2021-02-11 PPS School Board Charter Schools and Alternative Programs Committee Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-02-11
Time 15:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education's Charter Schools and Alternative Programs Committee - 2/11/21

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way and um i'd like to welcome everyone for uh our hearing on the renewal of two of our charter schools um this charter renewal hearing for uh february 11 2021 is called to order for today's hearing all materials are posted on the pps website under the board and meeting tabs this meeting is being streamed live on pps tv services website and will be available on the pps communications page for viewing um welcome again as you all know this process is fairly clearly prescribed by the state of oregon sponsors of charter schools in oregon are responsible for evaluating charter school performance and determining whether or not to renew the contract of the charter school based on its compliance with the law and the contract and its performance in three domains academic financial and organizational the national association of charter school authorizers recommends in its principles and standards for quality charter school authorizing that a formal renewal application be used as part of a fair and transparent process this renewal application ensures that all charter schools entering the renewal process have an equal opportunity to present data and information relevant to their request for contract renewal it also ensures that the renewal decision is based on the renewal criteria specified in ors 338.065 and oar 5810260400 charter school renewal evaluation includes a review of annual performance reports annual financial audits annual site visit and any other information mutually agreed upon by the sponsor and the charter school the annual performance framework and report is the tool used to formalize this review ors 338.8 charter school renewal criteria the sponsor that would be us shall base the charter renewal decision on a good faith evaluation of whether the public charter school a is in compliance with this charter and all other applicable state and federal laws b is in compliance with the charter of the public charter school c is meeting or working toward meeting the student performance goals and agreements specified in the charter or any other written agreements between the sponsor and the public charter school governing body d is fiscally stable and has used the sound financial management system described in the proposal submitted under ors 33804 and incorporate it into the written charter under this section and e is in compliance with any renewal criteria specified in the charter of the public charter school the sponsor shall base the renewal evaluation described in paragraph a of this subsection primarily on a review of the public charter schools annual performance reports annual audit of accounts an annual site visit and review required by ors 338.095 and any other information mutually agreed upon by the public charter school governing body and the sponsor for today's hearings each school will make an opening statement followed by a 10-minute school presentation then there will be 10 minutes for testimony in support of renewal 10 minutes if there is any testimony to oppose renewal once we have concluded that we'll have an opportunity to ask questions there are some suggested questions in the meeting materials um we'll start with our friends at arthur academy um welcome stephanie walker arthur academy's executive director and tara miller principal of the portland arthur academy oh excuse me just excuse me sorry canine and human visitors at my back door sorry about that uh welcome to 2020 in 2021 okay um we just welcomed our friends at arthur academy so we'll just ask you to please um get underway with your opening statement thank you very much tara tara is this you first tara o'neill or do you want us just to get going i think you can just get going because
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ninety percent of what i was going to say director constand just said for me thank you so much so i say go for it okay so uh we have a a quick slide slide deck to show and jen i think jenny braden is going to share her screen okay so thank you very much for having us director comp stand director bailey i don't think director de pass is here yet but thank you to her as well uh my name is stephanie walker and i'm the executive director of the six arthur academies and so tara miller who is the the principal of the portland arthur academy she's going to talk to you guys about most of this because it's her school she she's the expert at it so and then jill domini is here as well and she's our business director so she'll jump in for a couple of these slides as well so thank you very much and jenny you can just go to the next slide please okay so this slide just is who we are our mission statement our motto and our core value statement the the motto is the one our kids know pay attention work hard get smart and be proud they all that's really for them they know that if they pay attention and they work hard they will get smart and they'll be very proud of themselves uh in the last couple of years the core value statement is fairly new maybe three or four years and this is something that we've really focused on embracing this core value statement not only within with staff but with students and families as well so okay jenny next slide please thank you okay here's some overall information about portland arthur academy we opened in 2006 we're located in the monteville mount mount tabor neighborhood uh charter renewal so we started we have a three year renewal from 08 to 011 and then our five year from 2011 to 16 and then our five year flex which brings us to where we are now um our average enrollment has been just below our capacity so 178 has been our average enrollment you can see here's our teaching fte our administration and then our central office support and that central service support me executive director jill is our business director and we also have a bookkeeper hr slash a bunch of other job titles as well person okay uh jenny thank you very much okay so what we did is i'm about to to let tara miller jump in and so we have you guys have seen our performance framework you've seen our charter application you've seen all that information it's great statistics but we also want to sort of talk about our successes that you may not see on paper and some of them are ones you would and then also some challenges that we've had at portland arthur academy so we'll so tara why don't you just jump on in all right well thank you for having us i'm tara miller i'm the portland arthur academy principal and i just thank you all for being here i'm going to jump into our successes some of our successes are our extracurricular activities our students have had the opportunity to go to the children's museum the zoo walking towards the state capitol we've also had some in-school field trips which are my favorite we've had the newport aquarium come with us rojo the llama has been able to visit our school a few times with their book with his book is so wonderful and reptile man actually just visited us during cdl so that was really exciting the kids absolutely enjoyed him in person but they also enjoyed it um cdl style so that was really a great treat um we also have free quarterly after school clubs in music and pe music focuses on band singing theater and then pe they focus on different sports or activities in each different quarter then we have a free organization-wide omsi night and so all six schools get together and we close omsi down and they get to explore the their friends and families get to come and they get to explore omsi on this one spectacular night it's amazing uh it's just so nice to see all the other schools and we kind of have some competitions that happen we want to see how many of each school comes and paa does pretty well in that department i recruit i recruit um then we have the portland trailblazer night we offer discounted tickets and that is set up by a huge blazer fan that is here ms walker our fifth grade kids get to go on an overnight trip either to the coast or to the mountain and then recently we've started to implement more community service projects and one of those projects was cleaning up mount tabor and the surrounding areas of our neighborhood so mount tabor is just a hop skip and a jump from us so
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just all that area we decided to do a community project and clean it up recently uh i think it was the year before covet uh 20 spring of 2019 and then we love to do family nights we do bingo and movie nights pancakes with santa which was new last year and it was such a big hit and then we have had um harvest bears and sock hops and so it's just a way for our families to come and meet each other and be um enjoy each other's company um jenny you can go to the next slide um this is us at the onsie night um our students enjoying different exhibits um you can see the young lady in the bottom left-hand corner she's wearing orange we used to be the tigers so that was a couple years ago and then the students on the right are from recently last year in the green because we're the dinos now next slide um this is a huge success that i love and it's one of my favorite events that we have at the arthur academy it's our student of the quarter and it's a chance for us to recognize um academic successes for the students um it may be responsibility that student student has shown um responsibility in the quarter or another academic success um improvement so so many different things and this is an event that's held after school where families get to come and we celebrate together we talk about the kids we have a sweet treat and it's just a great um building community building experience and it's one of my favorites and that um the one on the left is the kiddos they're making a silly face and my little one's in there so i really love student of the quarter it's great next uh next slide miss jenny um some of our academic successes in our di program on our second and fourth quarter direct instruction mastery reports in all arthur academy classes we demonstrated 80 um in all di subjects and we've met this goal a hundred percent of the time um since 2014 when the school goal was adopted so kudos to us next slide um our um oregon state assessments we have either met or succeeded in all of these objectives next slide um easy cbm uh we started to implement easy cbm in the 2015-2016 school year with only our k and first grade students then the following year we decided to have the entire school do it as well and it is an organization-wide assessment that we do and uh beginning uh since the beginning of easy cbm our students have increased their fall to spring scores every year we average about 80 percent of our school in the 40th or and 40th excuse me to the 99th percentile in both reading and math and then we were unable to complete the spring assessments this last year because of the pandemic another academic success that we have is our upper grades tend to do some projects that are just for them and it gives them responsibility and ownership and the first grade that they start doing that in is third grade and they have an invention convention where the students create an invention and they receive a patent on their invention and then they have an invention convention and people come and they we have little dollars that kids can um pay to purchase their invention it's so cute and then in the fourth grade we have a wax museum where they complete a biography project dress up as the person and participate in a wax museum night for families that one's by by far my favorite and then our fifth graders participate in a science fair they pick a project and then they participate in the arthur academy organization-wide science fair and it usually happens in april um other successes is that we have the portland arthur academy parent organization aka papo and they hold many of our family nights and work with us to do fundraisers we have our parents surveys families have chosen the option of either highly satisfied or satisfied between 96 and 100 of the time over the term of our contract and recently in the last three years or so we've um incorporated a sel program called frenzy into our curriculum and some of the units that we have i would love to read some of them we need each other uh be kind all the time teamwork me make excuse me teamwork makes good dream work and i am valuable and there are projects that the kids can do within class and out of class and they're um we involve the the families too and we've been able to continue that during cdl we've had to tweak it a little bit here and there but we've been successful in creating that sel program
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to be able to do it during sel or excuse me cdl as well next slide and these are some pictures of our kids doing some community building um the top two pictures are students creating summer bags for kids in our community it had sunscreen snacks hand sanitizer goggles other games just something just some fun things to kick off their summer to make sure everybody had a wonderful summer and then the bottom two pictures are us cleaning mount tabor park and now i'm gonna pass it off to jill hi there thanks uh again my name is jill domini i'm the business director for the arthur academies um so our financial successes um basically portland arthur academy is fiscally stable we've been fiscally stable for many many years at least the last five term five-year term we have met all of our goals we've met all pps's uh recommendations and goals we have no debt our liabilities are current uh our all of our financial audits have been clean and unmodified we have a great relationship with our auditors um and uh you know they've all been great great audits um some of our challenges probably like most charter schools we are unable to increase our salaries and benefits um we have that huge disparity in our purse funding that we've discussed before and uh eventually we will need to move from our current location and we just don't have the funds to be able to do that so that basically wraps it up thanks jill okay i'm going to finish off we're almost done here but this is these are some fun pictures to show what um in in normal non-cova time what direct instruction teaching looks like and you can see um there are some small groups and large groups and that's really is what it looks like in our our classes and you can see that middle picture that's a teacher who is teaching kindergarteners how to read and form their mouths on certain sounds as you can see her just up in their business right and unfortunately we can't do that during government time so okay next slide please so we talked about all of our wonderful successes but we do have some challenges and um our building jill alluded to this a little bit our building is older it's in need of some repairs and retrofitting it's a shared space with the church which they're great partners very great partners um but it's shared so we understand some of those limitations and there's no gym for pe we have what's called parking lot pe we make it work but it's uh it's it's not the best and we have a very our our playground is is small it's long and narrow i suppose so very limited activities close to neighbors and is also in need of repairs okay jenny thank you another challenge of us is teacher retention our sk our salary scale although we have increased it recently it's still lower than pps and benefit our benefits for our teachers are not comparable uh so some other challenges are staffing insufficient fte due to financial restrictions we'd love to hire uh more teachers so we can have even smaller groups for uh intervention and instruction uh and then pers percentage is substantially higher than pps okay jenny and just just so you guys know what we're doing for cdl uh we have am and pm cohorts five days a week we have synchronous live our teachers are teaching all day long our classroom teachers are they're either teaching they're teaching half their kids in the morning and half their kids in the afternoon and we're doing we're focusing on math reading language and sel and then the way if the kids if they're not if they're in the morning group and they're being taught live for those uh those three hours with little breaks in between um when they're not being taught live they're doing asynchronous like google classroom work which is so all the other stuff that's not math reading language and seo and we found that to work really well what we have relied upon during cdl is sort of all of our extra staff which isn't very many miss miller the principal our office coordinator our resource coordinator who is sort of our recess person they have all jumped in to help with google classroom posting assignments checking assignments our office coordinator is pretty darn close to being a teacher now i'm telling you we we've taught her a lot okay thanks next slide jenny uh oh and also i i did want to say these are some really super cute uh celebration pictures of our kiddos but i also do want to say our plan is to start lippy in the next couple of weeks we have a really good plan for that and then we are we're also planning to
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open to hybrid and in the middle of april and i think that's right around when pps is is as well it worked out perfectly for us to kind of be on that same timeline but here's some really great uh celebrations pictures these look like uh well i don't even know oh wax museum is the middle one that's for sure and then all school picture and there's the llama right mrs miller yeah there's i think that's napoleon actually and then that's some um holiday craft days that we've had in the past great okay jenny i think that's it i think we have one more oh yeah there's our new dinosaur again mrs miller said they used to be the tigers but the kids voted and they wanted to be green dinosaurs so we went with it thank you and i think i think we have some parents here who because we're done with our our portion of it okay great so if we have um anyone who's joined us that wants to testify in support of arthur academy um kara did we did we make a list of order in which people will speak or i do have a list okay um ashley wenrick ashley i think we're missing actually a couple of my list ashley are you here she's here yes i am hi feel free and um go ahead sounds good um my name is ashley wenrich last name w-e-n-r-i-c-k and my pronoun would be she or her my name is ashley winrich my son is noah winrick noah is a first grader at portland arthur academy this is our second year at the school and since the beginning even through this pandemic we've uh been in we've been so impressed and pleased with arthur academy especially when the pandemic first hit the schools had to shut down her arthur academy went above and beyond to continue the same level of education through distant learning all the staff have been wonderful you can really tell they all love their jobs and work so hard to run amazing school for us though this is more than just a school we're part of a family and they'll continue to be part of our family for many years to come thank you thank you so much andrea gillette hi my name is andrea guiller my last name is g-u-i-l-l-e-e-t and i go by she her i have a fourth grader and i have a kindergartner that just started this year we are new to arthur academy just as of last year my daughter came in as a third grader and um i um and i've just been so pleased by how she has blossomed and grown with the the support that the school has been able to provide for her uh we've had some very challenging moments um academically and emotionally with school and now she comes home and she is just excited and she is saying hey guess what and sharing stories and um highlighting how support how much support she's gotten and how great her teachers are and that has been a huge change for us and my son is the same way even with cdl um he is just so excited to be part of this community and part of this family and i feel so blessed um i think the school has done an amazing job bringing families from across the city together and really making us feel like a family wonderful thank you thank you for taking the time to share that with us saba sephora also didn't see yeah this is me so my name is solomon faked or solomon tuckling how pronounced my last name is techni t-e-k-l-e um saba is my wife she is at work right now so we have her um about arthur academy this is a second year um my girl is first grader i have a boy coming up and we are really happy to be a part of this family we the teachers are wonderful they're flexible uh they you know they they help the kids uh we are so glad to be a part of partner academy miss miller is the best and everybody is
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you know they're doing their their best and we are happy to be part of their party thank you so much for joining us today that's all i have for signed up and do we have anyone who uh has anything they'd like to stay in say in opposition to arthur's renewal application i didn't receive anybody sign up for that okay i want to thank everybody who came um you know the last time we met we reviewed um the application itself and all the performance data but it's also so meaningful to hear from a few parents about what the experience is actually like for your children and it's really um it's heartwarming and reaffirming to hear these positive stories so thanks for taking the time and do we have any questions before we move on andrea thank you if do you want us to provide a written statement if we haven't done so already or are you good or would it be still we can include that with the materials when we um for the rest of our board when we have our vote coming up so that would be helpful yeah thanks thank you so uh questions is now the time for questions from committee members yeah yes sir okay um i have a couple of questions um just want to start off with uh you know we've been dealing with racial inequities in this country for 400 years and the uprising the most recent one that started a year ago certainly brought renewed focus to that how did you uh address that uh in her classes mrs miller do you want me to jump in on this one yeah well we have we have leaned on some of the pps material um they it's been great to have some of those tool kits that we provided to our teachers it really has been very helpful because we feel that the that's where the district can help us that's where that expertise is where we don't necessarily have that so we've used those toolkits we've and then we sort of talk as a staff our staff are so small we talk about okay what's what's age appropriate for kate or kindergartners compared to fifth graders what's appropriate to talk about at school what what sort of information do we want to give do we want to reach out to families to ask for for their guidance and so it's sort of a team effort including with pps families and staff great i'm glad those toolkits got out there that's right yes thank you tara i suspect he might have had something to do with that um the other day so um thank you director bailey this is michelle i'm sorry i um i'm having problems with my camera but um i really um don't know that much didn't know that much about the arthur academy i'm really happy to hear some of the work that you're doing and especially your performance data is really um impressive um would love to on the line of scott bailey thank you for bringing up the racial issue and so i didn't have to um i'm always concerned about you know um and you talked about how difficult it is to hire teachers because of your you know you're not able to pay competitively have you tried to do some recruitment of teachers of color um i think as a as a way to increase outcomes for kids it's important especially considering that the numbers of kids of color that you serve to have someone in the building even it doesn't even need to be a teacher it can be a custodian yeah um someone that looks like the kids that you're serving um if that's an effort that is that something that you're looking into yes it is something that we're definitely looking into we haven't been very successful at hiring uh teachers that really do reflect uh our students we haven't been super successful and we also it it is hard for us to just find teacher the teacher pool for us in general is pretty small not a lot of people apply at our schools so but it's definitely something that we have looked into but we haven't been super successful i have a question um speaking of your teacher pool um you just you said in your in your presentation that you're you have insufficient fte was a line that you used when you were talking about your financial
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situation but can you tell us um what that really looks like in terms of how you serve your kids you did say that also that everybody is really a utility player and pitches in in all kinds of different ways but um if your resources were greater what what needs would you address yeah we would we would hire more what we we call them small groups teachers some people might think of them as a paraprofessional but but it's a little different the way we use them we really do use them as teachers and we would just be able to have smaller instructional groups that are more focused on a specific need and so in the direct instruction programs typically when you see a di program it's in a school just think of a big huge school in texas i always think of that when i think of a di school because they're used a lot in texas and you might have two or three or four second grade classes two or three or four first grade classes and every one of those second graders can walk to the appropriate instructional group right every first grader can walk to the exact appropriate instructional group and in a perfect world we would be able to put every single kid perfectly where they fit we're like this close to doing that and in the younger grades that's where we put all of our focus and if and in theory if all of our kids stayed with us in kindergarten all the way through fifth grade which you know doesn't happen people move we get new kids um if if people stayed our small groups in kinder and our small groups in first grade would would be sufficient to then have less small groups in second grade and then a big group in third a big group and fourth and fifth and we're good to go um because it doesn't work perfectly the world doesn't right we would that's what we would use our our money for is more more of those focus groups in older grades because we consider a fourth grader who gets 88 on something i'm not at mastery we don't want you to get 88 on something we want you to get at least 90 and especially in math uh you know you have those holes in math oh geez we're in trouble now we want you at like 95 or higher otherwise we're intervening to make sure what what strand did you not understand what concept did you not understand we don't want that to compile to the next concept and so that's what we would do thank you yeah do we have any other questions or arthur team do you have any questions of us no no questions for uh from us i i guess the only it's not really a question um but you've certainly brought it up your biggest challenge sounds like a combination of um funding and that's around staff retention and being competitive there and then the facilities going forward at some time um and you're pretty frank that you don't have any immediate answers to either of those and i appreciate that and having spent some time in the nonprofit world i i know it's uh it's it's not a place very few non-profits have you know wads of money just sitting around to be spent on that kind of thing um so i i just want to note that um and i think it's worth um i think it's worth and i'm and i actually i just sent uh tara uh an email saying you know we should have kind of a big step back and have a big picture discussion about this because you're not the only one in that in that boat um to think about how how we want to do this going forward um and and you know so that we can sustain um some really good educational practices thank you director bailey do we have any other questions okay um then we will look forward to seeing you next when we reconvene with our full board and we'll do a little bit of repeat as far as this committee is concerned in terms of hitting the highlights of your renewal application just for the benefit of the rest of our board and they have seen all these materials as well but we really appreciate the time that you've taken to put that all together and also to highlight challenges and areas where the
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district can be perhaps more helpful also areas of appreciation where the district is being especially helpful so thank you very much nice to see you all stay warm stick around if you like and we'll move on to our friends at opal it has turned to snow at my house it's snowing here too it's snowing here too finally hi beth um hello folks how you doing we're good good i hope everybody's staying warm yeah do you want to hit some highlights for us on opal a little bit of a recap and then hopefully have some uh people from your school community here as well we do we have a few people um with us and i i think i'm going to save introductions until after we do our little presentation so that then they get a chance to um speak a little bit so i first of all just thank you so much for your support and for inviting us here and giving us an opportunity to move beyond 20 years into what we hope is another 10 years a reminder that we are the first charter school in portland public and so we've been going for these 20 years um we're 20 years deep into the research that we call playful inquiry sort of this place of high challenge and low threat and what um sort of that stance of playfulness and rigor brings into the classroom [Music] situate the charter school within the larger department called teaching and learning so we also have a tuition-funded school preschool and we also work with a number of educators so to come in and see the work that we do because of the playful inquiry approach so that's intriguing and interesting and an opportunity for people to see it hands-on and not just talk about it um in our 20 years we've had about 200 graduates we've worked with 10 000 or so educators and we estimate that they reach something around a million children so that's the way we leverage our work is very much both internally focused on the experience that our children have and then also wanting to bring that out into the world what we have prepared for you today is a video that mary gage has narrated she's here um and jenny braden has it if you are ready to play this this is a a little bit of a window into a particular project in a particular year but to give you a flavor of what playful inquiry can look like and as you're watching it i'd like you to think about the graduate portrait and i'd like you to think about the word care like taking care giving care caring about and so how that shows up in this in the story so i'm worried that we don't have audio here jenny you'll need to unmute yourself for the audio to work sorry about that i'll replay thank you for the opportunity to share a window into opal school today in opal we believe school is where we have a chance to learn about complexity and get to be friends with it school provides the environment where we learn what it means to participate to belong within a group of otherwise strangers and to matter to them because they matter to us we believe children are citizens capable of understanding complex subjects and offering creative problem solving that the world needs we consider playful inquiry as a way into these important serious issues in the conversations they provoke we see play as the real work not a distraction from it some of the elements of playful inquiry that i want to draw your attention to as i prepare to tell you the story of a project that recently unfolded within a group of 8 to 10 year olds at opal school includes inspiring curiosity seeking connection nurturing empathy sharing stories and exploring playfully our curriculum intentionally grows out of what we notice happening in the world around us what we know about children of this age and our desire to connect work in the
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classroom to the world outside children and adults immerse themselves in curriculum development through organic exchange within our curriculum arc students in grades three through five study the big ideas of ecological interdependence and perspective taking while these big ideas stay the same each year the stories that invite us to explore them change as we return to school in september 2017 the nearby columbia river gorge was engulfed in flames floods raged in houston texas and standing rock protesters continued to remind us water is life water was central to everything going on around us it seemed we know the children would be aware of this context too so we began to wonder what might be possible if we were to use water as a vehicle for eight nine and ten-year-olds to construct the big ideas of ecological interdependence and perspective taking we wondered what does it mean to care what does it take to care for something bigger than yourself and how might care inspire children to take action as mindful citizens so when the children did arrive at school we began with asking them to reflect on their play what water play stories did they have where they encountered water during the summer they mapped and drew and wrote about their experience as water we suspected that caring for something bigger than yourself was closely related to thinking deeply and we were curious to see if our theory was correct we wanted to ask the children to reflect on their relationship to water but quickly realized that the word relationship itself was so big could hold so many possible meanings that we had better first take a pause there they shared that in relationship there's tension love and joy and fear and care sometimes it's hard sometimes there's conflict in order to provide a shared reference point and bring our individual experiences and histories with water into one experience we took a field trip to the bull run watershed the protected watershed that provides all of portland's drinking water the children returned from the field trip with new facts about the columbia river basalt and the gravity system of pipes that led water from bull run reservoir to our faucets but they also returned with a new ah for our tap water they had witnessed first-hand all of the natural and man-made systems that had to work interdependently in order for clean water to come out of our faucet at school or their sink at home as teachers we could have stopped there this is our drinking water this is how we use the water cycle but the children were developing an even greater awareness of their relationship to water in considering aspects of that relationship that they hadn't ever considered before they were getting even more curious the children had told us that relationships can take a lot of work because so often there is conflict how can we gloss over those very complexities when thinking about the human relationship to water so to cultivate tension we turn the conversation to bottled water we brought the children an episode of npr's talk of the nation why americans are obsessed with bottled water and as we listened the children wondered what could possibly lead humans to spend that much money on something that we already had flowing out of our taps i'm just it's just the same as paying for faucet water you don't need to pay three dollars for a tiny bottle of water why do people sell them if they know it's bad for the earth is it because of the money do they even know it's bad for the earth when people buy water bottles do they stop and think about their impact and then as the teacher i asked how many of you have bought bottled water in your life and everyone raises their hand it's convenient you can carry it around you can't carry your faucet around within the children's dialogue in questions there was a noticeable absence of the notion that people in our very own country much less our very own city rely on plastic water bottles because they do not have access to clean water even though children clearly articulated beliefs that access to clean water is a basic human right they hadn't yet to be begun to fully imagine the experiences of other citizens that were so very different from their own with this in mind we read an article about the water crisis in flint michigan with so much empathy the children read about a woman named gina luster opening and pouring individual plastic water bottles into a bathtub for half an hour in order to give her young daughter a nighttime bath after reading her story thomas kept repeating gina's words pop the top and pour it in pop the top and pour it in i can't stop thinking about what it would be like to be a parrot in flint and then lois they don't have a
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choice they're either drinking polluted water or buying plastic water bottles the complexities of this situation were not lost on the children their schema for plastic water bottles was full of words like good bad clean and dirty that they could see that for people in flint michigan plastic water bottles could not be so easily placed into those rigid categories of good and bad while navigating this article with the children one voice stood out in particular a manual always so forthright and upfront offered we're not dealing with it why should we pay attention to it the question why should i care about that is so important for students to ask in order to care humans need to see themselves within complex issues that on the surface may seem far removed from their everyday lives students are hungry for the complexities of real life as this project continued to unfold and children dove deeper into water stories both local and global fraught with issues of social justice they struggled with where and how to take action on the second to the last day of school we asked the children what does it take to care for something bigger than yourself from our vantage point as teachers the children had been caring for something bigger than themselves all along would they recognize the care they had fostered all year would they be able to articulate what it took for them to sustain it it turns out they were they responded that it took courage passion and making mistakes to care for something bigger than yourself it took a willingness to just do it without waiting for someone else to do it for you zion when i was reading me janae's essay amisha is one of science classmates i read a part that some people who are famous singers are helping the flint water crisis when i know a lot of times people are busy so even when they have an appointment to sing or something they can still help the water crisis they make time they move all the things that are really important to them to help the problem that means a lot to a lot of other people what might lead someone to care like that mostly it's about brain empathy it's about a thing you can't deny unless you take it out the empathy is going to do it it's a powerful emotion to be hearing all of these people getting hurt there's an unfairness part too and that also sticks with the empathy other people are getting hurt and that's not fair and then emanuel who not so long ago provoked us all by asking why we should pay attention to something that we weren't dealing with asked but here's the question are we doing anything about it and right here in this moment we could see that he so clearly saw himself in this problem and his classmates were right there with him we're thinking about it thinking doesn't help if you think without acting it doesn't do anything talking about this is spreading empathy if we talk about this other people get to hear about this and they can do the exact same thing if one person starts to help other people will pitch in it's like a ripple we need to take action we need to take one baby step which is thinking and then we have to take action real action if we talk about it it would make other people want to help no one out of our school has wait did you say no one out of our school knows about it okay our parents i didn't say they don't know about the flint water crisis but we haven't told them anything about what we think and then of course hands up everywhere i have i have i have and i reflect back to emmanuel you sat right there a few weeks ago and you said since we started doing this my family doesn't buy plastic water bottles anymore that's a change that's doing something has flint gotten any better since my family hasn't bought plastic water bottles if we want to make actual big change we need to do a little more so what are you proposing we do well i don't know that's why we're talking about it exactly talking helps in this dialogue emanuel wasn't alone in grappling with what it means to take action as a mindful citizen and in recognizing that part of being a mindful citizen is stopping and thinking to ensure the help you're offering is the help that's needed iris offered us the possibility that dialogue is a vehicle to both understanding and caring or as rowan might say spreading empathy when you're talking about stuff that can help because the whole entire year we've been talking about stuff and guess what we just learned a lot by just talking and talking about and learning about all of this i've been sharing a lot with a lot of other people even talking can spread all
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of this because we need to spread it to one person it can go to another person another person another person and in the end one of the ripples the children offered to the world was in the form of a mural in which they invited others to stop and think about the relationship between forests rivers and cities within this mural lifts huge questions of global complexity that children chewed on while the experience of creating the mural was within the local which they invented which is what i believe participation looks like i didn't have any answers for them nor did i ask questions that i already had answers to and they ended the year continuing to ask what does it mean to take action which is exactly where i think they should be we arrived in this place where the children identified complex public issues as meaningful and relevant to their lives the learning here was beyond the confines of a single project through participation in this learning community and beyond children begin to recognize that they both have a reason and a right to participate and so does everyone else even when full of uncertainty and discomfort even in an ecosystem of really complex perspectives an opal school where we prioritize listening to others seeking connections and staying curious skills essential to democracy and to the health of the human heart playful inquiry becomes the landscape to learn to take action as mindful citizens thank you that was a fantastic way to illustrate your your way of thinking and learning and thank you for the opportunity to share a window that was fantastic and beth i appreciate uh at the outset you asking us to think about our own portrait of a graduate because they are eerily similar and of course our portrait of a graduate emerged from the community not not from us and so it's not surprising that those same themes are what emerged but um that was really wonderful thank you i'm glad that we had an opportunity to share that with you we um have some public comments from folks who weren't able to attend today and so jenny braden has a couple of clips um that they recorded so i'd like to bring that in if we're ready to move to public comment all right so first we're going to hear from aaron moulton she currently works with teaching preschool partners and taught at oval school in the very first year and for 11 years after that before she moved to another school and she has a story here that we'd like you to hear hello members of the portland school board my name is eric moulton i'm here to share with you a little bit about my experience at opal school i was the first teacher hired at school back in 2001 i worked at opal school for 11 years where during that time i taught everything from pre-k to fifth grade as well as being a teacher researcher in the center for children's learning as well as a mentor to many of the new teachers that came through opel i helped run a lot of the professional development at opal school and then went on to work at oregon episcopal school for seven years and now i currently work at teaching preschool partners which is a local non-profit um that was created by judy grays the founder of opal and kathryn wilmott to share these ideas that we had learned at opal school but to help nurture and create preschools within public school settings so we currently have two preschools in park rows we have five current preschools in the beaverton school district and two new preschool promise sites that are opening in beaverton as well as one in gladstone and we're supporting two preschool promise sites um in the albany school district as well my current role is to work in taking the uh helping align preschool through third grade approaches in beaverton as well as in park rose and uh beaverton has initiated a whole ready reset play in kindergarten that we've been a part of in helping kindergartners experience playful inquiry even um through cdl and one of the rules i think is so important about how this work is continuing to grow and spread is that at opal school there's a real place you can go where you can see these ideas in action not just read about them and i think that is something that is so
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valuable and so hard to find throughout our country and throughout oregon there are not a lot of places where you actually get to see playful inquiry preschool through fifth grade and it's had a tremendous impact without our throughout our whole community that i hope gets to continue for many more years to come all right so next um we'd like to hear from xavier pierce he is currently a teaching assistant this is he's been with us for a number of years he was in he joined opal in the very first year in 2001 as a kindergartner he is currently a degree candidate at psu this year um and in education and continuing into a master's program so we get to hear from xavier now look hello i'm xavier pierce and i was a part of the first couple of graduating classes at opal school my experience is not only that of a student but also one of an educator and throughout my life i continue to use the skills that i learned in local school lessons like the importance of collaboration empathetic and critical listening and a love of the natural world specifically i remember sitting in meadows to nature journal and using role play to hold our own continental conference to make our constitution of the fourth and fifth grade and that helped us better understand what it really takes to make decisions as a group um i practice and use these skills to make change in the communities that i'm a part of to this day um these skills these are skills that the world has always needed um but at this critical point in our history even more so i chose to return to opal school and to become an educator because i realized the impact my experience here continues to have and has had on my thought process and decision making i want to continue the tradition of using education as a liberator and a tool to make change if you walk the halls of opal school you'll see panels documenting classroom and community projects of the past and the excitement of new or ongoing projects spilling out of the classroom literally browsing the online classrooms it's it's evident that the educators and the students alike find value in their learning through the memoir writing that they're doing and some of the creativity that's required to make distance learning feel somewhat normal my hope is to see my opal school continue for many years to come and to see many more change makers find their voice so in a recent conversation with parents they use the word magical about xavier and i think it's true next we're going to hear from angela vargas she currently teaches in the beaverton school district as a second grade teacher involved in curriculum development for migrant education she's also an adjunct professor at psu and she was an opel school teacher for a year and you'll get to hear from her no hi my name is angela vargas i currently teach second grade in beaverton school district at a title 1 school i also support the migrant education program with curriculum development and mentoring preschool teachers i started my education at head start and i feel so fortunate because it was there that i was sent to the opal school summer symposium to support a pilot program that they were going to launch i was floored i was odd i was speechless um the work done at opal completely shifted my perspective and instilled me with a desire to learn more after head start i transitioned to hillsboro school district and i would use my continuing education funds to go to the opal school symposium every year there was even a year when i didn't have any and i used my um tax return money to go because it was just so important to me that was an investment that i really wanted to make um some years later i ended up working at opal school i taught kinder and first grade and it was a true blessing it was a challenge
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and also one of the best things i ever did to develop as a teacher the teachers at opal school truly and genuinely love every student they see the brilliance in every child and they are passionate and dedicated to their work um while there i decided that i wanted to take what i had learned back to my community i had always worked in title 1 schools very diverse communities dual language programs um and i wanted um to continue to do that work so thank you to opal school i have learned so much and i have been able to take what i learned there to come back um and shed light um on the fact that we can have a very enriching learning experience that goes beyond skill one that is inspired by joy creativity wonder awe emotional intelligence critical thinking love the arts empathy literacy investigation change making opal school changed my life and it's allowing me to change the lives of others for the better thank you beth i can't hear you sorry forgot the mute thing um so we're going to hear from a parent and their child we're going to hear from seleka gardner who is currently education director at cairo's pdx she was an opal school teacher for a couple of years and her child elijah who joined us in pre-k and graduated fifth grade many years later greetings board members thank you for the opportunity to say a little something about the football school my name is olivia gardner this is my daughter elijah gardner and we first came to know of opal and when elijah was three now and it was a preschool that we were fortunate enough to choose and i recently was writing a list of things you know how you do reflecting on good decisions in my life and i kid you not having elijah go to opal school was one of my best decisions that i've made there were not only did i have the opportunity to have my child be fully seen and fully loved but i as an educator was pushed and challenged in my own practice that has continued to develop the way um that i am now with people and with my staff with the school that i'm now a part of so opal school has a huge place in my heart it is a treasure it is the place where not only children but adults can learn and be pushed and challenged um it's a treasure in this city um like my mom said okay school was my first school i started going there when i was three and you wouldn't be able to tell now but i was really shy it was hard for me to talk i didn't even like looking at people but since being at opal i've been able to talk to people and create connections with people that i don't see a lot of other people who are able to do i feel con i know my cell phone enough to be able to talk to other people and that's because i really believe as an educator that the best gift we can offer children is a better knowledge of self and the acceptance of exactly who you are and the willingness to give that gift into the world and that is core to the way opal school approaches pedagogy and i so appreciate that i my daughter and our entire family have had access to their school and to the wonderful people who work there thank you for your support and for a moment to share our thinking thank you all right i know that earlier we had boshua in the meeting but uh i do see her um and kat all right um so kat let's um give you a chance to speak and so if you can unmute yourself and introduce your name and um give us your hello i am kat lingman mother of an opal school third grader this is our
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fourth year in portland public schools having spent the first three years in our neighborhood school and even though my child did well in that school we were very fortunate to transfer to opal this past fall well since september my child has gained confidence has learned to problem-solve independently has become much stronger at expressing himself both out loud and in writing thanks to opal school's extraordinary effort to support and challenge each kid at their personal level um opal school's low floor high ceiling approach just coupled with their always evolving and engaging experiential teaching methods have really created an environment where my child has blossomed both academically and personally and my child is excited to start school each day and feel a deep connection without the school thanks to how his teachers challenge him and respond to him on his work my child tells me he never wants to leave of law school which i find particularly amazing during a pandemic where he has not been able to meet his class face to face or even see the inside of the school building but watching the giant smiles and the pride on my my kids face lets me know that opal school is a great match for our family and i just want to say thank you for the opportunity to attend this amazing school thank you cat boshua i see you here and i'm hoping that um you can unmute and put yourself on video long enough to give us a little window here we are welcome hi my name is bachua mendoza my last name is spelled m-e-n-d-o-z-a and i use the pronouns she her and hers so i'm the parent of jeshua huerta he's the second grader currently enrolled at opel school and of two other adult children 19 and 22 respectively my two older children were in elementary school when we fled from our home and moved to a different state because of family violence both children were enrolled in a pps elementary they struggled both academically and emotionally my son's first great teacher scolded him for behaviors he was having because of the trauma we experienced my daughter regressed in her studies because she was withdrawn and there were no mental health supports their resolve got them through high school and they're now pursuing a higher education thankfully joshua has always been a shy boy who cares deeply for others at opal this is seen as a virtue and not a flaw academics character and value stand side by side at opal he's able to communicate emotion and is more confident because of it with more funding opal could provide other invaluable opportunities for students and parents such as after-school programs mental health services and lower student-to-teacher ratios and i think it goes without saying i am overly pleased with opal and the results i'm seeing with my son thank you bashua thanks really appreciate that you have time to join us today i know everybody's got busy schedules um so that is the uh um extent of our public comment before we open for questions i wanted to just introduce a few people who are on the call with us we have um david peterson who is the chair of the board of the portland children's museum and also of course the chair of the opel charter school board we have alexa olson who is the chair of the education committee of the board and we have jenny iverson who is the interim executive director the other folks who are on the call who you've probably already seen are mary gage davis who is the teacher administrator for the charter school and tara papandra who is the teacher administrator for the pre-k program so now we're going to turn it back to you great and um i'll just confirm with kara that do we have anyone signed up who wants to offer testimony in opposition to opal schools renewal no okay thank you so much um yeah thank you all for being here thank you for sharing that video which was just such a great representation of what playful inquiry can look like was a joy to dive into your world for a second and i also want to recognize that our student representative to the board of education nathaniel shu
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is on this call nathaniel i'm sorry i didn't call you out before when we were going through the um arthur um application but glad you're here and so to you and director to pass and director bailey do you have any questions of our friends at opal i don't have any questions yeah no no questions here but uh kind of the same observation um and in our our earlier meeting i mean you made it pretty clear why you want to you know you're you're in there's some similarities here between both programs um you know both some really interesting and effective pedagogy both facing space issues um [Music] and being small uh with with a limited budget and you know the constrained rampers and so on um so i'm just doubling down on what i said uh earlier about um having a a bigger picture conversation about our the the district's longer term relationship with charters i will add to that point director bailey's point um that uh we our our board is in the process of revising our policy on sale and leasing of district buildings district assets and right now it's in a 21 day public comment period so i would encourage you all to go to our website and look at that draft policy you'll find it under the tab for the board policy committee and please offer any input you have one of the new provisions in that draft is that we would one of the criteria for negotiating what would be considered less than market rate for one of our facilities is the relationship that the leasing entity has with the district and specifically calls out do they serve our student population are they a charter school do they serve historically underserved students so those are that's all new language and um actually a significant change would be a significant change to our policy so please you know take a close look share it with your advisors that are helping you on your real estate challenges and then provide any feedback if we if we don't have it quite right yet and i just i didn't have a question but i did want to make a comment um so i think a lot of people know my son my older son actually attended opal school and um i was reminded of an incident that happened that i won't share i mean it was all positive um but as i'm looking at the ode um you know the breakdown of the school and i'm noticing that the student population is 80 white and the teacher population or 80 is 90 and this question of where you know there'll probably have to be some capital um some some some fundraising you know um as you're looking to relocate somewhere and i would love to see this pedagogy and this teacher training and this amazing program where it's really needed in east portland and serving kids that don't have access to this i think i shared at our last meeting that i i heard about the program from someone in taiwan actually my stepmother was teaching in taiwan teaching us educators heard about the program 22 years 20 19 years ago and said you might you know look into this in portland so i think it's a great program i'd also like to see um you know a more diverse student population you know i'd like to see the people that came and spoke um and testified about the school um represented at all levels of leadership and in the student body and would would love to see the kids in east portland where there's a higher level of poverty for instance being served with this amazing program thank you we appreciate all those comments and take them to heart and director to pass we agree so thank you yeah and i would also say that in some of the conversations i'm in not necessarily um with with school um funders are looking at diversity as a a way where funding is happening and i've just heard recently just in the last week two um stories of the loss of you know up to four hundred thousand dollars
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worth of funding because the leadership wasn't reflective of um our population in portland and so you know if if you don't want to diversify because it's the right thing to do as a non-profit it would make sense to diversify because it's a it's a way of staying relevant and resilient yeah we have lots of reasons that we would like to diversify and um and we may come back and ask for some more support in um looking at what those different opportunities are um so there's lots of ideas and um not enough traction in in various areas yeah we we hear you um i think it's interesting to look at the possibilities there might be in greater partnership with the preschool programming as well both as we look to expand our preschool offerings potentially as a district and then also um you know we may we may free up be able to free up classrooms and some of our larger or under-enrolled schools for um preschool programs run by others so um there could be some interesting opportunities there too yeah that's as we're starting the you know we're in this big process around redrawing boundaries and converting k-8s to middle schools starting in southeast and as we plan around boundaries and enrollment certainly having room for pre-k is one of the considerations we're looking at all right well any other questions in either direction just want to thank you all thank you to the families um who showed up or thank you for the opal for sharing those those videos it's really incredible to think about the ripple effect that you've had on our educator force throughout our own community and throughout the world that's something that's really special about opal and it's it's nice to get a little insight into that um we i asked roseanne to see if she could get that mural um so that we can we can add it to our art archives for the district if we have permission to uh use it again because it's really incredible um so so i want you to know that that mural actually was in besc um not last year but the year before when we had an opportunity we were one of those schools that was invited to bring um uh art ore and so we brought that's one of three panels and we brought those over and they were up in besc for a while oh it's good because we think they're stunning too yeah i just have to say that that part of the presentation was so remarkable um personally just to see the color and just the ideation that was happening and that was really exciting nathaniel do you have any questions or comments for either opal or arthur uh not at this time no but thanks for asking of course okay we look forward to seeing you all um again i'm sure when we reconvene as a full board and we get to share some of your stories with our board colleagues at that time what's the what's the date on that again i think um let me check is it the 23rd roseanne or kara are you there it's march 9th march 9th coming up okay just one second um all right well that concludes our hearing for today and we will see you all on march 9th stay warm have fun let us know and we'll see y'all


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