2020-12-01 PPS School Board Work Session

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2020-12-01
Time 19:45:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type work
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Work Session, 12/01/2020

00h 00m 00s
uh meeting uh michelle you're muted sorry were you speaking i said i was here but i wasn't kara didn't think i was here so yeah you were in the attendees not the panelists so you're here um yeah all right so um i'm gonna go ahead and call our work session to order tonight um and turn it over to ms ledesma to um orient us to how our conversation's gonna go this evening great thank you um so uh am i supposed to have guadalupe introduce you i always forget the protocol here this evening we're gonna just go ahead and um i'm gonna go i i can introduce danny or if you want to go drink water so we'll see what he said oh sorry this is a work session of the board so claire hurts our deputy is the executive sponsor of this strand of work and she has a very capable team who you're going to continue to hear from this evening so uh perfectly fine to have danny kick us off all right thank you everyone uh so my name's danny ledezma i'm our advisor in racial equity and social justice chair lowry uh board of directors uh good evening and thank you for this opportunity to share with you an update on the progress of the southeast enrollment and program balancing process before you hear from my colleagues i'd like to share with you a little bit about a little context and a little bit about the values and approach that has been guiding staff through this process so as you are aware um we are in the midst of really unprecedented times uh there's a global pandemic there's a resulting economic uh fallout uh we're in the midst of comprehensive distance learning reckoning and all of this is happening while staff principals parents and students are really continuing to engage with us as we strive to reach the ideals that are laid out in our community's vision and we are reminded every day i think about how special and unique our portland community is uh because despite all of the uncertainty despite all of the resulting challenges of the times we have had a really solid contingent of members in the guiding coalition who have rolled up their sleeves and committed to working with us to try to reach our goals and so as you know the goals of this process are not simple in fact there are layers and layers of complexity that not only point to areas for reflection for growth and improvement at pbs but they also shed light on the interconnectedness between education gentrification and displacement transportation issues locational issues neighborhood connectivity and racial equity and social justice so um given this uh complexity we find certainty in our commitment to our process goals while also holding really a lot of importance to the core values of racial equity and social justice and partnership and collaboration from our vision which is that second slide um and so you know one of the things i want to just point out to you as we think about how we've endeavored on this is that we've really tried to live into the definition of inclusion and our beliefs and i want to read to you one of the beliefs from our racial equity and social justice lens which we've we've tried to apply throughout this process and the belief is we believe the district must work in aligned and coherent ways and in close partnerships with families and communities we believe that communities parents teachers and community-based organizations have unique and important solutions to improving outcomes for our students in educational systems our work will only be successful if we are able to truly partner with a community to engage with respect to authentically listen and have the courage to share decision-making control and resources it's a pretty tall order and so what i think that you're going to hear from tonight is about our engagement efforts to date as well as how we are attempting to demonstrate our willingness to listen and act upon what we learn from the engagement that we're engaged with that we're that we're providing effort for our approach to this work also asks us to consider ways in which we create the conditions and our process to really optimize collaboration the ability to not only plan for but to truly understand multiple perspectives to live into targeted universalism while also recognizing our interdependence so you will hear a lot tonight and you
00h 05m 00s
already have heard a lot about equity and the multiple perspectives of what that may mean to people and i would encourage us to lean into some of the work that we've been doing through our professional development work with the center for equity inclusion along with what some of our coalition members have asked us to do and that's the work of examining our collective culture and not just our pps culture but our portland culture and to really examine that culture and work to disrupt where tenants of white supremacy may show up in our process so we've had robust discussions about this and what comes to the forefront for me are three three tenets i think are important the first is either or thinking i think that as you all know as decision makers as folks who are deliberating all the time we really have to resist the urge of either or thinking of thinking of things in dualities as a right way and a wrong way and assigning whole communities to one or the other instead we really are challenged to create meaningful space for dialogue and consideration that there are multiple experiences and multiple perspectives and holding on to that is very difficult particularly in a process as complex as this another tenant that i think about is this sense of urgency and that's something where we get trapped all the time i think we just we just experienced a little bit of that right um this sense of urgency can often make it difficult to take time to be inclusive to encourage thoughtful decision making to think long term and to consider consequences so instead of leaning into that sense of urgency we're really trying to make adjustments to our plans to the process and timelines to try to build in to bake in more space for thoughtful participation and deliberation in order to morally fault in order to more fully contend with a complex and interdependent set of decisions that we know have to be made another tenant that i want to uh to think about um and encourage us to think about together is this fear of open conflict um you will hear and you have heard many opposing opinions um and many of our folks our parents staff principals are raising very important considerations and while at some point we do want to get to a recommendation that has support that is widespread in the process to get there we don't want to shy away from these difficult conversations we don't want there to be a lack of dialogue or a lack of conflict but rather we want to ensure that we tackle these challenges in agreement and we've talked a little bit about living into agreement and so we've adopted a set of working agreements about the way in which we want to work together i want to just also say that we acknowledge that we are a work in progress and committed to share learning we have a great opportunity to understand so many different experiences and narratives from our work doing multiple levels of engagement and now really is our opportunity to take this in to synthesize and to bolster our process and strengthen our relationships as we move into making recommendations so i hope tonight that you'll hear you'll see this demonstration of us really trying to embody a learning organization taking in all of the different uh perspectives really trying to achieve a space where we're creating the conditions for racial equity and social justice doing this in partnership and collaboration with our parents with our principals with students and so many community members so i'm going to introduce our director of community engagement shanice clark who's going to detail a little bit more about our engagement efforts today thank you danny and good evening uh board directors and superintendent um i know as we've been continuing this work with our southeast guiding coalition we have been able to to really listen to perspectives and make continuous improvement um in our engagement process and as danny mentioned uh as a learning organization i think we've been employing multiple means and efforts uh to be able to reach folks uh where they are and so through social media or websites uh calling folks and uh making space uh virtually uh through surveys we've been able to hear initial perspectives from our community uh but really uh through our open house focus groups uh student and teacher outreach we have been able to sit with
00h 10m 00s
perspectives views and tensions and want to make space for what it looks like to adapt our process in ways that are meaningful for our goals and the community in which they will impact and so on the next slide we'll have a little bit of information on our open house so uh on thursday uh we had an opportunity not on thanksgiving but the week before that uh had an opportunity to have an open house where over 800 members of our community uh participated in a live stream and concurrently had language rooms um and so this is a little picture of the amount of people who participated but i'll also say through other outreach taking place in the same week there's been a substantial number of folks that we've been able to listen to and hear from and want to continue to have those perspectives at the forefront of some of our discussion uh tonight on the next slide there's just some demographics of the folks who participated um in the open house uh survey and our student survey and a picture of the demographics uh but i'll also mention russian somali uh spanish mandarin and cantonese and vietnamese uh groups in addition to what took place at the open house were also um happening throughout the week and so we have some rich feedback and information that has allowed us to identify some potential risks and opportunities that claire will be talking a little bit more about on the next slide thank you shanice and danny really appreciate the sharing of the process to date and having spent the past week reading through thousands of comments and hearing individual experiences through um their testimony in rooms and in their comments that they've submitted in surveys and um it it has a profound impact on the leadership of this the enrollment and program balancing process so it is we have shared a report that's posted online for this board work session and it is a 20-page report and it is broken down by all the sessions that we've had and we had in languages um that have been translated in in various um ethnicity and race responses this is something our guiding coalition has been asking for for more feedback and more understanding from our community and so we're proud to share um the comments some of them as i personally have read through them i can't it the empathy um for what is this is how this is impacting our families is um certainly in the forefront of my mind um having said that they have the comments are having an impact on how we want to [Music] improve our practice and our process and making sure that we're hearing those voices and bringing those voices forward our guiding coalition have had had uh every individual comment shared with them as well as um the 20-page summary report to review and that we will be debriefing with them on thursday having said that one of the things that we need to prepare for is we really want to right now we have a very large amount of information that people are considering in a proposal in a discussion proposal and what's in that proposal is really in both phase one and phase two of the work so at our next meeting we're going to take the feedback into consideration and we're also going to simplify into the one small area and focus on kellogg middle school
00h 15m 00s
so we'll be working um to establish the elementary k-5 schools that will be the feeder pattern for the kellogg 6-08 middle school so that's going to become our primary focus it's okay for ideas to bubble up that might be decided in phase 2 but we're going to put them in a parking lot off to the side make sure we capture every last bit of thinking but we're going to focus on resolving the small area in the next few meetings then we will bring that to the board in january and um really the um some of the comments from the community about this is too much change this is too much all at once really trying to listen to that and trying to get to a smaller where we know we're opening a school the community is excited about attending that school for their middle schoolers and so how how do we make sure that that happens so that's our primary focus then um as we go into the second item here where we are thinking about a second middle school um and all of these change this second phase changes were are happening in fall of 22 so a year later so it gives us more time we're hearing people need more time to to have a conversation and understand what's the best way have time to do the work not to be in a rush so we're looking at then the harrison park feeder pattern dli placements if we decide to move creative science that we establish at the same time a facility for creative science we make sure that we have special education regional program placement and that we have room for preschool in um in our k-5 school so they become pk5 schools so just helping the community um we're doing a a separation of phase one at this point and focusing on that one outcome we need for fall of 21 and then working the rest of it together because they are so intertwined and ha have the need to um be looking at how when you make one change it impacts all the other pieces of the area of the region so with that that's um what we wanted we've are thinking from our as staff as we bring forward the process and continue to refine and iterate with our southeast guiding coalition really being the staff being facilitators for the parents and principals that are refining the the outcomes for that are meeting the board charge um that was established last spring so with that i want to um turn it back to danny ledesma and go to the next slide i think we just wanted to before we turn it back over to chair lowry and the board for your discussion just kind of point out that like you know we're we think that we're at this pivotal point where we can sort of continue to build trust and sort of build support for the work that we're doing over time we think that we can continue to demonstrate a responsiveness and adaptation to uh to what we're hearing from our from our southeast guiding coalition as well as other parents and um you know we really are committed to continuing to to like claire said really regroup and redesign the process so that we're building support um that is is responsive to the challenges as we're as worse as we as as we hear from parents about that so um i think uh we we really want to make sure that both the board and the public um you know hear our commitment to that to continuous learning and inclusion and and that we really are committed to sort of like rolling up our sleeves and and doing the work to support the conditions for really continued robust community dialogue to be able to get to these um to get to a recommendation that uh that you you all can get behind so i'll turn that back over to chair lowry now
00h 20m 00s
all right and you all were sent out um the questions that um the that we're being asked is there a slide for the questions danny or no um so they're visually in front of people um um they're not but we can make one real quick okay i can also i don't know if this is legal liz can yell at me but um we don't have a chat i'm gonna just pop them in the chat but anyway um because some of us are more visual right we're trying to accommodate all learning styles um so our two questions tonight are um what suggestions do you have for improving the process so this is the as we hear feedback regarding the impact of our current process staff will regroup to redesign the process to build support for programs and enrollment challenges what suggestions do you have for improving the process and we'll go through alphabetically by last name and answer that and then the second is are you open to recommendations from the guiding coalition that allows changes over time in support of school transitions and if you end up answering both of those together it's not a big deal um but those are the questions so um we'll go ahead and begin through our list which i of course don't have up in front of me um excuse me chair lowry did you say that they were gonna be posted i i asked staff there we go thank you there are the questions yeah and they were emailed out earlier this afternoon but i know that not everyone's had a chance to look at them um so director bailey are you ready to provide a response to question one or to question one and two director bailey you're muted how's that i'll ask a couple of questions to get things going um and then let it go around i could ask a lot but um so one question is i just want to clarify our my understanding of uh just to check back in with staff was that we're kind of focusing on these questions the two questions staff presented which what suggestions do you have for improving the process yes and that's what that's what i'm focused on okay awesome thank you okay um so with uh equity being a central value um how how can you bring a sharper focus to issues of equity that come up in the guiding coalition discussions i'm thinking uh for example in particular the word segregation has come up a number of times uh has there been a discussion to unpack that word and what's that mean because i've seen it used actually from a number of different angles so i guess my my suggestion would be um more more of a um getting more specific on equity uh equity concerns and equity issues and uh guiding coalition members through a discussion that unpacks that more if that makes sense a second question i have or in terms of the process well um i think that makes a lot of sense dr bailey um did you have any i can stop i'll stop at one and then we can go around how's that i i think you're fine director bailey i think we can take some more substantive time here um i just stopped hearing you so i jumped in but i think it's because my internet is wonky tonight yeah well we all are um a second uh it's not against a question more than a suggestion i appreciate the attempt to have more time to deal with some of the substantive issues that have come up at the same time is it possible to make a decision on kellogg feeders without essentially deciding some other things down the line for example if we decide if the committee comes up with a recommendation for the feeders for kellogg uh what implication implications does that have
00h 25m 00s
for the location of say spanish immersion programs if kellogg is designated as a spanish immersion having a spanish immersion program does that mean that the schools not feeding kellogg would not have a spanish immersion program or not um so i think it's really important and i and i think coalition members are pretty hip to this too that uh really understanding the implications of if there's a recommendation for a feeding feeder pattern what what the implications are for other schools not in the feeder pattern as well so i'll stop there and let people go around and if there's time to come back around great um we can be here all night all right uh director brim edwards did you have did you want to respond to that what suggestions do you have for improving the process question yes um so i have a number of suggestions but i want to start by just thanking staff in the community for starting the process and the continued focus on the middle grades inequity and keeping that at the core because kellogg and the second middle school are a big unlock for students in outer southeast who haven't had an equitable middle grade so i would say like in terms of process like keep don't lose that focus um a couple things i would suggest is that to keep in mind as um there's a lot of new people in this discussion but the southeast cluster has had so many focus programs so many immersion programs um there's you know it had the largest number of uh under-enrolled k-8s um that to keep in mind the stability and the long-term health of those sets of schools and there's been a lot of experimenting over the last two decades in that area and just be cognizant of that um when proposing changes um i think uh there's been a lot of comments on the pandemic making it um and from the community um it's hard to engage and i think staff has done a a great job of trying to work within the parameters that we have with the pandemic but that many of the places where parents informally have discussions about things that are happening in their school communities um are not available to us because of social just to parents because of social distancing so just keep that in mind that while um i don't think necessarily people are objecting to the pace because they're objecting to the suggestions but um a lot of the social networking and conversations that happen informally aren't happening because of the pandemic um the uh phase i would say a process piece is that the phase one um whatever happens in phase one that that shouldn't predetermine phase two impacts um or um it should be very transparent and that we should make sure that um we all know if there's a phase a phase two impact by making a decision in phase one and then the last thing um i would suggest is um well two things one uh that more option that more than one option be brought to the community meetings in phase two um i think what i heard from a lot of people is that it was like here it is like up or down um and that didn't actually um we could have had actually more community um ideas and in engagement if we had uh had more than one option and then the last is i think and staff has i think acknowledged this and is making changes but there's some missing representation um as part of the guiding coalition and just to make sure that going forward we try and make sure that voices that aren't present at the table um are included whether it's the you know vietnamese representatives representatives from glencoe or the various communities that aren't currently at the table that we make sure that as we move forward they're included i think very promising start and appreciate all the work the staff's done
00h 30m 00s
to engage the community in pretty challenging circumstances director depos yes um i just want to appreciate first everyone that's uh on the guiding coalition um and the families that are going through these conversations and the staff work that's gone into you know presenting these these options um i like that that we're proposing to do a phase one and a phase two i'd like to um encourage us to take a broader look at the stakeholders that are impacted particularly those from glencoe um i think i think just personally what's the most important in this to me is that people feel like they've been heard we're not going to make everybody happy with the process or with the outcomes but i feel like it's really important for the public to be heard and for families to be heard so that to the extent that we can broaden the the people that we're listening to the impacted stakeholders that haven't been at the table and the communities that haven't been at the table i think that would be great um in terms of phase one and phase two um i'd like to just be cognizant that whatever we do it's gonna be hard to do this entire process in a vacuum in two distinct phases um so i'd like to us to be very cognizant about how we bridge those two phases of the work so they're an integrated outcome um and i also agree that the choice of options um you know we're we live in america and we're used to having choices and i think that um from a public um just public meeting perspective and public entity perspective i always like to come to the public with a couple of options because that's where the most input can help drive you know what we ultimately end up with so i'd like to also see more than one option for people to weigh in on and and i think that's it for now director constant thank you thank you everybody um thanks to our our public engagement team for i think really doing a great job and um doing the focus groups in our supported languages there are some ways where where things are actually easier um in virtually but it's it's a hard time to really try to take the pulse of the community but um one of the things that i think is important is for us to re-examine some of our underlying principles because these scenarios were generated based on board conversations that we had and some underlying principles that were laid out for example you know we had a a general sentiment that co-location is bad or i forget what we called them but you know they were some of our guiding principles that were laid out that co-location is bad and so we need to try to avoid co-location of programs and you know when you we all know that with any kind of enrollment balancing when you pull a thread here it causes a snag over there and so maybe we need to be a little more nuanced about some of those um foundational beliefs that have led us to the options that are have been on the table so far for example you know if we have co-location that is balanced within a school like two and two um that's a much more workable solution than if we have a single strand of something in a school so um just that that's something i'd like to see is a kind of a re-examine of some of them those underlying principles and the unintended consequences that they might produce um another thing that i think is important that was um really um brought to us by the community is that i do think we fell short on engaging students in this process and yes it's kind of a hard time to engage students with everyone virtual but i'd like to see more effort made for student voice in this decision-making process um and then lastly you know why why are we doing this um we wanna we obviously we need to populate kellogg and i totally support dividing this into phase one and phase two but ultimately we're doing this to to create um greater equity of opportunity um to decrease economic and racial segregation and all of that in service to ultimately raising student achievement so i i want us to keep the lens of student achievement because we all
00h 35m 00s
know you know a brand new middle school with a couple more electives than a k-8 might have had doesn't isn't necessarily the the what's really going to make a difference for kids in terms of how they learn so um just in all our conversations i i hope that we're um looking at everything as a means toward toward those ends um and i think that's all i got all right my turn next lowry um i think my comment about improving the first of all i'm super thrilled with this new direction i think it's the right answer and i really appreciate the responsiveness to the public comment that's causing this change um i think the suggestion that would be most helpful for me would be clarity around the board role in all of this i think um you know we have been in a role of listener but we've also been called in at some points to be role of ambassador and then i also know there's been some times where the board has sort of intimated that staff is leading this and i know that this is actually the board's process that the staff is facilitating so i think we as a board need to be clear about about our ownership of this um and our both support and collaboration with the staff as we go through this work so i think that for me would be the suggestion and i think that would be helpful to the public to really understand that this is a process of the board um and that our goals are you know um that equity framing is key so that would be the the piece i would have um director was that did you just call on me okay sorry i had a little glitch um can you hear me okay um so i i might be a little um a little repetitive but um so i think greater clarity in um the scope of the decisions in the different phases um i think will be helpful um i think that's been an issue kind of throughout the process um that it's been a little unclear what decisions are being made when and when will they be implemented um so um so i think that uh better clarity will be helpful um at the same time i'm i'm a little concerned that um we're going to be it means that a lot is going to have to happen in the spring um so there's a there's an upside and a downside to um kind of shifting things into phase two um i guess the second thing i would say is um i think uh um this process has been incredibly complicated i mean it's incredibly complicated even on a good day and it has been a good day for a while now um so i i appreciate um everybody's work on this i know it's been um really hard um harder than it would otherwise be because it's all virtual and having been involved in these things you know on this issue for a very long time um being hands-on really helps and that's not available now so i thank you to everybody for kind of powering through all of this um i do think that one thing that would be helpful is to sort of building on what amy was saying um kind of bring bring the student experience back into focus um i think i think the danger in these kinds of processes is that it often can feel like just moving warm bodies around on a map um it can feel very bureaucratic [Music] and i think it's i think it would be helpful to to try to remind people or or maybe inform people um why we're doing this um that we're opening two new middle schools and of necessity
00h 40m 00s
things are going to have to change it's unavoidable but at the same time we also need to kind of make it real for people the opportunities that are going to be made available to students that they don't currently have so the status quo is problematic um with these with these two new middle schools there are real opportunities for students um and and i think it in order to make that real for people um i think it would be helpful if um if the coalition members had the benefit of hearing from people from the academic side of the house about the academic opportunities that will be made available with changes and in looking at particular options like we can do either x or y in the absence of some you know information context setting by experts it's very difficult for parents or students to get beyond the obvious costs involved it's it's very difficult for parents to imagine something else if they haven't experienced it um that was certainly the case when i was involved in committees dealing with this sort of thing um so i think if if the process could include more consultation with the academic side to talk about what kind of programmatic opportunities um various scenarios would present i think that would be helpful oh we'll stop there all right um director scott thank you um yeah going last uh means i'm mostly going to be repetitive but um sort of adding my voice to some of the things that people have talked about i actually think going back to um scott's question about whether we can separate the decisions uh is really going to be key to sort of my answer in terms of how we improve the process i really appreciate staff saying that they are going to um add more representation for phase two and i think the the question though is is if if these if that works fine as long as you can disconnect these but to the extent they're interlocked then we also need to be looking at representation for phase one and um i think that i'll be interested to hear from staff about how much we really can separate those decisions and put things in a parking lot versus how much they are contingent and then the other thing i would say is in addition to not just the school representation for for phases one and two in terms of of what parts of our community involved but also um someone else mentioned maybe a couple of um um board members mentioned students you know being more involved i think that's really important and then making sure we're getting bipod families um really involved in this process um as well i think is going to be really key you know the other thing i would say for improvements or maybe a couple other things um making sure we're really deliberate in our outreach and i i will commend staff i think that that to be really frank i mean contrary to some of the things that i heard um at the town hall about the lack of outreach i mean we know factually there was a ton of outreach but for whatever reason that outreach wasn't getting through to people and and perhaps that's the pandemic perhaps it's just busy lives i'm actually a real believer that most community members don't want to get involved in local government school board processes unless it impacts them directly like they sort of just hope that things just move along and then are a little surprised all of a sudden when something does and so i think our communication needs to be really clear um very directive to each school that might be impacted but also very clear about why i actually got an email from a friend from one of the very early southeast uh um coalition meetings and he just emailed me and he forwarded the district email and he said why why should i care about this what is there for me to care about in this and i realized reading through it like we didn't hit people on that very first sentence with his this is why this is important and you should read this email um and and i think we just need to be that clear and deliberate in our in our communication so that people recognize really early and and i appreciate staff extending the timeline on this i think that's going to help with a better outcome um but we need to really you know really be clear with people why it's going to impact them and then you know getting back i mentioned making sure we've got by poc representatives on the on the on the coalition but i also want to hear directly from from bypoc families and and i'm going to say something that i i don't i hope it's not controversial but it may be i want to hear directly from by families and not from white people speaking on behalf of bipoc families
00h 45m 00s
um and i don't question um as a white person myself who cares deeply about racial equity i don't question people's commitment to racial equity but i also know as a white person who doesn't have that lived experience that i can only go so far with that and and i will be honest the majority of the equity conversation right now is is is coming from from white families in portland um that that are being directly impacted and and and i i would rather we we need to figure out a way to be hearing directly from bipolar families and and not just those families who might be negatively impacted because there will be some negatively impacted by any changes we make but those who are going to be positively impacted as well and that's really hard to do um but as we as we have this conversation and we we we center racial equity and social justice um it's not going to be as someone mentioned early on either or either this this this benefits all you know um um families of color in the district or it benefits none it's it's going to be nuanced in the middle and and for us as a board and for the community at large to really be engaging in a deep equity analysis we're going to need to be hearing from lots and lots of groups who are impacted very differently so um i can't tell you exactly the best way to do that i know i've been doing public outreach for for government services for a long time and it's really really hard um but i think we we have to get it right if we're going to end up with with a good proposal in the end student representative xu thank you um i'm worried by a number of aspects in this process um perhaps foremost of my concerns as directors constant and scott mentioned regards insufficient student engagement and representation including on the coalition itself if i were to offer one suggestion it would be to or just to be far more intentional and systematic in our attempts to reach out to our students than we have been thus far i would also be interested in hearing how from staff's perspective uh what student engagement approached throughout this process and um how we plan to be more uh thorough in reaching out in the future great okay um the second question are you open to recommendations from the guiding coalition that allows changes over time in support of school transitions um it's a yes or no question but obviously um we are going to take longer than yes or no to answer it because there's a lot there and we're going to actually go and reverse alphabetical order because um uh just to try to change it up so people who spoke last can have a chance to speak first so student representative lowry yeah before before we go into the round robin i'm wondering if like staff could speak to that because it seems like well who's going to say they're close to it i'm not and i'm not really quite sure what it's asking right seems like it almost seems like a trick question um like who's going to answer no um and like is it the recommendations do they allow or do they drive changes over time so maybe somebody there could be a little bit more yeah that's a great question julia that's a really really good uh thing there danny um or claire or shanice would one of you like to respond to that question from director brim edwards i'm just looking before i the first one to speak but okay so an example would be um right now we have a policy in place that allows for students to continue through a school throughout the from once they enroll they can continue all the way through there have been times in the past when a resolution from the board had a change that implemented things sooner and so what we want to be sure of is that we're capturing um what the board's intent is in for instance if there's crowding at crowding at franklin and if we change boundaries um or feeder patterns but then we allow all those students to stay that franklin it could take years before franklin's not crowded so what what we want to make sure is that we're understanding from the board's perspective for instance if um we change a pattern from
00h 50m 00s
um for a k5 boundary and if there were a fifth grade class um that we would make a recommendation from the guiding coalition that fifth grade could stay and complete their final year at the same school that that would be a recommendation we would include in going to the board um we could do that in eighth grade we could do that at 12th grade it just we wanted to kind of get a sense from the board about as we're making recommendations what are you looking for from us as a guiding coalition and really it's the guiding coalition members staff is trying to help facilitate what kind of recommendations you'll be looking for from the guiding coalition members in their proposal that's coming forward so looking at what current policy is um having the resolution from the board can actually um keep policy as is or it could also say because of the extreme crowding at franklin we're going to implement um we'll say 11th and 12th graders could the for the year of the implementation 11th and 12th graders could um stay but new 9th and 10th graders coming in would not um be able to um would not be able to like maybe it's even ninth graders starting at franklin so helping us with as we're transitioning these changes um what kind of transitions um recommendations are you looking for in terms of if we're eliminating under enrollment and overcrowding um if we're trying to have an impact if we use the current policy will take decades for the change to happen so then going through and having all this processing over this when it wouldn't change um for a really long time we need to know what what the board is thinking about all about lots of examples probably too many did that help director broome edwards i did thank you great um so student representative shu do you want to speak to that first or should we make director scott go first it's up to you nathaniel um i can go um i'd like to ask one clarifying question uh one more um i'm still not really clear on what is meant when we say school transitions specifically so changing from one school to another and so a transition year might be when you're going from 5th to 6th grade or eighth to ninth grade those would be transition years right so the question is are we open to recommendations from the coalition with regard to changing how those transitions walk or when they take place or or or transition could also be um when we're implementing a change so we brought forward a proposal to make a boundary change and then the board approves that proposal are we uh allowing it to for every student that is in that school they and and their siblings they can all continue to go to that school or are we saying um is there uh somewhere in the middle where we need to say the beginning class of ninth graders next year um would not attend that school so there's lots of ways to um cushion so that people aren't transitioning in the middle like for instance we've heard a lot from the community about the ib program at cleveland and by moving dli program for out of cleveland into franklin then there could be um students that would be impacted with not being able to complete the ib program so thinking about how do we minimize the impact on on students but also still um balancing that with the other impact of where there's not enough classrooms for the kids that are there in the building so there's it's it's finding the the tren how do we transition that's for the best for all the students involved yeah all right that makes sense um well in that case i mean i would certainly be open to that um i think that makes sense as part of the coalition's role although i mean i feel that the current coalition could certainly do to um have more student members personally um as i said previously and i might like to see significantly greater student participation before um things like that might be
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considered if at all possible um yeah i think that's about it i'm going to go ahead chair lowry um i'll go ahead and jump in yeah so i i'm definitely open to this i i you know this this issue came up i think over a year ago when we had an early work session sort of setting our values and goals around this and um i think i think grandfathering in um to a certain extent is one of the things that makes these changes easier as was been pointed out by staff it also makes the impact of the change take longer right to sort of see um the changes we're making whether it's an overcrowding issue or something else um but i also think what we're dealing with are long-term demographic moves right and and um and and i don't think we can solve a decade or a two-decade long shift in terms of where people live in the city of portland don't expect to solve that in a year or two obviously i think there are limits i don't think a third grader who expects to go to franklin whose feeder patterns change to a different high school should still be able to go to franklin but i am um um probably pretty open to to to quite a bit of flexibility there i don't see any reason why you know someone in cleveland and the ib program wouldn't be allowed to finish that up it does get challenging if we move that program out because then they would no longer be in the dli program um but i think you know giving giving some choice there as well and i would be interested in knowing this logistically gets more challenging but to what extent can we allow choice so that it's not you know um you know when we're and specifically around this issue not the larger boundary issue we're not allowing choice but specifically around this issue of you know what what class makes the shift um are we open to allowing sort of hardship exemptions to that or people saying you know you know sort of applying and and making the the um uh um the the hurdles for the lowering lowering the barrier um for people sort of getting those i mean and and i i grew up in portland when when there was much more you know you could choose to go to any of the nine high schools and my sister and i went to different high schools because of the different offerings that existed i know we're not going to go back to that system but i do think there is some value when you're making this type of a change it also helps ease the transition um when when people who who might be really focused on the experience of their own family or their own child um now um we can make the conversation more about why we're doing this and the benefits to the district um as a whole so i'm definitely open to that all right director moore um so this is an issue that has been that has bedeviled this district for a very very long time um and um i mean i i don't i don't know did we lose rita rita we can't hear you i'm sure it's brilliant and heartfelt any changes in boundaries she's back rita we missed you there for about a minute okay well probably not a terrible thing you didn't miss much um so this is this is a long-standing issue and um i i i am of the opinion sort of in general that um the current policy that governs the implementation the the process of input implementing any boundary changes is unworkable for the district um it virtually guarantees that any response to a current population shift will not actually take effect until well after the well after the fact and when you're probably in the middle of an entirely different population shift um so i have i have concerns about um i have how do i put this if we're going to go through this exercise we need to do it we need to implement it in a way that it's actually going to have a positive impact on um on the stability of schools um we need to have if we're responding to over enrollment or under enrollment in a particular school that's happening right now and delaying
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implementation for six seven eight nine years um i i think sort of um undermines the whole purpose of this exercise so anyway i guess my answer to the question is you know am i open in principle yeah sure i'm opening principle um but it has to be doable there you go um so i a lot where's next um i really am open to to very much changing how we look at school transitions um and again you know understanding that high school students have committed to dli or the ib program and and giving students an opportunity to complete that but i again agree that um with what director scott said that you know elementary school students not ending up with the high school that they had thought at or at the high school that an older sibling went to um are all things that i think are are hard on family as i understand and yet i think we need to make some changes um for the benefit of the whole district so i'm definitely very much supportive of changing the way we do school transitions and especially around the legacy with siblings and around at what grade do students move from a school i know that back in the portland history it used to be if you started kindergarten at a school you got to go all the way through the cluster and now it's just through the building and i would be open to especially looking at elementary and maybe even middle school at where those change points happen all right director constance i am um fairly aligned with director moore's comments i think one of the reasons that we've ended up with some dramatic imbalances in our district is because it has been hard for boards to make difficult decisions about implementing change because generally speaking nobody wants change um so uh you know the other the other piece of that to me is that we're we have been working really hard as a district to equalize our programs in our schools so what we really want is for all of our schools to be excellent um so that the the difference between the school you may attend other than sentimentality is is not that great um and so when we look at high school and you know the difference between attending a brand new franklin high school or a brand new madison high school i think it's it's a different conversation than when we had much greater inequity of offerings and programming and all that so yes i'm open to um hearing the community's thoughts more continuing to hear the community's thoughts about implementing changes but um as rita said we need to to make it happen and we need to do it in a way that actually serves our end goals um in a reasonable time period and then just within that we need to kind of hold hold harmless programming what's the word i'm looking for just consistent programming and patterns of matriculation but but other than that kids are pretty resilient and flexible and um so uh i think this district can withstand um some some tweaks here and there director depos i'm also in alignment with um director moore and director khan stam in that um well first of all we're not grading our kids and our families on resilience but that's actually a really good muscle to build um it's really good resilience is really important especially when we talk about climate change and just being adaptable to new situations so i feel like i'd i'd rather see a not a not a rushed process but not a long drawn-out process um i'd rather see a shorter process no matter what um not every single stakeholder is going to be thrilled and i think we should just um you know danny ledezma started out this conversation um saying that we needed to not be afraid of open conflict and to be prepared to have difficult conversations and this is one of those times um so i'm of course completely open to recommendations from the guiding coalition as you know director brum edwards said who would say no to that understanding that they're the experts in the community and they're the kind of the school community experts and we're the we're the board and so i i'm in favor of moving the
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process along um absolutely um listening to the recommendations from the guiding coalition and and and taking the bandage bandage off quicker rather than drawing it out [Music] for a long period of time all right director brim edwards thanks um so i would say that i'm open to considering the recommendations it will weather my thoughts about the recommendations though will be predicated on addressing some of the representation issues that we raised earlier about the guiding coalition and also the data that's used to back up the recommendations uh i'm going to one of the things i'll be considering is um like what the problem the policy uh my recommendation would be in relation to siblings um as a parent of three i know that and if if you're a working parent or a single parent um the challenges of having um your students divided or going in different places um you know create some challenges so i'll want to take that into consideration um so uh victor de pasiu is the ripping the band-aid off and i was thinking about that earlier because there are often people who have advocated over the years or like we just need to rip the band-aid off and just make it happen um and you know i look back at the process just two and a half years ago we um used in terms of opening the two middle schools roseway heights and tubman and we definitely didn't rip the band-aid off in most cases there was in some cases a pretty extended legacy provision that was provided to students and uh that left uh grant overcrowded and so i would ask that the board um with their recommendations that we rip the band-aid off for southeast that the board in its role as looking across the district that we treat students equally and that means if there's um if we have a policy that is was good for for the northeast cluster that it applied to the southeast or vice versa we're going to take a new position in southeast then we should have that same approach um and other areas where there's enrollment um balancing otherwise it'll seem like hey there's just a policy for the southeast um the last thing i would say is one of the things the audit one of the things the audit committee is going to consider tomorrow is um an audit that the the director bailey recommended um which was around hardship transfers and we currently have about 2500 hardship transfers which which is a lot um and it's not clear what that criteria is and what impact that's having and so i'd wanna i would wanna know how all those transfers impact you know if we're gonna be moving boundaries and um ripping the band-aid off on some legacies at the same time there's 2500 transfers hardship transfers around the district that may be impacting you know schools in terms of over enrollment or under enrollment um i would want us to be thinking about that as well because we can do a lot of good work or follow the recommendations and then um have it um not make any difference because of a separate policy we have so those are things that i would keep in mind when i was considering their recommendations director bailey so i would say yes of course uh i would be open to hearing the recommendations of the guiding coalition and my thinking is that the changes that um the coalition is going to be proposing to us are going to be of such magnitude that um we will really have to make some wholesale changes sooner immediately rather than later um
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but again hearing directly from folks in the schools involved parents and students in the schools involved should be part of our decision making process all right deputy hertz um what else do you have for us tonight well i've been um frantically taking notes because i want to make sure that i'm sharing with the guiding coalition their words of wisdom and advice um to tonight so at this point that is the end of our questions that we had um for this team and i hope that while i know we just got the summary report to you yesterday it was as soon as we could complete it with all the the holiday weekend so just appreciate the time and for you to consider all of that community input both the detailed version and the summary and really encourage you to take a good look we've been very careful to make sure that we have representation from um our six languages as well as um uh all the bypass communities in the region and so we've been very careful to disaggregate the data by race so that you have the opportunity to take a look at what the community is telling us so we look forward to the conversation with the guiding coalition and director bailey will be joining us on thursday and um director bailey i'll be sure to share my notes after i clean up a few typos and um then so that you can have um some share some of what the board's um thinking is with the guiding coalition i just want to share my appreciation again for staff working on a really complex process for the our community outreach team for doing a lot of work thank you andrew yeah thanks claire can you remind me and and maybe the community as well what's our timeline it so i see that the staff recommendation is to to separate out focus on the calc feeder patterns what's our timeline for making that final decision as a board so we have um three meetings in december and hope on december 17th that will finalize our recommendation for the k-5 elementary schools that will encompass the feeder pattern for kellogg once we finish that in december we bring it to the first board meeting in january for a conversation and discussion with the board um and then we ask for your feedback or the is there anything in the recommendation that you just can't live with that we need to modify and depending on the the feedback we get from you and how large it is we'll either come back in the second meeting in january or the first meeting in february at the latest for approval having modified the proposal to meet your expectations of um of the final proposal great thank you and so from a public perspective in terms of their ability to comment on the process obviously watching the southeast you know coalition meetings um is there public comment at those meetings so we have we have um multiple ways for um community input on our enrollment program balancing website we have in the six languages an opportunity for people to submit feedback directly to the guiding coalition we also receive many emails and we are compiling themes especially we do some analysis so we we give them all the letters and the things that we receive from ptas um parents etc but we're we also take the time to capture and com combine it by theme to help people um see if you know it's a minim minimal analysis at least of trying to help them digest all the um communication that's coming into the guiding coalition great so feedback through the website um obviously emails you know to the district and then they'll have an opportunity in january when the board is discussing this to also testify um at the board hearings thank you anything else from board members on this process tonight or any other things you need to say to be complete director broome edwards i was just going to say you know the the answer to the first question one of the
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things i should have added is i think there's going to be a natural transition um or bleeding over into um northeast i think it's pretty hard to i almost think this is going to be a continuum um to do the work that you bridge from one to the next but because i think it's going to be really difficult to say this is all confined within southeast um so being able to see the longer term trajectory of how this travels um and the other pieces that will be brought in i think would be really helpful so it's not just hey we're going to solve all these problems in this quadrant um and it's it's not it's not going to be impacted by these other schools in the future is um the thing that will put us in a silo we don't need to be in so i'd be interested in this longer term sort of like what it looks like or where the next piece is and how we bridge or where the overlap is um and so i want to make sure because i i noticed the staff feedback of here's what we've learned and here's how we're adjusting still has it just in southeast in phase two and i think that's pretty hard to do just from my perspective other um closing comments or thoughts chair lowry i would just invite anybody who's watching this evening or for us to remind folks that their feedback and input has been really important to date and will continue to be and we invite them to review the report they can notice you know how their how their suggestions and input has been considered or tallied or disaggregated and i think hopefully the board found found that insightful i know the staff has and you know this is this is an iterative process so i think that's why you're hearing from staff what you're hearing and again i think an example of our culture of continuous improvement learning and um working to always be better evidenced in this process tonight anything else just thank you for your time this evening thank you i know that um some of you like me were very frustrated that we didn't have more time tonight to dig into some of the um budget pieces around the goals and those scenarios and that we still have a lot more work to do there um tomorrow we have agenda setting so director bailey and i will be talking with staff about how we get some feedback about those scenarios that last question we didn't get to tonight and also get some more work in before our next meeting when we revisit those goals again so um thank you for your willingness to switch to this meeting to honor those of the community who were wanting to watch it this part of the meeting and i know that that's a huge meaty topic that we need more time on and we'll work with staff to make sure we get that um tomorrow is agenda setting at 11 am so please get any items you want to have us discuss in to roseanne before 11am tomorrow and i think that's everything so we are adjourned for tonight have a good night and uh see you all in meetings throughout the week but back here officially in two weeks good night


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