2021-01-25 PPS School Board Policy Committee Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-01-25
Time 16:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education's Policy Committee jan 25 21

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okay um this is the uh january 25th 2021 meeting of the uh pps board policy committee um we have presents um all of the board directors plus um student representatives jillian skelding and jackson weinberg um okay uh we have another very full agenda so um we're going to have to keep this discussion moving we're going to start off with a discussion of the climate crisis response policy um with uh a disk including a discussion of the community engagement plan at least a forecasting of the engagement plan um so we have um we have a couple of items that were provided that were emailed to board members and posted online the first is the climate crisis crosswalk um somebody kind i thought that mike was calling in to talk about what had happened previously in the engagement efforts as the committee was as the climate justice advocacy group was bringing the policy forward and that was going to be the kind of starting point and then a discussion with board members about what engage further community engagement they you all want to hear from in furtherance of your policymaking is um is mike in africa mike rosen in africa right now so yeah he wanted to call in he asked for an early set to call in from tanzania um i don't see his name on here do we know there is a phone number amy higgs says mike is not in the country today so i don't know if she has more updated information than we do no the one uh director broome edwards is phoning in um but i don't see okay so um let's give him maybe he's having a little bit of trouble calling in um rita if it's helpful the the and the agenda actually before the climate crisis response policy there was a brief update on the formal complaint policy and i'm happy to i can do that anytime but if we want to give mike a little time if he's trying to dial in i could address that very it'll only get us a couple minutes but um yeah let's do that okay um so uh when we last left the there were there was there is a draft that the committee has been considering with some proposed changes the committee has not uh i think there's one more look at that to do but there was a pause well a survey was done um uh families who have been involved in the complaint had a formal complaint with the district and a survey was sent to them and i should i should have backed up and said with the departure of stephanie sodenbeck um mary and i and lydia moving on to her new job mary and i are stepping in and kind of picking up some of the substantive work not just the political the policy committee staffer side of the work so we have uh met with um lots of people including the really uh alexis from from russ's team and we are just we're getting some clarifying information about which respondents participated in the process before the 2018 revision and which participated after the 2018 revision because we fit that that's helpful but we are that close to having that information and then we will bring that share that to the policy committee and bring that back to next week's agenda unless you would like us to otherwise and then i think there can be a final run through of the language and discussion of any outstanding items on the proposed revisions and if there are any additional revisions that are recommended coming out of the survey i think most of that's going to be in terms of training and process and less policy but we will we will be tight on that recommendation to you at that time when we have that and i think we should easily have that by the next meeting so that is the staff update on the formal complaint policy okay thank you can i ask a question about that yes um this is uh julia from edwards uh so liz the question i have is i didn't know the survey had gone out and then um when i asked for it i got sent a survey but it looked like it would look like it went to a lot of
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people which is great was really glad to see that um but looked like it was a survey about people's experience with the complaint process but did we also send them the draft revisions to the complaint policy and ask for their any recommendations or specifically to our policy we just talk to them about their experience i believe it was just about their experience is there a reason why we wouldn't send them the policy with uh here are the changes that we're proposing and here's here's why and get their point of view we had as i was just because it's like it is around the policy so it seems like it seems like it'd be relevant to get their feedback piece of the the policy i i think we wanted i think the glenn again i'm stepping in i was not on the front lines of stephanie's work when it was happening at the outset but i think the thinking was we wanted to get a sense of their experience across multiple domains so what the police the process that's set out in the policy their experience when they went through it the satisfaction they had by the result what was the outcome they got so it was more holistic than the policy and i think that i surmised that the thinking was the feedback gleaned from that holistic more holistic survey can be adapted to the policy um by learning what and again i we're not done with that work because we just got we're just like combing through the last questions but um i think that was the i surmised that was the intent again i apologize for not having a clear line of sight backwards um into what the thinking was but i do not understand that the draft policy was sent out i will confirm that with lydia but i don't i don't believe it was could it be sent out again to the same families it could i don't know i mean that's we got about mary was it a 25 27 response rate i mean yeah something like that oh that's pretty good yeah yeah um so that's so i mean do we go back to those 27 do you go back to everybody does everybody who didn't respond want to get another email i mean i'm not sure what all that family engagement piece i would defer to experts in russ's group about that um or an email that sends a link and invites people to send in comments is it part of the separate from the survey but to the same group i mean there are probably lots of ways to do that so i guess what i would say is i would ask the committee we are here to serve you and get you information you need so i would we will follow your direction on that issue about how to handle that and how you would like to receive feedback from that group beyond the services so just as an individual board member or committee member um like i like the concept of holistic feedback because it's like yeah it's maybe like the implementation or something else that's you know if you just ask the question about the policy then you don't get the you know complete feedback i do think for the for the board it's important to like hear the changes we're making are there others that you would suggest or what do you think about the ones we're making just because that is like more specific to to what we're doing um and not that the other information is won't go unused by staff but it seems like it would be most relevant to also get very specific feedback on the policy and the you know changes we're proposing it's live in it okay um all right so liz was there anything else you needed from us on this no um based on that feedback and hearing no no uh contrary point of view we will send that that some inquiry out to the people who were originally solicited for the survey and ask for their feedback um and see uh make sure that the committee members have that um do you have any idea about mine i would suggest that we send that out immediately oh i'm sorry rita go ahead well i was just saying it's going to be complete speculation at this point but what's your best guess well i don't think it's very hard to send out an email with a link
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and an invitation to provide comment right i mean i don't think we have to construct a complex document to do that and i think the it's three weeks from today i would er i would see if we can get something out in the next day or two with a 10-day or two-week turnaround time and try to get something in advance of the next meeting because i know this policy has been out but we'll see i may be this is not my native habitat in um surveys and this kind of engagement with families so i may be assuming things are easier than to get done than they are but that i would shoot to get as much done as possible this week get the ball rolling okay sounds good okay thank you um all right so now we'll move on to the climate crisis response policy and um amy higgs who is one of the attendees um can we move her over to a panelist she's on her way okay she has um graciously agreed to respond to some inquiries about the community engagement that was done in preparation for the draft policy that was presented to this committee thank you hi directors can you all hear me yes so uh yeah mike is in in africa right now um and basically just to provide a little bit of background and let me know if you want um background before when this part of the story is going to begin but um last all um not this past fall but the fall before that mike and i um started some conversations with pps staff and started drafting some language for our policy after talking with aaron pressberg and whitney ellersick and a number of other pps department leads um and had some meetings about what we would like to see in a climate crisis response policy and once we had a pretty solid draft i would say we were somewhere around version 10 and i think that was this past summer we started sharing early versions of this policy with some community partners and if i can do a screen share is it okay if i share my screen for a minute i'll show you um the partners that uh we have got the the groups on here have provided comment and either said that they would sort of endorse our policy or they have um reviewed it some of them reviewed it and said looks good others reviewed it and provided written comment back to us with specific recommendations for improvement we have another document that i think is on mike's computer where we have kept track of which organizations have reviewed it and what they have said and then after each organization shared their input we um we took another careful look at the policy and made changes accordingly if we thought that it made sense um there are a few other organizations we sent it to who never responded and those are not included on this list and there are a handful of organizations that have recently provided comment that i i have not yet put on this list because this this um slide was prepared a few months back so that um that kind of sums up i think what we've done so far are there questions about that or did you want more specifics uh so let me just count them up some of these i recognize some of them i don't um um so it would be uh i think it would be helpful if you uh if this is amenable to both you and um and these partners i think it would be helpful if you could share with us any feedback you got [Music] and kind of what kind of any more information about what kind of internal process they may have used um in responding so i mean for example i can imagine that
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some of these um it was a kind of internal staff process but some of them might have done some community outreach of their own yeah and i will say you know this was not meant to be a comprehensive public involvement effort this was meant to be us sort of getting some early input from organizations and so in many cases it was you know mike or or you know me knowing someone that we sent this to and a specific representative like a an executive director or a program manager would respond after having read it just on their own or maybe having discussed it with a staff person um i know that at metro they shared it around to a number of people but i'm not sure i believe it was only it was all staff and it was certainly wasn't all of their staff um and i know the pps climate justice committee has taken a much more careful dive into this and shared it with their student representatives and their teacher representatives um but i would say that in most instances it was not um you know like these organizations weren't sharing it out to their whole network and gathering a lot of feedback and then coming back to us unless they did that without me knowing which is is possible um and and many of them i'll say about you know five or six of them i was sort of the point person and mike was the point person for most of these so i'm not exactly sure what the communications were between mike and these organizations oh but just sorry you also asked about what their specific feedback was um for many of them they wanted to see more specifics they wanted to see language that would make it really um clear what changes would take place so rather than just setting vague targets they wanted to see language about you know for example disposable you know forks and trays in the cafeterias there was also some feedback from the go green initiative which is an organization that supports other school districts with this process of creating um language for for climate policies and they recommended that we focus it a lot more on preparedness for the impending impacts of climate change and how that will impact frontline communities and there were a number of other organizations that had um had you know wanted to make the the um the frontline community the role um sort of more visible in this policy uh and we incorporated a lot of that feedback so i i would say that a lot of it was about um specific changes that they wanted to see like specific um language for one or two of the um the the goals or strategies that aligned most closely with with their organization um so if if we could um if you could share um the more you know the more detailed list of the organizations and groups that you've contacted um even the ones that didn't respond [Music] and also if if it's okay if you could share their responses um any responses that you got that would be helpful i think um because as um as pps uh tries to come up with its own engagement um it would be helpful to know who's who's even aware that we're gonna be we're working on this um um so it it would be helpful i think to circle back to a lot of these groups um but we also wanna know who hasn't yet been contacted um to make sure that we get a you know now that we're in the process of actually deliberating in a policy um our process is going to have to be different and more comprehensive and deeper um but this would give us a good starting place to know what you've already done so that we can build on it rather than you know ignore it um absolutely yeah as soon as mike gets back or as soon as he responds to his email we'll
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we'll get that information to you okay that would be great um liz was there anything else that we wanted to ask about today on this in terms of engagement i think that's as far as we can go shanice um was unable to be here today unexpectedly and uh for all the right reasons and so um i think staff taking that information that amy and mike provide thank you amy and um developing a proposed plan i think also getting any feedback today from any of the committee members if there are specific voices communities constituents you want to hear from you know that would be helpful to surface that as the plan is put together but again it's not it's not the only time to ask that question but it is as input on the front end is helpful so i think i think maybe the most efficient way to get input from committee members on this question would be through email um so that um you know staff can especially because shanice isn't able to be here um she's going to be watching the recording but she's not able to participate live so um email might be the best way to uh to get any suggestions you might have to staff and the rest of the committee for later follow-up and and also i think if you have any uh well let me ask right now does anybody have any questions about the engagement knowing you know with the understanding that this is just the very very beginning stage of thinking through the engagement process anybody have any questions okay so liz it's on the same policy but not about engagement so let me not divert you if you were to say something else about engagement well i think i was going to say so let's let's move on let's um kind of put a hold on the engagement discussion and move on to other aspects of the policy so there you go well as a bridging some of what we heard um last at the last meeting when dr mckee did her presentation about the national landscape and we heard from mike and amy and others about um that some of that work was also the foundational and building out the policy draft that's before you um one of the questions is whether looking at some for instance the department of ed green schools has the three pillars um got an echo uh and and whether it would be helpful for the committee to incorporate for instance in the in the curriculum work you know the the i'm gonna botch the formal pillar name but pillar three of the green schools as an example there are opportunities to build into policy some of the curricular work that's already going on and also what may be planned and i want to get into the substantive conversation of what that is yet because that's that's beyond our agenda today but if we would it be helpful for the committee to come back with some uh augmenting complimenting pieces that round out some of those other pillars is that of interest to the committee i i would say yes um can anybody else on the committee want to comment yeah i didn't i'd agree yeah i think the the pillars we were able to incorporate everything that um was in the initial draft um and it pointed out some places where we could even augment um and the policy so i think that's going in a good direction so um this is just like another issue that i'm curious about just as we work on this policy did we get um the sort of climate footprint that we currently have i know there was some work underway but do we have that just so we have a baseline i think last time i asked it was like in process and i'm just curious because we're gonna have a great policy but if we don't know where we're starting from or it's hard to set targets and then
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also know if made progress yeah dan i thought and i may be misremembering the two meetings ago that was included but um maybe we can research circulate anew or recirculate to the board if that's um so that that what we have is there i know aaron has done that work um it's now been six weeks since the first time so i'm not remembering the precision um one of the materials is an updated um climate crisis crosswalk and it's updated as of december 2020. there's a different document as well that talks about some of the emissions am i remembering correctly dan i'm going to let you speak to it and me stop speculating about my memory or your subject matter expertise yeah there is another document and i can't i don't recall when it was shared so i think it was a while ago so we can recirculate that and what it does is it calls out the the certain areas where we have good data for baselining and then other areas where we don't have as good of data so it tries to go through a little bit and say here's where we're more solid than in other categories of the word it just seems like um we have there's a different types of work in this policy and some of them like the curricular and the engagement with frontline communities that those are um actually have different measurements about whether we've been successful versus just the you know here's what our current footprint is and when we do x we're anticipating by 2040 you know we will have reduced um you know our emissions or whatever the the metric is by x amount it just seems like it would be good to have that as like get that scorecard sort of set up so that we can sort of assess because there's a there's a lot of different things in that policy and we're um you know going after the ones that have the biggest impact um or deciding you know which ones are the most important to get after first i think would be just part of the policy making decision because we we should go deep on any number of those um but what are going to have the biggest impact so what are we what what are we trying to accomplish well um i want to have a bit of a different perspective on that i think there's some global targets that we should have but the kind of checklist that you're talking about is much more an operational piece that's that's way too detailed for paul yeah it's not actually a checklist it's uh what what is the overarching what is the goal the policy trying to accomplish um not whether activities took place but actually whether the effectiveness of the district action which i do think is the highest level of of work but not like hey did you know this particular activity take place because that is operationalized but like are we actually um just like ours we're having a difference on what we're trying to impact i think we have that in the draft in terms of the big overarching goal um around our carbon footprint um so i'm not sure and again we we can when we get more details we can maybe get a little bit of clarification because we're talking a little bit theoretically right now but i'm not sure how much more detailed we should get [Music] outside of here's where we want to be and you know 20 years from now in terms of our carbon footprint you're exactly right scott i'm just asking like where are we now yeah and i think we can know some things and other things are going to be really difficult to quantify so i'm going to suggest that we ask dan to recirculate the information that you sent us earlier so
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that we may have it um and that we can um we can use as the foundation for future discussions um and um we'll have to figure out when we can talk in more detail about that um but part of the discussion might be what what data are doable and and what are not like what data can we get reliable or what elements can we get reliable data on now or could we get in the future if we set up systems um so let's i'm gonna kick that back to you dan to figure out um what we've got what we could get what we can't get um and then let us know when you um when you're going to be able to produce a more um you know anything anything more detailed about um you know any kind of scorecard or data that um beyond what you've already produced yeah i'm happy to do that i can circulate some information that that goes into kind of the different levels of detail that the district or another organization could go into when they're looking at their carbon footprint and then give you some information on where we think we have good data such as utilities and other areas where the data is going to be harder to come by such as non-student related transportation employee transportation things like that are obviously larger challenges but i can uh we can provide that information okay and and i would ask that um especially if you're kind of speculating about what we could get in terms of data um i i think it's important that we understand at what cost like how much effort would go into developing a data system that we don't have already um or are there could we piggyback on um data that are being collected by other entities you know metro the city the state whoever um so anyway i i just want to make sure that whenever we land on it's got to be doable for the district and it's going to be an efficient and effective use of very scarce resources to to accomplish the goal yeah i was going to say i'd rather put more of our staff time into implementation of effective measures as opposed to trying to get a more exacting baseline measure right and again it's it's it'd be great to have that that um there's there's the reality around it too okay so um so the other thing that we wanted to do we've got another uh 20 minutes um and the other thing we wanted to do was uh kind of linking back to the last board last committee meeting when we heard about the pillars and the green schools initiative and we asked staff to to look at revising the policy document to incorporate the concept of the pillars um that is you know sort of the the national model um so in um liz mary um could you talk a bit about how you've applied the the conceptual framework of the pillars on to the the draft policy i i i can speak to that and just to to frame for um the broader audience it was this is not an uh a document that's before the committee today because it really was a conceptual if you just reordered the structure how do you end up with uh where do the policy recommendations align with each of the pillars and and are they do we have opportunities and that's what i was mentioning a few minutes ago not very eloquently about pillar three and some of the the curricular pieces so so pillar one um was you know reducing carbon gas emissions and uh reducing the carbon footprint waste those pieces and a lot of the policy work in the draft um is very
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uh thorough in that in that uh pillar pillar two was is about health and wellness air quality light food quality being served a physical exercise outside those pieces and then three the third pillar was about as you'll recall the sustainability education cte stem connections and when we looked at and not it's not a not keeping score about how many items are under which pillar but when you look at the breadth of the work that happens inside pps and the recommendation from dr mckee last week that having the three pillars in play together helps drive a more sustainable culture so this work is more effective so that it you get better buy-in and better results and and have a higher likelihood of achieving the out the uh desired outcomes of the policy um you know i i think this is not my area of expertise i was merely just doing a sorting structuring exercise with a document just to see if that helped us think about it um i think there are opportunities to go to our subject matter experts and help fill in some of those other particularly column uh pillar three but also probably some in in pillar two that work hasn't been done i mean the work was simply a thought starting exercise in response to what we heard about how would that the current content in the draft be distributed among the pillars hearing the lesson of the pillar the point of the pillars is to help drive effectiveness and go better stronger faster longer right so i think the next steps would be for uh but we're checking in with the committee about what's helpful to the committee if if you want to see some of those policy what those policy proposals might be in the in the second and third columns again to complement um the really thoughtful work that's already there and there's some in all three but the majority is in pillar one so um are we um liz and scott and i have already talked to staff about um kind of applying the conceptual framework um so we wanted to check in with the rest of the committee to make sure that this was something that you would be interested in in seeing come forward are there any objections okay okay so um hey rita i agree i couldn't get off mute this is just a classified as a objection but that's the so the exercise is and because i didn't have the benefit of being part of that conversation i just want to make sure i understand it's it's not to shift off the policy but more how does it align against the pillars so it's more of a re reordering or restructuring an alignment and integration versus a replacement um yes that's a question it's more a lot it's um it's it's how it's organized yes it's um it's how it's organized scott is that what you meant so you said yeah okay that's just what i'm trying to clarify nothing nothing of content fell out it was all in and um rita i was going to say it looked like amy before she raised her hand was was biting her lip leaning in so i didn't invite her to thank you i would appreciate that thanks scott um so i wanted you all to know so my background is in sustainability education as well and when we started drafting this we actually based the original draft on the odoe green school green ribbon award uh the three pillars and it was very much aligned with that but the more we got into it the more we thought that the need right now is for a climate crisis response policy the odo green schools uh pillar framework is about green schools in general and it includes things like healthy students physical activity um toxins all kinds of things that aren't necessarily related to climate change directly that are very important and i'm a total you know fan of all of that we specifically and intentionally
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shifted this to be more about climate crisis response and that's why we decided to move away from um from sticking with those three pillars and focusing the policy more directly on climate crisis response um so we did go through that process and um largely use those three pillars in figuring out what to include in the original drafts of the policy so amy um and and yet plastic forks and plastic trays were still in your draft policy which again aren't a climate issue per se uh i think that's arguable they're the the climate uh the carbon emissions from creating all those forks um and trays is much higher than the emissions from using durables so we tried to to include only things that were related to climate change and there may be things that are less directly related but um that was our lens okay thanks um so so i uh that's that's good information to have um and um it might be if you had if you used that in an original or in an earlier draft um would you mind sharing that um i can take a look i mean the earlier drafts were very messy and there were a lot of notes and uh i'll see if there's anything there that makes sense to share um yeah i can take a look and see what we have thank you um i i'm i i'm not a big fan of reinventing wheels so um i will happily steal anything that is of use um but i also think it's important that um this committee kind of look comprehensively at uh at this policy as an opportunity to um kind of hit many different things potentially um that would include the you know the education piece of of the school district's work in addition to operational and that sort of thing so um anyway let's see how it how it shakes out um and um staff will will bring it forward to probably the next meeting i think um and then we can substantive discussion on it and and one other piece is that the right now the curriculum piece is in a board resolution um and so we're looking for a really coherent framework to bring in get it out of a resolution into policy which is much more visible and enduring so that that was also part of her thinking on that and this is a little bit of inside baseball but it provides some context um i think over the years various iterations of the board have expressed very significant essentially policy pronouncements in the form of resolutions that are very often difficult to keep track of so to the extent possible we're trying to sort of recalibrate toward putting those statements of principle and and values um into a policy framework that can actually be tracked over time um so anyway um all right so i i think um i think we've gone as far as we can at this point on this topic so um i'm gonna move us on to the next topic which is um the student assignment policy and um let me just say a couple of words about this um this policy did not appear on the original work plan that came um out of the committee but um as we discussed that work plan it was noted numerous times by multiple people that the committee was going to have to be responsive to um emergent issues as they came up so that you know we we need to have enough flexibility to respond to
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needs as they arise um and um for those of you who are aware of the the work happening in southeast around uh defining feeder patterns for kellogg middle school which will open next year um and then the accompanying enrollment balancing work it has become clear that um we need to resume the work that uh the work on the student assignment policy that we started last year but had to pause because of coded it was one of the casualties of the covid kerfuffle um and um as the southeast guiding coalition moves into um a phase two like we're we're hopefully going to be closing out phase one and then um moving ahead toward a phase two which will include boundary work um staff in consultation with me and scott scott and i have been actively involved in the whole issue for a very long time longer than i care to think um it's becoming clear that we need to clarify the policy in order to allow the guiding coalition to get clarity around the numbers that they're dealing with right how and and how the policy is going to be aligned with the decision-making process of the guiding coalition so um we're bringing this policy forward again um to resume our discussions um so that's by way of intro so i'm going to hand it off to claire i think to talk about um what this policy is and what we um the the elements of the policy that we need to consider going forward thank you um uh chairmore and for your um introduction to this topic we um judy brennan and i are both um here to support the board as they talk through these um edits and we have um we initially had some conversation in this policy committee a year ago and it's time to resume that work and so we bring forward the updates especially i want to say that one thing that i believe is probably the most prominent change from a year ago is adding a high school where in the language in section five you can see in the blue that high school students may remain at their current school through graduation and i think that stems that recommended language stems from the conversations that the the board has been hearing from the community as we talk about enrollment and program balancing and that especially when you think about different kinds of programs if you're in an ap program or an ib program and then you're expected to change schools in the middle that it's hard for you to complete those programs in your high school during your high school years so the and it's just so it just allows for um that possibility and i think that's there's been a lot of support for that component especially as we um talk through the enrollment and program balancing and liz large i'm not sure if there are other items that you wanted to highlight this this evening as well mary is taking the staff lead but i think it's here at um for the reasons you've described mary is there anything else to add you're on me mary thank you i'm not much we there are a few other smaller changes we've updated a definition of underserved students and um i think i'm looking at the document now um and added some language at the end of uh when we would make exceptions to uh implementation of boundary change
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judy was there anything else we that you wanted to highlight on this no okay so i have a couple questions about a couple questions about it um one um because it's a pretty significant change um what's gonna be the community engagement strategy um that we would gather to get community feedback before we move ahead like we've done with our other policies and then second um the changes that are being implemented again because they're a rather significant shift are these going to be applied to all the high schools not just those going forward because we obviously have students who aren't in their neighborhood schools and um it seems from an equitable standpoint that it applied would apply to everybody i mean that that's normally how policies work not just i'll just say but i'm hearing from the southeast is that it would hey a whole new set of rules is only going to apply to us but what about the whole rest of the um so those would be sort of my two questions for for staff and i know shanice isn't here but i would expect that we would have a robust engagement process around a topic that a lot of people have a perspective on so i'll i'll jump in here um today is just the um we're sort of introducing this policy um we're not going to be uh i don't think we have time today to talk in exquisite detail about the suggested revisions um and yes um there there is a presumption that we'll have community engagement on it um we don't have a um a proposal for that community engagement um today um but we will be getting it um down the road the other thing that i would add about the stat this is status quo for the high school from the current policy so it allows the current policy for high schoolers to continue it's modifying it for grades k through eight so it is um allowing for the high schoolers to continue so it's not really a change in policy it's a change in a draft of a policy just to be right but i'm i guess my larger point was not about today's specific change but about the policy in in general so it had been as uh rita mentioned um on pause for the covet or for whatever reason and now we're bringing it back up and so what i'm just saying is that we haven't had the community engagement around this particular set of changes and i would just expect that before we move something to a first reading we will have uh at the next uh meeting have have a plan for you great thanks and julie i didn't understand your second question well so if like i'm not speaking into the most recent um iteration but just the underlying policy and this is the question i've had since the very beginning is when we um have um past resolutions that there have been some legacy rights that have been granted and sibling rights and if we're about ready to change to change that that my assumption is it applies to [Music] you know all students not just the students going through the process next next time you know who whatever change is made next and julia i mean i've heard about anecdotal promises made but do we have like that stuff in writing with people or is it all just kind of expectation and no there were some resolutions there were some resolutions and okay several changes were passed at board meetings yeah so we should just go through that and i mean again um i think we want to be consistent consistent across clusters that whatever you know what's good for southeast is good for northeast and the west and um you know i if i look at well maybe southeast right now is a sharp point but like it's probably going to be the west side next with lincoln opening potentially so you know look at
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that in the context of you know what's been promised in the past as current students who if this say if we adopted this policy um may um be you know have there's a new set of rules and it seems like it would apply to everybody but i just think we need to look at that so that it it's not the perception of like and we're doing a force it hap things happen in southeast and that's there's gonna be one set of rules for the southeast but other sets of rules for others or and the ones who've gone before well that that sounds to me like uh we pass a law against riding a bike and you rode a bike yesterday so we get to arrest you um i i think policy has to be forward-looking from from this day forward um unless there's like something specific um some specific action that the board would take retroactively but well i don't see why there'd be one set of rules for southeast and a totally different set of rules for northeast or the west i mean i just uh we're going to say hey are you talking about decisions that were made three years ago for example i am i am you know other there's other types of moving you know issues i just i think we just should need to be clear because there will be a focus on whether we're equitably applying our policies to all students so i do think that our director of enrollment and transfer judy brennan has some examples to share with you about when we have resolutions or promises that have sunsetted just for clarification um the last sibling preference after boundary change or sibling guarantee after boundary change that exists in the system the last active one has just been processed that has been has led to i think there's eight um incoming ninth graders who live in what is now the madison neighborhood but have a guarantee to enroll next year at grant because their their house is in what used to be the grant neighborhood and they have an older brother or sister who is still at grant it's the last eight that means next year that's because the last class of students who was freshman at grant at the time of the change are seniors this year so um we'll be so there are or will be seniors next year so there won't there aren't any other active sort of um promises if you will that existed that existing current policy that would need to be implemented or addressed if policy were to change effective next year so because we already gave that privilege to the people in northeast but if we've enacted policy siblings and southeast would be treated differently if the policy changes the policy would affect people at the time of boundary change okay it's gonna for me it's gonna be for me merit a larger discussion but i understand today you're just introducing a topic but i i think what judy's saying is is there's no you know even if we said this will apply retroactively there's nobody left to apply it to okay and so my question would be we thought it was a priority as a board to provide sibling preferences when we were making other changes but now when it's coming to southeast i'm just saying it's going to be a conversation that people are going to want to have about why there's going to be a different set of rules for siblings in southeast than there were for siblings in the in the most recent set of changes and we don't need to debate it now i'm just saying that's going to be part of the community this will be part of the community discussion well you can remind people that we're going to continue on to north northeast um in the next year or two and whatever policy is on board for southeast will be on board for north and northeast and well i think i think we should have
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the discussion now it's france overcrowded and we're trying to fill madison i mean if that's if that's the objective then it seems like we should just dive into it but if it will and again we can there'll be feedback with during the community feedback portion but a sense that you know different set of rules for one part of town than another part of town and i take your language i took it from the angle julia that maybe we we made a policy and we learned from it and that just because certain conditions were what we said for a certain group of people it may be that that what we've learned that wasn't in the best interest of students because of what happened with overcrowding or the lag and so i think we can make a case for just because we did something in the past doesn't mean we have to do it in the future i think we can i think you're right we need to have an open and honest conversation with our community about it but i don't think just because we made one decision when we were dealing with grant that that means that that was the best or right decision um and we can learn from that and make a different decision for new for the schools as we go forward so i i think i i totally agree with you yeah i totally agree with you and i say we'll just have a discussion because if we're saying we're going to move a boundary so you instead of going to this school you're you know you're going to go to madison when they're going to say hey we just look if you need to like grant's way overcrowded it's the largest high school and why aren't you know why isn't the district focusing on their that to philip madison so it just we're going to have to be able to make a cogent um case to the community about our actions and it's not that we can't change our policy it's just it's gonna have to seem rational and not that we're favoring one community over another i don't think anybody is suggesting that the reason to change a policy is to favor one group over another that's precisely what we're not talking about um what we're talking about is having a policy uh looking at a policy that whose um elements have contributed mightily to the enrollment imbalances across the district over decades and we have learned that in order to redress the imbalances and create a system that is kind of self-regulating going forward we need to address the policy that has led to those imbalances so that's what we're doing yeah actually i also want to have as part of that conversation or next just setting up the conversation is the hardship transfers i know we're having audited about it but in all the schools that are overcrowded there are you know fair number of hardship transfers and you know if it's is that the is that the policy that needs to be changed or is it the policy is it the boundaries or is it both or is it you know some sort of what what's the mix between the two when i look at it it's not simply hey we have a bad boundary policy and we need to get rid of sibling preference there's a whole combination of factors of why we have schools that are overcrowded or underenrolled so the last time we looked we had hardship transfer data in judy that was about three years ago two years ago somewhere in there that we took a look there weren't huge imbalances at schools because of hardship transfers is that correct that's my memory from looking at the data then we got the data recently and it seemed like there were a number of hardship transfers in both grant and and franklin they pretty much my recollection had been eliminated pretty much at lincoln so um we we don't approve a lot of hardship transfers into grant and franklin um i uh this week and last week um on tuesday uh last week we sent out uh most lottery and petition results for middle and high schools for the 21 22 school year so this is very fresh um information um there were more than 40 requests into grant and virtually all of them that were in the hardship category were denied however there are there's a boundary guarantee and there's
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a guarantee for access students that's still on the books so there are other factors and i um there are other factors that apply to a number of schools there are kids who might live in the grant neighborhood have been at chinese immersion and want to come back to their neighborhood school they're guaranteed a return to their neighborhood school if they apply during the transfer cycle so while jmp or jmp and you know or students who like exit out of jmp stay at grant no ma'am not without approval from the principal and occasionally that might happen if the student has an extraordinary need but generally we deny the right to remain if the school is overcrowded okay so um i think um we're going today we're just sort of introducing the topic and letting folks know that this is we're going to be looking at this so i think it's becoming clear that there's going to be a lively discussion on this policy um and um and i would expect nothing less um um but i wanted to since this was an addition to the work the original work plan that we had um i wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that it's we're going to be looking at it and we can have a more substantive discussion at the next meeting where we can talk about the specific revisions that are proposed and um and then we can talk about whether we need to look at um any other policies in addition to this so okay so if uh if there's no objection um i'd like to move us on to the next policy which is the uh preservation maintenance and disposition of district real property um and you received in your materials uh draft um with uh a few additional changes that we want to talk about tonight and um with the hope that um we can we can move this to a first reading to the full board um if we are in agreement about these um these last few changes so um we're gonna take mary liz is gonna take this one yes you said that so quickly mary without any hesitation almost as if you didn't want to take the lead on that one oh you understand it's my gift to you thank you you're so generous mary kane um so the the draft that you have and it's been posted is redlined against last week not the very beginning of time and the current existing policy in part because of all the changes in movement it was starting to look like a ransom note and wanted to focus on the remaining changes um that were asked for and this is the attempt to uh draft and capture them if we we also inserted some headers just to give a little more structure and organization and help set the path of the policy a little more clearly um i think the the first change i would call your attention to on page one in section b um is a change that as i recall director lowry asked for in terms of keeping the land in the public domain it's that reference and it's the you know did that do it is there more needed and i okay she's given a thumbs up for those who might be listening and not watching um the next the next substantive change is on page two in section d and you'll recall there was quite a bit of discussion um about whether to keep sale and lease conversations together or to uh separate them into separate sections and i think the the path that became most clear was to treat them separately for a couple of of reasons um some of the considerations for rent abatement under a lease or below
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market terms whether it's rent or otherwise under release involves some ongoing relationship defined by time periods of extraordinary circumstances things that aren't really applicable to a sale it's also true that a sale of anything of magnitude i mean it's 150 000 threshold is going which is very very very small piece of real estate in portland oregon it is going to come to the board anyway for full processing assessment of what what is the unique transaction before the board and under the terms of the policy itself that have in the the current version makes clear that selling district real property without exchanging it for replacing it with a an equal or better property is um akin to a last resort so for those those reasons and perhaps others this this draft distinguishes between those two it still provides in section c right above that that in all transactions the district must seek to maximize long-term financial gain i think some of the same principles in play about what is the normal course and expectation are still there but you'll see that's why section d is now just about the sale i guess the other the the fourth or eighteenth reason also is that there are these processes related to sale that didn't apply to leases and so to have them in a combined section also was a little a little murkier um at the end of section end of page two that very last red line section was read as a request dr moore's request for um uh building in an expectation that if property is sold to a a buyer with the expectation that it remains in the public domain or for the public good that it we do that transaction be structured in a way to make sure it stays there and if not then that pps would have some sort of mechanism in a transaction to get it back that's i think we've drafted it at a very high level because real estate transactions can have lots of twists and turns and unique attributes um but that and again every every piece of property of any significance will be voted on by the board in in that place and time as well uh i'm please interrupt me i don't want to we've been through this policy a lot of times so i'm trying to find the right balance between detail and getting on so we can get it voted out hopefully can i just say thank you for indulging me in crafting this language um i appreciate it and um i am mindful of the fact that this is going to make life difficult for staff who are responsible for dealing with these kinds of things um so i appreciate it we we are here in service of your policy making uh at all times so we um so you're welcome uh turning to page three uh most of that's just clean up structure changes until you get to the presumption of market terms and then again this becomes about pps leases so you had your sales section what are the priorities what are the policies in play what is the process if you're going to sell a property then leases gets into this extraordinary circumstance so there's a presumption of market value but then much of the language that you all have worked on for the past several months about what do you do when there is an extraordinary circumstance and there is a request for below market terms under how do you evaluate those and how do staff evaluate those um most of the changes in e one a through d uh wherever we are um hey luke can i can i just ask you i'm sorry about that i think part of this might have been lost because you only gave us the most recent changes um let's see so at the top of the the section where you have the factors um so the how this plays out is you look at a combination of factoring to be considered that you don't have to have all these factors but either one or some would be because be the the criteria that were used
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you have extraordinary circumstances plus one or more of the other factors to be taken into consideration so um i'm just is there a legal difference between extraordinary and unusual i'm trying to think not by any other [Music] so extraordinary circumstances is the language we used in drafting this to capture unusual not expected i mean it's something unexpected at the time the parties entered into the original lease to begin with right it implies that there has been some development um but it could be at the front end of the lease too i should i mean it doesn't i don't think it um prevents consideration at the front end well i'm just asking because what was worded extraordinary economic or other unusual circumstances seems broader than extraordinary so i'm trying to figure out whether this was just like a consolidation of that longer phrase into one term that means the same thing or whether it's actually a narrowing i'm trying to find the exact uh it's right above me yeah i see i see it um it was not an intentional narrowing i well let's be sure that we look at it carefully so that there aren't any unintended consequences because my the desire was to capture what you all asked for um and to do no no further harm that's a real fine question because to me it seems narrowing but if that wasn't the intent or the um the results then never mind so if you go back on the page though it's actually i'm sorry it's been just every edit doesn't isn't at my fingertips if you look earlier in the paragraph extraordinary circumstances is defined as extraordinary or other unusual circumstances beyond control of the parties so it actually just got moved it thank you yeah um i'm going to bail for another meeting since it's not a week in the school board when you don't have at least two meetings scheduled at the same time uh so uh thank you i i i like the new draft i think it's uh it's really uh clara clarity is there and and you've done a great job in translating our uh our meanderings meandering thoughts so i think we're in a good place thank you director bailey i you know i think where you the committee wants to focus on is that section e to make sure that because that is really why this policy these policy changes were undertaken in the main there were a couple other cleanup governance pieces around easements and rights of way but this is really the the harder issues you've tried to tackle and define and so we want to make sure we've gotten that right um and what go ahead julia no i'm sorry i thought you were finished no i was should have been finished director ben rodriguez please um so i had a couple things because um i just saw the first draft when um a couple days ago from the last time and i'm wondering if now is the time for me to to bring them up i think so looking at dr moore okay um so the first would be um the for the district the right to cancel any lease prior to the expedition expiration of the term obviously creates uncertainty for um our tenant and you know the tenant it seems like we should add with notice and given how hard it is to find another location it seems like we need to put in something that is fair to our tenants that would be one thing um and then um edwards just can i can i just pause there before we move on um because i that would be something assuming i'm in the right in the same place you are um that is negotiated
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with the tenant in the lease itself so um i mean we we can i would be surprised that a tenant would agree to a lease that allowed us to terminate on a friday and take possession on a monday that in negotiating the lease that there is some provision in a long-term lease that allows us to get the property back but if they're operating a school there i'm they would not consent i presume to a termination in the middle of the school year for instance so i'm trying to figure out what that balance is between what's written in what the mandate and the policy on behalf of the tenant is when you have some natural forces that are going to be uh in in play in negotiation of the lease so it gives flexibility to the district to craft a reasonable transaction but not um but not have you know decades-long restrictions on access to a piece of district property i think was the intent i don't know if that's helpful in thinking about it okay and um maybe when we get to the first reading of that we can engage in a colloquy on that because i think if you just you may come to a different conclusion you you may have a different like take on on it so um hold that thought then okay the um so thank you i'm sorry and that can sorry sorry to interrupt um can you say that again i mean are you are you unhappy with this language and and want to uh suggest some change um if so then i would suggest we do it here rather than at the full board meeting you're so so what i'm saying is liz provided a response that's an upped an alternative approach or like here's more information like it's not in the policy but it's in the negotiated lease and um i this was an issue that was raised by the community so i'd like to have a colloquy which is just like a discussion of like basically me asking the question liz providing that same answer in a public forum and um you know see whether that's um and obviously it's gonna go out for a public comment so people can comment on that if they think that the the response that liz just gave which is that that's part of the lease negotiation um people can decide whether they that's something that works for them or is uh yeah that's how things are done or not uh is this a public forum i mean i guess i'm confused why it needs to happen at a board meeting because this meeting is a public forum as well well i'm just saying when we have the the first reading that's if if that's not a if so you're going to have some more transparency when we have the first reading you're going to ask a question and liz is going to respond not a problem thank you yeah that's it that's what a colloquy is it's like elevating uh information in the in the public in the public realm um so then another question is um why we settled on five years um i would suggest that 10 years would be a more reasonable lease as we found before that a five-year is not that long and if we have terms that the district can get out if it needs to obviously um we can get out then the other piece i'm just asking about is if we have a tenant in the building and the district makes the very rare decision that it doesn't need it giving the tenant the sort of first right of refusal to negotiate for the property so i'm going to i'm going to address the and dana and kirsten and dan jump in here at any time i'm going to address the second question first so a first right of refusal is generally built into the lease on the front end and isn't i mean there's nothing to stop the district i'm assuming by your question that
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mid-lease the district decides it's going to sell the property um certainly there's an opportunity to sell that property to the existing tenant um and engage in those negotiations that's a known party i i don't i mean i suppose that that could be written into the policy i think again it's somewhat it it's likely to be somewhat in the mix already although no guarantees is it is it is it in our existing reasons um no no no no it just meant yeah i just go ahead let me just finish my thoughts so i'm clear but and you can and i'm happy to be wrong but i but if we're looking if we decided we wanted to sell a property often it would be it would be odd that we didn't ask the party who's in it if they want to buy it if we're looking to maximize a return on that asset or often a tenant will come and ask can i buy that property from you right so i just there are some market realities that aren't guaranteed but that are that you would expect to find much of the time i think is what i would say which doesn't that's just background for whether you want to put something like that in the policy all right dana i'm going to sit quietly now um it could be asked by the tenant um to have that as a condition just to be clear it never benefits the landlord to have that right it only benefits the tenants so it's not something i think we would necessarily want to put in but but to liz's point if we decided to go sell a property um you know that's the likely buyer um although you know depending on whether or not that was something that would work for them long term that they could actually purchase a building so it would get into all that i so we don't have that as a standard lease provision now it's not something i'd recommend we add but it could be negotiated if that were appropriate so i would suggest that we absolutely not add that to every lease agreement um that gives i think a signal that is entirely in contrast to the thrust of this policy there's different ways to look at it um you know i think there's a lot of people say if we had a building for sale that um could easily um outbid you know maybe a current a current tenant who actually we have a relationship with that's true although in a first-rate refusal that gives them the opportunity to meet the bid of somebody else so if someone comes to us we have a lease with party a and party b comes and says we want to buy your building and we'll pay you 10 million dollars then what the right gives the tenant to match that 10 million dollars within a certain period of time so um it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't uh give us it doesn't give them the right to purchase it for less than we could sell it on the open market we could certainly decide to do that but but that would be a different thing than a writer first refusal and i can't see who's talking is that dana no it's dana yeah sorry julia okay yeah that's okay sorry i'm just on the phone so i have just a fog question just i want to make sure i understand what this does this this policy now is like if we had a property that in those rare circumstances that we were going to sell um this policy would say the primary driver is maximum market value i'm not sure that's what it says liz um it seems like it takes into consideration uh and i have to now look back between lease and sorry that that's a that's a that's a question i'm not yeah i'm not head i'm not heading into an argument like some sort of no acquisition statement i just want to make sure i understand one section c sets out the objectives for the real estate transactions management of the district's short intermediate long-term educational operational needs considering long-term population and enrollment projections flexibility when you're talking about lease terms and provide revenue and other support for the district's needs the district must seek maximum long-term financial and other benefits so it doesn't say um maximize market terms per se but i think it's very much it like it does in the lease section when we split those two out um i think i i find it hard to read that particularly the maximum long-term financial and other benefits
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to not indicate that that that's a that's a large driver right but there is there is certainly i mean the board will vote on every one of these so there's flexibility to examine what the other benefits are um if you're not maximizing the long-term financial benefits as to your question about why five years is the long-term lease i don't recall uh that was that change hasn't been discussed in a while so i um i honestly don't recall why it's five and not ten or three or i don't know if dan or kirsten you have any recall of that figure typically five years is what you know we'd like to we don't want to tie it up longer than that sometimes there's options but again those those really benefit the tenant not the landlord so um you know in order to maintain flexibility five years is typically what we've done um and in several cases also had you know maybe a year's notice to vacate um because it would take us time of course to use the building as well as taking the tenant time to move out so i mean it could be longer but that's what we do and do we do do we do just a general structured um do we do like x plus an option or i know like in my professional life that tasty um way to like both signal the ability to have a longer term presence but also providing some flexibility is that do we do that i mean there's benefits to both parties we have done that um but the option um really only benefits the tenant because that's who gets to extend it so um if both of you can extend it then it's just it's nothing so so that it benefits the tenant um for an extension option and it ties us up in our ability to to do something else to the property should we desire after five years so some tenants that they're putting a big financial um commitment to the building are going to want that their lender may require it it's definitely something that would have to be discussed but in terms of just trying to preserve our flexibility for property um i think we'd want the five-year and then we would only do extensions in some sort of extraordinary situation that the board would have to approve of course anyway and there's there's nothing here that sets the minimum i mean the the terms for each lease are still negotiable for each individual property and individual tenant there's nothing in the policy that says it has to be at least five years or at least 10 years it's using a definition but it isn't it isn't a mandate or a restriction right okay you have a three-year lease or a 25-year lease there's nothing in this policy that would prevent either yeah and there are there are benefits to a landlord of having longer term ones because if you have a good tenant um you know reducing reducing churn and being able to track also a higher value somebody if they know they're going to be there longer sometimes willing to pay more if um versus just a shorter term so i do think there's advantages to the district and the landlord as well um we're not in the real estate business you're in the education business and right well we just happen to have a lot of real estate i mean true but and and the buildings that we're leasing we're are available because at the moment we don't need them but a lot can change in five years if we have as we have discovered in the last three um so i i think it's to our benefit to preserve enough flexibility so that we can respond to um the needs of fulfilling our educational mission not just maintaining a good real estate relationship well not maintaining a good relationship relationship it's to maximize value but i think the answer that liz you gave is one that indicates flexibility again thanks so are we ready to move this forward to first reading is that it's gonna come out of committee now is that the goal is yes so um are there any
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any other questions about um in particular the um these latest revisions to the policy no i feel like the revisions capture the conversation that we have you know the conversation we had at the last meeting policy meeting about this policy and then the follow-up meeting that our little sub group had um right of rita and i with liz um and mary so this is great yeah i would say get it going because this is like taken forever okay so let's uh let's take a vote on uh whether we want to forward this um to the full board with our recommendation for adoption um all in favor say yes yes [Laughter] well the cat has views you never know um we don't always agree um so i think that was uh three to zero with scott absent um for this boat okay so um all right so let's move on to the next uh and this is uh the comprehensive sexuality education um and this is going to be uh correct me if i'm wrong but i think this is going to be a kind of a conceptual discussion yes how to move forward and just to bring everybody i mean if you haven't been if you haven't committed previous uh policy committee meetings to memory um the issues at hand are that we have we have had um policy and regulate regulatory changes at both the state and the federal level um some of which are in um are diametrically opposed or at least in some degree of opposition and um we've been trying to reconcile the the two main dates um and it has as i understand it has turned out to be pretty complicated um so i think this is going to be an update on how we're going to move this thing forward is that well this is um and this is much like the student assignment policy it's a it's a first look and um and jenny's here dr jenny with the comb uh who's going to talk us through the different um ideas that her team has with regard to the policy and um so you you were sent the two kind of uh draft ideas along with the recommendation from the was it the health department jenny do you want to can i can i transfer this over to you to discuss where we are sure um and i i i had to park in front of a school to get a stable wi-fi so that's why my video's not on i'm like trying to you know tap into llewellyn here um so uh yeah so basically we have um what i have before you are two possibilities um two possible ways that we can go so by by state law we have to have a comprehensive sexuality education policy and um which we do and we put that in place uh three years ago it was due for a revision and update uh last year but then coveted um so we didn't didn't get a chance to do that um really what we did with the first go-around was although the the oregon administrative rule uh that is a division 22 assurance that requires we have the policy is just one of many laws that govern uh comprehensive sexuality education there are several and so when we wrote the policy the first time we did a ton of community engagement and we also took all of the different policies that are connected to this law and put them all into one policy for pps because there was the oregon healthy teens and there was aaron's law and comprehensive sex ed and all these things and and so we kind of put it all into one and that's been that's been fine it's been a fine policy when we came upon the revision um there are a couple new laws um that have passed at the state and so i i wanted to at least update the laws um and and then some of the policies that have come through in pps that also kind of touch on some of these aspects
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of comprehensive sex ed so the one of the policies the the the short one that is it basically it is titled comprehensive sexuality education policy is the exact same policy that we had before just with the updated oars ors's and district policies bulleted out and as you can see there's there's quite a bit that that is um connected whether directly or peripherally to comprehensive sex ed so that would be just a literally just an update to the laws and mandates it doesn't change any of the language or what we're doing in the district or anything like that the other policy is it's essentially the same thing but instead of being a comprehensive sex ed policy it's a comprehensive health policy with a sex with sex ed obviously a core part of that the reason that i thought it might be even better to have a comprehensive health policy is that there are also a number of laws that require like for example we're required to do drug and alcohol prevention curriculum every year we're required to do cpr training sometime between 7th and 12th grade you know we we have to do training on cyber bullying and bullying so there's actually a number of laws that that also influence health education in general not just comprehensive sex ed and so if we change this policy from being a sex ed policy to a comprehensive health policy but still contains the comprehensive sex ed components then we're kind of getting providing an overview of of everything and so the second policy that i proposed and it's a much shorter policy um taking a cue um from uh what mary was saying is you know trying to you know kind of streamline policies not go too too crazy with with all the language um is it outlines then all of the different laws that touch on the different health components so section zero is just an outline of the laws that are kind of general health um that it's part of graduation requirements and district curriculum and things like that and then we did sections one through four which are some of the main health components so mental and emotional health nutrition comprehensive sex ed and violence prevention and drug and alcohol and i thought that might be a a better way to go and then what we can do as as part of the comprehensive sex ed law requires that there be an implementation plan is that we could revise our implementation plan do the full you know community engagement outreach we would have a little bit more time and we could we could you know get in deeper and create an a.d an administrative directive sorry um that could serve as our implementation plan for comprehensive sex ed um and that would get more into the the the nitty-gritty of you know when how often who's responsible for it all of those things that are required to be part of our plan um and are already a part of our plan but just we would um we would still do that but it would be paired with this comprehensive health policy that was great thanks the conversation that she alluded to is um uh we are looking in other areas and liz and i have been working on this of trying to consolidate some of our policies we have we have so many i think it's it's not as user friendly as it could be um and so looking to find those places where we could consolidate policies so that somebody only has to go to one place they may have to hyperlink to others for additional information or to the administrative directive or even to the to the the guidelines right but but we want to make we're trying to make the policies as a whole um easier to to find easier to locate what it is you're looking for so that was the basis for this and all of those um laws and mandates although i didn't hyperlink them for you all um we could we could obviously we could hyperlink them so you know it could take folks to the actual laws and mandates that um you know a good portion of them are division 22 assurances so that's that's nice they're kind of all in one spot um but then there's others that started out as senate bills or house bills that are now or you know organ uh revised statutes and um so that that kind of what i what i found
01h 45m 00s
which is tricky is like there's aaron's law which is also senate bill 865 which is also ors you know like it's which is also mentioned in oar 581.0225 like it's like oh my goodness um so this would be a really nice way i cross-referenced all of them so that it would kind of be like everything that we think of with aaron's law is this you know and this is what it means um so hopefully that could that would be more transparent and helpful to folks so um so we have um so we have as posted um sexuality education revised and then sexuality education revised short except the short i think is longer than the other one um so let's see so is that is the one that's labeled short is is that the kind of is that the more comprehensive one that you're talking about um let me open it up here what is what is comprehensive health education policy and then the other one is the point so comprehensive sex education policy so you have two different titles i don't know how they're on the board page how they're telling our word page they're both sexuality education so we've got six point four zero point one three dash p sexuality education revised and then we've got six point four zero point zero three dash p sexuality education revised short and then we've got the pps comprehensive sexuality education plan of instruction process evaluation oh then then i think that the comprehensive health one must not have made it right okay it's not there um okay because i i cuz i was i was trying to figure out if it was like am i missing here um yeah i'm sorry about that i no that's no i'm i'm relieved so thank you um all right so this is uh so you're talking about having um so i think the question you're asking is whether it would be better to have a sex ed policy like a stand-alone sexual education policy or uh a health education policy that incorporates the sexual education of death right yes yes okay so i haven't seen that that second one the comprehensive health education um i will say i'll make a sort of statement in principle i i personally am a big fan of comprehensive and putting everything together because because i like i like the idea of taking a holistic approach don't often succeed but i like the idea so in principle that would be kind of where my head goes any other comments ailee you're nodding would you here to elaborate on your nod well i think it i mean i think that you know really clearly couching sex education as part of health education is vital and i think you know we jenny and i we've gone around about this a little bit with um health education in middle school but i think health education is so critically important um for students um it gives them just like ownership over their own lives but also the tools they need to um make decisions and learn about you know topics that influence a wide range of other pieces of learnings i think you know having a comprehensive health policy is really important because we have not um historically as a district done a good job of um valuing health education and elevating it and so i think it's it's beyond time for us to have a policy and really be clear about um the importance of that and i you know i'm a big supporter of um sexuality education for students and think it's it's vitally important that we are clear on um comprehensive health and sexuality education so thank you for this work and for these thoughts johnny sure so can i trust something else in um i am uh i'm also a big fan a big fan of using the the concept of well-being um because i think health tends in general to be medicalized um and what we really want especially
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around sexual education um it's not just the physiology it's it's a lot of the social emotional stuff as well um which the term health doesn't necessarily capture so that's my little copy editing suggestion because you know i have to thank you so this is just the beginning um did you did you get what you wanted out of this yes i i really i really wanted to move forward with the health education comprehensive health education and um putting everything under one banner and so um i'm really happy that you all felt felt similarly that it's it's nice to kind of have everything under one one spot and uh and that i can then um uh i'll make sure to take take a look and make final revisions and then i can get you the actual comprehensive fed one um so yeah i'm i'm really i'm really grateful thank you for for this feedback i i appreciate it okay all right well that was easy okay so awesome awesome work awesome work thank you yeah so um we look forward to you getting back to us um uh just just for the sake of thinking ahead to scheduling um do you have i mean how close to being ready for prime time is this draft i'm ready oh okay all right so the next question is when can we fit it into our busy schedule um so we will um if you think you you're ready to go then we'll get it back to you with a date okay that sounds wonderful thank you so much great thank you have a good night you too thank you okay so it is 5 56. um we've been going for almost two hours uh i'm inclined to take a little break here so um shall we it's now 5 57 social 605 okay we'll be back so the next um the next policy we're going to be looking at this is the last substantive discussion we're having today um is on the student representative duties and i think nathaniel is nathaniel here to walk us through it he is here um but me and jillian will be doing the presentation oh okay okay all yours and roseanne we sent you the slideshow it was a little late today so did you want to run it yourself or did you want me to run it for you carol can you give me permission yeah parker is going to but he's in the waiting room and could tay also be brought up just for this conversation sure cara do you think you can give um parker writes to run the slide presentation yeah i think he already did i changed the settings but i just made them co-hosts thanks wait okay i made the wrong person i think we still need parker in the room yeah i clicked to move him over but i don't see him at all i think he got lost along the way nathaniel do you think you could present it then yeah ah let's see there we go
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okay well good evening yes good evening um this is our proposed policy amendments for the policy 1.20.012 which outlines the duties of the student rep and also the district student council currently the dsc functions where the student body elects district student council representatives from their representative schools who in turn elect their student represent the student representative in this case nathaniel chu who sits on the board of education and advises the board of education the district student council also plays a role in advising the board of education sometimes um so the goals and why we are proposing these changes are there are a number of ambiguities in the policy there are also problematic provisions that we have saw while we have functioned underneath this policy and we believe that with these amendments it will be more effective equitable and representative of the student population and lastly there'll be easier communication from the dsc to district staff and the significant poly policy improvements that we are proposing are expanding dsc membership via a more proportional system of representation codifying and clarifying the role of dsc reps on committees establishing dsc oversight over other student committees in addition of an avenue for the dsc to call a snap election on a representative seats in the event of egregious misconduct or negligence improved transparency of meeting and documents as well as a number of other minor alter alterations all right so we don't quite yet have our engagement plan so this is a little bit of a rough draft but our plan is to reach out to high school's asb student governments and leadership classes and hopefully have some listening sessions and meetings also to contact the student body more generally with a high level survey and maybe survey and also maybe some listening sessions uh we hope to have a finalized engagement plan completed within the next couple weeks um hopefully this committee can continue working on tweaking our current policy um and then uh we can have its first reading right after we finish the engagement plan does anybody have any questions i think it's gonna need to come back to this committee for final approval before it goes to a first reading correct liz yeah okay i'm seeing nathaniel in jackson all right yes i stepped away to my printer for a minute um yeah and i i understood that was the intent that that there would be to the extent possible parallel paths but knowing that they all have to merge at the end before they go to a first reading is what i i interested julian to mean would you like them to walk through the proposed changes in the policy you've seen a high level would it be helpful if they walked through this the significant proposals uh yes i think it would um and we have maybe a half hour i think for close to a half an hour so um yeah i have i have some questions too whenever it is you want to take the questions well julia are your questions uh about the proposed revisions or are they are they not linked to specific language around specific provisions okay um so why don't why don't you guys walk us through what you're proposing and then julia you can ask your questions when we get to it would you like guests to like share the screen of the doc and go through like line by line um well it's probably not a bad idea um we may not need exactly line by line but if you could take it sort of section by section and and what where what we're interested in at
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this point i think is um sort of what is what's the problem you're trying to solve how you're trying to solve it why is that the solution you know like what are you trying to achieve here okay um should i just share the doc yes please all right um would would someone else like to lead this discussion uh parker jackson jillian tay well the first large change is like the first huge batch which i think was proposed by parker and nathaniel so if one of you wanted to go over that um yeah i can take this one um this large block of text here um and basically what this does is it changes the system of representation of high schools on the dsc from just one rep per high school to um reps allocated more proportionally with school population now it does allow for greater representation of smaller schools um which is something that we all agreed with some was um worth preserving but it does allow for larger schools to actually gain more power and voice as you know they have more students there which our core structure does not um so what we have here is um for all schools between one and six fifty they have one rep and then an additional rep um with each bracket each additional 650 650 being derived from the um approximately five percent of the total high school population and um i think that's pretty much the core of that i had a question about this section because i was um you know thinking from my time working in the u.s senate where um it's not a proportionate versus the house which is so there's sort of a counter balance um but i was wondering sort of what the impact of this would be because most and i'd be interested in looking at the data is that the smaller schools are probably our most diverse schools so looking at through a racial equity social justice lens whether um you you actually have a diminished voice for those schools that proportionally have a larger student population of tourist students so i'm just wondering about that because represent like in this congress you have the balance between the senate and um but this would be moving to more of a proportion i'm just wondering what the impact it makes you know the i think the bigger schools already have a bigger bigger voice generally in the district's operations um and i wonder if this would make like amplify that and then accelerate it so i'm just curious about the discussion like if you're from a small school what you thought about that well i mean i'm from a relatively small school jefferson's around 700 and i think it's worth emphasizing again that this does preserve outsized power for smaller schools jefferson for instance would get two reps um compared to i think franklin's three or four and that that's still disproportionate representation it's larger but it's more proportional than the current system and when you look at somewhere like um mlc with the approximately 85 high school students they'd get four times the representation on a pro student basis if i remember correctly as franklin would assuming we get four um reps so it still does preserve additional power taking into account the fact that those are precisely the schools that tend to be underrepresented but it it tries to account for that in a more more fair way because it really doesn't make sense for it to be 22 times as much representation or 21 times between mls
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in on a poor student basis between mlc and franklin as is currently the case and director brim edwards that is a discussion um that we had as well there i might am i coming through uh clearly um you are you're kind of um could you speak up a little bit sure yeah my julia it's there's a lot of road noise okay sorry okay um okay that's that's the discussion that we had as well around um it was it was a point brought up by jackson around how the smaller schools typically are the ones um that serve um well underserved communities um and we did as representative shu mentioned uh this this system is still um so the the scales are tipped in in their favors or in their favor rather um just not as much um i i i'm not sure if it was originally intentional but upon examining it further that became um a benefit that that we saw where it did make it more more proportional but still in favor of the the smaller school so that was um that was a consideration that the the dsc uh had before uh bringing it to the committee we when when this was introduced um can i so i'm gonna i'm gonna add a little bit of legislative history here and people who are here present at the creation of this or this recreation of this policy a few years ago correct me if i'm wrong as i recall um in the in the original policy well the pre-2017 policy i don't believe the smaller high schools had any representation i think so this is a fairly new phenomenon and it makes sense to take a look at it and see how it's worked out in the last three years so anyway julia did you want to add something yeah well i should just say you're you're right there well there wasn't even a district student council per se um and it kind of depends on the smaller high school so you know jefferson did have for example that's the that's the definition of a smaller high school it did have representation at the early um in the earliest versions i think the addition of alliance and mlc um was not that say they were excluded but they just hadn't traditionally been part of like the voting on the student weapon things um yeah so it would be interesting to see like based on the um that right now with the student populations where everybody all the high schools would land with the number of reps um and i was like okay yeah so like you know for example grant could outvote you know mlc and alliance and you know jefferson better i don't know or they're being equal so i guess i that's something i'll just want to as we go through the process think about it and also hear from the smaller schools where they see the advantage or the disadvantage of a shift yeah absolutely and i think taking note um you know because our uh and i my internet decided that um you know right uh previous to this uh presentation to just sort of uh you know leave the building um and i'm not sure if the engagement plan was talked about but it is still um a living document if you will and i think that that's a consideration that we can make note of is to specifically engage um smaller schools in in how they feel about that um specific change and we have recently um uh two two new representatives from from mlc um who have done uh fantastic work around engaging their their school communities uh in in some other things but um we can definitely uh make that a point so can i raise um along the same lines um just like a um i guess a point of information um nathaniel i thought you said that jefferson
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under this um scheme would um would qualify for two representatives uh i believe unless our enrollment has gone below the threshold this year which is not out of the question but if so you know at an enrollment of 700 that would give to representatives um assuming the language says what i intended it to say yes okay um i i'm not sure it does so i think we may need to tinker with the language a bit but okay i get the yeah okay um i had a practical question um so correct me if i'm wrong but my sense over many years is that it has been difficult um it's been uh how should i put this um over time it has sometimes been difficult to get even one representative of each high school um and now you're talking about having multiple so um [Music] it is i'm kind of i'm i'm making an assumption here you tell me if this is correct um my assumption is that your thinking is that it might actually be easier to have representation robust representation from each high school precisely because having multiple representatives would be easier to to facilitate and manage is that what your thinking is well i think also the problem in the past just has been visibility i mean dsc really hasn't been talked about to the general student body so i don't think there's a lack of interest in being involved in the district student council i think it's just a lack of like having information that this at this is actually a position that you can hold and be a part of which we have been trying to work on so i do think there are people interested it's just finding those people okay i mean i could i can imagine that it might actually be easier to be a part of a group representing high school rather than you know shouldering the whole burden your lonesome um so okay but i just wanted to i wanted to hear what the uh what you're thinking was behind it okay um oh i had a question share more if you want me asking around the student engagement piece this is roseanne uh julia um one is have you worked with anyone from the district maybe someone from that our equity uh team to help you guys go through the racial justice social racial equity social justice lens um something that we would do for many other policies um so i'd like to suggest that and my second one is for your student engagement piece i know that i i saw that you were looking at reaching out to leadership and other asbs but my sense is that those communities are often we don't have many students of color who tend to join those and so my question is have you thought about going to affinity groups like a mecha or a black student union specifically to offer opportunities as well yeah so we actually started putting together the engagement plan on friday it was like really we didn't know we had to put it together for this meeting so it's like a rough rough draft like it's a good start we had very little time to put it together this is what we had like great with like three days notice so yes we plan on doing all that stuff and talking with district staff around how we can do better we just there was the weekend so we couldn't really meet with anyone and chinese was out sick until tuesday so and and jackson uh correct me if i'm wrong but we do have a have a meeting um with with shanice or um i think i got an email around setting that up or having that um to to specifically go over our as you mentioned um pretty rough uh first draft or pretty rudimentary um first draft but you know targeting um affinity spaces was uh was a point that was that was brought up and i think um definitely one um that should be pursued um you know echoing what you said roseanne about um you know possible lack of of diversity on uh student leadership uh they're in student leadership spaces
02h 15m 00s
okay uh the students consideration is there it could be some sort of threshold um on you know there's like major issues that you would require not just a majority of the individual representatives but also like a majority of the the schools so you have to sort of get a double majority on like issues of significance so you make sure that it's not just the big school wraps always something through and that's a common like parliamentary or legislative um practice if you are looking at how do you sort of protect the rights of the authority but also be representative so just something to think about um i'd say not every decision but you may want to be like hey not only do you have to get the majority of the members of the council but also in addition you have to get the majority at the school so that it's not again just the big school's powering things yeah that's a good idea and it would probably go into our bylaws just because like decision making is kind of subject to change and it'd be kind of hard to put something in policy that could change from year to year around like what what are big decisions that year um my next question kind of following up on what you just said jackson um this policy is [Music] is pretty thin on the duties um and and i think at the time since this was a brand new organizational structure for student government um you know i i think it was okay not to spell out duties um but you have an opportunity here to think about what you might want to have his duties um so i would encourage you to give some thought to that and um and especially in consultation with staff to make you know to to make sure that you know any idea you have is actually doable um but it might be helpful at this juncture to um to really flesh out what um what student representatives are empowered to do yeah i think that's a good idea recruitment too you know yeah because i mean every year we do our goals and that takes as the board members know a really long time um so at least having like somewhat of an idea going into those goal sessions about what kind of things we are expected to do and kind of want to do like forever i guess is a good idea i think that's a great suggestion yeah and i i think that's something that um we are we're happy to um you know this this document in its present form you know the the red line draft that we're bringing forward um isn't set in stone um necessarily um obviously the dsc has gone over this and is happy with uh its current contents but i think adding um as as you said uh direct to more some sort of long term uh more concrete goals um i i think that um obviously jackson jillian and nathaniel but the dsc as a whole would be uh would be happy to work on that um i i think that the reason that we didn't or that there aren't necessarily um was coming from a point of uncertainty not not necessarily knowing or or having that direction um but i i think uh you know getting that from the board um isn't or it could you know as a is a benefit as a positive um in this you know the the the process generally but yeah i i also like that idea okay so um so i'm thinking that um
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we'll put this on the committee's agenda with um but we'll leave a date open um so that you guys can give some thought to what you might wanna um what you might wanna do in terms of kind of envisioning what the duties responsibilities of dsc and the student rep would be um and that might take a little a little time i'm thinking um if you haven't had conversations about that yet um so um we can you know you can get back to us when when you feel like you're you've got something that you want us to consider as policy revisions um so we'll just kind of leave it open and and you get back to us about when you want us to take it up you know in in earnest um did you get did you get from this session um hey rita all right i've got two more just two have two more things before we close it out that i wanted to flag okay all right yeah one is one is who um has the authority call a snap election and i'm not sure that i i'd like to know more about why the dsc would be able to you know call that because it seems like the person the representatives are elected by and selected by their school community so having the dsc like being able to call a new election i'm i'm not sure i think that's the right process if somebody if there's some sort of action um that you know i always think it's the um the voting electorate who should decide who represents them so i just want to flag for you that i'd have a bunch of more questions about that and then and i don't unfortunately i don't have the policy in front of me so i can't fight this specific language but i remember when i read the portion about the staff liaison that it was a shift from i i think you're fighting and i say saying there's a section can you guys hear me we can now but you cut out for a while um okay i was just i was saying on the dsc i'm not sure if the gfc that should be i think it's more that school community should i need that decision that pat we got okay next one that you cut out okay there's there's a change in who decides what the staff liaison's roles and responsibilities are and again i don't have it right in front of me but it seemed like it shifted from the superintendent and district staff to the dsc and i'd want to know um what student engagement thinks about that and the superintendent um that would be bookmarking those two issues as ones that i'd want to have for a good discussion about i'm happy to talk to any of the students here today because i think you guys did a great job of fleshing out some really important issues for how you're governed and how you work absolutely thank you thank you um director brim edwards um and and both of those issues um or both of those uh revisions um our our concerns that were brought you know it's not only you that has these uh these similar questions um and i think the you know the fact that they're repeated um is um the reason reason enough to have to have a further discussion um make sure that all all parties that are involved are you know equitably treated by this policy um i i think if you wanted to uh to come to one of our um sort of policy workshop meetings we had a few um i think uh the feedback that we've gotten might might prompt us to have a few more before coming back um but if you if you wanted to come to one of those meetings or um you know otherwise uh have a discussion um i know i personally am and totally open to that and i think uh the other uh students here and the other students on the dsc are
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um i'm more than happy to to to really dig into some of the uh the the in the weeds things um so i i think your schedule is probably more constrained than than ours um so we can we can i'd welcome that okay thank you yep and one last thing for the snap election and nathaniel correct me if i'm wrong because i'm pretty sure you propose this it's not that we would decide whether the dsc rep could continue on the dsc it's saying we're referring it back to the district or back to the school saying is this someone you still want to be representing you right and the language was intentionally there as an alternative to like expulsion in order to allow the students to determine who is representing them and if they're actually representing the views that they hold and as a mechanism to make sure the dsc doesn't just throw out people they disagree with that if all schools can make all schools have someone who they think represents their views and interests well maybe instead of the dsc making the decision about whether the solution asks that question again maybe you should build some mechanism within the heist within the high school that if there's a concern that somebody's not representing a school community that the school could have a mechanism to have an election but i guess you know like what special knowledge does the dfc have on whether somebody's representing a school community the language isn't about whether or not they're representing the community the language is about whether or not they're acting in um consistent and egregious um consistently and egregiously acting against the interest of the policy of the bylaws it's basically a misconduct or negligence clause and daniel just the snap elections there to make sure that they're not thrown out if they just if for from um cases that aren't that nathaniel i thought the language was was specified around um either a direct violation of of policy or bylaws right yeah a general um acting against their constituency because that was part of the original language we decided that that was that was too loose and there weren't really strict definitions of what that might be um and that that would ultimately be up to their constituency you know their you know the high school as opposed to uh the dsc directly um so that i think that language was was changed it was more more open more to that theme uh director from edwards but i think that that got changed around a little bit um pretty recently second half of last week ish but land it was modified a bit before then but yeah so some somewhere you'd have to have definitions about um what you know what would constitute fitness or or lack thereof um so the policy or the bylaws or both or anyway one challenge we kind of encountered sorry last thing was that to stay at like the district level we couldn't say certain high schools had to do certain things because each high school has a different form of student government some have asbs some only have leadership classes some have both so that was like a huge challenge of ours saying like it has to come from asb or school-wide elections when schools don't necessarily have those to begin with so i'll bring up something that i brought up what three years ago three and a half years ago when we first looked at this um i personally i think it's problematic that you can't predict what um what's going to constitute student government in in any particular school and i think it has as i understand it at least um i think it has periodically caused um some significant inconsistencies in practices across schools um oh yeah so there might be some value in using this revision of policy to push the envelope a little bit on what you can on what um student government ought to look like across the district
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so in case you're going on this is me encouraging you to um to you know have that yeah and and that's um i i think we felt that it neces it wasn't necessarily uh our our place to say this is how your your student body government should look um but we did put a strong emphasis on the dsc being an elected position uh regardless of the individual student body government that's another issue that i also am passionate about uh student student leadership generally and and specifically student body governments um but as jackson said keeping it at a district level um you're really only uh mandating what is in our sphere if you will um having the dsc position uh be elected at every school uh regardless of their pre-existing uh or lack thereof of student body government but i i i hear what you're saying uh director moore and i i think that's a another really valuable conversation that i'm certainly uh enthusiastic about okay and if i recall correctly there is a separate student government policy is that correct i i'd be interested in perhaps revisiting that at some point okay okay well why don't we why don't we stop it here um and then you know you guys do what you do what you're gonna do and um and then you uh keep in touch and let us know when you are kind of approaching the point where it would be helpful to schedule another committee meeting and then we'll get it on the on the calendar okay okay thank you um okay so next up um i think um do we have any uh we have two policies that are um out for public comment um anti-racism anti-oppression learning communities policy um do you know if there have been any um if there's been any feedback on that we have not received any feedback okay um can i just ask who has our policies sent out to besides um the labor representative after we have our first reading it's not sent out beyond that there is a it is posted on the policies and a revisions page which invites public comment and tells people how to give feedback on it but we don't send it out anywhere else so we don't close the loop first readings of public comments are also included in the public meeting notices that go out about board meetings so there is a general distribution list for those sorry okay um have we given any thought to kind of closing the loop if if during the engagement period we've had contact with you know specific you know beyond a kind of general survey or something if we've had contact with um kind of representative groups or or organizations do we close the loop and send them the draft that we've come up with i know that and danny ledezma is not here to speak to this but i when i spoke to her on friday about this policy and the the accompanying administrative directive she was putting together a timeline for engagement i um i don't have it but i know that's what she was putting together over the weekend um go ahead liz no no i didn't mean to cut you off mary i was gonna shift a little bit so please finish if you have more that's it okay i think as a general matter of process there is not a formal recirculation after engagement to answer your question more broadly i think mary can address these policies in particular but that is not part of the current repeatable consistent process okay yeah just one thing that i guess during compton
02h 35m 00s
and we're getting about policies um having some mechanism that besides like you have to go to the district webpage it seems like because people aren't in schools it's just i think it's even harder to engage people in the in that conversation because we have some little points of actual um actual meetings um just in general um it just seems like we it would be good for our policies to get them out a little bit broader during the public comment period because the number of people that are going to watch the board meeting and then or go online and go to that specific page just seems small what do you have in mind julia i'm guessing that you have some mechanisms and channels in mind i'd love for you to share them to help us get well for for example this particular policy um you know we had a whole bunch of incidents at high school um last year so circulating into the high school principals or to the site council um with a you know this is part of that it's not just i think also something that we as a community feel is a value and we've actually had a lot of incidents related to it so you know we hit the mark or is there other you know things to do so i mean that this particular policy it would send it to the um you know say we have these parent advisory groups also like just the routine matter we have this is what i did with like the professional conduct i mean i just listed on my facebook page and a number of other places but i got some great feedback so it seems like you you know we have a 21 day period to try and get it out or it could be this point of just people who commented you know who were part of the earlier engagement process because a lot of times when people looked at the very beginning it looks considerably different at the end so i think i mean throughout a proposal that we uh add something like this in the engagement plan so the subject matter expert or the staffer who is shepherding this work through and supporting the work of the committee will be responsible for that loop back i don't think that falls on roseanne i think it needs to be with the staff member who is the the subject matter expert on that and has had the lead role lead staff substantively does that make sense yep yep totally yep okay and uh the other policy is professional conduct policy have we had any commentary on that okay we have not okay all right so uh i'm i'm paying attention to the time uh and we have a number of people signed up for public comment so um why don't we move right into that so do we have the first person giving testimony yes david sorry my screen's too far i can't see it skelton david you should be hi i just was bumped off and uh had to rejoin i guess as a commenter now so thanks thanks for um i'm one wanted to comment on the pps policy on the foundation fundraising if i could thanks for having me um may i just start or is there a procedure where i state my name first or yeah state your name uh spell your last name for the record and um you have two minutes okay thank you uh my name is david scolton my last name is spelled e s-c-h-o-l-t-e-n and i'm a fifth grade teacher at abernathy elementary school abernathy's student body is 82 percent white and 18 and an 8.9 percent receive free and reduced lunch in a district where 56 of students are white and 22.5 percent receive free and reduced lunch abernathy holds several fundraisers for among other things the purchase of 2.5 fte over the pps allocation in 2018-19 abernathy raised over two hundred and thirty thousand dollars and kept for its own use about 157 thousand dollars the average grant awarded to schools applying from the general fund was about thirty thousand dollars there is a commonly held belief in our community that these efforts are needed because we can't compete with title 1 schools who get so much aid but raising this money but raising this much money year after year comes at a cost felt both within our community and without at our school there is very rarely a time when a fundraiser is not happening this has a significant impact on our
02h 40m 00s
school culture most pta communications begin with a call to donate and parents are bombarded with countless emails asking them to contribute or participate in events in order to raise as much money as possible all events use competition to drive up the amount we receive our classrooms are places where we stress collaboration over competition but this incessant fundraising runs counter to the culture we as teachers try to build but perhaps the greatest harm done to our community is that raising this much money robs us of the opportunity to build a community by working for a greater we a we that encompasses more than just our school because so much parent energy is spent solving the perceived shortfalls at abernathy little energy is spent advocating for structural change that might lead to a more robust revenue source that would benefit all schools in pps significant social capital remains untapped because we are permitted to work for our school alone in conclusion the current model is divisive and acts as an obstacle to the deeper changes we all wish to realize reforming the foundation fundraising model will free communities with significant time and resources to work as one district to make sure we have adequate funding at the state level reforming foundations that are divisive within and harmful without will strengthen our whole community as we refocus our energy to efforts that benefit all i'll end by asking what kind of community are we trying to build here at pps i know i want one that is loving one where we are encouraged to care for one another i think reforming foundation fundraising is a good step in that direction thank you thank you thank you thank you susan carson hi and i'm going to be speaking on the same topic as david just did so my name is susan carson c-a-r-s-o-n i'm the parent of a 6th grader at roseway heights middle school and i'm working with a group of advocates on reforming the pps foundation funding system that allows parents to raise money to pay for teachers at their individual schools this system hasn't been reviewed in over 15 years and it's well past time to re-examine it many of us promoted our school's foundations in the past we were those nice white parents who thought we were doing the right thing by our own schools while adding to a fund that benefited schools in underserved communities everybody wins right but when we take a closer look the reality is very different these good intentions have resulted in a system that benefits mainly white wealthy families while doing little for those most in need of the roughly four million dollars raised annually through local school foundations three million stays at the whitest wealthiest schools in the district and everyone else splits up the rest parent fund grants typically twenty to fifty thousand dollars are never enough to pay for even one full-time staff member whereas top fundraising schools use foundation funds to pay for multiple teachers at their own schools imagine if an outside foundation said we're going to give 4 million dollars to pps the catch is 3 million of that has to go to the whitest wealthiest schools in the district it sounds appalling right but that is our current system it's just that the foundation happens to be funded by pps parents we're not advocating to end parent fundraising altogether fundraising can be a great way to build community but in the past 15 years so much has changed in our understanding of equity and systemic racism in 2021 the board should encourage parents across the district to refocus their energy time and creative spirit to work together on long-term stable funding at all schools local school foundations are unstable divisive and they're not equitable how can we justify keeping this broken system every parent wants to improve our schools but it's up to the board to remove the option for parents to fund staffing on a microscopic level pps is an ecosystem of student potential that will define our community's future health economy and overall success thank you thank you thank you i have douglas wise signed up but it looks like we have kendra wise yes so it's my name is kendra wise w-i-s-e and i am a parent in my pronouns are she her i'm a parent of a student at robert gray middle school and a former fundraiser at bridal mile elementary we moved from a title 1 school to bridal mile and upon our arrival we kept hearing that pps funds some schools less
02h 45m 00s
expecting parents will make up the difference through fundraising so we were eager to get involved giving our time and money to help raise funds to buy staff in the course of my fundraising i received an email from a parent objecting to our fundraiser that was selling seats at their child's music performance the only way he could get a seat in the first few rows of the concert was to buy one so i began questioning my own participation in the foundation i've spoken with many parents who feel excluded from the school community because they can't afford to attend the auction and it's affiliated events i realized that in addition to exacerbating racial inequity at the district level local school foundations are divisive within school communities foundation fundraisers are a means for families to buy access to the social community one of the easiest ways for foundations to raise money is by charging admission to private parties so you first have to be able to afford to attend the auction at which you can purchase admission for both you and your kids to attend these parties for parents it's mostly house parties held throughout the year but our students are impacted by this behavior too some examples of parties for kids have been after school outings with their teacher for only five kids and back to school barbecues for each grade by allowing foundations to raise funds in these ways your condoning school community is being divided by socioeconomic status and ingraining this broken racist system into the minds of students and all of this the many volunteer hours having a divided school community exacerbating systemic racism for one fte these events turn school communities inward rather than building bridges to connect our district as a whole we are one district and our systems need to reflect and support the desire many parents in our community have to adequately fund all schools local school foundations have been an obstacle to that unity thank you for your time thank you thank you amy higgs go ahead oh is it me yeah okay sorry about hi again i'm amy higgs she her pronunc pronouns uh higgs is higgs i'm executive director of the eco school network and i'm thankful and excited that you all are diving into the climate crisis response policy and the discussion has been really productive so far um i'm a big fan of the does green ribbon framework and the whole school sustainability approach and i'm glad that last week's discussion and presentation was inspiring and also given the urgency and public interest in passing a policy focused on climate crisis response i hope that the climate will remain the organizing framework rather than switching to a broader focus on green healthy schools which is the odoe framework um i just did a quick reorganization of all the targets from the policy draft version 19 and put them into the three pillars of the odo and i have that document ready to share with you so i can uh email that right after the meeting but there is actually a lot of content under each one of those pillars pillar one is all about reducing environmental impact and reducing emissions pillar two which is health and wellness from a climate change perspective is really about survival and preparedness and resilience from the the personal impacts of climate change which fit directly under that pillar and pillar three is about environmental and sustainability education so i'll email this to the committee right after this meeting um many of the targets fit into all three pillars and so that's why we reorganized it to be aligned with the way that pps does business and hopefully easier for the public to wrap their heads around um also the green ribbon schools program focuses on the school level not on the district level and that's because reorienting a single school toward this three pillar framework is a huge feat and reorienting a large urban school district for those goals is an even bigger feat that would be amazing for pps to pursue but i believe is well beyond the scope of a single policy like this um so that's all and mike and jane and i are at your service and if there's any way we can can lighten your load moving forward with this policy we would love to help get it ready to share with the board okay thank you thank you and that's it we have one other person signed up but i don't see them okay all right good um thank you for everybody's comments um they're they're useful as we work through these policies
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and uh it is now 703 and um i'm late for another meeting um so if there's no objection um i think we'll adjourn for today and reconvene in three weeks okay thanks everybody bye


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