2020-11-10 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2020-11-10
Time	18:00:00
Venue	Virtual/Online
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting 11/10/2020

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so this board meeting of the board of education for november 10 2020 is called the 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 that means we're all tv stars tonight welcome everyone to tonight's board meeting uh we are going to be uh hearing an update on reentry and our ability to offer some limited in-person instruction which is really exciting um following that update we will get um another update on the fun for pps our first annual page we are gonna begin our time together tonight with the consent agenda board members are there any items that you would like to pull from the consent agenda for us to discuss on discuss and vote at the end of the meeting any items to pool so i had a couple questions about the college board contract so do you want to pull it julia or do you want to ask those questions as part of discussion of the consent agenda i think they're pretty basic um i guess i would ask the staff whether they want to ask whether they're prepared to answer them i sent the questions um in which case we could do it now or if you think they're pretty basic i say do it now um and then we can um move on so let's get the consent agenda before us um and then we can ask those questions ms fred are there any changes to the consent agenda no oh and i should ask were there any other board members who wanted to uh pull anything from the consent agenda okay um do i have a motion and a second to adopt the consent agenda so moved so it sounded to me like director scott moved and director bailey seconded uh the consent agenda is there any board discussion on the consent agenda dr burn edwards so i i don't know if uh dr cuellar or aurora are prepared to answer the questions i sent but it was around the college board that psat and sat tests actually that one's probably gonna fall with dr brown okay dr brown um and i'm sorry because you you weren't on the email that i sent um so my question was i know earlier this year there was a question about pbs's participation in the psat and the sats for our sophomores and juniors and seniors and i couldn't tell from this contract whether this um and the question related to um students being allowed to take them and therefore being having the ability to access national merit scholarships and so i couldn't tell from the agenda item because it looked like the original proposal by the college board was for a lot more of actual individual tests and the actual purchase order we had was for for a lesser number and so i'm was wondering what our approach was are we offering that to the psat to all sophomores and juniors and then the sat to all seniors so so the window for the psat that would have been offered to all sophomores would have been in in october and that that's passed and we were in cdl at that point and did not um within the guidance that was offered by the state it just simply wasn't permissible and we've we have held open then the um really the hope that we'd be able to offer the the psat and the sat later in the academic year and the college board has opened a window in january which would be particularly interesting for our juniors who are interested in pursuing the national merit scholarship the most recent guidance from ode would still cap the number of students that we could test at 250 per building which is less than our enrollment for many of our buildings for the 11th grade class so at this point um we're trying to hold that door open and we're working with our buildings uh as to how best to to make that opportunity available for our students but without having this contract in place then we do not even have the opportunity to hold that door open for our students moving forward so in in theory just to make sure i understand that this contract gives us the option and how it gets structured within the current limitations
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um we'd have the flexibility to figure that out but this this would gives us the capacity that every senior would be able to could take if assuming we could figure it out how to do it within the um guidelines could take the sat and that all juniors or juniors and sophomores could take the psat so uh again the cap per building would be 250 uh for test day and and so that does raise some challenges and again we're working with our buildings uh to work through the logistics of that and and what could be offered um i do not believe that this will support a census assessment i want to be clear about that and so uh again for those students who would be eligible for the national merit scholarship we want to explore every opportunity to offer that in january and then we're very hopeful that we may have a an expanded opportunity later in the year for for the sat it will depend entirely on the metrics as we move forward great um that's my question i appreciate staff working to try and make this happen um for our juniors and seniors dr brown this is amy what about the other um restriction around seat time or amount of uh time that the test would take to implement is there any waiver on that or we still would be with cdl that would still be a sticking point too so that the the most recent guidance that came from ode gives us flexibility within um the administration time that would allow for a normal administration and actually a time and a half administration um which is is desirable for us because then we could afford that at least that accommodation for students um so yeah we don't have the same restrictions that we would have had with the cdl with limited in person with only two hours uh that is helpful for for this event thanks that's good news so dr brown gibbon uh where we are today with metrics could could what could we do today if today was test day had we worked with our buildings we could have had up to 250 students uh participate in the assessment and that's given that all the logistics could be worked out to to to make that happen so the constraints uh right now are are based on what the ode guidance is the if we were fortunate enough to see our metrics improve uh we could potentially expand that number once we're out of cdl and and that would be the hope that as we uh enter into the spring that we might see our metrics and improve such that we wouldn't be under that 250 cap currently uh given current metrics we could do we could do with proper planning 250 at each school yes yeah great thank you all right uh is there any further further sorry board discussion actually just one last question on the same topic how will the opportunity be communicated to students and their families we've just got some correspondence on the topic and i'm curious about how the that will be shared so we'll work with our buildings uh to share that and i think that that's part of the planning process moving forward uh we've already had a conversation with a couple of our building leaders and this will have to go through a limited in-person planning process like we would for any other and part of that involves the communication timeline as well but that communication will definitely have to be done in conjunction with buildings as we move forward thanks ms bradshaw is there any public comment on the consent agenda no i heard no okay great uh the board will now vote on resolution 6200 through 6202 all in favor please indicate by saying 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 thank you nathaniel all right well we turn now to our time of student and public comment before we begin i would like to review our
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guidelines for comment the board thanks and appreciates the community for taking the time to attend this meeting and provide your comments public input informs our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns and our responsibility as a board is to actively listen our board office will follow up on board-related issues raised during public testimony we request that complaints about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a personal matter if you have any additional materials or items you would like to provide to the board or to the superintendent we ask that you email them to publiccomment pps.net that's public comment as all one word at pps.net please make sure when you begin your comment time that you clearly state your name and spell your last name you will have three minutes to speak and you will hear a sound after three minutes which means that it is time to conclude your comments ms bradshaw do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment yes we have davia harvey i think i thought xavier here davia are you with him i am oh great welcome thank you i think did davia just accidentally mute herself did i oh you're back you're back all right you can go ahead and begin davia okay um hi my name is davia harvey my last name is spelled h-a-r-v-e-y and my pronouns are she her i'm in sixth grade at mount tabor middle school and in the spanish immersion program it is my understanding that pbs is changing boundaries for some of the schools in southeast portland i live in the south tabor neighborhood and at franklin high school kellogg middle school in atkinson elementary all in walking distance less than a half mile away i don't need to cross any dangerous streets and feel very safe walking this school in my neighborhood that i know very well this is a neighborhood where i live where i grew up where i grew up in and where my friends live i know my neighbors and i know my way around my friends and i have talked about the boundary change and we do not feel safe having to go all the way to harrison park and madison when the schools in our neighborhood are less than half mile away we can safely walk there and we already play there all the time i don't understand why we need to travel one and a half miles to harrison park when catalog is less than a quarter away or travel four miles to madison when franklin is a mile away if i were to go to kellogg and franklin and franklin i would bike i would walk and bike now if i went to madison and harrison i would need to take the bus because my parents have work and can't drive me and and i know that that it that is the case for many other kids too also it is not environment environmentally a good idea to drive when you can walk in school we have talked about global warming and it is one of the biggest threats to my future this is why i ask you to consider the importance of neighborhood schools thank you for your time thank you mary very much davia and i know we've got um director moore and director bailey are on the southeast guiding coalition working with that team um and appreciate those comments that you have shared tonight thank you very much thank you so much kara do we have further public or student comment yes logan clear yes that's me do you want me to go ahead yes please thank you logan hello good evening my name is logan clyers last name is spelled k-l-e-i-e-r and i have two sons that go to grant high school and they are struggling and have told me recently and know in certain terms they haven't learned anything via distance learning and given this i'm before you today to ask you to do two things first develop a distance learning dashboard that informs you how well or poorly distance learning is working in pps and second conduct standardized testing this spring so that you know how far behind our kids have fallen in terms of educational competency data from other school districts show distance learning is not a substitute for in-person learning the dallas independent school district last week
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announced its map scores for fifth grade and showed over 50 percent of its fifth graders no longer test at grade level and this is compared around 25 pre-pandemic their head of academic academic affairs called these results quote atrocious today salem kaiser schools are released data showing 40 of all grades are f's which is triple the normal amount and unsurprisingly all of these losses are felt more acutely by economically disadvantaged families and critically we can only expect these results to worsen with each passing day common sense tells us kids will not adapt better with time however better data in the dashboard will let you know just how bad it's getting for students i feel there's no doubt you need data and you need a dashboard to inform your discussions about whether the service you provide is working for students i recommend you create a distance learning health check dashboard make it public and track the following first the number of d's and f's given within high school second the number of absences across all schools elementary middle and high school third the number of ieps and 504 plans again across all schools and lastly the number of students that have unrolled or unenrolled or withdrawn since being the pandemic which i believe you'll hear about in about an hour's time data points such as these give you the ability to create a green yellow red status on pps and inform your discussions on what to do about distance learning yesterday i submitted a public records request for these data i'm assuming it will cost me hundreds if not thousands of dollars to get this data from pps however you as school board members can obtain these for free and should seek them out as a way to frame your discussions about how and when to get schools open again now granted i recognize multnomah county's coronavirus infection rates not allow pps to reopen even in hybrid mode however independent of this there's value in creating such a dashboard first it has value because it it will help parents make informed decisions on whether they want to send their kids back to school eventually pps will get back open and parents want to make informed choices about sending their kids back publicly available data allows them to make that informed choice and second better data will help you take a data-driven approach to determine whether the service you offering offer is failing our kids and steps you're willing to take to get schools opening it i say this because i believe pps has a moral obligation to advocate to the governor on behalf of the children it serves when the service it provides is failing and better data helps you to be an advocate for children surely there must be a point at which pps would hit the quote all stop button and help the governor develop solutions to get at-risk children back in schools thank you for your time thank you very much thank you i said it and then i was still muted so i left a space we have sadie pettigrew hi my name is sadie pettigrew i'm calling or i'm not calling i we are here to talk about the boundaries for the south tabor um neighborhood schools um my last name is pettigrew p-e-t-t-i-g-r-e-w my daughter and i are going to talk um we have obviously two daughters currently at bridger middle school my husband and i feel like the boundary line at woodward street is so bizarre um this boundary line will literally divide our neighborhood in half the school year has already seriously impacted our kids socially and to fragment some kids even more by separating them from their school mate community only compounds the problem franklin and kellogg are neighborhood schools our daughters can walk to kellogg middle school 0.4 miles and franklin high school 0.8 miles from our home harrison park is where they're wanting our kids to change their middle school is 1.2 miles crossing two major streets and madison high school is three point miles 3.4 miles from our home the proximity of our neighborhood school is obviously the safest for our children we have been part of our neighborhood for 20 years and have anticipated our girls go going to high school we have been to plays sporting events i was uh assistant basketball coach for the pil we've been to high school tours our girls have just always thought that they were going to go to this school um so over the years and we feel like our children it's the most equitable choice for our children to attend their neighborhood school with their friends and community thank you for listening this is my daughter presley and she would like to talk as well um hello my name is presley pettigrew um p-e-t-t-i-g-r-w my pronouns are slasher i'm in the seventh grade and i go to i go to jim bridger um one through eight um i am in the neighborhood program i think we should be able to go to calgary for many reasons so i'm gonna list a reason i presley presley could you slow down just
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when i get excited i totally get it i have to like breathe deeply when i'm reading our script for board meeting nights so i don't rush through everything and people can understand me but um i'm getting old now i used to talk faster when i was young and so i i it takes me my brain a little moment to process what you're saying i'm so sorry if you could be that kindness i'd appreciate it i think we should be able to go to kellogg for many reasons so i'm gonna list a few reasons why we should be i think we should be able to go first of all we live pretty much right there four blocks away me and my sister could easily walk from there to our house or to our house from there we should go back why why should we go to harrison park when that is much further away and harder to cross over to why um why can't the bat why can't the boundary be division as well why cut it off at woodward uh also for myself in this example i went to an entire new school with no friends at all it was art it was decently hard um far away and it took me a while to adjust everyone there making new friends is not a skill i feel like going to college i'll be reunited with my old with many of my old friends in in the two of my new friends second of all i don't fully understand why you're splitting the neighborhood in half or why we should go to a high school middle school that are further away from than less than a mile away franklin and kellogg are less than a mile away why and lastly um you won't probably pay attention to me because i'm only in the seventh grade but i'm standing up for what i believe in i don't know i think if we're smart we pay attention to seventh graders middle schoolers are pretty smart about what's going on in the world so thank you so much uh presley for your testimony tonight and for slowing down so that i could catch all the important things you have to say i really appreciate you accommodating uh me like that thank you for listening there any other public or student testimony tonight ms bradshaw no that concludes who signed up all right sorry i have to find my script i want to thank everybody again for their comments and please feel free to collect with connect with our board manager roseanne powell if you have something specifically you want to follow up with the board office we continue getting to hear from students tonight which is awesome uh we have our student representative nathaniel next would you like to provide us with your report this evening nathaniel i would thank you um these last few weeks have been very busy for myself and surely for most other high school students not least because the first quarter ended last thursday in addition to the watershed historical events that have unfolded over the last week so bearing this and the fact that we will be meeting again in only a week in mind i'll keep this brief i would like to on behalf of the students of pps thank the voters of our district for supporting the renewal of our bond by an unprecedented margin of three to one its passage is an extraordinary nathaniel i think that that calls for some wild cheering oh yes please so let's have some wild cheering thank you voters all right please continue thank you for indulging my celebratory mood there of course um where was i it's passage is an extraordinary and perhaps unparalleled step forward for our mission and our students it is also a real victory for the jefferson community who who have awaited this day for far too long i look forward to working with all of you to implement the bond and urge us to be intentional and engaging students throughout this process particularly those from schools and communities which will be most affected by the bond in addition to the dsc thank you thank you so much nathaniel for your report and for getting us in a celebratory space uh superintendent guerrero are we going to be doing wild cheering during your report tonight do you think well nathaniel and anytime we have a student representative it's always a tough act to follow so i appreciate my time slot on the agenda but actually chair with your permission before i begin my remarks for this evening we do have a little surprise for the directors this evening so as a short interlude uh i think it's best introduced by our district's visual and performing arts leader miss kristen brayson kristin thank you superintendent guerrero thank you chair lowry members of the board um super thrilled to be here tonight to introduce a little surprise to you we were able to get some excellent video of one of our students her name is um as you know jefferson has a comprehensive dance program and zoe herself has made her way through the ranks of that dance program she's a
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jefferson dancer as i mentioned and she has is presenting a piece tonight it's a modern piece that has been choreographed by one of her teachers at jefferson uh modern dance teacher um what's what that teacher's name is rachel slater i just wanted to give a shout out to rachel but in addition to that a big shout out to all of our visual and performing arts educators particularly a shout out to our high school visual art educators because as we know we have programs 912 in all of our high schools and we agnostic of discipline all of these teachers work really hard to get to that pinnacle of learning for our students and that is often carried through in this process like we're seeing with zoe where a teacher is side by side really coaching a student to get to that moment of video performance and in this case this is zoe's presentation for audition for college and so we're getting to see zoe in her moment of light as she communicates her art form and this is this is zoe presenting to the world her audition tape for various colleges for dance across the nation thank you for joining us [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] thank you so much for sharing that with us i think you know the power of her movements and the beauty of those lines that's incredible and just you could see her giving her whole self to that routine and i think uh uh i don't know kristin what your official title is chair chief director brayson uh that it's um it's such a like symbol that dance is symbolic of the way that our students give themselves so fully to their work and i know that our as you said the instructors of the arts are also there with their students giving themselves fully so thank you for sharing that beautiful surprise with us tonight beautiful that was beautiful i want to also share that my younger sister was accepted into the um martha's martha graham school of dance in new york um they actually were here in portland for three weeks like many other dance companies during those days and and she auditioned right when they were here so there's a lot of possibility out there that was really wonderful to be shared during this meeting it was also kristin while we have you on the line i just want to say thank you to um all of our arts educators because there's i know been a huge logistical push to get students what they need to be able to create in different media and i've i've heard some some pretty amazing stories about teachers going out of their way to make sure kids get the materials that they need so thank you to
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everybody making it happen so that kids can continue these passions yeah i think it's you know this this video itself shows that a lot of times off book of the curriculum we have those teachers really working in supportive students um so i'm glad you got to see that manifestation tonight it was funny as you started speaking tonight kristen i could hear my daughter finishing up her clarinet practice for her so arts are happening all around pps in lots of ways thank you so much well i couldn't have planned that any better thank you so much zoe miss slater and the always uh fabulous kristen brayson for sharing that wonderful wonderful performance with this this evening i just thought even in this time of pandemic beautiful art dance and music it's being practiced and performed by our talented students every day and i also wanted to share an appreciation to all of our vapa educators who i know are working hard to help our students prepare at this time especially for auditions and portfolios it just it reminded me how my orchestra director once did the same thing for me my senior year so thank you to the esteemed dr thomas tatten out there you know the rest is history well good evening directors and good evening to everybody who's joining us via a live stream i thought starting the report this evening featuring student would help us continue to keep our students at the center uh it's been three weeks since our last meeting in some ways it feels much longer given all that's happened during that time including some really significant events both locally and in our country during that time so and i'll certainly be making a few comments about these current events after first i highlight a handful of other related items and i have a feeling our directors will likely also have some sentiments they probably want to share with our broader community too so i'll get to the election news in just a bit but first in other important news you're all aware that last friday governor brown announced a two-week pause next slide roseanne on social activities in five oregon counties including multnomah county so the governor announced four more counties including washington county to be added to the pause list today so this action essentially tightens already existing restrictions on public gatherings especially those taking place indoors the pause announced by the governor does not include guidance specific to schools but all employers are directed to ask employees to work from home unless it's necessary for them to be on site much of the announced aspects of the pause are already in keeping with current pps practices so uh no big changes for us at the moment but the reason for this pause is is actually what's troubling uh our covid trajectory is going in the wrong direction uh the trend as the state and multnomah county continue setting daily case records so we're nowhere near done with this pandemic and it's incumbent upon all of us to treat covet 19 with the same vigilance as was required a month or six months ago so that vigilance is necessary now more than ever our covid metrics are not good news right now for our community and for our ability to reopen our schools to students any time in the short term uh tonight chiefs brown and martinik will however have a staff update uh on where we are with limited in-person opportunities later this evening i know staff is working on creating a more extended session to dive in with some of the more uh granular details including uh hearing directly from some of our health advisory team we want to make sure that the larger community understands this connection between current health metrics and our ability to contemplate welcoming back students to campus more comprehensively we're all anxious to reach the necessary conditions required so that we can open our classrooms to students again making that day a reality will take all of us at pps and in the larger community following safe public health practices later this week we will roll out a new social media campaign that explains the role all of us have in getting back to in-person learning so to everyone in our community a plea please continue to wear masks and practice social distancing wherever you are on this evening's regular meeting agenda also we will hear from chief jonathan garcia an update about the fund for pps
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as you know the fund has played a critical role during the pandemic helping to provide essential services to a number of our families and there's much more to come it's true that the pandemic is urgent to us right now but i know that the fund directors are also planning uh for the longer term and how philanthropy can be a significant and strategic role in pbs's ongoing transformation work so uh i look forward to hearing more from victoria lara chair of the fund's board of directors uh who will be up in just a few minutes and finally uh i can't wait to talk about this we can now mark one week since the polls closed across the country and it was certainly a historically significant election for our district for our city and for our country given the much anticipated and tumultuous run-up to november 3rd particularly related to the presidential election we shared our first ever election toolkit with students staff and families that tool contained guidelines for political speech hate speech protocols lesson plans professional development content and resources that were made available to educators and students as they prepared for election week so this democratic process affords as i mentioned in my superintendent's message to the community a real life teachable moment regarding civic engagement and government election day finally arrived last tuesday and of course it's still taking a few days before we know for sure but the country will be swearing in it looks like a new president in january so i want to point out a couple of the many outcomes that coincide with president-elect biden that are relevant to us in public education uh first uh and i know she was here in town recently uh with uh with us first dr jill biden our soon-to-be first lady she's been an educator for more than three decades as an english teacher at the public high school and community college levels as well as at a psychiatric hospital for adolescents i'm confident that dr biden will be a powerful advocate for public education and given all we know about the importance and power of representation it's certain that vice president-elect harris her ascent will inspire a generation of young people of color especially young women of color across the country here in portland voters overwhelmingly voted yes uh for portland schools with successful passing of a bond measure that will provide over 1.2 billion dollars for capital projects this represents the largest school bond measure in oregon history our community sent a strong message that they agree that our students deserve safe modern learning environments and access to programs and high quality instructional materials and tools that will engage them and ultimately lead to their success to be a little more specific the 2020 portland public schools bond will fund health and safety projects in schools across the school district replace textbooks and technology equipment district-wide modernize jefferson high school begin planning for a center for black student excellence make historic investments in accessibility long overdue complete the modernization of benson polytechnic high school expand instructional and cte space at roosevelt high school expand multiple pathways to graduation facility construction and continue design and planning to modernize cleveland and wilson high schools aside from pps's own measure i think everyone's aware that the public libraries parks and rec and preschool for all also passed successful measures and congratulations to their efforts collectively this represents a real victory for children youth and families of portland i can't underline enough how enormous a milestone this is for us and for our students to our voters on behalf of pps's leadership team both at the central office and its schools from our educators staff and most importantly the students of portland public schools i share the deepest gratitude to portland voters for their expressed confidence and trust and i want to thank our board of directors whose vision for the bond their active advocacy leadership and campaigning help the measure not only pass but do so at historic levels of support we look forward to staying in touch with all of our constituents and stakeholders as we work with the community to implement this bond as with the 2012 and 2017 capital improvement school bonds pps's bond
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accountability committee an independent group of appointed community members will review quarterly reports and audits of how the bond dollars are being spent to provide accountability to the public until construction and implementation are complete and directors that concludes my remarks this evening thank you you superintendent guerrero and there's a lot to celebrate and a lot to look forward to even as we um also look at our covered numbers and know that there's a lot of handwashing we need to do i had said that my hands weren't as chapped as they were in march because i've been really good about hand washing and i pledged that i would get better and i have so i hope all of us are able to we're consistently washing our hands and wearing those masks all right we had an awesome super fun board retreat on halloween and one of the things we talked about was moving our committee reports up in the agenda so that we could share the work that the board is doing more effectively with one another and with members of the public so we're gonna turn now to our committee reports and i have a partial list of some but i know that there's more um but we're going to go ahead and uh um begin with julia do you have a report from the audit committee for us tonight no it hasn't met i have a rose quarter i5 report but i can i can i can do that after the go ahead and go through the let's let's go ahead and have you do the you were on my list i couldn't remember why i assumed audit but it was because of the rose quarter so please go ahead if you're ready and give that report sure um so and i'm currently serving on the rose quarter i-5 expansion executive advisory committee and most notably we had a meeting the last two weeks in which the committee advisory committee adopted values and the committee charter and um i've got to say i'm concerned about um the direction the project is heading just in in this in the context of harriet tubman uh middle school which is immediately adjacent to the project and we've had already existing air quality issues in which the district has made a very significant investment when we reopened tubman and the direction that this project is going um is not i i believe living up to the values that um are stated which is partly to address past um past uh inequities and that have come about because of the i5 right going right through albina and at the last meeting um when they we adopted the values and charters that there was i offered language because it was completely silent on the impact on harriet tubman i offered um language to include in uh the values and charter document that the air quality in the grounds of harriet tubman and the adjacent littles albino park is at a level that medical and public health professionals feel is safe for children and youth um and the uh odot uh instead proposed um which was the language that was ultimately adopted that the project will just improve the air quality on the grounds of harriet tubman um so obviously this is a that's a much weaker standard than um like an incremental immaterial improvement is a much weaker standard than air quality that we know is healthy and safe and when asked about what their baseline for the improvement would be there they were unable to state what that was or what improvement they were willing to commit to um so two weeks later we're still waiting for that language uh we'll be continuing to press them just that's an issue we can have a we can create a very safe and healthy environment inside the school through the very significant investments we've made but obviously when the students are outside or walking to and from school the air quality has a huge impact and this has the potential to make things worse so that'll be an area that we're continuing to work on and then the second piece and director scott feel free i'm sorry director bailey feel free to jump in um there's also work on a separate committee relating to the caps which is something that's really important to albino vision trust and whether um the sort of rebuilding community in alvina can be restored director bailey do you want to add anything to that piece of the
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the project work um so again albino vision uh as they have sketched that division for that part of portland uh proposed a really broad multi i'm thinking at least a dozen block long lid over the freeway that could then get redeveloped and maybe even have some recreational outdoor value for folks odot's uh response was to do a two block lid that would be highly exposed to it would be right over the freeway so highly exposed to vehicle exhaust which we know is incredibly unhealthy so odot has contracted with zgf a local architectural planning firm to [Music] to do two things run a public process to get input from the community on different scenarios and to cost those out and we gave them some feedback about that because the the other thing is uh what what albino vision would propose is probably far outside the budget that odot has which is already substantially over um over the initial dollar amount estimated uh so there's that's daunting uh the gap between what odot thinks would work versus a true truer vision for redeveloping the area is quite wide and the fact that albino vision has chosen not to participate in this process but due to due to odot's actions over the last couple of months means i was trying to be diplomatic to say you have a real challenge in running a public process that anybody in the community would see as valid if albino vision isn't participating um so uh director brim edwards i think you were uh being somewhat kind to odot to say you're worried about how this is coming down odot over the last year i guess has given every indication that they're just gonna ram this process through um over any kind of community opposition and and again there's some community support for it as well i don't i don't need to discount that but their absolute failure to take into account any of the points that we have brought up in terms of the health of our students not to mention that the long-standing impacts of air pollution on the community all the way up i-5 um it's disappointing to say the least well i don't think that they would interpret my comments at the last meeting as just like being worried um we're hold them accountable and i think that's you know the one of the questions that um we have had or discussed of like our participation when um others the city albino vision trust have left the process but if we're as part of the process we can continue to raise issues which we think are valid and i think we can hold odot's feet to the fire on um air quality and the impact that they're having on the students in that area so we'll just keep at it yeah and just uh i mean the other thing that that i'm watching is when we are meeting over a year ago informally pretty much every local government stood with pps saying you need to address things some now that the process has moved to a next the next stage some of those local governments have been consistent and some have some are not and i'll just leave it at that for now but that that again is uh has had one or two disappointments thank you director brim edwards and director bailey for that update can i ask a question sure um so it's thank you both for doing that um and um i understand the um [Music] sort of the logic and principle of staying at the table um but my question is um
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how how can we hold them accountable how can we advocate for um changes for um that will respond to our needs and the needs of the logic community um and if we can't um actually uh you know advocate effectively for for the kinds of changes that that a lot of us are are saying are desperately needed in the plan um at what point does our presence at the table become tacit compliance or complicity and how will we know um that's a great question and i would say they definitely don't think that we're like all on board with their plan um and there's a couple things we can do i mean so um you know we made them all vote on the issue um odot um immediately came back with we're gonna try and develop a standard so we're gonna hold them to that and a standard that um not is a arbitrary immaterial improvement but one that is based on um health standards that um we all that are public and that um health care and medical professionals agree on um the other thing that we talked about with um courtney wesling who has been the staff liaison and worked with on the staff working group is also communicating with the legislature about the project um because when the project was approved and funded i don't think that uh harriet tubman's uh the impact on the harriet tubman was even part of the discussion um and given that legislative leadership was all in the portland area we think it's in that we have two new uh state representatives who are um health care professionals that just got elected to the legislature um that will definitely want to have a conversation because this is something that's funded by the legislature not just that odot can ram through a community uh and i would say uh director more i had the same question and and uh director brent edwards brought it up actually in our in our discussions um and i would say uh at this point i really appreciate what uh julia did bringing up the language and just having it out there voted down in direct contradiction to the values was um i'm glad that she was there at the table representing us there may be a point sooner rather than later when um we want to opt out um but so far i think staying in has been valuable i just want to highlight that this again goes to the importance of our team that we all have different the seven board directors all have different skills and abilities and show up in different ways and that um it's when we work together uh as director of meadows and director bailey just demonstrated that we get somewhere dr deposit i saw that you were unmuted did you have a question or comment you wanted to make i did not i was accidentally unmuted for change it usually goes the other way around i'm trying to read people's body language and and zoom signs to try to help facilitate the meeting so i'm sorry about that um all right so um we will move on to our next uh committee report and i believe that um that was gonna be from director bailey around the southeast guiding coalition and i know director moore may have some thoughts on that as well yes so uh again to recap we have a committee of parents and community members and school principals and district staff working in southeast portland and we heard some public testimony on this earlier to do a couple of things one is to continue the transition from k-8s to k-5s and middle schools a second is to minimize co-located programs that particularly that result in single strand english speaking cohorts going through a k5 another piece is to set up a continuum of services for students receiving special education so they can stay with their broader cohort all the way up from k through 12. and
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fourth is to uh overall balance enrollment and make the best use of our facilities going forward all to really address long-standing inequities um that have been going on for well over a decade um the committee has been incredibly active and is the the district staff and their uh consultants started with a a proposal to not as the proposal but as something they called it the springboard to get conversation going the different small groups involved in the process have generated numerous um and i'll send you the i just got the uh summary today numerous different variations on a theme pages and pages um so we've got a very engaged groups it's incredibly challenging work because balancing all those different dimensions and a lot of data trying to get at some solutions is really really daunting i really want to thank all the committee members for hanging in there so uh another meeting of the group will be thursday night uh let's see that's the 12th and then on the 19th there will be an open house where the broader community can come in look at the scenarios and weigh in the the goal is to get it down to hopefully two or three scenarios again not as the final final but as best thinking so far and get feedback from the public um because often somebody comes in with if you do that and it's like yeah awesome why didn't we see that before it's happened throughout this process and will can happen again with good public input so that's coming up on the 19th and then the committee will get back to work and send us the feeder patterns for proposed feeder patterns for kellogg and presumably for a harrison park middle school for us to decide in january and then for later on this spring to send us a boundaries for the schools involved so great important process this has been hanging around for a long time i'm really glad we're addressing it now and again thanks to staff and to our participants and i hope to see a lot of the public engaged in that open house all right thank you director bailey um andrew do you have anything from the intergovernmental uh group um yeah thanks uh chair lowry um just really quick update we have a um meeting coming up on december 3rd the next intergovernmental committee meeting uh and we're in the process right now as a committee of finalizing the legislative agenda the hope is that uh on december 3rd the committee will be able to uh recommend that to the full board and it'll come back to the board in mid-december to finalize the legislative agenda in advance of the legislative session we're also hoping at that december 3rd meeting to have a dialogue with some representatives from the reimagine oregon um project to sort of talk about ways that we can be um more anti-racist and and focus our our district and our policies and structures around improving the um performance of our black students and and and the service that we're able to provide um to that community so uh we're still tentatively uh working on that schedule so it is not confirmed yet but we'll definitely let all the members know if we do get that confirmed because it would be great um if folks could attend that december third meeting um and then finally just following up on our um uh conversation really brief conversation we had a retreat last weekend um we are doing some research into the elections issue um and um we're gonna be staff were talking a little bit about it and and looking in terms of of what our options are and what the process is and we'll be coming back to the board um with a plan or at least uh some ideas that the board can discuss around that relatively soon as well thanks thank you director scott um director moore did you have a report on the policy committee uh i can um so the policy committee is um trying to work through a very very long list of policies um [Music] so in our attempt to make our processes more efficient where
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we have extended the duration of meetings to three hours instead of two we're still meeting every three weeks and we have come up with a partial calendar [Music] looking ahead to how we can how we can um manage all of the demands for a lot this policy work that's going to be pretty substantial this year um and and how we can sequence it most efficiently um so those materials are available um online for the october 26th meeting if anybody wants to look at it um our next meeting is uh november 16th um and at that meeting we will be um talking more about we'll be continuing a discussion about the formal public complaint policy um we'll be um looking at um [Music] a new policy called all students belong which will be responsive to new legislature yeah new statute from the legislature likewise we're going to be talking about um amendments to the title ix policy um also responsive to legislation um and um [Music] and we may be talking depending on how much time we have left we we may be talking about other topics as well um so i would encourage anybody who's interested um to to tune in on the 16th um it's running from 4 pm to 7 pm um if i can also say i'm this year i'm the liaison to the community budget review committee and we are having our first meeting on thursday november 12th [Music] which unfortunately conflicts with the southeast guiding coalition meeting so i will not be able to attend vectors this week that's it you haven't figured out how to be in two places that once yet rita no i have not two laptops yeah uh director bailey about the southeast can i ask the process sure absolutely sorry i didn't allow for time after his report um so director i was curious about um so we have these two phases so the phase one and then that's happening this sort of fall winter and then a phase in the spring and is it um i'll ask the question then sort of the context um when phase one is concluded are we going to be voting on the i'm assuming we're voting on the boundaries of kellogg um so that we can move ahead with the staffing and every everything else um and my question is that there's obviously if you look at if you look at the list of schools there's a much longer list of schools that are engaged in the process and have representatives on the coalition um but not all and like last meeting i noticed there were a number of proposals and alternatives that were being focused on that included actions that would be probably considered phase two but that would impact schools that aren't even um represented in phase one and so the question is like so if we if we vote on phase one and the boundaries does that lock us in on solutions and um decisions around schools that aren't actually even represented in phase one does that make sense my question yes um so first i want to clarify um we won't be voting on boundaries but more feeder patterns because the actual boundaries for the theater school so yeah thanks and that's that's a good question and um i don't know the answer to that and if there's staff here who want to speak to that please do um that's um it's a credit to the committee to think um outside the box so to speak as much as i hate that metaphor in this case the box was we're trying to put some limits on where we were focusing around the feeder patterns and in the spring would be a broader group of schools and include more school reps
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um but the i again it's one of the challenges is trying to do this in a smaller region as opposed to district wide and you just you run into those issues on the edges where oh gosh if we do this it might address something over here um for example i think there were uh some uh scenarios that looked at changing the feeder pattern into the lane in order to boost enrollment there and that's a set of schools that wasn't uh are part of partly was not included in i don't think lane has a rep on the committee so that's an example of something coming up from the community of people really looking at it and being creative in how they do it and so i'm going to say i don't know right now i'm prepared to respond if that's helpful okay so the phase one is the focus is on kellogg middle school and harrison park middle school and the feeder patterns for those two middle schools and also the dli programs that would be located at those two schools now having said that when that is that is what we're looking at to accomplish in phase one having said that when you try to have that conversation just taking that segment out of the whole southeast um area it's very difficult to do that on its own we are the k5 boundaries and the k-5 and other middle school balancing is also continuing in february after we get through the phase one decision in time for kellogg to be staffed for next fall then we will continue the conversation with the k5 elementaries and then the balancing of other middle schools so we're we've shown the guiding coalition what needs to be accomplished in phase one and it is hard for them to separate the two processes um so they tend to put the work together however the this the decision that we're being asked to bring forward for the board's review will be centered around harrison park and kellogg and really the other decisions what might be things that are being considered that it might be tied to those two specifics but we will continue to um process those in the spring with the full all of the k5s involved in the area so there are um some schools that are because they are not um close enough to be in kellogg or harrison park that are not involved in the process now and then we'll add them back in in the spring yeah and having been around directors more directors more and bailey for a long enough time knowing that this isn't a really targeted focus you have to have a larger expansive view um i would just make sure that um because i think some schools communities might be surprised that their schools are being talked about in a meeting and they don't have any representatives there that we sort of over communicate so that um there's not a case of i thought you were just doing the feeder patterns for kellogg and yet there's a whole bunch of other changes that we weren't aware of so i think that the benefit of over communicating communicating early would be really important so that when we get to the spring we don't have some or some communities who are surprised maybe that decisions have already been made or are that on a path to being made without their participation yeah i think that's a good point and i think that's uh claire's clarification of that uh was really good that we're gonna really focus on that narrow decision um in january and anything else will go to a broader group subsequent to that all right did anyone have any further questions for director bailey or questions for director moore around the policy committee report all right director deposit and dr constand do you have anything to report from either the bond committee or the alternative i can't remember what it's called um charter and alternative programs committee there we go um uh yes thank you
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it's a real exercise for me as a firstborn to go last um in terms of any kind of updates um it's good it's good for patience and humility so i have a brief update about the school improvement bond committee and the bond accountability committee um we had three topics on the agenda one of them was the uh we got an extensive update on the business equity an overview of the program and business equity refers to the minority and women owned minority women emerging small business program and the utilization um we got an update that we're um quite we're below where we uh have aspirational goals of about 18 and we're about seven points below that in terms of utilization for a variety of reasons um the good news there is that there's a really rich discussion about um it's it's actually being addressed um there's rich discussion about how to increase those numbers and we've got good people on board um good consultants on board um so i'm just looking over my notes here um during that discussion there were good questions asked and there were um a few there are updates on actions that are being taken currently and that will be taken in the future um the second topic we talked about was a bond execution plan overview there's nothing necessarily to report on that except that that's in development at the time we had our meeting we weren't sure if the bond was going to pass we know it passed now and and so will be staff will be developing that that plan though lastly we had discussion about new bond accountability committee members and i just want to share that we are currently recruiting and we would love to see participation from diverse candidates that have a variety of experiences if you don't think you qualify just go ahead and apply anyway um we probably won't be well we'd just love to hear from the community if you're interested in applying for that if you're listening there's a link on the website the bond accountability committee website and encourage you to apply we'll be vetting those applications at our next upcoming meeting i don't have the date handy but um we're hoping to get a new bond accountability committee chair and uh three three new members in in for the new year i do have a report from charter and alternative programs committee but i want to add one thing to director de pass's report from our bond committee meeting which is that um in our discussion around a bond execution plan we talked about uh and how we're going to from a management perspective how staff is going to organize around the investments in curriculum and technology which is new for the district and from a governance standpoint how the board is going to organize our oversight function for those areas because it it may or may not fall under the purview of the bond accountability committee who has which has been composed because of their expertise and construction and construction management so that's something that i'm really interested in um us focusing on because it'll be really important to have a strong oversight function for those new exciting areas of investment and and thank you director constance for adding that that's a really important uh key piece i left out the governance pieces um is true yes we've been focused on kind of the legal and financial oversight and i think that um i think that we that discussion is really important and um you'll probably we'll get we'll update you more as we move forward great um charter and alternative programs board committee uh has not met um in this cycle but we're having our first meeting this friday morning at eight a.m if anyone wants to join us we're going to look at what our schedule for charter review is this year and what schools are are coming up and we are also going to look at our student investment account investments and look at how our community-based alternative schools fared in that distribution process and how our students in in those schools are benefiting from some of those strategic investments and then also look at um the um esser the the pandemic relief monies that have come into our community and um see how we're investing those particularly in our alternative programs
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i think we all know where they landed in terms of our general budget um but this might be an area andrew where there will be a lot of intersection with the intergovernmental committee because probably some other entities in our community like the county for example and mesd also received some similar funds that where there's you know overlapping student groups so we're going to have a little discussion about that and then see how we might better coordinate with with other partners perps for say for our day and residential treatment students and lots lots of different student groups that are served by multiple partners um and then we're also going to check in with reconnection services and just see we may hear something tonight on our enrollment update about our high school students and whether they're sticking in in school but reconnection services um what kind of attendance supports do we have for our kids in virtual learning and how does that look different in virtual learning so that's what we're doing in there um and then quick update from the council of great city schools really our conversations lately have been focused on our districts that are back in some form or another of in-person instruction most districts have some students back in in-person learning but it's small subsets usually particular student populations and then um uh also just expecting when when congress does reconvene um there is full expectation that there'll be uh consideration of relief for public schools in the next uh pandemic relief package so we'll just monitor that and keep advocating and that's all i got all right that's great thank you uh director constance director of boss are there any other committee or conference reports that we need to share before we move on dr broome edwards you're unmuted does that mean you've got something no okay anybody else have any other conference or um committee reports i have a compliment though i mean great as long as i forgot to turn off my um mute we take a compliment um i personally really like moving up the committee reports to know what other board members um are doing in their committees and like the work at the work of the board um so appreciate that it's not the last 10 minutes of the meeting when we all are wanting to um finish up the the call up so thank you yeah i think it's good for us to share with one another so and this was i mean i can't take any credit because this was the wisdom of the board that came up at the board retreat so i i just do what i'm told um since we're giving compliments i wanted julie it was julian's idea so as long as we're complimenting julia i did want to also take some time to honor the work that our bond campaign committee did that um julia so deputy chair um and i see people clapping um thank you so much for the work that you did there and um the way that you know you hired a great team and we um i know a lot of the directors uh raise money um put up yard signs i had you know parker delivered a ton of yard signs to meet and people in the neighborhood took them and um all of the work that went into that the coordination of going to ptas and i know it was a big team but i know that you were the chair of that and just wanted to say thank you to that and for the success of that campaign that really is a huge legacy and a gift to pbs students thank you thank you all right um we are going to move on uh now to our next item which we're all anxiously awaiting um it's the big conversation in the school district which is around comprehensive distance learning and limited in-person instruction so superintendent guerrero would you like to introduce this next item it is the uh topic du jour certainly it was the focus of yet another statewide superintendent's meeting today yes chair i think i mentioned earlier last week governor brown announced that state of oregon's relaxing criteria and certain thresholds to reopen to in-person instruction starting with hybrid models that combine distance learning and on-campus learning but as you can imagine many families are in fact wondering how this affects portland public schools and how these guidelines impact our ability uh to implement a hybrid learning model or potentially full in-person instruction for students uh in second semester which has been a really
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rough timeline for us and i think the message that we shared with our community and for us that semester break would begin february 2nd so per the norm we have our chief assistant performance dr russ brown accompanied by our chief of student supports brenda martinek who are going to provide you with another regular update uh understanding that i also mentioned earlier we're intending to put together a much more in-depth program uh partly inspired by many directors who have written a number of questions that i think are important to answer uh for our public so i know that that's also something we're looking forward to providing soon but uh for the moment dr brown uh ms martinick good evening um it's pleasure to to join you again this evening board director superintendent guerrero members of the board in the community um looking forward to giving this update just waiting for the powerpoint to be pulled up again i'm pleased to be joined by ms martinac as we've done in the past we we've divided this powerpoint into two sections so that there's an opportunity for board members to ask questions at the midpoint and then again at the end next slide please so today's discussion uh at least the the first half is going to focus on the changes in the health uh metrics and what they mean for us what they would have looked like uh for the fall uh and and how that might have impacted what we could have done in the fall and also comparison to the cdc guidelines and again there'll be a break for for a q a after that uh then brenda will pick up and spend some time talking about uh again some changes in the guidance around limited in person activities things that uh we have implemented in terms of outdoor activities and the work that we're doing moving forward uh with limited in-person instruction and planning uh for a hopeful downward trend in the metrics that would allow us to to bring students back in pre-k3 next slide please again throughout this entire process the the guiding principles have remained unchanged that as we work through these as we think about this we always center racial equity and social justice in our planning we actually have a protocol that we use as we go through each of these processes as we think about them the next piece on the list obviously is ensuring the health and wellness of our staff and students and really the metrics speak to that and provide a framework and guidance for that and then we focus on again cultivating relationships and connections much of the work in the state too has leaned into this the importance of building and maintaining relationships with our students and strengthening those over time and then finally we're all learners in this window we see it all the time and we have an opportunity here to to strengthen and innovate our instructional practices as we move forward next slide please so on october 30th uh there were new metrics that were were put in place probably one of the biggest shifts here is moving to two week look back instead of looking at three individual weeks uh retrospectively and we'll go into a little bit more about that but that has a smoothing effect on things because there's always one week that's stable in that you're always adding one week but you're always having one week that's stable as you move forward the the model also has incremental increases in place uh for in-person instruction beginning at the elementary level which very much aligns with what we wanted to to do what many folks are interested in doing again is having more robust experience for our early learners and again it affords some exceptions for limited in-person instruction that we can continue to use as we move forward next slide please so prior to october 30th when we were looking at the metrics we looked at one week at a time and we'd have to hold the threshold for the metrics for three weeks so it was three individual weeks in a row and again you had to hold that over a three week time it made made systems vulnerable to rapid changes because a one-week change in the data could could have a fairly dramatic impact upon where you were going to land now we've moved to a two-week window and the date is aggregated for two weeks rather than just a single week again that means that there's always one week of data that's held constant as you move forward and it does smooth or stabilize the data and decreases the likelihood that we would make an abrupt decision to move in one direction or another
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that coupled with the thresholds next slide provides um again an opportunity to to look at moving forward so at this point on a two-week case rate per hundred thousand people if we had under 50 cases we could be on site between 50 and 99 cases we could do on-site and distance learning again primarily focused starting with pre-k to 3 and then edging its way up through elementary school with cdl and limited in person in middle school then there's this big transitionary band that goes from 100 cases every two weeks to just under 200 cases every two weeks and during that window as cases climb then we should be planning towards uh moving towards cdl only comprehensive distance learning or if cases are decreasing from above 200 then we would be looking to plan to go on site in early childhood above 200 cases you can see then it is comprehensive distance learning and again implementation of limited in-person test positivity rates again are broken up below below five percent would be on-site five to eight percent on-site and distance again focus for pre-k three uh and then moving up through elementary school eight to just below 10 would be that transition range and above 10 would be comprehensive distance learning next slide please this compares um it is actually very comparable to the um center for disease control uh guidelines and it's not too different really in terms of thresholds that were held before and the current threshold for uh again the the in person and cdl for starting at pre-k3 and then looking at middle school for cdl falls between the low and moderate risk range next slide and then when we look at um again testing rates uh and the percentage of positive tests they uh fall within the lower risk threshold as well this actually although the numbers look very different when they're applied to a two-week window of time they're not that disparate from what we had before for cdl so what did that look like when we were in the fall we could the next slide please so this slide shows uh the county case test rates uh positivity rates for the prior two weeks and it starts in july and extends through the middle part of october and the blue line represents uh the case rates for multnomah county the yellow line reflects the break point between on-site and then the on-site and and cdl that would be used for again our pre-k through three and middle schools and then the orange line is the break point between that on-site and the transition window and that large space between the orange line and the red line reflects that transitionary space and above the red line is cdl only with limited in person so you can see that when we uh first started having this data in july we were in that transition zone and we were starting to transition downward and you would have expected then at some point in the fall we would have had the opportunity to be looking at having early childhood hybrid in our schools in the fall unfortunately as we entered into october case rates began to climb and and you can see at the point at the point of this uh powerpoint was put together we were sitting at 138.1 cases across two weeks um unfortunately at the next cycle that went up to 166.5 and today it's sitting at 245. so we're well above the red line which would obligate for cdl and ceo only next five please this looks at case positivity rates and uh again similar similar breakdown that the yellow line is is the break between hybrid or pardon me on-site and then the hybrid and the orange line then is the break point between the hybrid and then going in transition and the red line again is is cdl only and again you you can see that we started in the summer above that yellow line we would have been again looking at being hopeful to to have pre-k 3 in place but as we've come through the fall the the numbers have begun to go back up and in fact when this was put together we were sitting at 6.7 positivity rate that went
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up to 8.2 and sitting at 10.6 so again both for uh case rates and testing we're well above the threshold right now for cdl and with only limited in person next slide please so again putting all this together what would it look like um so as we're planning for for fall over the summer we would have been planning uh to enter into pre-k three and would have had the opportunity if that was going well and we weren't seeing an uptick in in positivity to to gradually expand upward through the elementary grades as we progress through the fall next slide please you see that opposite thing that was happening with the transition where during during the early part of october we saw those numbers going back up above the transition threshold and at this point we know that we're we're now in the comprehensive distance learning um threshold we're above that threshold at this point time but again you can see that this would have eased the window we would not have abruptly gone from an in-person activity directly into comprehensive distance learning we would have had a window of time to begin to communicate that and engage our community as we made that transition next slide please and and now i'd like to afford the board members opportunity to ask any questions they might have about the metrics so i'm gonna actually ask us to take a moment here dr brown um and take a stretch break sorry my cell phone is telling me i have a text um take us take a um five-minute stretch break so we can maybe uh soak in some of this information and then return ready with our questions does that sound good that works for me thank you okay so let's uh let's come back at um 7 41 everybody thank you i am not sure you want me to try that i have to say that when my my husband proposed he said i want you to be my wife and i said yes and then i felt dumb that i had said yes and hadn't you know didn't really listen to what he said i was just caught up and then i so then i said well you didn't really ask me a question and he responded i'm sorry i didn't realize i was proposing to alex trebek so that's a beautiful story of our touching uh engagement moment so i will give you a pass because i know how hard that could be um so board colleagues what questions do you have tonight for dr brown well my question would be um how are the metrics different for um just specific student populations or how how might we work within the metrics for specific student populations other than just our young students like for example our homeless students so so the metrics are for the overall population of students and again the way they're structured and the guidance of structure really does favor early childhood as an entry point um for other student populations that of interest i i think really the area there that we would lean into is limited in person and really trying to take advantage of limited in-person opportunities the way to provide support opportunities for students who would elect to participate into that great um do we does everybody have questions do we want to do this in like some semblance of order or do we want to just go popcorn semblance of order it looks like okay is what michelle is asking for birth order oh i don't have everybody's birthday well i do know that amy is first alphabetically by first name so we could go in alphabetical order by first name which i think would make andrew next if that works and i would say you could also learn uh and have another comment uh column for earthquake i can put i can put birth order in there i think there's a lot of us are firstborns though so then it's like who's the first firstborn well that makes perfect sense for who's i'm gonna get out of the way when you guys are arguing about the first boards and who gets to go first all right so that's the child and although although i'm a metric guy i'm not stepping in then it's probably wise so let's do this let's go alpha by first name through one time and then if people have further questions we can go popcorn after that all right andrew do you have a question for dr brown um yeah hi thanks dr brown for the presentation um how do the revised metrics in oregon now compare
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to other states and and that's a lot of states so maybe just limited to the west coast i know there was some conversation before the revision that oregon was significantly stricter than california and washington how did these new metrics compare uh to be honest i spent time comparing this to the cdc i um [Music] the thresholds in california are frankly much less transparent than i had thought they would be um and i i to be honest i can't speak to the comparability at this point it would be thanks no i didn't mean to put you on the spot with a question i know some news articles um talked about the the significant difference um but i always like to get it from a you know an actual academic source so maybe for a future meeting if we could if we could bring that because i think it is useful i know i know early on in the pandemic washington oregon and california said they would band together the governor said they would band together and i think they really quickly abandoned that um for a lot of the public health metrics but i do think there's there's value in at least knowing um how we compare whether we're more strict or less strict um and then also i i guess i'd be interested in also knowing because i know some california schools are hybrid and you know um and i know some washington schools are hybrid as well and it would be interesting to know more about data um coming out of those districts that are doing some limited in-person learning and there may even be districts in california and washington doing full in person i'm not sure about that and sort of knowing if that's having an impact um in terms of overall coping cases in the community thanks um i'm next uh ailee uh the um dr brown you may not be able to speak to this but i'm wondering how i know that oha regularly publishes data around the outbreaks that are happening and how many students and teachers in schools that are doing some limited person are getting sick and i'm just wondering if um if and or and how those numbers are shaping sort of this understanding of the metrics here in oregon so the oha numbers that that we typically focus on really are around the thresholds and the dashboards associated with that um i have not seen a publication that evidences again the case rates across systems in the state um if you've come across something like that please forward it my way i would love to see um i know that there are a number of i guess i would say consortia across the united states that are trying to begin to look at that because there's so much diversity across the united states in terms of how people are approaching this i will forward the oha report from uh last week to you and it's it's fascinating you can sit there it's got every single workplace outbreak that was three or more um and all sorts of information in it that makes you start to question your life choices like when was the last time i went to mcdonald's um so uh it's it's very interesting information from oha okay julia you're next thank you um so i don't know if we go back to slide 11 and 12. i just want to make sure that i i understand um what that was saying and i have some questions about it so um as we transition from slide 11 where you have starting with august 16th um in the in person and distance and then if you go to the next slide where you have you know all the way through october 4th so am i reading it correctly that we could have been doing and i'm not saying i'm not advocating i'm just wanting to make sure i understand it under the new metrics we could have had in person and just and distance like this hybrid model through from 8 16 to october 4th is that am i reading that correctly so what i would would say is that based on the thresholds that ode has put forward this time we would have been able to have in-person and instruction hybrid instruction for pre-k through three uh we would have been within the the parameters to be able to do that in the fall starting around 8 16 and then we would have been able to continue that all the way until frankly this week and when this week when we cross that threshold for 200 cases and when with the test positive
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positivity rate exceeded 10 percent then we would have been obligated to go back into cdl but we would have had that window of time of october to know that we needed to start thinking about that transition back to cdl it would not have been an abrupt one-week change it's something that we would have had the opportunity to adjust to and the public would have the opportunity to know that we were moving in the wrong direction um yeah i'm not arguing that we should have been i'm just trying to understand that that's what it what this actually means um so just as a further follow-up and i think this is going to tie into some questions i have about the enrollment report um i have friends who have kids who are in private schools who four to five days a week they're in two hours of two hours a day and they are in that because i'm just trying to make sense of how that that works for them versus for pps students that's because we were in the yellow zone and they chose to have the the two hours of in-person instruction so i'm i'm going to make an assumption here okay i'm going to assume that they were doing two hours of instruction under the within the comprehensive distance learning model but as a limited in-person activity and and that's something that we have a team and actually brenda's going to spend some time talking about planning for limited in-person activities for for students that's something that you know odee had provided guidance as an opportunity to be able to think about that as a way to bring students on on campus right so so they in in theory they would be operating in this yellow zone and when we get to october 11th and start transitioning whether you're public or private you're you're then you're gonna have an impact on that sort of two hours in the in-person instructional time am i reading that right i mean so the rules aren't different for public or private it's just they're choosing to operate in a different way within the same set of parameters correct i would like to add within cdl um that it sounds like the private schools are in and they're choosing to do the limited in-person instruction once we go back to that red zone of cdl only you can still open up limited in-person instructions so it's not necessarily the case for private schools to now stop providing that what they do have to do is discuss that with their local public health authority to look at the local community that the school is in and make some decisions based on that thank you sure okay after julia comes michelle yeah i think amy um actually asked my question and that was about special populations um and how we're handling i mean knowing that we know that um you know uh people from communities of color and marginalized communities are are kind of being more impacted by by the coven pandemic wondering how this this um in-person distance learning will impact those communities and yeah and that's it for now i mean i think you mostly answered it already yeah again this these thresholds really apply to all students and um again favors early childhood and bringing students back into early childhood the opportunity to really think about how we could extend and afford other opportunities for for students for whom we might be concerned about differential learning loss it really falls i think within limited in-person instruction and one of the challenges that we have uh director of depos is that um you know we've really got two sort of competing ideas there on one hand um those are the very families uh for whom we know uh the the outcomes in covet are have been much worse uh and so you know on one hand we want to really be attentive to health and safety and and on the other hand we um you know are very interested in trying to expand the the opportunities for all uh for um student groups who we we expect that
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there may be some differential learning laws those two things are are you know sort of working in opposite directions there and it's that that's one of the quandaries here as we move forward right and then also do we have a good sense of um the the teacher population and kind of where they're at in terms of being able to deliver that in-person distance hybrid model i i'm not sure i understand i guess i don't understand if i were teaching how how would how are teachers doing both in person and distance are they doing that or is that is distance one set of teachers an in person another so the way this is laid out it would uh allow us to do the hybrid instruction pre-k three okay as a starting point uh if we get into that yellow zone we could be doing that the uh comprehensive distance learning really is secondary so it's the middle and the high schools and that you know i think a lot of us understand that that departmentalization makes it very hard to maintain the cohorts necessary to to have safe health conditions in in a building and so again this really affords us the opportunity to start with early childhood and then gradually expand upward as as long as we're able to maintain the health metrics where they need to be so yes it's two different groups yeah it's two different groups and two different transmission rates what i think it would help me to understand what a what a week what a typical week looks like for a teacher that's for a third grade teacher that's doing um a mixed model in person distance that yeah the hybrid model and that's actually something that we have a team that's working on planning that activity right now thank you all right and we'll have chances to ask more questions after we go through the initial round of everybody getting a question in uh nathanael did you have a question for dr brown um i've got a question about uh distance learning more broadly is it okay if i ask it now sure great um so i was wondering uh now that the first quarter has concluded if we know the past fail rates for high schoolers and um how those compare to uh spring and also you know if we know what the average letter grade was and how that compares to the first semester last year i i think that's a fascinating question um and it's one that i've actually asked my team to begin to look at but no i don't have the answer for that right now so um i guess as a follow-up do when do you expect to have that information again i've had my team beginning to look at this i don't think that that would take a terribly long time to do um you know there and to say that we've got a lot of things going on right now and i am interested in and beginning to be able to quantify what we're seeing in terms of changes thank you you're welcome all right rita okay um i i have a number of questions um i've been asked in this round to to limit myself to one so probably gonna do a compound question how's that um [Music] so my understanding is that um there are differences among age groups age cohorts in terms of their ability to transmit um and the potential the risk of a severe um [Music] a severe bout with the disease so um do we have i mean i get the concept here um and um and i get that the the focus is primarily on the youngest kids which i think makes sense but do we have sort of thresholds within the thresholds to distinguish among different age cohorts when it would be safe to bring back high schoolers versus you know middle schoolers versus elementary versus you know uh fifth graders versus second graders you know do does the state provide any guidance on that have we thought about that at all
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so the way this is structured right now it does start with early childhood and then the expectation would be that again as folks demonstrate the ability to have children on site and do that without an increase in transmission rates then one can begin to progressively move upward through the elementary grades that that yellow zone that in person and distance really does focus primarily on the expansion of elementary school it does afford the opportunity though if things are going swimmingly well to start looking at middle school and high school as well but really the threshold for in-person slash hybrid for that is having the case rates below 50. uh and right now we are quite a ways away from that and as a matter of fact we were nowhere near that all fall right but um okay i'm i'm not going to let you off the hook you're allowed to say no um do we have thresholds for um you know at at what point do you um do you expand the um the cohorts that can be in person because there are different okay like i'm not a doctor i i'm not an epidemiologist but you know i live on twitter so um [Music] um dangerous place to live right now it is but it's fascinating um i mean it seems to me that that there are different different considerations at different age groups so who's who's coming up with guidelines for how to know when it's safe to expand to age cohorts beyond elementary so the guidance that's stated right now doesn't have that level of differentiation in it so so again that yellow band really focus focuses on elementary and it's not until you get down into that green band that you start thinking about hybrid or in-person activities for for middle and high school i have not seen the level of granularity that you're talking about in any of the guidance really from anywhere that would suggest you know grade five at this threshold grade six at this threshold grade seven it's this threshold this appears to break down primarily at the point of when um most schools departmentalize and and then you have mixing of cohorts just based on scheduling in elementary schools you tend not to have that sort of mixing because most elementaries are not departmentalized once you get into a departmentalized setting maintaining the cohorts and and trying to avoid the intermixing of cohorts becomes very challenging based on scheduling okay i'll stop there i could go on but i'll stop there you'll stop there for now we're going so i have other questions all right scott do you have a question for dr brown um yeah i've got uh 15 so i'll start with uh um one is i want to uh and probably not for you to answer dr brown but just to bring back into view uh director to pass uh one of her questions was where is our teaching staff in all of this i don't want to i don't want to use that as my question now i would like a little more specificity on and maybe there is none but uh same miracle happened and we were able to start with say pre-k in kindergarten in a hybrid model and then you said if that goes okay we can expand further uh how exactly is goes okay defined or is that part of that you're not sure it's defined well peace because um what i'm thinking is if we're assuming there's a low either transmission or identification rate among youngsters then the canary in the coal mine here is staff um and and so just is is that the metric that we'd uh use to say things are going reasonably well or how does that work so if we were to get back into that yellow
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zone again we could look at hybrid for pk3 and then if that continues to go well if there's low transmission rate then in conjunction with the health department we could talk about expansion upward through fourth grade fifth grade et cetera um all of these decisions are supposed to be made in conjunction with the health department and that so we submit a blueprint to the health department talking about what activities we're going to do and they actually have to approve that and the health department obviously is collecting information not only on our students but also staff and and members of the community as well so that's kind of a judgment call slash negotiated path going forward yes there isn't you need to be clean or this clean for x number of weeks i have not i have not seen a clear articulation of a cut point for that and just when it comes to middle graders back in the day the middle grade model was half the day in a homeroom for language arts social studies and the other half of the day or the single class more focused specials i'm guessing again while not ideal for doing something in the middle of the year there at least be some capability on our teaching staff again those willing to come back into a hybrid model that we could build something along those lines of when you're in person here here's what you get so that there's less there's really no mixing in that sense of going from one class to another for half a day just want to throw that out there for you know those of us with old people with long memories all right thank you scott um are there other questions for dr brown yeah just really quickly um are there any oregon districts doing um testing uh like like um some sort of random testing of their students or district or teachers i know that is happening in new york city and other places and that's obviously something that the district wouldn't be able to do on our own it would take state and federal um support and and a plan but is that something that's being discussed either as part of of our potential reopening or that's happening elsewhere in oregon that is something i can't speak to i i'm not familiar with all the districts in oregon and whether or not that that's happening i haven't heard of it happening in oregon so um it would be it does feel like kind of getting back to the question that that i think scott was just asking how do we how do we know uh again some of these districts are doing you know testing of thousands of people a week um to get a sense of whether there are hot spots and of course this is the countries that have been successful in in containing you know kobe 19 globally are doing a lot more of that testing and tracing and so i just wonder if that's a again i i want to put a little bit more of the pressure on the governor and the state around this because that's not something an individual district i think would have the capacity of resources to do but it feels like that is something that would be useful and also would increase um i think the um some of the confidence that parents might have right in terms of sending kids back that we are doing some some routine things to look for hot spots and and and then to the extent we see them i know some of those school districts are shutting down um particular schools right if they're office and have five cases they'll shut the school down for a few days while they get it under control so i'd be interested in hearing more from the state um around that issue and andrew this was one of my questions that i sent um in advance and brenda maybe you might be able to speak to this a little bit when you do your part about our conversations with other partners both as a district and or as a coalition with other districts and other health care providers on um not just going it alone in terms of increased testing capacity and having a more concerted strategy because there i know those conversations are happening and maybe hopefully brenda you can shed a little light on that clearly the thing to do is to transform our schools into football teams uh so there could be daily testing just a little remark on our values in our country director moore did you have another question yeah um sort of a follow up on that testing and tracing um so apart from any capacity at a district level to do testing and tracing
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um where are we as a state and a county in terms of our ability to to really track our status in terms of both infection you know cases case rates and um infection rates um because all of this is pitched to the assumption that we actually know what the status of different communities is um do we so i i think you all have leaned into a direction that we would certainly look forward to having our health advisory panel address that because i too am not an md clearly we could be much more proactive with an increased testing rate i think we're all aware that that we do not have the testing rate that we'd like to have and that that would allow us to be much more proactive in terms of actions to provide for the safety of our our students and faculty moving forward so increased testing would be a good thing all right i just realized that we sorry go ahead that and as uh director lowry had pointed out before wash your hands wear a mask maintain physical distance from other people um we still have another half of this presentation um we were supposed to take 45 minutes for this part of our time together um but obviously we still have half of a presentation and more questions to ask so i just want to honor our fund for pps people who are here um waiting to present and talk to us my question to the board is do you all want to um take a pause and go to the fun for pps and then come back to this work or do you guys want to keep going on this the next half of this presentation for sort of having a through line what's what's the will of the board to pause and do the fund or to continue with the second half of this presentation i would rather continue okay who else would like to continue just thumbs up if you want to continue thumbs sideway if you want to move to the fund for pps jonathan jonathan michelle vote sideways i think rita and scott voted up andrew what do you think do we have some do we have some some outside guests here we have victoria lara who's the president of the fund that's waiting to present i'd be okay moving on and coming back to this i think this is a really important topic but i agree with you in terms of honoring people who are here uh me too and we we also put off our friends with the fund for pps once before so i think it would be a courteous thing well sir lowry uh uh our victoria lara is not yet here uh i'm texting with her letting her know that she's in and out when to expect her so feel free to move move move on with the presentation and uh she'll be available when you're ready yeah okay my staff will pray but um but yes i just wanted to honor her time okay for my brain it work it's better to keep going in the same subject before switching um so if that's cool we'll do that and then we can reach out to um ms lara once once it's time all right brenda um i think we'll move on to you and then we can ask another round of questions um and if people have more we'll have space to answer those great um so if roseanne can present again that would be great uh thank you chair lowry uh directors superintendent and our community members that are with us tonight um i appreciate you uh uh continuing to finish this part of the presentation so i am planning to go into the limited in-person instruction and activities based on what russ had shared i will discuss in more detail about the changes uh in regards to what this means for limited in-person instruction planning as you can see on the slide some of the metrics have changed in addition to some of the lippy guidelines and so our cohort sizes went from 10 to 20. we still remain in that two hour consecutive time frame there is no uh more 250 person per week limit for our classrooms or for our school buildings and as russ uh has mentioned we really do have this nice window of a transition phase so that we can actually ramp up
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planning to go uh forward into hybrid uh in person or back into cdl and limited in person instruction the last thing i want to share is they did add some additional guidelines for coved tracking in addition to a couple more symptoms that we look for and those are uh sense of smell uh and sense of taste so we have added those now to our self's uh check screening tool next slide so we have three official work groups it's our early learners our transition grades which is sixth and ninth grade and then our students who um are having issues with uh credits and need credits to graduate and that's our 11th and 12th graders and so uh what we have done oh wait i think you skipped a slide there we are so what i want to first talk about is our current limited in-person instruction activities and what we've done is we have followed continued to follow the ode guideline and so i wanted to give you a little bit of an update of some of the lippy activities that we're doing currently we still have our special ed assessments and to date in the past four weeks we have 73 assessments that we have started for child care we are running 10 sites with 110 students who are regularly attending our roosevelt tech center the support center is offered one day a week it's been going for three weeks and so far we've had 28 students and so that's really exciting that we are able to provide some of these really needed services and opportunities for students next slide so now i'll get into our work groups we do have the three work groups that i talked about and within these uh three work groups we are reviewing the new metrics we are really focused on social emotional learning and engagement opportunities around students with attendance or chronic absenteeism that are having ongoing or continued issues with engaging in classroom activities or homework assignments and then of course the students who are in need of credits for graduation so we are looking at um all of our recommendations in each of these three work groups uh we're taking through our resj lens and it's really helping to provide us with some really good information in regards to equity around limited and person instruction so next things that we need to do are making sure that we're engaging with our labor partners our families and our students that we are sending out parent surveys uh in regards to level of interest for the limited in person instruction activities and that we continue to prioritize the health and wellness of our students and our staff and so we continue to plan around that with our safety plans our training and submission of our ode blueprints so as we continue to participate in these weekly meetings we will flush out a couple more recommendations a couple of examples are with our early learners we are now looking at head start and pre-k to open up in a limited in person capacity uh our early learners so our pre-k and our head start follow uh the eld the early learners division guidelines and they are separate from ode so we are working with a separate subgroup of that early learners group the early learners group has really focused on how we can plan for hybrid k3 with the new metrics that came out in on october 30th we really saw that we can transition of course at that date we were still in that orange area where we could really start to look at how
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we could potentially go back to hybrid regardless of the numbers that are going up we still have a short time frame in order for us to be able to plan and be ready should our numbers go back down so i'll talk a little bit more about that in the next couple slides uh our sixth and ninth grade were really focused on those math and literacy gaps and around that connection and then students we in high school were looking at tutoring centers for academic support the tech support and then that connection and some mental health counseling social worker options for our students so those are really the groups that we are continuing to focus on next slide so one thing i did want to talk a little bit about is the difference i talked a little bit about the difference between eld and the ode guidelines and the od guidelines are also different from the osaa guidelines and so what we have been also able to do under osaa is to provide some high school fitness training and that was our phase one was to really focus on fitness training and as you can see in the slide we have a number of fitness training options by teams that we're offering in all of our traditional high schools i'm really excited to say that we are providing fitness training for 3870 students that was as of friday and so it's very exciting to date and i'm going to knock on wood we have not had any students that have tested positive for covid at this point in time or have shown that they have have had an increased risk we have had a couple we have had one staff and we used our procedures we did the contact tracing worked with our health department and so our processes are working our policies are working and students are wearing masks staff are wearing masks and we are continuing to provide all of the ppe and socially distance for all of the students and so as you can see in the pictures those are just two pictures at one of our high schools and it really shows uh the physical training that's going on and it also shows how serious we are taking the physical distancing and the mask wearing so i just thought that those would be fun pictures to share with you additionally we have ensured that we are title ix compliant for our athletics and that health and wellness continues to be our top priority so the next phase of osaa activities is is under our music department for choir band solo music and orchestra and so i am happy to ask kristen brayson uh to join me for uh the conversation in regards to uh the extracurricular music so kristen thank you brenda apparently it's my my second act tonight um so um thanks for letting me present this information chair lowry members of the board superintendent guerrero i know this has been exciting information that we've all been waiting on um and i'm really happy to report that we have a plan to move forward to engage our students in this important work i before i start and my my section is going to be short um but i just wanted to give a shout out to laura arthur she is our music tosa she supports all music education in our district and she did a massive amount she put a massive amount of care and attention and into detail on this project i also want to give large applause again to our educators and how incredibly hard it has been to stand up arts education during comprehensive distance learning um so one of the questions is why music and not per other performing arts right now um and and one of the reasons that fits in this model that we're doing right now is high school music competes in league and state osaa activities so therefore falls under our osa pil umbrella we'll get to what we might do with our other performing arts disciplines at the end of my engagement with you one of the big banners to start with is there's been a lot of misinformation from the nascent stages of covid to now
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you heard in the beginning of super spreader events with choirs and things like that and public perception has really sort of gone haywire since then and as chair scott alluded to uh we really wanted to dig into the academic sources um fortunately the national association for music education age educators and the national federation of high schools and over 125 national arts organizations hit the ground running in a massive study and there's been three rounds to this study coming out of the university of califor colorado in their aerosol laboratory in addition to the university of maryland the first round started in july with initial results round three will be published in december and it will include publishing and peer review this is all centered around respiratory droplets and whether or not any results from that cause alarm if everyone is participating following five areas of guidance that they've outlined so just really quickly you won't be surprised that there's not a lot here that steps outside of what we've all come accustomed to with some little adjustments um so masks per cdc wreck has to have have to be though that's mandatory distance of six by six between players and funny enough nine by six four trombone straight rows instead of the traditional arc that you often see in band and choir settings um the time allowment needs to be 30 minute sessions with a five minute transition so that aerosol can disperse between those times now it's worth noting we're talking about outdoors again just just like athletics this is all framed in outdoors um airflow airflow is the fourth component of this and again we are going to be outdoors and that is actually what the study recommends as optimal one and if we do move inside there are specific items like bell covers for the end of a horn that are recommended as an example and then hygiene same as everything else per the cdc um and then if we're outdoors we don't have to deal with you know that there's there's uh there's droppings that come out of the horn that are perspiration and so we we don't have to deal with that in outdoor setting when we get indoors that does get a little bit more tricky so what does this mean for us we have eight sites that have music education that deliver band choir orchestra and solo music opportunities we'll follow the same thing to cohorts only for students we are keeping the sizes very conservative with only 10 players per session music educators will see no more than five cohorts within a week and we will be calling these extra curricular music opportunities so for what's next what you can expect to see from here we met with music program directors last week along with site athletic directors we took time to review the safety plan and chart out what zones and schedules each each site would adhere to communications will go out to families over the next week high school music directors will start meeting with students in the next couple of weeks um and then following music we are planning stages um right now on how we'll roll out curricular dance and theater programs and then finally i want to ensure that how we engaged folks in this process was in the summer we brought together groups of arts educators work groups and for each discipline and they spent lots of time this summer um just combing the nation for every everything they could find around what was happening out there and what was the best recommendations for how to move forward in this climate um so that that's pretty much encapsulates what we're talking about when we talk about osa pil and music and i'd love to turn it back to the team brenda and sarah davis if there's anything i miss please chime in thank you kristen i'm really glad that you uh made sure that everybody knew that these are outdoor activities still because that's what we're really focused on right now is continuing to limit the spread provide the the lowest risk possible uh keeping with our priority of focusing on health and wellness of our staff and our students at the same time understanding that many of our students need that opportunity for engagement and it helps to keep our students in school and participating so uh so
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thank you kristen all right if you can stay on just in case uh the board has any questions that would be awesome all right roseanne uh next slide so i did want to share a few of our next steps we are going to consider just as christian said with the additional osa phase 2 activities we're also going to continue to roll out limited in person instruction activities as i had shared before the pre-k and head start our sixth and ninth grade focus on math and literacy gaps and connection and then high school for credit areas of need and mental health and some connections and tech support so we will continue to roll those out in november and december which it's already november in addition to our comprehensive distance learning in under limited and person instruction we will plan we are planning for hybrid k3 and it would be hybrid and some sort of a a virtual type of a situation for for students we will be starting to look at engagement opportunities for staff students and families and they will be site and activity specific one example is our head start families we will be working with the parent advisory council and working with them on a parent survey as well so that's just one example of how we're keeping the engagement opportunities and the parent surveys uh local so that it can it specifically pertains to the services that we'll be providing and provides us with some direct feedback in the ways in which we should go so we know in regards to hybrid that we can only do that if we're successful in lowering our rates of infection and so i can't stress enough uh for everybody to wear their masks to wash their hands often and to continue to be physically distance of at least six feet that's one way we will start to get our kids back in school um so the the final things uh january through march is the potential transition period uh hopefully that's gonna work uh we can look for in a person through a hybrid model for k3 as dr brown shared earlier in the evening once we can continue to do that successfully and we don't have metrics for that but we would work with our local health partners to establish what that looks like continuing to monitor our community infection rates we would hopefully be able to roll in fourth grade and then also fifth grade as dr brown mentioned for six through 12 it will most likely be that we will continue in comprehensive distance learning while continuing to offer the limited in-person instruction we certainly hope that our numbers go down enough that we would be able to invite back in 6th 7th 8th but we we want to at least get our k3 students in there and so that is all i have for tonight and i'm open to questions uh chair lowry if if you if you want to do that so i think this is all really important and i know that the public has lots of questions and we as a board have lots of questions i do want to just point out that we're um 38 minutes kind of over our planned schedule so i do want us to take some time to ask questions here we'll go in reverse first name order so we'll start with scott we'll go back up the alphabet um when you're going to ask your question i would ask you to think could this be an email if it's something that you feel like the public needs to hear um please go ahead and ask it but if it's something you could maybe email and we could get a more in-depth response um that would be really helpful and then we will come back i'm gonna ask everyone to just ask one question so that other every board member gets a chance to ask a question and then we'll come back and have a little more time for questions at the end does that sound good to everybody okay director bailey would you like to go ahead yes thanks um uh thanks for a great presentation that
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really this really helps my understanding and and i thank broadly the public as well um you s the fitness uh program is at uh traditional high schools uh what are the options of getting something like that for say alliance it's for any of our students who are participating in osaa athletics so students at alliance if they don't have access to that they can participate uh in one of our one of our other teams so so it's based on osaa not on our opportunity or willingness to be able to provide additional activities the additional extracurricular activities that we are looking to provide would fall under the comprehensive distance learning under limited in-person instruction and those are different requirements and so that is definitely something that we're continuing to look at in our athletic and vapa advisory meeting does that mean a student has to uh apply to you know the fill out the form to be participating in athletics in in order to be um eligible to be in in the fitness yes so they have to uh fill out the the family id form they have to have a um a fitness a physical fitness exam uh and there's uh there's fees associated and um so it's so it's everything that is required to be a member of a team under osia all right rita i get it but it's sorry scott you were cutting out there i thought you were done are you finished with your question okay you're done rita did you have a question for uh the team yeah um so these things are happening outside um what happens when the weather gets nasty what what's the plan they will bundle up okay so we're not contemplating moving these things indoors so what with athletics athletics has a seasonal plan uh one of the plans is to uh in the winter time for winter athletics to move indoors our current metrics would not necessarily support that so while we're in the planning phase and while we want to do that we would have to consult with our local public health team to to see if that's feasible so so for right now they will continue to participate outdoors we are looking at other ways like providing tents or uh or looking at other facilities that might have covered structures so we're trying to provide those accommodations um and how's it going to work with music uh kristen do you want to talk a little bit about that um well definitely leading off with what brenda just answered in terms of tents and covered areas as as the zones get identified it's going to benefit athletic directors and music directors to think about the optimal space that might already have pre like even under the bleachers right there's an area there that can be a zone but minus that it would be tense the recommendation is it doesn't have sides on it that it's got high ceilings so we just want to make sure that that fits the recommendations okay i'll refrain from asking other things i have more questions i'm after uh nathaniel do you have a question nathaniel did you shake your head i missed it oh sorry i believe you muted yourself for the last bit of that what was that i probably muted myself as i said nathaniel do you have a question though ah yeah i'm sorry um yeah so this is again a bit more general um but i was wondering um if we ever do get to the point where
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we're able to offer some form of in-person education uh how are we assuring that all of our buildings are sufficiently ventilated particularly the older ones that is a great question nathaniel i don't necessarily have the answer to that but i do know that we are looking at safety operating procedures under chief dan young and so he is working on that and we understand that that is a huge priority um but i i don't have the answer to that nathaniel this this is amy i can also pipe in and say that that has been one of the line items under discussion in um advocacy for the next round of uh pandemic relief funding from the federal government to improve ventilation systems whether it's you know independent unions units or whatever but that's part of the conversation yeah thank you i just i i want to know that we do have some sort of plan in place so thanks michelle did you have a question um i had a comment and i have a question that can be followed up an email the comment is i'm really glad uh i appreciate the presentation really glad to hear that the arts in particular music is happening even if it's outdoors and i also believe that um there's no such thing as bad weather there's such thing as bad gear and so i would you know i do everything outside um you you get rain gear you know we're in oregon i'm concerned about the kids that might not have access to you know good quality gear that would keep them dry and warm and curious what we would do to address that if it came up but really glad to actually would have people google um hunter nowak and his series of piano outdoor piano concertos called in a landscape and so music happens outdoors dance can happen outdoors um really glad to hear that it's that it's available for for those kids that um find a lot of happiness in that space so thank you all right we'll ask staff to respond to michelle's question there about how we might help provide rain gear to kids in need we did um actually in our uh our athletic advisory meeting on monday talk about that um the principal at roosevelt katie parman actually talked a little bit about that and so we have discussed ways in which we can um make a plan uh and actually one of them was to maybe get on a call with jonathan to see how we can look to possibly support additional outdoor weather clothing coats you know things like that so so i know that it was a very short timeline so uh so jonathan i'm sure we'll be somebody will be getting in touch with you i also you know we have columbia sports squares um located here and probably really happy to partner with the large largest school district in the state and next adventure is a local business that has been very charitable over the years supporting the black ski club um poor kids going out on outdoor recreation adventures and would be a great organization next adventure to contact and you know we have we have the outdoor industry here we have partners i'm sure that would be willing to donate materials for our students i appreciate that direct that that director to pass we'll follow up with you on uh some of the specific items uh i will also uh be sharing with the board uh for those that you may not know we do have a pta clothing drive uh operated by our pta uh partners uh out of mata out of uh matt madison the someone help me out not madison marshall marshall thank you thank you uh marshall uh and so right now we are our team is working uh with our operations team to to think about how we um ensure that those that close that's there and available is available to our students so we're actively working on that so we'll we'll share more information on how we're we're working to address the bta global drive
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all right thank you jonathan julia did you have a question i do this is on the next steps page the very last item the january march transition uh when we meet metrics towards hybrid and our in-person instruction for p p3 so if you're not in p3 if you were a parent would you read that as the district doesn't plan on holding any sort of hybrid instruction for fourth grade students and over what we have to do is we have to follow the metrics the ode metrics and it specifically talks about k3 we're including our pre-k and head start as well so it specifically talks about k3 first so that's what we can plan for as we are successful in implementing that and having kids and staff come back to school then we can focus on fourth and fifth grade so i don't want parents of fourth or fifth graders to think that they they are completely going to stay in comprehensive distance learning but i do want them to know that we have to be successful with k3 first before we consider fourth and fifth grade yeah and um maybe just a little bit finer point on on that so are you saying fourth and fifth grade could still happen within the january to march time frame as long as the metrics were met and it followed p3 or would it be starting in april i can't give you a timeline i would love to give you a timeline but our numbers aren't uh cooperating with us and trying to like try and interpret what this says what what this means here if you were a parent how you would read it like is there any possibility this is gonna happen um or it's all gonna be post post march right and unfortunately we don't know that um if the metrics stay the same uh we won't even have k3 back at hybrid so because we are above 200. so we have to get we have to go a ways down uh that that scale first and so i do want to reiterate that all of this is still in the planning phases so we have a number of different um different committees and groups that we funnel all of our recommendations through we have a decision making flow chart that that all of this goes through so we have an advisory committee that that these recommendations go through if you are looking at the next step slide where we're talking about the next phase of our osa activities and our lippy recommendations like the vapa ones we are in the planning stages of um the safety the the sops so the safety plan that just went to our health advisory panel on monday with some further edits we are looking at the blueprints and we have to submit the blueprints and then we still have to get additional final approvals with elt and so i i just wanted to let people know that even though on the slide it says hey we're we're in our next stages and we're we're planning it still has a number of teams that really need to look at all of this and so that would be the same thing for our hybrid is that it i always tell people this takes a lot longer than anybody wants it to just because we want to make sure that we are being very cautious and very careful in keeping our staff and our students focused on health and wellness so if i could just underline that point chair because i want to make sure that no one walks away with the wrong impression and i want to make sure that our families and our students manage their expectations what we provided tonight was an update on where we are in our metrics you saw those line graphs we gave you a high level overview of what the governor's paws and continued messaging on on public public health uh measures the trend is not suggesting that we're coming back anytime soon you're hearing a glimpse of some of the factors some of the things that staff is thinking through and has to work out there's a great deal more vetting that needs to happen internally we have a number of stakeholders including our labor partners that we still have to discuss many of these issues with so you know we're not setting up tents or starting
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flu practice tomorrow uh just to be clear um there's a lot of pressure and we share the same desire to add back programming wherever possible and bring back our youngest students bring back our students most impacted but it's not happening any time in the immediate short term so there's just too far too many details to to get right here and weather is gonna have to be a consideration um uh for some activities but uh you wanted a little bit of an idea of some of the some of the some of the questions that we're also trying uh to answer and we have to work through those with our building administrators and our employee groups and a lot of the educators that would need to be involved and who we need to be able to offer any kind of programming so i just want to i don't want to i don't want to be silent in mentioning that um and that's why i said up front that i know that we need a deeper discussion uh as we get you know a couple more weeks under our belt to think through some of these predictable questions and some of the ones we'll keep listing and taking note of that you're asking and we're hearing from families and and our educators as well so um it's an ongoing conversation and you know i've said from the beginning where it's safe to and where it's possible where it meets guidelines and rules you know we we will open the door as much as we can to our students to to get access to in-person activity i really appreciate that superintendent guerrero i am i think you know we've we've taken a long time on this we had 45 minutes allotted and we've taken over you know an app more than an hour longer than that 45 minutes so i really appreciate staff um being willing to get into some of the weeds and and listen to our questions i think i think what you've done is you've offered us a little glimmer of hope right i think all of us long for normal both in our personal lives but also in our schools um at the border treat we asked um what is your favorite fall um kind of as our ice breaker what is your favorite fall activity and director brim wedward said when the kids go back to school and we get to be there on the first day as board members and greek kids and i think you know i think all of us are so anxious for this but but like you superintendent grow we want to get this right we don't want to endanger our students we don't want to endanger our staff um but we also are hearing daily the stories of families that are really struggling so i think what you're seeing from the board tonight and all these questions is just this desire to help um be ambassadors and articulate to the community there is a glimmer of hope but we also don't want people to feel like we're we're promising something that isn't going to happen so i think like you said we want to be really clear like this is what we're planning for but it isn't imminent but there is a loosening of some of the oda metrics there are some things we're working towards there's some hope on the horizon our staff is working really hard to plan and think and prepare for this so i just want to honor all of that i'm going to ask my board colleagues we've got three of us left to still ask questions and then i'm going to create space for more questions again let's be really really thoughtful about can this be an email just because we have taken so much time on this and we still have the fun for pbs um still to get to tonight we don't want to push them off again but we're almost an hour late to having them start my question brenda is um did you say that a staff person had tested positive for coved or was it that a staff had an exposure and needed to quarantine uh we have had um so as we continue to open up limited in-person instruction and we continue to offer essential services uh with with with many of our departments uh we do have a coveted case protocol that we use and so we do periodically have a positive cases we run them through our protocol they are investigated with our health department and then we get clarification and next steps from our health department and so unfortunately uh the school district isn't immune to covid and we continue to strive really hard to to follow all of our safety and health procedures the nice thing in regards to this case is it did not spread and that is good news for us because covet will happen i mean we're seeing it right it is happening everywhere and as long as we continue to follow our really strict safety protocols uh we're finding that we are continuing to be uh successful thank you yeah it's there's like you said no one's immune andrew did you have a question i don't have a question but i do have an
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observation i'll try and keep it brief um and it's kind of picking up on what the superintendent and and chair lowry talked about i think there there is no clear answer or solution in this pandemic where we are in terms of schools and i think continuing to to bring that to the fore right i mean we had metrics in the state that were at ten per hundred thousand now they're at fifty and a hundred per hundred thousand is that the right number we we actually don't know because we're still learning about this virus you know every single day and every single week maybe those metrics are too high or maybe they're actually not and maybe they're in the right place or maybe they're even too low for reopening schools and i think we just need to keep coming back to this and and being really open and transparent about that lack of knowledge and i think one of the one of the values that is the largest school district in oregon we can bring is is helping bring the public along in this conversation and i think conversations like tonight help but i would i would really like to see more of this at a future board meeting of bringing both sides to the table i mean i get and we all get them you know yesterday i got an incredibly articulate well thought out email from a parent citing study after study after study that said don't worry about the metrics opening schools is safe and and this is a public health professional i mean a doctor like sort of saying this is safe you all need to open the schools today i received a very well thought out rational articulate email from a parent basically saying please please please don't expose my child and this community by reopening the schools no one's going to be happy whether we keep schools closed whether we do you know hybrid whether we do you know full in person right there's going to be people unhappy on all sides but i think bringing both sides to the table to talk i really would love to hear from public health professionals who are in favor of reopening schools sooner rather than later and i would love to hear from public health professionals who are really really concerned about the impact i want to hear from teachers who are desperate to get back into the classroom and i want to hear from teachers who are very very concerned about their own health and and the risk that they pose in the post to their own community and i want to hear from parents who really need their kids to be back in school and i want to hear from parents who are terrified of that prospect and i think we can actually i mean it government doesn't often do this right we often have an outcome that we want to get to and we're sort of trying to push people i think in this case the outcome is reopening schools but it's reopening schools safely and i think anything we can do to to bring that conversation along and recognize there are a lot of different viewpoints there are a lot of unknowns and there is always going to be risk i mean what brenda just said you know there is covid in our school community there is covet in our community there's covet in our workplaces it's on our sports teams it's everywhere we need to do everything we can to limit it but we're never going to eliminate it for a very very long time right and so thinking through that lens of of what can we do um and and and even if that means going down to the state and pushing to change the metrics and when i say change i mean perhaps making them a little bit less stringent or perhaps making them more stringent but again following the public health um information as we learn more as we go through it so i appreciate the conversation tonight i think we we need to take the time to do a lot more of this moving forward thanks andrew amy did you have a question or comment i do and i agree andrew this is the what right now this is the most important work and consideration in front of us and um i do think that we are planning for some engagement with our health panel as you suggested i think staff is on that so that's great and then um brenda i'm gonna take um i posed a question and i didn't get a response which i think probably means that as a team we haven't started anything yet in terms of building partnerships on a more comprehensive testing strategy and i think jonathan this is probably partly in your shop too i would really encourage that and again probably not going it alone just our school district but are we talking to ohsu are we talking to kaiser are we talking to providence are we are we working as a system to build that capacity if it's not happening from the statewide level a lot of school districts are doing partnerships like this right now so um i look forward to hearing more about that and if there's something that we can do as a board to um kind of ignite that effort i'm all in because i think that's an important component but we'll just leave it at that all right have folks follow up with amy on that question um is there anything else for the good of the order that we need to ask or say on this reopening piece before we move on to our lovely friends with the fund for pps just a quick quick comment um for for those of us you um and i'm conflicted uh want to see us reopen as quickly as possible it was just over a month ago that we were in the hybrid zone and i think many of us have seen the
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graphs of infection rate going up and then coming back down so we could get back there and really not that long of a time um so if if if for some of you that's a that's a ray of hope great so thank my only comment i'd have as we close this out is it's me it seems like a split screen i um heartily agree with director scott on a more robust discussion on the metrics and opening um but also um in the meantime we've have students in a comprehensive distance learning and diving more deeply into that as well we had public comment tonight i think we've had a discussion about getting a student panel um just you know if if if we don't ever move out of comprehensive justice learning um be looking um making sure that we're not just focusing on reopening um and at the same time we've got students in a in a you know totally new model so i would just encourage try and keep that split screen um alive while we are you know move between stages potentially and can i just note um whether we are going to be able to reopen and when is actually more dependent on what the community environment is looking like um much more than what pps can do um so as people think about their thanksgiving plans and then the rest of the holiday season um if they want to see schools open they need to be responsible so i think what we're seeing is that um family gatherings and um and that sort of thing uh are are are often super spreader events so people need to be responsible and i'll leave my rent there thank you rita all right we're gonna take a five minute break until 907 and then we're going to come back to um our fun for pbs presentation thank you thank you to that team for your patience and thank you so much to dr brown uh chief markneck christian brayson for all of your work and presenting tonight i appreciate it all right see everybody back at 907. uh waiting so long for us um that was a really important conversation and i wanted to give it a lot of time so we could all really dig in um but we're really excited now to hear um about the fund and the work that jonathan and you and your team are doing so welcome jonathan our superintendent actually do you want to introduce this this next sure i'd love to uh chair quickly uh you might recall that in 2019 the fund for portland public schools was established in part to accelerate our work towards our vision pps reimagined the fund for pps's core mission is to create coordinate facilitate public private philanthropic partnerships the better foster equitable opportunities and benefits for our students so tonight we do have an update from jonathan garcia our president for the fund for pps uh concurrently serving as our chief engagement officer who along with our dynamic pps team members who are with us this evening also uh and we also welcome this evening victoria lara board director for the fund for portland public schools who serves as the chair and is a day job founder and ceo of lara media services thanks for being with us here tonight thank you superintendent uh and members of the board uh so i am uh my team is the uh what's keeping you from a a middle of the week break so we'll try to do this pretty quickly i'm sure you have a lot of questions so uh so what we're doing here today is uh to give you a year one update of what we've been doing as we build the foundation for the fun for portland public schools uh and again as the superintendent uh alluded we we were established in 2019. um sorry are you seeing the screen or oh am i not sharing
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no uh roseanne are you gonna be able to share the screen there we go i was forbidden after last week uh for the last time from sharing my screen so roseanne is is doing us the honor here uh thank you so next slide um so uh as as as as you know as the the executive sponsors of the uh of pps reimagined are our visioning process uh everything that we do as an organization everything that that should be done as part of portland public schools uh should be uh in in in relationship to our vision and so i took a second we took a sentence out of the of out of the pps we imagine uh because i think this is the the crux of where the fun for pps uh intersects with with the work of portland public schools pps cannot do it alone if we want all of our graduates to attain the graduate portrait we have a collective social response responsibility to make this happen and that's truly what we believe here at the fund for pre-ps is that we want to work and support the work of pps to really help our graduates attain the graduate portrait and we're gonna and and the way that we're gonna leverage uh our efforts is through the business and philanthropic uh community next slide so tonight you'll you'll hear from uh members of our team uh and so the agenda for today uh again we'll do a quick intro give you a high level overview about the fun we'll go into some of the the accomplishments and successes of year one as we build our foundation uh we'll go into a little bit of the local school foundation's update uh and then uh we'll we'll close it up with a year two where do we go from here uh conversation so uh next slide so um as as as the superintendent uh alluded to victoria lara our board chair is here and so i want to i want to quickly introduce her uh to you our board chair victor lara has been a tireless community leader and civil rights advocate for more than a decade here in portland uh she is the founder and ceo of vlada media services the only latino woman owned marketing agency here in the pacific northwest her endless commitment and advocacy for the community has earned her numerous recognitions including being honored with this year's latino network aguila award victoria is not only an incredible partner as the chair of our board she has become a true friend and is encouraged and motivated by our district's vision and the commitment to uh to our students and in particular i buy pot communities and so with that i'm going to turn it over to victoria to share a few remarks uh next slide oh thank you you know it's such a great honor to be able to serve our community as the chair of the portland public school foundation alongside with such an incredible board of directors and under the amazing leadership of jonathan garcia and our superintendent guadalupe guerrero i just want to say thank you for sharing that vision that you all created and worked so hard last year and years before with me and you know i just wanna let you know that our community has our back we are here to support and realize and work for that vision that you you have for our community and our kids these days there is such an unprecedented times full of pain and fear and sickness and uncertainty but also is full of hope as you were describing uh the moments i connect and they hope for our kids you know i have in my work i have facilitated more than 80 focus virtual focus group for black indigenous people of color here metro area and rural areas and i always ask what is what gives you hope and i can say that almost a hundred percent of the people even with all these different challenges they always say are kids and when we say our kids in communities of color we don't mean only our kids my kids they were born for me it means my brother's kids my neighbor kids my community kids and that's what gives give us hope and all these times i'm in the board because i'm aware that now more than ever there is a need to focus on education that these kids that we were talking about are receiving and they will receive in order to help them think about achieve the dreams that are beyond anything we could have ever imagined although for
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ourselves i myself you notice i have a very heavy accent i'm an immigrant i came from mexico almost 25 years ago without speaking any english without knowing anybody undocumented and we don't know in this system and i arrived here with many dreams but also many fears but my dreams were bigger than my fears and i have this strong commitment of building a better future for my family of course pretty soon after i arrive i understand through first hand experience the reality of being a woman of color in this country being a woman that didn't spoke any english they didn't have anybody to call or they didn't know this system but my desire to work towards building an equitable future for me and my family led me to understand the value of educational health as being one of the best equalizers in our society and i convinced that we would have to create a better equitable and just a better future we need to invest in our kids education and i think that education will be the best way to build an anti-racist and antibiotic culture they provide our communities to try this is the main reason i serve on the board for our kids and like my dad always showed me and and tommy love is not about just feelings love is not about a choice and a decision and leadership is nothing without love leadership is a force a force of love and action and is such an honor and privilege and i thank you uh for this opportunity to serve in this as the chair foundation and i'm ready to continue working and work very hard with you and for you and for our kids thank you thank you victoria well and with that board we're gonna call it a night uh just kidding that was amazing um i really appreciated it victoria um [Music] thank you for your leadership and for for for your words um as the chair of the board i've gotten to know victoria a little bit um and i just have to say that she is incredible and i'm so thankful for her allyship and the work that she's doing on behalf of students of pbs she is she is as amazing as you think she is oh no thank you thank you i want to jump on that too and just say it's so great to see you here victoria um i've just watched loved watching you like get your wings and fly in portland and i'm grateful also for your leadership and then and the example you set for all of us oh no thank you thank you for your kind words and michelle thank you chair since we're piling on and i'm a member of the fan club too uh i'm a big admirer but i think what's important about what victoria is sharing about her own personal story and journey is that in this work that she's helping lead she can really empathize with the experience that our students our families and our community are having i know that her and her family are very actively involved in many of those civil rights issues and so we have the benefit of having her as the chair of the fund sort of keeping in mind through that lens the experience that our that our students and their families are attempting to survive through in the middle of this pandemic and i think that's a really important lens and you're going to hear a little bit about what the extent of that has been in the short term and how we're still keeping our sights on the long-term vision which is what's exciting thank you superintendent awesome thank you so much so uh moving to the next slide um so uh i won't bore you all with all the details here uh mostly because you all were part of the uh uh have been part of the 25 year history of fundraising uh across our school system uh but i want to highlight a few uh uh dates here again that you all probably have more context and more familiarity than that even i do um but in 1994 uh the pps schools found pps foundation was established uh i want to highlight 2008 as another uh point in uh in our history when the pps schools foundation uh broadens broadens its effort to include the seven school districts seven additional school districts as partners in 2011 uh pps school foundation beca the pps foundation becomes all hands raised they
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changed their name to all hands trade and and uh and expand their footprint and then in 2019 uh again last year we established in june of 2019 we established the fund for pps uh so next slide and so the fun for bps uh you know we're dedicated to building a robust network of generous donors stewarding our investments uh philanthropic investments towards our school and our school district and overseeing our parent-led school foundation efforts all really to advance and prepare the movement to prepare students to be changed and improve the world we'll get into some of the details here next slide and as you you met victoria our board chair um i also want to introduce you to picture members of the rest of our board uh that include chris nick becky cote who is a parent uh claire hertz uh which you all know very well and then uh uh at the bottom i wanted to uh share with you um the amazing team that i get to work with each and every day on the partnership side uh you'll hear from uh most of them tonight from this point on but i also just wanted to highlight a thing here that i try to do with this slide if you notice on the left of your slide under victoria's uh headshot is naila roach naila is uh you'll you'll hear from naila shortly uh but the reason she's elevated on on this sheet is because 75 of her time is dedicated to the fund for pps um and i think the other thing that's important to highlight here if you haven't had a chance to look at the last slide of your deck that was presented to you has a link of resources that has a lot more details that we won't go into tonight but are definitely there things like the budgets things like the operation agreements that kind of get into details of how some of these operational pieces work but i just wanted to highlight that nayla again she's a pps employee but 75 of her time is dedicated to the fund for pps and so uh hence the distinction here but uh with that i'm going to um to transition over to toulon to introduce yourself and share a little bit about uh what we do july hi there uh good evening it's nice to be here with you um i'm toulon spitz i work in the strategic partnerships team i'm also a parent of a pps 8th grader my pronouns are she her and jonathan you want to go to the next slide or roseanne the next slide for me please great so this kind of recaps a little bit of what we've heard from both the superintendent and jonathan what you see on this slide are sort of the three overarching areas of endeavor for the fund for pps building our generosity network is really about building that collective movement toward realizing the district's vision pps reimagined and that could be through philanthropic investments or strategic partnerships the stewardship piece is about aligning the funds pursuit of these investments and partnerships with the district's vision the emerging strategic plan and it's also importantly about being able to accelerate um toward racial equity and social justice through innovation and innovative projects and then of course uh it's also um on the fun to maintain um close relationships with funders through transparency and accountability and then a third area of our work is to support the parent fundraising efforts that happen via the local school foundations and you'll hear more about that shortly from another team member so next slide and again this first year of the fund for pps we really work to establish the organization creating structure and getting systems in place so that we can perform the key functions of fundraising and supporting the lsfs and we're really gaining some momentum so next slide so this by the numbers is a snapshot of our first fiscal year which ended on june 30th and in that first fiscal year the fund for portland public schools raised 574 000 that's distinct from the nearly 4 million that you'll see on the slide the local school foundations raised the dollars raised by the fund for pps went to general operating support to targeted investments that have cleared through through lines to
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the district's vision and in large part this year to the coronavirus relief fund for pps students and families the fund initiated this relief fund in march to be able to provide direct support to students and families with a primary focus on food insecurity and meeting those needs in less than three months from late march through june the fund the relief fund raised four hundred thousand dollars and as of the end of september we had reached more than 3 500 pps students with direct support and pps staff and in particular social workers and counselors were the ones that helped identify those families that have been most impacted by the pandemic with a focus on students and families of color next slide please so here's a little bit more information on the chronovirus relief fund which we really see as an example of how the fund for pps sort of lived into those pps core values of relationships of students at the center and of racial equity and social justice so as of september 30th this relief fund had raised 725 000 and this is really an example of collective impact from our community it's due to the generosity of more than 700 individual donors including some large dollar donors like ray and bobby davis the list of individual donors includes more than 200 members of the portland association of teachers with a matching contribution from pat and then the the relief fund through the fund for pps also applied for and received corporate and non-profit grants for instance from intel genentech no kid hungary and also received a grant from the oregon health authority so by the end of the year this year end of december the relief fund will have provided about a half a million dollars in support direct support to pps families in need again with that focus on students of color and families who are facing multiple barriers due to the impact of the pandemic and economic downturn and lastly i'll just say we're keenly aware that as the pandemic continues families will continue to need support and be impacted the relief fund is actively seeking donations on the website fundforpps.org and i thank you for your time uh tonight and with this i'll turn over the mic to my colleague camille adetovo thank you tulane and good evening everyone my name is camille idenavo i am the corporate and foundation relations officer for portland public schools happy to be with you this evening next slide please so with its um home classroom kit initiative the fund for portland public schools really stepped up to make sure that students who qualify for free and reduced price meals have everything that they need to be successful learning from home so through the generosity of philanthropic partners from community partners from faith partners all sorts of partners we've been able to furnish over 2 000 students these home classroom kits and when we talk about the home classroom kit what we're talking about is a comprehensive um kit of supplies that includes math manipulative science equipment art supplies and everything that really gives color to the educational experience and and brings the classroom alive for students wherever they are and just to highlight some of the generous folks that have come alongside us on this project jpmorgan chase iq credit union new relic amazon bridgetown imago day just to name a few and that also includes parents so we're super grateful um that we've been able to do this and the number is also increasing next slide please so innovation and the amplification of the great work at pps is at the center of who the fund for portland public schools is as as a state oregon has really taken the lead as the leaders of climate justice nationwide but more specifically we've heard from our students that this is a priority um we've heard and seen via their um their demonstrations their board testimony even today that climate justice and climate change the science of climate change is something that we should be prioritizing so our friends at pge portland general electric said that they wanted to
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support and build on the great work that students were already leading and so what they've done is they invested a quarter of a million dollars in the development of climate change climate justice curriculum k-12 and what what that looks like is in each of our science and social studies classes k-12 um students get a unit um dedicated to the science of climate change and climate justice in addition to an interdisciplinary elective at the high school level so this among other initiatives is just an example of the way that the fund for portland public schools is building on the great work of pps but also innovating next slide please and as toulon mentioned earlier one of the functions of the fund for portland public schools is to build the generosity network which includes it includes the investment piece but in addition to investment it also includes high impact high impact partnerships so i just want to take a moment to highlight a couple of the people that you see up on the screen so o planning and design helped us to send harriet tubman middle school to go see the movie harriet in the fall which is really great at the beginning of the pandemic when everything shut down amazon and doordash really stepped up to make sure that we could get deliveries meal deliveries to families who for whatever reason couldn't leave their homes and so they jumped right in in the spring in the summer and lyft has provided us and continues to provide us with unique ride codes to make sure that families can get to and from essential services so as you can see we um these partnerships are really important the ones that we currently have the ones that were were building and the ones that have yet to be realized so just as much as the investment is important so are these partnerships to really accelerate our work so we accept um more individuals to come alongside the fund for portland public schools as we support the students of pps so on that note thank you for your time and i'm going to pass the mic to naila now good evening everyone my name is naila roach and i am the donor services and school resources associate and also for the fund for pps i am the fund development associate next slide please so first i'll start by sharing a little information about the local school foundations which are parent-led fundraising groups local school foundations are different from other parent fundraising groups and that they raise funds specifically to support fte costs part of fundraising for fte also involves contributions to the pps parent fund that fund is redistributed to schools based on a demographic formula and that will be explained in more detail and later in the presentation there are 43 local school foundations 35 affiliated lsfs and eight independent lsfs affiliated foundations operate under the 501c3 umbrella of the fund for pps and receive a variety of support services independent local school foundations operate under their own 501c3 and receive a more limited set of services next slide please we had a very successful first year as the fund for pps we finalized the operating agreement between the fund for pps and pps school district as two organizations that are simultaneously separate and closely aligned it's important to understand where each organization is different and how each entity can support the other also one of the first things we did was document and outline our internal financial controls we wanted to make sure the practices of the fund for pps align with generally accepted accounting principles and set the organization on a path to a healthy financial future we also developed a comprehensive operations manual our institutional knowledge and framework is written so that it's clear for our work and the meaning of our work to move forward in a way that's thoughtful conscious and intentional jumping back to local school foundations a major goal of our first year was to ensure a smooth transition of lsf
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services from all hands raised to the fund for pps lsf's received different fundraising supports a full list of and that full list is available in the lsf handbook and while i won't name them all here i will mention a few so one of the services that lsf's receive is monthly financial reporting local school foundation leaders can clearly see month by month which donors have contributed to their schools any expenses that were incurred and what their net income has been um they also have the ability to accept online donations in a variety of ways not just on the fund for pps website but also through fundraising software and other virtual platforms there are day-to-day operational supports such as managing and fulfilling payments including check requests for vendors and expense reimbursements for volunteers finally the fund for pps serves as a knowledge base especially for our new volunteers who may be unfamiliar with the operations and compliance of a local school foundation how the fund for pps can help and where to go to find resources next slide please as i mentioned earlier we have 43 active local school foundations because all schools may operate a local school foundation schools who do not have an active lsf are considered to have an inactive foundation and any school that wants to activate their local school foundation has the fund for pps as a support affiliated and independent local school foundations raised a total of 3.93 million dollars last school year of the 3.93 million local school foundations retained 2.76 million dollars to support their school's staffing efforts the remaining 1.2 million dollars were contributed to the pps parent fund and those awards supported 53 pps schools and programs i will now hand things over to robin froome sorry let me unmute there hi my name is robin feron i'm the school partnerships manager also a pps parent i have a middle schooler and a high schooler so i'm continuing on with a bit more about the parent fundraising over the years this slide shows a line graph of the last three years the top line is how much the local school foundations raised that they were able to keep within their own school communities and the bottom line is how much went to the pps parent fund so it's a two-thirds one-third split the first ten thousand dollars that the school foundation raises is exempt and then um anything they raise after that um gets split into two-thirds in the school's account and one-third in the pps parent fund so next slide to summarize the two-thirds amount typically pays for around 30 to 40 fte each year in the schools that raise the money through the school-based foundations and then on the other side the schools that are awarded pps parent funds are not required to use those grants for staffing nearly half do and so that translates into another [Music] 10 fte approximately so we would estimate that between 30 and 50 full-time staffing positions are funded through the dollars raised by the school-based foundations each year that includes teaching positions and classified in other positions next slide so the 1.2 million dollars that was in the raised last year is in the pps parent fund that we re-granted to schools and so they are using those funds in the 2020-21 school year the so the 53 schools and programs received those awards and the fund for
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pps worked with their board and developed a new transparent formula to distribute these funds in a new way kind of starting from scratch what what would be the best way to distribute these dollars and um develop two required criteria first at least 40 of the student population um of the school needs to qualify as historically underserved which includes students of color limited english proficiency and special education and second at least 15 percent of the students in the school must be eligible for free meals so through this formula pioneer school community transition program and mount scott learning center each received awards for the first time the grant amounts were determined based on the number of students in that school community and ranged from 12 500 to small alternative schools to 45 000 to large comprehensive high schools and the slide kind of shows a breakdown of how those amounts were allotted next slide please and finally this is a pie chart that gives you a glimpse of how the pps parent fund awards are invested in those 53 schools this is from a previous year but i it gives an idea so about 44 of the awarded schools use the the money for staffing and while the grant is not usually enough to cover a full-time position it can increase a position's hours or it can bump up an employee from part-time to full-time 41 of the awards are spent on academic supports including tutoring or chromebooks technology and also educator professional development and then the the the last uh pie there is 16 percent of the awards spent on school climate including family engagement interventions to increase attendance and student affinity groups so i can tell you that that administrators wait to hear whether they're getting this award and we get lots of thank you emails in response when they find out the good news if they get one because these these grants although not huge represent flexible dollars and then they have so little of that that isn't already predetermined based on restricted funds um and so they're able to tie the their um outcomes that they want with those grants to their school improvement plans um so that is the end of my slide i'd like to hand it back over to jonathan to close us out here thank you robin uh and board uh if i may i i just want to say that i have the great honor of working with such an amazing team which you heard tonight so while you you may see me on tuesday nights at the board meetings these are the folks that are doing the the real work uh behind the scenes and and really leading with with so much care and passion for for the students that that we get to serve so i'm just honored to to work with them uh each and every day um so thank you team for staying up past your bedtimes to to join us for this board meeting and share uh the good work that you are all leading uh so next slide so as we continue building upon the foundation of the fund for pps we have selected a few areas of focus moving forward next slide so what's next uh so as we think about so there are five uh areas that we're going to be focused on this in our second year as an organization as was shared earlier uh after a competitive proposal uh process the board members of the fund for pps uh selected the firm of donald jacobs to perform the funds fund's first audit uh mcconnell jacobs is a portland-based highly accredited firm uh the firm has already filed an extension for our first 990 to the irs and is working and will continue to work with the fund for pps over the next several months to complete the audit and we will also be submitting our um our audit and documentation uh to the guide star gold star seal of transparency which is among the highest uh transparency markers in the nonprofit space the question of equity and equitable access for all pps students is not only part of the pps vision but part of the
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commitment of the fund for pps it starts with examining our own bodies of work and asking if these practices are advancing racial equity that's why we began a set of community conversations to investigate what restraint looks like in the context of parent-led fundraising this exploration began last year and paused because of coded and will continue this year including administrators and schools without without foundations and uh we'll also be working on our non-profit infrastructure so while the staffing infrastructure of the fund for pps is limited to part-time staff who serve as dual role as district pps district employees we still continue to build the infrastructure by building out various policies and it's administrative guidances to cement and formalize our work we are working to set up our strategic planning uh set up some strategic planning sessions uh with the board uh to to really lay out uh uh um a full out development fundraising plan so the fund for pps has always been committed to raising dollars to support pps students and families even in our first year and we're grateful for the dollars we've brought in moving forward we're continuing to seek philanthropic donations to support students through the coronavirus relief fund as was mentioned earlier and we will also be focused on large investments around some of the work that that you members of the board and pps staff are leading things like the center for black student excellence middle and middle school redesign uh as the covet 19 pandemic has taught us we don't have a crystal ball uh and we never know what's around the next corner while focusing on the strategic goals uh well we'll be focusing on the strategic goals we will also retain an ability to be nimble and responsive to unforeseen challenges and opportunities again like uh our coronavirus relief fund as a as an example and as i shared earlier we're extremely grateful to our board members who have been real who have really stepped up to be leaders of the fund for pps in our first year as an organization another key area of focus uh this year is board development and the board is actively recruiting to expand our board and set up leadership strategies that will continue to move our organization forward so a lot of work uh to be done but again just honor next slide just honored uh that i get to work with uh victoria latta as our board chair uh the members the the rest of the board members of the fund and of course our incredible team here uh who just shared um all of our success uh in year one so with that i just want to thank you i know it's 9 45 and i want to turn it over back to chair lowry for any questions and again i want to just highlight that on slide 26 our resources that include information about the local school foundations and the fund so if folks had any questions specific questions according to those documents there they are thank you uh jonathan um and team for all of that uh deep and comprehensive work i do want to say that um i was the involved with the local school foundation at selwood middle school i was the vice president and president there um and one of the reasons i really enjoyed the foundation was because um it is one of the areas of parent fundraising that does include an equity framework and i think it's really important that we have this sense of um i think uh you know that uh victoria said about our kids right it's not just the kids at sellwood it's the kids throughout pbs it's all of our kids that we're we're raising funds for and supporting um and helping uh give wonderful educational experiences too so thank you to the foundation and for all the work you do um for all of our students um board members we're gonna run through and see if you have questions i know it's very late and we still have like three more agenda items um so again i want to give time to this because i know there are some questions about the foundation and this is our first annual report from them um but do also want to just call attention to the time so we're gonna go in uh alphabetical order by last name just to mix things up and keep us awake um so we are [Music] we're gonna go ahead and start with director bailey do you have a question or a comment for the um the comment uh great work laying a solid foundation appreciate the attention to both the financial detail as well as the programmatic um and really a timely assistance during covid for the families who needed the most so thank you thank you thank you um i wanted to ask a little more about
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the equity direction it's it's has been a hot topic uh i'm glad to see that you're beginning to address that and in a i think a careful fashion can you give a little a little more detail as to uh the process going forward or is there a strategic direction emerging or [Music] can any details along those lines sure so uh so as as we alluded to uh last fall pre pre pandemic uh uh we hosted a series of conversations with uh parents who were act who are active uh fundraisers in their local school foundations and uh as you can imagine those conversations were really really fruitful from uh from from an advantage of those folks that were familiar with the process right we're familiar with fundraising and and the history and the work um i think what you know what we wanted to to take on in the spring is to uh have a conversation with folks with from uh schools and from schools that don't have active foundations right to really gauge not have you know a philosophical debate of why one school has a foundation why one school doesn't but really to have a conversation about what is philanthropy look like and how to how do we uh uh unpack philanthropy across our community um and so uh this this past uh uh actually ten days ago uh robin ferrone and nayla broke a shared or uh uh uh uh an activity that they that they could do um with very specific questions around our racial equity lens to really begin to think about how might they think they they look at their dollars that stay in their school through an equity lens right just because it stays there doesn't mean that that doesn't become an equity conversation and so a a conversation about how you you center uh bypoc students at that school so i think uh um all that to say i think as we uh embark uh in the in the spring uh with a series of conversations i think we're going to be focused on talking to administrators who benefit from the pps parent funds um you know as it was alluded you know forty five thousand dollars to some uh a non-direct uh of uh general support uh helps our our our principles so a lot of conversations i guess uh is is what i'm trying to say um which as as as you know with uh some of our other con other topics like naming this is a slow process to get to where we want to where we want to be as a institution thanks jonathan all right director brim edwards do you have a question of two comments um first i want to just thank the team that presented was a great snapshot of this year and from talking to parents and staff and students i know your work was really appreciated on and when you stood up the covid fund a couple comments just generally and um the first is just about um foundations uh ever since i've been a pbs parent this has been a big question in the parent community about equity and their role and you know how we can as a community lift up everybody's kids and our current policy well we don't really have a current policy that looks at um the purchasing of teachers and under what conditions and i think for our community deserves us to be more much more explicit about um what that looks like under what conditions um staff can be purchased using foundation funds and under what what what conditions um and currently we don't have a clear policy statement and to me that falls right in the board's realm of work we have a policy but it's pretty generic and doesn't get to this issue of purchasing teachers and under what conditions also i um the again there's depending on what school you're in or what community foundations are either you know a great way to support students in your schools or the they're the great uh unequalizer and so i think
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as a broader community um we just need to be really transparent about how things work and i'm glad that you're hiring mcdonald jacobs they're a great local firm and you know posting the 990 providing transparency around the budget which i think tonight's a great start but i think that will start answering questions because again i think this has been a very divisive in some cases a very divisive issue among the the parent community so i think those are things that as you build forward they're going to be really important to create equity because if if i'm a parent looking at the numbers right now tonight um i look at you have 200 2.76 million going to 43 schools and 1.2 4 million going to 53 schools and so you have a much smaller amount of money going to the neediest schools and the larger amount being retained in the wealthier schools and so you know how can the foundation even that out maybe so those are just my comments and more go forwards um but thank you all for your work and again i've challenged the board to get after our policy work around this hopefully rita's got it on her it's on the tracker somewhere i remember seeing it definitely and i'm sure director moore could speak to it but i know that is it is being actively worked on uh as we speak so i don't know where more is but thank you uh appreciate those comments yeah rita's been having some internet issues tonight so she pops out and then pops back uh director deposited do you have a question comment or comment i had comments very similar to director bailey and director brim edwards in that my questions are you know knowing that how gentrification has impacted um you know where where kids go to school at where we know that we have um segregated neighborhoods in portland by income and race and um that and you know while i i very much appreciate the work the team has gone through and trust that you'll dive deep into these like super complex you know delivering equity is is not easy and as you're probably all very aware of um i i look forward to to learning more about the work and to seeing how uh the fund can equalize um the distribution of funds like as um director broome edwards said a large pot of money going to the schools that are well off and a smaller amount being spread more thinly between the schools that that we all know um need it you know very badly so um i look forward to the work of the team i appreciate the team being here so late um and and i hope that we're able to be mindful of um those those discrepancies that we still see even in the presentation tonight director constant did you have a question or any comments ew um so jonathan i really appreciated what you said about increasing focus on how the um um how the fundraising schools are using their two-thirds that they're retaining because this is an area where there really hasn't been any scrutiny and frankly there hasn't been any transparency partly by design so that individual teachers don't know you know who's paid for by private funds and who's not but i think that's really important also because when we look at the investments the equity investments that we're making in our reformed um staffing um staffing formula um it's all on a percentage basis and so i've always said that you know to be a historically underserved student in a school with a small population of kids like you is about the worst thing to do because you're not getting any you're getting very little specific resources within that school um to support that student population and you know and it's gonna when you have a big school and you can have 150 students that maybe represent a small percentage of the overall student population but they have needs that are going unmet so i think that that's that's an interesting piece of the equity conversation and um i was interested to see that now it's only about half of the money um going to staffing and half to other things which is a shift in the trend if it's going to actual materials like chromebooks or professional development so i'm assuming that that all is just happening by the principal's discretion these days but i think that that's um i
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hope that school communities are having conversations about that and that those priorities are being informed by those school communities um too because that's that is um that's a different way of doing things but i agree with you jonathan you have an awesome team you're all wonderful thank you very much you guys have really um uh created a formidable force in a short period of time we appreciate your work thanks director constance um i don't have a question and director moore is texting me her question um so we will go ahead to director scott thanks can you hear me i'm on a different device all right good yes um no i do so i appreciate the report and the information and i'll just echo very briefly some comments by my fellow board members because i this issue so depends on on the angle at which you observe it from that um you know you could easily look at these numbers and say wow parents in this district raised 1.2 million dollars for kids who weren't their own to help you know these these schools and sort of bring them up and yet you observe it from a different angle and and as i think director berm edwards said you know 2.76 million dollars for a small number a smaller number of schools versus 1.2 for a larger number of schools and those probably are the the the wealthier they are the wealthier schools you know are performing i think we have such an opportunity to lead this racial equity conversation through this and you know and i have to imagine that 30 was a hard sell um when we put that in and yet i feel as though the conversation around equity um is continuing to progress and that i wonder if you know having these conversations about when do we move that to 50 percent it is actually a much easier sell today than it would have been you know five or ten years ago and i know in my kids school community um it is and um i just you know i think there's there's a real opportunity here to to see it as the end both right to see it as how do we tap in to families that have means in order to really benefit the families that don't and um and this is a great tool to do that if we get it right so i appreciate that focus and continuing that conversation all right director moore texted me her question but it's something that's already been asked so she's going to go back and watch the video um she says when she has internet again her her internet has decided to give up the ghost after our long meeting so she's trying to get back in we'll see when it happens um student director shu did you have any questions or comments uh not that much um just like to say that uh i agree with what's been said by directors gwen edwards the pass and scott and that foundations can be drivers of inequity which is something that i've definitely witnessed firsthand in my time at pbs so we must i agree that we must be very mindful of that yeah and once we once jonathan has fixed the foundation system um then we can start talking about the driver of an equity that occurs within pta fundraising by schools as well um so that's another another place for us to explore as we think about you know again parents advocating for their kids what does it look like when we as a whole collective school district to advocate for our kids um so we still have lots of work to do but jonathan and team thank you so much for the the work you've done um on on this behalf and we'll continue on all right the future um chair lowry that if we feel abundant individually and collectively that i mean i think maybe the work maybe some of the work of the pps foundation is to help people understand that you know this isn't pie like there's there's enough where we're prospering we're resilient we all have enough um and the mark of a great community a great civilization is is the ability to be able to take care of those um that can't take care of themselves so spread abundance chair i also appreciate uh directors uh conversation here and we're of course appreciative of family generosity towards our schools and i do think it's important to step back and look at the bigger picture because this sport has also approved our recommendations for an evolving more equity-based resource management and so when you look at a school that's say designated csi which often times has a concentration of students of color you can see transparently in our budget book that you know they may not have fundraising capacity but we're certainly ensuring that we're resourcing them as generously if not even more
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generously in the way of the allocation of positions or materials or other conditions that help provide equitable opportunities in those schools and we're going to keep doing that so it is important to look at all of it on balance so how do we sort of maximize every dollar coming into the school district to make sure that that we're meeting the needs of students but uh your points are very well taken though ah again you know um onwards right um director sorry super it's late and i'm a little punchy superintendent guerrero we get to talk now about enrollment balancing correct we do not enrollment balancing enrollment update see look i'm so tired i don't even know what i'm saying let me look at my script so i say the right thing all right we're we're you're going to start another enrollment count that's what we're going to do next would you like to introduce the october enrollment count superintendent guerrero i would and transparently you should know that this grid is going to suddenly get very much smaller so all districts submit to the oregon department of education student enrollment reports detailing the number of k-12 students that are enrolled on the first day of school in october each year we share this report with the board as a topic of interest and normally this would have already come to you in october but since the department of ed pushed back the actual count date to a later date in october due to comprehensive distance learning we're sharing this information with you a little bit later than than usual but uh back for a second act to borrow chris and brayson's term uh dr russ brown is is going to review some of the highlights uh from an informational memo that i believe you already received in the way of a student enrollment report so russ thank you um again please be back with you i will be brief i i think the memo is is somewhat self-explanatory uh overall we saw a decrease in enrollment uh in portland public schools uh from the 2019-2020 year to 2020 2020 uh school year um but of 1552 students or 3.4 percent the vast majority of that decline was observed in kindergarten and first grade um and that probably doesn't come as much a surprise to many because again the comprehensive distance learning environment is probably better suited to to older students than kindergarteners secondary enrollment on the other hand was much more consistent and consistent with projections we saw a greater decline in in the elementary grades again that was somewhat expected from projections and the secondary grades on the other hand uh were more stable so again the the memo i think is fairly self-explanatory and it outlines the changes grade by grade both in comparison to the observed enrollment last year and also in comparison to the anticipated projector projection projected wow i'm getting tired too projected enrollment this year so i would only add to uh dr brown's uh memo and highlights here that uh it's a similar trend uh as what our other surrounding metro uh districts have reported in conversations with superintendents over the each week uh they've been sharing pretty consistent uh scale of of enrollment drops uh at pretty much the same pattern uh in those younger grades especially kindergarten so uh i don't want to alarm you but it's a phenomenon that we're observing across the state all right any board questions or comments before we move on it looks like julia and amy each have one yeah so um you know it just seems pretty distressing that we've lost 1500 um students and i'm curious i um sent dr brown a email before and asked the meeting but it wasn't much in advance but asking whether we had this in a dis if we had disaggregated data um on where we're losing these students and then i guess i'm a question so i'd be interested in getting that at another point in time um but it just is a follow-up and then the question um i would have is um have we done any sort of analysis of you know where these students are going so if other districts are losing students as well are they homeschooled are they going to other districts are they going to other states where schools are open um i guess it i'm sure it's a little bit of all that
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but are we doing any sort of um detailed analysis of where those students have gone or are they just you know dropping out i guess is another question i would have the older students and julie i'll just piggyback with you so russ you can answer in the same same push um my question that i had submitted before was do we have any significant deviations any schools that stand out as losing you know a significant number of students or losing students at grades other than kindergarten and first grade so uh just to to be brief uh in terms of you know looking across the system and uh who is was leaving we didn't see a lot of difference based on race uh the the the folks who were leaving it ranged between four and seven percent uh by race and it was fairly consistent across race so i didn't see a huge differential there um in looking across the system again secondary grades were pretty stable and the enrollment in secondary you know grades eight and up looks pretty pretty stable and progressively as you go younger than we're seeing less enrollment in terms of individual buildings i i think it's a little premature to to talk about that though i will say um the in looking at the data the lion's share of the boss was in elementary schools so the you know the secondary schools look fairly stable on this finally in terms of knowing where students have gone if they had been enrolled with us and went someplace else i think it's a little early for us to know that but i would anticipate that we will have additional information about students who've left us if they've gone to other systems over time and not so fun fact i just learned this year that oregon is one of only a handful of states where kindergarten is not mandatory interesting thank you for that um anybody else are we ready to move on to our guest oh nathaniel had a question great go nathaniel yeah i'm sorry i'm just i know we don't have that much data but i was wondering if we expect to get the students that will be losing in the younger or the the olio grades back at some point or if they're just gone well i i think as you heard a moment ago kindergarten isn't a required element here and so i think there is some anticipation that students who or plan or families who are planning on having their students enroll in kindergarten or first grade would likely come back we are and we we have an ongoing relationship with portland state university to do enrollment projections in the coming year i i do think that that will be a more challenging thing than it has been in the past and i am so happy that we work with a well-known demographer in that work moving forward because uh this is a very this is a historical event and i i think it's going to be a little challenging to predict what's going to happen in the future on that we would certainly uh however look forward to to welcoming early childhood students back to our schools and what's interesting there dr brown too is that you don't know what grades they'll be in you know they may just sit it out and go back to where they would have been this year so you hear a lot of talk among parents about that parents of young kids and i think this underscores why we've spent so much time talking about early childhood and really trying to re-engage in early childhood all right well we have had uh thank you very much dr brown uh we have had pcc trustee uh son lightner with us for hours now um he is here to talk to us about the oregon school board association um or osb as we normally uh refer to it he is running for one of the positions um osbaa is organized um as one general state association with 23 regionally elected representatives established across 14 geographic regions regions so in even numbered years like 2020 boards vote to elect regional representatives for the odd-numbered positions even numbered years odd numbered positions on the osa board of direct directors and to approve the osba legislative priorities and principles so our board is going to vote on november 17th which is our next board meeting for position i think position 15 and position 17 which represent multnomah county um and tonight one of the
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candidates for position 17 michael sean leitner is here to share with us why he is seeking this seat so welcome uh pcc trustee song lightner i'm unmuted thank you chair lowry and thank you all for your patience your conscientiousness over the past three hours has been very impressive and i myself don't mind having sat through this because it's been very educational i've learned a lot about your challenges and and also about your personalities and i i love the sense of humor that often is present with you thank you um i i want to confine myself to only five minutes because we all need to get to sleep and i'm a little punchy too um i've been on the pcc board for six years before that i was a full-time instructor of political science and peace studies at pcc for 27 years and so i am the first former employee of pcc ever to be on the board this is not so much about me but i think it's relevant that i'm hypersensitive when it comes to issues of diversity inequity and inclusion because much of my life i felt excluded um i am gender but non-binary in my own identity that's unusual i don't tend to see things in dualistic uh simple either or categories and that's been heavily influenced by a lot of contact with uh eastern religious and cultural traditions i've spent about three years in india over at various points in time i'm a scholar of both gandhi and martin luther king my doctoral dissertation was a combination of the two i went to fisk university as part of my undergraduate education and i have a feeling for how it is to be in a minority pers position even though obviously i'm not black and that's not my experience but we need empathy we also need representation and that's my primary motivation here my board at pcc selected me to be their representative on the oregon community college association board you may know that that board represents 17 community colleges in the state of oregon and is independent of osba and yet the oregon school board association also represents community colleges and educational service districts and of course k through 12 districts technically i think there are only 22 board members now with osba there can be 23. but there are 22 of those 20 come from k-12 districts throughout the state two have people representing educational service districts not a single seat is there for community colleges there has been historical poor collaboration between occa and osba and someone like me i hope might bridge some of that gap because we have students in common literally uh my grandson in centennial district is in kindergarten i spend two days a week struggling with him online it's very educational these are tough times but it goes all the way up when you have foster students time out and perhaps graduate from your high schools many of them come to pcc and they're among our most at risk
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students to drop out we don't have a seamless garment of continuity for students we don't have clearness when it comes to dual credit which is a big issue and i think it's important for maybe you folks to realize that of course pcc is very big we're down to 65 000 students but what you might not know is about 10 percent of those about 6 500 are pre-college students during my years of teaching at pcc i figure i had about 15 000 students in my classrooms at least one thousand of those were high school students i'm used to teaching high school students there is not a separate reality strictly speaking between k-12 and community colleges we must learn to cooperate better with one another you might learn something from some of our challenges and experiences regarding to dei we certainly can learn from you how to retain instructors how to diversify our employee base to better reflect the needs and of course the appearance even of our more and more diverse student bodies so bottom line is i'm here because of my strong interest in k through 12. all four of my now grown adult children went to portland public schools i myself helped to create as a founding parent da vinci middle school in the pps district the arts magna program for a middle school i've been involved and come i've come to pps meetings um your board meetings in the past i've been a little bit on the busy side recently i am involved i am concerned i am empathetic and i desire to have your support in trying to bridge for our students k through 12 through at least community colleges if not further that's a simple summary and it is within five minutes um i haven't told you as much about myself as i might like but this is really not so much about me it's really about how we can be a better team statewide with one another i supported the student success act i was in salem every week during the last legislative session supporting the student success act even though it excluded community colleges i support we appreciate that work that you have done and thank you for your time with us tonight um you've sent us your resume and your nomination form and a letter and that's all in our board packet in board books so uh we have access to that we so thank you for your time tonight trustee thank you and uh and we sent out your response to the the s back question uh in the la my last weekly update so board members you also have um trustee sunliners um response there so thank you so much for your time and your patience tonight very nicely thank you all right um do we have any other items before us tonight that we need to cover before we we uh get to end our lovely evening all right seeing none alien sorry to do this but uh do we don't we vote as a whole board on one candidate for the osba nomination so how do we arrive at that we'll have that conversation next week yes and do we have the information about the other candidate yes so katrina came and spoke with us in october and provided information with us then and in our my board update that i send out tomorrow i will link to the nomination forms resumes um for all three candidates so michael michael and katrina are both running for number 17 and then sonia mckenzie is running unopposed for number uh 19. so i will send all that information out in the email tomorrow and then information will be on our packet for uh for thursday as well thank you all right anything else
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all right so uh i'm going to uh go ahead and announce that the next meeting of the board will be next week november 17th and that this meeting is now officially

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)

2020-11-10 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting 11/10/2020

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