginning to gather data to inform this approach thank you next slide thank you leanne and danny i'm elisa shore i use she her pronouns and i'm the area senior director of high schools to fully live up to our district mission and vision we must first start with a classroom community that makes students feel warm welcome and ready to learn in a typical school year the start of school focuses on setting up that classroom community and the environment for learning with our current online environment we realized that classroom setup would look very different yet still came down to the same principles first we focused on setting up responsible digital communities teaching staff and students how the internet works how to protect data acknowledging the digital divide and learning the technical aspects of online safety in addition to building empathy in the classroom community teachers establish norms and protocols during soft start to help create these communities and spaces from there we are working in partnership with iit to ensure we have training for teachers families and students in how to use these online tools safely we want to make sure teachers know how to monitor who enters online classrooms respond when there's an incident and train students how to use the tools we are also communicating with families directly about the capabilities and limitations of these platforms
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unfortunately incidents of online discrimination harassment are escalating nationally and we are anticipating an increase through the election while we want to be proactive and create communities where this behavior does not occur we know it will arise and when it does we focus on reporting events so we can track them to identify patterns while providing resources to students impacted by an event to do so we are relying heavily on those classroom communities to repair restore and educate our online tracking system currently shows most inappropriate online incidents are uninvited zoom or meet guests who are other students but they're not the students enrolled in the class most of these incidents while disruptive are not targeted towards specific groups of students and while we see have seen a wide range of behaviors the most common behavior we've seen is related to sexual harassment or inappropriate sexual contact content while we respond to these incidents quickly and in a student-centered way we may remain convinced that the best way to address these challenges is to partner with our students families and communities to build empathy this begins with a strong with building a strong foundation social emotional learning to create a community and develop a strong foundation for learners with that i will hand it over to dr jill bryant assistant director at mtss multi-tiered systems of support to talk more about our social emotional learning thanks elisa um yes i'm jill bryant i use per net pronoun she her and i'm as lisa said the assistant director of social emotional learning which is now housed in mtss and is in chief martinex office of student supports i'm very happy to have the opportunity to share with you tonight what our sel social emotional learning team has been doing to support our teachers in schools since last spring first i want to share that i'm especially excited to tell you that this fall we have begun a partnership with the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning or castle who is the leading who are the leading experts in district-wide sel implementation together with castle we're now developing a five-year plan for district-wide sel implementation this plan will build a framework and actions for sel to be an integrated part of the work of pps we know that we must keep our focus on the long-term plan for district-wide implementation in order to make systemic change and but in and since march we also have known that because of the pandemic and the black lives matter movement schools and educators need support now this is why last spring in collaboration with two other oregon school districts we created something i'm really proud of my team that we've done is a sel pd that we're calling micro lessons and you might check them out that linked in the slide here it's a really quick format of professional development and we have regional experts speaking and this is available at any time on the web and we've had many pps teachers access it we also created k12 social emotional learning lessons for the soft start and then additionally we've and and we only have a team of two ptosis although now we do have support of mtss but right now we're a small and mighty team and last week teachers k through eight have started teaching a nine week unit called resilience we can do hard things and that's a nine week unit that should take teachers through early november so in the development of these resources for schools and teachers our sel focus has been and been on and will continue to be supporting as people have mentioned earlier but supporting relationships and community building among our schools and central office relationship building and strong communities create a foundation for racial equity and social justice as educators and administrators prioritize relationships and strong communities schools and classrooms can become places where students adults and families feel a sense of belonging and to finish here as one social justice educator puts it true social emotional learning is about understanding our relationships with ourselves and with others it's to know ourselves as holistic human beings and to be able to see the humanities and
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others to fight together for the world we deceit deserve for the world we deserve which is rooted in equity and justice i look forward to answering any questions at the end of the presentation and i believe danny you're next is that correct david martinez oh yes i'm sorry david we got out of war okay thank you thank you jill uh so uh diva martinez i'm a program associate for humanities department specifically supporting our k-5 language arts and social sciences um just giving an update on a little bit of what the work the office of teaching learning has been doing uh since the spring but also into the summer and fall um and what we hope to provide to also support uh jill and the work that she's doing with the scl department uh so excited to report that throughout the office of teaching learning uh the teaching talent social justice standards are embedded in part of the unit planning process across all content areas k-12 so in language arts and social sciences in the sciences in mathematics you're going to see the teaching challenge social stand social justice standards embedded throughout our units and throughout our lesson planning and that's really important to know because these standards are divided into four domains identity diversity justice and action and really recognizing that in today's diverse classrooms and in the seat of current events today students need the knowledge and the skills related to both prejudice reduction and collective action and so with that in our k-5 uh we're specifically going to be providing 30 minute block lesson plans for a suggested friday delivery throughout the winter in support of what jill's lesson plans that her team is also developing and these lesson plans are going to be adopted from the teaching tolerance lesson plans currently available for educators and also aligned to the social justice standards what we're really also hoping to start develop is a progression of the teaching tolerance anchor standards and domains and the real hope is that with these lesson plans students are going to be encouraged to engage in a range of anti-bias multicultural and social justice discussions and actions for middle school we're really excited in the second quarter students will start to see the incorporation of teaching tolerances new streaming class film baby in the language arts courses the film and the supporting lessons lesson plans and the resources that we're going to provide educators really help support the critical conversations about identity culture family and belonging among students while also developing their knowledge and skills around issues related to race racism and police violence so we're really excited to support uh all the work that jill and mtss teams have already developed and i will take it away to danny great thank you so as you can see we're hopefully you saw lots of different departments being represented and sort of saw all the sort of like work that folks are doing around the sort of integration of sort of like our commitment to racial equity and social justice along with our instructional core um special thanks to diva martinez who's um talking to us from several time zones away so thanks so much for for being willing to to present with us i think we're open to any questions if the board has any i have a question of david our of the office of teaching and learning so i think we had some teachers who collaborated on some black lives matter curriculum and i was wondering um it was my understanding that we were going to implement that in some in some way shape or form so i was just curious about where that is and how it intersects with what you just described so i might just i might just pop in because um so really that that work came out of the office of student performance of student of school performance um and so there was some initial work that folks had done with one of our with one of our school leaders and uh the group sort of asked us to kind of make a commitment to some deeper level of integration into into lessons to be able to be able to make sure that the lesson planning was supported and so our approach was to really do this integration between building off of the progression of the sel lessons and integrating the racial justice standards uh in in that way so what does that mean in terms of the work that have been done collaboratively by some of our school leaders it doesn't fit with the framework that we've adopted or no i think what we we think about this is like building the foundation
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uh to be able to to be able to sort of like continue to think about how to integrate those lessons eventually so we're not we don't have any plans to integrate them now in virtual learning or that's not in the works i think um i don't think that we see it as an either or we're really trying not to do that either or thinking around this i think what we're really trying to sort of focus on is that we wanted to we wanted to we identified that there were some progression some learning progressions that needed to be that needed to happen and we wanted to make sure that lessons were anchored in some of the common standards that we had as a district and so this is i think what we consider some really good pre-work um david maybe this is oh i'm sorry just one last follow-up maybe this is back to you but um were teachers involved in the thinking around the curriculum that you just described our own teachers absolutely the teachers um are the co-writers of this they're actually the foundation of it um we're working with classroom teachers um who specifically have actually um asked to be a part of this because they they're seeing in their classrooms so yes absolutely they they're they're part of the development they are actually the ones uh really at the core of it it's absolutely you have a question about support that's offered to um school administrators and in other words like if do they is there a statement that they can come out if they if there's hate speech identified in any of the online platforms um what's the district's reaction you know when when these incidents come up that that we're anticipating are already are actually happening so i think we can talk a little bit about that so the district has some uh so we've we've developed some some protocols where we uh uh sort of like in person where we sort of like follow those protocols to be able to sort of like respond appropriately and then communicate out to families and students and have been coordinating with uh sort of james loveland's team around crisis response i think this next level of online planning is sort of is uh making sure that we're giving educators and principals the right tools to be able to respond appropriately uh so for example there was a recent incident where something happened the teacher was able to quickly remove that person from the from the online platform and then immediately turn turn into some uh some group discussion to be able to address it um adequately and then the principal followed up with communication to to families that were impacted so um i think maybe i don't know if leanne or alisa would add anything else around some of the online work that we're doing i'll i'll start and then i'll kick it over to um alisa part of uh the reason and um that we're tracking um sort of what's happening is to try to better understand are these things occurring because of technical problems with our platforms or are they student behavior related and so our response is going to vary based on on sort of where that falls um elisa do you want to speak specifically to the response yeah i think you know we we try to to to model both that that how we address the impact to that classroom community how do we restore that community and how do we educate and so it it varies depending on the incident and sort of the level and the age of the students but um just as danny mentioned really kind of stopping it in the moment using the technical tools to to do that and then circling back either right then and there with further restorative conversations and then also sort of dealing with with the actor or however that the incident was caused so there's no one answer because it really really depends on the situation but we have kind of a list and we have people who help help a school leader problem solve what should come next it absolutely makes sense to be flexible in how we respond and um i'm curious with these technical like the with with somebody zoom bombing for instance do we know if that's coming from portland or if it's from outside of the area if it's coming from portland is there anything we're doing you know kids um our students are learning racism at home is there anything we're doing with parents are we communicating out to
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parents that you know there's if there if there is an incident happen in the school community you know that the adults you know what are we what are we doing with the adults um are we offering any updating communication if there's those hate symbols are found in our in our platforms or on our classes um i understand that we're we're responding based you know either through technology or or other means but i'm i'm curious what we're doing with the adults that are that are in the system where these things are happening and and what we're doing with it with the adults if anything sure you know i guess one one thing that i i think that we want to make clear is that sort of you know the these online incidents are really a sort of a barometer of where communities are right like this is this is not just happening in our schools but throughout the country and throughout many different platforms and so i think um what our approach has been and sort of in terms of sort of like staying the course around our commitment around racial equity and social justice has been to continue some of the professional development that we've been doing to to make sure that in all of our communications as we as we speak to both families and to students that we would that we respond in a way that holds steadfast to our values and that we make sure that it's it's pretty explicitly stated that there is no place for that type for hate speech and we name it as hate speech and that um and that at the same time that this is that you know we want both our in-person and our online communities to be a place that are that are reflective of our values that are welcoming that where students feel a sense of belonging and so so i think the the repetition of that the explicit stating of that and then sort of like anchoring it to the learning that we need to do as an organization is has been our approach with with adults and then i think you know we're we have to be you know we have to just kind of keep on the the repetition around that this isn't something that happens overnight right if we if we get rid of one zoom bomber that it's all fixed that these are deeply entrenched issues and we have to continue to to repeat our values and to to build a system where we're you know eventually that this is not this is you know it doesn't um it doesn't belong anymore thank you kind of a follow-up question to them has been trying to get in uh for a little bit so can we let i know it's hard on zoom but can we get director morin and then we'll go to director bailey well if scott wants to follow up um why don't you go and then i'll follow you is that thank you uh director moore um so i think part of our pd is to uh enable our educators to feel more confident and skilled and uh you know when stuff happens in a classroom setting how do we deal with it in a way that's productive for for all the students um and protective at the same time uh how do we gauge that we're making progress along those lines and maybe that's uh that's a dr brown question or danny go for it well so so i guess you know we are we are sort of tracking these incidents and so one of the ways that we we do this is we sort of like have forms and i think you know we have to build in the internal practice to kind of review these and make sure that we're looking at those and i think that you know both leanne and elise have talked a little bit about kind of how we're doing some of that as as one way to gauge that um i think the other way that we're trying to gauge this is ultimately going back to uh what doc what what dr bryant and what david talked about is sort of like the importance of creating classroom community the importance of sort of of affirming students identities so that in addition to the sort of response that we're also building into the progression of learning that there is um that that that we're creating conditions that are conducive for our students to to learn um and to feel a sense of belonging um and so i think there's there's um and i know that as a board you all have had done some some deep work around sort of how are we going to sort of uh think about what those metrics look like in in the form of you know our board goals and and moving forward so um i think there's some some rich work to do i don't know if dr brown would add anything or if jill or david um and danny i think you said it well it it really is uh about changing conditions for learning and i think the place that we're most likely to see
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that uh show up over time is in more equitable outcomes in terms of student sense of belonging sorry director yep follow-up so i get that from the student point of view um but i'm asking specifically from the educator point of view and that's not so much although including the kind of big incident but also uh on the one hand the building that culture and on the other hand dealing with not not the the huge blow-ups necessarily but the smaller day-to-day how do we talk about this uh opinions clashing and have doing some critical thinking around that um i mean i think i think ultimately a lot of that work is sort of the work that we're engaged in now in our sort of like the next phase of our strategic planning and sort of thinking about how do we make our educator essentials and our graduate portrait sort of like come to life um and so i know that uh jonathan garcia has been working with our consultants to to really sort of bring in the adult voices that are impacted by that to sort of think about how we're how we're going to uh you know create some some benchmarks and then you know correspondingly how we measure that but i don't think that we have i i think we're in in that place right now and trying to appreciate i appreciate that it's a work in progress yeah no but i think it's um thank you for bringing it to the forefront in terms of how we how we measure director moore did you have a question yes thank you um so two things um let me just follow up with with uh where scott was going um i i get that ultimately we we are confident that if we can change school cultures to be more inclusive that um we'll start seeing um impact on outcomes um but in the interim that's going to take a little while in the interim would it be fair to say that we might stop seeing some um some impact of of this new approach uh in terms of the um i guess it's called the successful school survey the panorama survey that we're doing yeah i think uh i think that's a really good point i know that um you know i think this year is an unusual year right and so sort of like how we how we baseline or set that baseline you've heard me talk about this too much but uh i think that's that's one consideration i think um there's there's a lot of opportunity for us to do some learning and i think um we're in building the response uh sort of i would say that we're we're building the response right now and sort of i think that there are a lot of uh sort of uh connect connective tissue that's ready to sort of uh sort of link to sort of different ways that we're measuring uh the totality of student learning and student achievement um and we're just we're close they're ready they're ready to be connected so um let me get back to what my original question was going to be um but first um i'm i'm thrilled to hear about all the work that's going on going on in the district around building uh building the foundation building infrastructure building professional development opportunities you know building capacity for um social emotional learning um it is huge um i mean i've been talking about this for years um but this is you know if we can get this right it will a lot of other things will happen naturally um so i'm thrilled to see how far we've gotten in a relatively short time actually so thank you for all of that um my question is um can you can somebody say a little bit more about the work that we're doing with castle um i mean a little bit more detail would be helpful sure thanks uh rita um appreciate that yeah it is very exciting so with castle um they've been a great partnership so far it's been about a month well i'm not sure who knows but last spring just at the beginning of school closure castle came and did a social emotional readiness engagement
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analysis with the district and um they came to us and they interviewed lots of different people and stuff they do a lot of that money and um okay sorry just reminder speaking to make sure you're muted thank you and uh they produced uh then they had recommendations for where we should start our work and so then this fall we've begun that and and so beginning is working on this five-year limitation plan we hope that we're planning that soon november-ish i can't make promises but right now begin to co-develop professional devel professional development and we really hope to start with the central office administrators first because because we really want to create a culture that works its way down from the central office so that we're modeling and we have an understanding of the foundational elements of sel and that that shows up in the administrator's work and then which goes down in to the school principle which then affects the school climate with the adults so castle and our work really has an emphasis on the adult strengthening the adult sel competency capacity and ability to really understand our emotions reflect be reflective practitioners so that's really what we're hoping to start this fall is co-developing that professional development rolling it out with a central office um i could tell you a lot more but uh i know i only have a few minutes so if you have any more specific questions um yes i i would love to sit down and have a cup of coffee sometime when that would be possible um can i make a pitch in the meantime um can you include the school board in some of that training that actually we were just talking with castle about that that we have our request you know it hasn't gone out yet but that we would love school board and really the executive leadership to start first and castle said that doesn't happen very often with the school districts that they work with and they've been doing this work for over 20 years but they highly recommend it and we're impressed that that's where we as a district are pushing to start the work so absolutely and hopefully we'll have the support in doing that thank you so much i think this is a you know a conversation that we'll continue to have for a long time um and i know that a lot of us on the school board are definitely wanting to continue to learn and grow um i see director scott waving at me um did you have a comment you wanted to share and are you are you trying to move us on sure lowry yes i am i'll be i'll be i'll be quick then i'm sorry to wait to wait till the end um first of all great thank you for the presentation and it's really it's it's it's great to sort of hear and learn more about it a question i have you talked someone about sort of some of the curriculum right and the teaching tolerance and what we're doing at different grade levels i'm i'm wondering what we're doing in terms of involving students um in the actual in the actual process of disrupting racism within their schools and i'm thinking more at the high school level although it could probably be applied at a middle school or grade school level in an age-appropriate way but you know i mean to take a real-life example you know there was a racist incident at wilson in an online class and a racial slur was was was uttered at the end of the class and i heard about it from my sophomore before it had sort of spread very widely hear about it from his friend and of course you know i'm you know do good or so my immediate response is did you did your friend say something to the teacher they reported to the teacher no and of course you know my son looks at me like i'm crazy like what are you talking about i'm just telling you something i heard like like no none of us are reporting it and it got me thinking and of course the teacher had heard which is good and i think there were some actions taken but um but it got me thinking about both do do students know where to go how to report and and expectations around that and also do they know how to disrupt it and you know i know at my work we've we've been doing bystander intervention training which has been very helpful and i i have to imagine there must be some sort of bystander intervention that could be adapted right for um and again i'm thinking particularly teenagers and high school students um that if we're going to change the culture of these schools and really eliminate the racism i mean yes yes the adults are essential but the students are absolutely essential as well in that disruption process so i'm curious what we're doing along those lines i might put david martinez on the spot because um at our at our last meeting he spoke really eloquently about the power uh the power of the lessons to to to really sort of give voice to the students um and i i think that what we're trying to show you is
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not the whole the whole picture um but to show you like one portion of this so so you know i think you heard from you know from nicole berg around climate justice you you'll hear more from shanice clark around uh some of the student engagement from jonathan uh from their team around some of the work that's being done and i think that and you know certainly some of our contractors could talk a little bit about the way that we're doing that in partnership but i think this this portion is really about how through how how through the learning students can really uh be uh be empowered and uh david i don't want to you don't have to say the exact same thing but i i thought the way that you framed it was really it got me through my my next couple days i thought it was really inspiring thanks um sure i think i'll go back to the reason why we're using the teaching tolerance uh framework and the domains and really emphasizing that it's that progression that i think danny was talking about and that we were alluding to earlier that uh we want we want to get that base knowledge of identity going over in the progression of diversity justice and action and i think that just as just as an action really comes through when the students have the skills the vocabulary and the knowledge to combat and to speak about race and racism authentically from their experiences and also from their peers as they're listening authentically and it's the skill of listening and it's a skill of learning what to do with that because i think as board members mentioned they're we're hearing things at home that maybe aren't actually the same the things that my teacher are telling me or what i'm reading about um and the read aloud is something different than what i'm hearing at home and so i'm going to have the language to speak to that and if i have the language then i can um collaborate with my peers and and this goes k through through 12th grade i mean we have first graders who are talking about race and talking about their identity and the the power if we can do that across the district um no matter what school if you're face-to-face or even distance learning right i think it's possible and i think um with this um with the social emotional learning that's really the foundation of anti-bias anti-racist work and so it really is the hope is to empower students to take action uh but they they need to know they need to have the vocabulary the skills um knowledge content they need to know all of that um so that they can engage authentically in that and so absolutely um i think it's danny said we can talk about this all day um we'd love to definitely follow up thanks thanks very much all right thank you so much um i like i said before this is an ongoing conversation that we'll have and i know that the board is is wanting to learn and wanting to grow in these ways and i really appreciate what you said director scott about empowering our students to be the leaders on these things to support one another and to also be able to come forward when they see something they know is wrong um and so i know that that as an institution of learning that part of our goal is not just to prevent these things from happening but also to teach our students how to respond um so that they can be that next generation of racial justice leaders um superintendent guerrero i know that we have another update that's really exciting tonight and we're going to get to hear from dr brown um about all sorts of fun things so would you like to introduce this next segment yes i think i alluded to it in in my report um dr russ brown who's continued to play coordinator but in really in collaboration with with a lot of teams and a lot of staff you're going to hear primarily from from him danny and brenda uh provide an update and it is going to start with you know making sure there's a clear understanding of you know what the health metrics are telling us because that's really what's driving uh and providing the rationale for for our decisions and and the work that we're exploring regarding the potential of limited in person so i'm going to turn it over to dr brown here russ thank you and now i'm waiting for the presentation to be pulled up for us uh i um good evening chair lowry vice chair bailey superintendent guerrero members of the board in the community we're pleased to to join you this evening i'm pleased to be joined by danny ledezma and brenda martinac who will be speaking to parts of this uh as well this evening and as superintendent guerrero said this is really the work of the entire organization there are many many individuals and teams that are working tirelessly to continue to move this work forward next slide please so today in this evening's discussion uh we're gonna start with the health metrics and comprehensive distance learning and the constraints that we as a system uh need to operate within uh based on ode's guidance and the
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oregon health authority's guidance as well we're going to go on and then talk about community needs and how we've been working to stand up services at our schools in support of the community and danny will speak to that no i would break for for some questions answered and then we'll pivot after that into talking about moving forward and limited person limited in-person opportunities uh within comprehensive distance within that comprehensive distance learning framework and how we're engaging a variety of folks in that as we move forward and then we'll conclude with a question and answer series at the end as well next slide please today's presentation really sort of follows our our guiding principles which have remained unchanged uh obviously as we work through this as we've made decisions we center racial equity and social justice in all of those uh and then as we move through that uh of course our first and foremost thing is to ensure the health and wellness of our staff and students uh then we talk about uh you know again cultivating connection and relationship with our students and our community and then finally we're going to talk about the opportunity again within limited in-person instruction to strengthen and innovate the instructional core within that framework we're going to start next slide please with the health metrics while some folks have spent a lot of time looking at this and having been engaged with the health metrics consistently i want to make sure that we're all operating under the same information and same knowledge and so we all have an understanding of of why it is the superintendent announced that we will be remaining in comprehensive distance learning and it really does uh start with the the metrics and what those metrics need to where they need to be in order for us to be able to move forward and it's a step-by-step first first on the line the county must no longer be in baseline multnomah county hasn't been a baseline for quite a while we've been at phase one so that that criteria has been met because 10 percent of our staff lives in clackamas county and another 10 percent of our staff or more lives in washington county we also have to consider what's going on in those counties when we're moving forward as well we can't make an independent decision without also considering the health consequences and the health metrics in those counties as well next slide please so getting into the the individual metrics that we look at and the state looks at is as they consider whether or not we're eligible to move forward for the preceding seven days and for the past three weeks we would need to have a case rate of 10 or less cases new cases per hundred thousand people and we have to have a testing positivity rate of five percent or less for both the county and the state next slide please so i'm going to look at case rates here and this data is pulled from the oregon health authority and if we look at this it goes back to to early july and all the way to the most recent data that was available as of the date that this presentation was put together and the blue line shows the cases per hundred thousand uh folks in multnomah county and the red line shows the the threshold for us to be able to go back into hybrid instruction so the the red line shows a threshold of 10 cases or less per 100 000. it should be pretty evident that we've been nowhere near that threshold during this window of time as a matter of fact we've gone from as high as almost 72 cases per per 100 000 people to as low as 32 over that window of time and unfortunately we've been trending back upward next slide please there is a second threshold that is considered for kindergarten through third grade it's an exception that would allow us to bring early learners back we did get close to that at one point when we were at 32 cases per 100 000 but we did not mean we did not dip below that threshold and we certainly did not maintain it over time and again we have ticked back upward in the past week so next slide please if you put that all together and this is sort of like a stoplight report everything here has to be green everything has to be we have to meet all of these criteria in order to be able to move forward so as i mentioned earlier multnomah county is in phase one and we would have to be looking at clackamas and washington counties who have numbers that are not too disparate from ours as well our case rates as i mentioned haven't dipped below either threshold for
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in-person or hybrid learning nor of our neighbors for that matter and our testing positivity rates have not been below five percent for the last three consecutive weeks so at this point we are not eligible and again frankly looking at the the um case rates over time we haven't been near out eligible uh since we start keeping track of that next line please so later in the discussion we'll spend some time talking about well within comprehensive distance learning there is an option to begin to have some limited in-person activities at schools and we want to talk about what those are and again the constraints for those the one additional constraint above what we've spoken about so far so we're in comprehensive distance learning one constraint within comprehensive distance learning is that we could not have had any confirmed cases among school staff or students for the past 14 days in the site in which we're considering standing up a limited person activity within the company comprehensive distance learning option at this point next slide please we're going to move forward and have danny speak to the the inclusive planning engagement practices that we've engaged in so far this fall danny great so um so as you heard from russ you know as we as we face pretty grim and sobering uh realities around uh health metrics um as you all know as board members who are active in our community and who are available and listening to parents and students the the need for support the need for the need for services is still very very high um and so part of our approach has been as we sort of start to contemplate limited in person instruction is to also plan for and to be responsive to the needs that are that have been stated by our communities as well as some of the needs that are emerging um and so i want to just kind of recall as if you remember at the at the end of july uh you had a presentation from jonathan garcia and and shanice clark about some of the work that we were doing to engage families and students particularly our students of our students of color so we had robust focus groups with uh native families and students black families and students people of color uh as well as our dsc uh where we were listening to and trying to pull out themes from uh sort of what were what were needs as as we were sort of continuing in to be in the pandemic and those those those themes have continued to carry through we heard about the need for access to technology as well as support and utilizing the technology we've heard about the desire uh for students to spend more time with teachers more time with caring adults and to have to be able to form those connections but also we heard about uh the need to to be able to support our educators and making sure that that teachers had the ha were had the support to be able to to be able to spend the time online uh we also heard just a lot of care and concern for for social connection uh and supports for students a lot of care and concern and anxiety about the impacts of isolation of being socially distanced from friends and potential supports and we also heard quite a bit of concern for being able to meet basic needs we uh also continue to hear and as you look at these submarine health metrics a lot of anxiety and worry about the health and safety of students and families um and then we also heard really clearly about the need for really centralized information uh referrals for support for both students and families and as much transparency about our planning as we're moving forward so we took this information and have began and developed a cross-departmental planning group called student and family supports and we've met uh several times and our first uh first task at hand was to develop that centralized easy to access menu of student supports by school that's supported in our six uh six supported languages um and it's available on our website we're also printing off many of those copies uh and making sure that as many people as possible uh know what's available along with a description of what what that means um you also heard about how we we really got to test like what it would take to to think about some level of in-person support through our process around child care as you recall we said that we'd be implementing child care in a very in a phased approach we were we did a lot of coordination and work with our partners who are licensed child care providers as well as our school sites our our entire operations team to be able to make sure that we're doing this in a safe way not only under the regulations that ode has provided for us but also the state regulations around child care
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and to date we had hoped to be able to provide child care in september and the planning we we wanted to take a really cautious approach and so in september 20 on september 28th was the first uh phase of implemented um child care where we opened up sites at creston wrigler and beach um and to date creston and wrigler are completely full uh meeting that threshold for about 50 for 50 of the children who are being cared for being able to qualify for subsidized child care we want to make sure that we're making uh offering services for students and families with greater needs um and uh king and beach still still sort of ramping up around their enrollment this monday so that would be yesterday um our second phase of james john hayhurst mlc vestal and winterhaven uh they all opened up uh and are still continuing to enroll students and then on next monday we'll complete out with irvington and lunch so we went from about nine schools to 12 schools being able to to do that and we are excited about the enrollment and the the careful uh the careful way that we've implemented uh i want to do a special thank you to whitney ellersek our director of nutritional services because all of our child care sites receive free free breakfast and lunch as well as some our providers are also purchasing uh snacks from nutrition services because it both saves time and money so we're really able to support these child care sites so we learned a lot from the child care sites and have been working in really close partnership with multnomah county in both the chair's office as well as the sun service system to develop family resource centers and so over the weeks we've been working really carefully with our operations team to think about all of the safety planning and precautions and how we could offer an array of services that meet the needs that have been expressed by our families around technology support some academic tutoring some access to basic needs as well as some family family case management and some potential behavioral health services so as we're planning those we want to make sure that we are coordinating really tightly with our operations team we learned a lot from the child care implementation and we're trying to take that and make sure that we have a really well thought out well-planned well-coordinated cross-departmental planning process and the other thing that we're really trying to make sure that we're doing is we're taking a really cautious approach so that we can build confidence of folks to be able to provide limited uh limited in-person supports so these are these are going to be at only five sites uh we want to make sure that they're only open at most one one to two days a week after school hours so that we're really limiting um exposure to to and limiting exposure and also making sure that we're following all of the proper safety protocols and this level of work and coordination as you can imagine is taking quite some time and taking a lot of effort but were it not for all of the partners who have been involved to really who really talk about how much this is needed in that we have a lot of folks who want to be able to get eyes on kiddos and families make sure that everyone's feeling safe and be able to make sure that they're connected to resources in person so that might be able to make sure that when uh that the connection virtually is also happening so we're taking this really cautious approach uh we're continuing to do planning and we're we're doing this in a way that we think is as responsive as possible to the express needs that our community has been has been talking about what they need so we'll uh we'll continue to keep you updated on this planning and i'll let you know as implementation draws nearer i think we're gonna do questions now so this is uh ailee um i just want to say uh ms ledesma as you were talking there and talking about what you learned from the preschool implementation i just so appreciate being able to say like this did not go as planned and we learned some things and i also wanted to lift up dr bird that you did the same thing around the um middle school questions and i saw in the oregonian where you said you know things were fuzzy and and this is my responsibility and so i just really appreciate the culture at pps where we talk about that we're a learning institution and we're actually living into now um claiming when there's something that doesn't go smoothly and and saying what we've learned from it um and so i think that that's one of the huge cultural shifts i've noticed in pps is sort of this ability to say like hey preschool didn't roll out didn't go as we planned and hey there was a miscommunication with middle schools around what the intentions of the schedule were and we own that and we learn from it and we move forward and i just think that
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that is such an embodiment of what we're talking about of our theories of actions our sort of way of being a learning institution and continuing to always grow and improve and so i just want to thank staff for modeling that and for living into this culture of pps that superintendent guerrero is is leading us through and the board is supporting uh what other questions or comments do board members have for our team that shared tonight um i was curious um you talked about the the families that were most um in need of the child care and how how is most in need defined i'm not sure are we applying i'm sure we're applying a racial equity lens but is it based on parents needing care essential workers income levels how are we making those decisions sure so so we did quite a bit of analysis in the site selection uh we tried to offer both a geographic spread uh as well as doing an analysis of sort of like the students who'd most likely be utilizing these efforts and certainly had a racial equity lens on that um when i spoke about students most in need um it was it was a it was shorthand for financial needs so uh the state offers subsidized child care uh and so those families so that they're not paying the the full price they're actually you know sort of uh really to minimize costs so that they can access child care [Music] thank you can i ask um and i apologize if i've missed this um can you can you say how many um how many students how many children are currently enrolled in these programs and what the anticipated um like once everything is rolled out how like what's the maximum capacity um yeah so the the maximum capacity would be between so for 12 sites uh would be um third somewhere between 360 and 400 students we had originally contemplated uh nine sites and so we were able to expand to three more sites um and uh the it's a it's a guesstimate because some are they're maxed out at at 30 and some are maxed out a little bit more um and then in terms of enrollment so enrollment as of friday which is when our fabulous nancy hoth who's uh who oversees child care was able to get a report to us um i believe that creston and wrigler were at the max king and beach i believe had uh five and ten but i can i i'm at this point i've got so many tabs open on my computer that i'm not i'm uh i'm frantically trying to find my email where i haven't pulled up uh but uh so i i if you if you don't mind i can if i if i may know that it's changing um i think what we want to make sure that we're communicating to families is that there are still slots open not only the the sort of pay slots but also the um the subsidized slots um and so uh with the exception of creston and wrigler so and i'll get that to you soon okay thanks um can i ask um well actually i'm gonna go into a mini rant here so ailee cut me off when i've rented enough um yeah that's good everybody wants no i haven't even started yet everybody wants schools to open so much is dependent on schools being available for students to learn and families to get on with you know the business of of earning a living and maintaining sanity and all the rest of it um we cannot open the schools until the public health environment permits it safely which means that everybody needs to be wearing masks and physically distancing with fidelity every nanosecond of every day and it is i mean i've had to interact with the world more in the last few weeks than i have been and you know i understand it's hard but if you want the schools to open that's what needs to happen and i just want to note that there was a demonstration in salem yesterday um a bunch of parents i don't know how many 100 couple hundred um gathered at the the legislature to demand school's opening and based on the footage i saw on the
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news last night um i saw three three of those people wearing masks nobody was distancing i mean how do you not get this if you want the schools to open you cannot be doing that we cannot be sitting around in bars drinking it cannot happen life will not be normal until we're through the pandemic and that's not going to happen for a good long time so everybody needs to just do what we need to do i'm done thank you i would also add to that dr moore wash your hands uh i was i know that i was really good about washing hands at the beginning of the pandemic so much that my skin was a little chapped and now uh my skin is back to being nice and soft because i have not been washing my hands enough so i'm gonna practice washing for 20 seconds like we're supposed to and doing that all the time um done by others in the viewing audience to wash hands as well i i know we've got a little more of the presentation to continue um are we ready for that uh board or do you have any more questions of this portion real quickly um director moore uh and actually anybody can go to kgw.com and you can see me talking about the economy and the you know where less than half the jobs have come back and saying the exact same thing i end my interview by putting on a mask and saying you want the economy to come back wear a mask socially distance so uh just want to reinforce that um thanks staff for all their work we know from uh and i do at some point want to hear about where we are with sports as part of reopening and at this recognize the importance of that at the same time seeing you know adults on professional football teams screwing up um so realizing the the risks so i just want to appreciate the staff uh taking real care and planning uh the opening of those centers knowing the risks involved uh because you know we've we've seen examples of really well-intentioned efforts leading to this spread of the virus so apparently roller derby is the most in all that stuff yeah apparently roller derby has an amazing model that other sports teams are now following um before we shift i just have to um for dr brown and it's more of a contextual question or comparative question um it's on the slide that's the limited in-person um instruction for specific groups of students and i'm i'm wondering um does oregon have a more less stringent than other states you know i know that i mean part of what's a little bit what's happening with parents they're you know not only looking at what's happening in neighboring districts but in neighboring states in new york city and that's you know in texas and um since we've we've sort of uh we as a state have said like we're planting our flags on these health metrics and i'm just i'm curious because other people like yeah but these guys are doing this or that's happening there why can't we we do it are are are this the metrics more stringent or are they about in line with other places or it varies jurisdiction by jurisdiction well thank you director brim edwards for that question yeah clearly there is tremendous variability across the country in terms of how this is is playing out the metrics for the state of oregon are actually fairly well anchored to cdc guidance they're so cdc guidance has a set of thresholds for lower risk of transmission in schools that suggest that you should have a threshold someplace between five to twenty twenty cases per hundred thousand and with a uh testing rate below five percent i believe there are only five or six states that are actually using metrics clearly articulated metrics as a way to inform decision making um you know the the silver lining in this for us is that uh our data um it appears that some of the work that's been done in this community in terms of uh social distancing wearing masks etc which is much more ubiquitous here than in other
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parts of the country appears to be reducing our our incidence rates and and our incidence rates actually look good uh compared to some other states around the country but are far higher than they were in europe when european systems reopened schools so you know the the context here is we look good compared to the us the us tends to look bad compared to everybody else [Music] and again the the the metrics that the state has uh chosen to anchor to uh are consistent again with the cdc guidance for lower risk of transmission uh in schools and then a follow-up um obviously to have confirmed cases you have to have um a set amount of testing is our testing sort of adequate to be able to like it's not the word our numbers are you know x level because we actually haven't tested or that much or we're testing a lot or that is a um a challenging question i'm trying to be polite here i i think it's pretty evident that testing has not been performed in the u.s and oregon's really no exception so i'm pleased to say that i think there's going to be an influx of testing to increase capacity here the testing rates in our country have not been sufficient really to uh make uh contact tracing as effective as it could be and so increasing the testing rates um would certainly be helpful and in the past three weeks i believe two three weeks the state actually suspended the use of testing rates as part of the decision-making process because it got biased because of the wildfires and the impact of the wildfires and the smoke on people going to the doctor so okay so less less than ideal situation so chair lowry i think both director bailey's and brim edwards questions are a nice segue to a couple remaining slides uh that speak to you know our considerations for limited in-person activity including athletics but as well as some of the safety considerations and some and some reference points that that we're relying on uh this is uh brenda martinek and thank you director lowry chair lowry and board of directors and superintendent i'm going to share with you the last couple slides which is in regards to limited in person instruction and our next steps so what i wanted to talk about is the ability for us to continue to offer additional opportunities for students to receive in person engagement and academic and social emotional instruction and as you can see we have a number of pretty strict parameters if we are going to offer some limited in-person instruction under our comprehensive distance learning model which is part of ode's recommendations as you've heard earlier there's a lot of complexity in bringing students into schools managing cohorts numbers of students and building per week safety protocols and then the contract tracing so one thing that we have to really consider is what is and is not a cohort od has defined that for us so we have to look at our cohort management we also need to make sure that cohorts for teachers which is five per week is managed in addition to cohorts for students which is two per week we have a limit of 250 people per week in a building and we also have to look at um in regards to what is or is not a cohort we have to consider child care assessments and busing so there are many other examples and some key components that we have to consider and one of them i mentioned was transportation nutrition services and within all of that we still our number one priority is to keep students safe uh to keep our staff safe and then also try to figure out how to engage our students with limited in-person activities and with limited in-person instruction so next slide
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so there are some very critical services that we have already begun doing with limited in-person instruction some of those are special education assessments dibbles assessments and child care now what we have done is we have started providing some of those services and we learn from how we're creating those smaller one-on-one or small group interactions what we want to do again as danny had referenced is we want to build the confidence in our staff and our families and we want to also reduce the anxiety of being able to provide services in a in a healthy and safe way to reduce or mitigate the possible exposure of coved so as we've continued to provide these services we have worked out safety procedures contact tracing social distancing and now we're at a point to begin some other engagement activities and instructional opportunities so one thing that the superintendent mentioned was athletics and one big specific example that i want to talk about is high school athletics we know that especially for our high school students sports are important we also know that for many student athletes engaging in school through sports is a primary way to keep students connected and engaged in their learning so i want to be clear uh stay for our students again uh is uh our number one priority therefore our first steps in regards to athletics is going to be a small but an important step it's more closely aligned to some strength and fitness training by teams as opposed to team practices so we're not going to put on helmets or shoulder pads and actually have practices per se but we are going to get students out and start engaging by teams in some physical activity we've already begun some extremely important limited in-person activities um and this is one more way for us to offer engagement opportunities for students to offer outdoor team sports uh in fitness training that will continue as the weather gets worse football players and soccer players don't care if they're practicing in the rain so to summarize uh high school fitness teams we will engage in activities that will be limited to fitness focused training they won't be regular practices we will ensure that activities take place exclusively outdoors during one of our four time slots during the day and evening students will be masked at all times will be distanced from each other and will be grouped into cohorts that will remain constant for one week at a time we will be following all of our ode guidelines for safety these outdoor activities will also carry the benefit of not triggering the same cohort requirements as indoor programs do so we can go ahead and offer these outdoor activities for that engagement and those key connections and we can still continue to provide limited in-person instruction indoors so finally our hope is that we're going to be able to make some sort of an announcement uh in regards to athletics uh within the a week hopefully we expect that we'll be able to use this similar model to also introduce activities such as our performing arts choir band and then i also want to get into limited in-person instruction so planning for academic instruction is more complex due to the additional parameters we're underway in some of that planning through meetings with our principals our district leaders and we're developing a plan to include other stakeholders with some engagement we want to have teachers and principals in the planning and implementation process some areas that we are thinking about right now are in regards to our early learners including our younger students with disabilities and our students who are emergent bilingual we also know that we need to look at credits and credit deficiencies for our juniors and seniors in high school and then lastly we know that those transition grades into sixth grade and ninth grade are crucially important uh we are having some concerns around some students who are not engaging in instruction and so we really want to try to plan around how we can engage with those students and maybe bring them on to our premises so those are the three areas that principals have
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prioritized in addition to more global areas around engagement social emotional learning and trauma and then foundational literacy skills so our next steps um we've had our principal meeting um i'll be meeting with um pat tomorrow and hopefully we'll be engaging in other labor unions we will develop an engagement process because we do believe that we need multiple groups of stakeholders and parents to weigh in on this we want to engage with other community stakeholders as we decide on specific services that are in buildings and then our timeline uh since the superintendent just announced tonight that we will continue in comprehensive distance learning through the second quarter we're hoping to continue to slowly bring additional opportunities for students to participate in limited in-person instruction on an ongoing basis it takes a lot of time a lot of planning and it takes approval through ode we don't want to do this too quickly um because we want to make sure that safety continues to be of the utmost importance for all of those that are involved and i am done presenting and i'm happy to answer any questions that you have are there any questions oh sorry amy go ahead um with regard to athletics would that just be high school or are we thinking about middle school as well currently it would just be high school we have discussed uh starting to include middle school and so we first want to get high school up and running we want to continue to do a slow and methodical process so that we can continue to understand the risk factors to perfect our contact tracing and make sure that we're limiting exposure so we're going to do it slowly but yes middle school athletics is definitely on the table thank you so i'm sorry if i just follow up on that question so um because i was one of those students who like had to have uh lots of daily activity um what just in terms of middle schools what what would you see as a trajectory or is it like months away or just we have a limited time this fall was still outdoor activity is viable right we don't have a specific timeline director brim edwards what we would love to do is to be able to open that up as soon as possible we first want to get high school athletics up and running and then as soon as that is uh is happening and coaches are understanding their role and the role of all of the safety protocols then we're gonna start to roll out middle school so i don't have a time frame for you um i i am hopeful that it's before january but um i can't uh unfortunately give you a timeline at this at this point thank you we certainly want to make sure that the community has a few places where they can reference uh important metrics russ do you want to explain what each of these might tell families and and our students who are interested in tracking it in in the same way that we might be yeah uh we've added a couple links to this we've uh there's some resources that have been there uh for a while uh the the top two resources one uh linked to a dashboard that was put up by uh willamette educational service center and it gives a nice summary of all the metrics and our status and actually you can look at other countries as well and then the the second link actually goes to the report from the oregon health authority that again reports out on the metrics and gives those metrics over time and actually gives you a little bit longer view and so those uh for those who are interested in tracking this and keeping an eye on how things are moving over time those are two resources that members of the community could go to on a regular basis to see both are updated the oha numbers are updated every monday i'm not sure on the update cycle of the metric it would have to come after the oha
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can i just say a word about athletics restarting sports um i appreciate that sports and athletic activities are important to students um as are many other extracurricular activities um i'm going to be a voice for extreme caution in restarting athletics um and i'm going to trust that um staff are going to exercise the same kind of caution that you've exercised to date on this but i'm guessing you are you are receiving i'm assuming considerable pressure to to restart athletic activities and um i want to lend my voice to to those of us who want want to stress the need for safety i'm a baseball fan and major league baseball with essentially unlimited resources daily testing um you know gold plated everything experienced some pretty epic fails even in a very short season we are not going to have any of those advantages so um if you need someone to speak up to defend unpopular decisions around athletics call me thank you director moore we are going to continue as with all of the other activities or assessments or summer school we're going to continue to follow very strict safety protocols and we have we've been successful we are we have put trainings in place um and a lot of uh focus uh on how we get students there and staff there and how we return them as safely as possible uh back to their homes and so that is and has been since march um our first and most important priority and it will continue to be and life for our students and for our staff is the most important and so that's what we will continue to prioritize thank you and uh um you who did you say that work the district is consulting with on public health issues and public health guidelines around around all these issues all the risk assessments we're doing yes so we partner with uh multnomah esd who is uh is in consultation with oregon health authority and with the cdc so we've been in partnership uh with them we also have a national health advisory panel that we meet with on a weekly basis our safety plans and ode blueprints and our contact tracing logs and everything that we have developed has had to go through an approval process through oregon health authority and through ode and then we've also run it through our health advisory panel as well so we have multiple different points of contact for experts to be able to review our information to ensure that we're doing things as um [Music] as prescribed um by the the health uh professionals thanks no i appreciate that i i think i just want to add my voice to to director morris that public health has guided the district's decisions to date and and that is the most important principle it's a value that the superintendent put out there right at the very beginning and that the board supports as well and and i think that's true of everything we're talking about whether it's it's reopening in a limited capacity or not reopening now until you know at least january and it applies to band it applies to sports it applies to student you know clubs and um and and i i just want to make sure if
02h 55m 00s
there is a creative way and it sounds like you're thinking very creatively about getting teams back together socially distance in a safe environment that the public health officials had said yes that's okay um that's wonderful and i think that's a great thing um but i want to make sure we are willing to push back on on the pressure that is coming you know and really to be honest with the community we're in the middle of a pandemic there are lots of things that are important graduation was important prom was important um those students missed that we didn't hold those events because of the dangers um it's possible that we'll miss fall sports right and it's possible it won't happen and that is tragic and and we should do everything we can to support the students who are impacted by that negatively but we should not feel pressured to take unnecessary risks um that you see throughout the country right we are seeing schools do this and i i i know director lowry doesn't want to repeat things but i have i mean i'm also a sports fan and i mean these highly paid athletes who have been you know ensconced in bubbles in you know high-end hotels are still getting covered and they're still spreading it to other teammates and we're still canceling games so i just it is it is hard for me to imagine that for at least the near term that we would be able to go back to anything resembling actual games practices you know competition um but however i do fully support what you're doing so far and i appreciate the presentation today because i appreciate that that creativity that you're applying to it and the public health lens so thank you and i would like to say that it's not that director lowry doesn't want us to repeat ourselves it's that the will of the board as expressed in our board retreat was that we all recognize we repeat one another and we would like some accountability around that but sure you can blame me that's fine i'm happy to uh to raise that up i was gonna ask after more how the red sox were doing as she brought up baseball but um that just seems mean so we will indeed it is so can i shift another topic and i guess i just want to say i don't think um anybody who asked about athletics was especially since it just followed a long conversation about the health metrics and that were sitting with them it wasn't in the context of yeah throw up the health metrics for athletics so just to be clear i think um there are lots of our students who this is their outlet and um it's a question that we get asked and it's a good that we have an answer but i don't think anybody was saying throw out the met like stick to the metrics for schools but not for athletics um so i have a question if um if we're um shifting now to comprehensive districts for staying in the comprehensive distance learning model through the next quarter one of the things that i'm seeing in a lot of different school communities and parent groups is like everybody's hiring tutors to supplement the sense that you know kids are falling behind and if people have resources they're sort of supplementing into the just what the district is providing and i'm interested in um sort of what our what our equity point of view is on that because clearly the people who can do that are people the resources um i mean two resources one to be able to find somebody to teach those classes or to teach a subject and then to the financial resources to pay them outside of the system so i'm again from an equity standpoint curious um kind of what our point of view is on that and how as a system we can um you know push in and try and provide equitable opportunities to our students in what's pretty challenging environment yes uh thank you for um for that question we are looking in multiple ways of how we are supporting um students uh through equitable ways uh in danny's presentation earlier tonight around the family resource centers uh around our child care in regards to special ed assessments uh engagement uh through high school athletics there's a variety of different ways and then the next set of ways that we're looking at how we're going to pre be able to provide some really quality limited in-person instruction is is with maybe our early learners uh students who are having trouble engaging and then also looking at what schools those would would be at are we considering our cs high schools uh are we considering um different
03h 00m 00s
schools in different quadrants um of the district so a lot of those questions haven't been answered yet but um racial equity and social justice and our theory of action is always at the at the forefront of all of our discussions and um as i talked about from when i started presenting back in march we're really guided by our guiding principles uh which really focuses around our strategic plan um so all of those things are um are influencing uh our decisions and if i could add i think the um so i think one way that we're encouraging our community to sort of like to to to use the racial equity lens around sort of like the availability of services is that i think that there was we wanted to be as transparent as possible about the the wide array of services that are available at every school um and so i think one of the things that we had to do was some community education because i think what what i heard in talking with parents uh and talking with uh friends of mine who were sort of like do we do you know what do we what do we do what do we need to do is that there wasn't um what that going back to that place a transparent way for folks to see what actually is available and so we with a lot of cross-department mental work we we laid out school by school an array of services and supports that are there so at the very least parents can make informed decisions about what their what their students may need in addition to that's already there but if you look across all of the schools you can see that we have sort of really prioritized our sort of our our schools our csi schools our tsi schools and then we also have additional supports around that are culturally specific so we've as a system and as a district we've really tried to be transparent about that level of prioritization as well as the wide array of services and so if parents are looking for additional resources we want to make sure that they're doing it in a way that's like informed and also i think what we've committed to is as we listen to uh parents and as we listen to a lot of the testimony is to try to be responsive um we're you know we're consistently looking for where where might there be gaps and how do we how do we fill those gaps and so that's something i literally just got off the phone and it's something that we're trying to figure out in terms of the family resource centers as well is sort of like what's what's not being done virtually that needs to be done in person in a very limited way and how do we how do we make sure that that's available for for our community of schools and do it in a really targeted way that's well coordinated and and that we're collaborating not just with what's happening um internally but across our across our community so just can i just put a pause here we've been going for about 90 minutes um we're about 15 minutes beyond sort of our scheduled agenda time and um we have some more we've got a few uh reports left tonight so i wanted to ask is that the will of the board this conversation right now um and if so let's take a brief break and then we can come back to conclude this conversation and do our reports or would you rather wrap up this conversation and go straight into our reports to close our meeting what i prefer to wrap up and go okay so your choices are wrap up and go to reports or continue you're with director scott so i've got two four wrap up and go to reports anybody else i have one short question get my question answered so we've got two people who have questions just one okay well scott director bailey has a question and julia has a question okay so let's take let's take a two minute break everybody stand up and stretch and we'll come back
03h 05m 00s
and we're better uh especially going into hour four of a meeting for some of us if we've had a chance to stand up and move so i'm gonna ask my board colleagues to think about are your questions things that we need to ask tonight here on the record or are they things you can email and get answers to um so i think julia you said you had a question you needed answer and dr bailey you had a brief question so julia it was a follow-up to the broader question but i'm just going to try and take it down to a practical level for uh in we're continuing in comprehensive district learning so say you're a parent of a fourth grader that's not reading my benchmark what's happening the synchronous and asynchronous is not working where is that parent gonna go for say um reading like a lot of parents with resources would go get you know reading tutoring on their own is it they're going to that family resource center and if so like what like where do they find where that is and um i mean how do they access that i'm just trying to think of a parent's standpoint like right uh thank you uh dr bird do you want to just mention a little bit in regards to uh the schedules uh and how students are set up to get some tiered supports so yeah thank you director from edwards and that's that's why the schedules are set up the way they are in that there's some time for whole group instruction there's time built in for small group instruction and then time for asynchronous learning so uh in in every and we saw this in the with the middle school example that there was some definitely some misunderstanding and some of this communication on my part but that was um first for sure that's when if students are having difficulty that's exactly why we built in time for teachers to choose to have small groups rather than large groups uh so rather than whole groups so they can differentiate instruction for for students and so i would say if to answer your question directly if you're a parent and you're your child is experiencing problems then the your first uh the first place you go to is the teacher and if it doesn't get resolved that way then you go to the principal and then of course the area senior director after that but those there are built-in sort of safety nets in those schedules for students to get additional help that need it and that that's why they were designed the way they were designed was with those children in mind thank you and director brett edwards hi this is uh craig um we're also going to be relaunching um teacher recommended supplementary contracted tutoring services for our homeless and migrant students and we're starting to also explore um title three funding for our english language learners um that's something that's that's starting to to come together and um once we start to have some more definitive information on that i'll make sure i send you and the board an email with updated information around some of those wrap-around supports thank you very much thanks for bringing that up director brim edwards that was one of the questions that we talked about this summer in the planning groups was the the kids who just aren't don't take to online um but my question is real brief you uh brenda you talked about uh the minor fall sports uh football and soccer you left out the most important and i i'm not sure why fall sport cross country um and great article by the way i'd coach mark cotton um this week who was my coach um but uh fantastic fantastic person ah but what is
03h 10m 00s
cross-country what's the status of that in terms of the type of conditioning going on so what we will be doing is uh it is going to be by teams but it's going to be more like um strength and agility um some physical fitness activity so it's more around uh fitness training as opposed to specialized uh sports uh related activities so so even if it's a cross-country or the football team or soccer or lacrosse they're going to get some similar types of speed and agility training and other things like that where we will be able to reduce the the contact uh limit uh the the social interactions or touch or or anything like that limit access and touching of footballs and soccer balls and things like that so um sorry my cat has decided to enter so so we will be able to uh to provide those opportunities for all students including students who are on the cross-country team i hope we can send some of the football players like in a little training run to the top of rocky butte i will certainly suggest that right any other questions uh of uh dr brown or the rest of the team before we move on to our committee reports okay thank you so much um we've got a couple of reports from uh committees i let me i have to my internet decided to completely crash i think family members are using it um so i need to pull my script back up but i know that um off the top of my head that director moore had a policy committee meeting on monday so director moore do you have anything to share from that policy committee meeting well we are working on developing a list of priorities for policies that we're going to be tackling this year we have a very very long list we are it is highly unlikely that we're going to be able to do all of them so we're going to be hopefully by the next meeting we will clarify a short list of things of policies that we're going to focus on the next meeting is on the 26th and um i'm hoping that we will get back to looking at the real estate policy and the uh what's the other one liz can you help me with the other policy that we uh the complaint policy that we're going to be uh revising or at least considering revisions that's it thanks great um director scott did you have anything to report from your intergovernmental committee your intergovernmental relations team yes uh we had our first uh meeting of the intergovernmental intergovernmental committee the igc on september 28th um we got an update on legislative committee days in the state revenue forecast um and then we spent a good chunk of time talking about the 2021 draft legislative agenda um so uh uh we sort of took the the last the 2019 legislative agenda and and talked through that and what we might want to update next steps on that um courtney's gonna grab uh get ideas from the senior leadership team it will come to the board for approval in november and we also gave direction to staff to um collaborate with other districts in the osba from a legislative agenda standpoint and then the other thing the committee did was talk about potential topics that we'll take on this year um and so in addition to the legislative agenda we talked about working with our partner jurisdictions um we talked about criteria for board resolutions in support of other governments or ballot measures and then really importantly uh at the end director brem edwards um reminded us of of the reimagine oregon effort and the fact that school districts have not um been super involved and yet education is a big function of that and so i know director de paz is uh currently a liaison for the restorative justice work that the state of multnomah county are doing but um portland public schools um will and should be involved in other aspects of reimagining oregon um to address anti-black racism in the state and so we'll need to just be keeping up to speed on that and figuring out how we're gonna involved uh be involved and continue to to play in that conversation next meeting is on october 22nd great and director depos would you like to share
03h 15m 00s
some of that conversation you had with um the restorative justice uh team that's working on some of the reimagine oregon pieces sure so if you're not familiar you can look up the website for reimagine oregon that's a list of policy demands that have been sourced from three different research projects that happen from i believe 2015 through 2018 um the state of black oregon that was published by the urban league of portland um multnomah county's state of black oregon and the portland african-american leadership forum have all published reports about the state of black oregonians specifically in portland this policy demand kind of website document living document is called from those published pieces there's nothing new in those policy demands their their policy demands that have come up time and time again um commissioner j paul at multnomah county convened um is convening on behalf of multnomah county but this is a multi-jurisdictional effort it involves the city of portland multnomah county washington county clackamas county and the state and so i'd like to just share we've just had a kickoff meeting this week we're planning to meet again and we should probably coordinate um director scott on our um on how we proceed and i'll i'll make sure to follow up um danny on the staff side was able to attend our meeting um monday and and it was a good it was a good start awesome uh are there any other uh committee reports from board members okay say a few words about uh balance and enrollment balancing okay um so i want to uh reiterate what uh superintendent guerrero um said earlier that uh in the southeast there is an initial springboard proposal as what they're calling it which is kind of a first draft to throw out to our community coalition to develop a plan uh and i just want to emphasize um it's a real delicate dance to have staff bring a proposal out uh when we're encouraging uh at the same time a community-based solution um and uh want to emphasize that that proposal is not adequate it is not uh an endpoint there are for example it doesn't re balance uh high school enrollment nearly enough and mr merrill talked about that in his testimony earlier about i believe is referring to madison enrollment so it's a starting point to get the conversation going and and not an ending point at all so i'd encourage committee members and the public to look at it uh critically and i mean positive critical um and to keep you know keep looking at things from different angles ask the hard questions and push us to define the best solution at the same time there are some definite limitations in terms of the buildings that are there in southeast um and and that's just a given given on the ground uh so i just want to wanted to lay that out there i'm encouraged that we've at least got a starting point i think committee members have asked a number of good questions that staff are responding to and again i'm just really glad we're taking this on and looking forward to seeing what the committee comes up with all right thank you director bailey all right if there's nothing else we have um katrina dougherty here katrina doughty here with us uh who is on the esd board and she is running for osba board and so she wanted to share a couple of words with us tonight uh thanks katrina for being here and for experiencing pps board fun uh katrina works in public health so i know she uh was interested in um a lot of what we had to talk about tonight so katrina thank you yeah i will keep it very short you guys have had a very long meeting and i am impressed listening to all of it you guys really get into the weeds drill down do a lot of good work and i'm sure have a lot of tireless hours here so thank you for all you do um again i'm katrina dowdy i use the pronoun she her and hers i'm an mesd school board member so i heard you all mention us a few different times and the main thing that i heard throughout this whole meeting is how vital public health is and how much public health needs to be involved
03h 20m 00s
in making sure our kids and our schools and our communities are safe and that's why i decided to run for osba position 17 board i feel like looking at the lineup of wonderful board members there are now there seems to be a pretty significant lack in folks with public health or healthcare experience and especially modern healthcare experience so really understanding some of the health equities the systemic struggles that our students have had that might be different from that of their parents in certain ways whether that's technology gaps whether that's you know further further pushing folks out of communities and gentrification just a lot of different ways that our students are needing public health to advocate for them keep them safe and then push for policy change so a few of the things that you've heard about recently that i've been working on is universal preschool now which will be on the ballot alongside your measure which is very exciting your bond so hopefully we can get two yeses for our students which would be very exciting and a huge push for equity and so i was a big part of that developing both the school board member cohort and the public health cohort and i just thought the next way to keep pushing for not just our region but our whole state is to have that platform and really bring some public health expertise to osba one thing and one reason my board nominated me is because i've been able to hop in in just my year on being a school board and point out to osba some of their systemic um issues which is you know for example they never ask about pronouns at any registration they have they never offer it i'm in fact the first person who has ever put on their application what their pronouns are and i notice that is a requirement that is normalized in your meetings and you know that that is suicide prevention for our students and so it's just no longer acceptable for osba to not do that um and so simple things like that that make our students comfortable that prevent harm to our students and that really help promote equity are changes that osba and all of our school boards can really um be instructed firmly to do better so that's some of my goals my big focuses are like i said public health really building that bridge making sure that we can have stronger relationships and getting us more active in some of the legislative and community action spaces so there's a power point that was sent to you all for a day where you've had a little more sleep um but i just want to ask for your support and let you know this is me this is who i am reach out anytime you have a friend on mesd thank you so much for your time tonight and good luck in your election thank you uh dr brynn edwards you had one more thing you wanted to add you said yeah i just have a statement that i'm going to submit for the record so i'm just providing notice that i'm doing that for the earlier vote okay any other business before we adjourn tonight all right uh we have agenda setting tomorrow at 11 a.m so if you have something if you're a board member and you have something to add for agenda setting please email that uh to us before 11am tomorrow um and i hope everyone has a good evening tonight thank you all we are adjourned and our next meeting will be tuesday october 20th good night good night everybody

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)

2020-10-06 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

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Minutes

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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting 10/06/20

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