2020-12-03 PPS School Board Intergovernmental Committee Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2020-12-03
Time	16:30:00
Venue	Virtual/Online
Meeting Type	committee
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education's Intergovernmental Committee Meeting 12/03/2020

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okay why don't we do um quick introductions then um um of the panelists and i really appreciate our guests um senator uh dembrow and commissioner jayapal and uh khaliforn lad for joining us today uh to walk through the the reimagine oregon agenda um so i'll just start and it's always a little tricky in the virtual environment but um if you could hand it off to someone um after you've done just your introduction um that'll just help it go a little bit smoother so i'm andrew scott i'm a portland public schools board member um and this year's chair of the intergovernmental committee and welcome to everyone and uh i will pass it off to julia edwards thank you julia from edwards board member and committee member and i'm gonna pass it off to michelle de pass hi everyone michelle depass board member and just visiting tonight because it's an important topic thank you welcome to our guests hey pastor maria i'm so sorry i'm passing it to rita i i didn't follow director very well uh read a more board member and i will pass it on to courtney good evening everybody uh courtney wesling director of government relations for pps i already forgot the instructions sorry and i'll pass it off to stephanie good afternoon stephanie soden executive chief of staff here at pps welcome everybody and i will pass it off to um roseanne roseanne powell board manager and i'm going to pass it off to tay um tay i am the district i'm the representative on the district student council for jefferson and i'm a committee member and i pass it to parker hello i'm parker myros i've already sort of introduced myself um i represent benson on the district student council um and one of the student representatives to the intergovernmental affairs committee um i'll pass it to nathaniel i'm nathaniel schue i'm the student representative to the board of education i'm a senior at jefferson and i'll pass it to david good afternoon everyone david roy i am the senior director of communications for the district passing it to david you want to pass to uh how about terry why don't you go ahead so yes my colleague my communications colleague terry terry take it away cara you want to introduce yourself please hi i'm kara bradshaw and i'm the executive assistant to the board of education um and i will pass it to michael dembrow hi there i'm michael dambro i'm the senator for district 23 that's much of northeast and southeast portland and i chair the senate's committee on education and i will pass it on to commissioner jayapal good evening everyone i'm sushila jayapal multnomah county commissioner for district 2 which is north and northeast portland it's everything north of i-84 starts um with the st john's neighborhood to the northwest and then goes all the way out east northeast 186th and i'm very pleased to be here and i will pass it to kali hello i'm kali thornladd i am executive director of kairos pdx and i'm here tonight as one of a number of people that were involved in the reimagine oregon uh policy framework and the development of that it was truly a collective of several black lead organizations uh in our community and in oregon i would say that comprises if we imagine congress is just one of them great thank you and if i'm counting right we've got everyone except angela donnelly introduced she's the last panelist hi i'm angela donnelly i am the policy director for commissioner jayapal great well thank you for joining us so i will um turn it over to our guests so we can dive into this discussion
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about the reimagine oregon agenda specifically as it relates to education and schools and i know uh we as a board are very excited um to have this conversation so um i'm not sure who to turn it over to but but take it away all right all right so danny asked me to give an overview of reimagined so everyone was on the same page around what reimagine oregon is so i'm gonna start there and i i wanted to start with just a reminder around the black lives matter movement and that it's a movement anchored in humanity and black humanity specifically and for those of you who don't know the mission of black lives matter is they are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement we believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way we must move beyond the narrow nationalism that is too prevalent in black communities we must ensure we are building a movement that brings all of us to the front and i wanted to read that mission because i think in the media the message of black lives matter has often gotten lost and conflated with other things and so the centering of black humanity as part of the movement and an inclusive movement that involves all voices is important because reimagine oregon came out of the black lives matter protest movement it ceded the idea of how do we take what is happening on the ground to fight for black lives and bring it to the policy level and to our elected leaders at the table so um in the beginning of summer a collective of black pd's working across several sectors came together and began to establish reimagine oregon we pulled a lot from the palp people's plan as well as urban league state of black oregon plan but we also in our various areas of focus i of course uh being part of really sort of helping lead the education focus uh decided to also look at what was happening in several different educational spaces and bringing also some policy issue areas that were being talked about already in other policy spaces um reimagine talks about how it took over 400 years or 20 000 weeks to get to this point um but we are here and i think we believe that through intentional action in policy we can begin to change the narrative for black humanity here in oregon we were fortunate to have a number of meetings of which commissioner jayant paul uh and senator dembro participated we had the governor state legislative leaders tri-county commissioners from multnomah clackamas and washington county and from multnomah county i think we had steady participation from commissioner jayapal commissioner um myron and then the chair chair um kafori and uh and then we had some of our city elected leaders uh including uh mayor wheeler so uh we had a number of conversations where we were able to really isolate what are the policy areas that we want to focus on what's doable now what's doable in the future and what's doable sort of in the far future and we're here today to really focus on these are the things that this collective group we also i should say we had some of our federal delegates uh step in at times uh senator wyden and senator merkley uh and representative blumenhower was also uh involved a little behind the scenes and being briefed and his staff being engaged in this work so um we what i'm going to read to you today is sort of the overarching educational framework that was decided upon through this collective process and i would say there was a lot of intentionality to think through what can we feasibly do and focus on so it wasn't just high in the sky pie in the sky ideas there was also and i think commissioner diane paul and senator dembro can attest to that a level of accountability people saying i commit to this i commit to that and um we have things moving forward in the legislative space as well as the county space that we'll talk more about today but high level um eliminating uh in-school arrests and removing sros from schools was one item in the education space diversification and retention of the educator workforce wage parity for early childhood providers recognizing that many of our early learning caregivers are women of color um creating a list of culturally responsive and racially responsible contractors recognizing the role of cbo's in education and the fact that very few contractors coming out of the department of education uh are representative of the communities that are served in with children ending zero tolerance party policies ensuring and expanding affordable quality child care um doing a study on expansion expulsions as suspensions in pre-k
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specifically and ensuring all professionals throughout pre-k through grade 12 are getting trained in restorative practice and restorative justice and that's where we'll spend the bulk of the time today uh and then also um looking at how we support organizations and charters that are serving predominantly kids of color of course there's only two in the state that do so but um and portland has sort of been ahead of the curve of doing that uh with kairos um and then but we're looking at it from a statewide perspective and then all oregon districts um supporting some of the educational advancement councils uh initiatives and ensuring we have ethnic studies and that curriculum that is representative again that is telling the narrative that is untold around students of color is it accessible to schools throughout the state of oregon and that we are training our teachers to be able to deliver that curriculum the final thing and i would say probably the most um uh controversial perhaps is a conversation around state school fund dollars and the weights uh both for poverty and race and how we're ensuring that we're that the dollars that are serving our most underserved children are actually getting to them recognizing that we've had an achievement gap that hasn't budged throughout the state of oregon for many decades and that we have not looked at the state school funding formula since the 70s to really determine whether this distribution formula is the right formula to ensure that we're helping our children who are most vulnerable so um though and that's a big item reimagine oregon has this on their list but we're not the only people with that on the list and in fact the racial justice council that the governor put together the education committee of that has talked a lot about this this particular piece so those are the reimagine oregon areas i wanted to also bring up because we imagine it's not just focus on education there are other things such as legislative process there is an ask for racial impact statements and community advisory boards for all legislative processes uh that's just something worth noting because i think that's a governance issue and as a school board who governs it might be something that um we would think about in education as well but it was framed under the larger legislative process umbrella there was like seven different policy area buckets so with that i would like to turn it over i don't know if i should i can't remember who goes next so senator deborah our commissioner whoever wants to go next i think it's senator denver i'm nominating you senator okay thank you sheila um we were just in a meeting uh commissioner jayapal and i were she was the chair so i'm i'm still in obedience mode whatever you tell tell me to do comment um you think i think kelly really framed it up uh very well um you know there are you know many of us in the legislature who you know definitely heard uh the calls for justice that were being made out in the street and everyone was terrified that there would be a temporary listening to people's uh demands to people's needs to people's expectations and then uh you know as the months wore on uh it would just kind of fade away and once again we would have to start a lot of this work from scratch and so i'm very appreciative of what um uh the people who are organized reimagine oregon really appreciate um they're creating that framework to make it possible for us to really move forward in a structured way and i say that because there are at least a half a dozen bills that will come before the legislature as many as 10 uh coming out of the specific recommendations that uh kaleem uh mentioned uh and that you know in addition to that a number of other pieces of legislation coming out of uh other areas uh judiciary prison reform uh access to health care etc you know the the ten or so are just related to education um and i have a a whole list that uh i can send out uh after the meeting uh if you tell me who i should send it to uh courtney i can certainly send it to you and you can distribute it with the specific legislative concepts that are going to be introduced most of them will be committee bills coming out of the senate education committee one or two i think will be coming out of
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the house education committee and then some will be personal bills there's one directly related to restorative practice that senator lou frederick and i are co-sponsoring those will be personal bills and on the issue of restorative practice just next week monday morning the senate education committee will be meeting in public session and we're going to have a presentation on restorative practices in colorado schools that many of you may be interested in there's a colleague of mine in colorado pete lee senator pete lee who has been very active in uh moving their practice away from school resource officers and disciplinary practices that create a school school-to-prison pipeline replacing that with true restorative practice so he'll be there with us to talk about uh the process that they went through and then um they they have actually created a statewide restorative justice council and uh the um executive director of that council is going to be with us as well monday morning uh as will someone from the jefferson county public school district uh their manager of student discipline uh who's also a member of the colorado restorative justice council to talk about the changes that they have made in their practice which i think will be very helpful for us i'll just mention a couple of other pieces of legislation that i think will be a particular interest to portland public schools one is as as you may know a couple of sessions ago the legislature passed a statute requiring the creation of an ethnic studies curriculum to replace our current multicultural curriculum and the work on that new ethnic studies slash anti-racist anti-racism uh curriculum is being finalized right now and is going to be presented to the state board of education for final approval sometime this year and i will say that um they were doing pretty good work um before the pandemic it kind of went into a hiatus during the high and during the pandeca pandemic is so much has but they um once the events the the racial justice demands began in the spring they went back hard to work and i think they've done really good work the challenge that we face though is that whenever you change state standards some of you may know this uh it's a very long process districts um our districts want to have a very long uh transition period before they move from one standard to another so this new i think very relevant and and you know high quality anti-racism curriculum won't be mandatory in the schools until the 2025-26 academic year which you know is from my perspective really too long to wait and so i'm working on ways to allow districts to opt in early if they feel they can you know do the curriculum development the textbook selection uh and uh yeah the professional development that's necessary we do have a bill that is giving the educator advancement council money to do uh curriculum development around ethnic studies i don't you know i don't know how it's going to do from a funding perspective but i think it's really important and and i will say uh you know just in closing that um you know a real priority for many of us is uh diversifying our educator workforce and you will see legislative action around that um at this point a lot of it is just kind of placeholder we're not yet uh at the point of having concrete proposals uh but it's a real priority for me i think it's a real priority for many of us and i just want to say i'm really open to any uh any advice any proposals uh
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any uh yeah any um participation that you'd like to give so i'll end it there i'm open you know for any questions of course maybe i'll i'll go ahead and and jump in and just just add a little bit about the county's participation reimagine oregon um you know we as as paulie mentioned we have been participating in it from the beginning and i want to echo senator dembrow's appreciation of the work that this group has done it really has been um a phenomenal effort and body of work and i too think that the structure that reimagined oregon has set up allows us to make sure that the work lasts beyond a couple of months you know even half a year even a year and that accountability piece that khalid talked about that was very intentional and i think that's really important and so i'll give you know i'd like to sort of lay out what that looked like um reimagine oregon had created this very broad and comprehensive set of policy agendas and each of us as representing our jurisdictions committed to pieces of that agenda and committed to time frames within which we would try to move that agenda forward and at each successive meeting we reported back on how that was going and i imagine that that's going to continue the meeting frequency is slowed down but it's going to continue and and that was a really important um sort of collective commitment we all listen to each other make those commitments and so it was sort of a collective community commitment to this incredibly important agenda as colleen mentioned the chair sharon myron and myself were at each of the meetings we started and committed early because i think as it's true with the district we really saw the see this work as so completely aligned with work that we were and are already doing around racial justice and racial equity and at the same time it gave all of the rest of that work whether or not directly related to education or any of the policy items an extra sense of urgency and impetus that i think allows those of us who are advocating for it to do that with renewed energy and reduce success so um we have seen it all along as as part of our mission completely aligned with our mission vision and values it fits into work that we're doing that's not necessarily education related but i think that work provides a scaffolding so i just want to touch on a couple of pieces of that sort of background work and that is work around our workforce equity strategic plan its work around our covet response which has been very intentional from the beginning to focus on racial equity leading with race um and then reimagining our public safety system and this is a place where there's a lot of crossover obviously between the work of reimagine oregon and what we're doing at the county so that's some of the scaffolding and then you know i think why i'm here at this meeting today is because of the alignment with the education agenda um and with our our strong desire and commitment to partner with pps and with other districts on the broader education agenda including the pieces that senator denver talked about but then more specifically around the restorative practice and restorative justice component of the agenda again that was something that we committed to early um you know i think that we are in alignment around our commitment to those practices i know that there's a lot of work already happening at pbs around those practices there's some work happening at the county and we really see this effort as a way to to work together um to align to build and to partner around embedding restorative practice and restorative justice in both our systems so that's that that again that that's why i'm here at this meeting today is just to say we are so we are completely committed to reimagine oregon and we're very committed to this restorative practice piece and and the particular place where i think we all realize that happens is our sun school services the fact that we work with pps and other districts on those sun school services we have shared service partners and so when we talk about embedding practices in those shared service partners it makes complete sense to be working together to do that so um that's uh that's that's my my quick summary of the county's role both in the overall project and in the in the work that's uh the education related work uh thank you so much guests um for speaking and um kali i know you touched on this but um you did mention that the two plans that have kind of gone into the creation of reimagine oregon are the urban leagues um 2015 state of black oregon and the other plan is the house people's plan the pulse people's plan which
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which both had policy demands have both been published and so the idea was like the community has already spoken in terms of what is needed and what's great about the reimagine oregon plan is that it has assigned jurisdictional accountability where the other the other plans i think didn't do that and so it was harder to resource those demands i really like that we've been assigned as portland public schools some accountability the city of portland and uh and multnomah county and at the state level is is fantastic um i also want to say i'm really happy to see that the city um was assigned a piece of accountability because right now they don't currently have um someone that's involved with education issues but that could be a really interesting piece to include and the city um should be vested in the the inputs that are going to our system and the outputs and the students that we turn out and so i'm hoping that as a result of this work that we can see some kind of renewed commitment new commitment to focusing on on you know pre-k all the way through college commitment to getting getting our community members especially those marginalized community members educated so thank you very much director scott if i may please please do the superintendent good evening everyone i didn't get a chance to say that i was stuck in the holding tank uh but i did hear your whole intro khalees so i appreciated the the context and and and the setup here on arriving at a really well organized set of priorities that are hard not to get behind uh and i'm glad that we're we're starting to to make some inroads there and certainly um sia funds have uh assisted us with placing a bigger focus on social emotional supports and cultural responsiveness and our bond will certainly provide for the kind of refreshed curriculum uh we're excited about our ethnic studies work and we hope to be a real leader in the state on that and but we have a journey ahead of us in doing this uh senator dembro i appreciate you sort of lending your support to educator equity uh i was studying the 2020 educator advancement council's educator equity report last night and once again what what stands out very obviously is uh and i know everybody knows this our teaching forces doesn't come anywhere near close of being representative of the demographic that that we're serving and i think a lot of the relationships between our adults and students and the cultural responsiveness and all the rest uh can help be alleviated when when there's people of color educators of color leaders of color and there's a massive gap there so the workforce diversity efforts um the grow your own programming the alternative pathways and i know we're in constant conversations with the higher eds with tsbc with ode and there's a lot of interest in making sure that we're supporting and incentivizing talented prospective educators to join the ranks because our our students really do uh need to see their presence uh in all of our schools um and not just our students of color so i appreciate the the prospectus here i think it's an important one uh it is fundamentally about better understanding our community our students and our families um so we're not causing harm and we can minimize the need for restorative justice and are said thinking about what a meaningful relationship you know looks like uh with our diverse communities of colors i'm hearing a little bit more about um how this this this agenda's emerged cheers please go ahead um first i want to thank um all the panelists for coming today and sharing um your work and when i um listen to the agenda and then look through the proposals that have been outlined i see a lot of alignment with the values and the mission of in the strategic planning that has happened at pbs and so um i think it is only natural for us um to look at when you look at the education proposals that are part of it and um see how we can work together it's a question for you all is um do you have a specific ask of the district um as we head into the legislative session or a way in which we can effectively partner with you on the education items in the agenda and that that's where at least the
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legislative proposals and then i'm interested um on in terms of the sun schools and the work there um where you see um the integration and alignment happening between in this case pps in the county do kali or senator denver do you want to start with a legislative piece first and then we'll narrow it down yeah i'm happy to start you know we could certainly use your help with your colleagues and the school boards association and uh cosa the coalition of school administrators uh it is true that a lot of what's being proposed here um pps is is to some extent already doing uh could do more definitely um but there will be some resistance from other districts about what we're proposing um you know just i mentioned the challenge of shifting to a new curriculum right which uh this ethnic studies curriculum well you know i think it's obviously i think every all of us here would agree is extremely important um in some parts of the state it's seen as unnecessary and just another another piece of work that they have to go through and they're just getting used to the current standards they don't want to have to change and so you know your help with your colleagues there i think would be very useful and and also as well uh you know considering if we can figure out ways uh to have you be early adopters of the new standard you know i think that would be great you know to use the district almost as a pilot and to do some of the early curriculum development work around it i think would be very helpful and some professional development models even um so those are things that come immediately to mind um i would just add i um there are um as senator denbroe mentioned um representative um alonzo leon has a few bills as well as uh speaker kotec and so just keeping abreast of what's happening i think all of the associations including oea and having just support for these is important i think hearing from teachers and administrators within pps and and understanding why equity and diversity is important i think to the senator's point um some of this does challenge status quo and the more voices we have from educators the the better um and i think there's obviously a lot of community members that support it but hearing from the education the teachers and the teachers aides and all you know the people that are willing to speak i think will be very important so in terms of the more specific restorative justice restorative practice piece um you know i think what i would say is it the conversation is at a really early stage so we have pulled together a small group it's been michael and khali danny myself and michelle to start thinking about what a partnership around restorative justice and restorative practice looks like with the understanding all of us that this isn't something that you simply mandate and plop into a context so what we've very nascently talked about is starting with some sort of shared learning about what what effective restorative practice looks like for our kids in our schools and in others our other systems and i'll mention that for the county where you know there are other other places in which we serve young people and so juvenile justice is another place it's the other end of the pipeline that we want to that we want to break um and and so as we're thinking about it we're thinking about it in that sense as well so i would say in terms of the ask for tonight it's really just an introduction of the concept and then and then to ask for your your shared commitment and um you know interest in in participating in moving this forward if i can just add uh one more thing i didn't mention this it may be obvious but the the focus on the educational uh piece within reimagine really was about the pipeline to prison and uh the commissioner mentioning that i just reminded me that is that is what all of the policies were about how do we end the pipeline to prison for our youth and so um i i also happen to have had um it was more of an early learning briefing with the governor prior to this call but we talked about the k-12 budget i know that there are dollars for um just anti-racism work professional development and so we're working with her to try to have
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more language around restorative practice specifically in the dollars that she has set aside for racial equity work um you know this is the governor's first pass of the budget things change but we're trying to be consistent in the language we use and we at we imagine have worked with um sort of the chalkboard and stand advocacy group who has a similar set but not the same set of policy objectives and both amanda and i have testified amanda from chalkboard and i have testified before the senate and house ed committees so that there is alignment between what you see in policy and advocacy work here in our community can i ask a question um as i've been listening it occurs to me that there are um there is some work some related work that's going on and i'm wondering if um if anybody has reached out to either mesd which is coordinating it's a relatively new effort to coordinate um diversity equity and inclusion practices across school districts within multnomah county so it's not just pps it it covers all of the um the districts in the county um and the other the other thing is the regional educator network which is focused on it's in multnomah county and clackamas and um it's focused on trying to develop mechanisms to diversify the educated workforce um so i'm wondering if if there's been any effort to reach out to those two groups um yet i mean i'm sure you're reaching out to all kinds of people and they're not yet there's always more phone calls to make um but i'm just wondering because um we have contacts within those two groups so if you haven't already reached out i mean maybe we could serve as a conduit yeah i think that would be great rita um you know uh i've been working with the sort of statewide educator advancement council of which this you know the local network that they have these local networks that are um you know that are part of that but i haven't actually you know spoken to people doing the work on the ground and uh i think that would be very helpful i agree and and with the mesd um yeah actually i just got off a call uh that there they they just had a um a meeting having to do with child care and uh diversity challenges in child care uh which um kelly may should have been part of except uh the part that that she would have appeared on is happening right now so you know at the tail end um but yes no very important and you know i know mesd is also involved in um the youth prison program you know the donald e long educating there they're having a lot of problems there i have to say and that we're trying to get resolved but obviously the ultimate solution is to keep kids out of donald e long to the extent possible and that's what a lot of this work is all about so if i can just follow up a bit um so i i am i am a delegate to both of those groups that i mentioned um so i would be happy to to serve as a kind of liaison um in order for me to do that effectively it would be helpful to know what it is um like what's the ask um and what's the information that i should be um you know liaising on um so anyway if if i could connect with somebody i don't know maybe sushila uh if if i could get some direction about what i could usefully do to advance the cause it would be helpful sure yes uh would be happy to talk about that i mean you know i think in terms of the restorative justice sort of practice piece um what we've talked about in our little group is basically this conversation who else needs to be part of that discussion and um given mesd's connection with again both sides of the pipeline i think it makes complete sense for them to be involved i think with respect to legislative pieces probably senator
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dembrow is your is your contact um i don't i don't right michael yeah i i would definitely like to talk to you rita about the um diversifying the workforce effort so one of the most exciting things i think about the reimagine oregon agenda is the accountability which which all of you have mentioned and um you know i i know i know through my day job um there were some of those early meetings um where elected officials were um invited and and there was and tasked with with with making progress on this um it's had a real impact and and i know you know at metro as a result of that we've formed um you know internal working groups right to sort of look at the items that that metro was tasked with and and and it's it's becoming embedded in in sort of the structure of our of our operational work that it's that that accountability the timeline uh the outcomes right when are we going to achieve things it also frankly empowered um a lot of our black employees um to come forward with their own list of ways to sort of reimagine oregon or reimagine metro um and and there's a synergy there which has been kind of exciting to watch right as as this this community-led um effort has has sort of spread in a really positive way on the one hand i'm always reluctant um you know to to to task the district with with more work um there's a lot going on in pandemic and distance learning etc but but i also know that um getting back to what you all said the way we make progress is by holding people accountable right it's by setting very concrete um outcomes and goals and timelines and then having that follow-up so it's not just a um it would be really great to work on this when we get around to it it's a no no we really want to see something within one month or six months or or or a year and i guess um i'm putting this out there i don't i don't um have an end point for this comment but it's more of a question of what can we do as a school board um to to bring some of that same um um some of that same accountability and timelines that i think you've successfully um done with other local governments right and and i appreciate the fact that that pps you know really is leading on a lot of these things um but as the superintendent i know would agree there's there's still much more we can do and and i think we want to be um pushing the envelope on this and we want to be a district that's out there um really leading and so i i'm just i'm thinking about ways that that we can set for ourselves working with you what are some of those concrete goals what are some of the timelines and then hopefully that that that continues to become part of our um overall culture as as well moving forward i would like to take it back to the committee i don't have something at the ready uh you know education's a lot different and that there are so many players and when we had talked about we did have a conversation about do we have school boards at the meetings but because we're a tri-county thing that involves many school boards many people and it was a very tedious task of like literally going through each item and people saying what they were going to do so education has so much more breadth i think to it than some of the other areas um i would like to and that's why it made sense to start with the large district i think michelle um sort of stepped up and said how can we do something at pps and so um we don't have all the districts that we've talked to uh in the same way but i think we can be thoughtful i just because it's a collective effort i don't want to say you should do this and then talk to some of my colleagues and they're like oh so i'd like to bring that back um i think this conversation for me was framed as just an overview and a first conversation and then i think there are future conversations to be had where we get down to details like timelines great and i appreciate you asking too well and and and i think that yeah let's make sure we continue that conversation and and i think you've got a very supportive board i know you have a very supportive superintendent and leadership um and so i think we want to do what we can to do our part um and and really really be pushing this forward so um final comments either from from committee members uh or or our um guests director brian edwards did you have something i did um i'm wondering if in the discussion there um whether there's any discussion about the concept of mandates um which often in a state that [Music] has historically been local control that sometimes to make fundamental changes to the status quo um the state has had to mandate things and i'm wondering
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um if there was a point of view among the committee about um how to move pieces of the a broader agenda forward that may be contrary to you know or dislodging the status quo yeah there are many conversations maybe a flavor um like here here's a place where we you know are supportive or here's what we're not or um i don't know if i understand the question so you're saying what were the yeah i'm just curious about the um the context because they're definitely among many school board members um and osba of um we don't want um mandates um from the state about how because we're a state that values local controls um of of school districts whether it's curriculum or you know how you provide you know safe schools or you know a whole host of issues that look that usually that's been decided by the local school board so i'm just interested in if there was a discussion about that um and what a high level senator dimbro yeah i mean you know i think julia you know well that uh issues like this become you know really subjects of debate in the legislature you know and part of the political push pull uh definitely and and this issue in addition will take on the cast of an urban versus rural uh you know kind of uh it'll take on that flavor there will be people uh who don't want um you know they don't want mandates and they will say that this is something coming from the urban districts uh because that's where the people of color are and uh and you're forcing us to put curriculum about racism but we don't have you know we don't have people of color here and so it's not an issue for us so why are you telling us what we have to be teaching and you know that is you know from my perspective wrong on so many levels uh including the fact that many of those districts have substantial numbers of children of color uh in their among their students and um but that will be definitely part of the debate and it will a lot of it will get couched in that language of no unfunded mandates or even if they're funded we don't want them no uh it should not be a top-down decision and i think you know especially right now you see it happening in terms of people's reaction to covert response you know covet action i mean that this is something we do need to be prepared for and so i think i think it's really important that you raised it uh julia because it needs to be front and center in our planning for what this work is going to be like if i can just underline this point uh today and tomorrow uh is happening the oregon school law conference so i was in a session this morning with my fellow superintendents and attorneys from school districts across the state and a big topic of the conversation was exactly what you're describing senator dembrow is folks are finding it problematic or difficult to adopt a very outward uh facing statement around racial equity around ethnic studies around prioritizing workforce diversity around and so it's disheartening it's a little alarming in 2020 that we're still having to debate it um or or the place that black lives matter has in public education so it's it's definitely the reality and so to director brim edwards point is you know how do we how do we address and confront that what role do we play uh at a minimum demonstrating what it can look like and how it better serves a diverse student population um but how do we help our colleagues along yeah and and and that really is the key um you know i think we have just just looking at sort of raw politics we probably have the votes to pass a lot of this legislation i think you know just looking at my colleagues who are in the majority they're very sympathetic to the goals of reimagine oregon um but again
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if you know if the minority in this case the political minority you know feel that this is being shoved downwards as it were it's it's it's not going to be successful in the long run and so we really have to figure out yeah how to talk about this how to how to put it out there uh you know in a way that you know where we're we're using data for example you know to show disparate impacts this is not just rhetoric this is you know the the you know the data supports the need these changes uh that just is an example of you know having to figure out just how to talk about this and how to because ultimately the question becomes what does success look like here and success can't just be passing a bill it's got to be more than that and i think that you know the i will spend the list of policy uh issue areas so you can have it in front of you because it's a lot more detailed than what you see on the website and there is an amalgam of areas where we're asking for a mandate versus you know just a policy adjustment i think the zero tolerance and the uh eliminating in school arrests those are more of the mandates that are out there and i know that uh senator denver and i were talking earlier about the fact that the removal of sros is a mandate that we're asking for that not every district feels should be a mandate uh some people really like their sros so there is a handful but it's not every demand uh it really varies um i would say that the teacher there is there will be a bill focused on retaining teachers of color during contract negotiations and there is support from um some of the uh associations on this uh so i don't know i don't know that it would be i don't know if it's framed as a mandate i would assume it is it's we're essentially saying when you're making decisions about layoffs you need to prioritize our teachers of color um not just seniority uh but i don't know you know that will be controversial as well but as i said there's a lot of people behind not just reimagine but there are other advocacy groups focused on some of these areas so it's um i think it's more broad based than one might think i just want to remind everybody here that you know this is this is the good trouble that that we should be getting into um had had had had advocates not pushed for change from the status quo you know women wouldn't be have won the right to vote you know black people wouldn't have had one to write the vote you know i'm sure that made lawyers nervous and it disrupted the status quo and here we are so um i i do appreciate senator dembero your framing of you know bringing this rural urban divide i think it's important how we talk about these things we we want to get as much buy-in as possible um you know i'm willing to do that that nuanced work um in terms of talking about this but we we do i feel need we do need to stay strong and steady in terms of our asks and um it's really great to know that people on the call are kind of all pulling in the same direction thanks again from um watching the legis uh for several decades watching the legislature i find that those things that that stick and that are sustainable and that have widespread enduring impact are those in which um you don't often you don't win it on a on a strictly partisan vote so winning the hearts and minds um of either sort of uh whether it's rural and or an urban or um by a in a bipartisan way um just creates better better lasting change i think it's a worthy goal not just not just to win it um with with the margin that that you already have but also um i think the opportunity to um speak to those that may initially be not supportive and bring them along creates a better a better change thanks thanks for the insights on the discussions um i wanted to ask quickly if any of our student representatives had any thoughts or feedback um dubai or tay or nathaniel or parker i'd i just like to say that um from a student's perspective uh hearing hearing these goals um really concretely laid out um and and seeing the push um is it's uh it's inspiring and i think it's something that particularly the
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students uh of color and pps will will really value um you know retaining uh teachers of color um that's that's a point that's brought up um again and again as something of the utmost importance um and and really seeing uh you know yourself mirrored in any leadership position is is really um of the utmost importance and i think that uh you know the goals prioritized in um reimagine oregon are are really in line um with with the values um and and with the the hope uh that we have moving forward um but i don't i don't have any specific questions but thanks uh thanks for uh coming and and uh giving uh giving us this update um or this this insight um and uh i i look forward to um possibly working with it uh in in the future and in in seeing what happens thank you chair scott i actually have to go to a 5 30 meeting yes thank you no and and let me just i'll just wrap up um thanks again for um uh listen tonight and and you welcome back to this committee anytime that we need to have further conversations and i did want to let you know if you didn't we are um taking a step tonight um small one but i think important as part of our legislative agenda for pps one of our um uh uh one of our agenda or one of our items on that agenda is pbs will support and advocate for the reimagine oregon educational policy agenda so that'll go to the board um uh in a couple weeks um for formal adoption so i'm i'm excited about that so um so we are gonna transition into that our guests are welcome to stay you want to listen to the conversation about our legislative agenda but i understand you may have other things to do as well so thanks again for your time thank you thanks everyone thank you very much thank you for joining us nice to see you so um yeah more to come on that conversation because it's a really important one and i think there's lots um for the district to do um and and i think that is a good transition into our legislative agenda which is some of the things we just talked about and some of those principles um we've discussed this legislative agenda in draft form and and courtney provided it um a while uh back at least i think a week or two ago um to folks to take sort of a final look at um what our goal today is just any any final questions um you know or concerns about our legislative agenda and then um this committee will take a vote um to recommend to the board adoption of this legislative agenda and it is scheduled to come back at our next board meeting um i am actually going to have one suggested change um but um um well why don't i'll go ahead and throw that out there and then open it up to to other board members courtney did you have anything before yeah so two things one is i clarified the uh this um sorry all my acronyms are muddled right now uh state school fun not student success act i clarified the number i went into the document i talked to claire about the advocacy number that she's been working on with osbo um obviously the governor's budget has 9.1 billion for the state school fund which we know is not enough and she has publicly admitted to that um but and that has a lot to do with a lot of things but the osbo claire number is 9.7 so that's the number i am putting in our agenda if that's okay with you and um and that is a you know it's a big number but we have to we have to set our expectations high and um and i think that's the way to do it oh and i had one other thing um in the draft that you have the second draft kind of closer to final draft rita had suggested some language on i-5 and i just wanted to maybe discuss that a little bit i like it but i i'm concerned that we don't want to over promise what we're capable of in the legislature with you know we can't and we can't stop the i5 project but we can come up with ways to advocate to make it work better for our school and so i just want to maybe clarify that language okay courtney do we have that language it's in the document that roseanne shared is is it the one that's posted the one that's in board books should be what what um not in the one that was posted okay um well i can tell you it and we can i can also email it around i wonder roseanne if maybe because it was an ad it didn't get included because it wasn't accepted is that probably what happened that's probably that's my guess it's nobody's fault i'm sorry i should have accepted it in the into the final um it happened yeah okay so i'll just so oh sorry courtney i thought you were done go ahead i was just going to suggest i
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could i could email that language to you real quick yeah maybe email it and drop it in the chat um or we're not allowed to do it i don't think we have a chat okay or put it up on the screen or something people say you send it around and copy cara and myself and we'll get it loaded is it something stand alone like a stand-alone bullet courtney or is it embedded and is it to be embedded in something it's a i can pull it out as a standalone bullet for you all to review i can also send the working document that i have what i've been leery of doing is sharing the working document so that we're all in there i don't think that's a good way to finalize this if and that's no offense to anyone i just we might be here all night because we'll all want to get in there so um i'll send it i'll send it around please don't do that and i'll share the bowl separately if are you suggesting that just back to the funding that in that first bullet point under funding system shifts that that we would advocate for a 9.7 billion dollar investment that is what so what is that percentage increase i don't know the percentage increase i haven't done that math yet and i don't actually think that part's that important i was actually going to suggest we take that part out but the 9.7 is the this is the biennial um conversation that happens or among state business officers or school business officers where they have to kind of come up with the real current service level number that that's never the same as what the governor puts forward because of lfo's decision to always mess up the 51 49 split so um and i'm i'm editorializing because many of you have and i'm i think it's a it's a known problem um the osvo folks that claire is a part of they um they go through this exercise every time we see a governor's budget to come up with that number and her number is 9.7 their number is 9.7 so i suggest that we include that we go big i don't think we're gonna i'm gonna be honest i don't think we're gonna get to 9.7 unless you know we get a lot of federal help and there's a way to you know we can manage to get to that number but i think you know if we don't if we don't put it high we won't come close if that makes sense yeah i guess i i'd be interested how big of an increase is that and then looking at the trend line because um it seems like we just had a major investment through the student success act and so [Music] it's like um what what is that number based on is that individual district roll-ups and that's you know based on you know decisions that were made about salary and benefits or is it is it based on something else i guess um [Music] i'm just concerned like being able to rationalize i guess i'm interested being able to rationalize what that that number so if you're asked telling legislators yeah we need 97 just really quickly i mean maybe maybe one i mean i guess my question would be if if uh tying it to the osbo number seems like it makes sense because again there's a group that's done the thinking around that to sort of put it in if if we aren't going to tie it to that i i would question what we would tie it to right what what what an alternative number would be so so i mean i would be comfortable if if that is the number that sort of sort of came out of that group um that seems like anything changes between now and the full board vote on this i'll make sure you know i just got that number from claire this afternoon so it's possible that it could change but i don't think that it will um but i don't want to say that it's final final because i haven't seen anything formally yeah yeah courtney what would be helpful between now and the um when when the board acts on it is to get whatever the background um information that because the the typical pushback sometimes is like yeah what is that based on that's just an artificial number it never goes down it's always increasing you guys just got the student success act funding so you know being able to anchor it in data or whatever um whatever their structure or formula was that led them to that number would be super helpful to have visibility to yeah i'll definitely get you the rationale and the data behind it as soon as i can get it from claire and angie peterman at the at oasbo so can i ask a question how much of that is um how much of the discrepancy is grounded in the current methodology to determine the current service level and maybe we can i mean if it
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if that accounts for a lot of it then maybe instead of um coming up with a a dollar figure maybe we want to include um an item that we will advocate for a revision of the the methodology to arrive at the csl yeah yeah i don't know the answer rita but but i can find out from from all those folks cheers yes go ahead um two other one is just a small wording piece i of course like to see the rose quarter but in the school reopening comprehensive distance learning the third bullet um it talks about pps supports measures that alleviate the child care burden on families um and i think i know what that means but i don't actually think that we that somehow with the way it's phrased um i don't think it's explicit like what what are we asking the the legislature do what what implications does that have it's just it's it's to me it's it's vague um and then i had one other um just when i just lost the document i have one other place and just uh relevant to the discussion we were just having with our guests there is a um a bullet that talks about uh uh pbs opposes budgetary carve outs for mandated uses and unfunded mandates and i would recommend we strike we strike that because i think we're going to be selective in the things that we the mandates that we oppose or support and we have lots of budgetary carve outs some are good some are bad right that okay that's at the bottom of page one yeah and i think that was a carryover from last time so um there's not a new rationale for including that it was a carryover and then do we have the language on the rose quarter get circulated yeah uh um courtney has sent the document around so maybe if folks could open that and and we we can look at that um really quickly before we move on updated in the board materials book it's also updated okay um before we move on to that though let's let's let's have some discussion about these i want to i want to sort of discuss each one as as we go um so i think the funding number we're going to get some background information um around the the rationale and that um the child care bullet there's a question of is is there more um definition we could put around that or more specifics yeah we can um so one of the things that's been percolating um lately and i think senator dembro alluded to a child care meeting that mesd hosted earlier and i was um on it as long as i could be but the issue that i've been hearing a lot about is through nancy and emily is around the um uh erdc and the way that that subsidy is approved for families and that there are some problems under the under the current scenario where we have underemployed families or unemployed parents who can't qualify for erdc under the employment rules of that funding and so they get nothing and so we are under enrolled in our child care slots for example right now in our pps slots that we have made available are not full and a lot of it is because there's no erdc some families that may be under normal circle under when not in covid might have qualified but because of some of the circumstances around the pandemic they now are being denied and so it's pretty technical and that was kind of what was on my mind when i included that and i didn't go into great detail because i wanted to keep it broad in case there were other child care related items but that's one in particular and i'm not sure yet if it has a legislative solution or if it's going to be something that we can do at a administrative level but i didn't want to lose sight of it because i think it's important since we are you know you would think that if we have only 300 slots available for child care in our system that they would be full because parents are pretty desperate so um i just wanted to raise that it's it's a tricky one and it doesn't just affect us although we have the um child care initiative through the portland children's levy that makes up for some families subsidies so they if they are getting erdc and then they get the child care
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initiative they're full they're made whole and they can they can do it but with one or the other some families can't afford the difference and then with none they're you know trying to support their kids distance learning try to look for a job you know all at the same time which is untenable so i'm i'm supportive generally of doing something around here or having a um a line item on on child care i just i think what a legislator would ask is like so how does this translate into what i'm doing so if there's some way courtney that we can translate the issue issue that you presented into what is the legislative action that we're asking would be helpful because it otherwise is like is it access is it more slots is it the cost but if we have something specific it would be great to have it um defined in what the legislative action is yeah and apologies for not doing that sooner i i put it in as a placeholder earlier on and then um i didn't go back and and make it more specific so i can do that okay so we'll add a little bit more language there and then does everyone have the revised version um there's a bullet um oh wait i had it um oh no sorry now see i'm in the wrong version oh do you want me to read it while you're catching yeah yeah go ahead okay so the language that rita added and rita i'm i'm very happy that you added it i just want to make sure we're saying it the right way pps will advocate oops i lost it there we go pps will advocate for revisions to odot's rose quarter expansion plans to protect student safety and respond to the albino community's restorative vision yeah i'm really glad uh rita you raise this i would have just a slight i don't know if people are looking at the document that this is a okay but the language that um we potentially had asked the um executive steering committee to adopt was you know air quality on the grounds of harriet tubman middle school and adjacent lives albino park is at a level that medical and health professionals find is safe for children and youth so there's probably just a few words we could add to rita's language that um sets a sort of help air quality health standard um because what odot will say is their project could make a improve air quality but it but the reality is it's an immaterial amount julia do you think that's captured by the student safety abroad or do you think there's value in having something more specific i'm thinking there's just another clause right after student safety it says something like enhance um air quality pardon metrics or do we want to i i think it's i think air quality is a subset of student safety and i think as the proposal shifts there might be other ways where we may consider that student safety could be compromised and i think we we can keep it broad well i think we can say student safety and they come in enhance air quality comma and respond to the albino community's restorative vision that's a broad enough framework um because director constance uh comment there is some there is also student safety issues on the when they're actually do if they were actually doing the construction while we have students in the school and just the sort of air and noise and whole um the hillside stability um but i'd want to add something in on air quality because that is sort of a key issue that's not going away and it's likely to get worse okay so yeah so as it stands uh i just want to make sure we're reading everything aloud here so that people watching can follow so um so the bullet would be pps will advocate for revisions to odot's i5 rose quarter improvement project plans to protect student safety comma enhance air quality comma and respond to the albino community's restorative vision um i don't have any objections there does do do any of the either committee or board members i think that sounds like it may be just because it's standing alone as a clause but i think that sounds like we have a legislative priority of enhancing air quality on its own which i think is a bit
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far-field from our mission i don't think it doesn't sound it doesn't sound like it's referring to um i mean i'm fine with student safety and i just think we should be careful that we're not getting uh overreaching here because when things get deluded they lose value in my opinion well the student safety um piece they both relate to harriet tubman's middle school so we could just be um pretty explicit you could be directed to all out the school right and in all the meetings that you and i have been in julia um you know that's been our uh sorry director brim edwards um that's been our main point which is you know making sure that the students and community around here at tubman middle school are safe and healthy and that has been an ongoing challenge to you know get them to respond to any of our requests over time um so being direct about which what school we're talking about i think makes sense and won't be a surprise um i like that too and i like the focus on air quality but with the freeway it's hard to to put bounds around it i also i i don't know if pile driving is going to be happening i know there's going to be some soil stabilization probably but if there's any pile driving it would be great to look at the hours at which those are that's happening it's very disruptive on on so many endocrine and other body systems okay so i think just a copy edit um this might respond to director constance concerns um so uh plans to protect student safety comma including improved air quality comma and respond to albino the albino communities restore division that kind of clarifies that we're talking we're sort of delimiting the air quality issue to the tubman area that works for me i'm sorry would you mind just reading that again um i i'm just suggesting basically putting it including um before the air quality thing that sounds good including improved or enhanced air quality okay so it sounds like we've got consensus on that bullet any other comments there so again funding number we'll get more background child care um a little more um clarity um i think we've got consensus here i do have i do have one and i'll go ahead and say it out loud and see if i can drop it into the document as well um give me just wow i've got a lot of screens open so as i was um going through this one final time and i apologize that i didn't get it around earlier down under the school um reopening i realized we didn't have anything really about schools reopening so um i can folks see that um the uh so i'm suggesting a bullet that says pps supports and will advocate for all legislative med let's just say legislative measures um pbs supports and will advocate for legislative measures that help get children back into the classroom as soon as it is safe to do so and i i think that's a pretty broad statement um the the variable of safe um i think you know obviously there's a lot of different definitions around that um so it'd be some conversations but i i felt like it's important for the district to state that getting students back in school is a legislative priority and whether that's um additional funding from the state for um ppe whether it's getting teachers higher up on the vaccine list whether it's you know getting uh funding from the state or federal government for space that might help us you know um reopen more quickly that that it felt like a value that was worth stating in our legislative agenda so i i agree i would change um swap in students for children and then i would put it at the top um when we lead with liability protections that's such an adult centered um i'm not dismissing it but it's an adult centered like focus versus um the the bullet point that you just offered and that i mean just a general question the is there a particular reason why some words are bolded i think i was trying to highlight the topic and then i didn't i wasn't consistent so no there's not and i will change it i completely agree that that should be in there and julia i agree that um we don't want to lead with liability
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but i completely agree that we kind of we kind of buried the lead or missed the lead great other thoughts or comments on that okay other thoughts or comments overall on the legislative agenda so i added um under the funding um i i put in some language around csl um that we could um i mean use either in addition to an actual number or instead of an actual number around revised rita we're going to put you know we're going to put this on your tombstone well current service level is a lie it is can i can i just ask you do not disagree this is a little bit of an ignorant question is there currently a formula or is this something that state economists or the oregon department of education sort of sort of sort of craft themselves is there actually a formula in statute uh i don't believe there is it's a i i think it's yeah i don't think it's a statutory formula i think it's okay maybe it's not a legislative fix maybe it's well the reason why i raise it because this is a this is a an endemic issue in in public sector budgeting and um i i guess what i'm what i'm worried about is is um so it just so the city of portland right had the same uh argument that that and i was the bad guy there where we would come out with current service levels every year and our uh bureaus would say what are you talking about i can't do the same service so after hearing that for a number of years we just changed it and called the current appropriation level um so the numbers didn't change right but we just changed the the the the wording around it which was more accurate because it wasn't a current service level it was simply what you're going to get and i just i i wonder i i wonder if this is really the key i mean the really the key issue here is is can we set these formulas so that we actually get enough to provide the same level of service um i i think to to be really blunt you're going to get a lot of pushback um because some people are going to look and say well the only reason why it's not a current service level for pps is because your cost structure is too high we could then go back and say well no it's because we have more expensive students or other things right that play into that but it gets it into a pretty weedy conversation pretty quickly okay so can i just mention um i mean i don't disagree with anything you said um but it's this is not unique to pps um there are quite a few school districts that run into this um every year or every biennium and it has been a pretty significant topic of conversation within osba um it's one of those things that is you know when they're talking about the legislative agenda for osba it's it's typically not written as a bullet point but it's always in the explanatory materials um so and this has been as as i understand it um the last couple of years this has been an actual thing like there's been actual discussions yeah that is that is helpful background i have no opposition to this language so at all i think it's it's it's um yeah no it's it's fine and that's useful background i wonder if we could collapse the bullets does it make sense to collapse those two bullets since they're really closely related and and say this is the number we're going to advocate for after we of course get the data and the rationale behind it and make sure we're good with it and then add you know and and rita's language about the csl which you're right it's an administrative problem problem but it's pretty public one these days and um it's been that way for the last few bienniums okay um good i'm i'm i'm fine with that um we are coming up on time and and i two things i want to make sure that we're not going to lose any committee members but we also have someone who signed up for public testimony um that i want to make sure that there's an opportunity for that um before going over too much and we have one more item um uh which is to adopt the osba um i don't even know what we call it the their legislative policies um so any other final comments on this and there will be an opportunity at the board for the entire board to have a conversation and again if any final changes need to be made but anything else before we take action here hey i have one quick question and i can bring it up with the full board but we might get a little head start here which is that um we have in the past talked about thinking about some kind of legislative activism around um the arbitration process similar to sort of what we did with the
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white horse recommendations and tspc reform and i i apologize i wasn't tracking how when exactly this legislative agenda was coming to the full board so it would have been helpful to do this before but did you guys have any any discussion on that i don't believe that came up in our prior conversations um i guess what i would say amy is if there is some go ahead courtney there so we're probably going to say this there is a lot welcoming um safe learning environments about continued refinements to sexual misconduct statutes we could put it it could be couch there okay i've reached out to um sharon and liz for their perspectives on on this and specifically what what shape legislative advocacy might take so i'll let you guys know what i learned and then we can bring it up before the full board i'm sorry i didn't do that before and then i have one other late coming thing um which is that i was just approached um recently approached and did not meet with until this week the classroom law project who is bringing a bill forward around civics education and they would like our support and probably ideally like it to be part of our legislative advocacy agenda there's a bill that representative evans from monmouth introduced that failed last year they want to resurrect it it's got a lot of support and um it's you know osba doesn't love it because it's it could be perceived as an unfunded mandate but it's really no different than what has led to um like the ethnic studies law the native american student success law that african-american student success law so they're gonna i'm gonna get some materials from them um within the next day or so and i'll forward it on and if um if there's interest maybe we can somehow um show them that we uh will lend our support as well great so why don't you both of those amy um why don't you bring bring those to the board conversation we'll have that there and then that reminded me did we did we go ahead and we deleted the bullet on the unfunded mandates okay i did um i'm sorry i didn't get everybody's thumbs up i assumed that no comment meant it was okay i i'm okay with that i mean i think we we we should oppose a lot of unfunded mandates but i think that it there it is true we won't oppose them all so i think a blanket statement isn't accurate and i'll also be honest that that doesn't actually have any sway with um with state or federal legislators for that matter so um it's a little bit like hitting your head against the wall i think we'll be better off on very specific things um sort of sort of arguing on that point okay with that included as part of the osba legislative priorities so sort of we're already doing it through osba okay okay well so that that leads me to ask a question is like is there a reason why we are adopting osba's agenda i mean it seems like we don't have any ability to amend it i mean can we just accept it and say that there's gonna be there's gonna be alignment on some things but julia i'm gonna ask you to hold that question for just a couple minutes because what i'd like to do is go ahead and take act i'd like to take action on this on our legislative agenda then i'd like to let um our um member of the public testify since she's been waiting um and we're supposed to be done by six scott i believe and nathaniel has a question okay great nathaniel yeah just um going back to the agenda um as i said in the past i was interested in seeing something climate related on the agenda um in some in one form or another and i don't believe that was added um just wondering about that i nathaniel i didn't i didn't ignore your email about this um there i don't know what those bills are right now um if we wanted to make a broad statement about climate justice or you know climate related you know we could talk about the wordsmithing um we could do that the other reminder is that this and i'm not trying to diminish your interest this is a hot topic and it's obviously very important um there's also a nod at the top of the agenda to other things that could come up this is not an exhaustive list it's not meant to be they're going to be things that pop up throughout the session that maybe we weren't aware of in the beginning that we can still you know as a board you can still support and we can still advocate for um as a district that might just not specifically be called out in an agenda so this is you know one of those things where it's we can't we have to eventually like draw the you know put the nail in and say this is
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done and then things will come up you know if it's important i'll bring it forward to you if it's something that is just pretty run-of-the-mill i usually do that with you know my supervisor or something without bringing it to the full board um so it's up to the board but i just want to remind you that there are ways to couch it without um without because there's not a climate bill this time that we know of that's coming forward so so let me make this suggestion um if courtney if you could work with nathaniel on maybe a general statement because we do have some general statements in here and i think that one is consistent with with the board in the district's position um that you know we we will support legislation you know for climate justice something along those lines let's bring that to the full board conversation um at the full board meeting and and talk about if we want to add that in nathaniel does that work for you yeah that sounds good okay so it sounds like um so what i'm gonna ask is that we go ahead and and um and formally vote to move this to full board consideration we've got a couple things that amy um is gonna look at um language on we've got the climate related one um and then we'll we'll we'll have that that full board conversation does that work great and someone remind me do we do we do motions in our committees to move things forward so great can i get a motion on the legislative agenda it's moved second and then uh any final discussion okay all those in favor of recommending this legislative agenda to the full board for approval say yes yes yes anyone opposed okay and any abstentions and do our student representatives get a vote in committee i'm seeing a nod so and is that i i think it's our formal student representatives right which um remind me again i think it's it's dubai and um parker and tay right are the three there's also jaya who is uh absent currently okay great so um student representatives do you want to go ahead and cast your vote as well yes yes yes great okay thank you so we will send that forward um if it's okay with everyone i'd like to just deviate for a minute from the agenda um and um we do have someone who signed up to testify to the committee and i would like to shift over towards that kobe and i just added her as a panelist great thank you um thanks for joining us jessica thanks for waiting through um that meeting and um i believe we have you will have three minutes to testify great thank you um i've waited waited through many a meeting so you know we're good um hi my name is jessica colby j-e-s-s-i-c-a-c-o-l-b-y she her pronouns uh first of all it's heartfelt thanks to all of you board superintendent everyone employee teacher who's working to support the kids in the pandemic i i know it's a huge lift and it's it's it's appreciated um okay so i'm here today because of an issue i've been quietly hearing about in tag act the talented and gifted advisory council uh for years and then um as i've been working with the pps parent dyslexia parent group which and this has become an insistent voice across multiple groups that i'm seeing now teaching programs are failing to adequately prepare teachers to support students with best practices across multiple disciplines from the needs of students of color to literacy to special education and more and i'm here to call out this pressing need which has been increasingly evident and requires your leadership i know that efforts have been made and even legislation passed in an attempt to align teaching program curriculum with the needs of schools across oregon these efforts sadly have not been particularly effective but that was then in this current social and political climate there is i believe an opportunity to push for more inclusive curricula in teaching programs that support bypoc students struggling readers tag and tui students and special education students and all the other people all the other kids not on my radar not in my bubble all of that with greater success we have more and more parents community members and educators who see this as a key issue in supporting students we have a board superintendent and administration who understand the need for educating educators and are actively working to plug the holes left by teaching program curricula and we have a moment in the political and social climate that should be utilized before complacent complacency yet again
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sets in so what's my ask the pps take up this cause developing advocacy and providing leadership in bringing teaching programs ode and the oregon legislature up to date with the trainings that teachers need in today's classrooms that pps bring parent groups including dyslexia literacy advocates uh special education advisory council bypaw groups talented gifted advisory council educators and anyone else that i am not thinking of to share the first-hand understanding of the support students need that they are not getting and what teaching programs need to do to prepare teachers to support those needs instead of playing catch-up while already teaching i asked the pps work with these groups to decide priorities and the realities of what could be accomplished and i asked it's become a priority for legislative action thank you thank you thank you for the testimony appreciate that okay so the um last thing on our agenda is um is the uh oregon school board association legislative agenda adoption courtney can you go ahead and give us a little overview is this something that osba asks local districts to do is it something we have done in the past um and um a little bit about what's what's in there yeah um yes we have done this in the past it's pretty much a formality um and i roseanne brought this to me and said do we have time to do this so i actually don't know very much of the history about how this has come before um maybe roseanne i mean i'm assuming osba just reached out to you asking for us to do it because everybody's doing it yes so hi thank you so last meeting before last you voted for the board members on the osba board um i think there were two positions and when i went to go put in our final election tallies i noted there was this item that was supposed to be voted on that they asked school districts to give them a signal that you approve it by december 16th and so like uh courtney said it's somewhat of a formality i don't think osba would not go ahead and use this as their platform but they do ask that you review it and uh signal your vote on it so can i be back they're asking member districts to ratify correct thanks and it was developed um it was developed through the legislative policy committee of osba and the osba board um over the last like year um so they yes it matters because they want to be able to say you know this is this is the agenda for the organization that has been ratified by you know whatever percent of the member boards so having um [Music] my preference would be that we do something more like accept and acknowledge versus ratify um having worked in salem i you know i think they have like a majority of districts so this is what um the organization's board has approved i don't i don't know whether we pbs ratifying it um makes a substantial difference to legislators of whether they um [Music] you know support or oppose things on this agenda um i'm just not comfortable just adopting their proposals and i i did sit in my previous tenure on the board i was an elected member of the oregon school boards association board and um i'll just say the local the local government governance often gets in local control often gets used as referenced earlier in the meeting as a reason not to do to like we're gonna establish our own community norms and that could be like we don't think students should have a world language um as a qualif as a graduation requirement or any a whole host of things um so i'm personally i'm not um i'm not comfortable just adopting it as a they've asked us this is a formality because it if we adopted it means that we're adopting it so i'd rather accept and acknowledge um
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or something to that effect [Music] can i make a comment and then rita asked for your take because i think you still serve on the legislative and policy committee and i used to sit on that committee and the the main work of that committee is to formulate the legislative agenda on behalf of all the member districts and um and and all the member districts vote on representatives to the legislative and policy committee so i think you know if there were actual items on their legislative agenda that the majority of our board vehemently disagreed with then i think it would be reasonable to um object to their legislative agenda and to not ratify it but in the absence of that i do think it's really important to ratify it because they get their juice from being able to say this represents our member districts and we elect people both from our in our case from our own board not every board has a representative on the legislative and policy committee but we elect people from from the state to craft this agenda and it's supposed to be an iterative process and in my experience it generally has been and so that's where we ended up where we are and um i think that if we aren't interested in if we as a as a collective aren't interested in um sort of signing on to the overall priorities of the organization then we should rethink our entire membership with the organization because they expect that of us and our our place for input is in the crafting of the legislative agenda and it's my understanding that we've had that so i'm i'm teeing you up right now rita thank you yes um so uh while it is almost certainly true that osba the the osba agenda would have are the the absence of our ratification um would have minimal uh effect on the um the ability of osba to effectively advocate for its agenda um that that's probably true um but i think the issue at hand is is less about um the legislature and more about our relationship with osba um and i would say so i've been i've been part of the legislative policy committee for the last three years and um just in the last three years i have seen enormous change um i think it's an organization that is um very much in transition um and it is um it is really trying as an organization to understand and embrace the concept of racial equity if you've if you've read it there's a preamble um to the uh to the agenda and um i can tell you that represents months worth of advocacy um there is a new um caucus for board members of color that has become a real force within the organization and it would be i think counterproductive for pps at this point when osba is actually at an inflection point i think it would be very short-sighted and counterproductive for pps to indicate a diminution in its support of the organization so on that basis i would strongly recommend that um that we ratify this agenda can i can i ask if there's a if there's a middle ground here what i i i'm curious whether the the ratification versus accepting or acknowledging isn't is an important distinction because i um i i i actually appreciate this conversation um because i'm i'm seeing some really valid points on on both sides of this and and i'm just wondering if there's a middle ground there of acknowledging and and even accepting right sort of that this is osb's legislative agenda without without formally ratifying it if that's if that is sort of a middle ground that gets support from everyone would it help if i read to you the ballot we're supposed to fill out
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oh sure because i think ratification is my word not the official work the ballot says uh the resolution to adopt the proposed 2021-2022 osba va legislative priorities and principles and the choices are to yes adopt no do not adopt abstain or do not take action what about the write-in vote it's a very small line just kidding i mean the reality is it's it's not going to make a damn big difference to what osb does whether we're in or not it will make a difference in how osba responds to you know advocacy for me or anybody else from pps this this is the organization that represents school boards in the state and if we want to improve we need to play ball i agree rita and i agree with um what you said about um how the organization has been evolving both the initiative to evolve and the actual evolution and commitment of the people that are centrally um leading the organization right now um and i also feel like if we are not going to um adopt this their legislative agenda or or yeah accept it then we need to have a good reason we need to stand on principle and say these are the aspects of this that we object to because it is going to be meaningful to them and um it's just i don't i don't see i don't see why we would and if there is a good reason why we would then we need to be able to articulate that and collectively stand by it to them i guess i never look at something when you're adopting a legislative agenda as like a formality or courtesy um i mean to me for it to mean something you're actually supportive of the entire agenda so maybe the sort of short circuit is that we're just getting this and it's being uh this is a formality um but when i'm talking to legislators i don't want them to point to something like hey what you guys adopted that you know you adopted you adopted the osba agenda and here's here's their point of view i'm just going to go back to um senator dembro's comments um about um some of the tensions we may see in um in the policies agendas that are put that we put forward that may be in conflict with osbas i think there's plenty of room for us to have a legislative agenda that is different and beyond theirs and i completely agree we don't owe them a courtesy but if we are not if we're going to divorce ourselves from the organization in a significant way and not adopt this we need to have a reason and we need to have a majority of our board that says i don't feel comfortable standing by these aspects of the platform so i guess my last two cents on this would be to ask every board member before this comes up for our vote to review this document carefully and make sure that each one of us feels comfortable with this agenda that has been put together by our board colleague and the other elected officers of the legislative and policy committee and each of us just vote our own conscience about the content of the of the platform and i'll make one last comment um so as you well know julia when you're a member of a coalition you don't always agree 100 with everything that the coalition advocates for um but you're stronger together and as long as there's nothing that you cannot live with then there are reasons to um to to accept a a coalition agenda even if it's not everything you would ever wish for um and i would say it is important right now to support osba's evolution because if you're really serious about advocating for equity throughout the
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state osba is your partner it is actually trying to it's it's trying to educate school board members across the state if you if you want to get the outcome that you want one of the ways to do it is to support osba as it works to evolve itself and educate others um so i i mean if if there's a you know a few things on here that i might not be you know over the moon about um i'm willing to i'm willing to accept them because the um the potential benefit far outweighs the potential cost of associating ourselves with this agenda well i don't see um an acceptance or acknowledgement of the agenda as any way of saying that you're not serious about racial equity across the state um again having worked in the legislative process i think that um generally people know who osba is they're not going to go down and look at the individual list of what members did what with regard to the agenda and i don't think i think pps has a long-established relationship with osba as do individual members i don't i don't see an impact can i finish my statement um dr moore what i was going to suggest is that perhaps on our legislative agenda if um the chair is ameniable that we indicate or add a phrase on our agenda that if there's a conflict between our agenda and any other policy agenda that we you know adopt that the pps agenda is the sort of governing one because i'm concerned that we'll be we're adopting two different we just had a conversation about the pps one and now we're going to adopt a legislative agenda that has something else in it so if ours could be the penultimate one to me that seems as a reasonable way to address the potential inherent conflicts uh chair scott can i ask a question i i i can understand why some reluctance to adopt two agendas um but i i wonder if courtney and i'm gonna put you on the spot courtney and i know we're over time but i i wonder if we can be somehow be clear that when we sign on to bills or initiatives or coalitions in the legislature um it's for what's on that page but that doesn't that doesn't make us sign on to every osb osba position there will definitely be times where i've heard you say courtney we have to step away like we don't agree let osba fight that one pps is not on the on the coalition for it so i'm wondering if just being able to say that out loud helps you all think through like because we're signing on to a principled agenda does not mean we support every um legislative issue they support i just added i'm just sharing that from perspective don't go arm and arm with them on every issue it's we've you know we we have definitely some that we worked really close we've worked really closely on and they're a good partner and a good um i have good colleagues that i work with regularly um they were very helpful with the with the sexual misconduct sort of whitehurst work and um i i thought it was invaluable so i i agree i i see what julia is saying but i i don't think it's saying that we're gonna you know knock down doors figuratively since it's probably gonna be virtual um to you know to share the the gospel of osba i think it's more about a partnership and we can be vocal that we don't agree on every item thank you okay i'm gonna i know i i really did appreciate that conversation i i do think i do think the arguments about both the relationship with osba and the fact that i i don't actually see anything in here that's that's that's offensive or that i would change i think i think julia you're right there are there are things in there that that could be used the wrong way but but i actually think rita's point about you know and i'm thinking specifically about the unfolded mandate the rest of it seems seems pretty innocuous um but i i also
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think the fact that osba you know has come along as an organization and i think if if that does become an issue where they're opposing uh some sort of mandate from the state legislature that we feel in support of i think that's a moment for us to speak out um specifically you know at that time um i'm gonna i'm gonna make a motion that this committee recommended the full board adoption of the osba legislative agenda so i moved actually i moved it do you want to second it second okay um any further board conversation about this and and i think the point that was made about actually making sure as when it comes to the full board that the full board read through it and and you know just to make sure that we are you know comfortable with with the content is is going to be important so i'm going to abstain coming out of committee just to have an additional round of conversations it doesn't mean that's where i'm going to land at the board vote okay great okay um all those in favor um say i i and anyone opposed and abstentions extension abstention okay and then um student representatives um i'm good i'm also abstaining i haven't reviewed it i don't know what's on it just lack of information thanks parker to buy we might have lost yeah i haven't gone over it yet either okay great so a couple extend extensions hey andrew can i just chime in here real quick parker and tobia and who whomever else when you review it um you might want to think about making some suggestions that we might make to them about incorporating student voice um in their uh process of developing an advocacy strategy and it's a bigger issue for the organization too because generally speaking i think they don't they don't do a very good job of that at all so uh that's something that you guys might think about um because you have student reps in other districts as well yeah absolutely um and and something that i uh i wanted to bring up um and i think nathaniel was interested in was uh it's sort of intergovernmental related um was having some relationship with with other uh student councils statewide but that's that's for another meeting just wanted to uh sort of bring that uh i guess give a heads up but thank you amy and uh yeah absolutely i'll uh i'll read it with that that lens okay thank you um that was our last agenda item i wanted to just flag i know we're well over time but future meetings um actually have gotten i just wanted to sort of put them on the record i did i have had some some board conversations and actually we're addressing some of them even with our action tonight i know um um scott had asked whether the committee could discuss the air quality standards and and potentially asking odot or maybe it was deq to do air quality study at all of our schools so i'm going to put that on a future agenda um to see if that's something that that that we want to advocate for um there was also some conversations about um looking at future housing projections and population projections and getting some information from the city of portland we're gonna we're gonna explore that offline to see if we can knock that information loose but if not um this we might come back to this committee for formal action um i did get a request um about whether uh the district wants to make a statement overall about teacher vaccines so i don't think we have time to discuss that today but i do potentially uh want to put it on a future agenda or maybe if it's more urgent it might come straight to the board but the question whether whether we as a board want to make an official pass an official resolution um urging teachers to be high up in terms of the overall vaccine protocols and i think we will need a little more information on that because they are high up um but i think the question is whether we want to be higher by the way uh new york times has a um where are you in the vaccine line tool um which is just really fascinating i am absolutely like like 600 000 of multnomah county i mean i didn't even realize there were that many people in multnomah county um but i am i'm at the end of the line but it's a really you sort of put in your different metrics and it shows you where you are in the vaccine line um and teachers are are are relatively high up and so i think there's an interesting question there about about what what more um and then actually csl and budget development which i think again we're discussing a little bit and then um our student representatives did bring forward the idea of talking uh this is
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more of a future elections issue but the idea of um potentially expanding elections to include 16 year olds 16 and 17 year olds not just 16 year olds so that is an issue that also may come back as part of our election conversation uh moving forward so i just wanted to flag those things that i know uh more to come other any other business or things that that people want to flag i know we're well well over time okay thanks for a very productive meeting i apologize that we went long um but uh we uh i think we got a lot done tonight so appreciate it uh committee is adjourned

Sources

PPS Board of Education, BoardBook Public View, https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Organization/915 (accessed: 2023-01-25T21:27:49.720701Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)
PPS Communications, "PPS Board of Education Meetings" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbZtlBHJZmkdC_tt72iEiQXsgBxAQRwtM (accessed: 2023-10-14T01:02:33.351363Z)
PPS Board of Education, "PPS Board of Education - Committee Meetings" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk0IYRijyKDVmokTZiuGv_HR3Qv7kkmJU (accessed: 2023-10-14T00:59:52.903034Z)

2020-12-03 PPS School Board Intergovernmental Committee Meeting

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education's Intergovernmental Committee Meeting 12/03/2020

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