2021-03-18 PPS School Board Special Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-03-18
Time 18:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type special
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: Special Meeting of the Board of Education, March 18, 2021

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good evening everybody this special board meeting of the board of education for march 18 2021 is called to order for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on has been posted on the pps website under the board and meeting tabs this meeting is being streamed live on pps tv services website and on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times welcome to tonight's special meeting in the absence of chair lowry who is away for a personal obligation i will be sharing tonight's meeting she will be however calling to cast her vote on the matter before us today and actually she's joining us on video right now early monday morning portland public schools and the portland association of teachers reached a tentative agreement to reopen pps schools for in-person hybrid instruction beginning with our younger youngest students on april 1st and 2nd 2021 with the rest of the grade levels to follow i want to thank the bargaining teams who shepherded this agreement forward after months of planning preparation and bargaining with all of our labor partners this has resulted in a strong plan for safely returning students to schools we are excited that we are able to welcome back students into school for hybrid in-person learning we know how much our students and our educators have missed being able to connect in person that excitement and my excitement our excitement is not because we don't wish to reopen fully every day to all students we certainly do but given where we are this is a big important milestone in coming up with this plan our staff and our labor partners had to wrestle with a number of complexities including using our racial equity and social justice lands to call out just two dimensions of this issue our black indigenous latinx and pacific island families and staff are most at risk of contracting covid while the students in these families are often the most disadvantaged by online instruction we need to keep flexibility in this plan so that families have the option of hybrid instruction or continuing distance learning for the remainder of the year while maintaining continuity and educator attention for all students for middle and high school students this plan ensures students keep their same teachers unless they are out on leave we have had to plan within the confines of state regulations including the six foot distance between students and the limitations on people per square foot of space and our aging schools with many undersized classrooms and for our educators there are only so many hours in the day we're driving an aircraft carrier not a tugboat we can't turn the ship on a dime this plan is aligned to a point in time so that we can focus on opening schools as quickly as possible and not spend more weeks and months of planning to open schools adapting current plans to every potential new set of state or national national regulations would take weeks to change staffing patterns and bus routes just to name two aspects of the plan superintendent guerrero would you like to introduce this item happy to good evening directors buenas tardes to everyone listening in there is only one agenda item on the menu tonight and i think we all recognize it's an important one so in alignment with improving covid metrics in our community and after months of planning and discussion we're ready to move forward into the next phase in the course of a year we've had to we've gone from a rapid and necessary school closure to a comprehensive distance learning model shift into a limited in-person instruction model and now into a hybrid version of teaching and learning which all gets us a step closer to our eventual desired goal of fully reopening our schools directors administration is bringing forth for your consideration this evening and pending confirmation of ratification by our teachers union a viable in-person hybrid instructional model for our students i'm grateful that as a result of months of tireless planning discussions with our labor partners and feedback from families we have a plan for safely returning students to schools while there's a number of finer details that will continue to be finalized in the coming days our teams have been diligent and thorough in their planning and work to prepare the school system to reopen and begin welcoming students back all while observing continued public health and department of education guidelines
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to a hybrid model so as a reminder by definition hybrid means a combination of both in-person instruction and distance learning experience for students and there's no actual requirement for what percentage of instruction should be in person versus remote moving into a hybrid model does get us one step closer to a full reopening of school we've identified and put in place numerous health and safety measures and updated standard operating procedures so we believe with everyone's cooperation we can return to campuses in a safe manner in fact we already have experience with these new ways of operating given our experience with our limited in-person instruction model programming which took place at our schools with small groups of students as well as a variety of student on campus activities including athletics and performing arts and a large majority of our families have indicated that they too are ready we know our students benefit when they're able to be face to face with their teachers and with each other and even if only for part of the week due to constraints over space and distancing requirements we've observed that our students who have begun to come back over the last couple of months it's evident in their smiles and enthusiasm for being in class or on the field again i want to thank both sides of for their deliberate work and arriving at this tentative agreement i know that representatives of both the portland association of teachers and district administration dedicated significant time and effort to arrive at solutions and i'm appreciative for their persistence thank you p-a-t president elizabeth thiel bargaining chair steve lancaster and the rest of their team among the staff who represented the administration who played a lead role in these talks were our chief of human resources sharon reese and dr shaun byrd our chief of schools who will be providing you with the highlights of this tentative agreement with you next thank you superintendent and good evening directors i'm very pleased to be with you here this evening for what is an important milestone toward returning to fully reopened schools the plan you are voting on this evening is not perfect but it is a meaningful and critical step forward for the district for our educators and most importantly for our students i know you've read and studied the agreement i would like to mention just a few highlights in it hybrid instruction will begin for pre-k and head start on april 1st and either april 1st april 2nd for kindergarten and 1st grade grades 2 through 5 will begin april 5th middle school and high school students will begin hybrid the week of april 19th for all grades our cohort models are necessary to comply with the current oregon department of education ready schools safe learners guidelines which include requirements regarding cove and case metrics in multnomah county and the 35 square foot rule that's that six foot rule for social distancing that is in effect under currently published ode guidelines which physically limits the number of students that can be in a classroom at one time the plan gives families options families to prefer to have their children finish the school year in distance learning can choose to do so and we have been preparing for health and safety needs and issues for nearly a year the safety items in the agreement include hepa air purifiers for every room or space where students are designated to meet with educators all schools will have a school nurse or school health assistant on campus each building will have a safety committee which will include pet members they will be required to do a full walk through of each school building prior to the opening of hybrid we will have rapid cover 19 testing for all symptomatic staff and students and we're following oregon health authority protocol for contact tracing and for isolation i should note that these details have been shared with staff and families including via emails this week i want to thank our educators those who've shown such creativity and determination throughout the pandemic and those who represented them in the bargaining i know that pet president teal is joining us in a moment and those educators who have shared their thoughts their ideas perspectives and their concerns during bargaining and in the past few days after we announced the tension of agreement
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as you know we followed the science throughout our decision making and leaned on public health experts including our health advisory panel we are indebted to that team for their incredible support throughout this school year finally i would like to thank my colleagues who spent literally hundreds of hours working towards this agreement thank you and here to provide an overview of what our students and families can expect regarding a student learning experience and what weekly class schedules will look like for students is our cheapest school dr sean berg shot thanks john good evening directors i am thrilled to be here almost well really one year later to talk to you about the reopening of schools as you know we faced a number of challenges and constraints in providing educational program for our students and upon the school closure last spring we were forced to change to a whole new model of delivering instruction comprehensive distance learning as it has become known or cdl our educators had to quickly adapt and adopted new technology platforms and tools to ensure continuity of learning for our students as metrics and guidelines continued to change and improve school districts were able to offer limited in-person instruction which we started doing a couple of months ago and we began to welcome back small groups of students so that they could experience uh in-person instruction on campus it's provided opportunities to get people to get comfortable with safety protocols that we have in place and it was also immediately evident when visiting schools over the last couple of months the kids are happy to be back teachers are happy to be back and there are lots of benefits as we all know to having students in school in person learning face-to-face and now conditions have once again improved uh we have negotiated a viable hybrid model of instruction that provides students a combination of in-person instruction and continued remote learning experience so i want to call out the features of the schedules and i'm going to talk to you how about how that will look from a teacher and student perspective i know that there are lots of questions about how much time students will spend who elected to participate in hybrid versus who didn't and what will happen if a student stays remote versus coming to school in person so i want to go over that with you uh tonight for pre-k and head start our youngest students uh as you heard earlier they will start on april 1st and we'll have four days of instruction a week with the exception of wednesdays our kindergarten and first grade students will come back on april 1st or 2nd uh half of those students will come back on the first the other half on the second so that they have a chance to be in the building alone of course our kindergartners have never been in the school building as a kindergartner yet so we want to give them a chance to learn those routines that are so important for them and our first grade students were there but they had to uh leave at the last quarter of last year so we want to get them back in the routine just have a little bit of time in the building by themselves before older students come back on april 5th we'll be very excited to welcome back our second through fifth grade students and they'll be coming once everybody's back everybody in elementary school will be coming that chooses for in-person instruction for four days a week for two hours and 15 minutes students have been placed into an am or pm cohort and schools will be communicating with families about uh which cohort they're in and when they come to school they'll really focus on reading and math foundational skills as well as a variety of other [Music] topics including social emotional learning and teachers will also weave in other content areas as appropriate throughout the uh the time in school students who choose to uh not return to school at this time will experience much of what they experience right now in a distance learning environment however the times of things that uh happen may change because teachers are teaching in school part of the day and they may be teaching their same class the students who remain home in the afternoon so some of the activities they do may the times may change from morning to afternoon but the schools uh will be in touch with you about your exact child's schedule in the coming days for our middle school and high school students we'll be welcoming them back on april the 19th so we have some more time to prepare for their return we are very excited to welcome those students back and due to physical distance requirements uh students in those grades will have the opportunity to return for two days a week for about two and a half hours each time students will be assigned a cohort and will either will either come to school monday and tuesday or thursday and friday wednesdays will remain asynchronous as it is now i want to talk to you about what the day will look like for students for middle and high school students the morning will look very similar to what it does now everybody will log on in the morning and have a whole class instruction with their with their teacher and if uh they come in in the afternoon they'll the they will work with the teacher and the students who choose to remain home will uh continue their applied learning so i'm a former english teacher so i'll just talk to you about what i would do
00h 15m 00s
if i were teaching in this environment if i were teaching english first period to on monday to my students i would introduce a concept to them we would uh you know have some there would be some direct teaching from me some interaction maybe in small group breakout rooms in the uh in the virtual classroom and then when those students that chose to come in the afternoon came to my classroom we would be doing this extension activities so there might be some uh time where they are working in uh with one another interacting with one another in physically distance environments of course or there may be a time where i need to pull a student uh closer to do some one-on-one uh work with that student who may be struggling with the material or i may need to accelerate students who've already clearly grasped the concept so then we wonder what will the students at home be doing so they are going to be working on applied learning so some similar uh work will be happening at home except it will be independent uh but then i can as a teacher the next day when i see those next time i see those students together in a classroom i know i can refocus my attention on those students who aren't coming in in the afternoon i can refocus my attention with what we do in a whole classroom so maybe when i do breakout groups uh as a in the morning the next time i see my first period class i might group the students more strategically uh to make sure that the students who are not coming in for in-person instruction are grouped uh to get make sure that they're not missing out on what the kids that are coming to school are getting so that will students in high school uh ambulance will run their schedule so they'll be attending their classes seeing their teachers uh in high school two periods a day and in middle school three periods a day and uh it is designed to reinforce the learning that's happening online so that is the what the basic outline of the day will look like and um it's you know focused on continuity of learning and uh making sure that the the learning that's happening is uh reinforced in a variety of ways just like you would do in a in a regular classroom when i was a teacher and with people in front of me all the time and no distance learning there were still the first 20 minutes of class i would generally teach you know i would generally be giving direct instruction and then kids will go off and do things uh to to apply the learning and that's the same way this will work now you can think of the morning time where kids are in classrooms as the direct instruction time with some breakout groups and those kinds of things and then in the afternoon it's the reinforcement time so uh we've um heard different versions of what people think it's going to look like but it is our expectation at the bargaining table we were very um clear about this and agree that uh the focus of in-person instruction is academic in nature of course interaction is important and of course that's part of being in school but the focus of the day is going to be academic construction and with that i will turn it over to you thank you yeah you're muted director bailey of course a year into the zoom stuff and we're still doing it uh good times okay thank you sean and sharon do i have a motion and second to adopt resolution 6269. agreement for the return to in-person instruction between portland association of teachers and school district number 1j multnomah county oregon director brent edwards moves and director of the past seconds um i'd like to now invite uh pat president elizabeth teal to address us elizabeth hello good evening good to see you all i want to start by thanking you guys for all of your commitment uh to this process um it has been an enormous job crafting the agreement before you today on both sides of the bargaining table have shown an enormous amount of perseverance but i specifically want to talk a little bit about our pat bargaining team while i have the floor i want everyone to know that these are classroom educators our bargaining team is made of educators who have been working in comprehensive distance learning conditions in real time supporting their students and families through the process of all the changes we've been through and coming to the bargaining table in addition to the enormous job of teaching during this pandemic and the agreements that we reached will be the teaching and learning conditions that our bargaining team is working under as we move forward this spring so i want to thank the members of our team for their enormous work hearing from all of our educators and trying and working diligently to bring
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us all to an agreement that's going to work on the ground throughout these negotiations pat has made it clear that any return to in-person instruction has to be done safely with adequate protections for educators and our school communities and it has to be done equitably without sidelining the needs of our most vulnerable students or anyone who will continue to work remotely and we have made enormous strides towards those shared interests i also want to acknowledge how much harder it has been to get here after the governor's order that accelerated the timeline out of step with the planning that was underway or the start of fourth quarter and uh cutting out a week or more of planning time is undoubtedly going to make things more chaotic and stressful that they needed to be and i know in this week right now as uh everybody is scrambling uh to prepare for the transition to come um there's a lot of anxiety and a lot of unanswered questions um however i am so happy to be here tonight to tell you that pat members have voted to ratify the tentative agreement and i urge you to do so as well educators are so excited to see our students face to face and to provide them with the social emotional connections that they can't get through cdl it is truly going to be a celebration when when we get in the same spaces with our students i also want to acknowledge that there's no agreement that could have made this total transition of our district easy it's going to be hard but we were able to reach a deal that creates the strongest parameters we could to ensure the transition to hybrid education in our schools will be as safe and equitable as possible we know that nothing about the next two months is going to be normal we are still in a pandemic and we must continue to be cautious with the health of our students and their families and we know there is new contagion new more contagious variants spreading and it's not time to stop being vigilant the cdc keeps reminding us that this is one of the reasons that many educators have said it would be better to remain in cdl for the rest of the year we know that's not the option in front of us but the idea of using this time to plan and invest for a better year in the fall is something a lot of people have been talking about we have no interest as educators in going back to normal in the fall because oregon public schools haven't been meeting our students needs for decades this pandemic has demonstrated what a critical institution public schools are in our comm in our communities and the central role that schools play in the social emotional well-being of our students and after decades of hearing there's not enough money that we can't afford to give our students what they deserve the pandemic has also proved that there is money for things there is money available for things that we know are important we are very pleased to know that pps is receiving i believe 75 million dollars in new federal funding from the american rescue plan it is so needed um to invest in the things that we need to make this hybrid transition work and to make things work as we continue through the pandemic in the fall hopefully with much safer levels of community spread and hopefully with herd immunity we're excited that that hopefully means we can significantly increase our custodial staffing to make sure our buildings are well maintained and clean and we imagine please imagine if we could use all the energy and time and persistence that it's taken to bring us to this point right now and that we've used to to plan our the next eight weeks of instruction imagine if that same amount of energy is invested in advocating for the systemic changes and ongoing funding that we need to give our students the engaging hands-on relevant curriculum that they deserve the individualized support the access to opportunities and all of the social emotional supports that are so crucial i look forward to working with all of you to ensure that we do eventually get back to full that when we do eventually get back to full in-person instruction that is better than what we've seen before designed to prioritize the equity and social emotional wellness of our students we are working hard around the clock to figure out how to problem solve the next steps in this fall and and really excited um for the the payoff of having those in-person connections that we've been missing so so much so thank you all for having me here tonight and i hope you
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will vote yes to ratify the agreement thank you i'm i'm delighted that pat has that your membership has voted yes to ratify now i'd like to open it up to board comments i uh i'm guessing that our board members might want to say a few words uh director to pass do you want to kick this off sure um thank you um the steel and superintendent staff for the work that you've put into making this imperfect agreement i'm really which i'm really happy to support um we've gotten hundreds of emails from parents thank you for writing in and yet i'm concerned about who we haven't heard from you know who we haven't heard from immigrant refugee families people that don't speak english people that are working two and three jobs low-income folks we haven't heard from those people and we all know going into this that this is not a perfect arrangement we would probably all want this to be more perfect but i want to remind us all that perfectionism is one of the tenets of white supremacy in organizations this plan is good enough and it's going to take us through the end of the year i'm really happy to support it and um and we'll leave space for other comments thanks thank you director constant would you like to go next sure first of all i appreciate everything everyone has said this was a really difficult process getting to this point um i want to say that uh we haven't spent a lot of time talking about the particulars in section two of this agreement which is around all of our health and safety precautions and how we got there and how we're going to deal with issues as they arise but i totally support everything we've arrived at there and i think that was a stellar example of collaboration between our two teams on that part of this agreement we know there are no perfect solutions as director de pass just said and i have really had a lot of heartache about this because um our kids have really suffered this year and we know that and particularly our most vulnerable students have have really suffered um by the same token our teachers have really knocked themselves out to do their best to figure out how to deliver virtual education and with the support of our i think incredible central office team to develop a brand new way of delivering curriculum which is remarkable um and i do think we've made great strides there um that said um the the area of particular heartache for me with this tentative agreement is on the instructional time for our middle school and our high school students and um i think that given the resistance to live streaming for students and comprehend the students who choose to remain in comprehensive distance learning i understand that this is sort of the only model that was left available to us to provide an equitable option for our students for our students in the classroom and our students in virtual learning but i do want to highlight one aspect of this um tentative agreement that um makes me unable to support it and that is that there's the clause that um mandates the six foot of physical spacing and i know what was discussed significantly in bargaining was that that section would address the flexibility to respond to changes in the oregon ready schools safe learners guidelines which themselves are responsive to federal guidelines and we weren't able to reach agreement on that on enshrining that flexibility in this and so what we have is a an agreement to maintain six foot distancing and we know that today it appears that the cdc is going to make a change on that tomorrow and that the oregon department of education is likely to make a change on that imminently we also know that there's no defensible epidemiological or public health guidance that says that that's what's necessary
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and and it makes an enormous difference for our kids because if we simply create the flexibility to adjust to a change in those physical distancing requirements we can double the amount of live instruction time in person instruction time that our students can have and and direct and um uh chief bird please correct me if if i'm if i'm wrong on any of this but my understanding is that you know instead of by by doubling the size of our cohorts we could get our elementary school students in school full-time four days a week and we same with our the afternoons for our middle school and high school students so would double the instructional time for all of our students and i think and it wouldn't change the obligations for our teachers it wouldn't change the agreements that we've come to with regard to simulcast it really wouldn't change the model that we have forward for teachers but it would change it dramatically for our students and i hope that my colleagues will consider rejecting this tentative agreement and going back to the bargaining table i will say right here that i could i can support the rest of this tentative agreement i can lend my support to all of the other imperfect but well-crafted elements of this proposal if we can go back to the table and build in the flexibility around cohort sizes because i i think it's a small give and i think it's would be enormously beneficial to our students so i don't know where my colleagues are on that um i i will vote no if others agree that that makes sense then i would be happy to introduce a resolution after our vote uh requesting that the superintendent and his team go back to the bargaining table and say you know our board can can live with most of the elements here but we need to build in that flexibility to be responsive to changes in the oregon cohort sizes and and ready schools safe learners that's where i am i respect where anyone else is that has a different point of view this is a really emotional issue for me because our kids have suffered i'm delighted that they're going to be able to come back to school in some way shape or form but i think there's a very easy pathway for us to make that experience um significantly better and stronger and more meaningful for our kids uh thanks director constance uh director maura do you want to go next thanks um over the last few months my colleagues and i have received many hundreds if not thousands of emails and text messages from students parents educators and community members about reopening classrooms for in-person learning they offer compelling arguments for competing positions on the questions of when and how to reopen schools safely these communications have reflected the fact that this community is not monolithic nor is it binary the needs of all of pps's constituencies are varied and often governed by intensely personal circumstances many are eager to restore normal school hours others including many in communities of color that have already been disproportionately impacted by covid over the last year are deeply concerned about the risks of restarting general in-person classes still others are simply trusting that we do our jobs to balance the complex constellation of factors and arrive at a responsible doable plan what unites us all is our commitment to serve the best interests of our students keeping in mind the whole child that means doing our best in these unprecedented circumstances to ensure that students experience safe supportive learning environments that serve both their academic and social emotional needs as best as possible in the context of a continuing pandemic as this global pandemic uh continues to evolve um this task is in has been and continues to be immensely challenging because we must acknowledge that this pandemic is not over we can see light at the end of the tunnel but we must continue to proceed carefully lest we jeopardize the progress we have made to date at great sacrifice
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especially in the face of very concerning variance we all are exhausted emotionally and physical after an extraordinarily stressful year but the reality is we must remain vigilant i am persuaded that the plan before us balances the competing interests it is it is doable it is careful it has responded to the the concerns about safety it will bring our students back to in-person classrooms however limited it will provide we are already providing um extracurricular opportunities for students to engage in in the arts and sports and interact with their peers and have that face-to-face contact that we've all been missing um i was i was probably among the more conservative members of the board in terms of my concerns about health risks um given the way things have proceeded over the last few months much to almost everyone's surprise the the dramatic decline in infection rates and hospitalizations and serious illness and all the rest of it um i am persuaded that we now can very safely um bring students and educators back to the classroom i think students need this um frankly i think we all need some time to engage in simple human interaction in 3d um and i am persuaded that we can do it safely but we cannot just throw the doors open um that would not be safe that is not nor is that being advised by any of the guidelines either statewide or federal and i understand that there is great eagerness to maximize the amount of in-person time that students can have in in the classroom um and that it appears that uh the cdc um may be about to issue new guidelines um that would reduce the amount of uh physical distancing that would be considered safe but i'd like to directly address director constance suggestion that we that we not accept this agreement and go back to the bargaining table um and i would say my understanding is that the plan that we have before us today has been in the works for many many months it includes an enormous array of logistical arrangements i believe based on what i've heard in in our various discussions with staff and the presentations and and um offline conversations and the the best information i have available to me as a board member is that if we wanted to redo the um especially the physical distancing um conditions within this agreement and we wanted to dramatically increase the amount of time if we wanted to change basically change the the essential components of this agreement that were arrived at after months and months of staff preparation and months of labor negotiations if we were to do that it would require that district staff even assuming that we could get a labor agreement using the new guidelines and that you know everything else would shake out even if we could do that it would take something like four to six weeks for staff to completely recalibrate every element of this return plan that means re-staffing uh it would mean reassigning students to new classes and teachers it would mean re-routing all of the bus routes it would mean rewriting all of the operational protocols and those are just the elements that i'm aware of i'm sure there are a thousand
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other details that that would also have to be completely reconsidered um i think i think it would be irresponsible of us however however well intentioned i think it would be irresponsible of us to um not to accept this agreement as it stands because i think it is the best opportunity for us to get students back to in-person classrooms to some degree at the earliest possible moment if we do not accept this agreement my guess is that we out of the 10 weeks that might be remaining in the fourth quarter uh following spring break probably at least half of those weeks would be taken up in new preparations um so i think it would actually defeat the purpose of getting students back to school as soon as possible so i i strongly recommend i i will be voting yes and i strongly recommend to my colleague colleagues that they do likewise thank you thank you uh student representative shu um well you don't have a vote on this issue um do you have a comment that you like to make uh so i've got a specific question um so a member of the dsc reached out to me to advocate for the inclusion of students in schools safety committees and i'd like to say that having these committees open to students if not actively recruiting them would be excellent and students would undoubtedly provide invaluable insight and i sincerely find we can hope oh i sincerely hope that we can find a way to do so um and i hope that the current language um would permit us to to include students is that something that we can pursue superintendent well uh as you know this was the tentative agreement with our teachers association i don't think anything would preclude the safety committee inviting or including students when we talk about a safety committee there is a required and prescribed safety checklist that's been developed but i can't imagine any educator would not be open to including our students and understanding how we're creating a healthy and safe teaching and learning environment for everyone um in that case i would hope that we begin that process sooner rather than later particularly for high school students uh given the contributions that really only students can make to this process all right our chief of schools is right here and so i think uh would let us have a conversation about how to encourage our principals to have a student representative along as you might imagine you know we don't want to make this a cumbersome process so i don't think you mean 50 students would tag along but okay i just i want to appreciate you nathaniel one of the antidotes to perfectionism and organizations is developing a culture of appreciation and that you continually bring the student voice forward and i think the way that this is written it says like a pat member will be on the safety committee and it doesn't seem to preclude having student involvement okay thank you director brim edwards you're muted sorry about that um so i had before i have some comments but before that i um have some questions that when i read the agreement that were raised that um i have asked staff about um but would also like to ask them in the meeting just so we um there's a understanding of what it is we're agreeing to um also by the broader community um so my first question um is the agreement references a anticipated duration of the 2021 school year and i would like to clarify about whether or not this would go into the 21 22 school year
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i can feel that question uh no not unless the parties agree to extend it this is only for the remainder of this school year director for madrid great thank you um also um in the agreement it says schools will be open for hybrid instructions in accordance with the executive order 2106 and in accordance with guidelines and mitigation strategies set forth by the cdc ode and local health authorities um are we confident that pps can deliver um on the guidelines that have been set forth yes uh so we have been working for the last several months to look at our spaces we've made furniture adjustments for physical distancing we've include we've put air purifiers in classroom spaces we continue those continue to arrive and be put into classroom spaces we have ordered and delivered to schools uh ppe including masks hand sanitizer disinfecting wipes all of those kind of things our buildings have been cleaned over the last uh several months as our custodians have been working throughout this entire time so yes we do feel confident that we have the safety protocols in place and the and the strategies to deal with mitigation uh the layers of mitigation that are recommended by the cdc and ode and oha great thank you verify director brim edwards for accountability purposes every site has to in fact submit per ode's template along a number of areas and so uh every school campus has to comply with all those guidelines and requirements to support all of that the central office has constructed countless pages of updated or new standard operating protocols and procedures so there's an entire handbook that goes with all of these details as well and ode has to approve those plans before we can open the doors great well i visited uh bridger uh last friday and saw many of the uh the evidence of uh the preparation and the planning in place so another question about the child care assistance that is going to be offered can you speak to one of you speak to the duration of this and where the funding will come from i can take that question too yes the duration uh is for april may and june of this year and so the stipend is an up to 300 per uh child per month of reimbursement of child care costs and it is uh i don't know if the deputy superintendent hurts is on the card i think she is but it's my understanding that this is eligible for the federal funds okay um and then i had a question um there is a statement in the agreement that i wasn't sure if it was that we were setting a higher standard or a different standard than state guidance but it's that any symptomatic student who's tested even if they test negative must leave school immediately and not return until allowed by the rss ssl guidance and just want to confirm that state guidance and the reason it's in there is more of an affirmation not a deviation from the guidance that's correct it is an affirmation of the importance of isolating if uh somebody who is symptomatic that is correct great and then i'm going to ask a question thanks um ask a question that i'm surprised director moore didn't ask but i'm going to ask it maybe instead there's a provision about testing in the agreement and it says the district shall request consent to test students for copin 19 from student families prior to the first hybrid instructional day testing shall be available when the district is in receipt of necessary supplies to perform the testing and this has been initially we've talked about a lot in the past and i would like to know whether what the status of our preparation is to be able to fulfill that provision in the in the agreement so our principles uh the testing is uh site by site so it is not a process that's handled centrally our principals have to register on the site and then they do there's some training that they uh undertake and once they have identified who the primary contact person is which is school nurse or shaw and then the backup person which is the administrator then um and they do the training then the test kits are sent to the school and uh and as you said uh families do have to opt in to i do have to consent to allowing their children to be tested
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and we have the testing kits we don't have them yet but the process has been has begun for registration and then uh having those kids mailed to us we'll have them i guess maybe i should we'll have them by the time schools open or the schools that open will have them uh i cannot give you an exact date of arrival but that is the yes that's the goal it takes it does take a couple of weeks from what i understand but the process has begun in school so um it's our goal to have them as su as soon as uh possible uh to the opening as we can okay and then my last question um is that um i guess back to the testing i assume that we'll be notified for some reason we don't we're not able to um because we don't have the test kits i'm not able to fulfill that um the last question i have is relates to um guidance relating to dual language immersion special education and student support service instructors that that that is there's going to be agreements that are subsequent to this agreement and i'm wondering whether um what the timeline for that is and that's something that comes back to the board or is agreed to um separately and the agreement is that we would form uh you know working groups to solve some of the issues particularly around the model of instruction and how that works so the special education one was worked on today i think we pretty much have wrapped that one up um and then uh the dual language immersion we're continuing to work on uh some problem solving so those are uh really more like guiding documents to help employees do their work so it's not something that will come back to the board for agreement but it is just you know it's a working committee that's working on things like how do special ed teachers uh deliver certain forms of services to students and so there's a group i was a part of that group today and i think we got to a pretty good place for some procedures great thank you for the update and thank you um the staff and chief reese for answering a lot of other questions i had um once we had the text of the tentative agreement um so if i may just um provide some thoughts about the vote tonight i've given it a lot of thought and i want to um thank all the parents and teachers who wrote the board about how we should reopen our school buildings for the remainder of the year and as others have indicated we have received over the last several months a fair amount of communications from our school community on a whole host of different topics related to school reopening so thank you to the parents for and and teachers for sharing your thoughts this has been a tough year for students families and staff and it's not over yet um i'd say they're you know from looking at um from talking to parents and staff it appears there's close to universal agreement that students in classrooms with their teachers and part of a school community is the preferred way for our kids to learn and teachers to teach in non-pandemic times so how we reopen our school buildings during a pandemic promotes a range of responses however there doesn't seem to be agreement that we want our students to step there does seem to be agreement that we want our students and staff to be safe while this pandemic is still present in the community while people are still dying and and and while only a small percentage of the community has been vaccinated it's worth noting that today um the health authority reported another 393 cases and four deaths um definitely on um a downward trend but we are not definitely not out of the woods yet nor do we have a majority of our population our um the oregon population vaccinated um as we all know the guard the governor has ordered that in-person instruction begin and that all school staff has have access to the vaccine which has occurred the vaccine part anyway um and you know to follow through on our commitment to reopen our schools to in-person instruction the portland association teachers have been at the table at pps staff negotiators for many months and have represented their members interested in what they view as a safe return to the school building so i thank the pat reps for being at the table with the district um and really problem solving in a way to bet how do we best reopen our schools uh for all of our our students and to portland parents they hold a variety of views since
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there's obviously pat represents has represented teachers at the table portland parents have let their views be known in a variety of ways and they hold a wide variety of views on how and when we should reopen schools most in our elementary schools in the survey we did of parents most parents want their students to return return to school but a significant number want to continue in comprehensive distance learning for a variety of reasons because that's working for their student or because of multi-generational generations in a household or for a whole variety of reasons and that number that wants to continue in comprehensive distance learning is even greater for students of color to serve all of our students to meet both the ode and oh a health guidelines and to work within our building capacities pps cannot deliver full-time in-person instruction at the same time honor our commitments to racial equity and for all of our students who for whatever reason can at this time return to a school building so yes this agreement has some provisions that different parties may not like and not as not as much in-person instruction it doesn't have as much inter-person instruction as i wanted or have advocated for but our school buildings will be reopening and students who want to will be in the classroom with their teachers and classmates in a few short weeks which is great news from my perspective and those that can't be present for in-person learning will still receive instruction in a comprehensive distinct distance learning model not perfect but this is the best plan that staff was able to negotiate with the portland association of teachers to reopen our school safely and to start in-person instruction and continue to provide instructions for those students who chose for whatever reason um not to return um there's been many who have suggested including director constand that vote that we could vote no know tonight but i i won't support a no vote because that will not open our school buildings to more in-person learning in fact it will likely delay and disrupt our plans reopen as this isn't a unilateral decision for portland public schools i want to thank the staff for the massive effort they have made both school staff and also the central office to get our schools ready for reopening for hybrid instructions as i mentioned earlier i visited brigitte or last friday and had an opportunity to see the health and safety measures in place not only will we have building safety teams as was referenced earlier hopefully with student reps on them um but the district's independent internal performance auditors will also be visiting schools between now and the end of the school year and conducting spot audits to ensure the building are in schools are in compliance with the health and safety plans that are in place so i'm excited that students who want to be back in school now will be able to do so soon it's a critical step for pps and our students and staff as we come out of an epic pandemic and i view our jobs while i i think tonight is a there will be a range of emotions and thoughts about our path forward but i view our jobs as board members to continue to provide oversight to make sure our schools are opened as safely as possible and that we support the necessary funding to help students who have struggled or need additional assistance whether that's academic social or emotional so i'll be a yes vote tonight i'm excited that our students will be back in schools thank you uh director scott great thank you thanks sir and it was nice it's it's thanks it's been great to hear from everybody sort of their views on this as we go forward um yeah i've spent as director edward said you know a lot of time thinking about this a lot of time talking to people and corresponding with folks in the community about it um you know this agreement is not perfect as others have said um you know there are are quite a few things that i would like to change if it were just up to me um you know others have mentioned but it appears the cdc is going to announce shortly that schools can operate safely with three feet of distance in instead of of six i would prefer an agreement that allows for more for changing public health dynamics um and advice as as we learn more as as things change and allows us as a district to quickly adjust as we as we learn those things but at the same time
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i know there are also things that pps staff would like to change um and i know there are things that the portland association of teachers would like to change and and i think what we have in front of us is the definition of negotiation and it's the definition of compromise um no one got everything they wanted um and i think this is also a good time to reinforce the importance of collective bargaining um it's not just a hurdle that needs to be overcome in a process it's an essential component of running a school district and i think we always need to view it that way collective bargaining requires co-creation and it requires compromise it also requires responsibility and that's responsibility both on the part of management and also responsibility on the part of labor to do what is best for our students and that's the lens that i'm using as i've evaluated this this agreement that's come forward i um i heard from a number of people over the last couple days who think this agreement should be rejected because it doesn't go far enough to get our kids back into the classroom and i think to that group what i would say and and that group who's been passionately advocating you know for our kids for for for weeks and months um i want to remind them that it's this what we have before us tonight is not a choice between um um this agreement and and some ideal agreement that we that we that we would love to have it's a choice between the agreement in front of us and nothing and as some of my colleagues um you know have already said rejecting this agreement means rejecting in-person instruction for at least a few more weeks if not for the rest of the school year um and and i think you know that's an important dynamic to understand the other side of it as others have mentioned there are other people who think this agreement goes too far um and i would say for those families and those teachers and those community members who have been passionately advocating for the health of our students and for the health of our student families and the health of the larger community um you know what i'm hoping with this agreement is that we can spend the next few weeks demonstrating that we can reopen safely that we can meet these metrics and that and that and that we will not be contributing in any way um you know to the spread of coven within within our communities i think this disagreement really is the rub and it's the difficulty that we have um moving forward as a district we have a district that's split it's not split 50 50 but again according to the survey results it split 70-30 and even if you don't believe the survey results exactly it's somewhere probably in that ballpark about whether it's safe to return to school and you know we have a responsibility not just to the families that want to return to school and not just to the families that are nervous about it but but to both of those um we have to provide we have to do everything we can to to to get our kids back um you know for those families willing to come back in a way that begins to re-establish some of those some of those routines we have to also keep providing the same education to the roughly 30 of our families that are not comfortable opera opting in the hybrid um and i think that plus the social distance and requirements um you know that that we were again negotiating under that may change you know it's one of the key reasons for this this sort of morning afternoon structure particularly at the middle school and high school level that's going to allow all students to learn new material together and then students who are returning in person can get that additional help and reinforcement from their teacher in that material you know again is that an ideal situation no an ideal situation is that we didn't have a pandemic that's the ideal situation but the reality is that we do and and we're working our way through it and i think we're trying to find the best compromises that we can um we know things are going to continue to change as they're changing every day they're going to continue to change over the next few weeks and months um as staff and others have noted the district can't change schedules for 50 000 students on a dime and i think that's an important logistical component that i don't want to forget um but i do i do expect and i'll be asking the superintendent of staff to continue working with pat on changes that that we can make that will benefit our children um and you know if there's a way to incorporate and and and talk to pat about this new three-foot guidance and a way to incorporate that um so that we can bring even more students back into the classroom safely um then i think i think i think we should we should do that uh even after you know approving this agreement today um looking forward i think that's another really important thing for me is not just what are we doing for the rest of the school year but but what do we do moving forward i'll just put on the record right now i expect pps students to be back to school five days a week full-time with the start of the school year in september obviously things change all the time but um you know we you know we know that by that point in time all adults will have the opportunity to be vaccinated if again we're listening to public health officials who are telling us that they expect case rates to decline dramatically as the adult population achieves herd immunity and i think as a result assuming that those things all all come true we have to achieve this goal of full reopening and the next two months can show the the the families in our district who are reluctant that we can reopen safely and bring folks back um even then even in the fall
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we're still going to need to provide some sort of of cdl option for those students who are medically at risk because students will not be vaccinated in the fall and and and hopefully we have the state and federal funding coming forward that that's going to help us do that but but we need to create that program and we need to plan for a full scale reopening as well i actually think when i'm looking at this agreement and what it achieves it helps us move um more towards that as well and and again what i would be really concerned about right now in rejecting this agreement is that even if we got something that was marginally different you're delaying that reopening even further um you're putting it even even even further down the track in terms of showing families that we can do this and i think we make it harder in the fall um i want to agree uh sort of in closing with with elizabeth thiel we can't just go back to the old normal um that wasn't working for all of our students and for all of our community and as we think forward towards that full reopening we need to be thinking about how we're doing things better um you know to get ever as we get everyone back into our schools full time and and how we how we use this as an opportunity to fix some of those long-standing systemic problems so just um in closing thanks to guadalupe and his entire team thanks to elizabeth and her pat negotiating team i think it's now incumbent on all of us to make this agreement work for our students and families which has to be our primary goal as we move forward so i'll be voting to support this thank you director lowry thank you sorry i'm coming to you from my car as uh director scott said i'm uh out of town and so uh joining you as i can anyway um i agree a lot with what director moore and dr scott have said about um this plan um i i will be wholeheartedly supporting it because i do think it is exactly what director scott said a compromise it's a co-creation um with our labor partners and with our district staff and it does not do everything everybody wanted um on a personal note i know that for my high school student this easing back and not going full five days right away will actually help there's a lot of anxiety after a year of pandemic and after a year of public spaces not being necessarily safe i think this will be helpful to her to ease back in i know that again we do have a very diverse school district and just because something works for my child and will benefit her doesn't mean that that is universally true one thing i would like to quibble with director scott a little bit on there was his 70 30. i think it's clear that 30 percent of students have said hybrid or cdl only and 70 have said hybrid that 70 did not say full five days um they kind of subscribe to something that was as yet unknown so i think if we say 70 of our families want full reopening immediately that is not actually accurate um and i want us to be careful as we think about there's maybe three buckets where people fall into full reopening immediately hybrid and then the remaining comprehensive distance learning and i feel like as other directors have pointed out this agreement gets us moving forward to our desired outcome for fall which would be again i would hope full reopening it depends on where we are with the disease but i do think that this gives us time to practice being in school in a pandemic and make sure that our safety protocols are working correctly so that we can keep all of our students healthy and our staff as well so that we can continue on a path to having fully reopened schools so i will be vociferous yes tonight hey director bailey i have a clarifying question and um statement do you want me to do that now and then you can have the last word and close this out or do you want to go that would be great go for it thank you for the opportunity um so i agree with every what everyone said around compromise and i've really wrestled with this and i can digest the degree of compromise that is in this agreement um it's not perfect especially for our older students but i really can um accept that um i do however want to respond to director moore's point the beauty of um just going back to the table to create flexibility around the cohorting and the physical distancing is that it does not in fact change our model it does not require staff to completely recreate the plans that they've made for hybrid learning and or this is what staff has told me and superintendent i'll let you weigh in on this or or chief bird it all it does is it changes the cohort sizes it doesn't change the um experience and the relative experience between our students who choose to remain in cdl and those that are in live instruction it just
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it changes the cohort sizes um so if if uh superintendent if you want to weigh in on that i do think that's a really important point because it is it would it remains the same model the same online instruction for students for all students um for half the day and then the other half [Music] live instruction just for a bigger cohort why don't i let dr bird take a crack at answering your question first because i have a running list going through my head right now sean yeah so thank you superintendent so in terms of the if you just looked at the physical distancing and went from six feet to three feet uh in terms of the model we currently have you theoretically could go from uh two cohorts in high school middle school to one cohort because if you think that's half the distance then you could fit that many more students in uh and and considering the um number of students who have signed up to come or who we anticipate coming back that would be true so instead of two course you'd have one cohort which would allow for four uh days of uh of in-person instruction it would not significantly impact the elementary model however because those students are already divided into am and pm and you couldn't i mean you could um perhaps collapse an am rpm and make it but there are other challenges of making full day classes the other thing i would say is that while yes numbers it will work and that will that would give you one cohort in middle school in high school we've taken furniture out of these buildings uh so it would have to the buildings would have to be re-uh you know reset with furniture in some cases the furniture is in the building so that's not a big deal in other cases we've moved it and stored it so there would be a time uh factor in in resetting the buildings um but uh you are correct in that um the motto would remain am would still be uh distance learning and pm would be uh in person and the reason we couldn't change it beyond that is because uh the students who there will still be some number of students who remain in distance learning and they would have we we would not be able to restaff the district in order to to serve that um the full day model and and i wouldn't advocate for that either because i think it's really critical that we maintain equity between our students in live instruction and our students who choose to remain in comprehensive distance learning so thank you very much that point was really important and i just would like to believe that we could all call ourselves to our our highest selves get back together discuss only this issue because we know that keeping keeping the current language that we have is not good policy because it's not guided by science and um it's it's it it eliminates some opportunities that could be and i believe would be really beneficial for our students so thank you director bailey um that was a super important um clarification for me that the public could could hear that thank you superintendent guerrero did you have anything you wanted to add on this issue i just want to appreciate that directors have you know amplified what we've heard our very diverse uh perspectives and viewpoint viewpoints from from parents caregivers and families you know there's no one right answer we have very strong opinions along the whole continuum and we've just tried to arrive at a viable model that works in collaboration with our all of our labor partners while still moving us towards greater in-person instruction for those families who elect to participate with us so i won't go over all the points but there were some very real constraints in arriving even at this model you know and a primary one is our district runs on the talent in this organization and the for me you know being student centered about not breaking the stability and continuity of relationship between our students and our teachers who even through a distance learning model have you know deepened that relationship and it would be disruptive and i'm not sure always healthy to reassign needlessly greater numbers of students so thank you for considering this i know again staff and and our partners spent endless time working through this our school leaders are spent another full day working through logistics and details required to pull this
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off at the school level because in the end uh you know we we have to support it making making it happen at the campus level so we can communicate with clear detail to our students their individual school schedule and know what to expect when it's time to come back or what to expect if they're staying home so thank you so i did want to uh go back to the this sort of one i think sticking point that we've talked about tonight and that would be what what would the actual turnaround time be um if we um try to renegotiate the six-foot agreement first of all we'd have to wait for cdc and oha working through our plans that then have to be approved by ode what what's your estimated turnaround time even even if and again any kind of bargaining time in there as well for that to happen um i i can certainly let every cabinet member in the virtual green room take a shot at the pinata here but i don't because i don't think there's an exact concrete answer i can give you director bailey that there's there's federal guidance that that will need to be published that will need to trickle down through the states i don't know how the governor's office or the oregon department of education or the oregon health authority will interpret any order to make adjustments or not the time that they need to redraft guidance to go out to school districts which just from the trend takes takes a number of weeks we know uh and then we have to digest and interpret those and then go through the whole logistical exercise so it's you know it's bus routes it's meal and nutrition it's uh you know it's all the behind the curtain stuff that happens you know technologically you know to regroup students in our information systems it's um a lot of unglamorous work that's necessary that has to go in to it and then again the staffing piece uh is a big one and i'll let sharon elaborate if she wants to and that's assuming we're exactly on the same page and what we would want to accomplish and the kind of model we would want to morph into with every one of our labor partners so sharon do you want to elaborate a little bit and if there's anybody in the green room who really wants to make a point please let me know may i interrupt um director bailey excuse me sharon um i am obligated at 7 15 which was about six minutes ago somewhere else and i appreciate the conversation but i actually need to leave i'm concerned about you know the conversation is good and yet we're kind of going down a path of what would it look like right to reconsider i think we reconsider we're looking at an additional six to eight weeks as we just heard the superintendent say which i feel is not not a great solution i mean we we have an imperfect solution that starts kids in schools april 1st 2nd 5th and the week of the 19th i i can't imagine it getting any better than that so all right i also the most i need to leave i'm as far as i'm concerned since i raised this we can go to a vote um because it doesn't appear that there's support for this but i i want to clarify what i was asking which was to change the language to be flexible based on changes to the ready schools safe learners guidance which is i believe what our bargaining team was seeking to do in the bargaining all along and we would we would still get our kids we could still get our kids off to school on the schedule that we anticipate now and if there are changes then we could adapt but um michelle i appreciate your your time crunch and um i think this is a hypothetical exercise at this point okay uh michelle can you hang with us through public comment that's that's what's coming next sure i i mean i literally i can yes yeah okay as long as i can miss bradshaw do we have public comment we do we have um kevin perlis hi there my name is kevin perlis pronounced um perlis spelled p-e-r-l-a-s my pronouns are he him and i am a pacific islander i am the parent of each three children in the portland public school district two currently attend iw wells high school my comments tonight focus on increasing in-person learning time for middle and high schoolers like them i respectfully ask the board members to vote no on this agreement
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i appreciate the hard work you have put in but this proposal doesn't do enough to get students into the classroom and i'll provide three points why the use of an absolute metric the point that dr constant made earlier um was spot on she's much more eloquent than i am so i'm going to skip a lot of the uh the backup that i had for that and go straight to the fact that an acceptable proposal would use language that enables us to adapt as we learn more and follow guidance from leaders in this space dr byrd confirmed that accommodating a new three-foot metric would not affect the model and it is feasible to abide by it however this plan locks us into a six foot guideline and doesn't provide any flexibility the second point is we have inflexible practices here middle in high schools across the country including westland wilsonville beaverton and lake oswego are returning to in-person instruction in a manner greater than what's on this proposal their enabler is use of technologies like simulcast which enable educators to serve students in the classroom and remotely simultaneously and the district has already invested 1.5 million dollars in this but the portland association of teachers has already ruled out its use an acceptable proposal would embrace helpful technologies like this that innate that enable our students to gradually phase back in large scale however this proposal draws a hard line stating in section 1l quote no educators shall be required to offer both distance learning and in-person instruction simultaneously unquote which makes simulcast virtually impossible the third point is an unworkable schedule the sample middle and high school schedules distributed by the pps last night were shocking in that the only in person time for them is excuse me one asynchronous learning two for two hours and forty minutes two days a week and three in the middle of the day requiring students to spend their lunch hour trying to get to school and many of these students rely on trimet which often doesn't have routes in the middle of the day an equitable proposal would consider the logistics of getting students to and from school in a reasonable manner for worthwhile education not just for study hall it would give students the opportunity to have full day in-person structured learning and this is being done in wilsonville where my friend's daughter is a freshman it is getting more than 14 hours of in-person instruction every week they can do it i don't know what's holding us back this proposal makes it challenging for even the most dedicated families to get their students to and from school and that's just for five hours a week of asynchronous time in the introduction lead director bailey said we're piloting an aircraft carrier not a tugboat if that's the case once it's in motion it's harder to alter course as you're all saying this plan points us in the wrong direction from the start and i urge you to vote no until we can do something like what dr constance said please ask the district to go back to the bargaining table and come up with a plan that adapts to cdc guidelines and includes simulcast and gets middle and high school students in classrooms for full days so they can focus on in-person education thank you thank you mr perlis um is bradshaw next yes we have michelle chase hibbard hi thank you for giving me time tonight my name is rachelle chase c-h-a-s-e and i use she her pronoun and i'm speaking to you this evening as mom to a pps second grader and as an educator and a pps alum and as a black parent representing mom block thank you for granting me time to speak somehow the narrative of the past year has become one where our teachers are the enemy i've seen parents say that our teachers are on vacation that they're not working that they're lazy entitled and that they're being selfish i've seen parents of privilege claim concern for marginalized kids and in the same breath threatened to pull their kids from pps if their demands for reopening aren't met activating on the racial and economic privilege that has harmed public schools for decades i'm asking you this evening to truly act upon equity and prioritize the needs of our most of the most vulnerable members of our community our teachers are not bargaining for themselves our teachers are bargaining for us our teachers are safe they're being vaccinated but they are bargaining for the safety of families like mine mine is a black and latinx family and our pts student has cerebral palsy and asthma which which makes him high risk high risk both academically and from a health perspective as an educator myself i'm not worried about his academics i've experienced the dedication of his teachers and admin including his amazing pps fed staff i know that they are giving it their all and i know any compromise we might be making in academics right now is in
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service of my vulnerable child's health and there's no question which is more important i urge you to support our teachers and in doing so support our children and our families as a mom to a vulnerable kid the health and safety of my child and other vulnerable kids and families must be our priority our immigrant communities and our communities of color have been devastated by this virus our kids have experienced not just the trauma of the year interrupted but the trauma of illness and death of family members educators know that kids can't learn if they don't feel safe just as we know that the deferred maintenance of the last three decades find us more poorly positioned than other districts when it comes to mitigation and building and our teachers they know that better than most so i urge you not only to support the teachers calling for equity and safety and reopening but also to condemn the vilification of our teachers by voices of privilege who accuse them of moral shortcomings as they advocate for the safety of all of our children our teachers are professionals and should be valued as such in spite of the opinion of a vocal minority of parents unable to emphasize past their own trauma the last year has been hard beyond imagining and there is a light at the end of the tunnel but we're not there yet do not allow the sacrifices of the last year to do for nothing by capitulating to privilege and failing to support our teachers and vulnerable families do your part to begin to heal the fractures of distress that exists between communities of color and pps prioritize the needs of our vulnerable children and families evaluate the buildings of our most at-risk children classroom by classroom and do not penalize our teachers for advocating on our behalf um we will be the ones who remain if families of privilege follow through on their threats and we are counting on you to do right by our kids and if it's safe for our kids and teachers to meet in person i hope to see this board meeting again in person again soon and speaking of equity please resume food service at elementary schools to the children who will be continuing in cdl thank you so much for your time and director to pass thank you for thank waiting for your comments uh it's uh chair lowry i just wanted to interject that we are working on bringing back in-person board meetings but we were wanting staff to focus on reopening schools and uh but we are creating plans for reopening board meetings very soon and we'll be sharing those um shortly sorry uh that's awesome thank you i just wanted to respond to that okay ms bradshaw who's up next oh we had somebody else signed up but i don't see them so that is it okay um it's late um i could comment but let's uh let's cut the get to the chase um i'll just thank one thank our amazing staff who have gone above and beyond all year thank you to everybody who's been part of a bargaining team both our labor partners and our staff who have worked so hard to try to craft a number of agreements and thank you to my fellow board members who have been so articulate about the whole range i think we really represent the range of uh voices that we've been hearing so uh with that back to the scripts uh the board will now vote on resolution six resolution 6269 agreement for the return to in-person instruction between portland association of teachers and school district number 1j multnomah county oregon all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed uh please indicate by saying no no are there any obsessions resolution 6269 is approved by a vote of six to one thank you everybody for hanging in there uh the next regular meeting of the board will be held on march 30th we hope that students teachers and staff will be able to rest and recharge during the spring break to be ready to return to hybrid in-person learning this meeting is adjourned


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