2021-01-14 PPS School Board Intergovernmental Committee Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-01-14
Time 17:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education's Intergovernmental Committee Meeting - 1/14/21

00h 00m 00s
a few things to cover and and an hour to do it so um thank you everybody for joining us and welcome to the criminal committee let me pull up my um agenda there we go so um a couple things we're gonna talk about tonight um school reopening uh any sort of issues around intergovernmental collaboration where this community or school generally might be helpful uh in terms of moving that forward and then continue the conversation that we started briefly at the board meet on tuesday about the school intellectual system and sort of go through next steps it'll be some of the same information um but really just sort of talking about fleshing out those next steps a little bit more and what that's going to look like a timeline we'll also get a legislative update importantly there's a whole lot to share but just here a little bit there might be uh and let's go ahead and dive in then starting with the opening acknowledgement of the minutes they came around late and were posted late and i actually haven't even had a chance to look at them so if it's okay with everyone we'll do um those meeting minutes and the uh and this one at the next committee meeting so take a look at those between now and then carrying on a few issues um public comment cara is anyone signed up for public comments yeah do we uh i'm just uh more of a logistical thing do people have to be signed up in order for us to allow them public comment do you send them like a separate link or anything or people who are watching want to do public comment can they raise their hand um well those who are watching are watching via the youtube unless they've signed up and i send them a link to this okay that's i thought logistically yeah it could be as you know a few minutes before the meeting they let me know i can give them the link but without the link okay um great we won't have a lot of time at the end of the meeting but if anybody watching does um have public comment you can email cara bradshaw um and we can get you set up for that and cara is your email you can say it is there uh the easiest one is public comment at pbs.net i'll watch for that perfect thank you okay let's um dive in then uh on the first issue so school reopening intergovernmental collaboration so we got um a good update on tuesday from the superintendent and staff and we had some advisors from ohsu and other pub public academic county sort of talking about where we are from a covenant perspective and a little bit of where we are from a reopening perspective what i was hoping this committee could talk a little bit about and focus on is um is there any um role that either this committee or the board could play at this point in terms of helping with that reopening so thinking about requests we might have of out of the state or the county um or other governments for that matter that might need a little bit of to help those things so with that um courtney or maybe sharon i will turn it over to one of you yeah so um i think this is a good conversation to be having i think we have a few updates i know i think you guys got a pretty detailed or i know you got a pretty detailed um lippy discussion on tuesday and it feels like that was so long ago doesn't it um so we won't spend a lot of time on that but i think we can share some of the updates we've heard on vaccines sharon i don't know do you want to talk about that or do you want me to i think you are as up to date as i am so i'm happy to fill in but important if you want to um leave that and uh yeah i'm happy too so um i think you know one of the big elephants in the room right now is vaccines um how quickly are they going to be coming to oregon um and or getting distributed once they're here and um and how are we going to get our education workforce vaccinated in short order so that we can start thinking about the what's next um and so right now um you guys probably heard earlier this week that the governor added 65 and over to the phase 1d list with a nod to january 23rd as the date for that to start rolling out um it sounds like from what i've heard from oha and others there's about 200 000 doses in the stockpile coming our way now when that arrives is your gas is as good as mine but i know that everyone is trying to get that out the door into the state as quickly as possible so that's really good news there's a lot more supply coming our way the question is how do we get those shots in people's arms um so there's been a lot of conversation multnomah county is doing what they're calling matchmaking right now where they're connecting people who want it to be the right provider they're not actually hosting clinics at least at this stage from what i've been
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told and from what we've all heard um the providers the big hospital providers the system they are the ones who are doing the vaccinating and so they've been and some of you maybe if you're in kaiser received an email for example i got an email yesterday saying hey if you're interested in the vaccine sign up here of course if you go to it it's overwhelmed because the system probably got a lot of interest because everyone you know that feels safe doing so is looking to get to get vaccinated so and that's another whole question right we want to make sure that we address vaccine hesitancy there's a lot of people that aren't comfortable and that are not ready to run out to the nearest um vaccine clinic once they're available to do it so we need to figure out how do we communicate that with our team and um be culturally responsive to that to that concern and that hesitancy so that would be one piece um the conversation with school districts right now is internally we have a vaccine team that that's a meeting regularly to figure out you know do we how do we prioritize our employee group how do we um like roll this out david's been involved sharon's been involved how do we communicate to our staff when it's coming we sent a communication yesterday just letting people know that we know you want to know more we will share more when we know more and so just letting letting our staff make making them aware that we have them in mind we want to make sure they have the information but there's not a lot to share yet um what else can i tell you yeah okay this is julia yeah so um it's interesting because a number of individuals in my family either work at salem health or um have are in that one aid group and did the whole go to salem to get the um they've got a huge setup down there where they got their ground yeah where they've got a major pod and i'm a little bit concerned that multnomah county is relying on just external partners like that and and like that that our workforce wouldn't be directed into a a specific um pod because if we just leave it to people to set up their own appointments it's not going to be a very efficient process is that mesd or yeah so you're you're right it's uh the megapod for large boots as sharon and i were talking about earlier the megapod is the ideal scenario for our employee group we want to make sure that we can it takes logistical challenges away from the district as well as a bonus but um you're right the salem health has been a popular um a popular model uh my own mother was vaccinated there last week it was it's pretty easy so i think um that's it that coming up um that's coming down and people seeing how successful it was and i'm sure there are pitfalls because everything's big like that you know there are challenges but um i think there's a lot of folks looking to model that i know that um i heard from kaiser yesterday that they have uh max they're trying to do a mass vaccination next wednesday the 21st i think that's the probably yeah that's the 21st um no that's thursday the 21st um and at the convention center so that is something that they're working on so i think it's been that that kind of thinking is coming there's also supposedly sorry i meant to tell you they're standing up a pilot in skalatin this weekend kaiser is and then on the 21st they're doing a larger one in portland so that model is coming and the big systems are seeing that it's a good way to get a lot to catch a lot of people and then of course we need to make sure that we have the supply and it sounds like at least in the near term we're gonna see a lot of doses coming our way but um you know then there's a follow-up right we need the second dose so um that's i think the question that's outstanding is how many of these large megapods of sharon loves that charm i know um how many of these megapods are gonna get stood up and if we're doing these big ones how many now um can we rely on the supplies getting to us in order to you know get a lot of people vaccinated in short order i think i would just add really quickly that uh and so i think there's going to be a lot of opportunity in very short order um and it is our strong preference and yes courtney i do love the megapod terminology and i think we've also already been communicating with nesb about the numbers what how you know how many staff do we have what what um types of staff we have and we're also in
00h 10m 00s
close communication talking about our partners because they are also serving our students and we want to make sure that they are included and whatever we're talking about educators we're talking also about our partners yeah i guess i'm concerned that like for example for our staff if you're not a kaiser you know that's not your provider then you wouldn't have it so you have this diffuse system where it's dependent upon you know setting up an appointment or going in or people going different places versus having a set partnership with conversations that i've had just in my professional life with or vaccinating about 25 000 people or plus people is that the recommendation from the state and the county is to get one provider and set up and set up a pod because the provider is the one that's going to be uh that's that's who's going to get the vaccine directly from the federal government and be in charge of the storage and the uh the registering and all the pieces of it the requirements so i guess i'm just curious so pps isn't like picking a a partner that would uh vaccinate all of our staff that you know according to the prioritization in one place it says a diffuse system where kind of everybody's on their own with their own health care provider it sounds like the providers are collaborating quite a bit i know that they're i know that kaiser is vaccinating people that are not kaiser members um or have already in the 1a group so yeah i see the concern and it's very much from what we're hearing so far they're all working closely together um and collaborating as big systems together to get this done so i don't know i mean i think we'll we're going to continue to have those conversations and um hope that they can accommodate us is there some kind of certification system um i got the vaccine well the the vaccine that the provider actually has to sort of register and account for each vaccine um and so and given that it's a double dose you get a card that records it and the certified health care professional um the entity they keep track of it and so then when you get your second dose then you've got your documentation that you've had both doses but it's it's a coming straight from the federal government oha is just like a con it's a conduit yeah but it's going straight to the healthcare providers it is that whoever's going to be administering the vaccine so it just sounds like aps as an organization really has no zero control over how this all comes down so i'll chime in here correct director bailey um did you finish making your point around the role that pps should take so i can assure you i don't have a i'm saying it sounds like the way it's rolled out right now is that we we have no no role at any school district in the state vaccine comes down through the health care providers they figure out a way to distribute it but we're we're not a partner in that yes but maybe not well pps part would partner with the entity that gets the vaccine right so i that's how like that's all profitable businesses and others large organizations will be doing it i i think you're correct director edwards you know as far as an efficient model for uh an imagined vaccination plan at scale like that so and i can appreciate that courtney and sharon are being very measured in the information that we're sharing today but i can assure you we're actively working at partnering with the major health providers in the region around an eventual uh plan that mimics not unlike what you see in some larger urban areas given the scale of employees and staff that we would need to get through that we know is a key factor in in our reopening and possibilities for bringing
00h 15m 00s
more and more groups of students back so uh it would be a little bit premature to start to describe uh some of the thinking there with other leaders we are partnering with today but we're we think uh some good news is imminent um and we want to want to get those details down before we share those more broadly i didn't say good evening to our student leaders and directors good evening superintendent thanks for being here um yeah that's that's that's great and and really the purpose that i had of sort of putting this on was was this question of is there is there any role that either this committee or board members can play that was a little more relevant prior to the governor's announcement right because i think what i was sort of originally thinking was you know going to storm the gates like you've got to get our teachers you know vaccinated soon in fact now with the announcement that they can start getting that vaccine but i think now it becomes a question of um you know beyond the logistics is there is there anything else there either with the state or the county and it sounds at this point like the answer is no um that you're working with the healthcare providers and and working with the county and it sounds like everyone seems to be on the same page the teachers are priority yeah i mean we'll continue thinking about a role that perhaps the school board could play here if i felt like there were open lines of communication directly with the governor's office or the county chairs office or our health partners i could tell you those are live and in real time right now and so feeling probably more optimistic today than maybe i have in the last 10 months and regret disregard so uh which is good um but but i guess uh i would leave it to senior staff here you know to explore if there would be a role uh where we think the school board could be helpful in any barriers he might be experiencing but um it doesn't seem to be the case uh right now there's a good there's a good two-way flow happening right now on some important elements that we've been hoping for uh in the coming days and weeks okay well let's pivot i'm staying on the subject degree opening and pivot to the subject of testing this has been something that i think has you know come up repeatedly locally and nationally about the importance of testing to a safe reopening plan and i don't we didn't hear a whole bunch about this on tuesday and i'm not sure actually unlike vaccines i'm not sure that everyone's on the same page at different levels of government around either the importance of this or sort of who's responsible for it um but it i will just tell you my own personal belief is this is where the state and the governor should be stepping forward in a leadership role and really saying look this type of testing has been shown to be very important this is rapid testing we know school districts can't afford not only afford to do it but also logistically right i mean having every school district set this up and so as a state we're going to step in and sort of make sure that every school district has all the tests they need to move forward has that happened yeah i can speak to that a bit just based on information from the governor's office earlier this week there it in the metrics that are being released on the 19th there will be mention of testing they are aware and agree that it is a good tool in our toolbox it's not the only tool we know the vaccine's not the only tool as well got gotta keep wearing that we gotta have a testing strategy we've gotta vaccinate people so um there will be details about testing they didn't highlight a lot of specifics plus you know surprise right they're being careful but um it sounds like they're gonna want to like i don't want to use a word required because i haven't seen it in writing but i believe they're going to have some kind of requirement to uh have on-site to access to testing if you're in person or hybrid that is what i heard um colt say earlier this week the director gill um so that's what we know i think you're right they're seeing that too this is something that we need to do if we're going to really reopen and um whether i think it's going to be what the notes i took was that it was around um symptomatic students or anyone who was exposed students or staff that won't have any kind of known exposure um so whether it's going to be a random testing or you know when everyone tests every week i don't know that level of detail at this point but we'll get more information on the 19th when we see the new metrics and there are the new on the new metrics and the new guidance from ade superintendent go ahead amy sorry scott this is amy um superintendent have you heard anything in your conversations with your peers around the country about um the likelihood of the feds um specifically earmarking some of these stimulus funds
00h 20m 00s
for a cache of tests for k-12 it's something that has been talked about and advocated for but i don't i don't know the likelihood of that coming down the pike do you can i speak to that too sorry sure um same same phone call or meeting earlier this week um they are going to be tests that come from the feds the rapid test um and i'm i believe it's karazak dollars that'll be um be used to cover those so that's kind of all i know but but i think that's good news uh courtney i have one question surrounding testing um it sounds like it is uh either the the state whether it be the governor's office uh or the oregon health authority that would be the body uh coming up with the plan for for testing and then i guess implementation um in partnership uh with us just how that would work yeah yep you're right parker um um it's all about partnership right now i think we're all seeing that and so uh ode is in close communication with oha because they're not the health experts and they know that they're not so oha is giving a lot of guidance and support to ode as they develop their ready school safe learners revisions that are coming next week so you're right it's a lot of state agencies working together right now it's a perfect example of how intergovernmental the perfect example for this committee okay all right thank you uh another question is will there be any kind of temperature scanning available i mean i don't know i don't know what that will look like director bailey in the ready school safe learners i know it's there's um that's a big document and there's a lot of mention of that i think in the current version so i'm assuming that a lot of that will remain but i i don't know i mean we know it's common practice anyway for sick kids to come to school um that with with clovid i mean this becomes a real issue and yeah the um you're right and the uh the health and safety part of the ready school safe learner's guidance is um i i believe not going to change much so i think those kinds of protocols are still going to be in effect in place because you're right it's uh like testing is one just one thing we also need to be continuing these other practices i can offer that in my conversation with the head of hr in my bus we go um that they have been doing temperature uh screening and ripping and the plan is to not uh at the time i spoke with her at any rate but the plan was to not uh continue with that in a hybrid model because of the amount of time it would take for students to enter the building or the best meeting should take place so there's pushing that expectation about uh self-signing uh you know at home uh and through the uh visual signs and uh not taking that temperature one of the gaps in our knowledge about transmission schools is that as a pediatric incidence of um of coded often does not manifest it's nfc often asymptomatic um i i think it's a myth uh to only test the thematic uh students and staff i think random testing has actually been the important element uh when we talk about our swiss cheese model the quality of the the layer of swiss cheese around testing makes a big difference if you are doing some random testing and addition or even testing in addition to systematic testing that's particularly true uh in our pdf right our students i think um it would be safe to say director bailey to your point um we don't know everything yet we're going to get a lot of information dumped on us next week i appreciate what you what you shared do we have any info about contact tracing is there going to be any enhanced capabilities around that is the district going to be responsible for that is the county let me know i have not director moore i have not heard any um anything specific about school districts taking on that role this is a little informal my understanding is that most counties have stopped contact tracing because
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in just about every conversation it boils down to an issue of capacity to do it and whether it's so far gone that it's just it's difficult to do um it's certainly i believe a flexibility that exists in the sr2 resources if if we get to a level to where we could manage it at the school level and having and having folks do that but that sort of after vaccine and testing sort of the the third sort of component we would see about trying to accomplish sharing yeah i can share that as uh schools have not been open uh that pps and uh mesd have been in a cooperative arrangement we gather as much information as you can and then we turn it over uh to mesd so some of that is the beginnings of contact uh treatment so we're not responsible for but we are trying uh to help with that we have significant concerns about uh staff capacity uh when that becomes one school spoken about what we can do there and uh you are accurate uh to say that our uh county contact uh treating um is a is a fraction of what they would like to eat because it's outpaced so i think in the absence of contact tracing it just underscores the need to have random testing um can i ask him another question um and this is this is pretty deep and neat but i'll ask him anyway is anybody at any level talking about uh doing um testing of waste water as a method to identify outbreaks we have not talked about that at portland public schools uh i happen to have a cruise family member and household member uh who does have excellent uh testing uh at his uh osu is doing that as well um and just it may be just another uh tool it in in terms of just a just a broad um measurement of whether you have anything in it and it may be way easier than random testing of individuals and be able to catch more cases of community spread that's in our schools my understanding is that it's not as complicated to set up as it sounds like it might be and um i have a friend at osu who has sort of offered to put us in touch with the guy who set up the osu system so you might let us not think about that i want to go ahead and pivot to our next topic um but i just wanted to sort of wrap up just maybe maybe maybe ask um superintendent or his staff if there are any other areas um where from an intergovernmental perspective you all could use assistance and and also um areas now and then also thinking about how we do this going forward i can imagine as we continue to go down this road of vaccines and reopening and testing there may be hurdles that a little bit of political uh pressure or help would rapid uh would be helpful so i want to make sure that we can also turn around pretty quickly if we need to send a letter or make some phone calls to again bring some pressure appropriately and if something comes to mind specifically courtney please chime in uh given her her role uh what i i do appreciate the board's willingness to to be proactive in that fashion um um but i also want to look at this from sort of the assets based point of view is there's going to be a whole lot of communication uh plan and pr campaign uh that certainly will need to be part of our impending decisions to be announced and so uh you know already we're starting to hear from notables in portland around their willingness to help the school system promote uh not just an eventual return to school but continuing to practice safe and healthy practices and just sort of help portland public schools get the word out so certainly our directors will need to play an important role in doing that as well with our constituents yeah i don't have anything specific in mind yet but thank you for
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offering and absolutely pick you up on it when if the need arises great okay i'm sorry can i ask one last question for you is the state or anybody else offering advice or assistance around ventilation issues don't want to speak for the um risk management or anyone who's not joining us tonight but i know that you know there's a lot of conversation around facilities right now coming out of our partnership partners like oea they're talking a lot about that and their messaging um so i think this is that issue is going to continue to get some um you know make some headway or they're going to continue talking about um the need for overall not even because this was an issue before right this has just exacerbated the need for it um just like it's exacerbated a lot of things so i think that it's not it's teaching to tell whether it's whether there's going to be you know funding available for it but um the some of the things that are ongoing or perennial um funding streams for things like ventilation and new facilities like the um awesome program at the state are going to be continuing to get some traction and talk in but whether it will be a bigger bucket to address those needs i'm not sure but just to follow up on that do we have an assessment of the air quality and ventilation currently in our schools if we're anticipating that student students are we're going to reopen schools at some point yeah it's bad well i guess i mean seriously it's been a serious question that if we're going to plan on reopening schools and having students and staff in schools do we have an assessment of the status of the ventilation system and the air quality and the air flow in all of our schools the answer is yes and no uh we have an assessment of our ventilation systems and we also engaged an industrial hygienist to help identify the appropriate approach and maximization of our existing systems uh and there has also been a recognition that there are some classrooms that have uh uh ventilation uh and some uh and some purchases of airport funds uh for them those have not um there hasn't been really a lot of technical assistance from the government uh in that but uh so that's the yes and there is the standard operating uh protocol uh and our uh facilities team is working on an faq with regard uh to that as well that's the yes the no is there uh isn't testing of air quality in individual classrooms or locations uh so um i'm not sure exactly what you might mean by that but there are some individual there's an air quality testing there is ventilation and hvac uh system um i know i'm just here you said you like having somebody else thank you for the clarification that's actually the latter was what i was referencing okay um let's go ahead and move on thank you for that this is just a statement so next up we have the a conversation sort of continuation of the conversation around school board electoral system changes and potential steps we started this conversation uh at a tuesday board meeting although it was very nice those who are interested who may have fallen asleep by the time we got to it um i'm going to go back through um pretty quickly today some of this and and just for a little bit of background and then what i'm hoping to do um and again it's already pretty late but what i'd love to do is get feedback from board members um about um uh any sort of issues that they think they they might want to put on the table for this conversation or any other issues that that need to come up and then we'll talk a little bit about next steps where we'll sort of happen here so again just as a recap um currently school board elections um in pps require candidates to live in a particular zone but candidates then run and are elected at large which means throughout the entire district um and there is you know there is some evidence um from from other places uh that that can disenfranchise voters and candidates of color as we talked a little bit about on tuesday that that makes sense in the sense that you can have very strong support in your school or your cluster but maybe not be as well-known district-wide and have a hard time sort of sort of running this triple-a campaign smaller voting areas the theory behind this is that they level the playing field because candidates have to reach a
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smaller number of voters which is less expensive and therefore they barbarian and trump for getting folks in to the system to run and more candidates and then um hopefully more members of that reflect on the children and things that he needs to solve so um the question becomes how can we increase access to more candidates for pps this is something that as i mentioned lots of conversations individually um about and um i think there's there's a general consensus on the board that this is the direction you'd like to move in um so you know we can reform our process by limiting voting to the fines of the district it is it was interesting to me to find out that school districts in general set their own boundaries and rules around elections that is a little bit different than cities and counties which often have charters that voters have to weigh in that is not the case for school districts so school boards can make this change um and then simultaneously to sort of the conversation we're having here in 2018 the state legislature also enacted a new law on hb310 that prohibits districts from conducting elections that would impair members of the protected classroom having equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice it also set up an affirmative way for people to challenge districts that they believe have uh elections that that do impair members of the protected class um and remember members affected classes everybody those are people uh race religion uh age etc so um it and it's in addition sets up a um a method by which districts can correct or sort of sort of sort of review their systems and make potential changes and then at the same time that we were at this conversation and the state legislature comes along and passes this bill we also have the 2020 sentences coming our way every 10 years after census data is available pbs is required to redraw our boundaries to make sure that as people move within that decade um that our boundaries stay with them so that each zone is roughly equal in terms of overall representation we're expecting 2020 census data in the second half of 2021 i'm getting more and more optimistic about that number the less and less time the trump administration has to mess around with that data um and so hopefully this will be end up being a relatively straightforward census uh the data will come on time we can do our process as well but it does make sense to think about all these things [Music] next slide so in terms of next steps what we want to do is develop a project plan that would include both the project team that have staff board members and on a robust community engagement plan and that project plan it is gonna is gonna definitely take some time um you know to think about all the different aspects of this we're going to need to consult with experts on data analysis and potential electrical systems structures there are people who think about this all the time and it makes a fair just cultural system and i think we should find some of those experts at the and then i think we will probably also need to contact out some of the data let's get into this we need to work with multnomah county and washington county and clackamas county elections even very small members of voters in those other two counties they would also have to make changes um if we uh decide to make changes but primarily um in terms of guidance and timing it does take them some time to both make the zone changes but particularly if we make a change in terms of how we do elections and then you know hopefully optimistically we can bring forth options and recommendations to the board by the end of the calendar year um that's not uh we can set this deadline um internally uh the the deadlines we are operating against uh will be mostly driven by monroeville county elections um since we are not there is not time to make any change for this upcoming election in march of 2021 um that gives us a little bit more time to sort of think through this uh we don't know for sure i think though we've got plenty of time for the 2023 election um to get things to win the county but we do want to move relatively quickly uh one thing i added on tuesday that wasn't on these slides but just to remind people if we use the process that's outlined in the state law under hb 4310 the changes would not go into effect until the 2025 election however we have the option of not using that process and potentially making the change available for the 2023 election that doesn't provide us quite the same level of safe harbor um from any challenges but if we're following that process and i think our intent is to not only follow the process but actually to achieve the outcomes that that legislation looked at um as a result of that so with all that said i kind of want to open it up a little bit for other issues other thoughts questions um i'm coming out of this meeting
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um i'm going to work with staff on developing this project plan timeline we'll be bringing that back both to this committee but also to the full board i don't think i said on tuesdays this really has to be a full lower conversation all the way through so um i think this committee can help do some of the legwork um and to move things along but we really need making sure we're doing regular work sessions and local evolves into a timeline as well and then we want to be super transparent with the public this is one of those issues that i think again we're headed in a very positive direction i'm actually really excited about this work but we want to make sure everyone understands what we're doing why we're doing it the timeline so again we're not um anybody who is interested either just monitoring the process or interested in actually jumping in uh knows well in advance what those changes are and how it might change future campaigns so with that let me just open it up to thoughts and comments so um i think it's important to know the positive uh positives of making a move like that at the same time to note some potential pitfalls um and one of those the one that comes to mind is that if i'm elected from his own biozome um then i'm gonna look out for the schools in my zone and uh and besides that it would open up the possibility for say there's seven of us each from different zones some coalitions um that tend to favor four zones or five zones over two or three zones uh so there's there's less [Music] you know right now i feel i represent every student in this district every school in this district um so i can imagine for example when we were starting the uh bond process in 2012 that there could have been i'm not saying there would have been but could have been more of a hey how can i get my high school in the first bond kind of uh coalition work behind the scenes uh you know i'll support lincoln if you support cleveland kind of a thing as opposed to a using some objective criteria so i think that needs to be noted this as well and i don't know if we have uh examples from other districts and some real on the ground intelligence of how that works out um i do know if uh y'all remember aj we worked with briefly as a consultant um he was like well if you guys are considering this i will come and testify against doing it and i think for those kind of reasons and i think that comes from his on the ground experience in a couple of areas so i think that needs to be part of the discussion as we go forward so i actually um contacted aj to kind of ring you know re-up that conversation with him um and i asked him uh if he is aware of any studies um around um you know different different ways to organize school elections and what kind of impact it might have on on you know equitable outcomes and that sort of thing um i'll pass along anything i hear that one that would be great thanks rita for doing that yes got to your point i think it is um an issue we definitely have to take up you know we we talk about i mean the simplest change is to simply say members but there are other changes that could be made you know that sort of just just one more step in complexity um you could have five zones and two two at large school board members my understanding is there are districts that do that or similar things than that i believe and liz is not here today i believe there are restrictions on the total number of school board members we can have in state law i'm looking to see if anybody knows that i don't i feel like maybe she it's five or seven five or seven and i think it's based on the size of the district okay well i hope it's on five because we're in violation no i think if you're a smaller district um you know there's a lot of districts of fewer than 2 000 students um yeah yeah no thank you i i thought it
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was i thought we were limited to seven but i didn't want to say that without someone else actually confirming um and so so i think that but but i think scott your your point's a really good one i do want to also note and i and i say this i know i know this is not what you meant at all in some other work i've done around this um historically that argument that if you get elected at large you will be able to speak on behalf of the entire district or city or county um has actually been used to mask the racist underpinnings of at-large elections and so again i know that that was not you know the reason why you're saying it and i think there is real value in having that conversation because i think you write those motivations thank you need to be need to be thought out right what what is that overall impact but but i also know that that is that is something interestingly enough um some other work i did for city club around cities uh you know this form of that large election is banned by the courts in a number of southern states states that have you know routinely uh uh aggressively violated voters reports stepped in decades ago and said you're not allowed to have this type of system exactly so there are lots of issues and i think we need to really daylight all those things yeah absolutely you know okay and again to do a citywide most likely to vote and you know if you have more money you can do two or three of those and there you go and i think also 20 000 is a daunting number for most of us and apply apply an equity lens to even the way people get elected in general who are you going after with the voters versus an alternative strategy a small district of like how could you get more people out of eastern right how could you get your people to support potential downsides i think the other thing is because of um i mean it depends on where you live in the city so i'm somebody who had kids with the three different middle schools in different zones so i think there's lots of there's lots of ways in which you know you cross over from you know stark or burnside and you're in somebody you're in a different zone and i i think the sort of parochialism um would be less than expected um [Laughter] and again it's not like that would override all the other considerations have been brought up but if there's a way we uh either get some evidence and say well actually it's not a concern in real life cool i'll speed ahead or if if there's difference again andrew i appreciate you bringing up there's the simple model and there's other ways we can do this as well uh other ways to think about going forward um you know another option is um some kind of uh district funding for elections and again if if you have a small enough zone um that becomes a pretty minimal every other year expenditure i'm not saying we want to go there because i we all know what our budget is doing these days um but again some one more option we should think about going forward actually that's a piece of um just to follow on that scott's comment just as a piece of the sort of research since this is not going to be like in the next you know month that's going to happen but it would be good to
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i better you muted yourself julia andrew we did me i want to i won't take that personally um um i was just going to say it's like i think that would be another piece of information that would be useful to the the committee and and by extension the board is just to understand what if anything pbs could do obviously the city you know has a funding mechanism but you know is that even allowed in the state statute or like what would what would it entail in order to do something like that um can i make a suggestion actually i think amy reed i think amy was trying to get in and then amy and then i have to jump i just want to say um andrew thank you so much for really picking this up courtney and i've been talking about this for about five years and kind of linking it to the census but it doesn't have to be um you know there are a lot of um different creative approaches i'll reach out to our council colleagues on our call this friday and put this topic on the agenda and see what people have to add but there was a very high-profile um suit in ferguson missouri around how they do their school board elections and the way that that course that that case was settled was um ranked choice voting so that um say there were three seats uh everybody voted for all three of those seats but you could vote three times for the same person um and it wasn't tied to geography so that was kind of an interesting bellwether case just a couple of years ago but i really appreciate this work i think there's a lot of opportunities for us andrew we have a contact at portland state who is a national voting rights leader in this field academically political science professor kim williams so i'm happy to see if we could somehow engage her on helping us with this i've reached out to her about this before so um i'm just excited about about this work i think i think um there are a lot of good reasons for us to reform the way we the way we do it now that's a great resource thank you yeah um i i appreciate this conversation and i'm i'm glad that we're gonna start actually tackling this um but there are lots of other components that that are barriers to improving representation or the representativeness of the school board including the absence of compensation for school board numbers um given the amount of time that it takes um it's extremely difficult for somebody who you know has a full-time job with relatively inflexible hours to take the time to make all of these meetings with the rest of it and um and i know there's a state statute prohibiting compensation but um that doesn't mean we can't change it so i mean i i would advocate for since we're not talking about doing something you know next week um we have a little time i think it would be useful for us to contemplate you know kind of the full array of barriers to participation that exist and we might want to partner with other school districts um to explore those questions so anyway that's because did i i don't disagree with that and i also would just chime in about election limits whether we just raised the issue and it would be voluntary or whether there's some way we make it compulsory but i think contribution limits is really critical here did you have a phone uh yes i had i had sort of a a gaggle of questions um relatively unrelated uh i i guess my my first one is uh how how far along are we in uh coming up with a with a proposed change um my the that that question stemmed from i was wondering how uh voting or how how districts would be um how you know what district you're in is it where you live versus uh where where you're enrolled um and i also had a question about the uh the the the age uh component which i know is a is a different
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um discussion but if we are uh having a discussion about it if we are having a discussion about overhauling the elections that might be um a topic to tie in there um i think i had another specific question but it just let me let me take those because i'll forget the first one's a few uh maybe so in terms of how far along we're not right so this is the very beginning and um and so i think this is the reason why this brainstorming is great there's a lot of things on the table i think in terms of your zone it is where you reside for your world and that does create interesting things to look at right as you know julie mentioned earlier you know you might have um you might live in a zone but but your kids might go to school in a different zone but you know you're voting for this school board member and that's what we've members so it is something to to sort of look at but i think it would have to be wrong and then absolutely on voting age here's um what i said on tuesday i'll sort of repeat because these are great issues we're bringing up in my mind and they're all related i view this as a great opportunity to dig into all of these and then begin to sort of stage and say okay what does it take to make these changes um and are some of them we want to move forward with right away others we might want to move forward with but maybe not right away um i think you know trying to get a perfect system in the entire thing campaign limits changing voting rank choice voting it's very very complicated and i also want to remind people we are at a little bit of risk right now so that's also a reason to move forward we all want to do it but we also can be challenged on the state law for our system to the extent we are challenged what i'm hearing from folks though are you know do we want to look at do some research on public financing what that would take um research on different voting uh systems right things that might happen look at the issues inclusive so um but all of those again what i'd like to do is work with staff to put together a project plan a lot of this is sort of research based and then i think as we come back with counseling recommendations and believe that let's move forward a particular interest um i know we're over tonight i want to give courtney just a minute to give us a quick legislative update if there's anything that we present i think the only thing worth noting is that the legislature gaveled in this week just doing organizational work um electing the speaker that got elected again so um they go into actual work mode next week but they have um so we'll be watching carefully and um you know there's like 1800 bills i haven't sifted through them all we've been there's all vaccine all the time
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and all my people working through those you know one small thing um i don't imagine that has a lot of legs and just so you also know one of the bills that is causing me some real interest is uh is to make the onion the state vegetable just so you know what kind of stuff we're dealing with down there hey if you need a lobbyist on that i uh one of my good friends is responsible for making the channel the steak mushrooms so you can give me pro bono lobby advice on that i'll try to highlight some of those um [Laughter] here conversation she's taking her son to college um so i said she could be on her house but uh i'll communicate that she's gonna be watching watch this later it's supported um hi everyone is judy brennan and um thanks everybody appreciate a nice


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