2020-11-17 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2020-11-17
Time 18:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type regular
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting 11/17/2020

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this board meeting of the board of education for november 17 2020 is called to order for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on has been posted as required by state law this meeting is being streamed live on pps tv services website and on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times and i'm going to ask director depos to go ahead and open our meeting tonight you're muted i just figured that thank you good evening everyone i want to start by acknowledging that we live work and play on the traditional land of indigenous people who once made their homes along the columbia and willamette rivers we must continue to acknowledge celebrate and honor native american history and heritage native people continue to make our city and our region a more dynamic and thriving place for all tonight we'll be voting on a resolution proclaiming the celebration of national native american indian heritage month in addition to learning about how tribal history is taught within portland public schools in our study session later tonight but first i begin by reading the proclamation and bear with me resolution proclaiming the celebration of native national native american indian heritage month in portland public schools native american indians are descendants of the original indigenous inhabitants of what is now the united states the portland metro region rests on the traditional lands of the bands of the chinook multnomah clackamas tualatin malala and cath cath lament tribes these tribes established their communities in a resource-rich area where they traded and fished along the rivers and harvested those natural resources that fed and maintained their families in the 1950s under federal relocation policy a large segment of the native population in the u.s was forced to relocate to several major cities of which portland was won this has added to the diversity of the tribal representation in the region native american indian people whose history is rich with those who positively influence and enrich our nation our society our region our state and our schools through their entrepreneurship commitment to community service deep value of justice and liberty and social and cultural life on august 3rd 1980 pr president of the united states george h.w bush declared the month of november as national american indian heritage month thereafter commonly referred as native american heritage month native american indians have made profound contributions and contribute to con continue to make advances in education medicine art culture and public service and have have been a consistent and vital influence in our nation's growth and prosperity the portland metro's native american in native american indian community is diverse and growing with the population estimated to be nearly 70 000. as portland is a relocation site pps students represent more than 150 tribal nations as such we are humbled by native american indian employee families and communities contribution to the accomplishment of pps's mission understanding native american history is an important part of celebrating native american heritage month background the oregon indian education association introduced an oregon governor brown signed into law senate bill 13 tribal history shared history in the 2017 legislative session this bill called upon oregon department of education to develop a statewide curriculum relating to the native american experience in oregon including tribal history tribal sovereignty culture treaty rights government socioeconomic experiences and current events tribal history shared history is one of 11 objectives identified in ode's american indian alaska native state plan in which every school district in oregon implements historically accurate culturally embedded place-based contemporary and developmentally appropriate american indian curriculum oregon is one of several states adopting similar efforts to reaffirm the state's commitment in preserving tribal cultural integrity and the education of our citizens in may 2018 ode facilitated coordination of the creation of essential understandings of oregon's american indians which has been used to develop american
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indian curriculum and assessment tools for the 4th 8th and 10th grades aligning with state standards in the following content areas english language arts science math social science and physical education and health portland public schools office of indian education office of teaching and learning and office of schools are engaged in this vital statewide work as of january 2020 the state of oregon requires implementation of tribal history shared history with on within all k-12 school districts throughout the state the office of schools and office of teaching and learning are working together to support the implementation of this curriculum as a foundational and fundamental element of our culturally responsive teaching and learning for the students in portland public schools portland public schools has a racial education equity policy that states our commitment to affirmatively overcome the educational barriers that have resulted in persistent unacceptable achievement gap for students of color and to give each student the opportunity to support to meet his or her highest potential closing opportunity gaps while raising achievement for all students is the top priority of the board of education the superintendent and the district staff the portland public schools board of education believes each and every student is to be celebrated and appreciated for the distinct and vibrant contributions made by sharing cultures language ideas beliefs and values within a school community be it resolved the portland public schools board of education hereby promotes november 1st through november 30th as native american indian heritage month and encourages staff students and community to observe recognize and celebrate the culture heritage and economic contributions of native americans to our oregon and the united states through culturally relevant activity and to learn from the past and understand the experiences that have shaped the united states the superintendent and or his designation work with schools in the district to recognize native american indian heritage month through culturally relevant lessons and activities thank you thank you director devos the board will now bring forward resolution number 6203 resolution proclaiming the celebration of national native native american indian heritage month in portland public schools do i have a motion so i have a second okay so director depos moves and director scott seconds miss bradshaw is there any public comment on resolution 6203 no is there any board discussion on this resolution i just want to reiterate um the things that director depos said in the resolution about the impact of native american culture on our community and on this place and especially i was not aware that there were over 150 links to different communities in the in native american culture here in um portland and so again wanna um just acknowledge that those i think often times when i was a kid we learned about native american culture as something in the past and that this is something that is definitely here and now and vibrant and present um and want to thank um i know we've got some students that will be speaking in a minute and thank them especially for their contributions tonight all right any other discussion on this resolution okay the board will now vote on resolution 6203 resolution proclaiming the celebration of national native american indian heritage month in portland public schools all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all proposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6203 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative shu voting yes thank you nathaniel superintendent would you like to take it from here thank you chair lowry and and to the rest of the board i appreciate my opportunity to make a remark here um thank you for acknowledging this month as a time to to in particularly recognize and celebrate the culture and heritage of our native american community as an example of the work
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in action that your resolution inspires i too want to recognize two of our student leaders at grant high school who are also members of the indigenous peoples student union who are here with us tonight please welcome ani tate and livy buck um and if i may address the two of them and their and their classmates i want to share with you and the community tonight the decision to begin the process of removing and relocating the fletcher murals from the grant high school auditorium last spring just before the pandemic shut down our schools director bailey and i had the opportunity to meet with you former principal campbell your ipsu advisor and other students at grand high school you and your fellow student leaders were incredibly eloquent and clear in your advocacy and rationale as to why the murals should no longer have a place in your learning environment what struck me deeply was hearing how the continued display of these depictions of native people have such a negative impact on you and your fellow students this is precisely the opposite of the intent of the board's resolution this evening which is to respectfully recognize and celebrate the culture and heritage of native americans i want to assure you i want to ensure that you have a positive and culturally affirming learning experience while at portland public schools yesterday i sent a memo to principal mcgee and to high school area senior director alisa shore sharing my decision and outlining the process to move forward as part of my decision and in alignment with the goals of our master arts education plan the school's leadership will work closely with students to develop and collaborate on a conceptual design for a new mural one that more appropriately celebrates and better affirms the lived experiences and culture of native american students and with permission of the board chair i would like to request that we invite student public comment at this time and invite anita and livy buck whose leadership has been instrumental in raising the issue and the impact of the murals at grant high school to share a few words on behalf of the students at grant yes please um thank you um for all of that um uh everyone on me yanisha hello my name is ani tate and i am the president of the indigenous peoples student union grants ipsu has been working to remove the flesh memorial murals for over three years almost a year ago to this day ipsu co-presidents brought our demands to the school board to remove the murals and replace them with a new mural project led by all the student unions of color grant the removal of the meals has been a long time coming and i have been involved in conversations about it since my freshman year um three years ago the remodel of grant begun and as incoming freshmen at marshmallow we were always told about a perfect new updated campus being built that would accommodate all of our needs and foster the flourishment of our education the only way i saw this promise to be possible was if the murals were removed and new murals that accurately represent students of color were underway not only did this not happen but the plan to restore the murals advanced throughout this process the psychological safety of indigenous students and staff has been continually harmed due to opposition and selling from the community heavily contributed to by members of the grant alumni association as much as i am excited and relieved for these murals to be removed it is still only a form of harm reduction it is my understanding that policy is starting to be drafted to facilitate future situations like this my hope for future indigenous students and leaders is that they will not have to be subjugated to convincing people of the validity of harm done to them and of the validity of their personal experiences ipsu would like to be updated weekly on the progress of the removal and other related plans so that we can all stay on the same page going forward we would also like a specific date to be given for the start date of the removal and the end date of the removal before i end um i want to say thank you to our first club president my sister totally tate who was the first to bring this the
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removal of the murals to the attention of the school and first started the work around it and i want to say thank you to last year's co-president jackson wolf um who has contributed so much time to ensuring the removal and lastly i want to say thank you to our club advisor my dad who has had to deal with these murals since he started working at grant 14 years ago and to the surrounding indigenous community who has supported us in our steps toward decolonizing our schools thank you ani osiyo hi everyone my name is livy buck and i'm a senior at grant high school and i'm a citizen of the cherokee nation of oklahoma and as an indigenous student at grant and an active member of the performing arts community i was shocked when i learned of the fletcher murals for the first time um and even more shocked that i would continue to have to perform next to them as i move through my time at grant i am thankful that the process to remove these murals has started and i'm looking forward to seeing the ways that pps will support indigenous students as i graduate as my three younger siblings go through high school i'm glad that they are going to be able to see their school and school district begin to repair the damage that these murals have caused like ani mentioned earlier it has been very harmful as an indigenous student to see and hear the hurtful words of the members of the grant alumni association as well as members of the grant community i would like to thank our club advisor ray tate our club president annie tate and our past presidents totally tate and jackson wolf for the hard work and the many hours that they have put towards this project thank you to the superintendent and the school board for hearing us speak today wado thank you thank you very much for your continued advocacy and the work that you have done um and for your um untiring efforts and i do appreciate what ani said about um creating a system where you all don't have to work so hard um for us to do what is right so thank you for giving us this opportunity tonight um we are ready to sorry go ahead yeah yeah and as a graduate of grant high school um i'm so glad this is moving forward it's uh so just thank you i just want to um address both of the students um ani and livy i really appreciate your advocacy um through this work and your persistence and and patience um grant community and our entire community is better for your work i'm going to be watching and listening very closely for what you both are up to after these murals have been removed because i'm sure there's uh bigger and better fish to fry out there um i'll be watching closely chair can i say a few words go ahead yes please um so i wanted to um thank ani and olivia for your advocacy and your passion and your persistence and i wish jackson were here tonight because i can't count the number of times when i'd open up my email and find um an email from him asking what the status was and um so appreciate your your patience um as we work through this um and also that your courage to not only raise the issue um and and share your perspective with the leaders at your school but also the district leaders um i also want to thank um danny ledesma for connecting a resolution tonight um recognizing native american indian heritage month with this action and then our learning session later um i think this is modeling us as a as a system being continuous learners and i hope um that the hearts and minds of grant community members who don't maybe agree with this decision that they take the opportunity to listen to the words of the students and the perspectives and to better understand why this action is being taken and to move forward together as a larger community anyone else want to speak to this before we move on i just want to commend the superintendent for acting decisively when this when this matter first came to us from the student activists it really came directly to the board
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and the superintendent um was really clear in saying that he wanted to take this action to act on their demands because this is exactly what our vision envisions this is exactly what our portrait of a graduate honors and lays out and so thank you superintendent for recognizing this issue as a way for us to as a district to um really live our values and live our vision so thank you so much and thanks to uh thanks ani and and all the student activists and um i i hope that we're all kept in the loop to in meeting your requests to be updated on a weekly basis thank you directors and thank you students for keeping us accountable all right this is um a big moment um in a lot of ways as we live into our values as a district um and we turn now to sometimes something that feels like um it's the business and yet also is aligned with our values as we engage in the work of the administration of our district through the consent agenda um so board members uh if there are any items you would like to pool we will set those aside for discussion and vote at the end of the meeting so first i turn to ms bradshaw and ask are there any changes to the consent agenda tonight all right board members are there any items you would like to pull from the consent agenda there's not an item i want to pull but i just would like to raise we had as additional supplemental materials for the board meeting the preliminary financial report and the large district benchmarking i'd like to ask um at some point in time that we actually devote some part of a board meeting or committee meeting to these documents because um staff spend a lot of time into them and i think they're important uh materials um regarding our the financial health of our district so if that could happen at some point in time or that we get them posted somewhere versus just the supplement of materials to the to the meeting and i think that claire um hertz and the team that put them together all right any other items to be pulled or from the consent agenda all right do i have a motion and a second to adopt the consent agenda so moved second director constand moves and director brim edwards seconds the adoption of the consent agenda is there any board discussion on the consent agenda ms bradja is there any public comment on the consent agenda all right the board will now vote on resolutions six two zero four through six two zero seven all in favor please by saying 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 we turn now to some further student and public comment before we begin i would like to review our guidelines for comment the board thanks you and the community for taking the time to attend this meeting and provide comments public input does inform our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen our board office will follow up on board board-related issues raised during public testimony we request that complaints about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matters as a personnel matter sorry if you have additional materials or items you would like to provide to the board or superintendent we ask that you email them to public comment at pps.net again that's public comment all one word at pbs.net please make sure when you begin your time with us tonight that you clearly state your name and spell your last name you'll have three minutes to speak and you will hear a sound after three minutes which means it is time to conclude your comments ms bradshaw do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment tonight yes lucy kennedy wong welcome lucy hi my name is lucy kennedy wong spelled k-e-n-n-e-d-y hyphen w-o-n-g i'm a freshman at franklin high school and my pronouns are she her i would like to voice my concerns on
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how redistricting will change my high school experience i have a couple key points on how this will affect me first i was not given any information that this big change was going to happen if my parents weren't so involved i would never have known that i would be transferring high schools in the next couple of years i feel like these proposals were made for students with assumptions of how it may affect them by never asking them directly students have the right to be involved with decisions that will impact them when you make a proposal this large it is your responsibility to make sure the community is educated and able to have a voice second from my house it would take almost an hour to get to madison and almost another hour to come home if i had any after school program or if i wanted to talk to my teachers it would take me it would make me very late coming home with still homework to do making lunch for the following day getting sleep and any basic hygiene i needed to take care of then i would need to get up early the following morning and do it all again i know what it's like to have a very busy schedule and it greatly affects my ability to stay focused in school and help and make friends and how present in the moment i am it would be very difficult to have any extra time to be active in my community hang out with friends or my ability to work at my job both my parents work full-time jobs and we only have one car in the family which one of them would be using i do not have they do not have the time to drive me the places i need to be third having a neighborhood school is very beneficial franklin is three blocks away from me which takes about fifty which is about a fifteen minute walk we have a great neighborhood community with lots of kids i'd be able to get to school early and make connections with classmates before class has started not only would it help me make friends but it would also lower carbon emissions because i would not be taking the bus for hours a day i hope you will give students the opportunity to weigh in on this matter thank you for your time thank you next we have kaya robertson um thank you so much hello my name is kyra robertson spelled r-o-b-e-r-t-s-o-n and i'm a junior at franklin high school my pronouns are she her and i have two sisters in eighth grade i'm out today who would be about to change ever since middle school i knew i was going to franklin i competed on all the franklin cluster sports teams and began to become involved in the franklin community before i had even left elementary school the last few years at franklin have been some of the best of my life so far and i'm so grateful to have been able to go to a neighborhood school with such a strong community students at mount tabor have a strong network with franklin high school and this makes the transition much easier going to a new school is always hard but for local kids in our area everyone feels familiar and comfortable with franklin it is such a great community with the nearby neighborhoods all feeding to the same place i've found that kids and families bond better when they all attend the same schools separating our local neighborhoods and sending kids to different schools divides the community and makes the network of support for students and families much weaker i also live just a 15 minute walk away from the school and so do all of my friends it makes so much sense to walk to school every day as it is not only environmentally friendly and good for our health but it is a much needed time to talk with friends and bond if kids in my neighborhood went to madison we would also take the bus and transport to school for 90 minutes a day franklin just sitting there just a 15-minute walk away students in the area using public transportation could be subjected to late or overcrowded buses often with sports and extracurricular activities students barely get any time at home during the school week and with transportation time on top of that many students would be bussing back to their homes in the dark the transportation time is simply unreasonable for a southeast portland student it also makes the day cruelly long as by my calculations many kids would have to get up by six or six thirty and not get back home until seven or eight if they choose to participate in any sort of after school activity like a sports practice averaging two hours or a club one to three hours i personally feel as a student that i would be deterred from participating in my community and school sports if i could not go home after practice after school i also feel that many students who start high school at franklin will not benefit from transferring to madison they would have to leave a lot of friends and come into a new environment with new teachers students and athletic teams it is unfair to take students away from a school in which they were thriving as a student living in this affected area i feel it is unreasonable to have my sisters and other students move to madison when the nearby school neighborhood school is a great opportunity to participate in an already diverse community
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thank you you have deb miller lando thank you um my name is deb landau and my it's spelled l-a-n-d-a-u and i am a mount tabor middle school mom and my pronouns are she her i am also here to discuss the enrollment and program balancing efforts led by the southeast guiding coalition thank you for this opportunity the coalition's stated mandate was to create more equitable solutions for southeast students at the middle school level with a focus on open reopening kellogg or opening kellogg and converting harrison unfortunately there has been an egregious breakdown in both process and communication by which the proposal before you is much broader than it what than it has been described in all pps communications to date somewhere in the last few weeks it appears that the objectives have changed and now a rush to reach a final phase one recommendation by an arbitrary december 17th timeline is only now reaching the ears of the communities which stand to be greatly impacted by these changes for example neither richmond nor glencoe elementary's mount tabor middle school's largest feeder at elementary schools are represented on the coalition the two parent coalition members representing mount tabor are from atkinson whose high school will not be impacted by the new proposal there is literally literally no one on the coalition who is actually impacted by several boundary changes including the redrawing of glencoe's boundaries and the decision to send mount tabor middle school students to madison when the majority of students live within walking distance of franklin second the timeline has been a moving target at the october 22nd coalition meeting there was no mention in either phase of redrawing high school boundary lines and elementary school boundary adjustments were slated to start in phase two not phase one third the issue of creating racial equity is hugely important for our schools and i applaud pps's efforts and commitment to racial equity and social social justice however it remains unclear that the current plan achieves this when racial racial disparity is actually increased in other areas schools finally geography matters yesterday my twins got a letter in the in the mail from pps entitled heading to high school it says in bold letters connect with your neighborhood school most students find their best fit close to home and identifies their neighborhood school as franklin students and their families deserve an open and transparent process in reviewing school boundaries i also understand this tremendous challenges pbs faces with the growing population ensuring diversity equity and access and ensuring facilities aren't bursting at the seams but without bringing northwest northeast schools magnet schools and all the language programs into the equation there is no true rebalancing i'd like to request that from this board that the southeast coalition stick to its original mandate to open kellogg and convert harrison but that it postponed making sweeping changes to elementary and high school boundaries at this time and then to engage in that process in a more transparent manner with more robust community engagement the coalition says it wants to quote create an enrollment plan centered on student ass success at quote to do that it needs to take a more holistic view of the geographic boundaries within ps look at diverse school indices enrollment levels and population growth trajectories and most importantly it needs to invite input from all students and families not just a chosen few thank you thank you we have christina tognon my name is christina antonio t-o-g-n-o-n my preferred pronoun is she her thank you for this opportunity to speak about the proposed changes to franklin feeder schools i think the southeast i thank the southeast guiding coalition for their efforts to develop feeder patterns for kellogg middle school i am many of my neighbors recognize the situation for middle school students was poor and we want to be part of that solution up until october 27th kellogg was the articulated focus for the coalition however a significant change occurred between october 27th and 29th where the conversation expanded in scope from opening kellogg to determining which schools will feed to franklin high school the change in scope the lack of equitable process and pps's non-transparency for those affected are serious issues you're losing our trust families at glencoe and franklin have not been included even though the proposal will significantly impact them the coalition is de facto making decisions for students who are not
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at the table overall process equity and the communication regarding the impacts on high school placements have been extremely poor many comments from parents attending last night's mount tabor middle school tabor talk included words like blindsided left out duped and deceived many expressed feeling angry frustrated and confused what is the actual mandate for the proposed feeder changes for franklin both equity and overcrowding are mentioned they have asked and have not received sufficient answers about the equity goals and are not and how they are the proposal supports them franklin is a model for how we want our schools to look with a 44 diverse student population with the change it would increase to 53 percent however cleveland would see a further reduction in diversity from the meager 30 percent down to 28 madison would see an influx of white students decreasing its diversity from 65 percent down to 53 percent i would note that from the beginning the southeast guiding coalition was billed as just that a look at the south east quadrant madison is in the northeast and schools currently feeding to it and grant and to grant need to be all considered at the same time if franklin overcrowding is an issue the proposed changes have little effect on building utilization percentages going from 108 to 107 percent the health advantages of walking to school and social emotional support achieved by connecting with neighborhood students are not worth destroying to decrease density by this little while kovan maya may have delayed this process that does not justify making up time by shortchanging our ability to fully engage and understand the impacts any decisions affecting high school feeder paths must be put on hold until all stakeholders including students and families at mount tabor middle franklin and affected elementary schools are informed so they can have a say we want to understand how these changes truly provide equity and help families in need or whether they just change percentages on the pbs charts thank you for this opportunity to speak thank you eric happel eric i just want to thank you you sent out your complete testimony with all your research to us ahead of time and said that you've practiced and worked to make sure your thing is at three minutes so i thank you for um sort of your self editing and yet you're providing to the board all of the content so thank you so much for that we really do read those so you get the gold star of the night thank you uh i i try to try to do my best um my name is eric hopple that's h-a-p-p-e-l i use the pronouns to him i have three daughters in pps and they've been in here since kindergarten and my oldest one is in 11th grade i want to talk about uh the covet in the schools what and my question is what is the data telling us about the consequences of keeping schools online only and what is the data telling us about the safety of opening in-person schools the cost of online schools has become increasingly high we're losing students every single day enrollment in pps in october dropped by 1500 students some of those have gone to other schools some of them have gone to home school some of them have simply stopped education hundreds of students in ppe are getting no education and pps are getting no education at all right now they're not logging on also zoom itself is is failing for many students in a recent article 50 of salem kaiser students have at least one class that they're failing i don't know pps's numbers but i suspect that it is similar in this process we are creating a generation of lost oregon students because zoom school is unable to deliver what is needed in failing many of our students however the good news is opening school safely is possible and there is supporting data for this that is just growing in oha's data itself we have 61 open schools in oregon that have at least one coveted case considering both students and faculty on average it's less than two students per school that have in faculty that have had covid the most is six in any one school this itself shows us that we are it is possible to open schools and they are not super spreaders in another report from new york from emily oster's dashboard which has over 2 million data points of staff and students what we see from the staff and students is they actually have lower infection rates per 100 000 than the communities in which they are in other words the schools are teaching us how to be better at protecting ourselves against covid so in conclusion i just want to say and point out our online school for many is failing and there's no ifs ands or buts about that there's f's and people dropping out of school school can be open safely as evidenced in oregon
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and other places throughout the country there are hybrid models out there and we just need to figure out which one might be appropriate for us i'll just find it finalize this by saying i have a sixth grade daughter who literally saw a friend for the first time any friend she's seen nobody in six months in person this past weekend and seeing how happy that made her and thinking about how i want other kids to be able to experience that as well as the learning is so important the cost of not opening our schools is simply too high emotionally and academically thank you thank you alex mcintosh alex are you here let's see all right we'll come back to alex um give venna rain water thank you um i'm vina rainwater my last name is r-a-i-n-w-a-t-e-r i have a son at wrigler who is in first grade and i use she her pronouns um i was really excited to hear what the gentleman before me was saying and i'm proud of all of you for writing things down i was not that prepared um and basically i'm here because i want to know what the district is planning you know i think that as far as we can tell there's no end in sight certainly we have vaccines but it sounds like masks and covid are going to be a part of our lives for a while and as a parent of a first grader who is trying to do online school this is not working it's not working and we're all struggling and suffering and not together we're struggling and suffering alone and i need to hear that the district is thinking about what can happen next how can we be creative how can we find solutions where the students can participate in learning activities in person without igniting an enormous amount of risk our school has a huge exterior covered area that would be a great place for kids to sit and do reading for 20 minutes i mean i would happily take my kid to school for 20 minutes for him to interact with some teachers and some students um so i just want to see that there is some creativity and some thought that's going into what does this look like if we are not getting out of this this year obviously not if we're not getting out of this in 2021 what are we doing and i don't feel like i'm hearing anything about this i'm not hearing any plans to be creative to come up with different ways of using the buildings so let us know what you're thinking and just to be clear off the cuff testimony gets a gold star too i think this is a hard thing to do to come and speak to the board so we appreciate however that happens um i just wanted uh eric to know that we do read those um other pieces and that it's hard when you have so much to say to get it down to three minutes and we appreciate that effort so thank you thanks okay we have nate sandvik uh thanks uh i guess i'm kind of off the cuff also i'm uh nate sandvig spelled uh s-a-n-d-v-i-g um certainly appreciate the opportunity to comment to the board uh i was visiting with my friend who's former president of the sacramento board of education and i was like boy i'm glad you aren't you glad you're not on the board with just covet and the difficulty there and you know i guess no good d goes unpunished and certainly appreciate your tireless work when it comes to addressing some of the challenges of our time and i'm glad to hear uh eric and i didn't catch her name just in terms of talking about the elephant and the room so i guess maybe i'll be on clean up and just kind of echo some of the uh i mean there's certainly the the science out there and the experts but just uh coming together in terms of uh you know making some some judgment and some decisions and i'm a single dad have uh four kids uh um a four-year-old a kindergartner a second grader and a fifth grader and um yeah i just
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haven't heard anything in terms of a plan or a path forward in terms of how long it's going to take to put something together you know if we had to hit the green light tomorrow you know do we have a plan in place um you know what you know in terms of having uh what it's going to take how much money how much space you know is there some sort of task force that's identified the needs and the resources um you know certainly i feel like there's a lot of parents you know certainly on both sides of the issue with i'm not putting my kids in school unless it's safe but just you know what is that plan um and certainly on my my side you know definitely advocating getting um kids back in the classroom and you know on a personal note you know i been about a billion dollars in iraq and you know so it's i don't think money is really an issue it's just kind of a matter of priorities with getting uh getting our kids uh in the in the classroom and you read a lot of these articles um you know friends and family you know they're back in classrooms and other states you know it's happening uh it seems like in other countries and um you know we can certainly put a man on the moon i feel like that uh it would be really nice to get our kids back into the classroom uh instead of uh you know it seems like the only thing that are that's open are bars and restaurants which should be a you know maybe a terrible classroom but um you know looking to the the board and others in terms of uh you know leadership as a parent advocating getting kids back into the classroom you know what it's going to take you know there's certainly a lot of support you know again just kind of really interested in what this plan is and how how we can get kids back in the classroom so um you know it's not uh not an easy job but uh i you know look forward to uh hearing uh you know how this is gonna happen given it doesn't seem like it's ending anytime soon thanks thank you um that was everybody we have we want to go back to alex alexa did you make it looking at the list here if alex is here we ask you to wave at us just in case we're missing you and i think the iphone is chairs director constant correct no do we know who the iphone is that's here if that might be alex i think that might have been the person who testified so to last yeah okay sorry trying to figure out where we all are thank you andrew okay i really appreciate everyone's coming and speaking i know that we spent quite a bit of time last meeting talking about where we are with comprehensive distance learning and um russ brown did a really great job of talking about how once we hit the metrics that would allow us to reopen there's a time of transition nate i think you asked about that if we got the green light would we be allowed to to turn around and reopen the next day um so if you go back and maybe watch some of his presentation if you haven't already seen that that might answer some of those those questions but i so appreciate everyone coming and i know the southeast guiding coalition there's a big conversation there about the boundaries and i know that people are working really hard to try to think globally about as students raised climate change and carbon footprint and all of that as we do this work so thank you for bringing your voices and all of your expertise and views into this this board meeting tonight um our board office will follow up with folks as needed and if you have any further questions you can always email us or send any materials you have to that email address publiccomment pps.net and again thank you all for taking the time for your comments this evening um nathaniel are you we're going to move on now to our student rep report but nathaniel you said you didn't have a report for tonight is that correct yes um i will assume my reports at the next meeting thank you for letting me know that um superintendent would you like to share your report with us tonight i would thank you chair lowry and i promise i will be listening but i'm also going to be munching on a salad so i'm going to turn my camera off so you all don't see the lettuce in my teeth um good evening directors and buenas tardis to everyone joining us uh this evening um so i'll i'll begin with a mention of the four-week covid freeze in our case which begins uh tomorrow in multnomah county
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uh to quote the governor's governor brown's press release she stated these risk reduction measures are critical in limiting the spread of covet 19 reducing the risk in communities more vulnerable to serious illness and death and helping conserve hospital capacity so that all oregonians can continue to have access to quality care serious statement for truly challenging times and really underlines us being vigilant about uh measures and steps we can take so while the guidance being provided by the state and county at this time do not include specific school-related guidance or additional instructions the need for statewide action and its intended goal of improving or decreasing infection rates and metrics are closely connected to ultimately our ability to to reopen classrooms to students i can assure you there's some nice pictures of our students in a slide presentation so again i ask our community to stay vigilant wear masks wash your hands frequently keep socially distant follow public health guidelines uh doing this is not always easy particularly as we approach the holidays but it's absolutely essential to change the trajectory and stop the spread of the virus uh that's my psa we will continue to rely on our health advisory team local and county health authorities and guidance from the oregon department of ed i'd really appreciate continuing to hear families perspectives on the challenges we're all facing i can assure you that staff every day is being diligent intentional about considering all available information in developing modeling [Music] any plans or next steps and we're in common company in confronting these questions which our ongoing conversations with fellow districts in the state and across the country are all challenged with trying to respond to so i encourage people please stay informed with the information posted on our district website i know that we're making it a point to regularly update directors here uh at our board meeting and it's a it's a if nothing else a continually evolving uh reality uh in which we're trying to operate and still maintain some level of learning uh and engagement with our students on a little different topic um as we find ourselves needing to engage our students in in different ways during this pandemic uh our community partners uh have never been so important yesterday we gathered with many of our community partners as well as school principals for what are regular quarterly convenings especially moving forward my hope is that in these meetings we continue to have a table for thought partnership and collaboration where we surface some of the best practices and common challenges and how even at this time we can deepen our relationships particularly with our black indigenous and students of color we put a great deal of work the last several months into redesigning the rfp process for instance my thanks to our resj partners who navigated that process with us the results and i think you saw these on many of our consent agendas include a number of things that i think are important to acknowledge and celebrate um pps now partners with 16 culturally specific and multiracial organizations who are implementing our five resj strategies which include culturally specific family engagement wrap-around services mentoring leadership development enrichment and extended learning as well as positive cultural identity development and advocacy pps now invests nearly nine million dollars that's a 60 increase from the previous year in our resj partnerships pps now supports partnerships in over 36 schools with a focus on our csi tsi and title schools we've also expanded our to our cbo and charter schools with an expressed focus on resj cairo's many nations academy and rosemary anderson for instance all of our partners have met with our senior advisor on resj danny ledesma school principals cheat our chief of schools our regional superintendents as well as our chief of systems performance to review contracts
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the scope of their work and expectations and deliverables and i've said it before this is not work uh we can do alone our culturally specific partners uh by implementing and placing a focus on these strategies are going to be essential to us realizing our theory of action and our ability to fully serve bypoc students and families particularly in meeting their specific needs building their trust and their engagement uh and ultimately supporting our students reaching their full potential so i just want to say thank you to our community partners for taking that time to to be with us and to our district and school leaders for for coming together next slide i had the great privilege this past week to address the california association of black school educators at their fourth annual conference one of the largest in the country this year's theme was a blueprint for education equity it was an honor to talk to hundreds of black educators including many former colleagues i was really pleased to see that so many of our pps administrators took up my invitation to attend and participate in the conference i heard much positive feedback about how much they enjoyed the workshop sessions and discussions focused on better supporting black student success specifically i shared with cabsie members a bit of the context here the last few months in portland uh given that it's been in the national news a bit oftentimes this becomes an incomplete perception so i also talked about the incredible promise of our students of color and shared the pride about our community developed vision our theory of action uh and how it places a specific commitment to our black and native students i shared our excitement about the recently passed school bond and uh all that it will mean to our students in particular the impact we believe the center for black student excellence will have so my thanks to cabsie for the opportunity to share a little bit about our our portland story at their annual conference and for welcoming oregon neighbors to the wonderful conference a little more and related to this evening's earlier resolution on this next slide later this evening we're going to move into a board study session on the district's ethnic studies and tribal history curriculum presented by leaders and members of our humanities team from curriculum and instruction uh it's particularly appropriate timing given directors commented on this earlier especially this month uh as national native american indian heritage month so i know our directors enjoy these study sessions and especially for getting a chance to learn about the lessons that our students get to experience and then lastly coming up on the regular agenda also directors will consider a resolution to approve our student investment account grant agreement sie funds are critical to improving our ability to carry out our mission in fact sia funding has made possible much of the work that we'll be discussing in our study session later including a great deal of curriculum development and professional learning for k-12 ethnic studies and social sciences so it's my hope and i know that our directors believe this too that the sia our desire is to see it fully funded for the coming school year as was pledged to school districts uh so that we can fully implement the rather comprehensive investment package of strategies we developed last year with our community and our educators to further support our students our educators and and our school communities so thank you directors in case i don't get a chance to i i want to wish you and all of our pps staff and families a safe and happy thanksgiving and that concludes my remarks thank you thank you superintendent we turn now to more reports from the work of the board um as i shared with my colleagues last week we're going to go alphabetical order by committee and just ask you to share any updates you have on your um committee work um as chair and then at the end of that i'll offer a section for other any other work that we might uh need to bring before one another at this time um so do we have anything from the audit committee tonight no report all right no sorry julia how about from the bond committee um i don't have anything um other than um from last week we have an upcoming meeting december 10th but nothing new to report thank you cbrc we had the first meeting of the year last thursday
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we have a number of new members uh so this was a general orientation um to how we're going to proceed for the rest of the year and i hear we have a student as a co-vice chair is that correct yes yes daniel's clapping that's kind of an exciting moment there so yeah looking forward to a productive year it's a good group all right our charter and alternative programs committee yes we had our first meeting of the school year and on the charter side we have two full renewals this year which is a pretty detailed process that's arthur academy and the opal school we also discussed that the district is just putting out a request for proposals for our community-based alternative programs um so we expect to see um our existing providers um hopefully we apply to continue those same services for students um but it's also a time where we may need may see some new players um in the in the landscape and the district has um put a particular note out saying that um we are looking for those who have creative ideas about serving alternative ways to serve some of our middle school students because we've lost a couple of providers who had middle school programming and the number of slots that we have there for kids in that age are very few so we'll see what comes forward with that and we talked about how and whether our student investment account dollars are serving students in our alternative programs and as well as our um federal pandemic relief funds through esser there are some glitches around the esser funds and that they um are not reaching our charter school so there's some some ways that we're going to work on these issues in terms of advocacy but these uh student investment account funds and the services that the stu that the superintendent was just referring to and our community-based organizations do serve our kids in our alternative schools um and i think that's about it but we did you know part of what we do discuss is what are the needs of the population of students that tend to gravitate toward our alternative programs and in this unique moment of distance learning um just generally speaking are they being met and do we need to make any changes to make sure that they're being met and to really focus in on maybe the particular challenges that they might be experiencing and one of the things that one of the leaders of one of our community-based alternative programs raised is just the extraordinary degree of community uh violence that we've seen and gun violence that we've seen and how it's really affected some of these school populations and that was joe mcferrin from from rosemary anderson and they've had some some really tragic losses in their community of students and families so these are our kids these are our families and it's an important conversation for us to have to think about um given the circumstances of the time and in all the different ways that are that are unique and bizarre um what are we doing to serve our kids and do we need to do anything differently so that's an ongoing conversation that we'll have thank you all right intergovernmental nothing to report except an upcoming meeting on december 3rd all right uh policy uh we had a policy committee meeting yesterday um we talked about a number of uh policies um we are continuing pretty extensive conversation uh to revise the uh formal complaint policy um and uh we're going to be we had a number of comments that um staff are going to take back in and work on another iteration um we we had a uh some conceptual conversations about a couple of policies uh one the uh a new policy that would be responsive to legislation um and the policy is tentatively titled
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anti-racist learning communities um and then uh the second conceptual conversation we had was about a possible policy around um the district indemnifying employees um for any possible um legal proceedings that they may end up being involved in um uh so both of those are going to be coming back to us at some point um i i believe the anti-racist learning communities will be coming back to us fairly soon um and the next policy committee meeting is scheduled for december 7th any update on the project on the what the rose quarter project that was for julian um no nothing additional from last report all right um anything from the southeast guiding coalition oh well the last meeting on thursday a week ago um was interesting uh let me say that um uh so prior to the meeting um the the direction uh of work was to prepare for an open house that's gonna happen this coming thursday virtual open house i think committee members have been under the impression that at least two different scenarios were going to be offered for public comment not as end all be all proposals but as works in progress that illustrated would illustrate different ways of meeting the guidelines that the board set out for the committee staff decided to limit that to one option and i think that took a lot of people by surprise and a number of folks were not happy with that decision uh regardless of the reasons for that um i guess i would say if the rationale was not explained well or satisfactorily regardless there will be an open house for people to look at one potential scenario and the committee will continue to work to get us feeder patterns uh for two middle schools kellogg and presumably harrison park as well as the dual language immersion programs to be located at those middle schools some of what you heard in terms of public testimony tonight and in letters that board members and staff have received uh have to do with the it's really challenging to do this work um one piece at a time when we're in a system where everything is connected to everything else so there was a lot of concern about for example boundaries being decided in this first phase that will not happen it is inevitable though as the committee and the the scenarios they've generated i don't know at least a dozen scenarios um and that's mostly the work of the parents and community members on the committee it's inevitable that when you generate a scenario to try to look at just those feeder patterns that boundaries come up as a topic of discussion um and because everything's connected um even though those won't be decided right right now so uh that's part of what we're hearing from the community and feeling like wow nobody told us this was happening that's true but those boundary decisions won't be made until spring when there will be more school communities included and discussed in the discussion um but it is inevitable that it you know if you're talking about changing from a k8 to a k5 it's going to change a boundary and it's pretty natural for people doing the work and getting in the weeds with the numbers to look at those implications going forward
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uh this is a complex task um so i'll leave it at that i will go ahead dr bailey i just want to clarify you know we heard tonight from like a glenn co-parent so while glencoe maybe has been discussed those boundaries won't be officially changed right now there'll be a further process to have more conversation with the glenn cook community in the spring right so the phase one the decisions being made forwarded to us are uh which k-5s will feed kellogg and harrison harrison park i mean that's it's not official decision that will be in middle school but it is really the only uh viable option as well as which dual language immersion programs will be located at those schools which of course has backward implications for which k-5s have which immersion programs and that's that's the challenge of trying to do a limited set of decisions when everything's connected to everything else um so i i do appreciate the public comments and uh i will reply to all of you and um you know feel free to continue the conversation with me uh but i did want to make that clarification director bailey i'm wondering if there's because um i'm hearing from a lot of uh people in the community just being nice at a heart of southeast and watching the southeast um guiding coalitions meetings there doesn't seem to be that clear delineation of this is in scope or out of scope or this is going to be this spring or not the spring and so for example um there's been a lot of discussions of here's a preferred scenario and it has like glencoe listed and of course people from glencoe is like hey we don't even have anybody on the guiding coalition how come you're talking about our school so it seems like being really clear about what's in scope and knowing that there are this interconnectedness what's in scope and out of scope for this first set of decisions i think will be helpful to the community because um right now people are feeling like hey stuff's happening we weren't at the table and we don't know what's what's going on and the school district never told us anything and it seems like this is more clarity of this is the specific task and we know it's connected to a lot of other things it's going to come later but if you just watch the meetings that's not necessarily clearly delineated yeah and and uh i'd agree with that i think that's good feedback for staff um again uh you you've been sitting in i've been sitting in director moore has been sitting in as observers um staff staff are guiding uh the process um we're certainly talking with staff and giving feedback but um that's in terms of the board's role and staffs were all staff's role to run the process uh yeah so um yeah and that's uh and again when you're you start with a scenario and you tell people to you know think creatively um then you know the discussion of whether matt tabor should change from feeding franklin to feeding madison pops up and then which schools would feed into mount tabor if there were changes along those lines come up because people are thinking creatively and trying to to look at the whole the whole picture um and i'm sure that took some people by surprise and it's only come up in the last i believe the last two meetings um that that was a topic of discussion um and that's just um one one it's a good sign that uh we have this committee and people are taking their charge seriously and really trying to look at problems creatively uh our solutions creatively and on the other hand again communication in the time communication on this issue is difficult anyway but in the time of covet it's tremendously so if you you know maybe many parents know that this is happening probably some don't or they saw it and it you know wasn't top of mind when the notice came through um that's just always been the nature of communication around school issues in you know my 20 years of activism and then all of a sudden something comes up and it feels like wow where did this come from
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and if you weren't like engaged in going to youtube and watching the meetings you wouldn't have seen this progression of the discussion as it went along um right it'd be like hey that's kellogg i'm not anywhere near that exactly um check i don't need to i don't need to engage because it's like not having an impact so i think being more deliberate in how we communicate if there are larger impacts um so i'm i'll probably write something up a little more detail for board members to kind of add some context to this as well but i do urge people to attend the open house board members as as observers and uh everybody out there and the public uh to go and take a look and of course it's pretty natural to come to these things through your own lens the lens of your family and your children i hope along with that we take the bigger picture look of [Music] trying to increase equity and equitable programming in this transition going forward because this will at the end of the day we will be addressing and clearing up a lot of historic inequities i'll stop there because we got more to do right all right yes any other committee or conference reports that need to be shared by our board members uh just one more i sat in on a meeting around uh the design process for benson um and the the mpg uh things things are rolling right or long there's uh inevitably there's been some changes i don't know uh julia i know you were kind of um you looked preoccupied when the meeting was going on because i know you have a lot going on in all your other responsibilities but there's been a little bit of a change in uh not the buildings so much as where programs are located in the mpg there's discussion going on there and with benson the latest challenge and we had a good discussion uh was on the location of elevators and again we're dealing with a building that wasn't built with accessibility in mind and is has very little accessibility right now um and how to locate elevators in kind of a you know a cramped an existing building shell in a sense and increase accessibility through the building and staff certainly has a plan that meets the code with one exception of two classrooms that would not be accessible but we discussed doing more than meeting code and really stepping closer to our vision of being increased accessibility because the current plan would would be quite a work around in some cases for uh if students run crutches or in wheelchair from getting a to b would be quite a bit longer walk in some cases so staff is going to take a look at some other other ways of doing it it's a big challenge and might end up costing more substantially more to do that but i i can on the creativity of osm and our partners in that work all right any further committee or conference reports all right now some of you may have a little bit of a sense of deja vu because you might think that we already approved the student investment account and uh we did on october 20th this board reviewed and approved the sia grant agreement consistent with the guidance issued by ode at that time on november 6th ode issued additional guidance on the approval process and although we allowed for public comment on the october 20th consent agenda the clarifying guidance now requires that the grant agreement be approved as a standalone item and due to this updated information we will have the sia grant agreement as a separate agenda item with another opportunity for public comment in order to be in full
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compliance with the statutory requirements as issued on november 6th the agreement that was previously approved by this board on november sorry on october 20th is unchanged superintendent guerrero would you like to present this agenda item you're right chair lowry it can seem a little bit like deja vu but we want to make sure we're by the book here and we don't get called out on any technicalities so you're going to get another opportunity to hear from deputy superintendent hertz and we also have with us this evening leslie odell who we save for only special occasions this being one of them we like to keep her really focused on matters at hand so you have the two of them next good evening it is a great occasion to receive additional funding from our state legislature in support of our strategic plan that we're in the process of finalizing at portland public schools and we have already invested in many items this um for the 2021 year so we are appreciative of having that opportunity to support our students with counselors and classroom teachers and social workers and many [Music] investments along the way so with that you have had a full presentation we've had a full community engagement process throughout the past year and we just really are coming back to um dot the eye and cross the t to make it a regular agenda item rather than a consent agenda item so we bring that to you for your approval come on leslie you're not going to leave us hanging you must have something you can add yes i do um we are still looking for what the reporting um specifics are and we hope to have those very soon ode is working diligently and they've been um incredibly responsive in this time whenever we have questions or concerns um or uh want to know what the timelines are so uh we look forward to sharing the details on those that reporting with you soon and um with that again we're just very excited for the opportunity and um how uh under our superintendent's leadership all of this is working towards achieving our strategic plan all right thank you deputy superintendent hertz and director odell um do i have a motion on second to adopt resolution 6208 resolution to approve the student investment account grant agreement second okay i didn't that two did that was that uh i think was that director deposit that moved it i think it was depos and brim edwards but but i'll take it okay so we'll say uh depos moved and uh constant seconded um the adoption of resolution 6208 is there any board discussion on this item just as a reminder um deputy superintendent hertz um what's the additional resources that we're receiving as a district leslie o'dell i didn't i didn't open that all up from this evening i believe it's 12 million if i got that right in the latest version [Music] yes it is um and um it's uh the the exact amount i'll look up but it's a little over 12 million dollars that's invested um most uh certainly for specifically for support in mental health services given the specifics of what's going on currently as well as some additional supports for reading and math support at rcs high schools and then just as a further note the reason why we increased the amount in this s sia is because the legislature made a decision instead to put more money more the student success act money into the uh state school funds funding amount we did um we did keep a lot of our investments and did use um general fund dollars
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to support the strategic plan where we saw reductions in the sia grant funding we did see an increase in general fund funding but we were able to continue many of our investments that we had prioritized in our adopted budget process great thank you any other discussion all right i'm going to go ahead and ask if there's any public comment on this item no there's not all right the board will now vote on resolution 6208 resolution to approve the student investment account grant agreement all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6208 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative shu voting yes thank you nathaniel all right i'm going to take a look here at our meeting time it looks like we have two more items before we um head into our study session will it be okay to take a break after those items or do you all want a break now after after after is good thank you well we will move on um superintendent grow would you like to introduce this next item i'm assuming you're talking about continuing on with the gen the conversation about the geo bonds yes the next item is the general obligation bonds and related matters sorry double checking uh because i know we also have some some guests for that item as well so which i think deputy superintendent uh claire hertz will will help to understand uh to introduce and i think you know some of these characters already claire yes happy to bring before you a resolution to authorize the sale for 20 the 2020 bond program um on on november 3rd our community approved 1.2 billion dollars for about on a ballot measure to issue general obligation bonds um tonight we have with us our bond council uh golden euro of hawkins dell foot field and wood and financial advisor carol samuels of piper sandler and together with the finance and school monetization leadership team we have created an initial plan for issuing the bonds in three sales over six years based on our initial budget for the projects and um cash flow projections so tonight um i am going to ask both carol samuels and golden year to speak to the board we're going to start with carol samuels and roseanne is going to bring up um pdf report on the levy rate analysis and the plan for our sale and so with that i would like to turn it over to carol samuels as roseanne is bringing up if we can start on the beginning slide thank you go ahead kerry well good evening everybody i love being referred to as a character um so do i have control of this presentation or do i need to say you're ready to go okay i am ready so before i get started let me just again say congratulations to all of you about not just getting the largest bond issue in oregon history approved but by a eye-popping rate of approval at 75 it's just gives me faith in my community um as claire mentioned we are putting a bond issue together and we're putting it together fairly quickly largely because of what this table shows in the uh overall graph what you're seeing is historical
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interest rates all the way back to 1996. if you look in the upper right you can see the one-year inset and the inescapable conclusion is that interest rates are at super super low levels in fact the last time you sold bonds was in april and you can see if you squint at that small graph um that in april rates which we thought of as all-time lows were higher than they are today so our plan at this moment is to put the bond issue together with a goal of selling the bonds in mid-december and we will see whether or not the market continues to be strong one of the best things about having sold bonds so recently is putting it together is not that much additional labor although clara and her staff might disagree with that assessment in any case if you could move forward to the next slide so this is probably too small to read but what you see here is a table of the different measurements of property values that affect taxation for portland public school residents the first column shows the real market value after this was finalized we did get 2021 values for at least multnomah county we're still waiting on washington county and that has increased by a fairly robust 4.1 and in the far right column you can see the assessed value as i'm sure you all know it is the assessed value that determines the tax rate and that too is growing robustly and higher rates than what we had been projecting previously which is partially by design we like to be conservative but it's nice to see that level of growth even in the middle of the pandemic slide and i should mention i don't mean this to be a lecturer if folks have questions as i go forward don't hesitate to interrupt me so the top table here shows the district's outstanding debt at approximately 830 million dollars it consists of multiple series sold under the two prior authorization the first was november 2012. the last series of that was sold in 2017 and then in may of 2017 was the approval for the last bond measure for 790 million dollars we sold the last portion of that in april the table at the bottom shows your legal debt capacity and even though it may feel like you have a lot of debt by state standards you actually have issued very little of your capacity your capacity is about 11 billion dollars and you've issued um actually yes 11 billion dollars you've issued about 830 million of it so about eight percent of that next slide this is a graph of your existing levy rates as well as a projection of what the levy rates will be in subsequent years assuming no additional debt is issued so the dark blue is historic and you can see starting in 2018 is hovering around that two dollars and fifty cents again the assessed value of the district has grown at a faster clip than what we had assumed and that causes the levy rate associated with the bonds to be somewhat below 2.50 the lighter blue with the orange and light blue and yellow just breaks out the different series of bonds
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and by design we arranged the last set of debt issues to have a drop in 2022 so that you could layer a new bond issue on top next slide so as claire mentioned of the billion to that voters approved we have devised a strategy that is pretty flexible except for the first bond issue of breaking the sale into three separate series we believe at this point this gives you the most flexibility to deal with unforeseen circumstances both in construction timelines as well as tax rates etc the first issue is going to be approximately 365 million as i mentioned previously we are looking at selling those bonds in december assuming the market is helpful and the term is going to be about 25 years by design if you look at the third column in from the left you can see that we have layered new bonds on top to once again bring the levy rate back to 250 and each subsequent issue has a drop allowing us to layer on top that additional bond issue for the grand total of a billion to and change with two dollars and fifty cents for the first four years and then a drop thereafter to allow for the next bond authorization and if those are way too small and too many numbers to digest if you go to the next slide you can see that translated into a picture again to orient you the dark blue are actual labyrinths the gray takes your existing debt and color codes it in one color and then the various shades of blue is the new authorization building again that staircase so that starting in november of 24 you could go back on the ballot and ask for the next increment next slide actually i think that's it i just want to give the board an opportunity to ask questions before we have our bond counsel golden year present the resolution thanks carol this is director constance how are you i'm good thanks how are you um could you please um explain how you arrived at the um amount for this first tranche it's significantly more than the second tranche when we would actually be paying construction bills as opposed to design development so just explain a little bit how you arrived at those figures other than trying to optimize these great rates well director constant by legal standards and gologan can talk more about this you actually could issue substantially more right now roughly around 600 million would be legal under federal tax law standards however our feeling was that that locked you in much too significantly to managing your construction timing based upon a very significant bond issue and that 400 or so million was significant enough and that breaking it into multiple pieces gave you much more flexibility to deal with unforeseen contingencies and what do you mean exactly locked you into a construction time frame because is there amount of time in which you actually have to spend it yeah so uh director constant hi i'm goolgen i'm bond counsel to the district and under the federal tax law districts all local governments are permitted to borrow on a tax-exempt basis which allows you to get the best interest rate for your voters but there are a number of rules that come with that designation and one of
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them is that the district the borrower needs to reasonably expect to spend a certain percentage of proceeds within three years got it makes sense thank you very much um just to clarify director constance question though i just want to make sure i'm following because you said that the first tranche was larger than the second tranche but but we're looking at a 364 million dollar sale followed by a 540 million dollar sale followed by a roughly 300 million dollar sale is that right that's correct okay my mistake andrew okay i just want to make sure i was not looking at the wrong at the wrong numbers um i have a few questions but they might be more along the resolution so i'm happy to wait for the remainder of the presentation if that makes sense let's go ahead galvan sure so um you know the resolution directors as you can tell is relatively straightforward you've done the vast majority of the hard work in terms of getting this in front of the voters in past and this is really a short resolution which permits staff to do all of the administrative things that need to be done in order to sell the bonds so as you can see the majority of the resolution is these num these letter paragraphs a through l and these are all the various steps that need to be taken between now and the time the districts get gets money from the bond investors and i'm happy to take specific questions so i'm going to ask the question that uh a lay person would ask since um we just spent um several months talking to our community about it um so if you were to sum all this up um it essentially allows us um it's the first step in the issuance of the 1.2 billion dollars in bond that will leave the tax rate um essentially the same for a property owner that's right so the um this resolution it authorizes to have to take the administrative steps but staff is absolutely bound by what's in the ballot title so only the projects that are described in the ballot title are the ones that are permitted to be financed so this isn't any sort of change it's just implementing what we already told the voters we are going to to do and the tax rates staying the same ultimately we have the same amount of bonds that we're going to issue this is just the first wave that that is absolutely correct because you've been conservative and how you've projected uh assessment values um [Music] and given what's happened in the in the property market um it's likely or there's a fair chance that we'd end up slightly under that 2.50 value going forward yeah uh director bailey good evening nice to see you um we have been assuming a blanket three percent growth rate so to the extent assessed values grow above three percent and then the levy would be below two dollars and fifty cents are you were you suggesting that we borrow another nine billion because uh you know interest rates are left now i do enjoy spending time with you so sure um claire oh i'm sorry scott go ahead yeah and just uh just to follow up for future meetings uh looking ahead and looking at what kind of a bond we could uh look forward to in 2024 in in terms of how much is is left uh how many years um kind of thing um you know we we've got two more high schools that we'll be planning to do plus potential work at roosevelt as well for a future bond as well as a whole castle of k-5s and middle schools that are in desperate need of being modernized so it'd be it'd be great to kind of have that vision of what that next step would would broadly look like in terms of how many buildings we can take on going forward so that work is being done by our your office of school modernization team and that we will be bringing forward more information about a long-term facility plan an update to that so that will be coming soon thank you
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so claire would it also be uh accurate to draw a line between um this decision to sell these bonds at this time and the work that we silently concluded at the beginning of the meeting on our cash management policy allowing us more flexibility because we're going to have to park this somewhere for lack of a better term so earlier this evening on the consent agenda we did ask you to continue the waiver in percentage basically for us to hold in money market accounts and in banks and we've added a couple of additional banks we all of our banks are approved or through the state of oregon treasury office so we have a limited list of banks that we're allowed to use but we are adding more because there is the timing of the year this is when we receive all of our property tax collections all in a month for the whole year at the same time we're um selling bonds so we can um start the 2020 bond program so we did it it is a the two consent agenda items and this action item to authorize the sale of bonds definitely are part of a whole plan to to manage the bond proceeds thank you so um if i can if i can jump in um just a couple of questions one so the um the bond the resolution um allows the district allows the cfo to engage in either competitive sale or a negotiated sale um has pps ever done a negotiated sale for our bonds carol i know that better than i would yeah certainly not in recent memory uh not since the 2012 authorization was approved okay i and i'm i'm you know i'm i'm comfortable with that in terms of making sure we're getting the best deal what i would just ask not to change the resolution but if if in fact we were thinking about a negotiated sale i i would be interested in just the board being notified about that i'm not telling you anything you don't know but i mean gfoa criteria around negotiated sales generally something we would not fall into because again we have very good credit it's very straightforward it's full faith and credit and um something that we we go back relatively routinely so i would assume we're headed towards a competitive sale but um um if that changes it would it would be great just as a information point to know go ahead so i was going to say director just as a point of information we like to include the option for negotiated sale just to have maximum flexibility if something happens like a catas you know catastrophe where there's no access to the markets or the market sees up right no and that makes total sense to me which is why i'm comfortable with the resolution it's just more of a knowing if something along those lines just being informed about that and then this next set of questions i want to get into a little bit of the premium bond issue and i think this is important because there's been some media coverage around this that in my view was was a little misleading and sensationalist and so i think it's important as we are in a public meeting and talking about this to be really clear about about what we're doing uh and very intentional about what we're doing so um this resolution does um delegate the authority um you know to our chief financial officer to or to you um um deputy superintendent hurts to you know um go out to the market and and really sort of get the best deal possible and and one of those deals might be a premium bond particularly in a low interest rate environment like we're in um we have seen uh um you know uh higher premiums than we necessarily would expect and and i want to be you know really clear um you know again i'm not telling you anything you don't know but you know what a premium bond does is it it doesn't increase the principle that we're borrowing but it does add a premium on to it and generally when you're being offered that premium by wall street you are paying a slightly higher interest rate the alternative is to not get a premium bond and have a lower interest rate and i just want to be really clear about the fact that we as a board could make the policy choice to prohibit the district from buying premium bonds we could say you know we don't want to do premium bonds we just want to do a straight straight up on sale um and not engage in that the result of that would be potentially a lower interest rate than we would otherwise get however we would also lose out on that premium we as a board through this resolution are not choosing to do that and one of the implications in the in the media coverage that that frustrated me was it sort of implied that there was something hidden or nefarious about this this tool and this policy and i just want to be really clear publicly um this is all very transparent it's very above board and and we as a board through this resolution are deciding um to in fact um get the best deal possible for the district that might be a lower interest rate or it might be a premium bond with a slightly higher
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straight i think the most important thing we talked about it already in this meeting is that we have committed to the voters to keep that tax rate at two dollars and fifty cents um you know or below um and that that that really is a policy direction it's not a legal direction as a result of our bond approval but it is a policy direction that we as a district have adopted and that this plan adheres to and i think that that to be really clear um is is one of the most important things and frankly one of the things that i think our taxpayers um really care about which is that we went out and said you know we estimate this won't you know increase your tax rate above 250. if we are able in this low interest rate environment to keep that tax rate where it is and get a premium on top of it which will allow more flexibility and potentially more projects i think that's actually a really really good thing um and again it is definitely a policy decision and i just want to make that really clear that what we're doing tonight is is authorizing that possibility something a possibility that i am not only comfortable with i think is actually the right decision for us as a district to make did i get all of that right deputy superintendent hertz or carol yes he did thank you i appreciate that director scott because it makes the makes it all pretty easy to understand and in fact we have benefited greatly on our 2012 bond with the uh premiums that we did reap from that that we were able to uh invest back into modernizing our schools right benefited greatly and without increasing the tax rate above what we told the voters we would be so if i may all right i was gonna just ask carol if there's any further discussion uh before we move on to vote at this time i i first of all i appreciate director scott bringing this up because it does give us guidance that's very helpful if i'm going to engage in technical nerdiness effectively what a premium would do is give you additional proceeds at a higher interest rate that's correct but what you wouldn't want to do is tell the market that you refuse to accept the higher interest rate because particularly in a competitive environment that's what they are going to bid so your choice is not mandating that they have to give you a lower interest rate because that would effectively increase your cost because you're asking for something that's not standard in the market but rather reducing the size that you are selling so it ends up in the same place where the levy rate is the focus and the amount you get can be used for projects but since we are in a public meeting i just wanted to clarify that point i appreciate that thanks all right are we ready to bring this motion before us do i have a motion and second to adopt resolution 6209 resolution authorizing the sale of general obligation bonds and related matters so moved seven all right so director scott moves and director constance seconds the adoption of resolution resolution 6209 is there any further board discussion right miss bradshaw is there any public comment no all right the board will now vote on resolution 6209 resolution authorizing the sale of obligation bonds and related matters all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6209 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative xu voting yes all right thank you nathaniel and thank you um to carol and to golden and uh to deputy superintendent hurts for uh answering our questions and bringing that presentation for us well and thank you it's an exciting time to bring this to our community and i uh this is not my wheelhouse so i very much appreciate director scott um clarifying and asking those questions in a way that helped me further understand as well um i'm always thankful for uh there was wisdom and expertise of my board colleagues all right chair i was gonna say the same thing uh this represents a really important moment for
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our directors and continuing to follow through on a very recent election that just occurred so i just want to make sure that we're recognizing that occasion as you're doing uh and so appreciate having the council of the esteemed carol samuels and golden here with us to keep us informed and on track thank you yes thank you very much thanks everyone congratulations all right good night everyone it's good night for you but we still have another i know say good luck thank you for sticking around we're going to get to play with some uh social studies curriculum after this so that's exciting all right well as we appreciate the the wisdom and insight of our own board we also appreciate the wisdom and insight that we get from the oregon school boards association or as we commonly refer to it osba this is uh organized uh as one general state association with up to 23 regionally elected representatives established across 14 geographic regions to support school boards in even-numbered years member boards vote to elect regional representatives for odd-numbered positions and we talked about this a little last week when we had michael sunlightner with us and also when katrina dardy was with us in october um so tonight we are going to be voting on candidates for position 17 and position 19 of the oregon school boards association board the board will now vote on those positions board members were provided the nomination form and resumes of all three candidates and we heard from the two candidates in the contested election for position number 17. do i have a motion for either katrina doherty from mesd or michael sonleitner from portland community college i'd like to move um to elect katrina doherty for the position okay i'll second that okay so director depos has moved and uh dr bailey has seconded emotion uh in favor of katrina doughty is there any discussion on this uh motion this resolution this motion i just i wanted to um explain my rationale and we had two very qualified candidates that have diverse experience from one another i wanted to move forward katrina doherty's name because she's a youthful voice she's a woman and she's got public health experience i think will be very valuable and i think that she's the type of leader i'd like to see on the osba she also brings a really strong equity lens to the work and i i of course i i value that in in her youthful way of pushing things forward um i think will be really valuable yeah i think one of the great advantages katrina brings is um just getting to know her her perspective and um because she's um a younger age than i am she sees things in a different way and that's been really refreshing and i feel like i've learned a lot from her just being with her at osga conferences and in other places any other discussion on this motion yes if i may um so i i have to say i i've been struggling with this um decision because um i i can make strong arguments for both of these candidates um i i think um they they represent uh kind of system partners to school districts on the one hand mesd on the other hand pcc and um i think those are both um kind of institutional partners that that we could benefit whose presence on the osba board i think would be beneficial um and um i think in particular the the absence of representation from community colleges on the osba board is um it's somewhat problematic as far as i know there's been at best only spotty representation over many years i think um and and it's a voice that we really need to um pay more attention to we we've we've got to come up with ways that um where there's more integration
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from preschool through um college um that being said um it's if you know i mean both of the people i think were they made sort of compelling arguments um and having having a younger voice on the osba board would also be a useful addition to the conversation i think um and katrina did yeoman's work on um the preschool for all ballot mission um so it's been a it's been a difficult decision for me um i wish we had i wish we could have both of them on um but i think on balance i would i would support um katrina dowdy's candidacy all right any further discussion here all right all in favor of the motion to elect katrina doty please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes sorry all opposed please indicate by saying no all right the motion passes seven to zero with student representative shu voting yes all right um we move on now to sonia mckenzie from park rose who is running unopposed for position 19 and i've gotten to know sonia a little bit again through some of the osba work and she is just phenomenal um and so i'm really excited that she's willing to serve again all uh all in favor of sonia please indicate by saying yes yes yes do we need a motion you know it's not in my script but do we liz liz is nodding her head yes okay you took one on the last position you should take one on this one okay it's unopposed it's funny i move for us to support sonia groves okay so parker bailey moves that we um support sonia mckenzie do i have a second second okay was that director yeah yep okay uh all in favor of sonia mckenzie please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no the motion passes seven to zero with student representative shu voting yes all right so can i just say had we had an opportunity to speak to this i would have said i i it's a very enthusiastic yes for me sonia's done some great work in a very short time um she's a a hugely influential presence in osba um and i'm i'm grateful that she's there and willing to do this so rita do you still serve on the legislative and policy committee for osba i do all right and next week we will be looking at the legislative priorities not next week in two weeks at our next board meeting we will be looking at the osba legislative priorities and passing those um so be looking forward to some more osba action on the agenda all right is there anything any other business we need to deal with before we adjourn this meeting take a break and head over to our study session all right well then the next board meeting will be held december 1st and this meeting is adjourned and we'll now move into our board study session let's take a ten minute break so um maybe actually let's yeah let's take a ten minute break and get back about 8 17. um does that sound good to folks


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