2021-02-09 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-02-09
Time 18:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type regular
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting - 2/09/21

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board of education for february 9th 2021 is called to order for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on has been posted on the pps website under the board and meeting tabs board and meetings this meeting is being streamed live on pps tv services website and on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times welcome and to begin tonight's board meeting i would like to ask director depos to introduce this next agenda item which is the resolution in support of black history month director depos yes thank you chair lowry black history month is an annual observance originating in the united states where it's also known as african american history month it has received official recognition from governments in the united states canada and more recently has been observed in ireland the netherlands and the united kingdom it began as a way of remembering the important people and events in the history of the african diaspora sorry tech issues today in 2021 i feel it's important to pause and reflect on what this past year has meant for the african americans in our country and in our city i want to acknowledge that it was only nine months ago following the killing of george floyd we saw our country's biggest protests for racial justice and civil rights in a generation reigniting a national reckoning about racial injustice giving both a local and global profile to the black lives matter movement um i'm sorry while at the same time the health and economic impacts of systemic racism are ever more present during the kobit 19 pandemic where nationwide one in every 735 black americans for you math nerds out there that's 13 in 10 000 has died from cobit 19. but with all this heaviness there are some bright spots in july we passed a resolution in support of the development of a center for black student excellence in portland public schools to support optimal teaching and learning environments and promote culturally responsive strategies all in partnership with culturally specific black-led and black-serving community-based organizations at the last board meeting i'm proud to share that we voted to change the name of wilson high school to ida b wells barnett high school after the great leader who led the anti-lynching lynching crusade of the 1890s and later founded several civil rights organizations including the naacp and the first black women's suffrage association and last month the latest data from the oregon department of education showed that over the last three years black students at portland public schools had a 12.3 percentage point gain in graduation rates i see these as bright spots as hope for a better future and better outcomes for our black students and for all students and as i say how proud i am of these accomplishment accomplishments i know that our work isn't done we need to work together to close the achievement gap because reading and math outcomes should not be determined by one's race income level or zip code we need to work together to reduce the expulsions of black and brown students who have disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system we should work with our local community based organizations and black led partners proactively and not as an afterthought we should work together to become the district of choice for teachers and administrators of color we've asked the superintendent to track and actively recruit and retain teachers and administrators of color and i've been impressed that with everything else going on including the response to the global pandemic that the commitment to making pps a culturally and racially diverse district and learning institution is strong and we should recognize black history month every month by spending a portion of our district budget in places that benefit the black owned businesses and that stimulate the local economy and i'd like to read the resolution uh resolution number 6238 proclamation and recognition of february as black history month portland public schools pps celebrates black excellence to reinforce the success of every student their futures and provide community-centered and education that allows every student to achieve their fullest potential and thrive into adulthood black history month began in 1915 by historian carter woodson and other prominent leaders as a way to formally observe the visionary contributions of black people and now is a time for recognizing the central role of members of the african diaspora in u.s history after the onset of black history month half a century after the 13th amendment
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abolished slavery the civil rights movement accelerated a public awareness of black identity identity following the killing killing of george floyd the summer of 2020 saw the united states biggest protest for racial justice and civil rights in a generation reigniting a national reckoning about racial injustice and gave both a local and global growth profile to the black lives matter movement the contributions of members of the african diaspora and their endeavors to learn and thrive throughout history and make unforgettable marks in our nation as artists scientists educators business people influential thinkers members of faith communities athletes and political and government leaders reflect the greatness of the united states black history reflects a determined spirit of perseverance and cultural pride in its struggle to equitably share in the opportunities and the burdens of a nation founded upon the principles of freedom and liberty for all people members of the african diaspora have participated in every american effort to secure protect and advance the cause of freedom and civil rights and continue to resist white supremacy the local community has enriched the diversity of perspectives and experiences within our district and the board of education desires to recognize and honor the achievements and contributions of members of the african diaspora our history curriculum of community state region nation and the world must reflect the lived experiences of people of different racial religious and ethnic groups all students need an opportunity to understand the common humanity underlying all people to develop pride in their own identity and heritage and to respect and accept the identity and heritage of others in service of the superintendent's overarching strategic framework of targeted universalism shaped from the community driven vision for pps we recognize our commitment to center the realities of black students and eliminating the oppression embedded in our systems that they experience on july 28 the portland public schools board of education passed resolution 6150 in support of the development of a center for black student experience excellence rather in portland public schools which directed the superintendent to resource and develop a clear roadmap for the design of the center for black student excellence an initiative that focuses on a group of community schools by supporting optimal teaching and learning environments and promoting culturally responsive strategies and to continue to partner with culturally specific black-led and black-serving community-based organizations to develop those plans on january 26 2021 the portland public schools board of education passed resolution 6235 to change the name of wilson high school to ida b wells barnett high school after the great leader who led the anti-lynching crusade of the 1890s and later founded several civil rights organizations including the naacp and the first black women's suffrage association through leadership and practice portland public schools is dedicated to goals that advance racial justice especially for black communities in the portland metro area be it resolved the board of education of portland public schools hereby recognizes the month of february 2021 as black history month and encourages all educators to commemorate this occasion with appropriate ceremonies instructional activities and programs thank you and thank you to staff um for taking a fresh look in 2020 at this resolution with me specifically uh miss shanice clark thank you for your contributions thank you director um do i have a motion and a second to adopt resolution 6238 resolution in support of black history month so moved second uh director brim edwards moves and director scott seconds the adoption of resolution 6238 is there any board discussion i just really appreciate the way that resolution and proclamation was made and that it spoke to um our goals and our unfinished business and some of our successes and um it felt direct and personal and thanks to everybody who pulled that together i know that um pat is holding a week of action this week as part of their efforts around black history month and let's see um tomorrow they're encouraging folks to support black owned businesses on thursday they're having a watch party for the movie pushout and on friday they're having a q a with the filmmakers so um find more through our portland association of teachers who are also doing a great deal to honor black history month
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any other board discussion so just reflecting um back three years ago uh when we started and um as as many of us started on the board and i'm just thinking about what was in that resolution and to director constance point just the the um the gains that have been made and the work that's still left to be done i thought i think the resolution did a really great job of capturing that um and thank the staff for all the work of the last couple years to make many of those things possible and and also the board action and and the community um because we couldn't have done most of those things whether it was the bond or the changing of the name without deep engagement with the community i also wanted to raise at this time the information and resources that we provide to the schools and superintendent guerrero earlier today um you you all shared it um in response to just a question about what sorts of resources are being supplied to the schools not just for um this month for black history month but throughout the year in the curriculum and i don't know if that's um why uh dr cuellar and uh dr byrd just appeared on the screen but maybe they'll speak to that i thought the resources that you shared with the board that are being shared with the community um were really thorough and comprehensive and should be a good platform uh for our schools but i'm wondering if absolutely um thank you for the question uh director brian edwards and thank you director depos for for reading that resolution and wonderful introduction and for the board's consideration of this so uh it it's of course important to commemorate the month uh to black history month and uh recognizing black student brilliance is is a year-round opportunity that we remain committed to i appreciate sort of uh early signs that um actions and indicators are showing that our commitment is beginning uh to bear some fruit and improved outcomes and opportunity gaps we want to narrow but yes placing a real emphasis uh that's culturally affirming and sustaining uh starts with what happens in the classroom and making sure the teaching and learning really reflects the students that we serve and so guidance to our school communities to to our school leaders and to our educators is certainly part of something we want to you know continue to add attention to in particular during this month so uh we do have our chief of schools dr byrd and our deputy superintendent for for instruction dr craig cuellar and i would love for them to to elaborate a little bit for for everyone's benefit some ways in which that guidance is being provided and some examples of ways that our educators are really putting an emphasis this month on on those types of lessons uh dr bird or dr cuellar thank you superintendent um hello school board i do want to echo superintendent guerrero's um statements that this is an incredibly important time but but even more so um not something that the school system practices just one time a year something that is at the very core of what we do each and every day um for our students for our schools and for our communities um and i am joined here by dr valentino who is prepared to talk a little bit about you know the work that we're leading in the office of teaching and learning and how the work is interconnected and woven through our curriculum and our instructional practices and our pedagogy and then also joined here with dr byrd to talk a little bit about the work that the office of school performance is doing to continue to enhance and uplift this um very important work so we'll go ahead and start with dr valentino and then we'll close with dr berg good evening excuse me um board director laurie um directors superintendent guerrero um so for us the the premise is that um black history month should not be a 30-day experience but it really should reflect how we what we believe in how we feel about how we work with our bipark communities and how our um white communities interact in that same environment and so for for the office of teaching and learning integrating the work of black history quote unquote is really a function of when we're talking about language when we talk about math we're talking about science that there are threads woven in throughout are the the lessons and the units that reflect
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that belief and so while we do celebrate for one month um more explicitly it really does have to be an integrated process of ensuring that throughout the day our students have access to that understanding through that level of experience through um and helping to develop a belief system that really looks at celebrating the diversity and honoring uh voice um and acknowledging the the assets that we all bring to the table and so as you will begin to see within our curriculum you will see more and more evidence of that work being integrated and woven through our curriculum so that's how we hope to be able to make it um more comprehensive pk 12 because it will be available on our atlas um um management system so that acrylic the curriculum is available to all teachers and to all administrators um 24 7 and that they can download and use in their in their instruction and then finally i would just add that in osp obviously it's our goal to give schools as many resources as possible for again not just february but for every month so we definitely have some schools that are great examples of great examples of celebrating black excellence throughout the year like brilliance throughout the year so we've uh provided uh and in our office school performance meetings uh those cohorts are given resources uh you know uh throughout the year for ways in which they can celebrate it's really a partnership with the office of teaching and learning and uh so we are continuing to strengthen our resources and our um supportive schools celebrations particularly in times you know we're in distance learning and it's you can't do the traditional things that you normally do to celebrate uh so so um but it's still highlighted uh throughout the school district i wanted to add that um i thought it was important to add these wins that we've had over the last literally in the last year because as someone who's been involved for a very long time the civil rights um struggle it's modeling that it's okay to be both impatient about things that aren't are not happening um and and and and celebrate the successes so it's a both end situation i wanted to model that you know we can be impatient and joyful and celebrate our successes at the same time that that's the only way um civil rights leaders have managed to go through this it's not just 55 or 60 years or 70 years of struggle it's that you celebrate those incremental wins um and you keep pushing so i thought it was important to highlight um everything that we've done in the last year literally those three big things any further aboard discussion on the resolution that is before us is bradshaw is there any public comment no right the board will now vote on resolution 6238 resolution in support of black history month all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6238 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative shu voting yes all right thank you nathaniel maybe um one thing that was also shared um among the staff to all of us is what's been happening at vernon um and i'm noticing that there's a jazz band video um of the seventh and eighth grade band and i'm wondering if that could be shared with um the board or the broadway community just moving a lot of times our community has a chance to see the the bigger celebration that's happening in our schools and because of covet we can't um so somehow like elevating that throughout the month absolutely and and i also want to mention one other thing director brian roberts we have several culturally specific partners that work with our schools and uh are often in after school programs and other programming even though we're in the pandemic those activities have not stopped and those groups are still working with our students and so that's also a big part of black history celebrations too so i would be remiss in not mentioning their contributions to our efforts thank you um i don't want to put uh our director of coms on on it'd be nice uh uh staff if we'd kind of gather a little quick compilation with snippets from all of our schools so that at the end of the month we would have a nice little chronology of all the different kinds of activities that happened this month uh let's see if we can pull that together if we can have our school leaders capture
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some of those video clips for us to to synthesize together that would be a nice way to kind of round out the month more joy more joy indeed uh so we begin our meeting tonight uh with uh that proclamation or that resolution as a way to um solidify our focus on racial equity and on student-centeredness um we turn now to our consent agenda which which might feel a little weird that we have it so early in our meeting um part of this is because we have staff here to answer questions if the board has any and we like to do this up front and early on so that staff who don't need to be present for the rest of the meeting can can go about normally it's going home but it just means turning off the camera and maybe uh getting some down time so now we turn to that consent agenda board members if there are any items you would like to pool we will set those aside for discussion and vote at the end of the meeting but first i asked ms bradshaw are there any changes to the consent agenda no all right board members are there any items you would like to pull from the consent agenda julia are you speaking i'm trying to model the practice and turn my microphone off when i'm not speaking sorry um i i have a agenda item that i have a question about but uh not to poll or um for a separate vote okay we'll take that question after we've um moved the consent agenda does anyone else have anything they might like to pull ah maybe um first i'd like to thank everyone who was involved for um amending the minutes um that uh had me recording votes that i did not take um but now i'm looking at the one from december 15th and i think there might be an issue with that as well uh the minutes that is um i think i i don't remember voting no on the motion on resolution 6220 um i i highly doubt that that's a vote that i took um i don't see why i would okay so let's let's pull let's go ahead and take that off the consent agenda um to for review um so we will not include the december meeting minutes um so that's the 12 15 minutes correct nathaniel okay so we'll pull those for review and bring those back at our next meeting thank you anything else about the consent agenda all right do i have a motion and second to adopt the consent agenda oh i couldn't tell who that was was it rita and take your pick it was i think it was director khan stamina i believe okay so um director to pass moves and director condoms second constant sorry con seconds the adoption of the consent agenda is there any board discussion julia you had a question yes this is for uh deputy superintendent hertz and um unless superintendent wants to take it um but it's about the two um cleaning contracts that are to up there's two that are not to exceed three million dollars and um they i understanding based on the responses i got to some questions that um they're coming from uh capital funds one of the things that i've been asked a lot about in the community and then just based on the money that we potentially are getting from um the federal federal government for covid um of on something like this where there may be a covered application how is it that we're sort of bucketing things um the way that um w superintendent hurts explain this this is potentially have some flexibility to do a series of smaller contracts so we have the speed and we have people ready to go um for some very specific projects to be nimble but i'm curious because there is this narrative out there that hey you're getting all this money to do x for covid and or or you're not getting money to um do x um with covid and i'm just i'm interested at a very high level of how we're bucketing things that we think may be sort of covet expenditures and sort of where those sit how much there is um and you know whether that you know as we look long-term about how we're going to approach some of these costs which some of them are capital costs or cleaning costs um how we get them bucketed out to be reimbursable if they are at all yeah i think that i think i get your question uh director brim edwards um i i could see how that would be the case there's coveted relief
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monies there's a number of buckets and i think this evening what you see on the agenda is sort of this unique category of flexible services contractor pool but i don't want to steal deputy hertz's thunder she has her pearls on so i'll let her explain good evening uh so we have really these are we do this for hvac systems we've done this for plumbing we this is another example of us having con a list of uh gone through a competitive process to have approved contractors to do work and that we need sometimes it's to respond to a repair sometimes it's to respond to um uh ongoing maintenance so these are meant to this cleaning is meant for um uh bathroom tiles steam cleaning and sealing and sometimes we'll have a final construction where we need cleaning up after the construction work so these are met these are contractors that will be used in conjunction with other components it's not necessarily due to the pandemic but they also could be if we have an urgent need for instance to disinfect a whole school that would be beyond the scope of our normal work of our custodians yes so it's meant to be uh you know an out uh an outside consultant to um or an outside contractor that comes in and works it's this is a multiple year contract it's something there's different times that we need um construction cleanup whether it's in this deserve for construction things that are not bond related these are smaller we have other construction projects that occur from um other capital funds that are non-bond funded so these are intended for those kinds of con projects as well as ongoing significant maintenance and just making our buildings as clean and as disinfected as possible so we've been doing the um bathroom tile steam cleaning and ceiling in all of our schools before the pandemic occurred which i'm sure that's really appreciated just to maybe be super specific give the example of the full school that had to be cleaned say there was some coveted said we reopened there's some covered incident we feel like we have to clean the whole school you'd utilize this contract i guess the what i'm asking is is there some um and director scott jump in here if you have the right words we have a budget category where we're like okay we're going to take that out of the 3 million bucket and we're going to put it over here because we think that's reimbursable we have um a covid related project number that we've we have one for 1920 we have one for 2021's each year what gets assigned a new project number and so any um thing that is covered related um i can say that the fema reimbursement program for covid has been um with originally we were told you know here are all the rules we submitted all of our um paperwork based on those rules then they said no wait we're changing the rules so then we had to wait because of that we had a lower dollar amount and now we've got an a new administration at the federal level and they're saying that wait a minute we have we're going to re-look at this again so it's not clear yet on how what we get reimbursed for for through fema but i can tell you that we are certainly coding anything that might be uh covered related to um that project code so that we can submit for reimbursement once the rules are fine are finally settled and i do think deputy superintendent that the latest federal package the um earmarks and constraints um we've been told are the same as they were before so that we know where categories are reimbursable and yeah we know we know um what we're we we know if we are um doing something due to the pandemic and so we're coding things there it may not be reimbursable but we're coding it there so that we make sure as we're submitting and the rules are ever changing we make sure that we have tracked that separately right that's just what i want to know thank you can i just ask i was going to send a separate email but because you're here and this question came up i've been getting some emails i think other people probably have as well about where some of our cares act dollars um have have gone and other federal dollars is it possible to put a report up on our website i'm assuming i mean it's sort of at our covered page that just sort of says you know interested to see how pps has spent these dollars i think even just in high level categories would be really useful
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for the public and we do have a community budget review committee the cbrc this thursday and we are reviewing a preliminary list with them and so that is part of the packet that's being posted onto the website but we'll make sure that it's more prominent in the budgetary webpage so that people can um see how we're initially expected to spend but the as you know um things continue to evolve so we while we know what we've spent and we have set aside for projected expenses um the needs continue to evolve depending on what kind of program we're running at what period of time so but we'll continue to keep that updated just to confirm they're being used for covet-related purposes yeah there was a question there no no question yeah i mean there's just this perception in the in the community that because there's been so much discussion about it that this perception that we have this huge bucket of money for that you know could cover just about anything so i think just the more that we can just be transparent about you know what we spend it on and um you know costs that we have that we haven't been able to get reimbursed for um i think it's just good information for the community to have um so they're realistic about what it is we can do and we have a quarterly financial report coming up to the board at its next meeting we could also include um a component um on this this one pager that we've created for the cbrc um in that report so it becomes part of the record we have reported that to the board earlier this year but we can certainly give you an update as we do our quarterly reports any other questions about items on the consent agenda ms bradshaw is there any public comment on the consent agenda no all right the board will now vote on resolution 6236 as amended removing the 12 15 minutes and 6237 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions the consent agenda is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative shu voting yes all right thank you nathaniel now we turn to one of the key parts of our board meetings which is our student and public comment and before we begin i'd like to review our guidelines first of all thank you all so much for taking the time to attend the meeting and provide your comments public input does inform our work very strongly and we look forward as always to hearing your thoughts your reflections your concerns and our responsibility as a board is to actively listen our board office may follow up on board related issues raised during public testimony we request that complaints or issues about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter rather than being discussed in a public forum if you have additional materials or items you would like to provide to the board or superintendent we ask that you email them to public comment at pps.net now please make sure when you begin your comment that you clearly state your name and spell your last name you will have three minutes to speak and you'll hear sound after three minutes which means it is time to conclude your comments ms bradshaw do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment yes we have gaius chantry bakery yeah okay say your name hi i'm guys century vicar and my preferred pronouns are he him and i go to mlc oh i'm a lot of v-i-c-k-e-r-y um and i honestly think that uh uh having school in person is unfair for the teachers because they're at risk of getting coveted and even if they have the vaccine it's uh the plan that i heard of is that i heard is ridiculous in my opinion and unfair for the students um because one you know you're only going to see half of your class for the rest of the year which is kind of kind of weird and uh two we shouldn't be uh going in full-on in this if we don't have all the details of what we're um gonna do and i think we should just keep on doing what we're doing right now because um even if it's um difficult for a lot of
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students it's the safe way and it's probably the right way for right now if we don't have a plan that makes complete sense so yeah that is what i have to say and another thing is bring back sanjay so there you go thank you very much for speaking tonight thank you we have tyrion merrell black and preferred pronouns tyrion we're having a little bit of a hard time hearing you can you speak up just a little bit uh yes i of am and that dispute um the decision is not about like who wants to go to kellogg um it is rather that it is our community school as preston um and we've been expecting to go to attend since our parents voted on the bar to rebuild it and it is it is the fact that we haven't been together in person for 11 months and now that you are and now you are telling us that you are going to further divide this community these friends and classmates who have known each other half of our young lives that we will not continue to school together this fall this is uncomprehendable and hurtful and it is inconsistent with the pps4 policy policies like rules should be consistent otherwise why have them splitting up our little people middle schools putting up our middle school students is not equitable and during this unprecedented time of a global pandemic and social and emotional chaos our great pps district board members and superintendents could do better and can be better the current sixth and seventh eighth graders should be moved together to kellogg justin out just out of the neighborhood sixth and seventh graders are being allowed to do thank you tyrion and thank you for speaking up thank you um we braden bechtel um thank you thank you for having me on thank you for having me at this meeting my name is brayden bechtel b b-e-c-h-t-e-l um my pronouns are he him his and i am currently a sixth grade student at preston creston school um and one of the three and one of the 34 children that are going to hospital i please recognize that i am speaking out for all my friends and classmates who wish to go to kellogg i'm going to tell you why i want to build a cab i would like to point out that as my father tyler bechtel had said as well you have kept seats open and have put imaginary students in those seats to keep them open and although you assume that this is good for kellogg it isn't those seats should have children that are ready who are ready to learn and sure that could slightly benefit due to the small amounts of students to work with but i but i think that all middle schoolers should be able to go regardless of the amount of imaginary students there are plus i think that imaginary students can make some room street another reason i would like to go to kellogg is because i personally would love to make new friends and yes i can make new friends regardless of what school i go to but if you walk in my shoes tell kellogg could be a place for plenty of students to gather and be together including my new and old friends and agreeably the coronavirus does strain that but after students get their vaccines and code 19 called harms down we can do just that my final reason is that kellogg on the like preston my current school has more different and unique electives that students can choose from also the other school prospered is already over its maximum capacity and no offense it would be foolish to put more kids in another thing is that my parents alongside many other families have been paying money for this new
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school and the fact that you wish to not allow students in is threatening frustrating and upsetting because of what they've done for kellogg since i've been in second grade also one last thing riddle me this would you rather keep all of the preston students together as normal and put them in kellogg or would you rather break the friendships of more than 30 students and put them in an overfilled school that some will have to take the bus to you randomly drew a line through my neighborhood that will split us apart i hope you i hope that you take my reasoning into consideration and i thank you for your time thank you you have nolan west my name is nolan west west and i'm currently a sixth grader nolan i'm gonna nolan i'm gonna ask you to speak up as well it's a little hard to hear you okay um i use i use he him pronouns and i would like to speak about the creston kellogg oxford issue this pandemic has been hard for all of us and virtual learning is tough my friends every day to get through it to split us up now without warning would be worse if we're than if we're actually it's not right to take friendships that have been around for years just the hope of getting back getting to go back to school with my friends because like has kept me going i work hard in school so that i can be a good student and be around my friends when i think about going back to school without most of my friends it makes me may not want to go back to separate friends based on where they live would destroy the community it's unfair to families and students especially i hope that you take my opinion into consideration thank you for your time chair lowry if i could ask um the audio was a little difficult i caught some of it if if if if student nolan would be willing to submit his comments and in writing so we might read them be able to read them clearly that would be helpful so rosanne or cara can you follow up with nolan to make sure we get a copy thank you yes thank you nolan we have lisa kinsel hi good evening pps board members superintendent guerrero district staff and guests i'm lisa kincell i use the pronouns she her my last name is spelled k-e-n-s-e-l i have three children that attend school in pps and two of my children currently attend creston k-8 i have one student who's a junior at franklin high school for the past 12 years i've been an active community advocate for creston and southeast portland and i was here last two weeks ago to talk with you guys share feedback on the kellogg student assignment plan so thanks for allowing me to come before you tonight to share some broader ongoing concerns in our community family and community engagement in schools is really important for our schools to be successful and creating relationships with parents in the community based on trust is the foundation for that success public trust is vital for a thriving school district and as our community has navigated this process it's become really clear that trust in pps has been greatly impacted on november 19th at the widely attended virtual open house meeting the one proposal that was presented to the public showed that creston middle school students feeding to kellogg as a single cohort and then in december the proposal shifted considerably with creston middle school students being asked to remain at their k-8 until 2022 looking at the proposal it was unclear where room would be made until in 2022 for our students to feed to any of the middle schools in our area and when we asked pps we were told that it wasn't clear yet trust that it would happen given the years of issues and lack of attention paid to our quadrant of the city by pdps for the last 15 years we felt uncomfortable that an equitable outcome would actually be realized for our students this goes back to the closure of neighborhood elementary schools as focus option schools began to flourish the closure of the original kellogg middle school and marshall high school the lack of transparency around the lead in our school water the last minute change of plans with our middle school assignment and how data seemed to fluctuate wildly from meeting to media and inconsistencies in adherence to pps policy around cohort maintenance we heard the board say that maintaining cohorts for out-of-neighborhood 7th and 8th graders feeding kellogg was important yet our community was not given the same consideration to maintain our cohort and when we brought that to the attention of district staff we were met with an
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entirely new plan that fractured off 10 additional students and we're told that because we were not willing to wait until 2022 for middle school for our kids this is what we get i shared these things to illustrate how trust and pps has been broken in southeast portland and in portland and specifically the creston community if we're gonna make it through phase 2 as a cohesive southeast community it's going to be necessary to rebuild trust both for families and students as a district we need to have clearly defined goals have a clear process that brings together stakeholder input bring voices to the table that have not been present be consistent in all policies be open to community feedback and comments and as a district take responsibility for the process rather than having a volunteer group of parent advisors bear the weight of such decision making it's important that we communicate well and throughout the process so that families feel heard and engaged engaging all families in a positive positive manner will be vital to our district as we head back into the school building soon we need to continue to ask if what we're doing is really best for kids especially given the past year living through a pandemic and comprehensive distance learning we need to remember that our students are watching and they're taking their lead from all of us thank you for your time tonight thank you we have tom putman good evening school board members thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is tom putman p-u-t-t-m-a-n pronouns he his and him i'm a pps parent of three children a first grader a fourth grader and a sixth grader we love our schools and we love our teachers but i struggle with the fact that across the us almost 60 percent of students are back in the classroom in some form for our district that percentage is zero last summer oregon department of ed released guidelines for reopening schools safely pps spent the rest of the summer preparing plans for our school to start in the fall under all three scenarios online hybrid and in person but we didn't open due to high coveted levels in our community reopening was pushed to november then again in january to january 28th our school ready schools started sat empty our prepared plans sat on the sale in january department of ed labeled their guidelines advisory governor brown pushes to have schools open by january 15th by february 15th with ready plans and ready schools districts across oregon responded resoundingly they aggressively use new tools like limited in-person learning to test reopening plans by bringing over 30 000 struggling online students back to the classroom we were shocked to learn the opposite for our schools last week despite what we've been told since last summer we do not have a plan to reopen our schools are not ready much of our school meeting was spent on overviews of preliminary concepts for reopening we don't have buses figured out school circulation figured out classrooms figured out we're not even sure if we have teachers to teach our school is admitted to having more questions than answers at best they hope to implement lippy and mid-march and hope to offer limited hybrid learning no earlier than mid-april that's almost three months from now school board the district must be held accountable for this lack of preparedness this lack of urgency for what our families have endured over the last year for the district asks for three more months to figure it out is appalling but is it possible to change our trajectory pps has done a commendable job preparing options for our families particularly those with the great greatest needs and the greatest vulnerabilities this is the right thing for us to be doing but what about the families that are ready to be back in the classroom now do we have an option for them do we know how many would return have we even asked i can think of nothing that would change our trajectory more than allowing the kids that want to be back in school to be back in school not three months from now not next fall but right now school boards sixty percent of our country has already reopened their schools i can understand not wanting to be first to reopen but why be last thank you thank you sorry i have not moved the next person over but we have beth colon you should be here just saying hi my name is beth colon um that's c-o-l-o-n my pronouns are she her i teach third grade at james john elementary i come before the board and are superintendent this evening
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to ask that you pause plans for reopening buildings this school year and focus all efforts on providing equitable access for our most at made students year after year pps states that we are working on equity and social justice we've redefined the graduate portrait and we've made many attempts at courageous conversations with staffs however meaning well and doing well are not the same thing as educators we teach our students about individuals who notice injustice and they stand up against it and then we encourage them to do the same thing but i ask you are we doing the same thing are you doing the same thing the pat equity team and other concerned pat members sends a letter to the board and superintendent last week in a reply from russ brown sean byrd and danny ledezma it stated that families of color have chosen to participate at rates of voluntary limited instruction greater than their representation in the pbs student body in fact over 50 percent of students in though in lippy are black or latinx because we're offering those opportunities to our students of color at higher rates than any other students this letter also states that as a system the district is intentionally trying to move beyond calling out disproportionality and what is racist data is showing us that our bipoc communities are considerably more vulnerable considerably more likely to be living in multi-generational households and considerably more likely to have less access to vaccines if we are genuinely committed to working on social justice as a district we cannot in good conscience bring back our most at-risk students into buildings at this time i want nothing more than to be back in my classroom with my students i can't wait for the days when we can sprawl out on the carpet and playing back themes together and we can break into small groups we can head out onto the playground for an afternoon of reading outside in the sun but we have to face it going back into our schools is not going to look like that right now the simulcast model that we're currently discussing as a district is not going to look like that either it um it gives me there are students in the classroom nor the students at home the attention and the focus that they deserve from educators instead of rushing back into buildings i urge you to utilize the funding that we have to target our at-risk students for one-on-one instruction online with the substitutes that we have at our disposal and focus on reopening buildings only after our most vulnerable communities have been vaccinated as educators as schools as a district as a state we owe our students our families our educators a plan that values not just their education but also their well-being please please please keep our baipoc families in your minds and in your hearts as you develop our plans for reopening schools and remember that we are still in school we are still doing school it is simply at home right now thank you very much thank you thanks we have barb megan hi my name is kessia mcgilletti filling in for barb makin tonight my last name is spelled m-i-c-h-e-l-e-t-t-i and i use the pronouns she and her dear school board members and superintendent guerrero i am a high school teacher and a parent of two students in pbs i know i'm not alone in expressing my surprise frustration and disappointment with the decision to implement in-person learning in portland public schools as educators we constantly talk about having evidence in doing research to back up our findings to our students and in this case the pps school board and administration have not done their research pps has spent countless hours engaging with the community over boundary changes to support the opening of a new school in southeast portland i ask you to consider why you have not given the same respect to communities most affected by covid where the decision to receive in-person education literally could be a choice of life and death have you heard from the communities where zip codes paint a dire situation of covet impact have you hosted listening sessions at the schools of these zip codes have you intentionally and actively reached out to every family with language appropriate contact to learn what they want for their children and most of all have you heard how the people that will be most impacted truly feel are students these families and students voices count too pps cannot afford to miss this opportunity to set a high standard and uphold the equity lens they frequently reference as parent as a parent of two students in
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pps one in elementary and one in middle school i am fed up with the concept that we must keep up with some arbitrary idea that students are falling behind if we look at education as an opportunity to grow my own children have had amazing growth and i may not always be the areas that we measure through standardized testing but by continuing to subscribe to a keeping up with the jones's mentality pps will only further divide our community from the haves and have-nots i'm here today to plead with you to please reconsider reopening schools to in-person instruction unless you have heard voices from all communities across portland public schools and have resounding support for that decision i also ask you to consider what level of stress and strain you will put on students staff and family members by opening partially for a mere couple months rather than staying the course and starting strong in the fall when all communities will hopefully have the opportunity to be vaccinated opening schools in person will not solve anyone's problems not suicide rates not jobs and not social emotional engagement rather it would only put additional strain on a system already stretched very thin and will increase a less equitable situation additionally i want you to hear that teachers are very worried about the disproportionate risk to our bypoc families health and lives if schools open for in-person instruction this spring instead of focusing their resources to help such vulnerable communities is not living up to the frequently mentioned equity lens that pps likes to talk about with all the time money and effort that is being put towards planning to the return to in-person school the district should be um sorry the district should be working towards supporting families and students in comprehensive distance learning filling in the gaps where supports are desperately needed finally i implore you to put the work to hear and see the positive examples of teaching and learning that is occurring in our current cdl model during this pandemic instead of creating yet another change that is not based on research and full community collaboration i also would like to say that i want to thank director de pass and her remarks at the beginning of this meeting if we are going to hold pps to the black history month proclamation the disproportionate impact of covet on black and other bipod communities is exactly what i'm asking you to consider thank you for your time thank you that's everybody who signed up who's here thank you cara and thank you for everyone for speaking i know that um this is a very difficult time in lots of ways and we heard different perspectives on reopening and we appreciate hearing all the different voices as we continue to navigate the work of the district we continue to elevate student voice by hearing mix from our student representative nathaniel shu nathaniel would you like to provide your report i would thank you i'd like to begin by recognizing the fact that tonight is our first meeting in the third quarter this marks the halfway point in the school year as well as the beginning of our fourth consecutive quarter in distance learning for me as a senior this moment feels like something of a milestone the prospect of graduation of leaving pps is beginning to feel less like an abstract concept and more like an event that will actually happen it's extremely bizarre especially in an all-virtual environment i would like to provide a brief update as to the state of our student survey on returning to in-person education as of this afternoon we have received over 3100 responses which is almost a quarter of our entire high school population and an increase of about 1 900 from when i presented our initial results at our last meeting we now have a high volume of responses out of four additional schools grant franklin lincoln and roosevelt in addition to more responses from other schools it's worth noting that at grant in particular we currently have over 60 percent of the entire student body responding a truly phenomenal response rate the survey will be closed for good sometime next week and i will provide a final overview of the results at our meeting on the 23rd in the meantime i highly encourage all members of slt and the board to browse through the document i shared with you after our last meeting containing the anonymized qualitative responses which i have been updating periodically it is a genuinely insightful document as a reminder it's entitled reopening uh student survey qualitative feedback and it is an ex it's a google sheet um and i'll just conclude tonight uh by giving a shout out to margaret calvert jefferson's longtime principal for her recent promotion to regional
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superintendent for high schools and mpg both k thomas jefferson's dsc representative and i think selecting her for this role was an excellent choice and look forward to collaborating over the rest of the year thank you hey nathaniel this is director constance um have the responses to the survey um given the incredible participation since the last time you reported to us um have the opinions shifted much or just more of what we saw before well i haven't had time to go into the results with a dr brown's team so bear in mind that this is extremely preliminary what i'm about to say but it looks like overall they haven't shifted too much although there have been some changes um but and and of course there's been an absolute ton of additional qualitative responses um and i haven't even really begun to dig into all of them but um it doesn't look like the quantitative responses have shifted all that much all right thank you student representative shu um superintendent guerrero i believe you also have a report for us tonight i do thank you chair lowry um and i think we have a a handful of slides here when i started this to all of our listening audience um february 9th next slide i i would like to start with a quick preview of tonight's staff update as we continue preparing for a gradual reopening of classrooms and school campuses our buildings are ready and and eager to to receive our students at the appropriate time staff will be sharing more details in just a moment as part of our regular update uh to the board and the community but i do want to start by acknowledging um the many messages i and other district administrators continue to receive uh clearly there there are many thoughts uh and strong opinions that continue to be expressed thank you for sharing those uh please know every one of your messages are read noted and considered and they range across the spectrum some parents would like us to open as soon as possible while others indicate clearly that going back to an in-person model is not something they're interested in at this time i also want to personally thank those many community leaders i have had an opportunity to speak with including many culturally specific partners for sharing your perspectives directly we're trying and attempting to balance this diverse often contrasting set of preferences while ensuring a continuity of learning uh for our students so as complex as this challenge may be a challenge that districts everywhere are facing and under different local conditions and guidance guidelines our objective is to to try to outline a plan that offers our families options to choose from tomorrow we will be sharing with families a number of details about what our developing proposed hybrid learning model could look like for april may and june and later this week we'll be surveying our kindergarten through fifth grade families to get a real-time up-to-date sense of families learning model preferences for their students and what they believe would be most helpful to their students regarding academics and another support so we will be asking families to respond to that short survey by february 22nd and we will roll out a description of what the options being made available are and other tools that help make the survey process as easy clear and meaningful for them as possible middle and high school families should expect your own update soon next slide but at a high level if i could describe our proposed hybrid model for families who choose it would mean that their students would be assigned a morning or an afternoon time slot to attend school in person four days a week for two hours and fifteen minutes each day when not in classrooms students with would continue with distance learning activities we know there are some members of the community who are adamant about reopening as soon as possible i said it already on the other hand many of our families are not yet comfortable with the idea of sending their student back to in-person learning we've heard from them our job is to continue to develop and roll out these options as many as we can to help meet the needs and the comfort levels of our pps families so perhaps more than anything i want to be sure to be clear that hybrid learning in the spring is a
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voluntary option families who are more comfortable with their students remaining in online comprehensive distance learning for the remainder of the school year can choose to do so families indicating their preference will be helpful to our planning i also want to underline that you'll be what you'll be hearing about our proposed model for elementary hybrid model we continue to be in conversation with the teachers union and are hopeful that we can come to some agreements as we have previously for comprehensive distance learning and limited in-person instruction about some of the details of this proposed hybrid plan so we're further along with hybrid planning for elementary grades than in the secondary levels and i know dr brown and dr byrd will talk a bit more about why that is and it's some some of the constraints and issues that we've discussed previously with with directors i should also note that any hybrid launch is continuing to be contingent on state and county guidelines and allowances related to covet 19 metrics and on our continuing conversations with our teachers union so i know folks have heard that some of the guidelines are advisory and that is true but some of them continue to be mandatory and we have to work around those variables finally we continue this week to increase limited in-person programming with lippy now at 15 schools as of this week serving over 230 students so far you'll re you'll recall that libya is aimed at meeting the needs of specific groups of students based on needed educational relational social emotional curricular instructional and assessment support so we expect to continue rolling out lippy at all schools by the end of the month so much more to come later this evening and again all family should look for a detailed message tomorrow kindergarten through fifth grade families should look for a survey by friday next slide and nathaniel sort of hinted at this already uh i'm very pleased to announce that that we have found our our new regional superintendent for high schools and multiple pathways for graduation while this important role was advertised broadly it ended up we didn't have to look far and in the end have promoted one of our own margaret calvert a veteran pps educator joins our office of of school performance after an outstanding 11-year run as principal at our jefferson high school she led jefferson's transition from a comprehensive neighborhood school to a middle college focused high school built on partnerships with portland community college and portland state university with all students completing college coursework before graduation jefferson as you know sits in the albino neighborhood the heart of portland's black community margaret deepened partnerships with key culturally specific agencies these collaborations resulted in numerous improved student outcomes including substantial gains in graduation rates for black and latin next students in recognition of her work margaret was named oregon's high school principal of the year by the oregon association of secondary school administrators in 2016. and as as is part of our tradition here with when appointing senior staff we like to invite them to say a few words so i think we have miss calvert here on deck margaret all right is that good evening everyone um uh thank you superintendent guerrero board of directors uh student representative shu thank you for the warm welcome i look forward to making the transition to this new role and and taking a step to look at the city as a whole jefferson always as at place will be dear to my heart and central to the work that i've done and will continue to do in the district um what i am very excited to join a team in the office of school performance with lisa shore karina wolfe and lorna fast buckle of course and supporting our incredible educators and students at the high school level [Music] this fall and and through this uh the pandemic last spring what we've seen is an incredible amount of creativity ingenuity um and community built in very uh unique ways and the challenges are great we also face the realization that
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systemic inequities have been laid bare so is with anticipation that literally we roll up our sleeves and enter into the work and we do it collectively so i'm very excited about reaching out and working with people that i have been colleagues with for a long time and then also really feeling the breadth of the the community as a whole in portland so i've been fortunate to uh have been located deeply in one community in one space for a number of years and look forward to reaching out and and working closely with communities across the city it's um as the year has started and as we grow with uh as nathaniel said we're in the third quarter it's hard to believe that we're almost a year into distance learning um and really thinking about how do we support students as they make the transitions both from grade levels but also to their life after uh their time at pps so um there's there's lots of opportunity and and challenge at the same time that is with great hopefulness and optimism that um i look forward to joining the the team and and working closely with the staff at the bsc thank you thank you margaret as ms calvert leaves her post at jefferson uh ricky allen takes over there as interim principal uh mr allen of course is a very familiar face at jefferson high having served as vice principal at the school since 2008 ricky's career in education goes a lot further back than that i think 1980 we thank him for taking on this important interim role and we look forward soon to beginning a very intensive community-wide process to identify a leadership profile and a process for identifying jefferson's next permanent principle so thank you in advance to the jefferson community for what i expect will be a very engaged process and next slide more joy more joy four of regional superintendents calverts high schools now recently brought home quite a haul of trophies uh after dominating the we the people constitutional state tournament on january 30th state champions grand high school and runners-up cleveland high school are now set to go to the national competition grant and cleveland were joined by teams from lincoln and franklin in what was almost almost a pps clean sweep of the top five slots so this is really a remarkable outcome our congratulations to our amazing students whose dedication and hard work certainly paid off and our thanks to our constitution team advisors uh and we have a few of them joining us this evening just to round out my report with the chairs permission we'd like to invite them to share a quick word on behalf of our con team students about what this experience has meant to them if we could teleport i know we have three of the four maybe four of the four here with us this evening if you wouldn't mind each introducing yourself in your school they should be there hi i'm angela de pasquale i'm from grant high school and the the program is just uh such a a terrific opportunity for students uh to see them grow and shine over the course of a year is really wonderful and i am so excited for cleveland and sadie adams who's working so hard over there to develop that program and even does some great outreach and getting all of the area teams together to do some scrimmages so really appreciate you sadie and welcome to the to the club thank you angela i'm sadie adams and i'm the teacher at cleveland i started this team at cleveland five years ago so um we were pretty surprised but very very excited to have gotten second this year and the kids are often running on preparing for nationals while all of us adults are trying to figure out how to um go about this since we've never done it before so it's kind of fun to be doing this in all of the distance learning and it's been really amazing to see how well the kids have engaged and just i don't know how they're thriving through all of this it's been awesome to see so thank you for having me tonight hello my name is patrick mcgee jenks i'm from lincoln high school
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i wanted to congratulate all of our student participants in the we the people program and especially sadie and angela from grant high school in cleveland i'm so excited that you'll be representing oregon at nationals this year um and sadie i'm really looking forward to the day that you get to take a group to uh to washington dc i know that's um that is something you're definitely looking forward to and i echo what you've said about the opportunity that this year in particular has afforded our young people to learn about the united states constitution and the rule of law and the importance of governance and community building um so i'm i would also like to thank our volunteer coaches and our our wonderful parents who helped support our program for these young people um and thank all of you hi i'm david marsh franklin high school this is my second year with the we the people program um it's been a crazy year uh to put it lightly um but i'm super proud of what my uh what the students all did and they accomplished this here um and i have to thank the coach i think my uh the coaches without them it wouldn't have been possible i don't think my brain could have physically have managed i think it just would have you know exploded and just been all over the box uh but the coaches really really made it all possible this year just because it's so difficult and the amount of time and effort that goes into it is is a lot um oregon is is one of the the top states in the entire country for this program so it is it's always an honor making it to state and uh competing against other top programs so thank you all thank you angela sadie patrick and david and congratulations again to all of our con team student participants from grant cleveland lincoln and franklin uh pps continues to be a powerhouse in oregon and we'll be cheerleading you on to nationals and hopefully we'll be bringing it home again so thank you lieutenant guerrero um before our the representative coaches um leave i just want to also as a parent of a former con team member i know how many hours you put into helping your students and how many hours the students put into this and to see what's happening in pps across the district um is incredible and just again i know how much time it is uh throughout the year and i can't even imagine doing it in a covered year so thank you just be on behalf of all the students i know for my son it was a life-changing experience thank you very much i think patrick said it well what a year to uh really hone in on our constitution and democracy um i just have one more slide here for you and it's really just a a a conclusion but a little sign that appears that we found uh in the creative science school community garden so poignant little signs here and there all around our school district uh expressing uh their sentiments these days so thank you chair that concludes my report all right thank you superintendent um we are going to go ahead and do our board committee and conference reports again we have this uh closer to the top of our board agenda as a way to share and make really visible the work that the board is doing and then once we're finished with our committee and conference reports we'll go ahead and take probably a five minute break before we turn to our um big update that i know many people are waiting to hear on cobit kobid there we go i'm making coveton hybrid one word which is a problem covid hybrid and lippy all right so we do our committee reports in alphabetical order for no other reason then that is easy um so we start with our audit committee director meadows do you have anything to report i do we had an audit um but i should note there was also something very memorable that happened this last week we had a pps alum who played in the super bowl on the winning team uh so nadama can sue uh from grant uh so always proud of our alums it's the second super bowl but the first win um so it should be noted and that's much more important probably than the audit committee report um so uh at the last audit committee and i didn't provide this report because it was so late in the evening um last committee meeting but the audit committee recently received the um ach or the automated clearinghouse payment method audit and as people may the board may recall um on august 16th 2019 uh pps experienced a fraudulent transaction
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attempt through its ach payment method um an amount about 2.9 million 2.9 million dollars and uh fortunately we were able to uh recover the funds but following that uh deputy superintendent claire hertz uh requested the audit committee to add the ach audit to the audit plan the audit committee reviewed it recommended it to the to the board the board approved adding it to the plan and the audit has been completed and presented to the audit committee and it's a relatively short um audit and uh it's posted on the audit on the pps webpage and the audit committee if anybody wants to read it and i'll circulate it to the board but essentially the two internal auditors um tested the processing the the processes and the the procedures um that pbs had put in place uh to prevent uh fraud into in terms of our vendors and uh making uh fraudulent uh submissions for payments and um the auditors they finished your field work in november of 20 20 um 2020 and um i'm going to just read that they've completed the audit and based on the results of the work performed within the scope of the audit it's the author's opinion that overall the internal controls over the district's ach payment program follow best practices in design and are working efficiently and effectively to mitigate potential fraud and safeguard district funds um so good work to this the staff at pps who implemented um some new processes and systems to protect our resources also thank the internal auditors for taking on this work so appreciate all that and um it should be noted that there is one outstanding piece is that um as at the end of the um field testing that was done the district had not yet restarted ach payments um of the type that had where we'd had the fraudulent transaction um so once those payments restart um they'll need them there's going to be a need to go in and just test to make sure that as the payments um flow through that um we're we're confirming that the processes and practices are actually still work are working when we're actually flowing payments through but the initial audit showed that the work is done to protect our funds and this is a huge issue across well the private sector government sector um that ac fraudulent ach transactions are relatively common and we're just very fortunate that we didn't lose any funds and that we now have systems in place and that we had an audit to pressure test uh that work so that is uh the results uh that what that was the primary um agenda item of our last audit committee meeting uh do any of the other audit community members want to add anything okay thank you director edwards all right director depos anything from the slow improvement bond committee uh we met on february 4th and we had an eerily short meeting i think it's reflective of just the amount of work that happens before those thursday meetings that happen in the evening we uh rolled out a draft work plan that looks at the next two um or we're in quarter one but looks at um a series of um potential agenda items issues to discuss between now and may um we still have some outstanding issues um having to do with um just getting updates and when to plug those into the work plan um but yeah that's and we have another meeting coming up in about five weeks all right uh director moore anything from cbrc yes um the cbrc it's the community budget review committee um uh the last meeting was on january 28th and at that meeting the cbse members were working on um trying to clarify sort of their own work plan and they are eager to get more clarity on how they can meaningfully assist the board in the deliberations on the budgets um beyond simply issuing its two annual reports um
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so as the board liaison to the cbrc um i invite you all to provide any concrete ideas you might have about um specific asks that we might want to make of cbrc as we head into the budget season um and uh the next meeting of cbsc is this coming thursday on february 11th great thank you i think that's a really great point director moore and for all of us as a board the things we'd like from cbrc because i know we've mentioned a couple of times where we would like to to see some things um so continue to think about that and get in touch with director more um sorry that was very loud charter and alternative programs uh director consume thank you um we met last week we're in a renewal process with two of our charter schools arthur academy and the opel school and so this last meeting was our deep dive into their data and results and their renewal applications where they also have an opportunity to raise questions and issues to the district these are both schools that are in very good standing both in terms of academic performance of their children and also financial stewardship and just stability of their organizations so that makes our work relatively easy but still it was a good conversation and they also you know raised some sort of systemic issues that make doing business difficult for them so we talked about how we might address some things in our legislative priorities or just at least discuss addressing some issues in our legislative priorities that they raise that um that make life hard for charter schools i won't go into the details but um anyway good rich conversation um opel school is having an interesting transition to remote learning given that they are you know not a school that uses any technology ordinarily no computers in their classrooms so just transitioning all their students to remote learning has been a really interesting challenge but they still they still use the language of playful inquiry and learning together and we had some good conversation about like how does their project-based learning approach uh translate to the isolation of of distance learning so i would encourage everybody to attend our hearing um which is thursday from three to five if you're able which is a chance for the public to come forward and provide us any input about these renewal applications and then um next step is um they come to the board for uh approval of their uh 10-year renewal application and that's all i got director constance i just have a process question because i think last year i missed one of the the hearings that i'm also not going to be able to make the hearing tomorrow because of a work conflict and i think last year the approvals were just in the um the consent agenda um and i'm wondering if that's going to be the same process this year or we actually at the board meeting have a present at least every presentation on the program and the charter for the yeah it's my understanding that we will have a presentation you can correct me chair lowry if that's wrong um and a brief discussion but also all the materials are posted of course so i encourage everybody to just look at the results it's usually in this renewal process we look with a fine-tooth comb at a lot of the state assessments for each of these schools of course we have no state assessment data from last year so the conversation is a little bit different but i encourage everybody to take a look at what's posted there to renewal applications and then we can certainly have a discussion um at the board after the hearing and i think director brim edwards that we handle the different types of um charter actions differently some of them are sort of an annual some of them are an extension and some of them are renewal so the extensions i think were what was in the consent agenda and the renewal was what we voted on uh as a separate line item that's what i remember from last year but again it's been a year so i could be wrong on that one and i think director constant this year we have is it three renewals and no extensions is that correct two renewals so we'll we'll um work with roseanne to make sure those are on the agenda in a way that board members feel like they have enough um time to really digest all of that
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information all right um intergovernmental uh director scott uh yes thank you we have a meeting coming up um thursday uh this thursday from five until six o'clock and we will be getting a legislative update from um courtney wesleyan having a build discussion around some specific bills a little bit more specific around specific bills that impact education um we will return again to the intergovernmental part of the school reopening discussion i i want to stress this is not a broad school reopening discussion for people who might be watching or other board members that that's happening you know tonight at the board meeting this is just very specifically focused on whether there are any intergovernmental issues or asks that are needed um that that committee can help with and then um other items for discussion and one of those that has come forward is whether the district will be interested in or the board will be interested in sending a letter to multnomah county um supporting uh municipal broadband project and specifically a funding request that they have for a project manager to help move that forward so we'll be talking about that on thursday as well cool that sounds very there's some exciting possibilities there for collaboration uh director moore do you want to talk about policy or do you want to wait since you have like half the meeting is all about policy um well there's other stuff going on so why don't i do the other stuff and um we'll talk about those three uh policies before us tonight um later um so the policy committee continues to work through a very packed work plan for this year um and uh we'll be talking a a little bit later about three policies that were recommended by the committee um but in other works um we're um we're still working on a number of other policies at the next committee meeting on february 17th we're going to be talking about the climate crisis response policy student assignment policy comprehensive sexuality education policy oral public complaint policy and computer use policy um so um most of those are well they're in varying degrees of um of the process various stages of the process um but all of them will eventually be coming before the board and we invite anybody who's interested in these in these policies to tune in uh the next meeting is february 17th from four to four p.m to 7 p.m um and i just want to note that it's a wednesday um our meetings are usually on mondays but uh because of the president's day holiday it's been shifted to wednesday so um for all of you people who are you know waiting with dated breath for the next committee meeting just wanted to give you a heads up thank you great thank you um julia or scott do we have anything from the rose quarter no but i do have a correction to my previous report can i just make it really quick um on the ach audit um the qualifier that i missed was the word new so we are still making payments to vendors um using the ach method of payment uh but if you're a new vendor um we're not we're not putting those through so you're not using the ach and that is what we have to test because that was um or if you've changed your information and that's that is the um the weakness that we had previously was cheap when somebody was in change um finally changing information um so it's not that there aren't any ach payments thank you for letting me correct that i thought you were going to correct that indominus ooh maybe was not the first pbs alum to win a super bowl but he's he's not the first alum i just said he was that alum who won because i think um mel renfro i'm going to defer to you on this one julia all i know about them sorry the name sue is that he has a great uh chicken place here in southwood so bay's chicken that's so super chicken super bowl he's got it he's got it all covered all right anything else that's my super bowl joke of the night any uh other committee or conference reports just another comment chair lowry i should have recognized this at the beginning of the meeting i just want to acknowledge uh mary kane is is playing the role of council this evening and i just want to note it as we go into a brief intermission or half time here she has not had to throw a flag on the field yet so uh or had to pipe up so uh i should have said this at the beginning of the meeting
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i did promise liz that i would behave tonight and try to make mary's life easier so the only one who's not going to play nice is scott which we always expect all right um we're gonna go ahead and take a five minute break now so we'll go ahead and come back at 7 45 for our hybrid lippy and covet update thanks everyone it's 7 45 um and turn now to the update on covid hybrid and lippy so i turn this over to you superintendent guerrero to uh bring up um all of the staff and all the information we need for this amazing update yes thank you chair lowry um so tonight we're gonna provide provide another extensive update to share with directors in the community on our ongoing reopening planning we have a star-studded cast here of senior leaders so you'll hear from our chief assistant performance chief of schools chief of hr our senior advisor for racial equity and they'll each introduce themselves as as they speak so we do have a slide deck for you and i think they are ready to share information with you and take your questions and a bunch of other staff in the virtual green room that are happy to join as well so dr brown good evening superintendent guerrero members of the warden community pleased to join you again this evening to give an update next slide please as the superintendent mentioned could be a number of us speaking this evening this is the right powerpoint i think we've got the wrong powerpoint here we want the portland public schools one one moment while i pull it up unless they have a better plan that would be an easy way to do all this really hard work just poach somebody else's presentation careful what you asked for director constant we're just double checking superintendent i didn't even notice it was the wrong plan so what does that say about me i was reading the little bullet points i think sean was trying to pull a fast one i had 72 questions prepared about that presentation and now i find out it's the wrong one i'll just say staff puts a lot of time care and effort into uh how they share our plans so it goes through a number of iterations but uh go ahead dr brown ah this feels much better looks familiar this is i think is our work yeah so today um you're going to hear from a number of us i'll start off with a an opening talking briefly about the metrics some of the health and safety measures that we're required to continue to do our chief operating officer dan young will spend a little bit of time talking about all the efforts that have been done to improve air quality in our schools he'll be followed by chief reece who will talk about vaccine distribution and that will be followed then by sean byrd who will lead through and discuss our limited in-person instruction and expansion of that as well as the proposed hybrid model of instruction and then our chief of engagement will round out with talking about our student and family engagement at the end and the survey that's going out next slide please
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thank you yes throughout all the presentations this year again our work has got is organized around our guiding principles everything that we do is centered on racial equity and social justice we spend a great deal of time reaching out to our communities to to highlight that we spend time really emphasizing the importance about elevating voice and choice as we move forward again at the forefront of our work has been health and safety while the governor did relax the metrics the remaining guidance is in effect and there are many things that we have in place to provide for the health and safety of our students staff and larger community we have spent a lot of time working on on relationships building and leaning into our relationships in this work and certainly there has been a ton of innovation in structural innovation and we're beginning to look at how that innovation can carry forward into our learning recovery plans next slide please we have continuing good news in terms of the metrics at one point you know the the two week totals here were well over 500 they have come down with the adjustment of the threshold to align with the harvard global global health institute at greater than 350 we've been under that for a while we're now sitting at 194.6 cases which is roughly 12 to 13 cases a day over a two week period that's what we're what we're averaging right now so it's good news we've been trending in the right direction i'm thankful to the the community and everyone who's been leaning in to make it easier for us to be able to open our schools and have kids back in place next slide please and again just for clarity because i i hear this uh bubble up from time to time the the governor did relax the health metrics they aligned them to the harvard globe global health institute that did not change the other requirements the other requirements with within ready uh school safe learners remain mandatory there are over 100 different requirements that we need to lean into some of those are things that we're used to that the idea that students are expected and staff are expected to wear math except under some circumstances for students with disabilities we have to have symptom spaces we must maintain at least 35 square feet per uh person in a classroom we have to screen students as they come into the building and we must maintain stable cohorts and i've seen some confusion around this the requirement here is that that a student can't come in contact with more than a hundred people during the course of the week in in terms of that cohort i saw some folks floating around 100 per day now it's 100 per week it's a more rigorous standard there and again we have more rigorous uh cleaning protocols in place in our buildings have made efforts to improve air quality and again we have this ongoing relationship with our local public health partner that we vet our plans through as we move forward so with that i'm going to transition over to dan young our chief operating officer for him to spend a little time talking uh about those efforts to improve air quality in our buildings video director superintendent and student representative shu um if we can move to the perfect next slide uh similar to symptom screening wearing face masks or or hand washing building ventilation is an important component of pbs's covet health and safety strategy when we first began discussing our ventilation systems we wanted guidance from public health experts therefore we reached out to multnomah county public health department for direction in our discussions with the county they recommended we partner with a certified industrial hygienist to develop a district-wide ventilation plan so so that's what we did last year we hired environmental health and safety firm pbs engineering to develop a building ventilation plan as we worked with pbs we were careful to ensure that the plan conformed to the guidance of hvac technical organizations and public health organizations including the cdc the epa osha ashrae which was the the american society of heating refrigerating and air conditioning engineers and the county when the plan was in final draft form we met again with multnomah county public health including their director to make sure the plan met all standards and requirements before we began implementation in short they were very happy with the plan that we had developed and they did not recommend that we make any changes to it we also reviewed the plan with our health advisory panel uh who provided some minor comments and after that we moved into our implementation phase some examples of implementation actions include prioritizing bringing in outside air into our schools by adjusting the ventilation systems to maximize the amount of fresh air coming into the buildings
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running the systems longer each day so we run them about two hours longer in the morning and two hours later in the evening and also running them continually throughout the day or when they would shut down when not heating or cooling the plan includes a ventilation system maintenance checklist that we've hired outside mechanical contractors to complete at every school and they've completed these uh last month i've gone through every school we've completed we've cleaned the air intakes at every school and continued to do this on a regular basis we've also purchased portable hepa filters for all school symptom spaces in other rooms that do not have active ventilation and the plan also calls for recommendations using non-mechanical options such as opening windows and doors when feasible think the last item to highlight here would be that the plan notes that pps will continually review available technology that's being developed for potential use and that's something we do regularly we're constantly looking at new options new technology and new products that might be out there that can help thank you next slide please good evening director sharon reece chief of hr i can update you on our covet 19 vaccine distribution k-12 educators uh have been all staff and pps educators as well as our community partner staff uh have been uh eligible for vaccines in sequenced what they're health authority is calling waves so we are in wave three of four waves that means that about 5 500 of our staff and our community partner staffs have been invited to receive the copin 19 vaccines through the oha process that schedules inoculations at the oregon convention center next slide i'm going to turn this over to our chief of school sean byrd all right good evening everyone tonight i want to share with you our plans that will allow our students opportunities for connection support and also allow for options and first i want to talk about our plans that are already being executed which is limited in person instruction so as superintendent guerrero mentioned at the outset of our meeting we have 15 schools that have now started limited in person instruction there are about 234 students that are attending lippy this week and 53.8 of those students identify as black or latino and that's compared to 25.2 percent uh district-wide uh statistic for those groups of students so just as a reminder limited in person instruction is targeted supports for students either for curriculum instruction for social emotional learning and we also have in addition to these programs that are running we have about 4 200 students who are engaged in athletic programs and we just began uh inviting students back in our high schools to participate in visual and performing arts so uh for the next several weeks more more schools will be coming online so by march 1st nearly every school in the district will offer some version of limited in person instruction next slide please as we move toward from limited and personal instruction to a more to a broader reopening of our schools we want to talk about how and how we can do that in a way that will support our students both academically and from a social emotional standpoint so we think about this so when we first acknowledge the hard work and dedication of our educators and our teachers you cannot underestimate the amount of work that they put into their jobs every day particularly those of our youngest uh students so kindergarten teachers first grade teachers uh who are able to keep the attention of students from uh distance is quite a remarkable uh challenge and our teachers have really stepped up and done a great job so i first want to appreciate what they've done and it's also a reason that we want to get our youngest students back into school because we know those youngest learners will benefit from this live support of a teacher so we want to provide options for our families we have two options that we want to discuss tonight and the first one would be the students may remain in conference of distance learning which is what we know about now it's a combination of live video conferencing and independent work and then we also want to talk tonight about option b which is the participation in a hybrid instructional model and this would be as the superintendent mentioned earlier an opportunity for students to return to schools live for an in person for four days a week for two hours and 15 minutes each day students will still continue with some distance learning activities when they're not live in school and we want to show you some examples of how that could work tonight next slide please
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so we uh have looked at a variety of opportunities for this and just a reminder that we continue to be in conversation with in collaboration with our teachers union and we will continue uh collaborating on on what's the best possible option for families to uh choose but these this tonight what i'm presenting to you is a framework that um that we would like to to start from so again four days of in-person instruction for two hours and 15 minutes per day this provides predictability for families it provides consistency for our students and it provides us the opportunity to meet the logistical challenges of the social distancing requirements as well as transportation needs of our students you know one of the most important things that we have tried to maintain throughout this pandemic is is the connection to a teacher we know from a lot of research that the one of the primary drivers of success for school children is the connection to a caring adult and so this model will allow our students for the most part to remain with their teachers with with few exceptions thanks like so i want to talk about a hybrid model in a couple of ways i'm going to first think of have you think about a class of 26 students in a classroom so we have 26 students in our classroom and about 30 of them we think probably are not going to be able to come back right away so that's eight students so you have 18 students that you would need to see in person there are a couple of ways that this can be accomplished right now that we're talking about the first uh proposed model is a hybrid model with simulcast and what that means is that there will be students in the classroom so in this case there could be 18 students in the classroom divided into two groups and eight students would be at home so in one of those groups an am or pm group which we'll show you an example of in a moment eight of those students would be at home on the computer and the teacher would be teaching from her classroom some students live and in person and other students would be at home following along or participating in a uh from their from their home the advantage of this obviously is they get to keep the connection to their teacher uh they get to keep their connection to the classmates that they have gotten to know uh virtually all year long and they're not missing uh out on an instruction by going to another program such as virtual school we want to be able to support teachers uh to do this through video equipment and other technology solutions and we also realize that this may perhaps be an option for some of our older students as we go into middle and high school so we want to continue to talk about this model another way to achieve the same goal is to have students come to school again the same class you have 26 students in your class eight of them are going to participate uh and continue pursuing the hybrid model and the 18 that will come to school so the teacher would have perhaps the morning group would be the eight students at home that will continue to participate in cdl just like they do today so the teacher would teach the content that she's going to teach live in the afternoon she would teach that on the computer to those eight students and then the students that chose to come in person would come in the afternoon we understand that we have some in some of our buildings we have some operational hurdles that we'll have to overcome uh depending on how many students want to come back but we believe that those are uh challenges that we are up to solving and we're going to uh to work uh hard to to make that happen next slide please just to make this come to life for you a little bit i want you to meet our student ayanna yeah there she is ayanna's parents have chosen for her uh to participate in the uh hybrid model next slide please so ayanna's she's opted into the to the hybrid learning model she's going to be assigned either to a morning or an afternoon group in this case i honest uh school has assigned her to a morning group so she is going to you can see her calendar there her weekly calendar there she's going to have in person instruction monday tuesday thursday and friday and we're really focusing on three um distinct uh things here in in person learning so i told you at the beginning we're focusing on you know connection and support both academic and social emotional so we're going to spend some time in a iona's class on social emotional learning going to spend some time on foundational literacy skills and then some time in math because those are of course building blocks to a successful education and our youngest learners definitely need and can benefit from the in-person interaction with their teachers when on wednesday when ayan is not in school she'll be at home and she'll have some opportunity perhaps to work in small groups with her teachers as well as doing some asynchronous work or work that's not live in front of in front of a teacher she'll also still be familiar with some of the model because distance learning will still be in place for her after her in-person session in the morning she's going to go home and
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still continue to participate in what she's very familiar with was our comprehensive distance learning model for some of the content areas if you go to the next slide and show you a graphic of ayanna's daily day so she'll get on the bus around 7 45 she'll be transported to school and when she gets to school she'll be met by school staff members who will do a wellness check to make sure that she's feeling well in this case ayanna is feeling great she is going to go to her classroom and settle in you'll see that she's at her desk she is modeling great coronavirus uh safety protocols by having her mask on and she's gonna get settled in with our other classmates uh the classroom is gonna look a little different than what we normally see in our kindergarten classrooms there won't be obviously students sitting together on the carpet for story time because we need to keep social just or social distancing and you know there will be opportunities for for teachers to still make that personal connection with students but they will be socially distanced ayanna will then uh the class will get settled in and they'll go through their day with social emotional learning starting off checking in making sure everybody's doing all right followed by a math lesson and then followed by foundational skills and literacy now in this case ayanna has uh is a student who receives uh special education services so she's going to instead of getting her lunch at 10 45 and going home she's actually going to stay at school for an extra 30 minutes and this is another advantage of this hybrid model because we can provide additional services to those students who need additional one-to-one services through either an iep or for our english language learners zoyana will stay she will have her additional services and then she will get on the bus and she will go home but her day is not over next slide because when she gets home she'll have time to eat her lunch that she got before she left school and then she's going to go into the familiar part of the routine for her she'll have her specials classes pe art and music that will be online in a synchronous asynchronous format and she will continue to have some asynchronous learning with science social studies and health and then at the end of the day she'll have some time to catch up and uh reflect on her the work that she did this this morning in person so perhaps her teacher wants her to read independently for 20 minutes and so she'll do that maybe right in her journal or reflection about her reading practice some math problems uh apply that learning so she'll have some time at the end of the day to do that so that is what it would look like for a student who is uh in the class now when if you're in the pm group if ayano was in the pm group in the morning she would do these activities that you're seeing here on the screen she would this would just be a flip she would have her breakfast do her specials classes and then she would go to school and do the same thing next slide so uh i just want to talk about some of the operational uh considerations that we made when we're thinking about and talking about these plans with our with our labor partners we need to have a gap in between the sessions in the morning and afternoon sessions so you notice that one session started at eight to ten fifteen and the next session's around about 12 30. uh and that's because we need to make sure that we have an opportunity for our custodial staff to sanitize the high touch points in the building such as doorknobs rail handrails and uh bathrooms and then we'll need to make sure our classrooms are able to the teachers will supervise students wiping down the desk as they leave and making sure that those areas are clean and ready for the next group of students we also need to give our teachers time to uh you know have their own lunch and have some planning time to work on lessons for students you know again i just want to point out that the instructional model is this allows us to provide continuity of teaching and learning we think it's really important that if possible students stay with their teachers uh because they have spent the last several months uh in this very extraordinary circumstance getting to know their teachers and having building a relationship uh it allows us to provide some extended learning support for those students who need it most and uh it allows also the social emotional learning lessons to be live and in person four days a week in addition to our amazing teachers we also have amazing counselors and social workers who will be available for in-person support so there are lots of reasons to bring back our students in person even uh you know though we know that there are some challenges that we will work to solve we know that the challenge of two hours and 15 minutes and what time of the day student go goes to school might provide some challenges for our families and we are going to uh we're going to send out a survey which is going to talk about just a minute to help understand what people's needs are but we still think that even just uh with hurdles that we might have to
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overcome we still believe that these opportunities to allow our students this additional support and the additional opportunities to connect is is worth the uh effort to solve the problems next slide please now i will turn it over to chief jonathan garcia thank you dr byrd uh good evening board uh as it was mentioned earlier uh a survey will be going out to all pps kindergarten through fifth grade families uh this friday uh where they will provide three specific things or two specific things they will provide a preferred option uh if they want to uh participate in hybrid learning uh the months of april may and june or if they'd like to remain in online online only cbl throughout through the rest of the year in addition we will be asking uh parents to uh share any additional student learning and support needs for their individual students uh we are going to be requesting that uh families respond by february 22nd so that we can begin to really effectively plan and staff accordingly uh and as was mentioned earlier uh or previously uh middle school and high school families should be expecting an update soon as we are developing plans uh as we speak uh next slide and so uh the goal of this uh the expectation of this survey is that we reach 100 of our k-5 families we really want to make sure that we uh we understand uh and survey encourage all families to to voice their preference for in-person instruction or distance learning uh of course we we encourage our families to make that decision with their students and uh and encourage those conversations at home uh we also know that relational engagement is going to be really critical uh at this juncture and so the survey uh will originate from schools uh and and most likely from school principals uh so we are building on that relational trust between the schools uh and their and the families that they serve uh in addition uh we are working internally to coordinate uh central office support staff and cape and school-based staff to ensure that the survey gets completed 100 so we'll be providing some trainings and and making sure that we're making phone calls and uh ensuring that we're crossing off every person um that we serve in in our district that is in the k5 uh uh that are k5 families and so uh so we'll be doing that regarding this survey which again will go out friday in addition to that uh the office of engagement and uh in partnership with many other departments uh continue to engage black native and communities of color and we will do so this month as well uh to really hear their thoughts and their feedback and their preference for how we should improve the cdl experience and how we should continue refining the any ins in in person experience that students uh would take be a part of uh next slide turn it over to dr brown thank you and at this point we'll be happy to take questions director bailey go ahead um yeah my first question is for sean um you had the two hybrid models one with the simulcast and one not and i was a little confused with the non-simulcast model where if you have 26 kids eight on average we think would be a cdl staying at home and 18 coming to school it sounded like all 18 coming at once yeah so yeah and those are some of the logistical over tax yeah so definitely those are some of the logistical operations that will have to work out that in that case it could be there could be a school you know there could be an example where we have three teachers at a school and um there's some number of them that want to remain in cdl and some remember they want to come to school so in that case we would have to probably make a couple of teacher changes and have one teacher be the cdl teacher and then the other two do the in person and divide the ones that could come in we also could look at our space utilization in schools and see uh you know we have to move some classrooms from the classroom that they're assigned to to other spaces in the building these are all conversations that we're having i think you know the simulcast model and
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the one the other option of that both have their pros and and cons and you know we will work with our educators to solve uh for for these operational issues that we have dr burn i had a question on the same lines and that was how you came up with the the numbers that went into the the assumption that went into the model um in terms of the eight students versus the eighteen are you using um like national data or how are you coming up with those assumptions i will refer to dr brown who uh we've talked about 30 as kind of a starting point for families that may want to stay home but i'll refer to him yeah and and systems around the country we've seen um that 30 roughly 30 on average have been been staying in cdl that being said um this community has been much more conservative about leaning into the health metrics and and behaviorally than other communities so i actually suspect that that 30 percent may be an underestimate of the the proportion of folks who want to stay at home that's why it's critical that we find out um from our families their choice um you know what what what do they really want to happen for each of their students um you know i've related before you know for my three kids two of them i would have wanted them to go back to in-person instruction and one i would have wanted to to keep home because i think he would have done better in cdl and in fact that's how he finished high school with something akin to cdl so we really want to afford families that sort of choice and then once we have that information back from our families that's why it's so critical that we hear for each student uh that family's choice then we can can really model this out very tightly thank you dr brown can can you talk a little bit about um the the time sort of the two and a half hours is that part of the state guidelines in terms of limiting the time that students can be in hybrid actually dr byrd i think would be better no that's more of a function of we need to have time to clean the buildings and we also need to have time to transport students back and forth the two hours that you're referring to as in limited and personal instruction that is a limit of two hours because it can only supplement comprehensive distance learning it can't take the place of so once we go into a hybrid model that will be the educational model and we've looked at times and as we especially as we include middle school and high school the transportation the logistics of that become very challenging because of the social distancing on buses so we had to have some room in there for drivers to have uh to refuel buses to take their own breaks and things like that so that's where the two hours and 15 comes from okay um and sort of related i'm sorry just related on that um you know you mentioned the hundred per week um my understanding is that that doesn't include transportation or passing in the hallway it's it's just sort of limited to scheduled classes is that accurate correct yeah so that potentially will make it easier i know you're still working through logistics of say like a middle in high school but but potentially that clarification from ode might make it a little bit easier yes it does but i think i think you uh we yes we're working on some different proposals i think in high school it becomes challenging because students are in so many different configurations of classes and so a student in the band for example that could be 75 students right there if the ensemble was together and then you have your other classes now the 4x4 schedule does does make it a little easier to solve so we'll be uh putting some proposals forward uh soon to share with you some our thinking on how we could do that and some things may stay in distance learning and others in person so we're working on through some of those issues now and dr bird is it safe to say that the the main constraint on time um with the k5 model is that we are um using a model where the kids keep their same teacher and they have their same teacher all day and if you if you had a kids at school longer then you'd have to switch it up and move kids to different teachers right the length of the workday and the transportation in between home and remote couple of things because our teachers are still remember they're teaching in person but they're also still responsible for you know planning for those asynchronous lessons so there's the time that we have to give them to plan their lessons there's also um the um the yes the desire it is our value to keep students with their teacher as much as possible um so there's a there are a couple of reasons and we then we have to uh you know divide the groups into reasonable uh you know sections so two hours and 15 minutes is is the is the best in person we can do and also if you think about kindergarten students
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you know it it's going to be different than what we would see in a normal kindergarten class so students will be masked they'll be uh coming in they'll be sitting socially distanced that there's some classroom management aspects of that too that uh it's certainly not we certainly don't want to they are not going to expect kindergarten to sit still in their desks for two and two hours and 15 minutes there'll be some opportunities for them to move but we do have to control um that as much as possible so you know there's several factors that go into the to limiting the time but we think it's important that they have an opportunity to be with the teacher for those critical literacy math and social emotional learning aspects of the day all right let's uh have constant um i have a question about i have a few questions but i have a question about lippy so right now you know we have really just a handful of students we have less than one percent of our students um but when you say that by march 1st we're going to have lippy available in every one of our buildings is there a maximum capacity there for a number of students or what do you imagine will be the maximum number of students in lippy once every building is up and going yeah so it's limited to again because limited and personal instruction is must not take the place of conference of distance learning so by its very nature it's supposed to be supplemental so there are different kinds of activities that can happen there are schools that want to do some academic things as well as clubs and activities so they'll have students on campus for different things i think as more teachers uh receive vaccinations we'll have more teachers that are able to participate and interested in participating um so uh some schools have right now uh very small you know they're starting with 10 15 students some are up to 40 students at a time so it really depends on uh it depends on a couple of depends on what what need are we trying to meet is it a social emotional need is it an academic need and but the the overarching goal of limited and personal instruction is a very targeted need so it's not really it's not really supposed to be wide scale real thing in terms of uh you know as plans come in we can we can see what the numbers are but they're averaging right now about 40 i mean 20 to 20 to 40 students are what is happening so if you just do that across the school they may increase again with teachers becoming today we may have more i've talked to principals that have said i have more teachers that want to participate once they receive a vaccine all right i know that um i'm just going through to make sure everyone gets a chance to ask an initial question i think we've got rita julia and me so rita did you have a question rita you're muted how's that can you hear me yeah yes okay um so it's just some logistical questions um so in terms of the vaccinations um what are you hearing about um the availability of slots and do we have any sense of how many of our teachers um have actually been able to get shots at this point we have very limited information about the availability of vaccines it's our we don't know who has gotten a shot and who has not gotten a shot that information just isn't accessible to employers uh dr moore so with regard to how many have been available initially there were about 2000 vaccinations happening each day at the oregon convention center of course that's expanded uh in terms of who has become eligible to receive vaccines and the latest number i heard for wave 3 was that there were 800 to 900 vaccines available uh for that group of educators and we expect more to open up here later this week so is that is is whether or not somebody actually um got vaccinated is that considered privileged info is that private it is not accessible to us i i believe that our health care providers consider that confidential information however i do know that it is tracked by the oregon health authority okay but but as an employer it's it's not likely that you would be able to know i mean you're not going to have like a i don't an estimate of the percentage of teachers who have been successfully vaccinated or not we don't have we don't currently have a path to knowing that information okay
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okay just to build off of that have we asked i mean it seems it seems like if we've prioritized that the governor's prioritized it um if there's not enough slots and people aren't getting in it seems like we want to we'd want to know that if we're moving ahead with opening schools um it seems like we'd want to advocate if our teachers aren't getting and school staff and the service workers and the bus drivers aren't getting them that if before we open schools that we'd want to be able to ensure that um that happened so i'm kind of curious it seems like a passive position for us to take well we would have to ask our employees and there are i think many reasons for vaccine hesitancy our focus has been on education regarding the efficacy and the safety around the vaccine we have not taken a position that we want our employees at this point in time to report um i would also point out that the information we are receiving from the cdc the oregon health authority and the american academy of pediatrics isn't basing their recommendations uh about where and when it's safe to reopen on vaccines they're basing it on a multiple multiple layers of mitigation efforts like social distancing uh limited capacity hand washing etc yeah i guess the point i'm trying to ask is not about like understanding whether people like proving they've been vaccinated or not but more in this in the spirit of if somebody wanted a vaccine and they one of the people who called and couldn't get an appointment um that we you know and they wanted one that we'd want to advocate for them to get them and it just seems like that would be something we'd have a if you're if you've been unable to get a vaccine and we're asking you to show up for school like let us know so we could help you get one versus like this is some sort of repo like compliance reporting mechanism but it it seems passive for the district to if that's because what i've heard from say the portland association of teachers is that's a requirement for them to come back and it seems like if we can't if we can't get them um if they're not able to get it scheduled or for whatever reason because there is a shortage of supply it seems like we'd want to know that to help facilitate it whether it's cdc guidance or not well i i can clarify and ask uh additional questions regarding that but it's my understanding that we've reached wave two because there have sufficient been sufficient vaccination spots in waves one and two and that it is a it is a matter of time over the course of the next uh several weeks to get through uh to finish waves three and get into uh wave four i just had uh director broome edwards that the that we are interested in getting information about vaccines but uh going through the channels through multnomah county's public health department so if you'll recall it i don't know if you remember when uh public health director guernsey was here and she talked about the sort of data that they have available i know that they're in development of developing a vaccine dashboard that they've offered to share with us once it's it's fully developed and embedded there so we'll we'll we'll be able to give you some of that information thank you i guess i'm concerned because it seems like that's a threshold requirement that some people have to go back in and if we're making plans that and we're telling families that this is going to be an option and yet we don't have any idea whether or not um actually people have been able to have to access the vaccine it seems like we may be promising something to students and families that we can actually deliver on we'd want to take a more advocacy role because like if if in fact the governor has prioritized school staff then and it's not happening and that's a requirement to get into back to either hybrid or you know more extensive lippy that we would want to know that and be able to advocate for that so the uh the vaccines have been moving along with rapid speed uh up until uh about this late last week
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uh so uh we i think there's an underlying assumption here about how quickly they are moving so i think we need to get some additional information about what that looks like because it is my understanding that waves one and two have been able to get vaccines uh so we're really looking at waves three and four so why don't um we get some more information and and uh come back to what is the what is the timeline there what we know is that the vaccine supply has not been something that we have been able to adequately uh forecast or our state partners have not been able to accurately uh forecast so i'll tell you what what i'm looking for it does not inspire confidence when the director of oha predicts that the the rollout is going to be a mess um it would it would be nice to get some reassurance if it's not a mess that would be good to know that would make me feel better on many levels that would make me feel better so maybe if um we don't want to ask staff if they got vaccinated or not but maybe we can ask at an appropriate point and it's probably not yet is there anybody who wanted to get vaccinated who hasn't been able to as a as a gauge and that would not violate any privacy and that may be that may help us if there is any hang up help us advocate further i think as we go a few more weeks into this process that the state is going to be able to provide us with additional information as uh danny ledezma just spoke to with our uh our county uh health provider that we will at the health department uh we we are going to have some additional information uh within a within a few weeks so oh i was going to say have a question about can we voluntarily survey staff and rather than getting a 100 response rate take the response weight the response rate that we do get and extrapolate that to the total population to get a sense you know within a i don't know two or three standard deviations or something just to give us an idea of what the percentage we're talking about of people who have been vaccinated i think even asking becomes an issue around people's health privacy stuff but i think that's a good a good suggestion for sharon to kind of um take under advisement uh i haven't had a chance to ask my question yet which is um about the the high school and middle school and i said you i know you said that there would be more information coming but i know we have a lot of um we have both students who are thriving in cdl in high school and um some who are really missing um some of those interactions and i'm wondering how lippy will intersect with things like leadership classes or i know from my community there's a lot of students who had sort of hopes for their senior year of their leadership class or some of the ways they give back and serve the community that's part of kind of traditions for seniors especially and also thinking about those students who there's a lot of tradition in high school right especially for our seniors and what ways we're thinking about preserving some of that for students in this second semester ways that they can come together ways that they can sort of put a capstone on their career and engage with and invest and sort of thank their communities yes thank you for that question so actually i just spoke with uh alisa short who's director for high schools and uh we we're talking today about what uh kinds of things we can do to make the end of particularly the senior year uh a special event uh and so i would say you're limited in person some of that can happen some schools are planning uh limited in-person events that are both academic and social so obviously that again as i mentioned at the beginning we have about 4 200 students all high school students that are student athletes that are able to participate we're bringing more and more students with visual performing arts so that's another opportunity so as many opportunities we can for our high school and middle school students we will be opening up lippy those schools are still developing plans but um again there are definitely uh senior traditions and uh those things that we know are important to to students so we want to give them as much as as we can but i don't want to over promise something that we can't deliver on right now so we're in discussions about how to make that happen for students all right um director bailey i think you asked the first question in this round do you have another question um yeah for uh jonathan um there's kind of been the implication by uh some of the public that we haven't reached out to our african-american families native families
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families of color could you tell us what's happened so far and then that survey looks to be i know you want to be comprehensive and then do it sounded like also some kind of targeted outreach as well could you expand on that [Music] thank you for the question uh sorry my internet might be a little bit slow uh i think the question was uh previous engagement and then looking forward to to this one so uh in terms of previous engagement um i think we've done over the course of uh this school year a number of things one we've uh done a a survey that we did at the beginning of the year that went out to all families uh in addition to that we've been working very close with our close specific partner uh to get real insight uh our cultural partners and our community based nonprofits are accountable to the community that is the premise of our ceo uh our culturally specific uh organization and so we really rely on uh on their input their insight uh and uh their thoughts station around how we uh we think schools and comprehensive distance learning uh into this tab called anybody else having trouble yeah okay i'm also having yes i'm having trouble hearing maybe i can try to channel jonathan and um we can kind of go from there um he can uh he can move his lips and i can be the sound uh i think or can he also maybe um take the video off to increase the speed oh yeah jonathan do you want to try that i think he's gone i think he's not eating why don't i just jump in really quickly so as jonathan as jonathan mentioned i think like um uh like you all have heard uh engaging our families and students has been uh most important throughout this entire process particularly families of color uh we've engaged them in several different uh ways and and uh like uh like we heard in the proclamation uh today there are some places where we have done really great and some places where we're going to continue to learn and improve uh jonathan mentioned that at the beginning of the year we did survey all of our families and students we've done some follow-ups with those surveys we've also engaged in in sort of targeted focus groups of where we wanted to talk to not only parents and family and parents and families but also students uh so we've done some really sort of uh focused focus groups if you will uh and then as jonathan mentioned we do have a pretty extensive network of culturally specific providers who are not only telling us about their experiences with uh with with schools and the the the ways in which they work with the students but also their staff and their families that are that they're employing uh and so we've gotten quite a bit of uh feedback um and you know we've also had the we we can also see where there's really strong relationships between uh school staff and uh parents and families so we've heard feedback from teachers from principals from counselors from social workers who are also bringing up uh the the the um the uh input that they've received um and sort of have have cycled that through our planning as well um as you've heard before uh we've tried to have really robust planning uh process so that uh ultimately when we think about returning back to in person we're really taking into account the multiple needs of our students the individualized needs of students and families and providing a range of options to be able to to support those needs i think as we've talked about going to a hybrid model i think one of the important features of that is the flexibility and allowing we know some of our intergenerational families might not want to join in right away until their elders get vaccinated and then they might be more comfortable coming in and that's i appreciate that flexibility being built in from the get-go so i'll stop there and let somebody else ask and thank you danny my internet went out that was the perfect answer
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other questions from the board well can i just note that um this is an example of why we need um more reliable better high-speed internet access all over multnomah county just saying hey save that for the the committee this week thursday there we go thank you i have actually a quick question and then and then a statement um and i want to get back to the middle school high school question because i know we're going to have so first actually let me thank you for this information it was very clear presentation and and i think you know you've done a lot to for a k through five to figure out a model that is going to allow some of that flexibility and keep people with their teachers and so i i just appreciate this we're going to have a lot of questions from middle school and high school families and i i want to respect the fact that it is it is harder under these state guidelines um you know to see if we can make that work and i know you staff are working really really hard to do that can you give a little bit more sense of timeline and and i guess both both in terms of when those families will hear something and i also i'm gonna make this assumption you tell me if i'm right that we are not the fact that we have that we're not rolling something out this week does not mean we're pushing off the potential move towards hybrid for middle school in high school it just means we want to be clear about the plan before we start rolling out information that might change is that accurate that's that's correct uh director scott and we are uh we have draft plans that we're working on we'll be in conversation with our labor partners about those as as well and um you know we're getting feedback from from people about those plans but that does not mean that they'll start later you know we're not going to push the start of those it's just that we will also have an opportunity to survey the community of those middle school and high school parents about their uh desires and and needs uh we want to provide a framework and we'll be we're getting closer to to being able to provide that so uh all i can say is stay tuned it's gonna be soon thanks and then just really quickly chair lowry i just i you know i want to um i'm gonna sort of just address this this larger issue right and and i think the reality is that our community has split and superintendent guerrero said that earlier today i think all of us are receiving lots and lots of communication from people who have very very different viewpoints and i think it's really important that all of us take the time to try and understand where everyone else is coming from i will tell you that i um i have become convinced through through what i've seen from cdc and other places that there are ways to open school safely and i think given the cost to our children of of being out and cdl we need to move rapidly towards that i will also say i'm getting a lot of communication from teachers from families from community members who are uncomfortable with that and and and what i'm trying to do personally is just understand you know the viewpoint what what is that that is making them feel unsafe you know at the same time there are there are families that are really suffering and children who are suffering in in distance learning um and i think it's really important that we understand what they're going through and why it is so important to their families to want to come back and so i would just say i mean in the end we are we are one school district we are one community there will not be a successful reopening of schools um if our teachers don't feel safe there will not be a successful reopening of schools if our families don't feel safe and there will not be a successful reopening of schools if we do something wrong right and and we don't get these mitigation measures you know in in place and appropriate so so i just want to thank the staff you guys have been working for a year really really hard um to make this work and i know from a community perspective it often feels very frustrating why aren't we moving more quickly um you know and i get a lot of questions and i won't ask you today but you know um we i know you are looking at what other districts are doing and you know the fact that you know ben is moving towards you know opening the schools and high schools and some of our local private high schools are opening as well and and i know we are looking at those as models and trying to see what they're doing and how they're fitting within those state guidelines um but also making sure we're understanding again what those what those concerns that the community members have are and and that's going to make the most successful end of this school year and then really prepare us well for starting uh in the fall amy um so this kind of andrew teed me up perfectly um going off of those sentiments my question was probably to dr byrd um are we giving any consideration to moving up high the hybrid opportunity because it is a pretty long runway i mean we're it's almost two months from now and at that point and it's been made pretty clear that our limited in-person instruction is very limited so the vast majority of our students will be in cdl for the next two months and at that point i think it's fairly safe to say that we'll be getting close to being a national outlier in terms of the number of kids that we have in any kind of in-person instruction um so you know all we heard from dan young tonight that all
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of our buildings are prepared so we have made the we i think we hear from our community sometimes that they think that the district is hung up because we haven't done the facilities work that we need to do to return safely um but i think we we've seen and heard that that that work has been done so um are we looking at opportunities to move up hybrid at least for k5 yeah so i would say that first of all our um i just give a shout out to our ops team who've been for months working in our buildings to uh rear take furniture out and rearrange furniture and put directional signage down and um so they've been doing that for a month so those are those are ready to go um yes i think that uh depending upon uh the vaccination rollout you know the as uh sharon mentioned it's in waves so uh right now invitations have gone through k through eight teachers i believe that's wave three is uh six through eight so you know as uh we make progress towards vaccination uh of course we are still in collaboration in conversation with our teachers union but uh it there is a there is a world in which maybe okay we have a slow roll where we start you know k one then two you know that there's a there's a world where that could happen uh it's 59 days until april the 8th so uh you know we we know that time is of the essence and we know that uh but we want to do this right and we want to make sure that we are that our teachers feel comfortable and that um you know we know our buildings are uh set up so that this is successful for students so i would say stay tuned for that too michelle rita or julia do you have another question to ask i do i'll follow one of them if they want to go we'll just have you go julia rita do you want to go well i had a question about testing um i i know the prospects are not good for the level of testing that we really ought to be doing not just locally but nationally um and you know i've seen i've seen the research saying that um school outbreaks are not necessarily common but they're also not unknown um are we looking at any alternative methodologies like batch testing or i'll say it again waste management testing um i mean is there is there any is there any hope on the horizon that the testing situation is going to improve anytime soon so we've had some information come forward regarding testing again the testing model that's being proposed by the state at this point in time is aimed at symptomatic students and the primary benefit for that is uh in terms of determining how long a a student would need to stay at home uh for quarantine purposes um there is but there's a flaw with that i mean if we're talking about k5 assuming that it still holds that kids tend to even when they're affected they tend to be asymptomatic i mean that criterion seems to be a little flawed i i understand i'm describing the the system that's put in in place and um agreed i think a more robust model that involves testing asymptomatic students and doing it in a manner akin to say what we saw in new york city would be a broader model uh i do believe we are also we heard you the last time with the question about wastewater and i think we have been following up to to find out where we're or what options we may have around that as well because again some folks have been using that as a successful way to to understand whether or not something's bubbling up outside of awareness so thank you all right julia and then nathaniel yeah um well first before i get to my question i just want to acknowledge that um i really appreciate the detailed planning that's gone and and care that's gone into the planning um has been noted we have um well i think there's a whole range of viewpoints on returning but we certainly have those who um want to continue in comprehensive distance learning and and a group that wants to definitely wants to have their kids back in school our kids want to be back in school um and then there's a spectrum of in between and i think um you know it's a monumental epic task that hopefully we'll never have to do again um and i think
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that um considering the circumstances um staff has really done a good job at trying to address both of those needs and i guess i also want to just reflect on the comment like are we going to be last um you know sometimes there's benefits to not being an early adopter um and like you know i think there's definitely cases times when i love being the early adopter really pushing the boundaries like reaching getting newer learnings um you know i think in this case um whether we want to be the later adopters or not they're we're definitely going to benefit from learnings from other districts whether it's you know there's large districts open reopening all across the country new york chicago um you know just pretty much in every in every state um so i think where earlier it was there's not very many people to learn from that's not the case now so um i'm hoping we're sort of uptaking the learnings um and again i think the initial planning that's been done really addresses both learning styles and needs of our broader community and i hope that it is you know gradually moves to in person because i even those who for safety and health reasons want to stay in comprehensive distance learning i've yet to really have anybody believe in their hearts that that's um the best way there's nothing like the magic of a a teacher and a student um in the classroom together so i thanks staff for that i think my um questions that i would have are sort of a little bit so not somewhat technical nature about um you know if we have a lopsided response um so we're banking our strategy on students having not having to change teachers um but that's also depending on having like a nice split in a classroom of getting this you know part of the students want to do you know comprehensive distance learning another part want to have in person and it all sort of works out but i i anticipate that we'll have schools in which um it won't won't be that so one question i would have is whether um if we get results that don't lead to fitting into the model we have with the safe guidelines what do we do about that that's one question and then just go back to the vaccines that currently we have a long history of requiring students to disclose whether they've been vaccinated and it's not necessarily for the students but also for the larger population of safety so i'm curious about why there would be a different standard in this particular case um you know i i think we as a community we're going to need to know whether people have been vaccinated and whether it is safe to change some of our health protocols so i'm not understanding why things would be different when for our students and for for our staff and but i but i would start with a question that director bailey um posed because i think that's probably the best one which is there if they're anybody who wanted to get one they didn't get get one and how can we help facilitate that so those are those are my two questions one about why is there different standard for students than we'd have for staff and then what if we have more students asking for hybrid more in-person versus cdl and how would we balance that and still have within a school that workout so in terms of uh yeah the math is probably not likely to work out exactly like we would like it to but we we are gonna you know we're surveying our parents one thing to see what is your what are your top priorities is it very important that you stay with your teacher and so we want to ask those kinds of questions um we hope that we can take care of it within a building i mean we will be able to take care of within a building uh so it may require some students changing teachers if there are inordinate amount of students that want to participate in distance learning we may have to uh we may have to split the groups up a little bit to make it work for space considerations but we are committed to uh to trying to keep students with their teacher as much as possible because we think that's important uh particularly since they have spent all this time building a relationship with that teacher for the last quarter of the year we want to make sure that to the extent we can we want to keep them with their teacher um but we do know that uh that may not be possible in a hundred percent of the of the cases so uh we'll wait and see what we get back with the data and then we'll come back and if we you know that's why we're also in continuing conversations we made to make
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some modifications to how this how this works out and i'll turn it over to sharon reese for the other question sure i mean one of the considerations uh is that the vaccines have been authorized under the emergency use authorization they are not like other vaccines who that have had uh longer a clinical trials and a different approval process so that's one of the considerations another consideration that we need to consider uh is um going back to the that vaccine hesitancy and the reasons for that right there's uh some pretty significant uh and brutal uh racism in the medical care field and what we know is that vaccine hesitancy is highest among our communities of color and so when we talk about what are what sort of information medical information are we going to ask our staff to provide to us we need to take those things into consideration the approval of the vaccine what is the racial equity lens that we would apply to that and and the working conditions that we're asking people and to function in uh is there a value in getting that information absolutely are there additional considerations that we need to uh take into account in making decisions about that absolutely and i want to share a story uh to make that a little more uh real uh which is we have a member of our vaccine team um who has health care training experience and background and who's a woman of color who shared with the vaccine team her own hesitancy about getting the vaccine and why uh and and she um expressed her um her embarrassment uh uh with regard to sharing that uh with us and i just want to be cognizant of all of those factors when we talk about asking employees to provide health information because it's it's it's multi it's multi-layered thank you for providing that um ms reese i i want to echo the communities of color for very good reason have distrust of the medical system um i have stories too i won't share here now but um i feel like uh this is an opportunity for us to to do one better and to actually distribute you know truthful information to communities of color in ways that that will be well received i think we should look at who's sharing the information and if we're sharing data which for some communities doesn't mean much versus stories um [Music] and so really like this is an opportunity for us to deliver something culturally appropriate ways and to think about who has the expertise on the team to do that and perhaps consider doing a race matching which can be effective in terms of research projects getting getting trusting putting a principal investigator with someone that's reflective of the community that they're asking and surveying in to deliver the information just a thought great julia did you get both of your questions answered there [Music] julia you're muted is someone playing the recorder that is paige practicing the clarinet so that is my daughter who is a sophomore at cleveland practicing clarinet uh so that is and she's in the room next door to me because i had to move my office since my father-in-law is now living with us so uh roseanne especially likes it during uh our meetings when paige plays clarinet the good thing is that she's practicing a music teacher would love that without being asked she's very dedicated to her clarinet it's a it's a wonderful thing to see all right julia did you get both of your questions asked i'll take it offline because i have a number of tiered questions just because there's all sorts of policies uh about you know when people go back about that other people because the vaccine also is about protecting the larger community and um when we don't if we have unvaccinated people for whatever reason in our ecosystems um that has that has implications for parents and grandparents who come drop off kids or you know whatever we're doing so i i'll take it offline uh but i definitely have some more questions about that great thank you nathaniel i know you haven't had an opportunity to ask any questions yet and i'm assuming you might have some so what would you like to bring forward
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tonight yeah so i got two questions um the first is one common concern that we saw in the qualitative responses to our survey concerned student adherence to guidelines that is to say students who are concerned that their fellow students would not follow the rules that are in place to protect their health from breaking social distancing guidelines to removing masks and at um 1208 total survey responses 12.3 percent expressed that roy so what i'm wondering is what are we planning to do to combat this potential issue well that's certainly important that students follow the guidelines and you know the good part about this is that we have two options we have comprehensive distance learning and we have uh hybrid instruction so we're going to require students uh and anyone entering our buildings to follow the masking requirements and social decision requirements and we want to do a good job educating people that there's a reason for that and uh help them understand why uh they need to do that and work with them it's not a uh it's but uh you know we will have to talk to people if they cannot uh follow those guidelines and and uh we may have to you know talk about what the other choices are in terms of comprehensive discerning but we you know we want to believe that if people understand the reasons why they have to do something that they'll do it especially our high school students who are uh young adults and uh you know i believe that you know given the reasoning for things uh then then we can help them make better choices for the protection of themselves and others because as we all know masks not only protect you but protect the people around you and that will be a requirement if you're going to be in our buildings to comply with those safety measures i i think a lot of what the respondents um expressed the concern that they expressed was that even if we explain the necessity as um thoroughly as possible there will there's going to be a small minority of students who still don't care who just disregard the guidelines do whatever they feel like and that that puts everyone at risk so i mean what happens if we have that scenario what do we do to keep everyone safe so then our you know our teachers and administrators will be able to have conversations with those parents uh those students who are not able to comply with those rules and we would then you know ask them to participate in a comprehensive disincentive it became a habitual uh problem hypothetically it became this became a constant concern that somebody was not following the rules just like you know in society if you uh refuse to wear your mask on an airplane you don't get to fly that airline anymore and so there are consequences to not following uh not following the rules and this is a health matter so we'll take that very seriously all right um is there anything else we really need to ask in this moment before we move on to our policies nathaniel did you have a second question sorry okay go ahead yeah and um this this might be a better question uh for our health advisory panel that i figured it might as well ask at the moment um so a while back we were shown modeling from the ohsu covid forecast that predicted that we'd have a significant resurgence in cases um and that that that would be underway now um now this hasn't been the case in fact quite the opposite has happened so i'm wondering since it's the case rate is so important to what we're doing with regard to reopening why was the model wrong so uh we get updates from dr graven every week where he talks about this and i one of the things that uh if you recall back to him speaking about that he he talked about fatigue cycles and so fear and fatigue and there was a lot of apprehension around the holidays and frankly folks in multnomah county and the portland area stayed home more more more than that they they follow guideline guidance on that as i said earlier we've actually seen i think greater compliance with health and safety guidance in this community than other communities you know for those of you who watched the the after effects of the the super bowl in tampa it was not pretty what people were doing there and it was vastly different than what you would see in in this community and so um dr graven said that you know this past week that um that the fatigue cycle hasn't kicked
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in quite quite as early and now it's really a race frankly between the the new variants that are in this country at this time and the rollout of the vaccines and so we do anticipate that we may see an additional bump later but the longer we delay it by following uh the guidelines in this community the longer we keep our hospitalization rates low the more we'll be able to absorb that bump without necessarily having an adverse impact it's something that we continue to look at and something that we re revisit um every week and i think if you recall and i i've so identified with this when i've modeled things sometimes you want to be wrong and i even leaned into that early on and said this is something i hope i'm wrong about and again i think we see the folks here are following that guidance a little bit better than other parts of the country our numbers are very low right now that 13 cases a day is is a very low rate we we have substantially reduced the the rate at this point time and that gives us some question to to absorb a bump if it comes but again we have been guided by um the health guidance and the metrics and we will continue to be uh so as we move forward all right go i know staff has been taking notes uh and as you can see this is this is continues to be iterative i just want to underline uh we look forward to hearing from a hundred percent of our elementary families uh it to do sort of a next stage of accurate planning uh knowing what their choice is or their preference i think everybody realizes there's differences of opinion and all we're trying to do here is is to meet that need uh i'll underline again uh we're hoping and to continue uh uh discussing uh and arriving at agreements with with our teachers union to to make sure that we we can offer uh a hybrid option uh hopefully on a more accelerated timeline if possible uh that that's sort of a gradual rolling return starting with our youngest which i think coincides with the early waves of vaccines uh being made available so they will have had their second dose sooner than others um and uh and then i'd be remiss if if i didn't sort of also stress uh and this has been a learning experience for all of us at every level uh not just for school district leaders and others the governor's team has made herself uh has made them regularly available to us you should know i have the opportunity to meet with them on a weekly basis they make themselves available for questions i have to say the same thing about our cooperation and collaboration with county leadership we have another meeting again this friday morning with local superintendents in the region as well as local public health uh as well of course my colleagues uh and all the folks at ode who also have learned uh to sort of make adjustments and iterate their guidance much of some of which is still mandatory um guidelines continue to shift a little bit we're expecting maybe some fine-tuning that will happen for athletics this week uh later uh so so so this has continued to be fluid and this is our best attempt today at try to offering uh options for for how we move forward hopefully sooner rather than later our our only goal is to continue to sort of be in there we have been rather proactive but uh can't control for what number of vaccines come to the state of oregon but everyone who we're hoping to have back on campus will have had access and opportunity uh to those doses and and we'll keep rolling those out there were some questions around testing i'm just checking my notes here for those that are interested we'll forward to the board sort of 15-page guidance that district leadership has has been issued by oha around when and how come and how do you go about it and when's it required for those that are curious to hear more about that i know that vaccine dashboards will also be made available more broadly to the public i invite folks to oregon.gov there's already existing uh pretty specific and disaggregated bar graphs about vaccine doses and who's receiving them already those are pretty up to date across the state so i i think what you see is the apparatus globally at all levels getting increasingly sort of more specific and knowledgeable about everything that that we're contending with so uh it has taken sort of partnership with uh all of our stakeholders uh and i also wanna just a shout out there to our community based organizations our culturally specific partners
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uh who also serve our students who are also uh slated to be in line uh to provide their support services uh in person and so uh that's also another important element of our re-entry uh into schools so thank you for your questions uh hopefully what you heard from staff tonight is uh is a balancing act here to try to serve a diversity of opinions and preferences by our families we're going to keep working uh trying to meet that need thank you thank you superintendent let's go ahead and take a five-minute break and come back at 9 15 for us to focus on our policy work thanks everyone call everyone back so we can move ahead on the last couple of items that are ahead of us uh for business tonight um we get to look at some exciting policies so i um let's see trying to find my place in the script all of a sudden i turn this over to director moore who is the chair of the policy committee to bring forth uh the policy on the amended preservation maintenance and disposition of district real property director moore thank you um so this is uh coming uh before the board for a first reading um and the current policy on preservation maintenance disposition and and disposition of district real property was last revised in 2018. um the proposed amendments are intended to respond to some issues that have emerged over the last several years um to align the policy more closely with our overarching racial equity and social justice framework and clarify the board's intent the policy committee voted out a number of amendments for consideration by the full board including the following elements um uh acknowledgement of the districts that that the district's real property assets are on the traditional land of the chinook clackamas california wasco kaplan um tualatin and malala tribes uh acknowledges that portland institutions and citizens participated in redlining and structurally organized policies zoning and planning that restricted or prevented black indigenous and communities of color from land ownership and led to their disproportionate displacement through urban renewal or gentrification aligns the policy more closely with the district's racial equity and social justice goals strongly affirms that only on rare occasions will the district sell a real property without replacing that property with an equivalent or better property provides additional guidance and clarity around the preservation and disposition of district real property and establishes specific evaluation criteria to guide decisions that may deviate from current market terms allow staff to efficiently convey real property rights of way or easements that are imposed as a condition of approval of district development and maintenance projects and allows staff to negotiate contracts without board approval at or below applicable delegation thresholds for district expenditure and revenue contracts if they provide a termination right with 90 days or less notice um so there's there's lots more of that delicious detail in in this policy um uh we welcome public comments on these proposed revisions over the next 21 days and as a member i just want to say i so appreciate the way we're talking about real estate with acknowledging land theft and thinking about we are beneficiaries of um racist practices that happened and so how do we consider that as we think about our responsibility around land and ownership um and the stewardship we have of the resources we do own and so i really appreciate the the huge amount of work that staff did to connect with especially indigenous communities to have this be in our policy as the forefront the beginning of our policy as we think about land ownership and what that means um
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and as we think about in the future what does it look like for us to make right some of the things that have happened historically so i just wanted to especially to danny say i so appreciate all the hard work you've done to make this policy really a um a trendsetter i think in public policy around land ownership um i'm gonna i want to make a comment on that i also appreciate steph um very much i know a lot of work goes into every bit of development here and also that you know when we talk about what a future looks like it's also time right now what we know in 2021 to do something that looks different from the way we've always done it before to recognize you know to go beyond recognizing who's benefit and actually address that you know talk about you know what we're doing to shift our own behavior and how we're showing up so the acknowledgement is beautiful and i'm i'm i'm proud that that's in the policy and yet i'm wondering [Music] you you know it's it's usually up upon white people that have access to land to make the timeline for when it's going to be redressed in community and so i'd like us to just rethink this timeline we have an opportunity tonight and today to do something differently and and and for the in service of a different outcome and i know that i'm just working on on that right now i'm speaking i'm speaking um and so anyway yes i want to just say that i just as there's a letter that came in tonight i think that needs to be um daylighted and and that we i hope we'll have a robust discussion around how we're showing up in this moment i'm sorry director depos i thought you could stop speaking my internet's a little wonky i apologize for interrupting you no worries speaking of the letter um do you want to actually um we're not we don't vote on that we just have the introduction right so so we just have introduction so if we're going to say something we should say it now right there's no emotion or anything no okay so i'm just uh build off on the comments that director depass um just shared um i do appreciate the new introduction and i think that was one of the things that in the seven months that it was in the committee that um there was a realization when we were reading through through it that it was you know not not a policy that um as a district that we would or a board with the equity lens that we have would want to have adopted the previous language and so i want to thank um danny ledesma and team for updating that i think it's really positive and i also i think the fact that we built in criteria into that has an equity lens about when pps is going to negotiate um below market rates that we look at through an equity lens is a really important change um but the two things that i would like to do is i have some questions that came up in the committee that i um said that i was going to raise when they came to the full board so i'm going to do that in a minute and i talked to um the district's uh general counsel about um just a colloquy to just establish on the record sort of what what the language means and what it doesn't i'll do that in a second but i was asked to read the letter that we received tonight which i'm going to going to do because unfortunately the way that our process works and i think it's a good question to ask but when we have a first reading we don't actually have a public comment period where um individuals could comment and so really the opportunity to comment is you have to get one of the public spots um and they were full tonight so it didn't work out for um they originally wanted to come and present this didn't work out for the do that and so then the next time somebody could um comment or comment in person to the board would be at the policy committee meeting or when we're moving to final adoption um which often is too late so if you want to address the full board um you may or may not be able to do it depending on if there's a full slot so i'm going to read the letter that was um sent to the full board and um as a member of the committee i take this um to heart personally that um um we've i feel like and i'm going to speak for myself that i fell down in the sense of an important stakeholder we didn't reach out to in the seven months so the letter is from cairo's pdx it says uh dear portland public school board members after years of talking about how black kids matter it feels ironic that we're at this place as an organization committed to black children black excellence and black success we're
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deeply concerned about the lack of response to our july 17 2020 facilities proposal asking for your support and partnership with us we're disheartened that we still have not received a written response to our proposal we're furthermore wondering whether your commitment to black children is more in talk than in action we kairos pdx are part of your pps community your pbs family when we submitted our proposal in july we were told that a real property policy was being developed to address our needs it now appears after holding the policy in committee for months the policy drafted makes it almost impossible for pps to negotiate the terms anywhere close to what was presented by cairo's pdx in way in many ways it appears this policy was drafted by those with tangential understanding of equity aside from bulletproof language this policy does very little to support the partnership focus on equity that we have worked so hard to foster with pps especially our support in passing the recent bond measure in the center for black excellence embedded there we ask that you review this proposed real estate policy and make edits that exemplify true commitment to equity and equity partners um so you know i i as a board member i take this as a um you know the board needs to engage um our stakeholders um and it's unfortunate that it didn't happen before we had our our first reading but i think we have an opportunity the next 21 days to to do that and i hope we ask for their very specific comments um about um the proposal that we're going to that we may be approving in 21 days so in addition i had some questions that i raised at the at the committee meeting that i'd like to ask um i think since uh general counsel is not here this evening uh mary kane is prepared to answer um and so specifically the policy has a um definition of a long-term lease and the the policy describes a long-term lease of at least five years and five years is the floor um but it could be higher is that correct that is the five year is just a it's a an industry standard is my understanding but the policy doesn't prohibit us from engaging in longer-term con leases okay and a longer term lease um while it may not be explicitly called out of the policy it could be negotiated as part of the lease and that would be the standard practice correct great um and then in the same section of the policy it also acknowledges that lease should also have termination rights that's a district um thing that something the district should have um in its lease and the right to determine at least is pretty standard in most leases as is a notice period and so while the policy doesn't spell out a termination or notice period the expectation is that that would be negotiated as standard practice as part of the lease agreement and the notice period would be reasonable to both parties obviously you're you know for an agreement that's correct and the notice would probably match the would likely match the use right so you're looking what what is the best for both parties and that would be embedded in the contract okay thank you um and then also in the committee i asked about the current situations in which we might have a current tenant and the current tenants write a first refusal um if we were to in those rare cases sell a property um again this would be a negotiated lease term as long as it's not in conflict with other terms of the policy correct that's correct um and so there's nothing in this policy that prevents the district from negotiating a right of first refusal if pbs feels it's to our advantage or benefit that is also correct okay and then the last question i had um about the in the committee is um that it relates to the district's objective in real property transactions and real property transactions as defined as generally defined in the policy are both um our terms including leases or sales and this is section c of the policy and i ask in the committee about whether maximum market value is the primary sole driver and transactions for pbs and there was a longer discussion at the committee about this about this concept and what are you know depending on the property and the circumstances that um what our objectives might be but what i'm trying to focus on is what the policy act this policy draft actually says um and and what was pointed out to me is an answer to my question is that in section c that it provides that district properties have been managed to carry out a number of objectives and there are objectives in addition to maximum financial benefit which is one of the which is one of the benefits or one of the objectives listed but the first objective that stated is that they are managed to quote reflect
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the district's short intermediate long-term educational and operational needs so i looking just for the acknowledgement that the policy draft does have it does have maximum financial benefit but it also acknowledges that there are multiple objectives for pps in real property transactions that is correct okay great thank you for the clarifications because i think it's not necessarily in the policy and sometimes if we put things in the policy it may be too prescriptive um but it's not precluded in our lease negotiations right i i would say at a high level that's the most significant change in this policy um which is i think was largely informed by our considerations around our current circumstances with a couple of our partners that we have leases with now so it does give us that flexibility it does recognize that we have a um we can give preferential treatment to those that are serving our students in one way or another whether they're a charter school or whether they have a mission that is focused on our historically underserved students so um i think somewhere in there were some kernels of what to me are the truly significant changes in this policy and i i look forward to our rapid uh adoption and revision here dan i saw you smile i saw you smile at that because one could say this process has not been very rapid i i just want to share that i did a presentation today on what spatial justice looks like and the drivers specifically what the historic drivers of inequitable growth are and um again say that this is an opportunity for us to look at what part of our um prioritizing and its real estate so it's always the highest value and you know speculation and specula it's a speculative market right so land as part of a speculative economy concentrating white well you know i guess what i'm saying is we need to balance uh the public interest with um doing the right thing knowing what we know now and so um the list goes on to say a list a lack of public and private investment in black and brown neighborhoods um a tax system and subsidies investing in white homeowners disproportionately a biased private finance system zoning that sequesters wealth and lightness and and how we show up in this real estate transaction i think will be really important to balance the public good with doing the right thing what we know about land speculation know about who benefits from this and and really um you know i'm even i'm willing to volunteer to take a hard look at this policy as well and and contribute where i can so director moore with this being our first reading assuming no bumps in the road when would this come to the board for adoption uh i was um i did not look at the calendar uh roseanne do you can you figure out quickly what 21 days out is it would be at the march 9th board meeting andrew i know you've been trying to add something in it's okay is that that's that's 28 days is it not it is but that's our first board meeting after 21 days after 21 days okay thank you i'm sorry i was trying to do the math and and 21 days is mandated um so we we can't really do anything about that time frame is there uh between now and the 21 days versus i mean instead of we can we're announcing it now that there's a 21 day comment period can we go one step further and actually do some targeted um targeted outreach or rather than just it's on the website can we do something a little bit more intentional danny or jonathan would you like to answer that question and maybe talk about what outreach has already been done and what other plans you might have and then andrew will get to your question so um we so as you know we did some re some outreach at the outset uh to partners around uh who we thought might have an interest in this uh and primarily through the coalition of communities of color um and so i think there's an opportunity we had we had a pretty uh thorough conversation with uh folks there who wanted to have some time to go back to their members and sort of think about how to how to engage uh with this policy and with others um so i think that's uh the the has been the the primary uh outreach that
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that i've been doing is primarily through these organizations okay i i'm sorry go ahead well i just i actually i i want to take a slightly larger so i i need to i'm going to admit that i'm catching up a little bit so i'm not part of the policy committee and i did not see this letter which came in just a little before five o'clock tonight uh until people mentioned it so thank you director for members for reading it but i i think i am confused and i think it's good to surface this though since this is a first reading before we we go much further my my read of this policy and you know as i went through it before and and reading through it again now it is it is very strong in terms of saying we should be getting market rate for our leases but it does have language that allows for exceptions to that and exceptions based on you know schools that serve you know predominantly underserved students that have a connection et cetera and so i i'm actually i'm a little confused and i can follow up with with kairos but if anybody's had i'm a little confused by the letter um because they're they're obviously frustrated by this policy but i'm i'm trying to get a better sense and and then i'm hearing people talk but i'm not actually hearing people say are we proposing to revise this policy um and now after this first reading or because it also sounded like we just talked about moving forward with adoption in four weeks so i i apologize but i've lost the thread in terms of the conversation and where we're headed with it dr moore can you speak about the policy adoption process well um we i mean all policies after a first reading are open for comments um for 21 days and um generally when there's a policy committee meeting that occurs within that 21 day period or or after we consider any any comments that we have received so it is um it's within the purview of the committee and the board to make additional revisions um i i would only say that um the committee spent quite a long time working through this policy language trying to balance um a number of competing interests and in particular trying to be responsive to the requests from um several of our uh partners um around um changing um changing the terms of of leases in particular um and i think we have built in enough language that provides the flexibility that would be necessary in order for the district to um to respond to those requests um so i mean we're we're open to considering considering the policy longer um but i mean there's there's there's also a um we also have to balance the question of uh you know a sense of urgency with um continued consideration of additional amendments so um did that answer the question one of the reasons we took up this policy in the timeline we did is because we had partner agencies ask us to make some decisions about leases and and kind of the idea was we needed to have a policy to to make sure we were making sort of um decisions clearly so they were transparent and i know that you know kairos was on my heart and mind as we discussed these and that we really did try to build in um you know provisions for if if the um school is serving mostly students if the school is serving underserved students you know where is there a place for us to negotiate and i i too like andrew um not seeing the disconnect there that kairos has surfaced in their letter so i think that that's then you know inherent on us to connect and figure out where that disconnect is um between what what we intended which was to make space for those negotiations and the sense that they got in reading the policy is that there is no space for the negotiations so is there a policy committee meeting then between now and and our board meeting 28 days from now there is so you will be considering comments well what i guess i would ask what i what i will be interested in seeing when when this comes back for final adoption is that we got um specifics and from kairos but other other stakeholders and partners as well right um that we specifically reached out to get because the letter is is general so i'd be curious about specifics that they're seeing in the policy and concerns and then i'll be interested just from a
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recommendation from the policy committee about whether those concerns were valid and deserve some changes or whether we feel like we had already incorporated the necessary um flexibility language and can move forward so so director scott some of the issues that had been raised are were part of the colloquy um that i had with mary kane around some clarification while something wasn't a policy that um like what is the intent or is it not allowed in the lease because frankly that's an overarching policy and then there's some things that actually are not disallowed um to you you can negotiate in the lease and that was important to be able to establish that that it wasn't the intent to like you can't have this um but it's just not in the policy but it's as part of a regular lease negotiation so those are some of the issues um i would say that our policy on policy says it's at least 21 days it doesn't say it has to be it like not more than 21 days so we're obviously well within it um to me when i um you know read the letter um and see the last um sort of part of it um that you know i i feel like we have an obligation to go ask you know really specific what it what is it that we missed um and um you know we i i don't think there's any bad intent in the committee but um we clearly must have missed something because they read the policy they hadn't had an ask into us and there is a disconnect and i think if we just move ahead with a yeah we got it right we think we address their concerns um i think this letter clearly says they don't think we did so we should figure it figure that out and i think the point of asking other media based partners because just my history with the district on our facilities is you know we have all kinds of partners we have a very specific one here but um you know we have head start programs that aren't pbs headstart programs that might want to be in our buildings and or lease um so i i do think um there's some pretty strategic outreach that we could do in the next two weeks of you know here's what we were trying to accomplish here's the language we came up with and you know have we accomplished it or where's where's the gap and i don't think that's going to take shouldn't take that long to be able to address that i'd like us to encourage um definitely the targeted outreach and consider um engaging with the tribes we should absolutely have someone representing the tribes on our our committees whenever we're talking about land and real estate um just as a best practice as a state-of-the-art you know we want to be we want to be that institution that's doing things right um and yeah i think the letter is pretty general but i think it bears um repeating that we should absolutely have engaged with them and there's other partners i know impact northwest i think is another one that's housed in one of our buildings that had questions uh this spring um and and perhaps the preschools the preschool universal preschool might also want to you know look at using property that we're not currently um occupying so so anyway thank you again for bristaf for considering additional targeted outreach and um let's let's make this right i have one other question unrelated to this topic but i don't want to move on if other people are ahead andrew so there's another um part of this policy and it actually was was there before and so um um i just i'm i'm curious about the people on the committee whether this came up in all your conversations sort of only on rare occasions will the district sell a property without replacing that property with an equivalent or better property um and does the rare occasion i mean does that sort of allow flexibility to still do that the reason why i raised this and i i don't know what the district's overall land holdings are i know what we're talking about is a school that's what people think about right a school or school property but i know governments often own lots of little random pieces and parcels i don't know if the school district has a lot of those i know other governments tend to so i wanted to make sure we weren't being overly prescriptive that there are sometimes you absolutely want to sell a piece of property um and not have to replace it so i just i didn't know if that'd come up in your policy committee at all talking about this um i i it did not um primarily because um i believe we disposed of the last i could be wrong here but i i think a couple of years ago we disposed of the last sort of random lot of land that um that we had um
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so i i don't think um i think what we have left um and just to just to remind people um in the last 30 years um pps has disposed of quite a lot of property and and i think we have come to regret some of those dispositions but i think at this point um what we have left are sort of viable school properties um and the language was intended to permit um a you know a long-term lease or a sale of a property um but only after really serious consideration of the you know of the long-term implications for for such a disposition um i think we tried to be very careful about the leaving enough room enough flexibility so that the district would be able to um to be good stewards of public property um we may we may want to look at some of the language again um i i will say that you know our legal team and the the real estate team within the district um have have spent many hours pouring over this language um and they've been when necessary they pushed back on um language that they thought was too restrictive um and this is you know the over the course of many months this is the language that we landed on after a great deal of discussion um so we can the committee can take another look at it um i have not i have not read the letter um i didn't see it before the meeting started i was in a another meeting before this meeting um so i don't know what the specifics are but um we can certainly take another look at the policy uh considering the the comments that we've gotten and any other comments that we will receive in the next few weeks and and and director moore if you could you know make sure we reach out to kairos and get some more specifics about what they're seeing in the policy that um they feel is a barrier to the good faith negotiations with the district so we can have that be part of our our clear considerations i think the answer to your question is like yes we could um it's just it's not going to be the general practice because i think director moore is correct there there were a lot of miscellaneous parcels that didn't have schools on them i mean that just were random like things that have been donated to the district or you know we were never going to use for schools and those mostly are gone but the answer your question is yes we we could but it's probably going to be rare that's helpful and and that's kind of the way i read it i just i wanted to hear from the committee a little bit of that i mean i can imagine a situation where you know we want to to to to sell a strip of of land on the side of one of our you know fields to portland parks and recreation for some reason and i want to make sure that that would be allowed under a policy like this versus having to go buy another strip of land somewhere else in the district to you know to to make up for that so um but it feels like the language is sufficient there so thanks thanks for that i think that also the letter you know while it's not super pointed about the policy specifically um is just i i sense this frustration of writing a letter and not getting an answer back and so you know understand workflow is really crazy right now but i i you know when you write an institution you you want to get a response back um right away yeah i i think we have a bigger um conversation that we need to have about how we do outreach around our policies i mean with our 21 day comment period especially i know we've talked about this multiple times at policy committee and with our outreach folks really thinking thoughtfully about how do we not just say the policies out there but really try to invite people in to give comment and and we still haven't you know i know that the staff has tried lots of different things but we haven't been able to thread that needle perfectly yet and that's something we still need to continue to think about and it's come up multiple times in the policy committee this is not the first time where something's come forward and then we're like oh we missed this voice and so um that's something that we just we continue to need to bring forward at policy of how do we there's always this like do you do you write the policy you send it out there and get feedback or do you get all the feedback and then write the policy and we're trying to do both and i think in in doing that we
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sometimes miss some things um so i know that our staff has worked huge hours on this and done a lot of investment and yet we still obviously need to do a little more or a lot more um so we'll we'll work with i'll have director moore work with folks to help make that happen anything else on this the real estate policy before we move forward to our next work i'm just going to submit the call quick questions um for the record and also um was asked to submit that um letter for the for the record as well so i'll get that to miss bradshaw thank you julia all right director moore would you like to introduce our next item which is the second reading of the make sure i'm on the right thing this is the second reading of the anti-racist and anti-oppression learning community policy um in september 2020 the oregon board of education enacted the all students belong rule which recognizes that student health and safety are the cornerstone of education and that all students are entitled to a high quality educational experience free from discrimination or harassment based on perceived race color religion gender identity sexual orientation disability or natural origin and without fear of hatred racism or violence the all students belong rule prohibits hate symbols specifically three of the most recognizable symbols of hate in the united states the swastika outside of a religious context the confederate flag in the news this rule was a springboard in the development of this anti-racist and anti-oppression learning communities policy which was informed by input from students and staff and articulates the district's commitment to providing a safe and healthy educational experience for all of its students and staff this proposal this proposed policy has been open for public comment for more than 21 days and to my knowledge no comments were received so it's now before the full board for um for adoption do we still have larry do you want a motion yes please second great i didn't catch any of that so it sounded like director bailey moved and from edward seconded the adoption of resolution six two three nine is there any board discussion is um well i can ask for people to this um not deflect he can send this to somebody else um there is as part of this um the discussion in the staff memo about this it talks about alignment with the student conduct and discipline policy and that is still outstanding and hasn't been adopted and i was wondering if we have an update of when that's going to be what the timeline for that is like which which which student conduct and discipline policy the current the current one or the one that we did really extensive work on uh it will be part of the new um student conduct policy and i and um that is still on hold pending um the completion of discussion with uh p-a-t and um i think with the other uh with all of the other covid responses and the return to um hybrid and lippy it's it's taking a bit of a back seat i'm sorry did you say we were we're acting as if the new one's in place or it's not it's not in place yet it's on hold the policy that uh it's referencing the new policy but what's imp i'm i'm sorry i'm i'm not we have in place our current policy is in place until we get the other one approved right correct and right the new one or the current one the current one and then we'll automatically join with the other one when it's it'll move into the new one yes yes i think the reference in the policy also uh spoke to a lot of the work that's being done at the administrative directive level uh we're sort of we're aligning uh the making sure that restorative justice practices are aligned uh in both and that and that that was where the bulk of the staff work being done was was being discussed so i just have a short comment about the policy
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i think it's a necessary policy for us to have and really important um to set expectations especially given some of the incidents we've had at our schools over the last um in our community in recent years um but i'm most um one of the sentences that i really think is important but i think is really important as part of this policy is the district will incorporate learning opportunities to support the goals of the policy in here um because i do think we can pass a policy and it won't make a huge difference in in the district it creates a framework but i think what really is going to change things is changing people's hearts and minds and the education piece of it so whatever it is that the district has um materials or curriculum or the way in which they're going to roll out uh learning opportunities it would be great to better understand that what what that is and i know that's not part of what the board does but i would just be interested in that as sort of the next step in the outreach um that's going to happen from the policy so the live stream just stopped terry are we still live just let me know that he's working on it i just saw that message okay so we're gonna just take a little pause okay thanks terry okay is there anything we need to recap from the last three or four minutes and i don't know if this makes a difference or not but i am recording it so there is it is on a record of it i apologize for those of you who we blanked out a little bit but terry as always saved the day and got us back sorted and live um is there any public comment ms bradshaw on this policy no there's not okay any um other board discussion on the policy um this is the only policy i know of that actually has a paragraph in bold maybe maybe there's some others that's a mistake apparently it's a mistake i ask about it ah well i think it should be in bold because it really emphasizes the the heart of the policy in terms of addressing hate speech and hate actions so to me it was symbolic of how important this is for our students in our community leave it in [Laughter] anything else all right the board will now vote on resolution 6239 resolution to approve the anti-racist and anti-oppression learning communities policy all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6239 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative shu voting yes thank you all right director moore back to you once again for the second reading of the amended professional conduct between adults and students policy uh so did i mention that the policy committee has been busy um the professional conduct policy was approved by the board in october 2019 after extensive community engagement once implemented staff brought forward a few areas of tension between policy and practice and asked for amendments to the policy the amendment to language about contractor training was proposed to more accurately target training to adults who have direct unsupervised contact with students and not to require it of contractors with little or no contract contact with students for example contractors doing work with our finance departments or external auditors the policy also defined expectations about staff to student text communication with the introduction of comprehensive distance learning in response to the coronavirus pandemic the district incorporated new communication platforms to allow additional methods of access to communicate with students including a platform for instance that allows district oversight of text communication between students and staff the proposed amendments reflect that such technology that can be tracked by the district is
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permissible um and this is before the full board for adoption tonight with the unanimous recommendation on the committee all right um we need to make a motion so who would like to um bring this forward for us do i have a motion and second to adopt resolution to approve the amendment the professional conduct between adults and students policy removed and moved second that we move the professional conduct policy as amended thank you so director from edward's moves and director constance seconds the adoption of resolution 6240 is there any board discussion all right miss bradshaw is there any public comment no all right the board will now vote on resolution six two four zero resolution to approve the amount of the professional conduct between adults and students policy 5.10.064-p all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes all the all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions all right uh the resolution is passed by a vote of seven to zero with student representative chu voting yes all right is there any other business at this time before we adjourn our meeting all right the next regular meeting of the board will be held in two weeks which is february 23rd is that correct i don't have it in my calendar and it's not on my script so the next meeting the board will be yes okay february 23rd uh this meeting is adjourned and i hope you all stay well


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