2021-01-05 PPS School Board Special Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2021-01-05
Time	18:00:00
Venue	Virtual/Online
Meeting Type	special
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education Special Meeting - 1/05/2021

00h 00m 00s
all right this special meeting of the board of education for january 5th 2021 oh could everybody mute please i'm hearing an echo and it makes me a little i'm hearing it crazier than normal for tonight let's see for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on has been posted on the pps website under the board and meeting tabs this meeting is being streamed live on pbs tv services website and on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times happy new year everyone and welcome to tonight's special board meeting director depos as chair of the school improvement bond committee would you like to introduce our first item tonight had to unmute there i'd be delighted so this item is the appointment of the bond accountability committee members as part of the 2012 2017 and 2020 bond programs so the bond accountability commit committee as we often refer to as the bac had nine members with three having left the committee at the end of 2020 just last week with the departure of those bac members coupled with the passage of the 2020 bond there's an opportunity to maintain the strong capital management expertise on the committee as a whole while increasing the breadth of professional experience and backgrounds on the bac and the committee's demographic diversity earlier this year i worked with staff to co-create a bac application form to increase diversity on the committee both demographic diversity and diversity of experience board members current bac members and pps staff reached out to the community in their networks specific efforts were made to reach out to underrepresented communities and to potential applicants with experience in one or more of the 2020 bond scopes of work as a result we received 14 strong applications for consideration all applicant data including demographic information and professional experiences experience was provided for review to the school improvement bond committee members but applicant names were removed to ensure the selection process was focused solely on increasing demographic diversity and breadth of experience on the bond accountability committee based on the applicant responses and staff recommendation at the december 10 2020 school improvement bond committee we recommend that the board of education considering consider the following appointees for membership to the bond accountability committee konichi oyugusu kara snow angela jarvis holland and darren golden and i want to highlight how we increase the diversity of this committee because i think it provides a model for us moving forward and recruiting for other committees volunteer committees so first we created an application process which asked respondents to voluntarily provide demographic information their age their race their gender identities in addition to their professional backgrounds and interests in serving then we shared out widely and we asked others to share out the call for volunteers to expand the reach staff did their best to use a values-based approach in the selection of the new bac members specifically our race and social justice values to round out the committee's depth of knowledge current depth of knowledge and experience and i'm really proud to share that as a result of this process we now have the opportunity to add three women two african-american members three people under forty and we're in turn recommending a disability rights advocate someone with expertise in the minority women contracting space a technology expert and someone finally who attended pps and as a veteran and a civil rights advocate finally before we leave i'd like to say a few words of appreciation for our outgoing bond committee chair kevin spellman for eight years kevin has generously offered his time and energy to support the pps bond and community kevin was one of the original members of the bac dating back to january of 2013 and has chaired the committee for the entire duration of the bond program his tenor has seen seen numerous changes in both bond management and pps leadership and his steady hand has provided a consistent voice for the board and the portland community he has gone above and beyond in volunteering his time in other district efforts including participation participating in the development of the original long-range facilities plan and numerous other pps activities kevin has always been just a phone call away to staff and board members alike and has provided guidance on a wide range of topics over the years and he doesn't know this but if he's
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listening i have volunteered him without his knowledge to continue to be available by phone to the incoming newly appointed bac members who might benefit by his experience we are grateful to kevin for taking on this endeavor and for chairing a high functioning team that has provided expert and uncompromising advice to the board i hope you'll join me the rest of the board the superintendent and staff in thanking kevin spellman for his many years of service kevin you've changed us and we are grateful for your service to the district and finally i'd like to say a big thank you to staff uh for the collaboration um we experienced during this process it was really a pleasure to work with dan jung and marina cresswell on this process sorry i have to find my own mute button too thank you director depos and uh thank you kevin spellman for your service and to um all of our new members of the bac thank you for your willingness to serve in this capacity um do i have a motion and second to adopt resolution six two two one appointment of bond accountability committee members so moved second second okay so i heard director brim edwards move and director constance just beat out director scott for the second is there any poor discussion on this resolution i just want to note i'm just really excited for this new slate of candidates i think the process that director depos created to do this was really great we had amazing really strong candidates and and really excited for these new folks to join the bbc i agree and i hope that we can um lean on this model for populating some of our other citizen committees some of our other community member committees because we had a number of other really great qualified candidates that would have made us exceed our our number that we need for the committee who we're willing to serve so um good job bringing forward people who are interested in serving in this volunteer capacity i will note that when we sent letters to the people that didn't make it that we absolutely said please be in touch with the board office um you know we don't want to let um 10 strong candidates uh get away from us so i have i have reached out to them thanking them for applying and asking them to stay engaged excellent i want to just join uh director de pass's comments about uh kevin spellman's uh tenure because um having viewed or participated in many of those meetings the level of detail and the amount of preparation that the committee members and the chair take and the care um for taxpayers dollars and really trying to sort of maximize our resources to the benefit of our students um it it is they've given us a gift of their time and their expertise and um especially when we relaunched sort of our bond program after decades of not having a bond it was really important the foundation that was laid so um thank you to kevin and your leadership and i really want to applaud the effort that um went into creating a adding diversity to the committee we talked about this as a board um but it to translate um what we talked about and our desires to have a more diverse board um i think um sometimes that doesn't always happen although even if everybody wishes it um is going to happen so um thank you um michelle for your leadership and uh getting us to this point because i think we have will really will this district will benefit from having varied viewpoints and experiences um on the committee is bradshaw is there any public comment on this matter there's not okay any further board discussions the board will now vote on resolution 6221 appointment of bond accountability committee members all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6221 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative xu voting yes
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all right very excited about this um new chapter in our bac and very grateful for all the work the members have done uh in the years leading up to now what uh what a beautiful foundation we have to build on all right we are now continuing talking about beautiful foundations to build on as we look at our goals for the 21 22 budget um we'll be adopting a goal for the unending fund balance reserve we first began to discuss this item on december 1st and we felt like we didn't have enough time to talk about it so we had some briefings with claire in our weekly check-ins and then again we had a dedicated work session on december 15th it is can this is a new thing that we're doing a different uh way um because this is considered best practice for school districts to develop budget principles and policies to formalize standards and fundamental values that should govern our budgeting process it is recommended that staff develop long-term revenue and expenditure forecasts typically covering five years as part of the budget process and to consider these but these forecasts during budget development in order to address the district's future financial position the pps school the portland public schools five-year financial forecast prepared for the board includes a staff recommendation to maintain an eight percent general fund reserve over the next five years this forecast will be updated each fall in preparation for the budget process superintendent guerrero did you want to say something about the recommendation ahead of us tonight um only that i've appreciated directors spending a bit of time and really understanding um all the different ways that that we can set a roadmap for our fund balance in particular since that's a priority making sure our school district has reserves um and it and it's really sort of a conversation around um our comfort level the priorities and the circumstances that we're finding ourselves in and as as staff commences the budget development process which started in earnest all afternoon and was very inclusive of a cross-section of people uh who work in the school district including many school leaders uh whose perspective we appreciate it's important for the staff to know how big is the pie that we have to work with uh and so i think that that's the discussions that the board has had is you know informing you know uh sort of what that looks like for us moving forward knowing that we can't only be thinking about the coming year but have to think about the subsequent years so we're being responsible and can take that into consideration with our planning especially as we sequence a whole lot of priorities um and we know current circumstances include dealing with this pandemic which has put us in a very different trajectory not just in our focus and in our work it's had such a um impact on the economy and it's you know there's been a lot of deltas and sort of our funding streams and that also includes some supplementary ones to to help address some of these issues but as we continue our march towards realizing our community-defined vision and we work at continuing to develop and we look forward to sharing you know in a couple of months where we are with our multi-year strategic planning we also know we have some immediate priorities like the educational recovery um that is in front of us because we know students have been impacted by the loss of direct in-person instruction the last 10 months so we want to be able to sort of build back some of that time some of those supports and interventions and likely that includes quite a bit of expanded summer programming options but i think uh tonight's uh decision helps to begin to define you know what we have to work with um and it'll be important to sort of be clear about where the gaps are and and where we need to put in those additional supports so at the same time that we want to keep all of our other multitude of work strands moving forward we have big desires and goals and objectives for curriculum for professional learning for human capital for workforce diversity and of course all of our ongoing um construction projects uh that we're also excited about so i know deputy superintendent hertz has now presented a couple of times and made some iterations to to some of the paths forward for the board's uh consideration so unless uh claire you want to have something to add here um that's my two cents for the moment
00h 15m 00s
the only thing that i would add is that since we started this process there's been a federal stimulus package that has come forward and been approved and we are expecting a march about 29 million dollars that will help us with a one-time source of funds to support that um one of the more things the board was concerned about was how are we supporting um learning student learning in terms of summer schools and interventions as they return from being out of um you know in the same room with the the teacher so that's great news and we're going to be looking um closely at that and making sure that we're not setting it up with permanent staffing when the funding source is not permanent but really looking at how can we utilize those funds in a one-time expense that will help achieve the goals that we the goal the board has expressed in supporting our student learning thank you both so what we're going to do is we are going to um make a motion to bring forward this resolution as written in our board materials which would be um going with scenario four in the memo which is the eight percent fund balance so we'll make a motion get that on the table before us and then we can robustly discuss uh that amount and that uh measure and make amendments as we see so fit we'll also hear some public comment and then uh we will vote on whatever then is before us in the resolution okay so we're gonna kick off the conversation um do i have a motion and second to adopt resolution 62-22 which is adopt a 21-22 budget goal for ending fund balance reserve don't move do i have a second second all right so director constand moves and director moore seconds the adoption of resolution 62-22 is there any board discussion um i i would really like us to consider sorry scott i'll get you once i uh save my little bit i i still am a scenario three kind of girl um going down to a seven percent uh fun balance again i think that taking the cut um too fun we're gonna have to cut funding next year anyway but i think taking the bigger hit in year two instead of year one um just with the amount of learning loss that students will have coming in to us i know that we are we have had stimulus passed we are hoping for more money but i still think that i'd rather see the cut in year two than in year one so that's why i would encourage us going to the seven percent uh ending fund balance scott um first i want to ask uh so 29 million were expecting what is that earmarked for so it is um we haven't made um a proposal for all of it yet there will be some um for feeding children um we've been feeding children for almost a year now and we anticipate all children having free meals um and throughout the district so that we anticipate that to last for 18 to 24 months so there will most likely be a need for supporting the nutrition services program but that can't run into a deficit mode and then as well i wanna uh i would ask superintendent guerrero to um speak to more of the instructional side of the long-term um impacts of not being in school with our students and how we might use those funds to support student learning right which is which is what they're intended for is to help uh supplement districts ability uh to confront this pandemic and so regardless of some of the limited in person or hybrid or re-entry models we contemplate all of them will have costs and staffing and extended time um and materials so so some of that we hope we would hope to resource from from those sources of monies uh to support that kind of activity for our students and claire what's the difference between the 29 million that you're citing and the 33 million that was referenced uh in our materials so the 33 million is the total but there is money that goes to charter schools and goes to you know goes there's multiple pieces so this is what we direct into our neighborhood schools at pps and and does that include an assumption
00h 20m 00s
of full reimbursement of the um fema monies some of which we've already spent not not at this point the fema money um i would we haven't we have not um assumed receiving any yet um and i think that there are questions uh the rules have changed they gave us a set of rules we submitted then they changed the rules and now we're not it's not clear what's going to happen and this has been a nationwide conversation so it's still an ongoing conversation about whether we'll receive fema or not so as we look at the cuts that are in the scenario four it looks like it would be 26 million cut over the five years correct and so that 29 does that all need to be spent in year one or is that money that we can spread out across those five years to make up for some of the shortfalls it's not meant to be spent over five years that will be because it's federal funding and they have a fiscal year end that ends in september 30th so while it's coming in in march it will carry forward into the next year for the full year all the way to september and then i i don't i haven't read the rules on if there's how much carryover we'd be able to have at that point but that would get us through the two summer programs for sure that we're intending to spend so that would make scenario for a little more attractive because we would have resources to sort of soften the shortfall in year one and then we would also have extra resources for summer programs take another discussion go ahead yeah can i follow up on that um so as i recall the last time we got some federal assistance it amounted to about nine million i think 8.6 yeah i think yeah okay and and i'm assuming that we have spent all of that at this point yes uh so i so here i guess here's my question um it seems to me that 29 million in the larger scheme of things is not a whole lot of money so it's not like a windfall so it may it may cover the additional costs but um i'm assuming that we're not going to have a whole lot left over there's not going to be a lot of wiggle room is that fair so are our costs continue to change with um what our circumstances are and so for instance as you know the governor has um issued new rules and new metrics we're still trying working through what that all means to us so in terms so yes we have money set aside to prepare for hybrid instruction and so we've got that included but in in terms of knowing there's still a lot of unknowns so having some of the 29 million set aside for the unknowns is is a healthy thing to do so i'm this may be the same question but asked differently um how much of that money do you think would be again we've got sort of the the table that you've laid out with the different options and in the five-year period uh has different that's basically operating expenses as usual it's general fund yes operating and um doesn't account for the additional costs if we were in some kind of hybrid model for some period is that correct so this year is a mixed bag for 2021 there are things that we're not spending and there's things that we're having to spend so really right now it's coming out pretty close to a wash on what um we're needing what we have gone unspent versus what needs to be spent right so for instance all the things that we needed to prepare classrooms we've spent but we've also saved on not turning on the 50 000 computers every day right so there there's um offsets in in the budget this year that continue to evolve and we continue to monitor and you're about to in later this month um actually beginning of february you'll receive an updated um quarterly report to give you a sense of what's happening with both the revenue that we're receiving at the state school fund because
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enrollment is down across the state not just us so that helps us when it's across the state um so there'll be revenue shifts and there will also be expenditure shifts but right now with our current scenario it's running um up to date we're running about even with just by moving things from unspent to things that we need to spend on by moving money around okay so i'm just trying to gauge and you may and it's very fair to say you have no idea because there's so many moving parts of that 29 million how many how much of that could be applied to that operating deficit uh as opposed to it's being applied to deal with higher costs some of it's going to nutrition services so there are we have enough expense if we if our goal is to increase the general fund balance to carry it forward into the next year we have enough expense to do that in general fund that would be that eligible by that that stimulus dollars to me it doesn't matter as we know that we're going to have increased costs next year in terms of opening [Music] schools so whether we're spending it out of general fund or the one-time fund from federal source at this point is does not really make a difference we know that we have um both pots available to us and we will continue to use them to our best ability um and in really continuing uh want time expenses to be paid for by the grant funding so we don't end up putting permanent staffing in a temporary source so that's our main um thinking about how it gets spent out um yeah i mean i i understand that um but what i'm trying to figure out is at the end of the day if um if we have extra expenses which i think is probably likely if we're in a hybrid situation for all sorts of reasons and we're providing free meals for all students are we are we still cutting effectively cutting 12 million dollars from our basic ongoing model that's our current scenario because in general fund we we do need to make a current service level adjustment in our general fund because we will have a shortfall there and we can't replace it with one-time money we really have to have a long-term adjustment for that and whether it happens in year one or year two um is certainly something the board can consider so director bailey certainly as last spring we'll certainly uh be thinking about what what short-term measures we can put in place to preserve resources in this second semester and these are one-time monies and we will we will want to use them to support our students and snaps on deck here if we need them it's really premature to be able to calculate um what are going to be the employee costs of some of these models but there will be a cost uh we have a regional soup on there who could probably tell you to run a summer school it's going to take about this much staffing and resources and if we want to expand on that that's going to take a chunk of change too and then there'll be some educational material costs too but we'll try to preserve what we can between now and the close of the budget year to draw down that that gap that we have see see where there's opportunity to finish closing that out that was actually part of the exercise that that staff engaged in today is to see what we can do about that that general fund gap now so i'll make my speech now i won't support the resolution um we have we are facing huge needs for our kids i think multi-year interventions will be necessary to help them catch up and if we're in if we're cutting 12 million that's not going to get us going in the right direction i think we need more resources than that and the the more we bring into year one will save us money down the line because if we have if we only move the needle this far in year one and we still have this much to make up with a fair number of our kids um that's going to be more expensive in year two and year three going forward um it's just gonna be a huge shift so my preference is to
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put as much money as we can into next year uh which means spending down our reserves more director bailey would you like to make an amendment to the resolution before us at this point or would you like to let there be further board discussion or do you know i don't have this i don't have the spreadsheet in front of me with the formulas to come up with something responsible because um again as we've seen it's not just a one-year fix a one-year change carries into the next four years as well and i appreciate staff and that's what's great about this process we have to uh think long term and i really want to again thank staff for bringing this long-term process to us it's it's um uh it's what we need to do um so i don't know how to i don't have the the numbers to say this is what the the plan should look like but i would say shifting down reserves and against doing that away in that five-year projection so that we don't get huge bumps and jumps along the way i i don't know how to put that into a resolution except in very general terms in terms of board guidance to say spend more reserves make this as as smooth smooth as you can going forward but we need to spend it big in that year one to make up that deficit as much as possible okay director from edwards it looked like you were going to say something and then director constant i saw you just unmuted so let me just if i may just ask director bailey a question so uh scott is there another one of those scenarios in front of us that you prefer or recommend or are you talk uh talking about something completely different um give me a second to uh answer that um so why don't you go ahead and i'll i'll jump back in in a bit great so i had a number of questions um as i mentioned when we had the previous um more discussion about this i'm struggling with the um not knowing the size of the loss or and the amount of acceleration that needs to happen um and to be making a decision based of like on the reserves without knowing that other piece of information um so my first question ties into that and um this is the superintendent or whoever um it's the learning side of things um when do we predict that we will have some sense of the um either the learning loss or the amount that of learning that needs to um take place or be accelerated over the next year um and i asked that just because thinking about where we might be in the in the budget process to sort of understand how we could might be able to calibrate or flex um during the budget process well what i say is it's an unusual year and we've had this conversation um it also probably won't surprise anybody to learn that after the inauguration on the 20th probably the first thing states will do is request essa waivers and so summative assessments aspects probably won't be taking place which are hard to do if you're not in school or if you're just back in school to set aside two three weeks to take those tests um so when it comes to having a measurable sort of indicator which i think is what your question is director brim edwards so we can actually have an informed conversation uh you know we want to have some kind of a dipstick or snapshot of how we're doing we know there's going to be an impact of of out of necessity of the model that we're implementing now you know we've suggested that the map assessment at the end of the semester uh would be an important way to get an idea uh about where to steer supports and interventions uh we're hopeful that that's something we'll be able to to implement usually that's open for a couple of weeks uh the window uh and takes a little bit of time and we think we might be able to pull it off remotely uh and after a couple weeks of crunching that data i know dr brown is here and uh he's testing me here uh could probably have something to you you know at the end of february but dr brown what what do you think to the question of having an indicator of how our students did sort of across the school system to help inform our investment decisions do you want to elaborate on that sure um i think i share the
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the concern about the the lack of standardized data to be able to make a informed decision over time and uh yeah things certainly have changed a lot in a very short window of time when we started this academic year i think there were a lot of questions about whether or not an assessment could be performed remotely and whether or not the data would be reliable or valid across the system as a whole and early research by nwa across the country has indicated that in grades three through eight they didn't see a substantial difference in the reliability or validity of the assessments uh performed remotely again in grades three through eight um so i i think that um as the superintendent has outlined that uh an end of semester assessment would be a wonderful opportunity for us to gather data uh and to begin to to move through that fairly quickly to be able to anchor some of our our thinking about how to prioritize things moving me forward and probably more importantly an opportunity for our parents to understand where their students currently stand and begin to think about the recovery process for our students as we move forward great so just to summarize so if we had that in the semester data that could inform the uh just the budget process at the board and staff will go through this spring okay um great and then i had a somewhat technical a more technical question about the estimates for deputy superintendent hertz um one of the variables is the local option and um in this scenario we have the local up the local option is projected at three percent while the overall historical average is nine percent and i'm just curious about that because the local option is a property tax which despite everything else going on around us um property taxes are not um and property values are not going down and there's actually been more development so i'm i'm curious why we have or is that just a standard um plug number that you put in or is there some is there some reason that i'm missing that that would not be more true to the more aligned with the historical i can see if it was income tax or something that was dependent upon the economy but that's not the not the case with the property tax the most recent history is three percent and so um i'd have to go back into the report um the there had the local option levy is the difference between the real market value value and the assessed value and two different tax rates from measure 5 and 47 and it's a it's not just a regular assessed value like you do for a bond it's a calculation right and so what i can say is that when we look at our local option living in the history historically when we had great growth and housing costs and you know the real market value was going up at a real steep um rate that's when we saw the really high percentage growth in local option levy and so it's not growing well in the last two years this projected for this year and for last year um based on our real property collections we're seeing more of a three percent growth rate rather than the higher rate and so we're being conservative right now because of our most recent experience okay great thank you um and then i think the other question that just i'm looking at the overall the package that we had on page 16 there's a table and just just to understand sort of the nomenclature we're using when i look at this looks like from 2017 to 2021 we have um 110 million dollar increase in resources to the district i'm reading that correctly excuse me just for a moment um i don't have the same page numbers as you could you tell me what report you're reading the five year financial forecast document um thank you i've got that okay so it's the last page in the packet thank you um it shows between 2017 and the 2021 forecast that we've had 110 10 million would have a 110 million dollar increase in our overall resources
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and that's my assumption is that's not including the one potential one-time federal dollars yeah the this report was created before this um federal stimulus package was approved okay so a minimum of 110 possibly 140 million what is and and our enrollment is we're anticipating it's going to be down um what is our um average or the increase that we're seeing over time that because if you look at the the passage of the commercial activities tax um that revenue going in local option increasing the reason is that the revenue is that the um the reason we have shortfalls is we're putting more into reserves um or that we're spending the rate of uh spend is just exceeding the rate of new revenues even though we've had a significant amount of new revenues so as you're going forward that's the issue in the next biennium there's a very small grow if you look at the state school fund growth in the um five-year forecast you can see that it's less than one percent for the next few years and that's why we're having a short fall but i guess i'm i'm just looking at over the five-year trend is it that our expenditures because it's the revenues been increasing at a not insignificant amount is it's just is it that our expenditures are increasing at an even greater rate so over time our general fund for the next biennium receiving receiving less than one percent increase for state school fund normally we get more like a four or five percent increase so it's a significant reduction in revenue over the next biennium in the general fund and the reason why is because the current service level at the state level was calculated with the um change in counted per savings that as in as a state average is a offsets that lower revenue amount so the current service level can be maintained on an average basis because pers refinanced our pers debt because pps refinanced our pers debt 15 years ago we realized that savings 15 years ago and we've saved hundreds of millions of dollars over that 15 years but now when others are receiving less revenue they also their expenditures are going down our expenditures are not going down because we've already lowered them by refinancing our pers debt and how many fewer students is this based on for this forecast based on um we assumed for next year that we've lost some students this year so we assumed half of them would come back for next year so about a 700 student loss heard me about a 700 student loss because i think we had 14 at the last enrollment count we had 14. i don't have the exact number but i know that we counted half of them is coming back so that's a conservative approach we believe that um as the vaccination [Music] gets out to our community that our students will return to school okay um director ben millers did you have more questions or can we move on to another board member no just before we have a vote i'll have a comment okay um i know we haven't heard from director scott dr depos or nathaniel um who'd like to go next you haven't heard from me either oh sorry i thought you already went i'm losing track in my old age here um okay so who would like to speak next anyone really excited to take on budget 101 i'm looking at andrew square but he can't tell that i'm teasing him because he is not 101 it's like 605 right that's true michelle did you have something you wanted to add well a lot of the questions that i had have been answered already
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um i was curious when we said we're feeding all kids does that mean every student um you guys are just curious about that it means every any student that comes and wants food or signs up for delivery at home okay so that means that's more than they identified families that need the assistance in the building or whatever yeah um it's the federal program was changed uh during cobid um similar to the summer feeding program so we it's a different um set of rules during the school year yeah and then my other um you know whenever we talk about budget i i admit i look to andrew director scott like i'm just like he's here um but my questions about are about the summer school programming and making up for this loss which is probably a different conversation but i know we're going to spend some time talking about later um we already pre-covered had huge gaps in achievement for kids and we know that because of the pandemic we're gonna i mean all kids are gonna experience a loss and so i'm trying to square just with myself are we talking about just the loss that we're gonna that kids are gonna experience from due to the pandemic or are we talking about those general gaps in achievement which is something that i'm concerned about have been concerned about for a very long time and i know all of you here are concerned about as well so i'm just trying to square this conversation now today with how we're using these resources and how we're going to accommodate these budget shortfalls over the next five years with the bigger issue of are we addressing both of those gaps today or with this conversation or are there two separate conversations happening so i don't really have like a pointed question i'm just i have a lot of questions in my mind um this is not my area of expertise but i'm i'm listening carefully and trying to learn it if i can just piggyback for a second on michelle's question um you know i think what we're doing here tonight in this exercise is we're tr we're trying to enable staff to begin building the budget based on a critical assumption which is uh what level of reserves are we starting from um and then they begin to build the budget and if we think back to last year and the really thoughtful budget message and priorities that were put forward when the superintendent presented the proposed budget you know it was all about how do we fund the strategies to achieve the goals that we've spent a lot of time and effort articulating around eliminating disparities in our district and those are all the same challenges that we're going to have through through the budget process in front of us um and it's all the more heartbreaking because we know they're exacerbated we know they're going to be bigger for most of our kids and we know that they're going to widen the gap because our our students who were behind and underserved before are disproportionately hit by this pandemic and remote learning so i have those same questions but i i think that that's really for our our budget conversation and we just we're we're really honing in on this one variable now and julie i share your frustrations that it's it's hard to know where to land when we don't know the magnitude of the investments that we're going to have to make to um you know remediate all of of the effects of the learning laws but um i guess i i depart from where you were coming from director bailey in that i i don't think this is going to be about a one-year intensive intervention investment i think that the tail and the hangover from this period of remote learning is unfortunately going to be longer and we're going to have to keep investing making those additional investments in our students for the next three to four years in a way that looks pretty different than it would have looked um had we not landed in this pandemic so um i guess i just wanted to jump in because i i i'm thinking about this process
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a little bit differently than jumping ahead to having to solve all the the challenges of our overall um budget process and i look forward to seeing the superintendents um and and you know the deputy superintendent's budget proposal that really tells us these are the strategies we need to invest in to address the learning loss this year and those persistent uh inequities and disparities that we've had for way too long i really appreciate everybody's sort of thoughtful um stances and uh i really appreciate that dr constand this is one of the things i think we've talked about that we appreciate about our board is that we are different and that we have different perspectives and that this is exactly the kind of conversation where we can uh learn from one another and grow and stretch uh director scott i saw that you unmuted did you have some things to add to this conversation uh dr moore was also a muted so i don't want to jump ahead she was ready to go now go ahead um thanks um let me bring up my notes here um yeah and notes look at that did i give that away um that's right they've been typing sort of as we go um i'll try i'll try it i might say if i sound a little preachy i apologize so forgive me for that um but i'm really well um versed when people sound preachy so i'll i'll make a song if you get no i appreciate that it wasn't even intended as as a comment about you but i appreciate that so i i am going to support the staff recommendation tom for scenario um number four you know for for a number of reasons and for me i think sort of starting off it was it was good context to go back and and i do i spent a lot of time with government budgets but i haven't spent a lot of time with school budget so i really am learning um about school district budgeting and it is different in a lot of key ways um but i think it was useful for me the context of starting off recognizing that we we're not we're not a well-reserved school district and that's not that's not a slam on on on current staff or leadership because we are better than we were before and we have been making steady progress and it takes a long time to build up solid reserves um but our reserves aren't we're not starting off in a good place right we we've got reserves of nine percent um in this fiscal year you know gfoa recommends um that reserve be over 16 you know just over 16 um in in sort of ending fund balance and and i think it's it is worth just pointing out had we been at 16 going into this pandemic we would have had more flexibility to deal with the coveted related learning loss that i think all of us as a border are unanimous and i know the superintendent is leadership are unanimous in wanting to address so so that is one of the reasons why you start at a better place is because when when these things hit um we it gives us more flexibility to respond and that really is why i'm concerned with some of the other scenarios that that staff have laid out for us and i do really i want to echo what other board members have said i really appreciate the process i think the information's been really clear i'm glad we have this chance for more discussion and i'm glad to hear from from all the boards i think we do bring different perspectives to it but i'm concerned about scenarios that take that reserve um even lower than it currently is and including scenario number four which which takes it down to eight percent um you know concerns me a little bit as well i i don't love the term rainy day fund i don't think that's helpful in our public discussion because i think rainy day fund vote evokes um a discretionary fund that you can sort of do whatever you want with and you know you can take a vacation or you can buy a new car or whatever it's like a rainy day fund and in reality you know our ending fund balance is what keeps the district solvent um if that any fund balance drops to zero um the school district shuts down you know under law like we can't operate without without operating reserve um and so pandemic or not or other things you know we have to close our doors and so that's why it's such a uh um it's such a key role of the board this sort of fiscal you know responsibility of like like what is the right thing to do um moving forward and and i also want to point out i mean we you know we think about reserves as as a way to sort of to sort of um ease some of the issues that we're dealing with right now but but really what what they're there for are things like you know pandemics and we are spending down our reserve already in order to deal with this pandemic um floods that might happen fires and earthquakes those those sound unrealistic but but they're not um if if we lost one of our schools right in a fire um we could easily rack up tens of millions of dollars in a heartbeat that we would need okay 2020 wasn't enough chaos and destruction for you you're now you know predicting floods and fires and earthquakes thank you not predicting but just noting that um anything happened yes possible preaching and the vocals going back to preaching
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and fire and brimstone the locusts i mean the locusts could really cost a lot of money as well um but i think that you know that's really when i think of a reserve what i think about is that you know is is are those things that are so unexpected that we would need to to react very very quickly that could cost tens of millions of dollars that we would need to have the other thing and this is secondary for me but it's not unimportant it is our bond rating and we do have a really strong bond rating because of um you know prior boards and and good fiscal decisions um to the extent we spend down our reserve much it's hard to say when when the bond rating agencies would make a change but to the extent we spent it down significantly and we saw that bond rating decline it would mean you know tens of millions of dollars less in infrastructure spending um from from from our bonds that that we're currently you know spending right now and so i i don't think that's as important as the other reasons for reserve but i do think it is an important one i don't want to leave behind so so i do i do support number four because i think what i what i appreciate about it is it it it forces us to make the hard decisions that put us on a sustainable path going forward um the sooner we make those hard decisions actually the less impactful they will be um because they they accumulate over time um i'm a little worried i i you know scenario three i think is is intriguing but um i think we're actually a little less likely to have stimulus in the second year um and so i i think you know we would be not we'd be kicking the can down the road a little bit um but i think as other people have pointed out those those those costs are are going to be substantial no matter what and and i would rather sort of sort of bite the bullet and make some tough decisions to get us back on a sustainable path earlier um rather than than than kick down the kick the can down the road which could potentially mean a larger cut um or smaller reserve at the end of the process the other thing i want to point out is you know with scenario three we would end up with a seven percent reserve well we still need to get that up to 15 or 16 so so that means a much longer process as well not much longer but a little bit longer process than an eight percent reserve um and i guess i want to point out even at number four um you know we're taking you know where we are taking significant cuts we still we still end up with a reserve that's less than 50 of um of recommended levels so so for all of those reasons for me i support number four it's it is going to be painful i i think we need to continue making the case at the state and federal level um you know for additional funding i i am optimistic that some of that you know may may occur and may happen um but i think i think for me the fiscally responsible thing to do is is to make those those decisions early um and again get us on that sustainable path and ran all right well if we're talking about rants then i think we should turn to dr moore thank you i appreciate that um i i will i'll i'll try to keep the rants in check um but i can't promise anything um so i am uh i am not in favor of four um i am in favor of three which i think presents us options uh for different decisions going forward um so let me i just want to address um director scott's um articulation of the reasons behind having um why it's important to have fun balance or reserves um and and i'm gonna venture a little bit into territory that is not my area of expertise so claire i'm going to ask if i say something inaccurate or stupid stop me um but my understanding is that uh gfoa recommends uh 16 reserves for most governmental entities but it is highly unusual um i think it's probably non-existent in fact for a school district to have that much in reserves i think the standard the goal for most school districts is 10 rather than 16. um is that fair claire i think it's the rare district on what state it depends on what state you live in and i i would i had this conversation with nathaniel earlier this evening that we used to be towards the bottom of when you look nationally in dollars per student spent or revenue received and we have recently with measure 98 and sia or student success act the two of those combined have moved us into the average in the middle so nationally we're now in the middle where
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before i would say so those that are at the top like new york new jersey their reserves are higher because it's easier to do when you have more resources so um so when they go for a bond rating they get a you know aaa top of the line um rating because they aren't financially solvent i think it was harder for us when we were at the bottom for us to do that when we moved to the middle i think our reserves should be increasing okay so um so increasing but i i actually think 16 is probably beyond reach um for the foreseeable future um okay two um when alien and i were on crbc um whenever that was years ago uh four years ago um we helped champion the uh the policy um that uh the policy that that pps says the district should increase the reserves and and maintain reserves um sufficient to accommodate you know the kind of disasters you're talking about um and i continue to hold that view um at the same time um i i i think we have to acknowledge that we are in the middle of a um of a world historical moment with the pandemic um and while i understand the um the need to have robust reserves um i don't think that is our prime directive um i think our prime directive is doing the best we can for the kids given the circumstances um and we have to be prudent and to take a long-term view which is why i'm really happy that we're doing this um it you know having a five-year horizon gives us a lot more um consistency in practice and um you know it's going to allow us to be more um more deliberate in the way we spend our limited resources um so i am not in favor of drawing down on the reserves in perpetuity um or even over the next five years but i do think at this moment um we know that we're going to have extraordinary expenditures um certainly for the coming year um possibly beyond that and i think um no matter what the level of learning loss has been um we probably won't know that really until next year with any real certainty so there's so much that's unpredictable but i do think it is predictable that we're going to have to spend we're going to have to invest in our children to the degree they need it so i am in favor of drawing down on the fund balance um two percent for the following year for for next year um so director moore would you like to make an amendment to the motion before us to reflect that um well i would like to recommend scenario three right the motion that we put on the table recommends scenario four so if we wanna i mean i think the sort of process way forward we can keep discussing this which i think we will but if you wanted to espouse that viewpoint we can try to make an amendment to reflect that see where that goes um but if you're not ready to make that amendment at this point we can keep discussing well let me just say maybe two more sentences about uh scenario three i think scenario three provides a good balance between the need to prepare for extraordinary expenditures next year but also maintains a healthy fund balance going forward and depending on how things shake out over the next two three four years um we could adjust that fund balance upward i i mean if we if we can give any credence at all to the um the state projections about um the economy over the next couple of years
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um it looks like this is going to be an unusually short recession um so we might be able to anticipate you know in the 2022-23 year that um where even under under both scenario three and scenario four we're looking at um you know still significant shortages um shortfalls you know we might be able to mitigate that through an increase in the general fund budget um anyway it gives us it gives us an opportunity to do the immediate investments that we're going to need to to respond to the pandemic but also maintains a healthy reserve level going forward okay so so i guess i i would recommend that we amend the resolution to read um scenario three rather than scenario four okay so director moore has an amendment before us to amend uh the resolution to reflect scenario three rather than scenario four um do i have a second for that amendment all right is there discussion on the moore amendment i have a question so we're not actually if we voted for this it's just voting for the substitution it's not actually voting for the the option three yet correct so that would be it would be the substitution it would be a substitution substituting three for four we'd have to vote on the amendment if the amendment passes we would still have to ultimately vote on the resolution i just want to clarify i have a question and the current uh draft resolution shows an eight percent fund balance rather than a scenario okay so we would be moving to seven percent yes fun balance sorry thank you claire for catching that so it would reflect scenario three which would mean the language would change to a seven percent fund balance um true larry i have a question for staff um claire i apologize for doing math um on my own during a board meeting i i think i promised never to do that but yet here i am am i is it accurate that the difference between um scenario four which keeps one balance at eight percent scenario three which moves it to seven um that in scenario four we're currently drawing down fifteen percent of our reserves and i'm taking those numbers from from your your um uh your summary table that our current reserve uh 63.6 million dollars and and in 2122 we would draw that down to 54 million dollars so you know roughly 9 million dollars or about about um 15 drawdown of reserves and that proposal number three would draw down reserves by about 26 percent am i missing anything with that now you're making clarity math if you're wanting me to verify that percentage i need to just a moment with my calculator okay yeah you have the correct your um logic as follows i just haven't verified enough so all this i'll talk will you verify make sure i didn't miss anything um yeah no i just i i thought it was it's useful for me to sort of look at and just just again for context that scenario four is in fact using our rainy day fund um to the tune of about 15 percent of our existing and i'm going to call it reserve yeah we weren't going to call it that no i just i'm correcting myself thank you haley um you know that he uses about 15 of our reserve and scenario three uses about um roughly twenty twenty six percent of the reserves so i just i think that's that that's useful and then i actually have another question for claire but i i i already asked him i'll jump in and say the one thing about looking at scenario three and four we cut this about the same amount a little over 26 million in either three or four for me the difference is when we cut that um so it's the trade-off of we cut more in year two than in year one but we still cut ultimately the same amount but then we also lose more of our reserves so there is definitely a high cost to scenario three yeah no and i think that's an excellent point because that is the trade-off we we end at the end of our five-year period with a seven percent we cut the same amount ultimately but we end with a seven percent reserve versus cutting the same with an eight percent but you you don't have to cut it all in your one you can cut some of it in year two my second question and you answered it earlier and i just i but i i don't think i i followed um with this new stimulus this 29 million dollar stimulus could that mitigate our need to take these first year reductions and i know that's one time
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stimulus money these are ongoing potential reductions needed in the five year forecast and this question was already asked and answered and i'm sorry i just i've forgotten your answer so i i think there are so many variables here we can make we can certainly use the stimulus dollars to help offset the additional costs that happen for next year even and if they're um if we ended up adding staffing using creating long-term expense over um with short-term money that means we would eventually have to figure out how to pay for that or reduce it right so there remind i just one thing i want to remind the board is that once a year now we're going to have this discussion so while we're looking at five years at once all those numbers will change by the time we get to next year because our funding level will be determined for the biennium um so so just know that we took a stick in the sand on the day that we did the forecast with the best information that we had and so and the next time we do a forecast it would be different it will be different because yours spending powers change and your revenue collection patterns change right and so um i just i know that you're really working on trying to do the right thing and so i want to give you some comfort in that um [Music] we have reserves to address um anomalies that come forward right that's one of the reasons we have them um we also want to be prudent in our long-term look which you guys have done that diligently going through and looking at the multiple years and just know this isn't the last time you get to do that you get to do this over and over again and we're continuing to give you quarterly reports to track on how we're doing based on the forecasts right and then again uh next fall we will have the same process where you get to set a new number we'll know a lot more we'll know by then we'll probably have an assessment with children and know what we're dealing with so just so um right now the difference between seven or eight percent is manageable okay we're going to manage whatever you bring forward to us but what's most important than anything is that you bring a number forward so that we can make a plan with the number you're bringing forward you've heard our recommendation because we're being fiscally um good stewards and you are also thinking about all the children and all their needs can't argue with either point just um so i know you're going to make the right decision um in in which whichever one it is um but i'm hoping that scott that i'm uh or andrew that i'm helping to um answer your question but anyways um we haven't heard from sorry claire i thought you were 25 is what i got but i you know under pressure in a board meeting i don't like to do something we should have rules about what we can do math yeah i just wanted to check in because we haven't heard from nathaniel yet but i did want to i thought amy wanted to respond to claire and i did as i just wanted to briefly say i think your comment about assessments is really important um deputy superintendent um because i think you know as we are deploying resources we really want to again think long term and thoughtfully about where those goes and i know that the map assessment that we'll be doing in january will help us to do that to know sort of to have some data we we think we know we have a lot of guesses about learning loss but i think it'd be really helpful to have that that snapshot as we continue to try to look at summer school and other resources for our most um that needs kiddos um and i'm really fascinated by what we were seeing from the national numbers around math and seeing if that's that's true here in portland and where especially we can we can help uh improve math nathaniel do you have any thoughts about this process or any questions you wanted to to weigh in on this discussion can you you're cutting out can other people hear me you're cutting out other people yeah a screen looks frozen to me so i think that the internet is intermittent i'm going to find you hear you now i'm going to try to join through my phone uh maybe if you turn off your video we'll be able to hear you all right
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no it's still coming out nathaniel if you could try to call it that would be great i'm so sorry we're having internet issues here could i uh want one or two quick comments oh wait if nathaniel's on he's on no okay so nathaniel's gonna call in and cara will move him in while we're waiting we'll hear from director bailey yeah first of all i wanna uh gently correct director constant i think this uh who thought i said we need one year no we need a multi-year i think we're going to need multi-year extra interventions for our students so we're in agreement there um i i do feel kind of like it's uh 1929 and uh president hoover wants to balance the budget that that's the most important thing that's a little bit of an overstatement but we have i mean i mean we have huge needs pre-covered that we were not going to be able to really satisfactorily address now it's well beyond that i i talked to a teacher at an upper income elementary school and i said you know ballpark it where are your kids compared to where they should be and they thought around 50 percent that is they had learned about half of what they would have learned in a normal year with a few kids right on target and a few kids way behind and that's at an upper income school we have and i think map will show we will have substantial learning loss and i want to give our staff the resources to be able to have a really robust response to where kids are so you know i'll vote for three because i think that's where we can get a majority maybe um i would go down i would cut reserves even further i think we need the money and if we get some unexpected dollars from the feds or even from the state great we can we can adjust the budget then and not take so much ad reserves but i want in this budget for our staff to have resources to really really address what we can um and i don't want us to budget on reserves i want us to budget on kids and that's not to say that you know andrew that you didn't bring up some great points about the importance of reserves yeah but we are in we're in a we're in a pickle my friends and it's a big pickle and we know using the equity lens who has been hurt the most i believe nathaniel's here because his thing says talking permitted so nathaniel looks like he's muted here can you unmute nathaniel i can't i just asked him to unmute nathaniel yeah all right we can hear you okay great um i'm sorry my wife hasn't been cooperating all day um yeah so i don't know if i really have that much to contribute uh [Music] you went really quiet there for a second nathaniel oh i'm sorry do i have to hold it like a microphone all right um that's better yeah so what i was saying is that um i met with claire prior to the meeting and it was really helpful um to gain more insight onto into how all of this works but there's there's still so many complexities but um the way i see it as of now is that any course of action we take is going to have considerable downsides or at least has the potential to and that um i believe that it is critical to protect and increase our reserves whenever possible but that it is also extremely important to combat the inevitable learning loss that we're going to see especially for younger students and i don't i don't know if we really have a plan here that can
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strike that balance um adequately but i don't know if we can given our situation i think the only thing that really solves the problems going to be substantial outside funding um the likes of which we don't have at this time so i don't know i i see the merits of both three and four um i i don't know i think you kind of summed up very well there this the sort of the like you said there's um potential downsides on all decisions and there's also potential upsides so this is why board members get the big box to make these decisions and those of you watching may not know that being on the board is a volunteer position so i think amy constant director constant was going to say something director moore and then maybe director scott uh unless you had anything else to add nathaniel all right director constance thanks um nathaniel i share i share your your verbal hand bringing um but i also think it's hard because right now we're sort of talking about two different options which is very reductive i think we all want to feel comfortable with our ability to invest in the incredible needs that we know that we're going to have it's just a question of slightly very slightly different approaches and claire when i wanted to jump in before it was just that uh you articulated exactly what i had been thinking about you know we're laying out a framework right here but we're not beholden to maintain that framework in our consideration of next year's you know the following year's budget or the subsequent three years i mean you you focused on the fact that our revenue picture will change well lots of other things will change too our policy making perspectives may change ours our understanding of what the actual costs may change our composition of our board may change um so um you know we're we we don't deprive ourselves as a as a board and district of the opportunity to change course in those subsequent years um i'll just put my two cents in here um before we take a vote i would support scenario four because i think it already has a pretty significant depletion of our reserves and we have made a really strong commitment as a board and a school district to try to be more fiscally responsible and i agree that these are extraordinary times but the reason that we got in a situation where our reserves were so drastically low was because school boards over the years were weren't willing and able to make the really hard decisions i mean we are we are an underfunded district in an underfunded state and there are always heartbreaking choices that have to be made with every budget cycle and i think it is fair to say that this one more so than others but it's always hard and there's never enough money um and that's why we got in such a dire situation that we made a real commitment to try to remedy so um i don't think scenario four is saying we just want to sit on a whole bunch of money and not invest in our kids i think we're already um are taking a big hit and um i think that we can't overstate the importance of continuing advocacy for federal funding and state funding although you know the state's in a dire position as well once we really know what it's going to cost to dig ourselves out of this hole and attend to the needs of our kids um so that's where i stand right uh director moore and then director scott and then whoever's ready after that okay so i think my cat has something to add to the conversation um so i i think i'm going to piggyback on what amy was just saying um we are an underfunded district in an underfunded state that has disinvested in public education for generations um the pandemic has simply made visible the costs of that the human cost we have structural inequities we have a structural deficit um and we are we're having to look ahead to you know a five-year horizon that is um completely unknowable in many ways um i do think we need to respond to the crisis in front of us
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um but i am actually more concerned about um the numbers at the top of this chart the budget shortfall between 2021 and 2026 and i'm looking at a total over five years of 212 million dollar shortfall um that that is a horrifying number and i i you know we can do things in the interim to to maybe lower that number but i think i i think it reflects a a financial situation that is problematic going forward so i i mean i i it's probably a bigger conversation than we can have tonight but i would like to have more information about what is making what's driving the shortfalls what is within our control and what are the factors driving the shortfall that are not within pps's control but that we can have some impact on some influence over and you know i will say it again the current service level formula is a structural problem that is going to compound year over year until we fix it um that's the one that i know about i'm sure there are other things that are driving these shortfalls over time um so going forward i would like us to look to use this instrument um as a way to uh kind of look ahead to what are the issues that we can be dealing with or we should be um forecasting for um and what can we do about it so that's my little soapbox um and a lot of this is um i'm gonna echo scott austerity budgets don't work they don't fix budget shortfalls they are inhumane they may be you know politically appealing in the moment um but we cannot continue to disinvest in our in our people so whatever we can do as the biggest district in the state to exhort and demand from the state adequate resources to invest in our children i think we should be doing okay end of my rant thank you so i i think what we'll do here is we'll we'll hear from dr scott and then i'm going to go ahead and ask miss bradshaw if we have any public comment um because i feel like before we vote on this amendment we really need to hear from um our public uh investors here so director scott did you have something to add um yeah so i i i'm going to oppose the amendment because i think i think option number four is better but i just want to say you know if if the if the board supports option number three i may still vote for that in the end because i think um as deputy superintendent hurts pointed out these are you know um there are answers there's not a right or a wrong answer right there are just different trade-offs with each of these so um but i also wanted to and i always hesitate to actually uh correct a real economist but i i know director bailey um can take it i think the um the issue and frankly the um the reason why the hoover analogy doesn't work is because the federal government is not required to balance its budget we are required by a lot to do that and i think that we can talk and i think all seven of us would believe that yes if we could deficit spend if that was an option um by all means now is the time to do it but we can't and we're not allowed to and we're required by a lot of balance our budget and and for me the risk of spending down further than we are which is already i'll point out very low is that if there's a and i'm going to say it again be the doomsayer if there's another pandemic wave right and kogi comes back if there's other things that hit us the catastrophic impact to our children of a district that is insolvent far far outweighs any of the kind of impact that we're talking about today and so i i want to keep that perspective in mind we can want all we we can hope all we want that that that we can spend our way our way out of this but we actually don't have the legal authority to do that the spending needed to help our students is far greater than the 60 million dollars that's in our reserve but if we blow through that entire 60 million dollars and the school district shuts down and is taken over by the state we haven't done our students any favor so i i just i think it's important to push back on that we are just in a very different position than the federal government this is not an austerity budget because
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we want it to be it's in a stereo budget because we have a responsibility uh not to make the district installment all right i'm you're right andrew that wasn't uh uh i wasn't using that as a drag analogy and and you know that and i know that but but the analogy is our reserves and as director constance has put it we have the choice of sitting on cash or spending it on kids when in this is an extraordinary situation if we weren't in an extraordinary situation then i would give more weight to the fund balance but this is extraordinary and i think my dream is really quick really quick sorry there is a significant risk of spending that down and i just want to make sure that all board members are aware and acknowledging that risk and i think what director good friend actually said was scenario four shows that we are not willing to sit on cash we're already spending down some of that to serve kids so i just want to make sure what she said wasn't misrepresented all right i'm going to ask you a lot yeah yeah i just wanna miss uh i wanted to ask miss bradshaw if there's any public comment on this tonight you do have a public comment and it's elizabeth thiel hi everybody elizabeth teal i am the uh currently serving as the president of the portland association of teachers good evening and happy new year uh elizabeth before you get started i'm just gonna ask that you spell your last name for the record um not that we don't already know it and um also to just remind you you have three minutes and you'll hear a sound at the end of that time um and to thank you so much for being willing to provide public testimony tonight and i believe as pat president i do get to speak more than three minutes ooh what's the rule liz roseanne what's do we have i don't know what the rules i don't think i have a limit but i won't take too much money right the contract allows essentially an unlimited sweet then never mind do you have life all night yeah okay people learn something tonight so that's a great night all right elizabeth happy to help and so elizabeth teal t-h-i-e-l so first of all i appreciate this conversation and all of your dedication to fiscal stewardship of our school system and making the best choices for our students giving the resources that we anticipate thanks for allowing me to speak a little bit to this resolution at this time of uncertainty and unique need framing a difficult budget conversation around a central goal makes sense i believe that centering the building of reserves or the the preservation of reserves and the creations of in the creation of our budget for next year is not the right value though for this time um we don't there's a lot of things we don't know about next school year or the school years after that but there are some things that we know for sure next school year our students will be coming to us with needs that are greater than ever and um just to get back to where we were before the pandemic would require more resources than we've had and then not less and i know that we share a much more ambitious goal than getting back to where we were before to meet our students academic social and emotional and relational needs better than we ever have in the past we've seen the cumulative impact of what happens when students needs go unmet we've been living it in oregon for the past decade or so and that's why we have been fighting to increase public school funding last year after winning the student success act we were finally able to spend time making plans for how to better serve our students particularly our students of color and because of that work we have more counselors this year than we've had we've had more social workers than we've ever had we have more educators providing academic support we couldn't have known a year ago just how badly we needed all of those folks but we know right now that we will still need them next year in this context voting to prioritize the pps reserves is the equivalent of cutting staff and i want to talk about what that means at to our school communities and the negative impacts that it creates um in a best case scenario when we make staffing cuts early in the budget process we sometimes get to add those folks back later on after we successfully advocate for for funds or when the conservative estimates end up being more conservative than the reality and this seems like prudent planning but on the ground it is hugely disruptive to schools and students and staff when we cut staff it's our newest hires who are unassigned or laid off and the district loses the investment in those crucial employees
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worse the school community loses a beloved community member who wants to be there in that school and when frequently um you know luckily positions are added back the staff member has already moved on taking a different position or frequently left our school district or the profession and we know that our csi and our tsi schools have the highest share of new educators and are impacted the most it has a huge impact on the stability of our schools and our programs we can fight for resources that we need and add them to our reserves when we get them the reserve doesn't mind with the whether those resources are there in may or june or july or august but when we're talking about people's careers it makes so much difference after you've been told that you're unassigned it is devastating for your employer to tell you that in the spring even if later even if we say we're fighting to get you back later um so when we're fighting for we can fight for these resources um and and not i'm sorry i lost my spot here on my notes um but when we cut our staff we do irreparable harm to our school communities and programs and we undermine our shared goal of retaining our recently hired educators of color that we've been working so hard to add to our district and on the subject of fighting for resources um i also want to point out that our stock market is booming the new york times reported this weekend that overall in the united states wages are higher in 2020 than 2019 overall they are just going to fewer people we cannot accept austerity and cuts that exasperate inequality in oregon or anywhere in the united states it is it is not true that there's not the resources out there to support our students so we need to fight for that and in the meantime the reason we have a budget reserve is to provide continuity and a cushion for hard times and this is clearly exactly the kind of time that reserves are for it does not make sense to me as an educator or a parent to make preserving preserving the reserves the central priority rather i urge you to build a budget that prioritizes stability for us for our students and the supports that they need thank you thanks elizabeth and i just got a text that um next time we need to add you to the agenda so we don't have that awkwardness about time limits so sorry for that no problem we are all good was there any other public comment ms bradshaw no that's it okay great um i had a question for deputy superintendent hurst and that is so let's say we we pass the more amendment we and then we go with scenario three seven percent reserves does that mean we're locked into having to spend down to seven percent let's say you know the biden administration gives every school district a billion dollars um can we seven's the the maximum we can spend down to we're not required to do that if we get a bunch more money correct that's correct the way the resolution reads is a minimum seven percent so that's the most we could spend down but if we did get a windfall if the economy turns around more quickly we can leave our reserves higher yeah and in in budgeting at a 7 fund balance our actuals are always different than our budget because we're budgeting 18 months before the year ends right so budget and actuals will never equal each other but we're budgeting with our best knowledge now but we will end on june 30th of 2022. okay thank you for answering that question i appreciate it lower do we have i didn't see any kind of um input or recommendation from the cbrc on this resolution there there was not oh excuse me i'll let doc or either either of you either dr moore or uh deputy superintendent hurts can answer that one defer to dr mark uh well to my knowledge um the cbsc was not asked for a recommendation um they were briefed um and it i mean to some degree it's um i think it was a function of it took a while for the cbrc to kind of get organized um we had a number of vacancies and a bunch of people had to be recruited um but to my knowledge the cvsc was not asked to make a recommendation uh i would like to say that i'm really
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missing their input in this conversation because this is exactly the kind of question that we convene them to advise us on and in every single um uh report that they've made to the board during the budget season since i've been on the board their number one issue has been about how to build a healthier reserve since historically this district has been fiscally quite irresponsible with regard to reserves so um i i'm feeling a big miss here um about not having their formal input or even any public testimony from any of their members i want to um second what director constant just said and that we employ these volunteers to give us their best thinking and to not hear from them is is really um unfortunate um we we sometimes as individuals aren't the best thinkers and it helps inform our decision making to hear from others that have different experiences i would just encourage us to recruit again i have 10 people i've got their emails that want to volunteer that are strong applicants that care about the district um and that's for another another day but let's i i just feel like it's a really difficult um i feel like i'm making a decision in a in a vacuum that's not diverse enough and not not broad enough um it's it's just really unfortunate that we couldn't hear from them tonight yeah i think that was an oversight and i apologize for that that we didn't uh pull the cvrc in on this and we will make sure that in the future that that um and so process wise do we need to make a decision tonight or can we go back to them and ask them we've already put off this vote so this is the latest we could make the decision so we need we have to make a decision tonight we were supposed to make a decision at the end of december and we we actually called this special meeting so we could have more time to discern and get data and be briefed and have conversations okay and all right let me send a question but i think you sort of answered it thank you i'm sorry what requirement is that that we have to make a decision is there something in our policy or in statute it's about our budget time so the budget timeline that we adopted in the fall had this on there and um that we need to finish this make the decision tonight so that we can move forward on our budgeting process so it's a self-imposed something that i think we shouldn't have wanted we could yeah deputy hurt should speak to that yeah i'm curious too about that because i have a work plan i work from at work and i have deadlines all over the place all year long and many times they have to be moved so i'm just curious also based on you know your your question director broome edwards about does this have to are we going to die if we don't do it tonight or could we improve our process by extending this out 10 days and asking the cvrc to weigh in so the cbrc did have a conversation and asked questions the the comments that i received back were they were pleased to see that we were looking at a five-year financial forecast and starting a new practice of having this conversation with the board on an on an annual basis they were pleased to see the growth in the fund balance they were pleased to see that we were recommending a small usage of fund balance as the staff recommendation so those were the comments that i received from the cbrc and so they i would say we have one we had two leaders at the start of the year one resigned and we then got new leadership on board we have a lot of new members it's not that there aren't members there's just a lot of new members we had a committee meeting that was scheduled for one hour because it was during the christmas holidays and so um the um so there there there were a lot of circumstances in place in that the cbrc is just starting up with a new group a lot of new members and so in terms of why it's important to do it now we are in we have four budget meetings that are internal in where we're looking to make our recommendation um for our proposed budget um make a recommendation to the superintendent who would bring something
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forward to the board we have a goal of starting staffing early in time frame in terms of march in order to meet that march 1 staffing timeline we would need to have our process done by the end of january in order to have staffing start um by march if we delay this decision we can't finalize the proposed budget um proposal going to um the superintendent um and then we would have it would lead to a delay in staffing into later in the year which has always been a goal to keep it early in the year so that we can have the best applicants and have um teachers hired before school starts in the fall so that's that's the reason we're on the timeline that we're on it doesn't mean [Music] um that it doesn't mean that we can't go beyond it but what it does is it snowballs and has an impact on many other things that are um that have already been approved by this board and then a budget calendar we can certainly amend the budget calendar but it does have an impact on when we'd be able to start our staffing process thank you i appreciate that and i also um this has been such an extraordinary year that i would be in favor of pushing things out knowing what you just said that that's tremendous pressure on staff to make a decision so you can get to you know those hiring decisions through the summer and fall because i really feel like the way we do our work matters and who we consult matters and who we hear from and whose voices are elevated and who's we are not listening to matters so that's just my own personal appeal to hearing from the cbrc um i don't know if i'm alone in that or not but that i'm just expressing my own views and my own wish to have been more intentional about having them in the loop having them in the loop and having them inform us i mean we're all here for for the best outcomes right for kids we have that all have the same goal and so how we get there matters so would you like to make a motion to table this matter before we before we move on before we address that before we have that i would also like um uh chief hr officer sharon reese um added to the room so that she could um explain uh more about the staffing timeline okay so let's hear from rita and then we'll hear from sharon and then we'll go back to michelle or amy or director broome edwards who all raised this issue as well um if we want to make a motion to table this so um director moore what was your question no i don't have a question um i wanted to reinforce what um deputy superintendent hertz said about the the tenor of the conversation within cbrc um they were thoroughly briefed on the document and walked through the different scenarios and the projections um there were some questions they were engaged in the conversation um but i did not hear anyone um who appeared to have any serious concerns about the direction that the district was headed in um there was no um you know this it's it's a it's a pretty engaged bunch and if they're unhappy they are not reticent to make their views known and people seem to be fairly copacetic with you know what was being presented to them so i given that i don't think it's necessary in this particular instance to delay our decision-making um i would endorse the notion that going forward um we should be more intentional about including the cbrc at these you know kind of critical milestones in in the budget process but i think in this particular instance given what i heard i i don't think um i don't think i did not get the sense from
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the people in that room that um they felt um they felt they needed to um you know uh oppose the proposal or that they had any significant concerns so there it is uh ms reese would you like to talk about the hiring implications yes so uh the our ability to go what we refer to as external uh with posting jobs uh is one of the downstream consequences to our budgeting timeline and of course the later uh in the hiring season that we are able to post jobs externally and of course the difference between the external posting and the internal posting is we are required to go through a process according to our collective argument agreement of posting positions internally so internal applicants have first shot of those positions uh the downstream consequences of course are we we are able to post those positions later in season uh that means our canada pools are smaller and i think it's safe to say that also has a negative impact on our ability to recruit diverse candidates which is a high priority for us in this last year we were before the pandemic hit we were on track uh to staff externally uh in the earliest we had for quite some time on april 6th we're already late later this year and we're hoping for an april 20th uh external round posting uh right now which is uh certainly later than we are hoping so there are consequences from a snapping perspective for uh delays in budgeting decisions so i'll turn back to directors to pass constant from edwards would any of you like to make a motion to table the matter that is before us at this time i don't have any interest in doing that i was just raising the issue of like why we had to vote that it wasn't by statute or anything else so just clarifying that i do not i don't either i was simply raising a question okay is there any further discussion on the moore amendment all right we will now vote on the moore amendment which substitutes um seven percent for eight percent in uh resolution resolution um six two two two all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes okay all opposed please indicate by saying no no any abstaining okay so you're gonna have to help me with math here um because i didn't hear everyone so i had director moore director lowry director depos and was it director bailey voting for the amendment and then director constand director scott and director brim edwards voting against it i think so okay so the amendment and uh the amendment passes four to three with student representative shu voting everything abstain okay thank you nathaniel all right we now move on to resolution 6 2 2 62 22 as amended is there any further discussion on this resolution so i have just going to explain because i'm going to vote now on this i'm with some director bailey on the issue that i think we have the depth of what we're going to need to make up um is not going to be you know one person you know moving from eight to seven um or you know potentially we might have to spend even more than that and um having been through you know living through the 2001 recession um when we had very little reserves um you know the community did what it needed to do in order to fund our schools and that was the teachers working for two weeks for for free um the community buckling down with a and passing a local income tax surcharge so i've seen kind of the the arc of what it's like to climb out of a tough
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budget hole but i think what in the past the difference is we haven't also had potentially such a large learning loss um my preference and i think and i said this from the very beginning i just i'm not comfortable with backing in like picking as our anchor point here's what the reserves are and then work from that i'm telling the staff work from that um i'd much prefer that the staff come up with a budget that they feel addresses the potential learning losses loss and to director de pass's point also works on our board goals of accelerating gains for black indigenous special ed english language learners and that if based on that budget we have reserves of ten percent great but if they're four percent i'd much rather live with that and know that we built the budget around what the educators in the district felt we needed um versus just and from my own personal saying it seems somewhat random to pick you know going from eight to seven seems like well maybe that's two thousand kids that aren't gonna get it because you know if we if we left it at eight uh versus going down to seven so i'm just i'm just uncomfortable starting the process with the reserve number versus staff and the superintendent the educators coming with a here's here's what we know to the best of our knowledge and what we can do so i'm going to be a no on um [Music] this resolution because i have a greater degree of comfort with moving the reserves into this unprecedented situation but that's just my own personal comfort level and i understand why other people have different comfort zones and i think that's one of the good things about our board is that we do have differences and and we share them and learn from one another other um comments before we vote on the resolution before watching this one so go ahead go ahead director bailey what are you just watching then scott i agree with uh director brian edwards sentiments um i'd i'd be willing to go lower in reserves if that's what it needed to you know get the job done isn't the right phrase but have a more robust response in terms of what i think the extra staff that we're going to be needing for summer school for math specialists for reading specialists to really address the learning loss but i will be voting for it because uh it's they are to compromise but if we get a couple months down the road and we actually see where our students are and what the response is with a seven percent um i'm willing to revisit this all right constant and then scott thanks i think i said this the last time or the first time we addressed this question back in december which is it does feel like the tail wagging the dog in this conversation and um you know elizabeth mentioned um that it doesn't seem right to build a budget around the priority of preserving reserves and that is what it feels like in this conversation and i agree that's just completely um wrong however we haven't even gotten to our budget process and we haven't even seen the superintendent's budget proposal which is i predict going to be all about how we continue to further our goals of eliminating disparities given the exacerbation of those disparities the worsening of those disparities um and so this is taking a huge chunk out of our reserves um i agree it's really uncomfortable to at this point not know what it's going to take um to be able to invest in what our kids need but this is just the beginning of that process and um it's just a question of uh how how how deeply do we want to cut into that um sense of financial responsibility that that we've been trying to push this district to have for a long time and and also these decisions are not irreversible we're going to have a whole road full of changes both on the revenue side and on our understanding of the expenditure side um so i i appreciate
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uh that staff needs this hard and fast number in order to begin building the rest of the budget proposal but i do also feel like um the whole process seems seems quite backwards and and it's awkward director scott thanks um yeah i'll be supporting the the resolution um i you know i i would have preferred i felt more comfortable at eight percent but seven percent i think it's workable um although although again you know increases the risk you know at the risk of cara changing my name to cassandra um permanently i mean i feel like it is important to come back um and i just want to share probably the hardest thing i've ever had to do in my career um was lay off 700 employees which i had to do in march and i had to do that because we ran out of reserves um and i want to point out that the the the the operations we were talking about were very well reserved they met or exceeded gfoa's goals um in all cases and and and because of this pandemic um we laid off 700 people i fully agree with pat president thiel's comments i think you know layoffs are very disruptive everything we can do to preserve teachers and positions and and student learning is really really important massive layoffs that come from you know the type of catastrophic situation that governments including school districts sometimes find themselves in are far far more disruptive and so for me i think i want to make sure we don't frame this as we spend money to increase learning and say positions or we sit on the money the trade-off is the lower our reserves are the more we have to cross our fingers that nothing bad happens um and and you know we've been doing that for a long time we're going to continue doing that moving into the future but there is a significant risk there that i think we just need to be honest and transparent about as we move forward thanks any further comments before we vote i just say one thing and i'm gonna i'm gonna back up our local cassandra here a little bit um the reason why we're having to talk so much now about um establishing some um some minimum standards for reserve funding or reserve funds um is partially because of the pandemic but it's also because this his this district has a long history of failing to have sufficient reserves to deal with crises um so i mean i think we need to be prudent i think we need to be um flexible enough to deal with situations as they arise um but in principle i mean we do need to be talking about uh reserves and robust reserves because stuff happens stuff happens every year um some years more stuff happens um and this next year is going to be i think extraordinary um but we do need to you know it's it's not it wouldn't be so much the the tail wagging the dog if we didn't have a history of having no tail so all right anything else before we uh vote nathaniel yeah i'd just like to say something um well i chose to abstain during um our first vote of the night um i i'm now beginning to slightly lean toward um scenario four i know that's now pretty much out of the question but i i i beginning to see that that argument more now um but in any case i will i will support um i will vote in favor of this um of this proposal because i do see um its importance and it's virtue even when compared to two scenario four um yeah that's about it thank you yeah nathaniel sometimes i'll come into a meeting thinking i know what i am going to do and how i'm going to vote and then listening to my colleagues on the public testimony uh changes my mind so i think again that's one of the the points of why we have board meetings and why we discuss these things that we do uh learn from each other as we do this process all right if is there anything further before we call a vote on this matter
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all right um the board will now vote on resolution 6222 as amended um adopt a 21-22 budget goal for ending fund balance reserve all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes thanks amy all opposed please indicate by saying no no are there any abstentions all right resolution 62 22 passes as amended passes by i guess i can stop saying amended because we voted on the amendment resolution 62 22 passes by a vote of six to one with student representative chu voting yeah all right thank you all for that in-depth um an excellent discussion uh is there any other business uh at this time before we adjourn all right the next regular meeting of the board will be held on january 12th and this meeting is now adjourned

Sources

PPS Board of Education, BoardBook Public View, https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Organization/915 (accessed: 2023-01-25T21:27:49.720701Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)
PPS Communications, "PPS Board of Education Meetings" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbZtlBHJZmkdC_tt72iEiQXsgBxAQRwtM (accessed: 2023-10-14T01:02:33.351363Z)
PPS Board of Education, PPS Board of Education - Full Board Meetings (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk0IYRijyKDW0GVGkV4xIiOAc-j4KVdFh (accessed: 2023-10-11T05:43:28.081119Z)

2021-01-05 PPS School Board Special Meeting

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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Special Meeting - 1/05/2021

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