2020-12-07 PPS School Board Policy Committee Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2020-12-07
Time	16:00:00
Venue	Virtual/Online
Meeting Type	committee
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education's Policy Committee Meeting 12/07/2020

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and um cara if you can just keep your eyes open in case he joins us it needs to be added yes okay um we're going to convene the uh board policy committee for december 7 2020 um again we have a very full agenda for this meeting i am going to ask that i'm going to endeavor to take a break every hour if i forget somebody please remind me um and um i guess do we need to do introductions um he gets the usual okay so i'm good in the interest of time since we're already late um i'm going to ask that staff who are going to be presenting if you could introduce yourselves when you you know when it's your turn to present that would be helpful um and um i think i'm going to uh can i just read off the names of people who are part of this committee uh so board members i'm rita moore chair uh we have um director julia broome edwards we have uh director uh ailey lowry who is the chair of the board and director scott um scott watch it bailey sorry um who is the vice chair i've only known scott for about 20 years so sorry um and we have um the board of representative uh the student representative to the board nathaniel schue and we have student representative to the committee jackson weinberg and um i think the other student representative to the committee is not currently with us so um okay so i'm going to just leap into this um and the first item on the agenda is the student suicide prevention policy and we have um amy rona mila rodriguez adair and james loveland um who are going to be talking to us about the draft policy um so uh mila and amy i think you're going to be walking us through this yes and amy did you say you were going to present or did you i would like to present um and i'm trying to do that [Music] do i need who i don't know if you can just a second and i'll sign you permission okay okay you should now be able to present um here we go can you see that we wanted to start with the slideshow right mila yeah okay can you all see that yeah yes can you do yep awesome thank you amy um we will start with some introductions but um i first wanted to say that i'm super grateful to be here again in front of you to talk about senate bill 52 at exact um i feel super privileged that i get to be the one along with amy um and james to be able to continue to bring to life um adi and the feedback that we have received thus far so my name is mila rodriguez are pronouns and i identify as landnex and i'm a qhp a qualified mental health professional in special assignment um with student success and health but often i refer myself as a district-wide school social worker doing many things within our department and one of them being is implementing suicide um a senate bill 52 addies act um amy would you like to introduce yourself sure amy arona she her pronouns identifies white and work in the student success and health department with mila and james and i support a lot of different work
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within that department um but today yeah really honored and excited to be here with mila talking about this work james yeah hey good evening everyone james lovely senior director of the student success and health departments uh he him pronouns identifies whites um i'm just really here for for moral support for amy and mila who have done uh an amazing amount of work uh to bring you this this draft proposal tonight and so i am just so appreciative of their their energy and effort around all of this awesome thank you james um so the last time we were here we were able to present our engagement plan as far as how we were going to engage students across the district and what working groups we were going to be facilitating conversations for feedback regarding our policy and we had asked for an extension given um the feedback that we had received was that working groups were having a hard time getting together given um you know online distance learning and just the beginning of fall and so we were able to actually capture even more feedback during this time frame um amy can you move on to the next slide so for today we're going to focus on kind of like summarizing some of the feedback that we were able to receive from the working groups and amy please jump in um if i miss anything um throughout the the presentation today but we were able to highlight some feedback from the sud prevention student advisory um committee we were able to also gather a lot of feedback from addie's father and we continue to receive feedback from him um his name is lon staub and we have made an agreement that we're going to meet with him at least once a month so that he can continue to provide not just um consultation regarding this policy but ongoing implementation regarding how this could potentially look like and what his hopes and dreams were as he was advocating for this policy to to pass statewide we were also able to meet with our district-wide student council which was super fantastic to be able to get feedback from them along with the mere student group at lincoln high school george middle school and their student leadership group um we are going to be meeting with lines for life this wednesday that was also another working group that you all had wanted us to connect with and thankfully we were able to finally get into their books to be able to connect with them regarding their feedback to which we're going to continue to do we're going to meet with the rest of the group that we were not able to meet due to time frames and just not um having working groups that were meeting and the other one that we were not able to get feedback was smirk they were going through a lot of their own transitions and they were trying to capture um information and feedback on their own and to send it off to us and they just have not been able to do that and so um we as soon as we get anything from them of course we will be implementing any feedback in future work that we're doing um for this particular policy so in summary some of the things that were really highlighted from a lot of the students that we were connected with were very few things one of them being was that students wanted to rece or want to receive peer-to-peer training similar to youth mental health first day training but specific for young people young people to be able to understand what are the signs what are the resources that are available for them to be able to connect their fellow students to those particular students often the feedback that i heard was nila we don't want to talk to adults adults don't understand us it's not that easy to just make that call to that um one line that where we don't know who the other person is on the other line they kept saying what what is what kind of curriculum training is available for us to receive so that we know how to provide a direct support um along with being able to have resources that were available in the right there and then in case they didn't know how to research them in case they didn't want to ask the adult so that was one prime feedback that we got along with making sure that everyone at pps is trained um in in understanding what the warning signs and seeing them and talking about suicide and being able to connect students and families to supports immediately um and so often when they ask for clarity around what we meant by everyone people always say if people always then asked again do you mean like the bus drivers do you mean the cafeteria folks do how what do you mean by all and they wanted us to reassure them that it was every single person pps getting some form of training regarding suicide prevention and mostly when it came to the warning signs and those resources and the folks that they were able to connect them to
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in order for them to get that support so that was super important to a lot of the students and their feedback um for launch stop he gave us a lot of feedback that was very similar to what the students were wanting um and a lot of what we already currently have which was he was super grateful to see that we have access to suicide screenings and we have access to mental health supports in a lot of our schools he was happy to see all that but most importantly one of the things that he keeps reiterating for us is accountability so having a system that collects data having a system that allows us to be able to paint a story as far as what are the gaps for implementation and for resources for curriculum for training for supports and we currently do as best as we can but he wants to see a system that allows everybody to be able to communicate and have a centralized way to collect that information so that there is accountability on each of the schools that are implementing it along with us as a district so that has been something that he's been providing a lot of guidance to us on but most but was very very very important to him amy did i miss anything in regards to that summary i just want to make sure i i just think we were very struck by whoever we talked to at whichever school at whichever age range that the themes were so consistent absolutely that was super interesting um maybe i would just add another consistent theme was students are often told to check in with a trusted adult um when they're feeling when they're there is suicidality or mental health concerns or connecting their friends to a trusted adult and pretty consistently students would say what happens next we need to know what happens after we talk to the trusted adult um which i thought was fascinating and and which is why we ask students for their perspective right so as adults we think we know what happens next but students may not be going to those adults because they don't know what happens next i think that that would be a part of our training as well um other than that oatmeal i think you've absolutely summarized it and then we'll be going through the policy after this so i i'm so far in regards to this summary is there anything that's coming up for you all um any questions or thoughts that you have before we move on to the next thing just so appreciate the um their ownness with which you've really listened to people and also that whole you know it means all the adults and i think that that's that's really huge so just again very impressed with all of the work and thoughtfulness here in this work thank you i appreciate that it's definitely been um fun to be able to connect with them one of the things that i often say about young people is that you give them the platform and they will take lead and that's been probably the most beautiful thing to witness is that um they have a lot to say about this and they want their their voices to be heard so i appreciate that um amy can you move us on to the next slide something that um we were giving feedback to was considering you know what kind of plan what kind of recommendations even us would we have given all the feedback in this policy we had all the money in the world what would that look like well i we would we were thinking about potentially um hiring a full-time data analyst somebody that can really look into developing and implementing a tracking system that will actually help us with that accountability piece that lon keeps you know asking about um regarding that in another full-time position solely focusing on the implementation of senate bill 52 and addie zach that's part of my position um and a huge part of it and i definitely have a lot of other buckets of work um in the other assigned duties um that and that you know a huge part of it is that it's having one position that one person that can solely focus on that would be all the hopes and dreams that we um we have and that we also understand not everybody can you know do that right now so that's why amy and i are doing a lot of that work right now the other thing was having a staff suicide prevention training in the right now in the classrooms yes of course amy and i can put a video together put it on pepper and have that be something that folks can watch on their own time immediately however you know if we had all the money in the world that could be professionally done by an organization an agency who can who knows how to do that knows how to create e-learning modules knows how to focus on adult learning knows how to focus on all these concepts in order for them in order for us to have it accessible and readily available for folks in the right now because that was one of the things that students and i believe you all have asked us why are these um trainings not available right now why aren't students receiving this in the right now and so one of the things that i had to explain to a student is the convoluted process of getting
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um a mandatory training is is not as easy as one two three and so they're like but why why is this not easy and so yes it's i wish it was and i um it's not and so that was one if we had our dreams put into place these are some of the few things that we would actually hope to consider in the future as we're thinking about this particular policy but most importantly this policy is really talking about a very important factor young people that are experiencing suicide radiation young people that are experiencing grief sadness um and that's happening today we receive suicide screenings all day every day and so those are some of the hopes and dreams amy i don't know if you have any other hopes and dreams that you were thinking about um that we were that we missed yeah i think you got it any questions about that before we move on to the policy i have a question um thank you for sharing the uh student the outcomes of the student engagement process and sharing their perspectives um in terms of the folks can you leave the slide the last slide back up that's possible sorry about that i clicked the wrong thing it is possible yeah um so i i'm wondering if um based on best practices uh if you look at districts other school districts that have track records of you know caring for and low you know suicide ideation and um actual suicide rates what they would say the biggest bang for their buck is in terms of uh if they had unlimited resources how how do they apply it in a way against best practices that's led to positive results and you know i don't know if it's studying the data or if it's obviously data is really important but is it you know is it training or is it something is it something else and i'm curious about whether that's a question you've looked at um oh um amy please jump in if if you have any other thoughts but yes it's a question that we as a state have been pondering on um amy and i attend the oregon alliance um where other district members from across or the state other school members that are also implementing addie saxon bill 52 have been pondering this question actually at our last meeting we spent quite a bit some time talking about what kind of collection what data we're interested in collecting what is best practice as far as what data to collect and what tracking systems are currently in place or not and most folks do not have a tracking system for that most folks do not have any idea what it is that they're hoping to collect but that there is a desire to collect that data there is a desire to have something that paints a picture of what is missing that we could do better as a district as a school for our students and families in regards to suicide prevention um however i i would say that i think that we're all still kind of grappling what that can look like or what that is um i don't know amy i don't know if you have had if you have some thoughts more or less because you've been part of the alliance for longer than i have so i don't know if that has been something that has been talked about before but these are conversations that i feel like we were all kind of trying to decipher what that can look like in the near future given this policy yeah yeah i mean it's it's a great question julia a number of districts are starting to hire one full-time fce to just focus on senate bill 50 so that is something that the districts are moving towards um honestly what we frequently hear what we hear more frequently you know a year ago what we would hear more frequently is we do suicide screenings um our staff do them but nobody checks them nobody looks into them nobody follows up with staff about them they just go into a black hole um so it's exciting for us to know that there is an increased focus on this across the state and there will be increased fte across the state so that kind of thing doesn't happen i think in our situation you know will as emily moves into talking about the policy we talk about every school district that the legislative managers every school district has has a policy in place and then within that every school has a plan right and so to have some fte of a data clerk dedicated to you know we are going to be asking people to create a plan and we want to have an inventory of what curriculum is each school doing how many suicide screenings have they done have their staff been trained have they done pd at their staff meeting like we want to be able to keep track of all that
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so i think to have one full-time person as a support and consult in addition to us still being available as well as a little bit of data clerk fte to be able to analyze and keep track of all of those things um i think would be huge and would really support lon stob's ask around how do we make sure we're not checking a box right we can say we've got a school district plan and policy we can say we've told all of our schools to do this but beyond that if we don't have some fte dedicated to it it's very difficult for us to support adequately and hold folks accountable and for the end goal right of keeping students alive yeah the other thing that i was going to say is that we started an inventory last year to collect some of this information per school and of course we didn't require anybody to submit the the google form but it was part of my desire to kind of address where is each school at with training with curriculum with implementation and with suicide screenings and with identifying who on who in your school is responsible to implement suicide prevention curriculum who in your school is working through that every year so we are hoping to do this inventory again through the end of the year however it's not something that is required as of right now but would be helpful to have extra support to to continue to address the gaps that were you know addressed in that inventory that we collected great thank you and i just mentioned um i think tracking data um and figuring out what data to track um it's it can be used not just for accountability but also to monitor um prevalence and because i mean my it's been a while since i looked at the um the youth survey um but as i recall that the numbers on suicidality were pretty horrifying um and i mean i i think this is an unrecognized issue among children um so i i guess i have two questions one um can you give us a sense at this point uh about prevalence like how i mean you were saying you you receive um um what do you call them checks or um screenings like all day every day how frequently do you get screenings we have had about 70 suicide screenings so far this fall and that number is significantly lower than last fall because of distance learning and access to students um and the screening is just one part of it i mean mila and i will do regular consultation throughout the week as well right but even though the um everybody's assumption i think is that mental health issues have have been exacerbated if anything by the covid and the distance learning and all that um so if this is a down year and we're already looking at 70 screenings that's pretty significant um and i think it's an important oh you're muted rita can you hear me okay i think my cat stepped on something sorry um so i i think i mean i think of suicidality as as a sign of other things not going well so if we can kind of monitor that it can help us identify areas where we need to improve you know the overall experience of students um uh my my other question was um it goes back to the when you say all do you really mean all um so we have the capacity now this there's going to be a question mark at the end of this but can i assume that we have capacity now in every school including k5 um to to do to identify and um provide appropriate services for kids expressing suicidal thoughts
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it's not just at the high school level for example okay this is kanye i might have missed something but um just when we're talking about tracking and accountability with regard to this new law and a new sort of accountability expectations i hope this team also talked about um the rigorous tracking that's been done on all the downstream type interventions like the many years of tracking on the dbt work and the effect that that has had on suicide prevention i don't know if you guys talked about that we haven't talked about it here right now today i guess i'm wondering if if we should be shifting into talking about the policy because i know we have a limited amount of time um and this is a discussion mila and i are happy to have with anybody anytime um we really appreciate people's interest in it and i also want to be aware of the time and want to make sure i'm sure that we get so let's so we've only got another we've got like 10 minutes yeah allotted um so um amy if we can take that question offline um and are there any other questions about the um about what was presented or can we move right into discussing the policy okay so um sorry i couldn't get my microphone off mute um i'm wondering on the student engagement um information do you have additional backup data that that this like is what um inform the slide creation you specify where you're asking like numbers or what what kind of data are you referring to um so i don't know um how much it was but that's like obviously a summary of the the feedback and i'm just was wondering if there was there was more than a summary um or other information um yes i mean we took notes um as much as we could when we met with students um and so we have those notes typed up in in google drive um in if you want to review them we're more than happy to share them we didn't take note of like the race and ethnic background of students and or how many students at times just because when i remember for one particular working group they didn't want me to identify that and so they kind of just wanted to give feedback and um but if that's something you're wanting to review yeah we'd be more than happy to share that yeah thanks that would be useful i mean i love this i love the high level summary but sometimes it's good just to do a deep dive into the um more detailed feedback oh no for sure yeah yeah yeah um this the high level um overview was per recommendation of liz to keep it high level rather than maybe two details i think she must know that amy and i are very detailed oriented people that we can get into rabbit holes and have a hard time getting out of so yeah we more than happy to shut up sometimes rabbit holes are worth exploring [Laughter] for sure amy and i totally believe in that um what was that and sometimes they're rabbit holes but um so can we can we move into um looking at the um the actual policy um and let me let me just kind of frame this up um the the hope is that we can um bring this to a first reading um as soon as possible um ideally at the next board meeting um so that we can uh as i believe this is uh have we missed the state deadline or is the deadline in january where where are we we're past the deadline but um i think the committee and staff um agreed several months ago that it was worth doing a more thorough job on the invasion on the engagement and not just a cut and paste on the statute and i think and the osba policy was really not much more than that i think you'll find this is really thoughtful work
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so there's urgency to it but i think but that is the history okay um so so i mentioned that because there is there is some um urgency in in getting this um getting this process through the committee expeditiously um so i'm going to ask if anybody has any kind of overall questions or comments about the policy draft as it currently stands there any sort of conceptual issues that anybody has i have a more just technical issue just trying to track this so we had this before the board policy committee in june of 20 uh june 22nd it came back and what we have now is a non-red line draft was there something that's like bridges us from the last discussion or what the one from june 22nd is very different this is more like a process question i'm just trying to figure out what and julia i can speak to that they we did not think that uh we can absolutely get you and anyone else a red line it was such a significant and you know i mean it wasn't iterative it was a big move from one version to the other with so much new text that it didn't actually show much it we basically filled in substance in the outline and then added some brand new sections so um i know that those red lines are really helpful and i i regret i didn't offer that to you as well i should have thought about that it just was such it's almost a brand new policy in a very from a very bare framework of the old one that's okay that's just just knowing that that's helpful um was june 27th the last time we looked at the actual language i think at the actual language there was conversation about the engagement at various meetings after that and some discussion about the history of the policy and the powerpoint that mila and amy did um in october i believe but uh but i think the actual like looking at the the words on the page of the policy it there hasn't the i'm not sure it's june 22nd but i think that was the last time okay great i'm just trying to take my old versions and the notes i wrote and um carry them forward thank you yes okay so any other kind of big picture questions or comments i just i just want to echo what liz said about you know that the state deadline may have passed but i so appreciate the very thoughtful and deep work that is shown here by staff and i know that um amy and mila you both dedicate so much of your time i think amelia you said you're the district social worker to students and and it's very clear in this policy that that heart for students and that heart especially for um this family in particular is is prevalent in this work um and so just wanna wanna thank you for that um and you know sometimes it's policies can we get into the language and we go down those wormholes uh rabbit holes um but this really at its heart is very clear that this is this is a labor of love um for our students and i just want to thank you for that okay and um likewise and i think it also to me the it's so clear now what the system we want to set up will look like um in terms of the the scaffolding it's it's really clear the accountability piece that addie's father spoke to is really clearly addressed by that um so just great work appreciate it uh just another like framing question um about the the policy uh refresh my memory is there going to be an ad as well or is the policy the district framework all right we've talked a lot with our new best friend liz large about this yeah so i i think that that um where the plan sits right because what this policy says is you shall develop a plan and it shall have these components and so i i i don't think we know exactly whether the the plan itself will be in the aed or in
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a different governance resource document so this is the first step i think we're clear i i when i listen to mila and amy they they you can just hear it when they talk they see it they know how to build it um and we'll just be partners in figuring out where to house the information we've talked about making sure that resources are consistent and that they are not repeated in multiple areas but linked right so department websites school websites ads student handbooks all of those things have materials that when it's up when they're updated they're updated uniformly so we've actually talked quite a bit about information management on this one and that's why you're getting a really long-winded answer on the ad because i think it's important this is sits in a lot of places that is accessible to the entire community and especially to students and how they find it in all the different ways and how we make sure it's consistently maintained yeah i didn't ask the question because i was expecting one necessarily but just wanted to know what the framework was so just the follow on i would have is um so we had a deadline for the for the policy um what is the act uh required in terms of the deadline for you know every school having its own suicide prevention plan julia i don't believe i'm looking for my folder here with the statutory language i don't believe that there's a deadline to have the plan develop there's a deadline to get the policy in place i'll i will circle back if i'm wrong in my recall but um many components of this plan already exist and you can hear that there's an urgency to get them get the district plan done and then figure out how to roll that to make sure each school building has its own um plan but i believe the state deadline is is for the policy itself and from our experience in talking with our friends across the state the only the districts up until about a month ago probably the districts that had passed the policy already were ones that took the osba one strapped the box and moved forward so they were not engaged and had not built it out the way we had yeah so yeah and i just wanted to just reinforce what somebody said about the heart and soul i mean huge shout out to mila who has absolutely put her heart and soul on this so yeah thank you a student in a pbs school when [Music] would you expect it for on the policy number four to be in place which is the requirement that every school is on suicide prevention plan is that next fall i mean no i i would i mean i would say i mean amy can correct me from wrong that's something that amy and i consult with today we are currently supporting schools and implementing their own suicide prevention plan today and so um that's because we're not waiting for the policy to pass that's not because we were waiting for a policy to be put into place i believe that even before i came in amy was already providing a lot of consultation per school my intention behind getting that inventory last year was to help me in supporting schools in implementing their own suicide prevention plan so which we've been trying to do um as much as we can given the little amount of hours that we have every day i'm hoping that if we either get further fte and or once this gets put into place then we can we then we can start talking about implementing actual plans to support schools to to feel that they can actually put this requirement into place however most of our schools already have plans and they're not formalized like that like how we are um highlighting on on four great thank you um and then my last question is this is more of minor but the other tracking accountability with the district student success and health department will and says something um just in terms of the policy um do we think we're always going to have a student success in health department or will it name be changed as often happens at pbs and would we rather would we instead have something more generic and this is just a drafting question i can take that one uh director brim edwards so you know i think and this actually goes back to one of the questions you asked earlier is what is it uh that what is the priority here what what what have other districts done um that has the most bang for their buck and i think really as a department that's charged um with responding to high acuity incidents with students it is our sincere hope that school systems the work that the
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mtss department is doing um the work that that individual building teams are doing will put systems in place that are universal that will hopefully eventually put us out of business we we know probably that that will will never fully happen um but but that is that is that is our hope um in the interim we will be here as long as we're needed and so you know i can't predict the future um but but we will you know our our team is i'm so appreciative of this skill um empathy compassion that they bring to our schools every day and i and i i think you know we will be here uh in it with this name or the another uh for as long as even and i think james as mila and amy and i uh talked about i was always the voice of policies have to live for a long time and so what you don't want to be is stale if you tweak the name of the department because you'll see this process is um it's a lot to engage with and so we want to not have to update to correct those kinds of administrative changes so i think if i understood your question julia it's whether we can think about how to kind of uplevel that in case there's another adjective added someday yeah totally fair statement right because five years ago we were student services not the student success and health department so yeah i've been around for 20 years i've seen a lot of different names and i'm still tracking um so it's more of a it's uh nothing to about the body of work but more like what it's called and that we don't in three years have somebody a policy that references an apartment that could probably put in parentheses or its successor close parentheses and deal with it so that we don't have to resurrect the policy in three years when we change it to the you know moving a word around um question do we have a corollary for suicide prevention among staff well in doing this work this is this is why we talk about everybody being trained honestly because it it's applicable when folks say well they don't work with students unlike they work with humans so this is something that you'll use with your friends your neighbors your family your coworkers and yes students and families too so it's something that's applicable across the board and i will say and i will say that we have been connecting a lot of the adults to the resources that we actually give our students because they've been in need as well so that's definitely something that we've been unfortunately unfortunately um connecting the adults that are experiencing some of their concerns to these resources i guess at some later date formalizing that referral system or that here's what to do if you see a co-worker you know that'll happen informally but to formalize that so that person gets connected with somebody who will support them could be something to think about in our our next bucket load of work but yeah i appreciate the spillover that this will have if we get everybody talking about it that's that's a good thing mila i wonder if there was anything you wanted to specifically call out or name or talk about in relation to the policy in its current state no um i think that um you all were actually able to capture a lot of what where my heart was at with this policy is that i really wanted to center the attention on the unfortunate loss that we had with addie and um there is a reason to why their parents were advocating for this policy and i i promised um lon that i would do my best to always center adi in everything that i do regarding suicide prevention in this district and y'all were able to capture that and so i'm super grateful that y'all allowed us the time and um are committed to students just as much as we are can we now um just one last question um if we have all staff what about um maybe this is a conversation with our partners but like this i know that there's lots of strong relationships um between students and son um some staff and other contractors who um especially the our cbo's that are working closely with our students and i know we have some training requirements for contractors that are working with students and just curious um
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i know there's a sort of the push and pull with time and resources for additional training but i'm wondering if that's something that there was a conversation about or discussion about and what the thinking is i appreciate danny vigorously i was gonna say there wasn't a discussion but i think that both our sun providers and our resj partners uh have access to pepper and can sort of like access training and so we can uh as as contracts get renewed we can sort of like either uh in the next year's uh contracts or amends this year's contracts and add this to them and we in our mental health contracts this year have have added it that they need to do pbs mandatory trainings we cross check with the trainings they do with their own agencies just so we're not wasting people's time but so yeah um leading into the future i think along with danny's partners our mental health contractors also as we add this mandatory training to the to the menu they will have access to it and will be asked to do it and so it sounds like julia you're thinking the language when we say all staff should should call that out yeah i'm just um well it'd be helpful that's an easy ad um and then my other question um is another group of adults that students often have really close bonds with it are coaches i'm assuming if a coach is also a building staff person but or they consider they're also covered by the staff designation even if they're like an out of out of building contractor i mean we you know i'm not i i'm not sure how the training the staff requirements apply to the coaches who just are employed with us to coach so i don't i don't want to shoot from the hip on that but i'm happy to find out i can ask sharon i assume that they get the bulk of those that are that relate to them um and their work with children i mean we have a pretty i think consistent practice around employees who work with children but let me let me nail it run it all the way to ground julia and i'll be happy to circle back with the committee by email on that great thank you and i would say the an unofficial response would be like dialo's been great to work with and so you know he's definitely open to us going to like the quarterly meetings um or i guess it's every three seasons so the the the season seasonal meetings for the coaches throughout the year to just talk to them in general about this and then i went to one a couple years ago and was able to ask them if they wanted follow-up information was able to follow up with them provided them though that their mental health information at their at their annual meeting so so the athletics department's been super open to it as well i'm so glad to hear that rita i think you're a mute i was sorry um so are there any other comments or questions so i think so far we've only identified two potential areas for uh slight revision one is to look at the just the terminology of the district uh component that's going to be in charge of this um and then the other is potentially adding language so that this would cover contractors who have direct contact with students and potentially coaches so i think that's that's all i think i heard in terms of possible revisions final words going going on just a sec sorry um i just like to extend my thanks to amy and mila both for meeting with the dsc i know they spent about an hour and a half reaching out with us spending that time um almost one-on-one with us it was very meaningful to have us involved finally in policy creation um and i know it was super nice to hear from other students about their experiences as well justin i think you beat us to it i think we were fully both going to name how appreciative we were of of the students on this committee in the board group of participating sorry neil i thought you were muted no i just that's my favorite part of my job is being able to hear directly from students in order for us adults can create lots of things but really y'all are the ones that are impacted by what we're creating so
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it's always a good for us for y'all to have donated your time to us so thank you as well okay so um i think these are very minor potential revisions so um are are people okay with taking a vote on whether um we are prepared to vote this out of the committee for full board consideration for first greeting can we take a vote all in favor say yes yes okay and students oh uh okay that was i hear two voices who didn't hear from i didn't i thought i didn't think i heard you um yes okay okay um so how about the students uh yes okay okay so um if you can get back to us jillian is on the call or at least is she did she join us i know we want to honor students but i would remind us that students have voice but not vote on the committees um so i it is important that we know that jillian and jackson are in support of this policy so i think we should allow for them to say that but i also want us to honor that um sort of boundary we have around who votes for what which is all just complex and is why we have liz on speed dial okay thank you for that reminder okay so um so this is going to be going to the full board um if you could get us uh prior to that um any revisions that you have um to offer based on the comments you heard today um that would be great um and okay i think we're done here today and i wanna i also wanna add my uh thanks for this great work um i think this is a i think this is a fantastic policy um it's um it's very heartening to know how how much work has gone into this and how how you've really kind of gone above and beyond to make sure that um it's responsive to students and it's going to it's going to be doable and feasible and effective and this is important so thank you okay thank you thank you thank you liz for walking us through this last month seriously yes thank you yeah yeah great job we'll circle up on those final last edits and we'll get them back out to the policy but i'll reach out to you guys tomorrow okay have a good evening thank you thank you everyone here we are 502 so um before we leap into the next agenda item i'm going to suggest that we take just a few minutes break um i need to get more tea uh will three minutes do it okay uh we will meet back here at 505.
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next item on the agenda is um let me turn off my phone um the preservation maintenance and disposition of district real property um and we have looked at this a couple of times already um i have gone through um most of the language um i think the the issue at hand today is the language in the preamble that uh we wanted to get some input on uh on some of the language uh from especially native american communities um and i know danny has been working diligently um to set up meetings with um with representatives of communities of color and my understanding is that elona wilson who's the advocacy director for the coalition of communities of color was planning to be here for today's meeting but um she ended up sick today so she's unable to make it um but danny can you walk us through um some of the language that is suggested here is danny here hi sorry can you hear me now yes okay i'm having some uh i'm having some mouse issues um so uh yeah so unfortunately alana from the coalition of communities of color couldn't be here um i believe she wanted to talk with the board and ask folks to consider just a couple of pieces of information one to sort of like what the distinction between like a culturally specific organization uh might look like in uh in relationship to land uh and real estate and then the other
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consideration was to think about uh the benefit of sale to a culturally specific organization they had an example that they wanted to share with folks so i believe um we can probably uh i'm gonna follow up with alana and with marcus and see if they'd like to either sort of provide some written testimony or potentially come back at the next meeting so i'll i'll sort of do that the other thing is that um for the preamble around we heard from you that you were interested in sort of having some different language around um the sort of both acknowledging uh sort of how how the district sort of happened to be uh sort of land holders and then also a little bit more information acknowledging our relationship with indigenous communities and also uh acknowledgement about sort of uh looking to see how other jurisdictions have sort of handled this language so um today what we wanted to do was just um play for you a short video um that just sort of uh is an opportunity for the board to kind of reflect and think about uh the impact that a land acknowledgement can have on people um and so it's a short video um i would love to play it for you but i think maybe someone else has to do it uh and so we'll play that and then i'll share with you some more information i think we're missing the sound you we're still not getting the sound i'm so sorry before i begin this morning i'd like to recognize the algonquin nation on whose traditional territory we are gathering we acknowledge them as the past present and future caretakers of this land [Music] wherever i go that's green earth i do the lakota tradition of technology in poor directions the land and the people living there um as i call the grandmother earth for land i view her as a sacred living entity and that's where we acknowledge it in you know the code of thought philosophy as a native person i'm ready for any kind of confrontation that might come up or preparing myself to remind people of all those things that they forget about i was at a meeting in minneapolis and the room was primarily non-native people other than a non-native organization but this executive director got up and said okay we're gonna get started so everybody you know was sitting down and getting quiet and she said i'd like to get started by acknowledging the indigenous culture of this of minnesota and i was like first i was like wow and it just made everything like fall away a little bit for me my guard went down i was more relaxed because by saying that like that means she understands something that is just like you can't talk about right it's just it just relaxed me as a minority as a woman and as a native person like it just like like pulled away this layer that's always there you know it was super cool we're at a time where um non-native cultures are understanding
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the traditions of indigenous peoples for for probably the first time in our history so like when i go to new zealand the protocol is to acknowledge each other's ancestors and your mountains and the rivers and and that's such a beautiful tradition when people are in that space and say we acknowledge who you are this land and the where your people come from they're saying we acknowledge a relationship but we're also creating that relationship this is a good thing the important thing would be that folks would then sit with that like what does it mean that our settlement is occupying this space and what responsibility do i have considering that legacy to these contemporary things right and how do i stop distancing myself from that ideally that would be for me the impact that this has if you start acknowledging that the land that you're standing on in the space that you are in belong to people that are still here like make so much more room for understanding of all these other issues it's one of those little things that like if it could just tip a little bit all the like dominoes that could fall from it i think are important now i'm like imagining it and like wanting to live in that like the thing that i'm imagining like yeah that's actually really beautiful it's just being a genuine human being to acknowledge each other's histories the good and the bad [Music] [Music] so [Music] i'm glad that you guys got a chance to see that um what i really like about that video not only does it show sort of like a really um sort of diversified look at native people you have an elder you have these like awesome hipsters you have um just like a really good blend of uh sort of different ways that native books are represented throughout the country um but the just like the impact of sort of like what acknowledgement can do um and sort of like it's it's it's real it's really powerful so the suggestion to kind of change the preamble to really acknowledge that i think is a really powerful way to kind of signal the district's um commitment to racial equity and certainly our theory of action um so uh i have been working on sort of trying to understand how other jurisdictions are are attempting to do this um and since our our preamble the the preamble as was written um does not necessarily acknowledge uh native folks nor does it uh sort of acknowledge dispossession uh we did want to try to seek some consultation from folks um and uh like all things in november and december the timing is just slightly off um the city of portland uh and working with laura john who's the tribal liaison for the city of portland and their office of government relations uh they are the city of portland is drafting a resolution that sort of gets at sort of like some draft language that uh takes into account um sort of the uh the dispossession and has some like common language around dispossession as well as uh references to other policies that sort of get us to how we're sort of at how we're situated now in terms of land ownership and in in public entities so um they're scheduled to have that uh resolution i believe in uh middle of december and they'll be sending out some draft language to a group of reviewers for us to take a look at that um and so what i propose is that we sort of take a look at changing the language in the preamble to have a first um first paragraph that would sort of do more of a land acknowledgement that sort of acknowledges the land that we're on similar to what we've seen in our some of our other land acknowledgments and then a transition paragraph that talks a little bit about disposition and the different federal policies that got us to how pbs owns property in the city of portland and then uh with the lens of sort of indigenous uh history and then uh uh the sort of like getting back up into the cup starting back up with the language around the responsibility of the board as sort of stewards of the
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of the property and assets so uh if you don't mind we'd like to just pause a little bit and get that language uh get that out back out to you once we have it and then have your sort of review and then i think um what laura told me was that there's quite a bit of alignment between a lot of cities not just the city of portland but also cities in hillsborough i think city of hillsboro beaverton um some philanthropic organizations um the portugal demand foundation uh so we'll have some nice alignment so that we're uh we're in good company could we also get the questions or comments from the coalition uh ahead of time so that we have a chance to read and look it over yeah i think i think so i um i i don't know if they'll if alan will have prepared testimony or she'll she'll come with that but if she does have prepared or can ask to see it first um so i i understand that um you know there's a lot going on for everybody um um and there is some some level of urgency um to get this uh to kind of nail down some specific language um for this policy so i'm gonna ask for your best guess um when when do you think we might when do you think you might get some language from the city and what degree of confidence do you have in that date whatever it is well um as i understand the time certain is on december 17th so i'm anticipating language from the city you know within today or certainly within this week um and i can turn that around to folks as you know as soon as i get it so i think uh because of their time certainly we actually have some certainty okay so um i'm gonna look at the calendar now um and i'm gonna ask roseanne to help here uh so i think our next policy committee meeting is january 4th i think um and that is um just shy of a month off but we've got a break in between um so and we would like to get um i mean we would like it um can you do you have handy the uh the work plan that we came up with and what is the desired date for this to go before the board for a first greeting let me look [Music] i think it's january 12th is the current updated forecast so that it would come back to this committee on the fourth which is the next committee meeting and then go to first reading hopefully on the january 12th regular board meeting okay so um so how about we uh hope that um david gets the language and if if you could send it out to committee members um as soon as you get it danny so that we can kind of look at it ahead of time before the next meeting and if you know when people get it if you could take a look at it in any to the extent that we can do some wordsmithing offline um prior to meeting in the committee i think that will facilitate the processing um so i think at this point um unless there are objections i'm going to sort of suspend this agenda item until the next meeting when we will consider changes to the preamble and
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at that point any other language changes um that that we want to consider um there's been there have been some revisions to the to the policy language throughout based on our previous comments so um i think if we suspend it today and then at the next meeting um we devote some time to both the preamble and then working through any other language issues for the rest of the policy and then we might be able to we might actually be able to get it to a full board for consideration um the what second week in january or something like that okay any objections well i don't have an objection i have um just uh initiated a raise so we last summer had um an inquiry or a request from cairo's about um below um below market rents um and also a option to sell and i understand there's they're two different um they're two separate although complementary um items but on the first at this point we're like almost halfway through the school year and i'm um wondering if um it doesn't seem that the criteria on the on the rent is has been an issue in the committee um whether we might be able to um as a board and this is a question more for ailey and scott be able to move ahead on that particular question versus waiting for the next meeting and then potentially the board meeting after that which would probably be in january for a first reading the public comment period and everything else because the school year will be probably three quarters of the way through um so it doesn't seem like the committee we've had an issue there's been a big issue about the criteria around the rent and more the issues are more about the permanent just permanent disposition of property so i'm wondering if we could continue to move the policy forward but move ahead and respond to the requests we've had at least on the rent i want to defer to liz on this because i think one of the things we've been trying to hold in tension is being responsive to our partners and also making sure we have clear you know the part of the purpose for working on this policy was to make sure we had clear criteria for our decision making um so i my understanding is we need to finish this policy and have it approved before we respond to any of those partners but liz did you have a different thought or a path forward there i'd like to respond to the committee members in writing about the pros and cons of each path i think that's the appropriate step on my part thank you yeah okay so um thank you danny for all your work on this i know it's difficult to track these kinds of things down um so we're looking forward to getting some um some suggestions from our partner agencies and hopefully we can work through the language relatively quickly after that okay thank you um so but don't go away because i think you're next up for the next policy as well which is all students belong and um so i think danny and mary are taking the lead on this one and this is um we have renamed tentatively to the um anti-racist learning communities so if you could um uh who's gonna talk to talk us through this uh i think i'll kick us off and then uh we can kind of go from there so um you are correct i get to work with the fabulous murray kane um and since we last met uh we met with the students from publius united uh who are very interested in this policy in particular they met with myself and shanice clark who's our director of community engagement earlier in the year to talk about some of their ideas around racial equity and anti-hate speech and then we're very interested in this uh policy in particular and i believe that you also have the opportunity to
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hear some of their testimony um so what we did is we continued to sort of um try to point out like what would be sort of uh handled in the administrative directive as well as sort of like what would be in the policy and a lot of what the student feedback was uh were more tactical issues that would be handled in the administrative directive um so they they talked a lot about sort of like the logistics of uh like you know for example like uh restorative justice um they talked about sort of like interactions with like principals and and and teachers and students um it gave us just a lot of really um really good feedback um both from their lived experience and and certain incidents um and you know seem to be really connected not only to their homeschool communities but throughout the district so it was a really good meeting ultimately a lot of their feedback will inform the administrative directive um i believe that they were you know if i were to characterize i think that they were in support of the um of the policy in general and were excited to see um the district taking some uh comprehensive look at that i think for example uh you know one of the things that they wanted to see more consistency in was in sort of like the reporting and also the sort of like uniform responses um so i think that the policy does a nice you know elegant if you will way of sort of like meeting their needs well also we can kind of continue to engage with them around the administrative directive to make sure that some of the sort of ways that this gets implemented um also meet some of the feedback that they gave so i believe that um the the other question is that um i think the the big thing was that um when we talked about restorative justice um and discipline a lot of the conversation that we had is that we wanted to make sure that we weren't sort of setting up like discipline and restorative justice but that we were sort of like acknowledging that there are consequences and that we have a restorative justice approach at the district and that uh that and that through that approach different consequences can occur so we we had pretty robust discussion about that um and then i think there were a couple of places where we wanted to um just kind of continue to bolster the a.d mary am i missing anything i feel like i think that's right i think that the concern was uh in articulating what the you know uh and i think this again moves more to the administrative directive and the procedural piece of what uh what the path of discipline what the path of uh restorative justice looks like and sometimes they can be both right you can you can have both but you know the incident is of a level of seriousness that will also lead to um more formal consequences the other thing that they were interested in they uh what we talked about and i don't know that it should be in here but the um uh having being able to articulate more clearly that there are times there and when we may not be able to provide information on what has you know what the consequences were for the student or students involved because of ferpa issues or others and and what they want and what they were interested in is making sure that that information is known at the front end as opposed to in the you know when an incident has occurred and it feels like an excuse as opposed to having a better understanding of uh what we are able to provide and what we want to provide in terms of information going forward and what we are prohibited from doing um the other the only other thing that we still really need to discuss and i think the students and dr bailey were interested in the same thing about clarifying um the learning opportunities um to support the goals of the policy and um we um were planning to reach out you know there are there there is some legislation that requires it i don't know the extent of it and my hope had been to reach out to we have somebody uh office of teaching learning to help answer those questions i don't i don't have that today but um i don't know if that it if you need that for purposes of adding that language into the policy or is just uh additional information for you to know as we're moving forward yeah i guess i would i would also just add on
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i you know we listened and heard some of the board feedback about the name and sort of like the question of sort of like why would it be called an anti-racist policy and i i would have to say you know my first reaction is that this questioning feels a little bit like we're taking a step backwards from some of the work that we've been doing around our racial equity work um i think that uh you know if we were to look at a venn diagram i think that the the work of anti-racism encompasses uh the work around anti-semitism the work around misogyny um and uh to to sort of to to sort of try to find the perfect term uh that sort of um that doesn't that doesn't include anti-racism feels like we are we're really not honoring where we are in terms of our racial our commitment to racial equity um and the work around our theory of action um what i will say is that there are you know quite a few um you know groups that are civil rights groups that acknowledge the sort of if you will the primacy of the work around anti-racism the work around sort of addressing race um as an important place to begin because of how deeply entrenched it is not only in the culture but in our systems and so the like the the work of anti-racism really sets us up well to contend with other um other sort of forms of oppression um and you know we're we're a critical race district we are critical race theory district which you know sort of talks about this like permanence of racism and unless we can really uh sort of live into that targeted universalism where we're taking where our system is uh really sort of hindered by the pernicious history of racism uh we were we aren't able to and if we're not able to acknowledge that first then we aren't able to um sort of build the requisite muscles to attack other oppressions um i think um it's well i'll go ahead i think that you know the the you know and sort of looking at you know different uh boshinis and i have you know been looking at different uh sort of research and different uh things because i think clearly you know as women of color as an indigenous person as a woman of color um you know there is you know i think there is privilege and sort of talking about um how you know sort of i guess i guess what i would say is that there there are both you know in the anti-defamation league in the southern poverty law center in um other pieces other sort of uh groups that are represented in this this group that all embrace anti-racism and embrace um our work around race equity and the black lives matter movement um and so i would just i would strongly encourage the board to to kind of continue to embrace this path that we're on um and to to really caution against the sort of like duality of like if you say anti-racism then you're not um then then where's my where's my thing um but really to sort of like embrace anti-racism as the work that we do the foundational work that allows us to build the muscles to attack all the the different oppressions um you know i stand by i stand by that like if we i guarantee that if we sort of lead with anti-racism that the white nationalist movement the sort of uh the work there they are not happy with that uh and that that really is gets to the heart of sort of what their their movement is about so well do you want to speak um briefly to the glossary at all danny or do you want to to yeah i think i think we wanted to um so we were trying to find a way to add uh some more language to this glossary i think originally because we didn't directly sort of create that like sort of terminology list because it wasn't all directly correlated in the policy but more in the the um in the uh in the administrative directive i think we want to kind of go back and sort of talk about anti-racism and it's for sort of like more expansive um and then also include um like targeted uh universalism and give just a little bit of context about sort of like why the district has chosen i think it's i you know candidly i think this conversation is comparable to the conversation that we had about sort of like why are we racial equity and not just equity um i think it's it speaks to um sort of where we where we want to be at sort of at the forefront of really sort of um tackling the thing that never gets tackled and so the intention of the glossary was just to show you what you know that what all we believe it encompasses and we're adding to that and the students
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had a lot of input in this piece of it and it wouldn't necessarily be even part of the administrative directive it'd be a hyperlink hyperlinking from the policy and the administrative directive but but but um available in multiple places so that there is a deeper understanding of when you're talking about some things microaggressions or you know that that people have a common understanding of what it is we're talking about when we're talking about this so that was the idea behind it and can i jump in one sec to ask a question about that sure for the glossary of terms could we add something about what restorative justice is or looks like in the context of this special yeah i think i think we also wanted to kind of draw some links between this ad the suited conducts a.d and make sure that there's um that there's like some consistency there and a little bit of a follow-up question is restorative justice always to be used or is it taken into consideration we think that the it's a it's a different so when we talk about restorative justice i think most people say that this is like an alternative to traditional um to traditional um discipline right so instead of getting uh suspension you're getting something else i think what we're really trying to do is to sort of frame or sort of justice as an approach um so there's still consequences um it's just taking a look at consequences with a wider frame with the concern for the whole community and um wanting to sort of like find more proactive solutions to actually change your behavior i think that's what we're trying to do so i think your suggestion around defining what the approach is is really important i also have something to say um i do appreciate y'all's work with um restorative justice but i personally my experience it's really not been effective and it's just hurt more than it's helped and i'm aware that that might just be me personally but even with the people i've talked to that's how it's ended up um so [Music] please like moving forward make sure that you are thinking about both ways that it could go like if it really is going to cause more harm than it is going to cause help because especially in racism i don't see how necessarily that could help and in my case it was with sexual assault and it definitely didn't help yeah that's really important and and uh i think we would love to talk to you more about that we heard that as well from some of the other students the the concern about uh making sure that we have a robust um and consistent approach and that there have at least what danny and i heard there have been some fails um and so we want to understand better how we failed and how how we can do better yeah i think it's that's i you know jillian thank you for bringing that up i think that's like a classic example of sort of like the approach might be restorative but that doesn't mean that the consequences are not without um the consequences for behaviors aren't without um appropriate that they aren't appropriate and so i think this is work that we need to do as a district and sort of um you know i think the i think the shorthand understanding is like restorative justice is somehow lighter but actually with fidelity resource if we have a restorative justice and a restorative uh practices approach um the importance of relationships the understanding of harm that gets done and the the consequences and the way that folks are expected to take responsibility for that harm is is quite different than the way that it might be currently being implemented so we we really need to um kind of grow and learn as a district as we continue in that yeah the point i guess i wanted to call out and i think julian was trying to get at was typically restorative justice as i've seen is a dialogue between the victim of that hate incidence along with the perpetrator and i think sometimes not always that interaction can be even more harmful than the original act itself we heard that and we're hearing that again today we also heard that sometimes the harm is broader than just the two and that that's not been taken into consideration that is you know that the the harm is to the entire community
01h 35m 00s
and um and so that we have to do some work on that so can i get um i think i i need a little clarification on where where we think um we stand with this language how um are you because i i think i'm hearing some concerns about um the need to like um define more uh more clearly what we mean by a restorative justice approach um so i'm a little i'm a little unclear kind of where we are in the process um i think our i think our recommendation i think at least my recommendation is that we um is that we sort of make reference to restorative justice and we provide the link to the student conduct and discipline um a.d where sort of like those sort of sets of consequences um are are there so that folks can see that sort of like that that there i think i don't think that in this a.d we want to define discipline conduct or restorative justice or sort of lay out what that should be i think we want to make reference to it and to define it but not necessarily sort of start to assign consequences for that i think that um it's so it's so fact specific and know i mean and we have already does the student handbook that kind of lays out what what behaviors lead to you know the the continuum of consequences um yeah i mean i i'm i'm not arguing for more specificity about you know what what particular consequences would be involved um but i think we need uh i think the language around restorative justice needs to be probably somewhat more prominent and and a bit more fulsome so um so currently uh the the second um component of this policy is definitions um and um i guess i'm wondering if that's the best place for them and for restorative justice uh no for well so you that's you've got to kind of preamble the purpose and then definitions and then expectations and consequences um do you like us to move definitions to the end we've done that in another i can't remember which other policy we um were we going to uh offload definitions because many of them seem to be changing rapidly uh we offloaded most of them to the glossaries the the ones that remained are bias incident symbol of hate and hate speech and one of the reasons they remain is that they are defined in the ode rule about an all student's belong policy i'm sorry what does that mean liz so the od rule is defining the rule says you have to have the district test has have a policy and these are what the terms mean in defining that policy so it i think there are probably ways if they were to find someplace else to reference them but they are those uh are particularly tied to the oar yeah so the the the three of them uh bias spice incident symbol of hate and hate actually actually just two just bias of incident bias incident and symbol of hate sorry i'm looking at the rule right now yeah we we included hate speech as okay and i think the hate speech is an important reference here in order to provide cohesion and some of the work that danny has done and others in the district as well to respond to hate speech incidents and so to marry the ode requirement with the structure and language of the work that's been done i think that i think that language bridges and danny i want to speak on your behalf
01h 40m 00s
because you are the expert but that's the linkage i see by adding that language to this policy exactly um so so my thought was uh and now that i know this is taken directly from the statute um i don't know i may change my mind but anyway so what i was thinking was um this might so especially in number two um we talked about a and b um reasonably likely to cause a substantial disruption of school activities um reasonably likely to interfere with the rights of students um that might be a place where you could insert some language from restorative justice that frames harm not just in terms of an individual but the collective um that might be a way to sort of link the two sections you know between uh the definitions and the expectations and consequences where you talk about using restorative justice approach does that make sense yes we'll work on that okay okay and um so i was a little clears so it at the end there's the glossary of terms that's not that was just for your edification but that's not to be part of the policy okay okay okay okay um any other questions i have a number and i guess i'm going to start with the one that just um came up the glossary i don't understand that that that's not going to be part of the policy it there'll be a hyperlink at the bottom but it's not part of the policy at the end of the policy it's not what the board is voting on i think that work is still under way julia and i think it's um we want people to be able to access it or looking at this material but it isn't necessarily part of the board policy so in effect the policy would end at found here the sentence before that end of policy uh i'm sorry it wouldn't have the sentence that says the glossary of definitions but no it should not okay so that's not part of the policy no um you see julia where it says end of policy it's on three there's a roman numeral three that says expectations and consequences and then at the end of that the last sentence is nothing in this policy is intended to interfere with the lawful use of district facilities pursuant to a lease or sense license license oh yeah okay i need better glasses and there's something on my screen uh and then it says end of policy after that okay um that just seemed like a random set of words there i didn't realize that was the end of the policy because normally you have like references so thank you so both of those sentences are then not part of the policy um so i have some like just uh well first danny thank you for um sharing your perspective about the title um and i think it would be good somehow to think about how to capture what you said um as part of um either the administrative directors or capture because i think it would be a question a lot of people ask and i thought your explanation um will be helpful for people of why doesn't it say x um so i would just encourage us to also make this an opportunity to um further um further advance uh our work then on the one two three four the fifth and the sixth um paragraph under the purpose um i would be the language as it stands now i think is good but i also think it's like it's more than being free from discrimination but that we have a
01h 45m 00s
culture that actually um is anti-racist because free from discrimination almost seems like hey we'll like we're tolerant versus like we're actively trying to create an environment um it just free seems passive it's okay but it seems like we also would want to have something to for both of those something that also indicates that there's action um behind it um and then and i brought this up last time and i'm still not quite sure what to do with it but i'm number two you know i was just looking again today through the hate on display hate symbols database and um if you just go scroll through the first couple of pages um numbers like 13 14 18 28 38 and 43 are all listed as hate symbols and it's like who knew i mean um and i'm just thinking like for example we have all these sports jerseys that have include those numbers and um you know how again there's a lot of information in uh this database but how are students specifically going to how are we gonna build awareness and then are we gonna say for example hey it's okay to have you know 13 on a jersey um and that's not a hate symbol and it wasn't in the policy when you link to it it says this is a hate symbol um so i just think we have more work to do and then also the intentionality of i think most people if they use the word the numbers 43 um don't believe they're expressing some sort of hate speech and so how do we distinguish between hey that was intentional hate speech or um or or unintentional or even unaware and i'm just using probably the most extreme example here just like of a number and how that gets played out because i think it could i just i'm trying to understand how we'd enforce the policy and who and what on that list how we actually would navigate that in an environment which some of these things are common um either number sequences or um things like 100 percent is another another one is like is that when if you say a hundred percent which is commonly used but not in the sense of as a racist statement so how do we is it all intent and who judges intent and then how do we also educate students i i think you know one of the things about this is that um ways to express hate continuously evolves right and so there's new symbols there's new language there's new um sort of coded ways and so you know we're always gonna be missing um you know and i think you know if a student chooses a 13 for their basketball jersey or that's the number they get or you know i'm 43 this year um i do think we end up with intent and if it's graffiti um you know that's different than a basketball jersey but if we you know um i think it's having adults um be be trained and be proactive and be learning about these things and and having kids as well um i i don't want us to set up like a sort of straw man argument that we can't limit these things because you know the innocent kid who just likes the number 13 is going to get in trouble i think we want to be really clear that um there is a level of like um intent um that is like is there is a judgment made about it um when yeah just to clarify one of all i'm not at all arguing um that we speak that out i'm just trying to think about like how how it gets interpreted and how actually how we educate um people it's not that i'm saying we shouldn't put that in i'm just trying to think about how to effectively so it's not just say hey we passed our policy um but actually make it meaningful right and i think that's some of what we talked about with the suicide prevention policy is how do we actually hold ourselves to accountable to this that we are going to be responsive to hate speech and understand that hate speech evolves and i'm i'm thinking about an incident
01h 50m 00s
in a high school yearbook where kids made a hand gesture that none of the adults who were looking at the photographs and like proofing it and a lot of the kids didn't know meant something and then you know the yearbook is published and all of a sudden it's pointed out that this is what this means and and it's horrifying um so it's how do we how do we have things in place where we're learning but also we're holding kids accountable and staff accountable one another accountable um to to be anti-racist and i think it's an evolution danny do you have some thoughts there yeah so i think you know similar to what you heard about the um about the um addy's law policy i think a lot of what we want to try to do with the protocols and with the um with the ad and the in the toolkit is to give administrators and educators the tools so that they can sort of recognize not just the symbols in the database but also the sort of like tactics that folks are using online to sort of like lure children into this and to kind of get that so i so i think that some of the i think what i'm hearing about some of the larger questions about sort of understanding intent we can provide um you know in our toolkit to be able to we can provide some more information in our toolkit so that that that sort of like estimation of what intent might be becomes a little bit more certain we can sort of like also tie it down to patterns so with the administrative directive um we'll have some more requirements for centralized reporting of these incidents in which case then we can track and then also kind of report back out to folks to to talk about patterns that we're seeing centrally so that if the number 43 is you know was yesterday was pretty innocent and then we have you know four four uses of the number 43 along with other symbols then we know to sort of to then sort of like turn on and sort of be aware of that i think the intent in sort of putting the database in the policy is to sort of like give folks sort of like oh no not a warning like a um a heads up that in addition to the three symbols that were identified that there is that there is a sort of national database that is helping us sort of try to understand that sort of pattern of um the way that folks are sort of using symbol symbols for for you know for bad purposes so um i think yeah a lot of it can be um a lot of what i'm hearing your maybe some some sort of second thoughts about i i think could be accomplished in the ed and in the resulting toolkit we're also um and had started discussions with again like um with addis act with peer-to-peer you know to talk to help with you know the that recruitment that starts online in ways that i think with the adults are always behind you know and and so um empowering students to help us get in front of it would be fantastic i don't know what that looks like but that's hopefully that you know we will have a lot of input from students about what they believe would be really proactive approaches maybe there's just like an additional couple additional sentences that just talks about how it's ever ever evolving and maybe something about intent i don't have any second thoughts at all about the database i'm just also wanting um our the policy to be and it sounds like income combined with the protocols and the ad which um i haven't seen so i just i don't have that what what the whole thing looks like but just to [Music] um acknowledge that we're going to need to be um so lean into into this work because it's i think um it's not necessarily intuitive to s to everybody nor is everybody um aware of even that there is a database or the things have evolved and so again no second thought but just more how do we help how do we help people comply and embrace what we're trying to do here okay um we're uh we're pretty significantly over time um any other specific questions okay um i'm going to ask that um danny and mary um work on um some language to respond to the questions that we got today um are there any does somebody else want to say something
01h 55m 00s
okay um so can you come back at the next meeting with some um responsive language and then we'll we'll um take it from there yes okay okay um all right and uh so we still have two items left to talk about on today's agenda um so i'm gonna i'm gonna ask a question um so the next item is the policy updates to the title ix policy that are intended to respond to both state and federal regulatory changes so i would say that sorry go ahead well i was going to make a suggestion that my understanding is that um this has become endlessly complicated and um you're probably not in a position today to um to really give us a definitive um suggestions for revision yet what what we brought today were some very discreet components that i think are easily moved to the next meeting in order to give ample time for the climate crisis response policy and i suggest that you do that and yes there is complex work on the other pieces that are not as discreet and there are much hairier that is still going on so yes okay so let's um let's suspend this for today and put it back on the agenda for next time um at which point we may or may not have more substantive revisions to consider but press not on the and out of the professional policy but we'll have other i think we'll have other policy revisions for you okay i want to i want to caution that there are we are in control of part of the timeline but not all of it given multiple people um providing input and we are we are um we are doing some wholesale um a new re a new approach to how to make these policies accessible to the students and broader community who need to access them and parents and teachers and so we're in effect starting over with some of the other collect not the ones that were on the agenda today so i will definitely have an update by the january 4 meeting but with the holiday smack dab people taking some time off at the end of december i don't want to i feel reluctant to promise revised policies by january 4. we will do our best certainly the meeting after that but it's it's not an easy task and may not is always a possibility okay i just wanted in full transparency to the committee about where we are okay um all right so um so let's stop here um take another few minutes break um and then reconvene three minutes okay we'll reconvene at 6 10 um to start a preliminary discussion on the climate policy be back here in three minutes
02h 00m 00s
the um climate crisis response policy and um and i wanna this is the really the first time we've um had a chance to talk about this policy um in any death um so since this is the preliminary discussion um uh i would i'd sort of like to frame this up as um by the end of this session um i'm hoping that we will have gotten some some information in from what data and information we have available about what pps is currently doing a little bit about kind of resources we have available um to bring to bearer on this on this policy um and then ultimately have by the end of the meeting [Music] some assignments for staff some requests for the the data information and recommendations that they can bring to us to inform how we how we approach this policy um so that's kind of i i don't think we're going to be in a position to talk about language specific language about the policy today it's more like a
02h 05m 00s
kind of framing up the issue um so i'm going to ask um uh so i think for staff we have dan young and sarah davis here who can speak to this um we also have several people um who have been working on this issue so mike rosen aaron pressberg amy higgs and jane camalt so if we can add them to the panelists in case they want to contribute to this decision um um so we have before us a policy draft um that is uh very ambitious it's uh very thorough um an enormous amount of work has gone into this um so i want to thank the the students and the um teachers and committee members who have worked on developing this draft for for many many months and there has been some coordination or some contact between the originators of this policy draft and pps staff i think we need to sort of deepen the understanding from pps staff about um kind of the implications of this policy and and what kind of resources we have available to us or that we need to develop in order to be responsive so um i guess dan and sarah i think do you want to lead us off on this yeah you can go ahead and start if that works for you sarah um so i'll give a little a high level overview so the the draft policy that you have before you um the i think it's the climate crisis response committee and loser name uh worked on this draft and it provided different versions of it in different information to staff for several months and and over the summer provided one version uh that staff took and did some analysis and responded back to it that's one of the documents that's in your packet there that's called the crosswalk it has some detailed information from a high level certainly staff agrees with the objective of reducing carbon we the district you know staff wise we already have goals around reducing carbon around energy and sustainability goals and targets that we have and so we have quite a few strategies and tasks underway and i think what what this policy will do is help build momentum behind that uh we certainly have information about uh what our carbon divisions are now at least at a high level uh and certainly we have lots of information about the efforts that we have in place at the moment so at kind of a high level that's where we are at the moment specific to some of the the recommendations in the draft policy some of them are things that are already underway some of them are things that we certainly endeavor to do all of them seem like good suggestions uh we'll say that some of them may be harder to implement than others and some may have more uh return on investment than others where some are seeming doable and we'll see a high level return on that investment for others it might not have as much return as far as carbon emissions so from a high level i think that's a bit an overview from the operations side i'll let sarah add anything that she would like and i i would mirror what dan is saying um on the curriculum in school engagement side um it it continues from the work that we've collaboratively started with the um with students and schools and across the departments and with the climate justice committee um and so at a high level most definitely um things things you know some things are underway some things would be extensions of what what we're doing but definite resonance across the office of teaching and learning as well that these are very important topics um and and really deserved deep thought okay um
02h 10m 00s
so i want to invite board members do you have and or or the students uh student representatives to this committee do you have any um any kind of overall comments or questions um that you want to talk about now rita this is amy i have a question okay um so uh i know in your preamble you said we aren't going to be wordsmithing or anything but it's not clear to me are we actually using this policy as a starting point for crafting our policy or is this just um ideas to inform the creation of our policy because um to me what we have here is a lot of great ideas but it it reads more like an administrative directive than a policy so um what what is the plan with regard to actually crafting a high-level policy that speaks to our ideals and our goals rather than our specific strategies so my um my request um to staff has been to um to look at a kind of national environment um because i um i have become aware that there are a number of school districts across the country that are also tackling this issue um in i think lots of different ways um and um staff have come up with they've identified a few districts that are that are working on it um so they're assembling um policies that have been developed by other districts or in the process i have contacted the council of great city schools to ask them to kind of put out a blast request for information from any districts any of the member districts who are working who have policies or are working on policies related to climate crisis response and that will i think when we get that information um we can we can use other districts policies uh to inform how we want to approach ours um i mean i tend to agree that a lot of the stuff that's in this draft is probably better placed in administrative directive or some other operational document but a lot of work has gone into it so i want to i want to be uh respectful of all the work that that has been um uh that's been done so far um but i do think it would be helpful if we could get some policy models from other other school districts and maybe other jurisdictions as well any other questions um i suspect that we're going to be wanting to be ahead of the curve from a lot of what's out there um i think we want to be more than aspirational um flowery statement i think we need some pretty targeted goals um and this part what's in this uh the draft gets us there some of it i think is too specific um and and belongs more in a you know 80 or a plan um but i i think the the framework uh is useful in terms of some specific areas that we can make statements about kind of directing staff work i do think there are times when some of the things suggested are above and beyond what we are as a school district in terms of our mission particularly some of the community education work i do like references to student engagement in this work um uh on the uh on the operational side as well as within the curriculum per se and that's a fruitful area for us to look can look at
02h 15m 00s
uh so that that's kind of you know not not getting to wordsmithing but in terms of of general direction i think we we can incorporate this framework into sort of our more traditional policy framework um and make it work um i just uh want kudos to uh our our allies out there and kudos to staff i really appreciate the uh the spreadsheet um the head green yellow red was was really helpful um and and i i just i think we can do more and have some really good partnerships uh with the community that will drive down our our carbon usage increase our use of renewables and so i'm i'm all for i think the targeting will help us do that we know there are state matching funds um for doing some of this work that we haven't been uh taking full advantage of um that's a conversation i've had with staff for a couple of years now so i'd like to see us get over the hump and get that going it's it it'll pay for itself and then some so um i have some overarching comments um well maybe some of the language needs to be um reformatted to like be more um fit with the rest of our policies i think this is a really great concrete policy that is it doesn't in many cases doesn't say how just sets targets which is it's more than what what we want to be doing in like the key areas and i look at pps as you know what probably the second largest landowner in the city we often every every morning have you know normally have 50 000 students um being transported often in cars or um sort of dirty buses um that pps in many ways i think contributes you know contributes to the climate crisis and i think there are many things in here that provides some real tangible ways in which um we can get after get after um being a leader versus a follower and i want to applaud staff i think if you look at when i look at the crosswalk there already are many things that have been implemented and so check um we're on our way on many things but there's others that whether they may need you know leadership support or um needs dedicated staff that those are all things that um i think with with focus and and support uh and and leadership from our students that they seem doable um so i i think we should press ahead and i i i i'm with scott i don't think we should be aspirational um there's some very tangible things we can we can do and the policy i think as long as it doesn't tell say specifically how we do things um but more the the what we're aiming for and in different areas um i think would give us a i say play a leadership role in an area in which our students and staff want us to and the board sorry any other general comments okay um what kinds of information um would you would you like to have in order to be able to um kind of inform our discussion of of this policy um i i think a brief review from staff
02h 20m 00s
of here's what we're doing now um and if they have a sense of where the uh which cliche do i want to use low hanging fruit biggest bang for the buck um what would you yeah where we would go for next steps um to really start to impact our practices and just to build on that um because it seems like the low-hanging fruit is actually stuff we've already implemented um so and then there's a second you know the second layer second tier of low hanging fruit i mean i would be in and maybe it's the the going through the just step by step of the um crosswalk to the policy to see like say on like the first one how many of the first five do we already have in process um or um you know it could easily be achievable and so we start seeing you know where the delta is between a having a comprehensive climate policy and where we currently are so that that would be that would be one thing and i guess the other thing from staff is and this is this is more a drafting um issues like you know how to make it mirror the policy format that we we currently use julie you want that in the first round of information or is something to put a pin in until we get farther along answer to the general question because i think sometimes it's hard to look at something when it's not in the format we're normally used to for example i mean this is just instead of like having the word target and then maximize reductions well like you drop the word target um because you're just we're making a a statement of what we want to do with uh ghg emissions so it's more ease of having people think of it as in terms of a policy that's certainly not the most important well i i would honest question just to understand what information is helpful to the committee because i know there's a lot here so this is a really helpful conversation to have you tell us what um staff can provide as we work work through this i guess it's kind of splitting the difference of um i don't i don't think a reference to plastic forks uh belongs in policy uh but what is what is the language that gets us to a plan and a.d that addresses i mean again if that's uh we have to look at cost effectiveness and what actually moves the me the needle on our carbon usage i don't know plastic forks is one of those things or not um but that is an example we we we wouldn't want something that specific in the policy but we would certainly want the policy to be more like yeah well maybe we ought to do something about plastic it should drive some change in that kit in that area does that make sense yeah it could be that the district no longer utilizes like disposable or you know i mean without saying forks but have a class of things that are disposable that um contribute to climate change for for example like up level at one piece or have a larger class versus naming the individual things within the class to that specific okay forks get them out um but the the challenge here is that this is a huge systems issue a lot of which is beyond our control a lot of which we can't change the system i mean transportation is is a big thing switching to a natural gas bus really doesn't cut the mustard um how much is all electric probably a pretty big investment i don't know so it's it's weighing what you know what's feasibly within our control that doesn't kill us budget-wise i mean we just have to look at that um because we're
02h 25m 00s
we're in a pretty warped system right now um and then that's gonna it's gonna prevent us doing a lot of things or make it extremely hard to do a lot of things whereas some some things are much more in our control and we have a much easier path ahead to implement them and to and they can be a substantial impact on our carbon usage their generation so building on that um i think it would be helpful i would like to see um staff i guess um identify that you know what's within our direct scope of control and where are we dependent on other systems and where are we dependent where are we limited by um external actors like my understanding is that a lot of what we do in nutrition services is driven by the um by the feds um so what are what are those limitations and [Music] what could we do um and it doesn't have to be you know as detailed as plastic forks but like what generally speaking what are the parameters within which we have to work um to make this doable um and and things like uh transportation um i think we're mostly dependent on a contractor so like where's our how can we maneuver within limitations where where are the parameters um that would be helpful for staff to try to tease out a little bit um in my understanding um so i had a brief conversation with um dan and aaron um and my understanding is that uh we do have some data um but there's also a lot of data that we don't have um so that some work would be required in order to establish baseline levels that um that we would really need in order to you know establish goals and accountability and all that so it would be helpful if staff could articulate how how much torque would be necessary in order to establish um baselines and what that would mean in terms of you know goal setting and timeline and all that does have i faithfully represented what you told me yeah i'll jump in real quick we we have some good data and we can share that data certainly for the next meeting on what some of our biggest carbon emitters are building usage and electricity in natural gas and in our transportation and really depending on the granularity of the committee of where we set those goals and those specific targets the information we might we have now might be sufficient to to have a good policy but certainly when we get to that more granular detail whether that be we'll see or the 80s uh down the line or or some other uh document that clarifies exactly what what targets we want to go after we will need to do some additional research on that on baseline so we do know that's going to be a part of it the question is doing it before we can finalize the policy or is it something that can come after and and i'll stop there and let aaron jump in if i said anything that's inaccurate you pretty much covered it so we have really accurate data in some cases but for instance for waste you know we have some limited waste to data but we don't know what that conversion is exactly to carbon and we don't know exactly how much that all that waste weighs so it would be like an industry average basically so the way that our hauler tracks it now is not real life data it's based on an industry average so they're little things like that you know for transportation we have good data on the student transportation side but we don't necessarily have great data on our maintenance fleet or any other kind of um district vehicles um so that would be part of you know what
02h 30m 00s
we'd want to track as well um so there's just some pieces that we have to get together on exactly what we're tracking and where we draw that line um and also um you know what we choose for the baseline year may be tricky because the further we go back you know the less reliable that data might be so they're just little things like that that we need to iron out before we move forward okay um so i guess the other the other thing that might be worth um getting more information about um or kind of staff thinking through and this might be liz um if if we can uh if we can get a better sense of um you know so far we've been talking about policy and a.d um but there are many other mechanisms that we can use to accomplish you know to advance the cause um i'm not sure it's really clear to most of us what those other mechanisms might be um so if if we could get a little clarity on that it would be helpful i think um because we we do need to keep the policy at a relatively high level of abstraction you know um it can't be so detailed that it um it will be outdated with every technological change for example um so if we can if we can tease out how we can achieve what we want to achieve um in ways other than policy that would be helpful great we're happy to do that um on the governance level and then also working with tanya and sarah and jonathan on some other concepts that might be worthy of discussion so absolutely okay i was this i this is alien i um my laptop decided it didn't want to be at the policy committee meeting anymore and kicked me out uh now i'm back but so i may have missed this but i i was wondering you know as we um just talked about our anti-racism policy and i do know that it talks about including by poc communities in this policy but i i think um one of the things that was missing for me was a little more robust expression of how that intersectionality of climate justice with racial justice and that part of our work here is that work and so how we continue to use our equity lens and some of the as we're looking at transportation and some of the you know things we're thinking about will have impacts on other ways that we live out our values as district so um i really appreciated the breadth of this that it talks about you know new materials and um curriculum and all sorts of different factors that go into climate justice but that was one piece for me that could have been a little bit more robust and i'm sorry if i missed discussion about that earlier you didn't we haven't talked very much about the curriculum side mostly we've been talking operational um is there anything we want to address there i guess for more of like a process standpoint i would appreciate um i know we've been doing student engagement i know we have a climate justice advisory council i believe for students but i'd like continued student robust student engagement throughout this entire process as well so if we could get some um but this is in in the spirit of asking for info um if we could get some uh suggestions from the uh engagement folks about um how we can sort of meaningfully loop students into our discussions and and also um i think in addition to that like trying to be efficient about the use of resources um if if that info could also include some ideas about how we could kind of build
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an infrastructure for ongoing student engagement with these kinds of efforts um i think that would be helpful i was going to just um complement the curriculum side because we all got to the board got to experience a curriculum lesson on climate climate curriculum and we read this incredibly powerful poem from two indigenous women um about sort of the way climate change has affected the land that they call home and it was just really amazing so i know that there's a lot going on with the curriculum already and it really will be sorry impactful okay so um does staff have enough to work with we gave you a few assignments okay um i and i want to give an opportunity to [Music] to the advocates who worked on this policy do you have um do you have any uh suggestions about other kinds of information that we might want to request from staff as we start working through this so um this is mike rosen i um i think you've covered your bases with staff we're looking at the same thing particularly national examples from other school districts there's some examples in oregon so i think you're on the right track i don't know to amy and jane do you have anything you want to say about that this is jane um no i i agree i would say that i would encourage um i don't know that you're we're going to find an example of another policy that will feel like maybe what we're reaching for here and i would just like to encourage the board to um consider taking a real leadership position on this i think it's an opportunity hi this is amy um i agree with jane and i actually did a bunch of research at the beginning on other school districts uh that have taken leadership roles and there are a few um internationally but but i think that this we pass a policy like this it could put pps in a real leadership position at the national level potentially international level a lot of the school district policies focus on the education side of or maybe on the operational side of things but there are very few that are as comprehensive i'm talking about both all the different ways to reduce emissions to enhance sequestration and to increase engagement and preparedness so i i think people can correct me if i'm wrong but i think there is appetite um among staff in the board to um to take a leadership position um on this issue but it's easier when you know what other people are doing um to know where the cutting edge is um and i think to the extent that we can um we can leverage the work that other jurisdictions have done uh on this issue i i think it's um i think that's a a more effective way to proceed um if we don't have to reinvent wheels we shouldn't so um okay any other questions so just to that point um rita you know there's when i look through it there's things that are unique to being a school district like the curriculum but there are other things that are just like we're a large entity so instead of looking at what just what school districts are doing i think there's cities across the country that are doing um pretty revolutionary things and taking leadership positions like whether it's related to transportation or their facilities footprint
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um i mean lots of businesses are doing the same thing um i know just in my professional life um there there are many similarities again putting aside curriculum between a large entity that's moving a lot of people around that's feeding people that's um you know contracting and procuring items that maybe the the question about best practice and policies the place we look is more cities or potentially businesses versus just other school districts um because i'm sure there's a lot of other there's a lot of information out there that we could tap into that is not unique to a school district per se i i agree i think we ought to be looking at jurisdictions um i don't i don't know how applicable um uh private businesses would be but worth looking at so i i have a request for the advocates if you have some of this information about other examples if you could forward it to us that would be helpful and if you want to go down some rabbit holes your own self um in the next month or so um please send us any info that you come up with um it's going to be this is going to be a heavy lift for staff and it's going to be really across the organization so to the extent that we can kind of be efficient in use of our collective resources that would be all to be good um okay i i guess my last question to staff is do you have any questions for us before you go off and do things i don't have any questions i think we've got some good materials that we'll be able to provide okay okay um we are at 6 51. um any final words on this before we move on okay one quick note i just wanted to clarify it sounds like um folks are primarily referring to the matrix but um i just wanted everyone to know that that last version of the policy the version 19 is has been updated quite a bit since the last version of the matrix so many of the concerns that were addressed in the matrix um were resolved in version 19 of the policy okay so um yes um and if we could if staff could update that based on the latest draft that would be helpful um i know it was it's from what six months ago something like that um okay any other last words okay um kara do we have anybody who wanted to uh do public comment yes we did um mike rosen yes um hi so i just wanted to clarify a few things based on the discussion we've had so far um this bear is repeating even though i know you guys already know this but since we're the largest school district in the state we're also the largest property owner in portland and the largest kitchen in portland and we have a 30-year program to rebuild all our schools there's never been a greater need or opportunity to address these issues i do think we need to be a leader and i did want to emphasize as amy mentioned that this is version 19 of the policy we've been working on this for a year we've addressed the issues in the crosswalk it's good to update the crosswalk and i think we've identified all the rabbit holes already and we've avoided them um this issue about what belongs in the aed versus what belongs in the policy is a really critical issue for this policy i'd remind you that we had a resource conservation policy that's existed for
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almost 30 years it was incredibly vague and it was out and that therefore was weak and they never wrote nad for it and we established targets not to say how to achieve them but um we because we understand that is the role of the aed we really need to move out of this pattern of vague weak policies and into something that's specific um we can't rely on this is so unique we can't rely on our old methods of developing policies we really need to look at this in a bold way and then i just wanted to say on the issue of student involvement i couldn't agree more with jackson and we are working hard to involve students one of the things that we did do through the climate justice committee is we release the draft policy to all the um climate justice education courses that are going on now and will be going on and we've asked for feedback and we started to get feedback from students but we are very interested in working with nicole berg and tapping into the students through the climate justice committee the students that worked on the curriculum over the summer and the last thing i want to say is how much my cat how much we appreciate being at the table with you guys um we worked hard on this policy and i would remind you that version 19 means that we've worked with over a dozen community groups up to this point and so we've got a lot vested in it i really appreciate that staff is this is a heavy lift for staff but we tried to produce something that would minimize that lift and so thank you thank you and we have jane come up hi um following on to what mike was saying a few a few things that i wanted to supplement the conversation with one um in thinking about other policies and what other folks are doing director brian edwards mentioned cities and i just wanted to remind the group that we have um among the partners that we've gotten comments and feedback with one of them was a sea of portland and we did get a letter of support from the mayor and we spoke to his folks that are working on climate issues at the city and they were really excited to have pps as a partner in helping to achieve all the climate goals in the city of portland um so that will be some good synergy another thing i wanted to touch on was around the admissions audit so we you know fully support and are excited uh about getting some baseline data getting you know supplementing what aaron and his team have already been successful in measuring and i also wanted to um talk about some of those things that are perhaps going to be so-called like less return on investment and maybe not you know move the needle in such a significant way but we feel are so important um for behavior change and just modeling to students what ultimate in the bigger picture does actually move the needle on climate and i know the board has heard from students in the past on some of the issues especially in the cafeteria those high visibility places so i hope that you will consider the impact that those have that may not be specifically in ghg reductions right now that are really important for the hearts and minds of our students and um sorry another place i thought we could look at for policy could be large universities that um i don't think our group has has cruised through those policies yet and i think that sums up the rest of my comments thank you okay thank you do we have anybody else for a public comment that concludes public okay okay it's now 6 58 um we could chat for another two minutes um anything else for the good of the order it's not a meeting unless it goes overtime so i think i think we need at least five more minutes
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and really really at least five minutes over time is i mean that's that's even pretty weak right there jackson can you uh you want to get into it on something anything yeah i actually did have a question wrapping up um so i know at the last meeting sorry this will be really quick but at the last meeting we discussed assigning policies to committee members i was just trying to loop back and see if there's been any movement on that so jackson i can speak to rita made the assignment and we are basically having a rolling start on implementing those a couple got off the ground last week but not all so we are getting this new process in order and looping in trying to find the right which students are attached to which policy for those conversations so it's a really important piece and we um we are in the process it's a new it's a new layer of process that i think will have a lot of yield um but it also with the compression of the holiday week and last week we did not get all of them in so more to come yeah did you did you and jillian have uh subcommittees or policies they wanted to get connected to i thought i had that list but it doesn't mean it's complete rosian jackson and julian i'll send the list to you too and you can um indicate which ones you would like to do nathaniel as well we already did they already sent us the list you actually did the list of all the policies they wanted to be on and i thought you all had that do who else did you send it to everybody right jackson i am very sorry some of those meetings for sure is that the one that had jackson on every committee no no i didn't send it to liz i think i sent it to you i don't think it got sent to roseanne or to liz and so i am sending it to both of them right now okay thank you that's helpful i'm sorry no no no oh no no one's no one's in trouble except us for not getting it fully rolled out last week and i should have i should have forwarded on to roseanne and liz jackson and paid attention to that my apologies for not closing that loop nathan did i see you raise your hand yeah um i was wondering if i might be able to be involved in any of the policies that were not uh taken by jackson or jillian assuming that there are some left i have not seen the list maybe um nathaniel if you and jackson and jillian can talk through that and then send us an amended list is that does that sound like it would work okay thank you thank you so if you remember the purpose of doing these um sort of subcommittees is to try to get through as much work um as we can because we've got a huge queue of policies that we need to get through so this is one of those all hands on deck the more the merrier so anybody who's willing to work we'll use it okay it's now 702 which isn't quite five minutes over but i think we've fulfilled our mission so um okay if there's nothing else i'm going to adjourn in writing lorita it's haley i just wanted to say thank you to jillian um for speaking up about her experiences with restorative justice in this meeting i know um that was a big thing and i also um have been thinking about just how hard it is uh jillian for someone who's newer to dsc like you because we haven't had the chance to meet together in person and build a relationship to like jump in on a crazy zoom meeting um is really challenging so thank you for your courage and speaking up and sharing that really important insight yeah okay um thank you everybody uh we'll we'll be back in um what three and a half weeks four weeks um uh happy holidays in the interim

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)

2020-12-07 PPS School Board Policy Committee Meeting

Documents / Media

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Minutes

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Event 1: PPS Board of Education's Policy Committee Meeting 12/07/2020

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