2020-11-19 PPS School Board Special Meeting

From SunshinePPS Wiki
District Portland Public Schools
Date 2020-11-19
Time 17:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type special
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Special Meeting 11/19/2020

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this special board meeting of the board of education for november 19 2020 is called the order welcome sorry mr johnson and ms kirkpatrick i head that backwards my apologies the purpose of tonight's meeting is to consider your complaint number 2020-04 which was put into a vance after the board met in a special meeting on january 21st 2020 and you accepted the offer of mediation we understand that the mediation did not resolve the issue you rate the issues you raised and so your step 3 appeal is now back before the board for decision the content raised in your complaint and step three appeal to the board will be heard in two parts first we will hear your concerns about the following issues number one the concerns you raised about the medical accuracy and parental ability to opt out of the sexual health education curriculum we will also discuss the concerns you raised about how the curriculum encourages encourages sex stereotypes and teaches people who don't conform to sexual stereotypes are pathological and need medical intervention two we will also discuss your concerns about how the current curriculum is invasive and that it questions students and by extension their family positions on political and religious beliefs and finally we will discuss your complaint the district did not follow federal ferpa requirement that we keep student information confidential after that the remaining concerns you have raised will be heard in an executive session under ors 192.6604 because the remaining parts of the complaint pertains to confidential educational records in executive sessions pertaining to confidential educational records members of the public and media are not able to attend the meeting the board will take a vote for each part of the meeting you will have five minutes to provide your comment tonight in each part of the meeting both this public meeting and the executive session following your comments we will take the next five minutes for board members to follow up with questions for you or for our staff i will be enforcing the time limits this evening we will acknowledge that you do have a different step one complaint also pending against pps but this hearing tonight consistent with ode requirements is exclusively about the step three appeal of the complaint you originally filed in august of 2019. we will therefore take comments on that matter only and we will deliberate and vote on that matter only again welcome tonight mr johnson and ms kirkpatrick kirkpatrick uh would you like to begin and i'll ask you first to discuss the matter from your appeal that are unrelated to your students confidential records as was outlined in the notice you received from our complaint coordinator now is the time to hear your concerns about the sexual health curriculum your ability to access and opt out of that curriculum and your concerns about the district providing ferpa projected information to others within the district as we have outlined earlier in an email from lydia lopez gamboa our complaints coordinator in this public meeting the concerns that you have raised specific to your child will be heard in the executive session to protect your child's confidentiality i want to apologize in advance if it appears that i am preventing you from presenting information important to this decision but i may need to interrupt you if you begin speaking about complaints that infringe upon your students confidentiality which we will hear during the executive session or our amended complaints at the step one level overview i know this is complex and messy and clunky and so i ask um both of you for your patience tonight as i try to make sure we're respecting you and um respecting your daughter and also giving you a fair chance to be heard so i hope that's clear all right um mr johnson and miss kirkpatrick i invite you now to share any comments you would like to have for the board for this public part of our session thank you um it's been difficult to prepare for this as you said it is awkward and clunky and it's going on 10 years now of awkward and clunkiness um we feel we're here largely for as a formal gesture to to be done with this um to document the failure of the process so that we can move to the next level um earlier this year we sat before you we discussed a lot of things some of which we can't discuss here some of which we can but we provided you 10 years of good faith documentation including you know detailed files of communications documenting problems that the school district has systemic and long-standing problems both with failure to provide for the needs of its disabled
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students and with political harassment on campus and we provided you with really good evidence that those dovetail and that um you know families of disabled children who present concerns to you about political harassment on campus then are retaliated against through refusal to provide services to their children and we won't go into specific details of that but i think the public needs to hear that in the public record that this was 10 years of us in good faith negotiations with high ranking administrators always being told that a solution was around the corner that it would be taken care of um and never never getting that and the concerns that we've brought to you are not just something that we've gone after because we're interested in money we've never asked for money we've always tried to help you be a better school district because we believe in public school we believe in your mission as you've stated it we are concerned at the unequal treatment of the disabled of gay and lesbian and butch and femme students we are concerned that you know your complete obsession with national politics has led to the exodus of large numbers of kindergarten and third grade students through formal withdrawals and untold number of students through an informal withdrawal our daughter's class and this is not just divulging personal information about her but just from what we can see you know and many of her classes we've been told our kid is the only one handing in assignments so you know we've we trying to help you we've been offered to help you many times over the years we were told that yes the district wanted to talk to families about how better to deal with uh hot button political issues how better to stay out of them how better to stick to curriculum how better to deal with um you know requirements about health in a way that doesn't that doesn't pathologize people who are different and um at every step of the way we've offered ourselves in good faith and and not only been rebuffed but i mean not heard back in two years you know and that has really worked to the district's advantage because then that's two two more years of information that gets ticked off the statute of limitations of what we're allowed to talk about so so through extending good faith to you we've suffered and you know we've we've been in touch with other families we've been approached by staff other people are suffering many of whom have been afraid to approach you because of the intimidation and we will go into detail in private session over the specifics of the intimidation that our child experienced but it's a widespread problem that everyone can feel and um we're done you know we we feel like we've we've worked with you and you know in some cases it's resulted in um letters from high-ranking administrators saying we don't intend to comply with federal curriculum law you know just just to heck with you that is how our good faith has been repaid and we are disillusioned we're horrified and we're just ready to move on to the next level may i interject specifically uh regarding the mediation process so well and we can't talk about this is public ah well let me just say let me just say that many of the issues that were outlined at the beginning of this hearing we were not allowed to discuss during our mediation process at the last minute by the way you won't be talking about the the mediation process was severely curtailed and limited seemingly at the last minute and while principal frazier and the lady who came with the comments were both very accommodating and helpful to us in that process we were dismayed because the mediation was did not address many of the issues that we thought we were going to be able to address and then we were asked to as a result to sign a waiver uh releasing the school from liability for all of the issues that they didn't address and so we really feel like we're done like our good faith efforts for you are done and we're ready to move on to ode we're ready to move on to the federal we're just done um you know we tried we still want to see you succeed and and it breaks our heart to see what's going on in these schools because i very much appreciate it i remember when i'm not
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getting served i remember when you came before us in january and we were able to to highlight the option of media option of mediation and i was very thankful you you were able to explore that and i'm very sorry that it didn't work out to resolve the concerns that you had we're going to take some time now for school board members to ask questions of of you and of staff so board colleagues how would you what questions do you have in this moment julia i noticed that you're unmuted do you have a question [Music] okay i it's um one of the challenges of zoom facilitation is trying to read what would normally be like body language cues through zoom so i apologize anyone have any questions for um uh mr johnson or ms kirkpatrick or for our staff in this moment carol avery can you remind us again the the subject matter i'm sorry to i'm drawing kind of a box here uh the specific where we are right now yes so we can ask questions right now about the medical accuracy and the parental ability to opt out of the sexual health education curriculum the concerns raised about how the curriculum encourages sex stereotypes and teaches people who don't confirm to sexual stereotypes are pathological and need medical intervention concerns about the current curriculum being invasive and that it questions students and by extensions their family positions on political and religious beliefs and finally that the district did not follow ferpa by keeping student information confidential so those are sort of the four things we can talk about right just want to reiterate one of the things that was brought up was whether a link was provided and a password to view the curriculum mind the right uh right topic area now um that um if i may um director bailey that the the link and the question about access to the virtual scholars curriculum is part of the step one response in this part of the in the step three uh complaint the family was at that point looking to review the curriculum when we were in brick and mortar so they were they were speaking to dr withicom and to other um community partners we had who are helping us in the development of the um the sex sexual education curriculum um and so that's what they're talking about i think jenny can speak to that piece and if i may interject the virtual scholars uh with the the assistance of the principal frazier provided to us in coordinating um with the instructors for virtual scholars we have no no complaints about the availability of of of our of our ability to review curriculum through the virtual scholars program no that's not true um this time around yeah but and i think this is general that can go into the public record the problem is that it was a systemic problem again with not being able to to to get simple access to look at things that are actually of medical concern to a child with an iep with severe medical concerns that resulted in entirely inappropriate curriculum so we are not opposed to sex ed we never asked out of sex ed this is not a this is not about contesting sex ed this is about you know parents with children who have specific medical concerns that their care teams have specifically put into ieps and the systemic failure of being able to review for those specific issues resulting in actual harm and in this case you know that that was um that was something that was coming many years down the line and that um we want to allow some time now for the board members to ask some questions of staff and of you all um so uh mary had you asked ms uh would have come to respond about the
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curriculum there i missed that and i uh missed what you were asking her to to respond with there what i was suggesting was that the in response to director bailey's question about the access to virtual scholars that's that's the step one that's the new complaint and that is not going to be heard today the curricular concerns that were raised uh in the initial complaint i think can be best addressed by dr withycombe who met with the family i think on at least two occasions to talk curriculum uh yeah so um we had uh for high school curriculum um franklin high school was a part of the act grant so adolescence and communities together grant uh which was to increase comprehensive sexuality education curriculum and training for high school teachers particularly at schools that saw a higher than we would expect rate of unintended teen pregnancy and stis so in partnership with multnomah county health department and planned parenthood of columbia willamette we selected an evidence-based curriculum in accordance with federal grant requirements so it had to be evidence-based program which we had too we had reducing the risk and positive prevention plus both of those curricula are not they're not textbook curricula so the materials that we have are a teacher's guide so that's essentially what we have we have student workbooks student workbooks can go home teacher's guide or copywriting materials that that we're not allowed to to give but they can be accessed online if you wanted to purchase your own copy of those curriculum those curriculum are always available to you from the teacher or from the offices that should have been available through the office and or through the the teacher but we can't we can't give those materials one thing i would note about the materials because materials also went through an extensive adaptation process in accordance with the grant to ensure that they were medically accurate accurate lgbtq inclusive culturally responsive trauma informed so that was a number of community partners from multnomah county latino network native american youth services sci and another number of other community based organizations that provided adaptations to the point that if the family were to purchase the curriculum let's say from the vendor they would not have the exact same curriculum as what's delivered because there were adaptations made in accordance with the grant so that is why we encourage families to preview materials and we provided a copy the time we met with um mr frazier at franklin uh there was a copy in the office which we said they were they could uh look through ah and this highlights the the absurd any hurdles that families are required to undergo to to address this this curriculum can you we're going to we're in a portion right now where the board is asking some questions so um we'll have another chance to speak when we get into our executive session but we'd like some time now for us to be able to ask some questions um so i had a question for myth with the comb which is um in that do we need to abstract ourselves from from this portion of the proceeding no you're at this point i'm going to interject at this point there's an accuracy when inaccuracies are presented i am going to interject and interject strongly and if you are uncomfortable with that then maybe we we should be excused from this portion of the proceeding so it's really hard for us to sit here i am not going to listen to lies yeah at this point i'm not going parents are not allowed parents i've had enough parents are not able to purchase to it as miss whitney said it's been altered it took us two years and by the time we saw it we were told we were the only people who had seen it we our child actually is having problems in her last term of school because it took so long for you to show that medically necessary curriculum to us and when we did see it we saw that it contained subterfuge it was attempts to hide curriculum from parents erase it from the boards interrogate children about their private sexual and and and and political affiliations and and in directing feelings their private sexual feelings and you know and and and all of that stuff is in direct violation of of 20 ufc 1232 which is that parents have a right to see curriculum regardless of promoter
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content so we just you know we can't stay silent about this the publicly and i will not understand what this is not this is not us objecting to sex ed this is this is sex ed being hidden why are you hiding it so our process here is to to give you that time at the beginning to speak and then for us to ask questions yes your process this is this is it we're we're done with the process we are done with the process the process is an utter failure we are asking you to be done so that we can go to ode okay well let us then move into our executive session and so we can deal with that part and then um we will take a vote an executive session on the issues related to those and then we will move back into public meeting to take a vote on those issues all right the board of education of portland public schools will now meet an executive session pursuant to ors 192-6604 to discuss complaints relating to confidential records the board will now bring forward mr johnson and ms kirkpatrick's step 3 appeal to complaint number 2020-04 specifically whether to uphold or overturn and whole or impart the superintendent's decision because of the nature of the complaint there will be two votes before the board we've already had the first one um the vote made during this okay the vote made during this session now will be made public however the vote that we just made during the executive session will remain confidential but for the participants of the executive session all right do i have a motion on [Music] this part of the complaint i'll make the motion uh to get us going okay uh so what are you uh moving i will regardless of how i vote i will move to uphold the uh superintendent resolution all right thank you mr bailey do i have a second for this motion all right director bailey moves and director stop seconds the motion uh which we will number resolution 6034 um what further board discussion is there on this matter i i would begin by just saying um superintendent and chief cuellar um craig is that your correct title deputy superintendent quayle i just um i'm sorry i need to have better sense of all of your titles um i i feel like um you've heard us on this desire that some of the board members have expressed about considering parental access to curriculum um and uh would ask that um we maybe think about how to to do that in light of some of the copyright issues superintendent did you have any i saw you unmuted did you have a response yeah i i would um and i would echo that same desire that i think directors share i think you know it it's no stretch for me to say our pledge is is to make curriculum accessible to parents to the maximum extent possible i think we can be creative about eliminating any barriers i don't think you should have to go to the office but sometimes it's a unique curriculum or maybe it's a material that we don't have duplicates of i just have a hard time believing that with the sex ed curriculum that this isn't a question that hasn't come up for you know another district so you know i look forward to seeing how we can work with that publisher to see how we can create another avenue for making those materials accessible so that so that parents have that opportunity but it's no mystery here uh that we're trying to keep from families around materials that we use instructional materials in schools so uh i'm making a big note of it i'm sure our deputy superintendent is uh we want we encourage families to review the instructional resources that that we use in our classrooms for learning thank you superintendent thank you superintendent i also wanted to weigh in and just um remind everyone here to be mindful of fact that it is difficult for some parents to make it in not everybody's able-bodied speaks english has access as a single working parent it would have taken me some days to figure out how to make it in on a weekly basis to read through the curriculum so it's just i just want to weigh in on the fact that i i support what's been said here today and that it's important to be mindful of being open and providing
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access for for all not not just people that have the later to come in um to to an office to you know to review curriculum so if we can make it as open and as accessible to as many people as possible including language translation i think that would be wonderful i think we can be creative about it i don't want to speak for our health services department but in any content area you know we lend out library books to students all the time if we need to lend out or buy a set of materials that could be you know lent for a period of time to families maybe that's a solution so and where possible and we can get permission from publishers you know a digital uh version which nowadays i think most people want to see anyways when we purchase content it does make me think about curricular adoptions that we have coming up that might be an important feature that we negotiate that as we purchase material that we have digital access to it as well and maybe a general password for families who want to review those that's terrific thinking and i want to add to that that i attended a workshop last year about accessibility in terms of putting materials into braille and making accessible like digital versions of things like font size and font colors and certain fonts that are more accessible than others there's a whole body of literature out there right now and um i would encourage anybody that we contract with to you know we want our vendors to be able to comply with these um methods that help get access for people that um aren't able-bodied so again to the maximum extent possible uh i can't speak to this specific and unique curriculum uh jenny's here i'm sure she's had this conversation probably with them um and maybe we get a special permission to duplicate the whole thing but uh i don't know if you want to add anything to that miss with the comb uh yeah so um to to speak more in general the the two curriculum that we had that are copyright protected um were purchased as part of the grant so those ones have been a little bit more complex to to work with and navigate but we have more recently moved to and um entire k-12 materials for comprehensive sexuality education it's all open source materials so that is now available both online and we have both english and spanish versions in all of our offices in grades k through 12. we also linked to it in all of our communication our notification letters which are translated into all of our languages and uh but but you raise a good point about um if it's in the office in print form and if it's in um if it's accessible digitally the there that doesn't mean that it's that doesn't mean there aren't continue to be barriers to accessing it so i think this is a really it's a really important point for us to consider what other ways we can make it more accessible and i appreciate the conversation around copyright materials and that's an area i'd like to learn more about how we can do that when traditionally we might have a textbook we could send home versus the teacher's guide and what what rules and regulations are around that all right are there any other comments before we go ahead and vote on this matter so just i want to say in public session that i agree with all the comments that have been made by fellow board members about access to curriculum just as a parent i think not everybody is always going to agree with the curriculum but we should people should have access to it and i think there's been several different avenues discussed tonight and also given the passage of the bond um and our investment in curriculum i think there are many of the things that director depass mentioned that we can explore to make our curriculum more accessible to to parents in the broader community okay i'm gonna go ahead and ask us to vote now sorry director bailey did you have another comment what i'm hearing is that there's a fair amount of agreement with the complainants on this issue so i would at least like to have that formally observed as a i don't know if that's an amendment you'd like your own motion uh i would like to amend the motion by saying uh that and help me out mary well i would say i would say that to amend the motion to read uphold the superintendent's response and
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ask for increased opportunity for parents to access curriculum with a follow-up on progress towards that in six months um no i think it's specifically important to say this part of the complaint we agree with they were not provided access so i think we have to be careful with that because i don't know what we're i don't know what we're agreeing with i think we we we agree that parents should have access and it should be so that's different than agreeing with all the facts i agree that parents should have access i do believe that um the parents in this case were given access i do think we can do a better job of lowering the barriers to that access well i think sorry okay no i agree i think we can we can um we can make a statement um in there or we can amend it just slightly by making the statement that you know the district is pledging to make curriculum accessible to parents to the maximum extent possible i think the superintendent said it best and said it well um and that's going to be our pledging commitment um and so i think that that we can absolutely mary correct me if i'm wrong but i think we can we can add that to um we can add that statement to the resolution i believe yeah okay hang on one second so many people are talking so let's go with mary first and hear her verdict on that and then check back with um direct director bailey to see if that satisfies what he was thinking mary well i think you need a motion to see if the amendment if if if you can bring the amendment and then vote on the amendment and then vote on the the entire resolution so the statement that we we're still discussing the amendment we haven't actually come up with one yet um so dr bailey would you like to take a spin on what you'd like the amendment to be well i'm kind of hearing informally that there's uh agreement for a general we need to do this as a district um and if if you all want to go ahead and do that that's fine and i while i do support that i will still vote no okay um and if if that's the sense of the body so be it but um there we go all right so um do we have someone that is willing to make that uh amendment then to the motion all right doesn't sound like we have an amendment to the motion before us i'm sorry you're you're looking you're looking for an amendment that of course this is the story of our lives so the question is graduating from school at 12 years i'm going to remove myself from this meeting at this point thank you very much for your time yeah okay um the question before us is do we want to amend um the motion we have before us upholds the superintendent's resolution um do we want to amend that to include a provision asking for um sort of codifying what we've discussed around parent accessibility to curriculum and so if we want to amend that now is the time to do that if we don't then um we need to move forward i will just say from my perspective um i i don't see anything in the record that says we didn't provide curriculum to the maximum extent possible i hear from board members and i don't disagree that if there are ways we can do more we should do more but um i don't see anything in the record given that we didn't try and do that in this case which is why i i won't support that amendment if if anyone were to actually make it yeah i i don't think it's necessary because this is a public part of the meeting and i think we have fully there's been a expression by majority of the board and i think a positive response by the superintendent um a path forward and that should be complementary to the the vote or could be without amending the resolution i i um i think staff did what they thought was possible and i you know i acknowledge the meetings happen and and the sharing i'm just saying that wasn't enough i i acknowledge that staff may not have seen a way to do better um so i'm not pointing a finger at
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anybody in particular you know dr whiticomb or anybody except to say that it wasn't enough and to vote on the motion as it is before us can i offer an amendment yes ma'am okay um so i think the current motion reads something like uh the board upholds the superintendent's step three decision i would suggest adding a clause comma with the understanding that the district will work to facilitate opportunities for parents to review curricular materials okay uh do i have a second on that amendment can you reread that director more with the understanding that the district will work to facilitate opportunities for parents to review curricular materials i'll second that amendment um i i would say it doesn't go far enough because i think we need to um if if we can't make a curriculum broadly available to parents then we shouldn't adopt it all right i'll still go ahead and second and i'll vote yes on the amendment and then now on we're still discussing right i actually just want to respond to that because i think it's important to say on the record i am concerned that if if we set that high a bar we might forego really good curriculum um that our students would benefit from and and i think what's been what i'm sort of formulating in my mind is we're going through this and listening to the appeal listening to the family um i i don't disagree at all that we need to make curriculum as widely accessible as possible i don't disagree at all that that should be um you know one of the values that the district uses when looking at curriculum i do disagree that we should set that as a bar that if we can't share it and you know for everybody gets a copy of it every week that they want it that we never adopted because i think what we're doing is letting a very small number of families in the district dictate what the majority of the district can learn and benefit from and i think that is beginning to set a dangerous precedent there is in fact a responsibility as as a family if you have particular needs or concerns as a district we owe it to you to give you that opportunity and to opt your child out and to make changes to it we also owe it to all of our students not to make changes to the overall curriculum or process based on a very small number of people who might have concerns and so finding that balance is challenging and tricky but i worry very much we're going towards this side of everything has to be available for everybody all the time which might actually limit some of the things that that our students would benefit from okay um is there any further discussion on this motion i'm gonna just your hand up but i'm gonna have us um just have a board discussion right here uh director moore uh yeah i'm um i agree with director scott and if he thinks this clause as currently written sets the bow too high um uh can you can you offer some an amendment to the amendment yeah i don't think we need it part of this i think this is an appeal process on a very specific case um my view is we should uphold the appeal i think we've made it clear and i think the superintendent shares the values of making curriculum as widely accessible so i don't think i don't think any amendment's needed i concur with director scott i do not support the amendment um all right any further discussion before we vote on the amendment chair chair lowry i would only say when we say curriculum that's a broad term we have district uh approved curricular adoptions but instructional materials also include those decisions that individual teachers make in every classroom and so my hope would be that if teachers have questions about the materials that a particular teacher is using for a unique course you know that they can request that and all i'm saying is that whether it's a teacher academic freedom choice or the district approved curriculum that we would do our best to make sure that those materials are accessible and that we pay particular attention to eliminating barriers but a statement that reads that we'll make curriculum available uh kind of presumes that that we don't ever at all uh so i just want to be careful and i know that's not the intent intent but um it can have that connotation ms within did you want to add something here or did we
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cover the matter that you were interested in expressing superintendent guerrero spoke to it i think part of the struggle is the academic freedom piece is that while teachers may use materials that we recommend as a district they also supplement because they know their students best and they know what their needs are and all those supplements are not always made you know the entire semester in advance um and so yeah i he spoke exactly to what i wanted to say all right any further discussion on the amendment all right we have the amen the more amendment before us all those in favor uh to amend the motion rita do you want to read it one more time um uh the board upholds the superintendent's step three decision with the understanding that the district will work to facilitate opportunities for parents to review curricular materials all right all those in favor of the amendment please indicate by saying yes yes yes okay all those are closed please indicate by saying no no no no any abstentions director moore how did you vote she voted no but i'm i'm just curious about that like why why don't we just withdraw the the amendment then well we voted now so we can the amendment does not pass uh it was two yes and four no um we move now to the main motion um are we ready to vote on the main motion before us all right um all those in favor of the motion to uphold the superintendent's uh resolution please indicate now by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no did you say no director bailey i did okay i couldn't hear you you cut out again director brim did you vote okay any abstentions okay the motion passes uh five to one um the board has voted to uphold the superintendent's decision of the free complaint and complaint 20204 is approved by a vote of five to one was there anything further all right i know that folks are excited to go over to the southeast guiding coalition open house um so thank you all for your


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