2021-03-08 PPS School Board Policy Committee Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-03-08
Time 16:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education's School Policy Committee 3 08 21

00h 00m 00s
today is the uh board policy committee meeting for march 8 2021 um we are um we're gonna try to have a slightly shorter meeting than we have been um we're we're hoping to get everybody out of here by 6 30 um so that people can catch a breath it's uh any anybody who's been paying attention knows that um this is a a very dangerous high stress forward policy committee meeting before march 8th we're trying to be as efficient and effective as we can we are in um we're we're going to have a slightly shorter meeting than we especially involving um we're hoping to everybody brings me to um the first issue that i think we need to talk about today um given the press of business to reopen schools um and in particular in light of the shorter um the the shorter time frame available to do the preparations because of governor brown's announcement last week there has been a request made to this committee as well as other committees board committees um and other work groups that to the extent possible we uh cancel or postpone meetings with staff who are going to be um gonna have to be totally focused on preparing to reopen so there's been a request um that we consider canceling the april the march 29th meeting um i think it's a reasonable request um so i would um i i think we should do it in in order to serve the best interests of students um are there any objections by committee members well it makes a lot of sense given the march 29th date for uh k5 reopening yeah okay so um we're going to uh officially cancel the march 29th policy committee meeting which means that our next meeting will be april 19th okay all right um so let's let's leap right into the um issues at hand um so the first policy we want to talk about today is the uh preservation maintenance and disposition of district real property policy um this policy has been out for a second reading um but uh based on um comments from the community that we received um we're going to be considering some amendments today and uh director brim edwards circulated proposed amendments that amplify the racial equity social justice priorities in the policy and as relates to below market rent made financial hardship arising out of extraordinary circumstances one of several criteria not the threshold criterion um so i think at this point um the julia you um distributed uh some proposed language um could you walk us through that yeah and you just you just did an excellent job of describing uh in laypersons terms uh what the legal changes uh what the changes in the legal the changes in the policy language do um so in both sections um and section d under the sale and also under e the under leases um there's just a closer linkage between this policy and our racial equity and social um justice goals and um it you know and so in many ways provide sort of equal standing for um especially in d under the sale of property of selling property for public purposes or which we all agreed was um a priority or that it substantially advances the district's racial equity and social justice goals and you'll also see that
00h 05m 00s
again in e which is the pps leases and as you um outlined the only other change is um and actually this was something that i think a few versions ago um the language was it's returning language to um occurrence a previous state which was adding this um that in an earlier draft the the list of criteria included um you know a the financial criteria and what we've and then it got then it got moved up to be a sort of gate a gatekeeping criteria and it's been um moved back to um one one of several fact one or several criterias that um the board would use in terms of considering um in terms of making findings and that is it i think there may be no as i say that there's that's it so they're quite limited um that's it and as you mentioned um i i raised this at the last committee meeting and then um we had a discussion about it a brief discussion about it when it was first read and i shared this with the committee members last week so thank you for the consideration okay um any discussion about this language um yeah i'm um right now uh would be opposed to the language unless i can hear more uh what this language does is say uh we're going to potentially subsidize some programs by lowering their rent for example and not on a short term basis but on a longer term basis and i think if we're going to support programs that are not district programs explicitly then we should do that in a transparent manner that is basically open to all and not just programs that we happen to lease to that gives that gives some programs a leg up that uh other deserving programs uh would not have access to because they don't lease from us and it's uh secondly you know that rent money is i believe and and dan and dan can confirm this if we're taking that out of a budget line that should be dedicated to you know ongoing maintenance and capital improvements for that site that that's part of a lot of our lease agreements require that that's going to have that's the wrong budget item to use for that so if we want to go ahead and subsidize or invest in whatever you want to call it uh community programs let's do that but let's do that explicitly and as we've done with a lot of our community partners we've tied that funding to outcomes that advance student achievement so if that's where if we're going to do that let's let's do it through that channel where it's transparent where it's equitable in terms of broad access to a wide array of programs as opposed to a rent subsidy that tends to be not very transparent thanks for raising those issues um you know i would i would say this is going to be very transparent because the board has to make an express set of findings and what could be my assumption is that those express set of findings are in a public meeting with a public action and to me that is a very transparent way of indicating and again we've set up criteria of indicating
00h 10m 00s
and we've spent months developing the criteria indicating um that we have reviewed the partnership and the program and made a determination that it would advance our racial equity and social justice goals uh well no what you're suggesting is i mean what we had before was if there's uh some kind of economic emergency then we would consider short-term subsidies um this says basically any one of our anybody who leases property from us would be open to asking for that and on not just a short-term basis but on a long-term basis right and so so there's this is creating a subsidy program for anybody who leases from us no it creates a program in which we would provide not for anybody we have to make a determination um that is aligned with our racial equity and social justice goals um so it's not for anyone and again i'm going to go back to there's you know several points in which um decision-making points again that are in the public and the first would be the express finding and then the second any sort of lease agreement both would have to be approved by the board you know and you said that before i heard it i understood it but i don't think you're responding to my other point as well which is that we have moved very carefully and deliberately and i think a real positive direction of tying when we support community groups it's tied to some specific outcomes this kind of subsidy again would be open all to apply for but there's no tie to any kind of student related outcomes and if we're truly focused in our as i see our racial justice policy is laser focused on student outcomes to provide a subsidy without that tie is to step backwards in terms of where we've been going yeah i just disagree because um while you can have outcomes i think we've all agreed there's outcomes that further our racial equity and social justice goals that are that are beyond um just uh performance on a map or nest back test is is that what that's not and frankly like for example that's not when we when we uh uh make grants to our partners or through the rfp process it's not tied to a map score but it is tied to outcomes and services provided would you like to suggest some outcomes that you would want to see i i i don't i i feel like that i feel like the board has with this language um the flexibility to um to require that as part of the lease if we feel that's important what why would we do it through a lease arrangement why wouldn't we do it through a granting program because there's all different ways in which we support and work with our partners and at least is one particular way that we do that it's one type of asset that we have you have funding you have partnership dollars you have um facilities one once we do it through a lease it's i mean we already have set up a way to channel money to community programs where there's a whole uh open structure it's an rfp structure we've got accountability built in uh that that hi danny uh that danny has has helped us really move forward on the last couple of years if we do it through a lease it's completely outside of that process i think this is just another way in
00h 15m 00s
which we can support our students who in many cases haven't been equitably served by the district in in a whole host of ways whether it's with uh fte whether it's with playing this for some reason um i i really find that the things that julia has added to this language um for me do bring us to the racial equity place and i feel like our our leases are the place where we can address some of the concerns you've had scott so can you help me understand like what it is for you that's not quite um cohesive or not quite um covering the district's needs in this space uh sorry i thought i was clear let me say it again and if you don't have been clear it's just am i you know understanding so you so we we have programs set up to support our community partners we have a whole rfp process that's open to everybody leases are not open to everybody we have um and there's not only transparency but also accountability built into that process and it's specifically focused on student outcomes if we give programs a break through their leases we under the language you propose there's no connection to student outcomes or the services that they offer in terms of that accountability piece and it's you know it's through it's through dana's shop basically which needs all the money it can get to keep those facilities up-to-date to live up to our end of the leases um the lease agreements so what i'm saying is i mean i think for me the question question is the you know the when if we're using the racial equity lens to make these decisions isn't that the accountability piece well you what do you mean using the racial equity lens in this process yeah well i think that's where the rubber meets the road what specifically do you mean by that yeah and my point is if we are not laser focused on student outcomes then we're not using the lens okay can i um so one thing that occurs to me um let's just sort of run with that concept um in order to establish outcome criteria you would have to set it up so that there would be sufficient time for outcomes to become clear and it's i mean that would add an additional dimension an additional time frame onto this that um that might not actually be in play um and and i wonder about adding i mean it i don't know it just it i think it would be very difficult to operationalize as a as a criterion um in in a real estate transaction and precisely which is why i think real estate is the wrong place to do this the right place is through the kind of partnership programs that we support um that danny oversees because we've got the whole structure set up there i think we're you know this kind of these kind of changes were brought about by the things that kairos you know the letter that kairos wrote to the board that um director broome edwards read at the board meeting and i think for me what was really hard in that letter was this idea that i thought we'd been fair and that we had you know thought really crucially through these real estate pieces um and i think that that's part of this sense that the world is fair that i have as a white woman um and i think in talking with danny and with liz and with others about this and about specifically the things that kairos wrote it's um we do need to keep our focus on students and student outcomes in the district and also we need to think about the fact that we know that we have not served black students well and that kairos is doing something different and that um you know no the um results aren't there from kairos in the way that we would hope but they're also building and working and what does justice and equality look like right like this is all in some ways very subjective and as we think about like what historic
00h 20m 00s
damage has been done and how can we support places that are focusing on um black student excellence and developing those programs it's a bigger it's a bigger question and a bigger undertaking than just um sort of cold policy and it does get tricky as we get into places of real estate but i also think that what better place to really enact our values than in spaces like this so i i had a um i had a really hard time with this at first because i thought we'd done a really good job and then as as i really thought more and more about it and had people ask really difficult questions it became more about like how are we really living into our values and i you know if if we give a release reduction to somebody that could mean two or three teaching positions right um and and so it's hard to think about like how do we balance this and what does equity really look like but i do think we need to have this language in here and i support us i i see what your instincts are director bailey and i really appreciate them to holding us accountable and not just being like um mushy booboo feelings but for me this is really about um equitable justice and about changing the ways we we look at the world um so i'm not hearing any specifics there i'm hearing this this is in line so somebody help me out here i think danny's got some specifics i keep cutting her off sorry danny sorry no i apologize um i apologize i came came late um uh director bailey i really appreciate your questions and i really appreciate everyone's work on this i think what i'd like to just kind of throw out there is that i think that um well you are correct and thank you so much for for being story about our work with our partners around services um i think what we're hearing from uh kairos and what we could potentially hear from other partners like kairos is sort of wanting us to to sort of lean into partnership through the lens of inclusion um and so that sort of and this is the part where the rub gets really hard because i think as an institution uh our inclination is to want to do is to want to do the fix and and so that that i and the dei work that we're trying to do is about sort of having folks who are closest to injustice be the ones who are making the decision and so um i think particularly when we start to think about the um what what this would mean uh for an organization like kairos means that they're they're stronger as an organization they can partner with us better because of the benefit of the lease agreement and so while i i i think that um what i'm hearing you say is wanting some sort of level of accountability what where i go to on accountability particularly when we think about like how we're trying to define partnership particularly with culturally specific organizations is that cooked into their um cooked into their membership in the coalition of communities of color cooked into their bylaws is that they do have a focus that's culturally specific and that their accountability as an organization isn't to um a set of of people who are disconnected from the community but sort of have built in sort of like that that sort of built-in community accountability so i think unlike other organizations a culturally specific organization cannot benefit uh either from public or from private means on behalf of the community without showing results to that and it's a i call it grocery store accountability it's probably i probably shouldn't be so callous about that but i think that that's when when we started to set up lay out the criteria um in the first part is sort of like wanting to make sure that we're thinking about partners in that way and so um i think that maybe bifurcating and thinking about like will we do partnership in in this way over here um this is really kind of like a is is sort of saying like this is how we're we're moving through partnership throughout the organization that we're not compartmentalizing it that we're sort of making it through so i i guess um in terms of the lens that we're putting on this i think this is where the rubber hits the road around inclusion i i do think there's ways that we've defined culturally specific organizations as a as an institution that get to accountability um and i i would just uh i would caution what i what i heard from kairos when i heard from uh other partners and what i consistently hear is that they want to be they want to enter into partnership into deep partnership with pps um and uh that they that the in addition to sort of like being resourced they do offer quite a bit of uh sort of service and and sort of
00h 25m 00s
connection there so um just some food for thought um and i think it's it's um other jurisdictions throughout the country and certainly throughout the metro area have looked at real estate and economic participation as key to those sort of partnership and equity pieces and you know in our plan we also talk about sort of like how do we have equitable equitable investments throughout not just in one part of the organization so danny how is you define the and again not the term you want to use grocery store accountability how does that differ from three or four years ago before we set up that accountability structure in the rfp process of just saying we'll grant you money because you're a culturally specific organization with without the um the accountability structure that you've helped build uh working with our partners i think what uh i think what it is is an extension of that accountability by by sort of by including in the criteria for who who can partner in this way and the types of organizations that the the pull through thread is the culturally specific organization i still think even i stand by our redesign of our services for sure but i i i still stand by the that the the delineation is uh holds up for for real estate transactions you're not making sense to me there i i really don't understand what you just said because you're saying give money without an accountability structure is okay which is what we used to do so why did we go through this whole process to create that structure the redesign of the rsj partnerships was about a different was about aligning services and investment to strategies um and the accountability to the types of organizations was through the definition of culturally specific organizations um and so i think that that pull through is in the criteria and the policy about the types of organizations in which we would consider these types of lease and sale agreements and again my point isn't about not supporting it's how we support through what venue we've already got a venue set up why not use that because then it keeps we're sure that the money is tied to strategies as well as the types of organizations because what you're saying is just types of organizations and not strategies i think that's a really good question i think my perspective and the perspective of what i've heard from other organizations is that the that the that while they well they value and appreciate the partnership on the services side that they they crave a deeper level of partnership throughout right so what what does that mean i think what they're looking for is the district to get closer to that's that place of inclusion right so if we're saying that organizations who are closest to the injustice are leading the solutions uh one way for them to be able to um be able to to be able to do that is by sort of having a strong financial uh strong financial foundation and so the credit or the discount that occurs through the policy is a way to invest differently in the organization um so that we can get closer to inclusion i think the the investment that we make on the service side is a way that we get closer to um racial equity in terms of you know research research driven practices um there's if you know i think that public institutions and i used to work for several um invest in capacity building in in various ways and organizations that are that are implementing their strategies um and so the it this um this you know sort of uh the the policy i think aligns to that type of partnership investment in terms of bolstering their ability to to bring those solutions the other thing i'd like to say about this is the reality is racism runs through real estate policies all across the u.s um and it particularly has here
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in portland and um so yes like real estate's been used to keep people of color out of certain neighborhoods and real estate policy and real estate prices and when i look at this you know the fact that in this policy we're giving a preference in the sales to public entities and like those public entities were like pps and ended an entity that in many ways used um real estate and where we invested and where we didn't um in ways that further divided the community along race and that led to inequalities and i look at you know where the schools have been closed um or just a whole host of issues um real estate has been a weapon in many ways um to against community of communities of color and so you know this is the reverse and that it's using it to um i think advance our priorities and when we first got on the board and our very first board meeting in july of 2017 as the new board we had a group of individuals that came and asked us to give consideration to allow students to return to albina um to the historic black neighborhood and you know that was another way in which i th and the board um spent time working on that so as to the staff and eventually we set aside allocations of slots in schools and to to me that's that was just an another way in which we use the racial equity lens and some sort of um and a policy in which to advance um and address historic inequities in our district so to me real estate is just one other way but it's usually been a you know a weapon used against communities of color um to keep keep either keep them out or keep them in so i to me i think it's like totally appropriate and fits with a lot of the other conversations we've been having about albina and that we had in the last school bond measure well we can agree to disagree and move on from there okay can i maybe make a suggestion that would um i might partially respond to this um a bit different but but i think it's connected um i mean i i hear i hear about the um our stated commitment to um racial equity and social justice that we need to um really follow through on um and and i personally i i think this language is um i i like this new language a lot um what did occur to me as i was reading this um is that uh if we look at the list of criteria d the number d um is uh that the other entity has to be has to have an official connection to the district or it's enrolled students or students expected to enroll in pps um and i think it's important to have to to reinforce the notion that um what we're actually thinking about and talking about are um entities that who may be leasing a building um but who are kind of um engaged in in similar kinds of um educational activities um that would benefit our students um so it occurred to me that perhaps we might want to make this as the threshold criterion um sorry which one d that you have to have an official connection to the in section e sub 1 d yes it's under pps leases it's it's the same list um it's d and um what occurred to me was it is theoretically possible i i don't think this is necessarily the case currently um but it's theoretically possible that we could be leasing a building [Music] to um for example a for-profit organization a for-profit company that isn't actually providing direct services
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to pps students um or potential students um but it you know for whatever reason they may be suffering business losses and they may want to seek um a lower um a lower rate for the lease um i i think that would fall outside of how we generally think about the the res j lens in our mission um so you're saying that the the sort of the gateway would be they'd have to they'd have to pass through that gate and be somehow officially connected to like our mission and our work and then then you'd have to have also the other criteria yeah or then you could have um because these criteria are listed as and or so you don't have to have all of them you can have any of them but it does occur to me that i for me i think a threshold for me would be that um this is an entity that has some official connection to peps or its students um so for example i'm going to throw this out there and uh you know this is this is a hypothetical example um the meek building will at some point be empty when we open the mpg building um and and unify the um uh the alliance program there's a there's a there's an auto shop there you know theoretically um if we we could decide to lease it to a car mechanic um which you know it's better than leaving a building empty but it's not exactly you know presumably fulfilling the educational mission um and i would be much less inclined to give a below market rate lease to something like that um so that's that's my proposal um i'm sorry to bring it to the to the committee so late in the game to be perfectly honest this occurred to me this afternoon when i looked at this um policy for the empty ninth time um anyway sorry i get what you're saying uh rita but i i don't think it's necessary given the endor statements um and i think scott just reflecting more on what you were saying i think you're really trying to hold us accountable to um make sure that we're we're using our resources wisely and having us be really good stewards of what we have and i totally i finally totally get what you're saying because my headache is going away so i have a pollen headache i don't know if anybody else gets those but it makes me a little foggy um but i i really appreciate the perspective you brought julia go ahead i was just going to say that i um to me i think it's um i guess i kind of just um well that's not what that what it said i just kind of assumed that was sort of a threshold filter but we did actually make it like an equal um equal criteria that you could have actually not had that and still have said you met some of the criteria um so i'm i think that's a you know to me a a an adjustment and a recommended change that i think would actually make it stronger okay so i would say i would support i would support your amendment okay um so i think we've got two things on the table here um so let's take them sort of one by one um let's take the uh overall uh now let me let let's do it let's do it in reverse order um do i'd like to take a vote on whether we want to make this um what is now section d um whether we want to put that up above and make it a gateway criterion a threshold criterion for eligibility for below market rent um do we have all in favor say yes yes yes opposed say no
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i said yes but i didn't unmute in time okay okay um opposed scott you haven't voted oh yeah i had a thumbs up i also was commuting sorry i can't see everybody at the same time so okay um and our student rep oh not doesn't vote correct well but but do you have any comments um i mean i totally agree with that i mean i think it's our responsibility as an educational institution to kind to educate students so it makes sense to include that okay okay so um i'm gonna look to liz for a moment um can we just make this adjustment um can we move it up to the previous so to the heading paragraph okay yes okay so um [Applause] so now let's do the over uh all of the language changes in this current draft um as amended um all in favor say yes yes this is to recommend it to the full board to recommend it to the full board yes yes yes not no okay um and any comments from the student representative okay okay so um so i think we have resolved the the language the amendments um and i'm gonna look to liz again but it seems to me that um [Music] these are uh these these amendments have gotten uh quite a lot of public airing at both the committee level and the full board level so um i would request that we be able to to take the vote as a full board to adopt or not the policy without having to go back through a first reading it is that we just the board can make that decision under the policy on policies um we also have drafted we have we we tried to anticipate we knew that julia's amendments were coming um and we have drafted a resolution and we will hustle to get things posted tonight um i think we will circulate to the full committee the draft language and if it needs to be tweaked i think the best place to do that then is at the full meeting we're just gonna run out of time to get it on the agenda for tomorrow but because this has been around for a long time and there are multiple requests waiting to be processed that have been from for many months we we have teed this up with a procedural path that if the board so chooses can vote finally tomorrow i appreciate that streamlining liz but i do have to say one of my favorite things is when we do things like have a third first reading the other thing is i think we i think we should be comfortable with that because um throughout the process um we it's not like we've had a barrage of public comment in in opposition to like for example that text part of the text reader that you said so i mean it'd be one thing if we'd had a bunch of comment against something and then at the last minute put something contrary to it you know that in there into the contrary to the public comment in there so to me i i in some ways and somewhat maybe um we should be cognizant of uh whether our assumptions but the fact that um i think we're on the right track because we haven't had a lot of comment in contrary and to me i would anticipate that your amendment would people would be um that's an intuitive um change so i i mean i would say the the other thing is um at least for this section the criteria we actually have had a consistent set of criteria they've just been you know sort of moved around a little bit at times um so um okay so um i guess liz
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ali and i um we may need to talk offline about any particular language that's going to be required tomorrow at the board meeting prior to voting on this and okay just to i need to know if i need to say stuff and if so we can help with that director more i have one last question real quick sorry go ahead um did we check back in with cairo's pdx if this language addresses their concerns it's been shared with them and they have a response to that sharing julia well i'm sorry um yeah that it seemed to address the concerns that were that that had been that they had raised um as people may recall their letter was not it was not specific to specific language um and so i i did send the the language to them and um after i'd sent it to the committee okay process questions so tomorrow um do we have to mend it at the meeting or okay so there'd be two amendments or one collection of amendments i mean it we can break it out if needed but if there is a i think there also can be a consolidated vote on the amendments that have come out of this meeting scott would yes on one unknown another as a courtesy um i'll i'll just uh voice my concerns and make it clear what i agree with and what i don't okay and if you think through that and you want to handle differently director bailey happy to do yeah i'm good um i can count um and going going to one vote is fine no problem there okay okay good um so um we uh let's move on to the next um so let me ask a housekeeping question um i i'm hoping that we can uh finish this meeting by 6 30 which is half an hour less than our normal seven um so how do we feel about cutting it down to just one break during this meeting i'm sorry having it down to what one break i mean i've usually been giving you know one break every hour that's the only reason i come to these meetings oh yeah i'm sure when i uh when i chair meetings i only have one break every 90 minutes so i'm much meaner than you are so i'm okay with only having one break i don't have any breaks you may recall acceding to the will of the group so anyway okay all right so um let's move on to the next policy which is the formal public complaints policy and um so we're we're returning to this policy um which has been which we've been considering for um a few months i think um and we had paused um in order to uh to get information about uh survey results of um families that had uh experienced the uh complaint process um and we've gotten as a committee um survey response details uh that were anonymized um for uh 2018 on um and the 2014 2014 to 2018 or 2014 to 17 i guess um are are still forthcoming but um the critical thing is that the information we currently have applies to the policy the policy regime that exists under the current policy so if those of you taking notes at home um the board uh
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considered the complaint policy in 2017 and finalized the current policy version in spring of 2018. so the survey results we have net in hand are um apply to the the system as it as it exists under the current policy um and i guess one other well okay so there is a work group that has been um working um sort of off camera um in between the committee meetings um to to hammer out some issues that have emerged and uh the work group members are director brim edwards and director bailey and um i would like to ask them to bring the rest of the committee up to speed on what you've been doing in the interim absolutely i think you're going to get two versions we can't hear you can you hear me now yeah yes hear her just fine frida okay i i think it was my cat hitting my keyboard sorry blame bernie yeah i think um you know scott and i um had a little bit of difference of um opinion we had we had a long committee meeting um and you know i and again i don't think there's anything wrong with having more than one perspective because we all bring sort of different experiences i was i had misread the survey results um the first time around and i actually thought they were way better than um than they actually were and then when i reread the columns it's like is actually pretty shocking about how um you know how unsatisfied people felt about whether they felt heard or they were able to you know be kept informed um of the you know procedures or whether it was fair um whether only the time was reasonable and so that led to a pretty long discussion that of scott and i um about what the relevance of the survey and what what did it mean and from my perspective and i know scott will provide his from my perspective just given these outcomes the natural thing to do was hey we have we we're changing the policy we have some um pretty direct feedback about the um about the the process and there's sort of two things you could do about it you could either do a crosswalk of are we changing things in the policy to address that because we ask them in the context of that or are there going to be process things that um sorry are they going to be process things that are going to be addressed and um i i'm con i'm concerned with moving ahead with the changes in the policy for first and second reading with data like this if we can't say um you know we got feedback and we're taking steps to address it um either again whether it's through the policy or through the this is how we're changing our process so that from my perspective i was like oh new information let's you know take a deeper dive into it because if we ask people's opinion and then just ignore it or what their experience was or appear to ignore it if there's not any sort of link to changes we're making then it's not really it doesn't to me doesn't feel very authentic and it feels like well we're not going to actually change these numbers which are pretty pretty poor in terms of what people feel about our complaint process and the process and the fairness of it so it was it was a good discussion but we kind of had two different points different points of view um so yeah and and and there was overlap also um so now that we have um as of this morning and thanks is mary
00h 55m 00s
still here there you are we have the results the process and also with dates so that we know which ones came in over the last couple of years as opposed to earlier ones um it was a little easier to see or to ask the question was there were there issues that were relevant to the policy as opposed to the enactment of the policy that were brought up in the survey um there's also a question of well um i mean we should treat this as anecdotal and not a you know kind of scientific random sample survey but anecdotes are data [Music] so they're they're a valid piece of data but they are this isn't shouldn't be viewed as this is what complainants gave us feedback this is what some complaints gave us feedback um most of what i saw there uh was issues about how people were treated i wasn't respected nobody listened to me all i got was a crappy email [Music] and it was much more about the implementation of the process as opposed to policy and considering that we're about to start a whole new process and way of staffing complaints starting in the fall um my my question is and again this is a dialogue or a trial log or whatever a whole discussion my question is is there um is there anything in that data that said well the policy really needs to be fixed here [Music] and the the one possible area and it is actually something you brought up julia is there was timeliness of response but i think it would it it looked like what it was is um what do you think was that it looked like a a multiple choice response canned response and so it was hard to understand what exactly was meant by it but let me get the exact wording um oh we also talked about well you're looking looking for the exact reading we also talked about whether and this hadn't occurred to me of whether part of the frustration that people have is that this multi-step process and it was sort of an aha moment for me that like that second review is not required and that you know that would require you know we nail it the first time so you don't get a do-over or a mulligan um but that one of the things that may frustrate people is like we you know the district ruled against you and then when you appeal it like no surprise often it's you get the second ruling and then you go against you and then you go to the to the board so maybe one of the things that would make it less frustrating and expedite it is that you um because that's that's not a requirement by law um but that you have a you know one level of review and then if somebody wants to appeal it it goes to the board but you don't have this multiple staff and also like a staff efficiency standpoint right so timeliness of formal complaint process was the response to better address formal complaints what areas need the most improvement select choice so that was one of the the canned options um so my and again we didn't have this data when we were talking and we got into this um multiple perspectives trying to talk this over um and my question was okay i thought the i thought this was process was about tweaking the policy as opposed to a wholesale look uh and if so to uh to look at eliminating step two to me would be substantive and when we were talking over liz said yeah if we if we can consider that then we should start over with a public process
01h 00m 00s
and that would mean we wouldn't move on this policy until the fall um i think that's what you said or am i uh i i i think there's a choice to be made about whether to do it now or in the fall i'm not sure it's contingent upon the two-step or three-step so you could make you could i think you could decide that you've received input through the survey process that decide to shrink the number of steps and you could do that now without further engagement or you could decide you wanted to wait i mean i think both are principal decisions but so so since the meeting given that we have some at least some specific something to do with the timeliness of the process and again i'm not sure if that was timeliness in staff getting back to you about it which is one issue versus the it's a month okay i'm gonna appeal that's another month okay i'm gonna appeal to the board that's another month and then something happens so it gets dragged out and you know pretty soon your kids out of school um so given that and given um and julie and i think both agreed why are we doing the step two and i think my experience with step two is staff pretty much saying what staff said in step one and very rarely seeing anything of substance added to that um and then i think that's often true i would i would just also say that sometimes what happens in the process i'm not advocating i'm just sharing information is that in the appeal additional information comes out right so it does it does allow for more back and forth sometimes between the families complaining it also adds time and frustration it does both of those things sometimes so i mean does that come out in the first administrative oversight or in the second and if it comes out in the second why couldn't it come out in the first yeah it comes out both i mean i think every round gives you gives more um this is what i really meant and now that you've said this you you i need to clarify that what i meant was something else or something similar i mean it's a human process it's not a judicial process and so it will have those components no matter how many steps you have but in fairness to some of the back and forth again i'm not i'm not advocating in one direction or the other just giving color to the experience yeah i just um to me that's that's more about the quality of the investigation um the i guess the empathy of the investigator um as opposed to oh well maybe we should add a fourth step and also some parts actually division 22 doesn't let you out of course uh i don't think so um so if we can take a step out and if we can act on this now and say hey we got survey feedback it said this our experience is this why not just cut it out now i'm one i'm good when could i have the survey results mary you got uh yeah actually um jackson one of them um there it should be posted a couple um meetings ago was the um the the summary and then what mary sent today was the raw data but if um this should be already posted and i don't know roseanne if you remember what meeting it is it was posted but i can share that i can also send it to you jackson i i already have that i wanted the 2018 present yeah jackson apologies you weren't cc'd on or uh part of the original because those when we surveyed parents i don't think we told them that it was um it might be posted on a website so we did not post that document it's just a disaggregation yeah yeah i i get that part of it um i'm talking about the email today me too because i came today i haven't had a chance to read it so um i appreciate receiving it but i haven't had a chance to do that 4 30 was my first look so yeah so um so i i think uh
01h 05m 00s
i think if we want to we could consider eliminating that second step there's still some other cleanup of language to do number 14 [Music] got some a suggested rewrite for that so can i um so it sounds like we have a couple of things on the table um if if i've heard correctly so one question is um do we are we considering this round um addressing it because if you remember way back when this first came to the committee because staff had wanted some um pretty discreet technical fixes um that were relatively minor um in the larger scheme of things but significant significant enough that staff over the last couple of years has noticed that you know these things needed to be different um so there's that um since we were looking at the policy anyway you know our discussions have gotten you know progressively broader um and and i think what's what's being suggested right now is um potentially opening it up opening the discussion up significantly more than we had anticipated to include um maybe changing the changing the process by cutting out one third of the steps which is pretty significant and i think it's also important to note as i understand it staff have um concluded long since concluded that the um implementation of the policy um the process that is experienced by families um needed some improvement and that they have been working on designing those improvements over the last i don't know year six months however long it's been and that um a redesigned process uh is scheduled to be implemented in the fall do i have the the time frame right okay so um i think one of the one of the questions that the data we have the survey data um poses is um how much of the unhappiness that has been expressed is related to the policy itself as opposed to the implementation of the policy um so are we talking about um needing to substantially revamp the the policy language and the structure of the complaint process that's codified in the policy or is this potentially something that um could be addressed um in in this redesigned implementation process because if it's process we may not need to do the substantial policy review um we may still want to but that's a separate question um so it seems to me we we've got some threshold questions here um do we want to how urgent is it that the um initial technical fixes that were brought to the board um actually happen this year um i don't i don't think there is not that they are of that level of urgency okay we talked about that in our um work group uh meeting and the the sense was that they were things that um in in the interim we could there that there's the authority to go ahead and go ahead and do it's just this the sense of they'd be helpful
01h 10m 00s
to have in policy like whenever the policy has changed i mean my my view is now that we surveyed everybody um and we i think instead of revisiting like should we have surveyed people what questions do we ask that sort of thing um you know like should have we shared the policy changes with them should we have shared the policy with them um that that sort of water under the bridge um but that now that we do have some data i think it's better to wait versus moving ahead with a policy that could be perceived as they're just ignoring like what we told them because they didn't make any changes so it really seems like whatever those things that staff are thinking need to be changed really should travel as a complementary um package of like here's what we've heard and based on that here you know based on what we've heard from both participants and from the staff side here are like both a package of policy changes and process changes i do i do think we've headed down a path of framing the initial work as simply staff technical fixes and i think the draft you have before that however that started is far more than that it included rewriting a preamble that came at the committee's request let me not matter here or there but the the the pending amendments here have come from a lot of sources and represents changes that go in both directions i think in terms of some benefit i mean just just to clarify what i meant i don't know what i actually said at this point but what i meant was what we have here the current draft is um it includes quite quite a few changes um none of the changes address the the essential structure of the complaint process so we still have three steps but but aside from that we we've made quite a few changes some of which are more significant than others um but some of them i think kind of are significant um but i just want to remind everybody that the thing that brought this policy to this committee in i don't know august i guess um whatever it was many months ago was that staff had identified some [Music] some fixes that um that they thought were important to make um and then once we once we started looking at the policy then you know open the door to all kinds of other things um so my question was you know if we if we pause on this is that going to cause problems because we haven't addressed the fixes that were the the the precipitating event that brought this before the committee i i don't think it brings to a great we can continue to process formal complaints as they come in under the existing policy okay okay so um so i guess the question is um well before i get to the question um if we decide to to engage in more um public engagement however that would look or if and or um we decide to take another look at the structure of the complaint process um i think the committee should be aware that that means we would we would be tabling this policy more than likely for the duration of this academic year and probably would not be able to continue any additional work until probably the fall so i mean i think to me if you if we can't make a case that we've addressed some of these issues with this data i i think it's better i think it's better to wait and i actually think also we one thing we could do is like hey we have data and if staff do believe there's things that can be changed that would address this it's like great let's we've got a baseline let's get get the things that don't require any sort of policy change
01h 15m 00s
happening to and so when we go back to the policy that we're able to say look at these look here's the things that we talked about that we're changing in practice um and here's you know we believe this will address a crosswalk to these issues that are raised i mean here's like one of them is like the length of time it took to receive a decision was reasonable 74 strongly or somewhat disagree now one of the things i do think is that when we change the policy and made it compliant with state law is like actually by state law our decisions are timely right like we're not running through a bunch of deadlines but clearly what state law thinks is time we can't let our complainants think is timely so maybe part of the process is to explain like at the very beginning like you are entering a formal process you know here's under a normal time frame you're going to get an answer in three months and so all of a sudden the response is it was a timely response because they told me it was going to be three months and that's what it was but right now like i say i'm somewhat ironic because i don't think any of our decisions have been late but people must not know what the time frame is and so it doesn't seem timely but it's like hey if you want an answer in two weeks don't get involved in this process sorry i was gonna say liz when someone makes a formal complaint there's an urgency there there's a conflict an issue they want resolved so they'd like it resolved sooner or later than later so i think that that's 100 correct julia sorry let's go ahead oh i'm just trying to tie that feedback to the policy right so the policy does maybe not in a summary fashion at the front end which may be different than outside the policy communications but the policy does say here's what how long it will take and i think the ad does as well so that so the 90 days is set out in there i what i think i hear you describing but i want to make sure i'm not presuming is that that's a change in a communication and an experience issue not necessarily a policy issue and then i think what i hear you saying is you don't want to make any policy changes until the experience work has been done that is that accurate or not because i'm just saying i'm i'm just saying if the reality is like we don't have time to go back and do a bunch more work on the on the policy right now that doesn't mean two community agents or i don't know what they're formulating another title either is that you can't be hired or we couldn't do something like when you file a complaint to say you follow your plan on this day under our under state law and the formal complaint process you may not get a decision until you know march 31st totally great so you have to go back to the complaint policy and like yeah we're not going to stop the hiring process for these positions we are not going to stop restructuring when the chief of staff position is filled and figuring out where we are not going to stop those those things um but what i'm trying to do is connect those change things to the policy language and figuring out where the crosswalk is and how translating what i'm hearing from the committee members about the timing on that let me let me bring up another issue so if if what i mean changes are going to be happening right um people are being positions have been created people are being hired there's a recognition that you know the the way complaints have been processed could be improved and you know planning has gone on um it will presumably um take a fair amount of time for any of those changes to um to actually play out so if what you're thinking um you collectively the board um the committee um you know if you're thinking that we should hold off on making any changes to the policy until we get more data you're not talking about next fall you're talking about a year from next fall are you willing to put off making any changes in the policy for almost a year and a half or put another way are the changes that are represented by this draft um [Music] are they better than just keeping the current policy um for the you know for the next year year and a half
01h 20m 00s
because you can't you know a year and a half from now the board you know a future policy committee uh can take another look at this um policy and make changes then so you're coming kind of coming down you're summarizing our meeting the other day um yeah exactly where i where i felt that where i kind of came is like ranked minds or pardon is this a great minds think alike thing or is this crazy minds think alike just no i think people who've been deep into the process and like see like the there's there's you know pluses and minuses with each of the yeah the paths forward so can i um so let me suggest a path forward um and then you guys can shoot it down let's say that the feedback we got through the survey qualifies as sufficient for us to say okay step two gone um before doing that i would want to get some feedback from the people who have been involved in that uh ju just to or or maybe liz and mary are deep enough to say yeah you know we can go either way and that way's as good as any or maybe even uh yeah that might be an improvement in the process but i'm not hearing either of you for example say no no no no no no um so we could make that tweak in this process right now oh well tweak make that major change in the process right now clean up a little bit more of the language that needs to be cleaned up and we're good to go right now job done um to address julia's point hey we listened to we listed the feedback and saw this will help with timeliness or at least one part of timeliness and our administration has listened to the feedback and and is saying we're rolling out all these different ways of doing things you mean take remove the step two yeah room so remove step two uh finish finish tweaking the language and let's get this thing done okay okay i'm gonna i'm gonna push back a little and and and just to be clear i'm completely agnostic on this i i can be completely persuaded either way um but let me just clear this out obviously i didn't persuade you so no you didn't um because what occurs to me is you know it's now march 8th um we're running out of daylight for the school year and um in order to actually bring this policy you know given the way we work nothing happens overnight um so we would have to be getting input from staff about what the implications of getting rid of step two in this process would be and the staff who would have to be responding to that information request are precisely the staff who are going to be most overwhelmed by the current reality i mean we're talking about you're going to have to reach out to principals we're going to have to reach out to the senior direct the area directors we're going to have to be re you know i mean if we're really going to do this because this is not an insignificant change it's not it's not principles it's it's senior directors they're the ones who do the step two correct it really depends i mean they they do step one or step two sometimes depending on the complaint okay but if you look at step two it's i can't think of a time when it wasn't a senior you know cabinet member yes slt generally does the step two right not senior director so uh rita i would argue that by eliminating that step two we're saving them time and then oh my god do i have to go through this again i would like to hear that from staff not our speculation to me the bigger question is i'm going to assume and uh you're right reader we should check with staff but i'm going to assume the party we should really check with
01h 25m 00s
are like um like the complainants versus this because it's in some ways removing sort of one uh ability to appeal you know taking a layer out now i would think you would remove some frustration but like i mean i'm just making that assumption i mean because people do always have that people do always have i believe the right to go straight to ode at a certain point anyway on certain types of claims but if through the division 22 process they have to generally start at the district and when they exhaust they get to the final decision as defined within those parameters then they go to od the final decision maker is the board as defined in our policy it need not be okay because just along that thread so um if somebody like their original objective is to go to ode because that's an allowed path i mean in some ways we're torturing everybody by making them go through the three steps um because it's just like i'm just doing this so i can get my ticket to go to ode very in the last three years very few have gone to ode that that generally that the process concludes at some step in the internal process we wear them down julia we wear them down hey i've been part of the process so we constructively resolve issues in an appropriate manner right so um i mean julia it's it's not a bad question to ask people hey how was that step two but looking at at the survey responses at least um they were almost across the board cynical badly burned um i put my kid in a private school because i just couldn't take it anymore are you ready for the survey what you're reading from the survey you're just making that up no i'm reading from the survey they'll ask column v is is uh free form response um and it's it's they're they are not happy campers um there may be happy campers out there uh they just didn't respond to the survey but you know we we could go through and see was there anything that reached a step two where there was a happy ending uh okay um we're gonna have to make a decision one way or the other are we gonna are we gonna punch are we gonna she froze yeah is that a comment geez that's a that's a bad luck well i think she was calling us to decide if we're gonna punt on this you know are we gonna take scott's suggestion or are we going to um just wait and i think that's the matter before us right so sorry my internet is yeah you just froze so that's okay yeah i've been i've been frozen off and on for the last 10 minutes um so okay so so what are we doing but when we do do a straw poll act sooner versus act later and later dinner i can live with either one but i can do sooner or later but either one has to be accompanied by some sort of rational here's what we did about this people think we can't do that until later than i'm a later vote but it's it's sort of not necessarily a timing issue it's more of a how do we articulate a here's how we're responding to feedback and it could be a whole host of things we discussed today so i i could live with either but the if it's if it's sooner it also needs to be accompanied by yeah yeah if that involves staff that can't be sooner so and i think it does so i just can't staff can't make that commitment given what they're facing right now with the rest of the school year i don't know i i just have the the feeling that if i called up keeley and said would you mind getting rid of that step she'd say
01h 30m 00s
oh god please get rid of it end of conversation but maybe i'm wrong maybe it would be oh god you know we need to meet as a senior leadership team to discuss that if it's but i don't get that impression but i think i'll put a lot more pressure on the first responder because the next appeal goes right to the board and that's not a bad thing because i like we should land things i think it's a good thing and and you know why if there isn't that pressure then we're going to end up with a step to appeal and that's more time and it's uh oh my god you know let's anyway but if y'all want to wait but uh i i just have the feeling we could just do this and and get it done and and get it and tee it up but okay it's what that is to get done and you're talking about a narrow piece and i think julia's talking about broader pieces so and so that's the my response is to the broader body of work that she wants to come through together and you're talking about a more narrow scope work i think i want to clarify my response um why i had that distinction i mean the only thing at all in that survey that was relevant to the policy was the timeliness piece um and i thought julia what julia said let's make this one change responded to that and so i thought that would be it good done but again i'll i'll stop we got work to do if you want to wait we'll wait that at some point it's like let's just get it done i think we've awesome okay okay i'm sort of there i'm i've been going in and out um i've been catching bits and pieces i think what i heard is a consensus that we probably want to ask some more questions um and and therefore that would given the press of other business we that probably means we need to wait is that did i get the sense of the room have we heard from the student representative no we have not jackson um i honestly don't really care that much um surprisingly yeah um i i think it's worth considering the um step two appeal getting removed i'm a little confused about what the sooner or later i think we might be a little different about that but um i think just pushing it back would be fine yeah okay thank you so um um so i think given the realities um we just need to acknowledge that it under the current circumstances i think it's highly likely that if we table this if we pause this now we're we're we're talking about we're going to return to this next fall so what i'm going to report back to slt is that when the new structure is in place and the positions have been hired and there and we are through the school year that putting together a summary for this committee of the crosswalk between the survey results and staff action you will have that to present along with whatever policy changes you want to make i think that's what i've heard and that's much of julia's perspective that's broader than what scott said but i think that's what has just been articulated yeah and i think it's not that you can't do some other things like put in the first response back like here's here's how long the process takes um so i mean i i wouldn't wait i'm just looking at some of these other things um julie i'm not suggesting that we don't make continuous improvement along the way what i heard you say is the threshold you you for your perspective the committee's threshold is a staff crosswalk of activities and improvements undertaken that crosswalk to the com the survey results that's the body of work along with hiring and getting this into the new chief of staff structure or wherever it's going to go it's in a temporary spot right now that collection of things cannot happen before the end of the school year their continuous improvement can always happen and we can continue to make those
01h 35m 00s
incremental improvements but we can't deliver to you a summary crosswalk of all the things until after the school year am i clear i'm not trying to distinguish between different points of view and different strands within some points of view not sure i'm doing a very good job okay so i'm going to defer a little because i was hearing bits and pieces but that sounds like what i thought i heard so julia if i'm wrong i'm not i'm trying to summarize not influence harry potter where uh rita you're on what is that station number one that you just all of a sudden disappear into the into the train station oh two and a half or eleven and a half whatever it is three quarters nine and forty chords thank you thank you you all are a disgrace to harry potter fans glad i was muted because suddenly my itunes started playing okay all right so um so let's uh we got to move on um so i think i think the decision is we're going to pause this um we will wait to hear back from um we'll wait to get the feedback from staff and then this will probably be kicked to the next generation of the school board for some decision making okay okay all right um so i would suggest that we take a break here um and maybe at some point my internet will calm down um so how about if we make it so it's 5 43 how about we give it seven minutes and meet back here at 5 50. okay all right thank you let's move on to uh the policy that formerly was known as computer use and now we're contemplating changing the title to responsible technology use so my understanding is dr travis pocky um is is going to walk us through the changes right okay um so let me see if i can present this real quick all right and can you see my screen excellent all right um just kind of wanted to go quickly over what the what the changes are um so responsible the responsible use policy replaces the computer use policy and it's significant in terms of wording but it doesn't really reflect a lot of operational change that these are mostly things that we're doing today there's there really isn't a whole lot of additions as much as there are subtractions from the old policy so while it may be some a bit of semantics we're focused on creating a responsible use policy this move mimics a lot of the changes made by our peers in the council of great city schools that moves away from a list of penalties and restrictions and more towards a code of conduct and we really want this to serve as the framework for a series of administrative directives that we can use to address technology and system changes more rapidly than just a revision of policy so why are we focused on this change now [Music] the policy was written at a time when there was a lot of assumptions made the first assumption was that pps owned computers were only issued to staff student computer use was in labs or via computer carts information and the services that would be accessed via those computers would be on the pps network and that the policy should encompass penalties and specific technologies so this change also acknowledges that computer use is no longer so much as a tool but is a bit of a societal foundation and as such we need to meet our legal obligations and ensure that our services are available for our staff students and families and that those tools are not used or abused to harm others so in what was removed um the when it was authored it looked to that policy as a shield that could be used to direct the activity of technology use and implementation it also looked at to technology as a scarce resource since then we've moved towards programs where students have access to
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computing resources accounts and other tools meanwhile other districts have moved towards policies that more reflect that changing technology landscape there's been a strong emphasis on computer use that benefited academic purpose and digital citizenship in updating our policy we remove things like definitions of i.t terms the policy should be in accessible language but also refer to technology use at a higher level leaving the specific systems and platforms for placement and administrative directives we also removed guidance from specific laws and what that prevents is the need to update the policy every time a new law is introduced or modified um system names were removed because those systems changed at a speed that are really difficult for us to keep up with and policy change just can't keep up with and violations were removed from the policy itself it was kind of a strange inclusion when it was first drafted but we have policies for staff violations we have policies for student violations we're simply just going to refer out to those policies rather than try and repeat that here another thing we removed was i.t governance procedures so there's a lot of things that were used in that policy that kind of tried to enforce uh technical controls where we really do have the technical means to do that today rather than try and force that via a policy so things like that we tried to influence in the past were bring your own device policies that really shouldn't be handled that way we do have the ability to control what devices are on our network technically so we don't need to put a policy in place for that what was added so the vision for this new policy is to serve as that framework like i mentioned but we want to make sure that that's more agile to do any of that though we need to be guided by a purpose so the purpose is we want to provide technology with the idea that students are at the center so we do so for the enhancement of learning and productivity we also have a focus on equity and inclusive learning and ensure that our distributions prioritize our typically underserved communities and we also want to focus all of our activity on on ensuring student safety responsible deployment and use is a section that guides us towards the creation of administrative directives for guidelines on acceptable use that include things like passwords and security bring your own device and others and the next section focuses on fostering the safety and security of our users the first carries over from previous policies by implication but we're making it very succinct here where much like in the physical environment of a desk drawer or locker on pps systems you should have no expectation of privacy because those systems are monitored the next is cyber bullying and anti-harassment which is a call out to the existing policy another is content filtering software so we're required by law to filter pornography and harmful content which is hate speech gambling violence and others and we are releasing a tool which will also allow parents to filter out things that they may consider as wasting their students time like youtube or restricting the number of hours of use of a pps tool and that'll be out with our one-to-one rollout and the last element refers to a shared approach in that we all have a part to play in ensuring the state safety of our safety and security of our users both student students and staff so our community engagement plan is largely tbd we will be work definitely working to seek the input of principals and teachers uh we'll also be looking to uh and by the way uh apologies for the typo that had gone into the uh board submission but i did get it corrected here so uh mckinney bento sorry about that we'll be looking to uh students in the typically underserved communities also looking to mckinney vento and title one as well as parent surveys and incorporating that feedback as well and uh we've also consulted with nathaniel shu as a part of this for a student perspective and will be seeking the input of the district student council and that was all i had i had one comment about um the technology resources and the no expectation of privacy and i remember last year on the policy committee when we were talking about um i think it was our law enforcement policy um i believe that was i can't remember where it came up but um it was the search and seizure search and seizure yes it was the search and seizure policy it was a shock to the students that were on the committee at that point to learn that you know the wi-fi at school is monitored so if they're on the wi-fi and they're texting their friends or sending emails that that can be observed by pps um and so i just think as this i think it's really appropriate that
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it's in this policy and spelled out so clearly i think the continued conversation on something maxine had talked about when she was the student rep was a student um student like rights and and to remind students that that is not private um when they are on the using the district technology but i really appreciate that it's in this policy absolutely and we will be actually moving to place disclaimers on our login banners that do remind students of that as well so i actually had a question about this section as well but from a little bit different standpoint um so when i read it's like yeah but what about privileged information student records employments or health related issues are we saying to people like you send something by email and like you don't have any right to expect privacy say you write something about a health related issue like are you supposed to pick up the phone and call like to me it just seems like that's that's not a blanket you know the way i would approach it is from the perspective of um we are we are not necessarily going to go looking for private information but in the course of doing our jobs and the systems just by nature capture this information and it is entirely possible that we would run across something that you would rather not be there so yeah and there are other laws that we that would uh prohibit the dissemination of information for example um there's a lot of information that comes through the system about students but ferpa um prevents that information from going out anywhere without this specific permission of a parent so and the same goes for client privileged information um uh you know things like that i think you want to think about what's the business of the district so when when we have attorney client communications from district council inside the system to district clients that is still very much protected by the attorney client privilege but if i am consulting with my own private attorney and i do that on the district website which would not be a good idea i may have put that at risk so protected information can come within the confines of the district's operations and it has a lot of protections and if it's an individual who is using the system for personal use it probably has far fewer protections yeah i would just i think we should at least acknowledge that there's like places where people can expect privacy because otherwise like i would never send like an email about my child if there was some issue if i read this like hey you have no expectation of privacy even though like well what about hipaa it's the it's the it's the fact that the because this is a district server all of this information is going through there it's it's and again it's a separate piece of what is going to be disseminated or possibly disseminated but if you are if you are using the district server and i'm using the wrong technology the words and the worst person will be talking about tech stuff so i'm gonna let you know what you mean okay excellent old school you know when you turn on the google whatever um but we are required by law to monitor everything it's not that it's disseminated but under um cipa and coppa we are required to look at everything and so that's where the that expectation of privacy doesn't mean we're going to release it it means that the depart travis's department is looking at every er or has the capability it's not that they are because there's too much information flowing through but that they have the capability so i i think uh when you say there's no expectation of privacy that could be interpreted as it's public yeah to me this like it's so a refinement can i finish so a refinement of that to say it's subject to [Music] viewing by district staff or you know something along those lines to say no it's not that it's going to go out on our facebook site but any anything that happens through the district's network is monitored and may be viewed and i'm not sure what view means again uh by i.t staff who are then sworn to secrecy around you know ferpa and hipaa and all that stuff um there are public public records
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requests are in play here so some of this is only subject to review in the normal course by district staff who has protocols and duties and gets fired if they don't adhere to those but but there also are i mean emails that are pulled in public records requests searches they are rarely emails um from students about their educational records right but but i just we see all sorts so i don't want to over i don't want to over minimize the staff it's not just staff doing their jobs who may run across and monitor email no i mean go ahead scott so yeah i i think we we should define more clearly who has access to what under what conditions that it's not strictly private we have access to all of it however i mean that's the reality is there is we there is access to all of the information that comes through our system right so i uh unfortunately this is complex and i think we need to address the complexity um for people to understand and then to feel secure that oh i i can put this in an email and i know if i say something sensitive about my student that it's not going to be publicly broadcast it will be protected from a public records request for example and so on but i i think given those realities i think we need to be pretty clear and specific about how this plays out yeah i agree because i you know i maybe this was written like with a um to be directed at students but i was thinking of cases where and this is like seems very real to me like somebody could have a like um a racial discrimination complaint about their supervisor and share it or a board member could send something sensitive to the superintendent and like i if i send something to superintendent i'm not expecting a bunch of other people to read it and use it somewhere else so like should i have no expectation of privacy is it a public record yes in theory um that's the case but i also think like okay i think information can be misused and i think there should be some because not everybody has access to look at everybody's mail so very few people do very few people do thank you but but it's we you know we had a lot of discussions around this with nathaniel as well it seemed to us to be more prudent to say you have no expectation of privacy so that you then as the user would be more prudent in looking at do i do i send that that personal email through my system when and we have we have found this in you know sometimes there are public records requests that are rather broad we had one two years ago where it was over 35 000 emails many of which you know you know people were expressing personal opinions about things and probably wished you know if they hadn't um but there are they've done it on the public's system and so we thought it was more prudent to say you don't have an expectation in the hopes that if you were thinking you know to be careful because that's it's also on the the responsibility of the person using the system well then there needs to be some sort of mechanism where i mean i just view and hey i mean i'll just say i i don't want everybody looking at my email and if somebody has sent me something with a complaint about retaliation or some something else like i don't think that i guess if if somebody's gonna be looking at it i wanna know like who it is and what criteria they would be passing along besides hey this looks interesting and i'm not saying that nothing that happens but i'm just saying this policy doesn't is like a wide open like no guidelines see i don't i i feel like this policy follows the law law about what it is to be a public institution and to use these resources and i feel like you know i was very clear that when i got elected any email i sent or any text was public basically if someone asked to look at it so it's i understand what you're saying about you don't want things about
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retaliation or very sensitive topics to get out but i think that that's the exception rather than the rule and we have systems in place other laws that prevent that my question what are the systems that's what i want to know because i think mary and liz just outlined those by talking about ferpa and um some of the hipaa and some of those other pieces my question for the doctor um is it packy pocky yeah yes sorry is pocky is um are we monitoring um emails and texts and those kind of things for you know i'm thinking about like um homeland security for like um chatter about like school shootings or anything like that are we doing any proactive monitoring or is it all just um when a publix records request comes forward that's when emails are monitored only only when those records requests come forward are we monitoring now there are capabilities within our current systems to look for sentiment analysis something that may indicate harm or threats of harm we do not have any of those enabled we parta what will be part of the administrative directive and this was put together um about a year and a half or so ago um if if there is for example uh somebody has information about a threat of being made then there is a process so it can't be anybody you have to get approval on high to be able to look into a specific set of emails to see if there is it's an actual threat if it's an actual threat to a school then and that sort of triggers our threat assessment one example one thing that i think myself and maybe other students would find helpful is like under what circumstances or how or i guess it's hard to phrase but like when is the data subject to getting collected or tracked because i mean like just an example if i have a window open and i'm signed into my pbs account if i open a new window under my personal account and i'm doing stuff in there is that getting tracked um on your personal device yes no if you're not using this pps server if you're not using pps hardware or accounts i i am not able to track you so if you're on the wi-fi if you if you're on your phone on the wi-fi that they can't you can't track anything except for the pps email um no if that's using the wi-fi so that's that's using a different type of tracking but that is also monitored so all of our outbound traffic is logged that the contents of it is usually encrypted and we don't have any ability to see that nor are we trying to that's that's really a lot of the these systems are maintaining logs for troubleshooting and diagnostics they're not necessarily to to monitor for the activity or or what the user is is attempting to do at that time i just wanted to be clear about that about what it what if you're on the wi-fi at school it's a little different than if you're at home on your personal device on other tabs while your email's open but if you're at school on your personal device with other tabs open there is some sort of record of that although it is encrypted so i i would support that we be more specific about when we're gonna monitor because to me like i'm just uncomfortable with the district may monitor intercept and review without further notice having been on like the other side of the district on some issues not when i was a board member like i and just some of the things i've been through as a board member like who is the district and what are they monitoring like with what bias what are they looking for i mean i i think we should be more specific because to me it looks like there could just be a major fishing expedition i'm sorry some of the monitoring is required by both state and federal law so we are and that's for this uh it's the oh travis what does sipa stand for uh children's internet protection act thank you so we are required to do a certain amount um by and that's both federal and state law um just go ahead travis oh one one of the other pieces to keep in mind also is that some of that monitoring is just inherent in the nature of how these systems operate so i'm only going to know that you've got a virus on your machine if i have something on your machine monitoring for a virus now if i go to service that machine and i find content on there that i didn't want to find or that you didn't want me to find i may have to take action on it but i was certainly wasn't looking for it i was just monitoring for the presence of a virus so i i would like us to take your feedback
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and return with some other examples some additional legal analysis we are getting close to creating a tangled web of process here that could have unintended consequences i hear the concerns but i think we need to bring back some additional information and recommendations incorporating what we've heard and i would just like to say that i fundamentally disagree with julia on this one i think it the i like the language as it is very clear there is no expectation of privacy and i think if you're using district email or district processes you just need to know that um and that there are other ways to communicate right this is not saying there's no way to have these more private conversations it's just not because of the legal ramifications of the use of this technology there is no expectation of privacy so if that helps in your analysis and coming back with new language there's that i'm happy to come up with a lot of legal examples from my first three years on the board of places where i i could see it's if it's misused could be problematic um i have another issue about the language issue but just question do we want to use digital citizenship as citizenship generally is being not um used as often in um in policies and laws uh yes i mean that issue came up there is a document that's already called that that's why it was referred to it's uh when we moved to cdl a document was created called digital citizenship i i think there was some conversation about changing that name uh so we'll we'll look um i i think we've probably covered most of the critical areas um for staff to wrestle with um can i make one request liz um when you come back with um mended language or any recommendations that you have and legal analysis could you also include um some like comparables could you give us some information about what comparable agencies and organizations are are doing around this stuff um because i i mean as as a state employee it was made crystal clear that if we were using a state state system or the state email or really state anything um there was no expectation of privacy um we we can provide comparator policies okay thank you yeah and and i i agree with i think the intent here uh which is to say yeah you don't have an expectation of privacy i just want to see some ands one of the ends being we're not on a fishing expedition here that doesn't happen this kind of monitoring only happens in from the district point of view if under special circumstances i.e a potential threat and yeah there's protection for hipaa and you know so if you put something in an email that is protected it's not going to be released to the public or if that if that's true then we should state that specifically as i mentioned earlier we we were going to focus a lot of that more procedural stuff in the administrative directive including for example when i mentioned the threat assessment right so that even for students it can't be that uh there needs to be a higher level of approval before anybody is going to go into anyone's email right because it's a so um that was that along with some other pieces of what it looks like as it rolls out we thought would be better served in the administrative directive again because of uh flexibility but this is a public document and if all the public sees is um you have no privacy with without any kind of explanation it'll um like we're we're the nsa
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and we're listening to every no i mean i mean serious and and that's all that's i just want us to make clear we're not the nsa yeah i think i think liz's comment when jude was trying to move us along that you know staff has heard this they've heard our concerns and our opinions and they'll bring us something back um in the next iteration of language is a good place to go from here can i just throw in anonymous complaints in your thinking you don't answer now but like the staff mix okay we we are yes i i i yes and i want to think about that some more and i also want to put the context of all that we do is not defined by this policy in fact there are significant constraints and expectations that come from public records laws from ferpa from due process rights i mean it is not as if it's the wild wild west because it's not stated here in this policy we have significant constraints we also have significant protections in operations to run so our goal in taking that back is to try to find that balance so that when people looking at they understand if i want to send an information i want to send an email to my teach my students teacher my child's teacher about concerns about their iep i i need to know that that is protected and i think that's a fair call out it's also true that if the teacher forwards that email about an iep to a paraeducator and says something about it that's also protected by ferpa but it will not be protected from a records request from the parent's attorney six months later when there's a dispute about the iep right so we're just it's it's to come up with they're just a lot of different paths that we want to go down and we don't want to give anyone the wrong impression either so we want to be clear so that's why my head is spinning with how do we do that and we do think this is our job so we're going to go do that and come back and give you some options great okay thank you um so we eagerly await um i just just so we know uh what where how long we're going to be awaiting um do you anticipate being able to come back with new language six weeks from now yes okay okay and i was closing comment um we're so rude sometimes uh dr pocky and staff thank you for your work on this thank you for dragging us into the 20th century um so totally totally appreciate that when i was looking at the red line and saw oh the old policy is completely gone um i i do want to call out uh thank you travis and mary and nathaniel and one of our outside counsel and some other i mean there are a lot of people thinking about what is the modern state of this look like um and i'm not one of them so i'm here you know the back end thinking with you these guys are the ones who've done all the work clearly has been a ton of work so thank you so much for that and for really trying to think about how we can i love that it's moving from the punitive to this how can we help support a culture of um respect and responsibility so thank you so much for just i love when you know our policies begin to transition to these values we have about sort of respecting students and respecting staff and helping um helping coach people to success rather than a list of don'ts so thank you for that incredible hard work you've all done on this policy thank you for your time thank you um so we will move on now to public comment we have kara haskey here thank you my name is kara haskey h-a-s-k-e-y my pronouns are she her i am here tonight on behalf of a group of public school advocates that includes parents and teachers who believe our school should be fully staffed in an equitable manner we realize that there are many issues the district and board are currently working to address but the discussion about the true impact of policy 7.10.30-p has been delayed for far too long it is wrong to continue delaying what we have heard in our many meetings with ptas local school foundation leaders administrators and teachers is widespread support for more equitable funding that fully staffs all schools our community is ready for change we have met with all but one of the pbs board members and all have agreed that now is the time to align our practices with our stated values so in my written comments on behalf of our advocacy group i included a recommended policy change to eliminate the practice of paying for public school fte with private funding
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we respectfully request that this be placed on the agenda at the next policy committee meeting thank you for your consideration thank you okay thank you excuse me that you sent your emails your statement yes i just did before i joined the meeting okay great thanks yes okay thank you um ms bradshaw do we have any additional public on it no that concludes you saying that okay all right um so it is now 6 24. um our goal was to end by 6 30. we've um achieved our goal with six minutes to spare um so more i have another uh topic to bring up um yes well you can do it six weeks from now how's that so um okay so uh unless there's some burning issue that we need to deal with um i'm going to give you back six minutes and thank you all for um another lively and productive meeting and um just to remind you our next meeting will be april 19th


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