2021-03-30 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2021-03-30
Time	18:00:00
Venue	Virtual/Online
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Board Meeting 3/30/21

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meeting of the board of education for march 30th 2021 is called the order for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on has been posted on the pbs website under the board and meetings 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 it is with great joy that we gather today knowing that we've hopefully all have gotten a little bit of a break sometime in the last week during spring break and are renewed for the work ahead the exciting work of welcoming our students back to campus and we have a great deal today to celebrate as we do the work of the district together and so we begin today with the board consent agenda board members if there are any items you'd like to pull we'll set those aside for discussion and vote right after we vote on the rest of the consent agenda but let's first ask ms bradshaw are there any changes to the consent agenda they're not okay board members are there any items you would like to pull from the consent agenda i'd like to pull six two seven three but i don't have an interest in having nor is it appropriate for to have a discussion i just don't want it with the i wanna vote on it separately okay so we'll pull six two seven three from the consent agenda any other items to pull from the consent agenda all right do i have a motion and a second to adopt the consent agenda so moved second director constand moves and director director de pass seconds the adoption of the consent agenda is there any board discussion on the consent agenda all right ms bradshaw is there any public comment no the board will now vote on resolutions two seven 6270-6272 and six two seven four we are not voting on six two seven three all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes sorry all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions the consent agenda is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative shu voting yes all right uh julia would you like to now address resolution 6273 yeah we can just go ahead and vote on it it's because it's uh a settlement i i don't think i have any comments okay um it would be appropriate okay um the board will uh i need a motion and a second for six two seven three so moved second director bailey moves and director scott seconds 6273 is there any board discussion on this and i'm assuming no public comment miss bradshaw all right um the board will now vote on resolution 6273 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no no are there any abstentions the consent agenda is proved is or sorry resolution 6273 is approved by a vote of six to one with student representative shu voting all obstain all right thank you student representative shu we turn now to student and public comment and before we begin i'd like to review our guidelines for comment the board thanks the community for taking the time to attend this meeting and for providing your comments public input informs our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen our board office may follow up on board-related issues raised during public testimony we request that complaints about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter if you have additional materials or items you would like to provide to the board or superintendent we ask that you email them to public comment pps.net please make sure when you begin your comment that you clearly state your name and spell your last name you will have three minutes to speak and you will hear a sound after three minutes which means it is time to conclude your comments miss bradshaw do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment tonight we do start with joe mcferrin joe
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there we go can you hear me all right my name is joe mcferrin uh m c f e r r i n and i'm the second chair lowry and members of the pps school board thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today as i mentioned i live in the city of portland i serve as president and ceo of poic in the rosemary anderson high school for over 30 years poic has contracted with pps to serve predominantly african-american high school school students who are struggling in the public school system some of whom are involved with the justice system and most are impacted by poverty and community violence first i want to commend the board superintendent guerrero and district staff for your ongoing support of local community-based alternative schools throughout the pandemic you have helped to ensure we have access to technology ppe and more to support the students and families we serve second i want you to know that community-based alternative schools are working around the clock as i know public schools are as well to make sure we open schools safely and in alignment with district state and cdc guidelines some alternative schools are even replacing ventilation systems moving walls while all are searching diligently to secure sometimes hard to find face mask shields sanitizer and other ppe materials third i ask that you seriously consider the request we shared with super superintendent guerrero and the board on march 1st this request addresses important issues around equity and ensures alternative schools are well positioned to achieve success among many of our most barriered students last i would like to request that contracted alternative schools be included in the development of general safety plans created by the district our community has been experiencing record levels of violence over the past year including exponential increases in gun violence this year so far there have been 21 homicides and 16 are gun related since covet began poic has lost eight program participants to gun violence and we are not alone all of their schools have been impacted by the disturbing levels of gun violence over the next few weeks i will be extending an invitation to board members to pass comstam and bailey to sit in on our street level outreach meetings so they can learn more about what poic is doing in partnership with other cbo's and law enforcement to reduce youth violence our staff members are on the streets every day interacting with youth and we can offer an important perspective as you develop much needed safety plans my hope is that pps will continue to support and stand behind community-based alternative schools have you as you have done so in the past years this means continuing to assist our coveted response efforts saying yes to the proposal we shared with you on march 1st and including us in the district's safety planning thank you for your time i look forward to our continued work together as we help portland's diverse and capable students succeed thank you so much thank you mr mcferrin i'd like to raise up a question of personal privilege if i could to respond to uh mr mcferrin now as opposed to when i do my report out from the charter and alternative programs committee since while he's still here if that's all right uh thank you uh thank you mr mcferrin for joining us
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um as you may know um we have i've been talking with karina wolfe about these issues and we and your uh issues that you and um your your colleagues from our other alternative schools have raised in your letter are top of our agenda for our next meeting which we're working to set we've taken a pause after our approval of our charters since the district was all all hands on deck for just school reopening but at our next meeting um i want you to know that that's our our first order of business and also that we will also be discussing how the district is working with our regional partners on community violence prevention efforts i sat in on the office of um on the community peace collaborative in the office of violence prevention meetings last week and the district is is getting engaged on several different levels there and of course your team from poic we're reporting on what you're doing on the ground so we want to just be able to connect the dots so that as a large institution where we're doing as much as we can and we're working as efficiently and as collaboratively with our our partners around the region as we can so um we'll we'll have a chance to talk more about those at our next meeting within the next two to three weeks of the charter and alternative programs committee and just appreciate everything you've done and continuing to bring these issues to our attention thank you and and again please feel free to call on me or others if we can be supportive in any way shape or fashion yeah and i want to say also thank you um director constand and also mr rick ferran um just for reporting out on how your community is experiencing um the uptick in gun violence in our community and i'm curious um you probably already have a representative attending the ipac the interfaith peace and action committee meetings that happen every friday at the police precinct on killingsworth and mlk those are those are but i'm wondering if the district has a representative at those meetings they're they're every friday they alternate between very um criminal justice um people from the da's office uh etc and and uh first responders to uh to violence and families that have been impacted that are also like turned to volunteers it's a great meeting to attend and a lot of work happens in those meetings i'm just curious if we have um somebody on board to attend you know one more meeting friday mornings at about i think they're from 9 to 11 or so um but it might be nice to have a some representation from pps there because our kids are impacted i'm not sure if it's the same but if i can share out the notes from the community peace collaborative which meets on friday mornings they do nike green does great notes and i can share those um director to pass with you with the rest of the board and poic is is totally integrated into that yeah excellent and that is exactly the meeting that i was uh referring to thank you thank you and thank you mr mcferrin for all the work you do can we circulate the letter to the rest of the board that came across with the request yes we will make sure the rest of the board gets that letter um thank you uh miss bradshaw do we have any further public comment yes we have vayner rainwater hi folks i'm vina rainwater my last name is r-a-i-n-w-a-t-e-r wrigler elementary parents have brought forward concerns about principal retention to pbs leadership for many years we recognize that wrigler receives equity funds and is staffed more generously to meet our student needs we're grateful for that and we know that the only way to succeed is with stable leadership without stable leadership resources and energy are wasted and waste is what i want to highlight in four ways first the 2014 report from the carnegie institute titled churn the high cost of principal turnover states conservative estimates of the cost to develop hire and onboard each principle is seventy five thousand dollars for regular loan that would be at least five hundred and twenty five thousand dollars over the past seven years that pps has had to spend to replace principles this does not include the cost of replacing teachers and other staff that turn over when a principal leaves second the secretary of state 2019 audit report discussed high expenditures on various school programs that are never evaluated for efficacy
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we've heard consistently that wrigler gets all the programs but who evaluates if they are working as a collective of parents that includes many with over a decade of experience at wrigler we know that many of these programs are not working without longevity in leadership and regular inspection these programs lead to more waste third community and parent involvement is built through relationships these efforts are discouraged wasted and burnt out by lack of continuity in school leadership and finally the most important point can be seen again in a quote from the carnegie institute report students achieve less both in math and reading during the first year after leader turnover and schools that experience principal churn year after year realize serious cumulative negative effects on students a condition that is exacerbated for schools serving underprivileged students and here's the real tragedy the waste of our kids potential the allocated equity funds at wrigler are not going to get regular students where they need to be for success in middle school high school and for healthy lives without further investment in administrative retention wrigler's padres unitos pta has outlined five demands in our march fifth letter we've yet to receive any meaningful response to demands three four and five which relate directly to recommendation 19 in the secretary of state audit prioritize development and stability of effective principles by providing incentives and additional support particularly at high poverty schools what has been done so far has not worked the dozens of messages that have reached your inboxes show that our community allies and partners know the urgency of stability for wrigler these include the voices of parents organizing to reform the deep inequities that riddle pps as well as voices of community members including state representative tana sanchez who shared her experience as the foster parent of regular students and called on the district to ensure greater stability for our school we need meaningful and rapid change we need you to make this happen thank you thank you thank you miss bradshaw who is our next public commenter yeah sorry i couldn't get the timer to turn off apologize for that but you heard it this time that's a good start we have bob staton hello uh mr staton are you there i can see your picture oh great there we go you have a camera you turn on the camera you'll see the camera we can see your picture which is fine or you are welcome to turn on the camera if you would like to do so let me see if i got it here just i'll video here we go there we go here we go here i am my name is bob skelton s-t-a-y-t-o-n i have a message here for the superintendent guerrero on the board the grant high school alumni association the mission statement includes developing alumni interest and support for grant high school this has enabled both grants high school and the grant alumni association to work in partnership over the years and trust is developed between us as we both realized benefits from this partnership that trust has now been broken by the actions of the former grant principal the superintendent the administration and the pps board as plans for rebuilding of grant were being developed the william t fletcher memorial murals were designed designated to be kept but their restoration was not funded former principal carol campbell and the pps administration welcomed our initiative to fund the mural restoration the alumni association was proud to partner with the grant people and demonstrate the sincerity of our commitment towards the school and its students in less than six months over 600 alumni and community members including a matching grant from the leo lester brown fund donated almost 225 000 a significant reflection of the support for the mural restoration by the grant community when we became aware of the opposition to the mural restoration we expected having raised the necessary funds and as a partner and significant stakeholder and grant to be able to meet with the superintendent and staff to discuss the project explore ways to reduce the opposition and or modify the murals alas that did not happen our request to meet with the superintendent was met with silence our initiatives to meet with board members yielded only three members responding we felt locked out of the discussion we were ignored
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our thoughts were not wanted carl hechner the artist who designed and painted the ideals of education murals was an advocate for social justice it seems ironic that these murals showing students striving toward knowledge and wisdom ulysses s grant signifying the end of slavery susan b anthony advocating women's rights and the peaceful coming together of native americans and pioneers would be thought today to be repugnant the title proclaims these as ideals connoting excellence not yet achieved with no mural restoration the 100 000 donated by our primary benefactor will be lost to the school to the district and especially to the students at grant because any excess funds left after the mural restoration were dedicated for scholarships grants or purchases of equipment to enhance the music programs at grant the trust in the current administration and the pps board by the alumni association and community members supporting the mural restoration is broken we were overwhelmed and encouraged with the financial support received for the purpose of helping grant we now have the unfortunate task of telling those supporting the ideals of education that this team is no longer valued by portland public schools we have begun refunding and redirecting the balance of the donations the alumni association appears that our appeals for contributions from the alumni and the grant community will not be met with enthusiasm in the future thanks for your time you thank you that concludes who we have signed up for tonight thank you all for your public comment um feel free to connect with our board manager roseanne powell if you have something specifically you want to follow up with the board or board office normally we would hear now from student representative shu but he let me know earlier that he does not have a report for tonight so we move directly on to superintendent guerrero and i know that you have a lot to report on tonight superintendent good evening directors yes and we're going to keep it focused on the main entree of the week and that's welcoming back our students or at least our youngest scholar so just a few snapshots because i think as we're on the eve of of reopening schools uh cara do you have the deck i'm working on it sorry i think it's important that um we we appreciate um all the folks that have that have gotten us to to this point uh and i wanted to make sure to call that out and cara i've just shared with you the the deck i have that i just can't get it into present mode okay i'm sorry where's within so it is a big week for us uh it's a week that's been more than a year in the making um i think 12 months ago when we shut down to deal with at the time what was appearing to be a fast-moving virus we we didn't know how long it was going to be the case that our campuses would would be closed it's true we thought it was going to be an extended spring break that didn't turn out to be the case and we had to quickly pivot and and think about how we were going to continue to deliver uh instruction to to our students and it's not just about delivering instruction it's also about delivering meals uh and technology and access to other materials that our students need uh and that was something in the you know call it the early days that we really needed uh to to apply our attention and our energies to uh we weren't sure how we were going to meet all those expectations our academic obligations and uh importantly also sustain the mental the social emotional health of our students uh who often times really depend on our schools as hubs for for those supports uh so that that was then if you know we do a little flashback here i think you'll recall some of these headlines the next slide uh so we did improvise we had to innovate just like every other school system in america uh the good thing is we we've had a dedicated group of staff across the district who've continued to work uh in our buildings from home on the myriad of issues that have come up uh as we transitioned through all the various phases during this pandemic for us as a school district and so uh i i just i know i've thanked them before and i i can't thank them enough but i do want to recognize our employees because throughout our district they've been essential uh in every respect so they quickly adopted in some cases the safety protocols that we needed so that
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they could do their work safely they adapted to these fast-moving conditions oftentimes rather fluid in the guidance that we had changing guidance from our scientific community which is still ongoing as as our country learns more about this uh coronavirus and so our staff have worked countless hours on problems that none of us have actually encountered before and hopefully we won't ever see something like this ever again so i'm thinking of nutrition services teams who continue to produce and distribute meals at curbside i'm thinking of transportation workers who help to get meals and learning materials to our students i'm thinking of support staff who helped students and staff connect their technology our instructional teams who overnight pivoted to distance learning are creative and dedicated educators and so many others who made efforts and implemented changes big and small that kept our students at the center all of this effort all these extraordinary individuals deserve our thanks and our respect they didn't treat this lockdown as a chance to check out they engaged they were professional they worked and they worked really hard and as we gradually began to reintroduce students and staff to campus through limited in-person opportunities athletics and performing arts our talented people in the organization gave us confidence that they would figure out how to serve our students no matter what they were flexible they adapted and they proved yet again why pps is such a special place so i want to thank them personally for their hard work and professionalism and for helping us meet our mission as an organization and as a community as we confronted this historic pandemic we've asked a lot of them and in return we've tried to be the best employer we can be one worthy of their efforts if you recall last spring and throughout this school year we immediately and aggressively reduced and paused spending to protect positions wherever possible we recognize that kovid created unprecedented challenges and needs for our staff particularly those whose work remained on site throughout the pandemic and we've been creative in finding responsive solutions we made the most of changed conditions to creating additional student and family supports like drivers delivering curriculum and meals and accelerating work on projects particularly in our facilities all the while keep keeping people working we instituted immediate and ongoing coveted safety measures including offering ppe that have kept our staff safe from covid from the beginning we facilitated school staff access to vaccines into vaccine information and we worked with child care providers to offer increased child care access to all employees and a child care stipend to all on-site staff which i know our directors are considering as you know and it states in our vision we all play a supportive role we're all educators in that sense and we portland public schools are also one of the region's largest employers i'm proud of our people and i'm proud of how we have prioritized taking care of them as we have with our students and our families and that brings us to this week i know directors will be joining us in in our excitement to safely reopen for hybrid learning for many students this week it will be their very first day in a classroom and we want to make that moment as memorable and happy as possible so we've been working very hard for several weeks to prepare addressing and reinforcing health and safety protocols adjusting staffing and bus routes ramping up our communication and family engagement efforts and we are focused on all students that includes those students who will continue their learning virtually in our distance learning program as well as those students participating in our hybrid model but even with all the planning we need to be prepared for the unexpected under the best of circumstances the first day of in-person instruction every year has generally gone rather smoothly but often times uh with a surprise or an unexpected wrinkle and we tend to mobilize and iron that out rather quickly so no differently we will work through any issue that may arise staff will be monitoring and responding to needs as we reopen our schools and we'll take care to focus on what matters most a safe welcome back to our buildings
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one of our graduate portrait qualities includes resilience adapting to life's complex challenges it also states in our vision ensuring a culture of physical and emotional safety as one of our educational system shifts and joyful learning as one of our core values so i'm asking each of our school communities to plan for a fun and special day whether it's this thursday or friday next monday or later this month these will also be days when we will all be learning some new routines intended to keep us all safe so i want to thank everyone in advance for your patience and understanding there is great joy with the first day of school and sometimes a hiccup or two to work out but overall we expect a positive welcome back for most of our students i know that they have been waiting for this day too i'm looking forward to these first days and i want to appreciate directors for joining me in schools across the district and saying hello and welcome back to staff and students and directors that concludes my report for this evening i know we're going to hear some more details a little later on the agenda with our update uh uh uh on reopening so thank you thank you so much superintendent guerrero um i know that i am excited to get to be in a school building and welcome students uh on thursday hey this is gonna be great um definitely something i've missed in my work as a school board member is those school site visits and getting to interact with our amazing students we move now on to um the work of the board our committee and conference reports so we do those in alphabetical order just to have an order no real reason other than that and we start first with our audit committee uh director brim edwards as chair good evening um i uh we out of respect for all of staff's time to get ready for the reopening of schools we canceled our audit committee medi meeting next week but that doesn't mean that auditing is not happening and i want to thank um our two auditors um for arranging this morning an opportunity for members of the audit committee and the student reps to um join them at a walk through at iw wells barnett right now the auditors as for our audit plan are reviewing alignment and adherence to building health and safety plans and they have a schedule between now and you're in to visit dozens of schools to right now to review the uh lippy learning that's the learning is happening uh during lippy and then later during hybrid um but i want to thank parker jackson and nathaniel uh for joining us this morning and also to the wilson staff i'm sorry it's going to take a while to reprogram after 50 something years the iw wells barnett staff for welcoming us to the building and walking us through the current health and safety procedures they have in place for for lippy learning and then how they're going to adjust for a lot more students as they move into into hybrid but there was i'd recommend any board member to if you have a chance over the next couple weeks to join them it gives you some insights on the things they're looking for the things that our schools are doing to make sure that when we reopen for hybrid that the schools are healthy and safe for our staff our students and families so that is the majority of our work and we'll meet again in um in may the one other thing of note is that we have currently we just had a second opening for the community position open up um on the audit committee and um already um director to pass the director bailey and i talked about reopening the process and securing new members from the community to join the audit committee so for we'll be sending around the application form to the rest of the board so if you have individuals that you think would be good additions as community members um please encourage them to fill that out so
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more more to come thank you director for edwards uh director de pass do you have anything from the school improvement bond committee my news is that we do have a meeting this wednesday at 5 30 of the school improvement bond committee we're following a work plan model um i'm looking for the agenda right now um and unfortunately can't find it it's buried in my inbox but that meeting is 5 30-7 um and please attend if you um if you're interested in what's going on there thanks uh cbrc director moore i don't know i lost you rita i was like she's not on this call anymore no i'm here can you hear me i can hear you and you're right below my box i don't know how i lost you but yes before you go can i just add something to michelle's report quickly from on committee sure um at our last meeting which we didn't um report out to you guys on in detail i don't think i would encourage you all to look at the materials because we had a very detailed presentation about plans for the curriculum and technology investments so i think that's something that's important for the rest of the board to take a look at it was um i learned a lot and it's a really important uh piece of this this bond program that we'll be monitoring so um it's posted there with the materials from our our last meeting which you still have access to thank you all right director moore cdrc um and right on cue my cat has arrived um so the cbrc met in a joint session with board on march 11th uh where we all got an update on uh strategic plan and um how it's being used to to build a budget so we got a bit of a budget preview um the next uh work session is scheduled for april 15th and that is going to be um a session to discuss the uh budget proposal that's it thank you and i hear bernie chiming in there as well all right director constant charter and alternative programs what else do you have to report there i know we got a little review earlier i think i covered it for the most part other than the news that was made public this week that one of our charter schools opal school um will not be back in session next year and the district or they are they are dissolving and the district is working with those families um and giving them a lot of special attention uh in terms of finding placement in other extending the lottery for them for other charter and focus option programs and or and or finding placement in neighborhood schools so a lot of a lot of hand-holding and individual attention being given to those families who were um i believe taken largely by surprise director constant so i was taken by surprised by that as well because we just approved that like within the last two months and i'm i'm somewhat curious that there wasn't anything in the renewal process that came up that would have flagged that they were in such precarious uh position in terms of their facility um and just maybe a note of like did did we miss something um as part of that sort of our due diligence in in terms of just having a better um what you know what are they with indicators that they would be closing their doors i can't remember the length of time that we approved but um i want to say it was another 10 years i think the charter itself is agnostic as to where a program is located and they did make it clear that they would have to find a new facility and my guess is that up until the 11th hour they were hopeful that somehow that might come together um but uh yeah we did know that they would need to move but uh in lieu of finding another location or moving they are dissolving and then i guess yeah i know i i think that's a really good question is there anything in the presentation that would have alerted us ahead of time to this sudden closing and i believe i'm just guessing also um director constand that at the time that this charter renewal was going through the board of directors was probably wrestling exactly with this with this idea the reason that the charter was going to move was unrelated to the um the revenue
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structure and the the you know it's an interactive museum and you need to have lots of little hands interacting and that wasn't happening during covid so i i think it's a both and situation i think that we that probably i'm guessing the school knew that something was coming down the pike or that discussions were happening but probably weren't at liberty to share anything final from the board the board of directors of that institution is the direct the governing board for the museum and also the school and so i'm thinking that there was probably a just a lag the timing of our communications didn't work out very well but i think it's a really good question um it might it might beg us to answer to ask the question in our in our further reviews is there anything that you're not sharing right now that we need to know or um because i think we did ask about financial stability uh in our in our review process and in fact did get a report out about that so anyway and then my secondary question and this is maybe for uh ms large is do we need to suspend their charter since we've renewed it or does it just sit there and it can be utilized at some point in time or because they're not actually going to be operating charter school next year that we need to to do something well certainly right now they're still operating the school right right so we wouldn't want to take any action until they're officially done and then i i uh i'll have to go back and look at that specifically but i don't think it just sits there unused i think it either gets suspends or suspended by the board or is uh inoperative under its own terms and i'll have to look at that specifically i'd be happy to circle back on that thank you all right uh we turn now is that all of the questions that you had directed by medwards okay we turn now to the intergovernmental committee director scott do you have anything to report uh no we canceled our last meeting uh but we are scheduled to meet next week on april 8th at five o'clock to talk about more intergovernmental issues director moore do you have anything to add on the policy committee no um we also suspended um the march meeting um which i think was supposed to happen yesterday uh our next meeting is scheduled for april 19th all right uh director medwards and dr bailey do we have anything from rose quarter yeah we had a meeting um last monday and um two things are coming out of it um i believe that um courtney wesling has made a request to um director scott that we have a presentation um there's some very interesting data and presentation [Music] at the last meeting that we thought would be useful for the intergovernmental affairs committee to hear and to have an opportunity to have dialogue around so that's one thing and then also there has been a request from the from individuals on the rose quarter executive steering committee for a sort of presentation on like what does pps want um from the the project and so that is likely going to happen well they requested it for april and um i think courtney wesley and i both said that um given everything else that's happening with the schools reopening um that may or may not happen so we'll be working with staff um on on that and again it may happen in april but uh maybe not uh just because of the just all the work that's underway regarding reopening it it's always interesting to have uh already communicated what we want and then to have somebody say well what do you really want i think that i think they'd like a more more definition in what we want and some people so the executive steering committee some of them are people or individuals who have been at that the table from the very beginning and then there's a host of new people and so um i think we should give them a thought a thoughtful answer about um at least some of the options of what maybe um what pps
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uh needs for that school community um the other thing and this is part of the information that uh we for the presenter that would be coming to um director scott's committee is around the the freeway is going to be significantly wider than previously had been disclosed um coming about 26 feet closer to tubman which is already very close so you know significant impacts and how those would be mitigated both during the construction and long term are are issues that i think we should be getting more information about director brim edwards is that 26 feet more than i mean i think they were and it's been a while the initial plan was something like 20 or 30 feet and is this an additional 26 feet you know i don't want to misspeak um but i we will send around the the materials um that were shared um i believe uh courtney got them from the committee and um we can send them around but again this is what we thought would be it was for a lot of people the first time they'd seen the the new the new the design and just um the breadth of it so just to remind board members in the public we had earlier reported to odot our concerns about how that hillside would be affected the lack of stability in the hillside the lack of known any kind of known support underneath the school knowing that that hillside had some substandard fill from a long ago construction project added to our concerns and that moving i-5 closer to the school meant uh probably a significant increase in harmful air pollution um you know perhaps going we sort of have a don't be in the back of school rule now uh moving if if it is indeed another 25 26 feet does that mean the front of the school then becomes a huge concern in terms of air quality and the health of our students and staff [Music] those are big questions thank you both for your work with this huge issue for our students are there any other committee or conference reports that we need to share in this moment all right we move on to um an exciting piece of our work in our continued uh thinking about the names and values of our buildings and and people um and so i invite superintendent guerrero to please introduce the um uh mascot new mascot process for iw wells barnett high school thank you chair directors if you recall on january 26th that was just a couple months ago directors unanimously approved uh resolution number 6235 to change the name of woodrow wilson high school to iowa b wells barnett high school this june students will graduate from a comprehensive high school named in honor as you heard who's a journalist activist mother of four tireless and fearless champion of racial equity and social justice of black women similar to the process for the naming of ida b wells barnett high school a committee was formed to identify a new mascot and the engagement process led by students again with support of our office of community engagement engaged in a process that meets expectations outlined in our current administrative directive i'm pleased to say that tonight i'm recommending that you approve the evergreens as the new name for the ida b wells barnett high school i'd like to introduce camille adedevbo our corporate foundation relations officer along with and i see he's popped up here our esteemed principal philippe i hope i said that right i'm working on it philippe to share more on on how this recommendation came together thank you superintendent guerrero um dear portland public schools board directors um superintendent district leaders
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my name is philly priestic and i'm very happy to tell you tonight that i'm the proud principal of ida b wells high school do we have kara are you able to project the presentation are you able to see it okay here we go and we can go to the next we can go to slide three thank you so the last time i was here i i had the wonderful pleasure of introducing you to several of our student leaders who led a historic effort to rename our school and if we go to next slide this evening i'm joined with the rest of the team so this evening you'll have a chance to hear from some of the grown-ups who've been who've been involved and so i'm pleased to be joined tonight by uh miss norma hamilton uh miss narina mcleave uh martin osborne and miss ellen watmore uh as uh superintendent guerrero mentioned we're here to formally request that our school mascot be changed from uh the wilson trojans to ida b wells evergreens we look forward to telling you about the process that we followed ways in which we engage the community what we heard from our stakeholders and why we think that evergreens is the best choice for our school mascot martin can i hand it over to you yes i hope and carol we can go on to the next slide you can hear me um one of the things we wanted to make sure that the first of all good evening thank you for allowing us to present to the board i'm martin osborne i was the community design community member designate to the committee i'm excited about to be here as well we just wanted to make sure that that the board understood that similar to what we had done on the actual renaming process when it came to discussing how we would go forward with identifying potentially a new mascot we kept the same values and processes in place and we adhered toward the school district's directive on how names are changed next slide please to that end there were some key things that we as a committee wanted to make sure that we included in our process and one was again making sure that the staff the students parents and community groups who were going to be affected by this actually had an opportunity to provide input and that we were going to document and be able to show our work throughout this whole process and we were going to also make sure that we would give consideration to the historical background of the name of the school that was selected and at the same time try to tie it to the relevance of the community being served by the school next slide please one of the things that was challenging for us frankly was that we really appreciate the approval of the renaming of the school back in january but in order to meet other deadlines for instance uh uniforms for the athletic teams the ordering cycle for them and just to move this process along we needed to make sure that we hit the deadlines for that including being in front of the board again we were fortunate that we already had some tools and skills that we developed through the naming process that allowed us to streamline and not have to think a whole lot about how we would do this again so we engaged using the same tools that we had before which was surveys to the community we involved the community more this time and we were looking more for a vote if you will rather than just input so that we could deliberate over the name the mascot was something that we wanted to make sure that particularly for the students we would have their involvement engagement and excitement and direction we were going we we were somewhat limited in terms of trying to be creative with the fact that we decided that we weren't going to go for changing the school colors school colors is a complicated process it also would add additional cost to the ultimate impact of our changes and we thought for the most part the green and white and third color gray of formerly known as wilson is something that could be something we could carry over and in fact would actually enhance potentially what the mascot name would be we and i'm going to let uh ms moore talk a little bit more about this but what we wanted to do is make sure that the community got a chance to to vote and we talked about how they how they came up with these ideas we actually had two different surveys that they did the first one to create general interest and the second one to get down to some finalists finally we with the help of a school board
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engage with a marketing group to help us with a branding process to really bring the mascot selections alive and i think we'll talk about that a little bit later on and with that i'd like to turn it over to ms watmore hi there thank you for having us thank you for your time um i'm ellen watmore and i'm a teacher at ida b wells barnett high school and i had the pleasure of presenting to you all back in june of 2020 and reading one of our student panel committee members words to advocate for the name change to begin with so i just sincerely appreciate your time and your support in this endeavor and this long but also quick path that we've taken um so if we could go to the next slide one of the things that mr osborne was referring to was we had a a couple of ideas of how to reach out to the community from how we had done the outreach for the the naming um so we created a google form um that we shared with the school-wide community and they were invited to nominate mascots um and it was an open invitation for nominations and we did ask that they provide an explanation or rationale for that suggestion we received 420 initial nominations which was overwhelming but we reviewed those individually and collectively as a committee and one of the things that was really important was we looked at these nominations through the lens of the guiding principles that we'd established early on in our committee work and those guiding principles that martin referred to earlier were really critical to identifying which nominations would allow us to move forward and and actually lift up the the school and the community and give us an opportunity to really center more local identity because that was something that had been requested by um by in the renaming process that we consider a more local identity so um so we thought about that that localism and how to symbolically better represent ida b wells legacy of community and strength and resilience so the five finalists were the bees the evergreens the guardians the owls and the royals so we put together a another form that went out to we had one form for the greater community and one form for current students and staff and rather than putting that out as a simple majority vote we discussed as a committee the the power of a ranked choice voting system that really gives voice to a greater um population of voters as you may know there are some states who have moved toward ranked choice voting to to allow for less um to allow for yeah greater participation and um and greater voice um that the winner isn't isn't exclusively um whoever um selected um that first uh choice so um so when we we did that um we thought that that might facilitate a consensus-building determination that honors and values the voice of every voter and that was something that had been important in our committee work as well we got more than 1500 responses we had 897 student and staff votes and 624 community votes and when we followed the protocol for ranked choice voting we had a clear front-runner and not only that but the student and staff votes um the the majority winner coincided with that as well so we saw a strong strong support for um the evergreens next slide so this was a um a school-wide loud and clear um support for this new mascot and um one of the things that really felt like it resonated was that evergreens are characterized by the life-giving force of their foliage the strength of their massive trunk and the depth of their roots in an individual tree and as a forest of trees they provide shelter and sustenance they have histories that precede us and will continue in perpetuity after we are no more this symbolic choice is grounded in the spirit of portland
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and is representative of ida b wells barnett's legacy so um we wanted to just share some of the input that we heard from some of our community members so next slide some of the things that people had to say in both the nomination process and in the feedback on the voting um are included here so a current student said that they thought that the evergreens is a good mascot name because it is already it already in a way represents the state we live in and we need to appreciate the land we live on as well as the people who live here a parent and guardian of a current student said evergreens are commonly associated with oregon they are important to our regional culture and history they grow tall and strong they grow in stands and groves in community and are non-gendered another parent guardian said they are iconic a staple of our regional landscape and industry and they are mighty and resilient and a parent and guardian who's also a community member and a member of our alumni our esteemed alumni said evergreens allows the current colors to work well it's neutral and regionally appropriate visually it's easy and fun to adapt on all graphics print platforms evergreens are strong and steadfast give shelter have deep roots and also reach for the sky with a somewhat verbally complex new name the simplicity of trees and symbolism they carry feels right and the symbol aligns with the strength of the woman we honor and with that i thought i would turn it over to our esteemed alumni member um who is joining us by video pre-recorded video um in the next slide and cara i'm not sure if it's just you might need to adjust your share screen settings to allow for optimized video and and also there is um in the settings there is an audio setting if you want to use original audio that might help us hear her better first off we want to thank you for your time today all right throughout this entire process the belief you've had i'm not sure everybody was able to hear this but this is noreena mcleave 2018 graduate i believe finishing up her sophomore year at uofo and currently living in sweden so she has been involved with this process from last summer whether here from oregon or from abroad um i also apologize i didn't see my screen earlier that camille was here and i wanted just to honor the incredible support that she has been offering to us as a committee and as a team and i just want to see if camille you would like to add anything my apologies no worries um good evening superintendent guerrero in board of education i am here in support of the recommendation of the ida v wells school community do we have any further presentations no that's it that's it from us we're happy to answer any questions and also just want to thank you for taking the time to uh to to hear and to for your support thank you so much i just continue to be impressed by the work that your community has done and i know that camille our staff person from the district office has been a huge part of that as well um but i really appreciate the student voice and the community voice that's been part of this and thank you mr osborne for being here as well um to share that perspective and i so appreciated the the things you read um about mrs what more about what what
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members of the community had said about this name is really inspiring any other questions or comments from board members before i have a quick comment and i have a question one of my questions had to do with the other four names and uh miss whitmore i believe you i wrote them down here my other question was and i'm not real clear on the relationship between the family foundation and pps and how we interface with that i'm wondering if this idea of the evergreens had been run by them as stakeholders and the other thing is i've heard from a couple community members now about the idea of using a tree which of course i mean personally i love evergreens i'm from oregon but using a tree that's used to lynch people in um in our mascot if that if there was any consideration as to the imagery there that we've all seen from people hanging from trees and using this mascot so i appreciate the community engagement process that's gone on i know you've heard from alumni from staff and students and community members and just wondering if that was ever if that if that um the notion of using a tree as a mascot was broached i'd be really interested in hearing from someone on the committee because i think that um you know everyone comes with blind spots and i think that might have been a really a really big blind spot that just wasn't considered um for whatever reason i i have no idea but i just wonder if that was if that was a consideration it's um it's something i really want to know i want to know if that was addressed thank you director of the past i i appreciate you bringing that up and um [Music] i can i can tell you a little bit about a relationship with um ida b wells uh descendants or at least some of them and then i can speak to your question in particular so we're we're in ongoing contact with um mr dan duster who's ida b wells's great grandson he's a speaker and a writer we have him scheduled to present to our staff and we also have him scheduled to present to some of the local ptas in our feeder schools that are engaging in reading books about ida b wells i've also had some communication with michelle duster who just published a book i to be the queen and she was incredibly generous to send some signed cards for us to include in them in the staff books which which we've purchased so they've been really supportive and i would say really enthusiastic um and our intention has always been to really join their efforts and their mission which is to to protect preserve and promote the legacy of ida b wells and so we we take this um seriously and definitely want to follow the lead of others who also share that commitment to protect preserve and promote ida b wells's legacy on the issue of the mascot i haven't spoken to them about any any suggestions or recommendations or you know what they thought about the evergreens as the as the as the choice and i can tell you that for us um the really the the focus and the opportunity was really to marry this this sentiment that we heard from a lot of our stakeholders during the naming process which was a desire for a local connection and um and we didn't we didn't think that i mean ida b wells has a very particular connection to woodrow wilson which we thought was a was a wonderful counterpoint to the history that we were trying to both surface and and move away from and ida b wells is somebody who stood strong and stood proud against what woodrow wilson and many others like him had promoted and so we felt like she was a very appropriate choice for us in response to his legacy and in choosing the mascot as we looked around our community to see what what is most prominent what is most reflective of where where we are evergreens seemed like a like like like an obvious choice so i am um i'm reading about her life uh and i'm i'm reading about the things that inspired her to start writing and those are deeply painful experiences that she she had
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and um and and and it's it's an incredibly dark legacy uh in this country so i can tell you as the principle of the school the last thing that i would want is to um inadvertently cause harm uh or or to in any way be associated with um with with what she devoted her life to fight against um and so i think you're raising i think you're raising uh clearly an important question um and um we're open yeah i i really appreciate that and i think osborne was trying to speak so i wanted to make sure him yeah specifically to your comment um the the idea of symbolism and imagery in the united states history is fraught with different ways that it can be taken so in our choice of the evergreen had nothing to do with the horrible history of lynching in the united states lynching trees typically are not evergreens in fact i can't think of situations where they are i as you as you asked that i was thinking like well let's see billie holiday in her famous song strange fruit mentions poplar trees oak trees elm trees deciduous trees with large lower branches typically are the ones that are used to do the unjustice act of lynching people evergreens the symbolism of that which we did discuss were more positive in just about every culture that um we touched on and so um we feel that um we didn't talk about it directly to your questions specifically in those terms but we were looking at the symbolism more as a tree of life than a tree of death and you could certainly take it either way depending upon your position one of the things that we're not able to present to the board right now is the actual imagery of the the evergreens which i think once that is out and seen by the public there will be no association that people will connect to what typically is thought of as a tree used for something such as lynching at least that's what the hope would be yeah and i appreciate that i thought about that too i'm i'm really into trees and evergreen trees don't grow in the south and that's that's where you know much of the lynching happened and um i also have positive very positive associations with evergreen trees um being being from this part of the country i just wanted to raise that issue i think i'd feel better about voting on it if i knew that the family had been consulted um just to make sure that you know we're absolutely doing everything everything we can do i think what i like about the evergreens is that it bridges our you know painful history in the state with this positive development in naming the school ida b wells barnett and in in that in that case seem to kind of knit together um who we are today with who we were in the past yeah um anyway i'd like us to do our due diligence and i just want to say one more thing and that's that lynching is a really difficult topic to talk about and as a sole um you know blackboard member um it would really um make my spirit happy to have my white colleagues weigh in on this as well i understand that you know um you know we none of us fights every single battle but it feels very lonely to me personally to be sitting here um being the only one broaching these difficult topics and i would invite you and beg you implore you to join me in disrupting um situations practices you know that are racist i can't i can't steer a ship by myself i i need we need to do this as a team um and so just invite you in please and and i appreciate your um principal and mr osborne um for your commentary i just i would feel better about voting for this personally if if we had consulted the family to see if they had any reservations at all so i'd like to still get me hang on one second because i norma hamilton has been trying to speak for a while and is a member of our uh team that we were asking questions i wanted to make sure she had a chance to speak and then we can wouldn't have other board members comment irma hi um norma hamilton i just um i didn't know you wanted the perspective of the family i was just going to say that as a
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committee um we do hurt you i am also a part of uh um african-american and we did a speak with as a group as a committee what this represent and we want it to be we look into as a spiritual part we look into the forms in the comme un the community there's no looking not even this much about that is looking about that is um in the spiritual part they wanted to connect to oregon part of the community to bring it back to have some part of it and that's the way we took it like uh martin is saying it just it is in that part and i thought it was a beautiful thing um in the beginning i will be honest i thought evergreen as a mascot i never heard of it but then i grew up it grew up on me and with the discussions and it i saw the beauty of it and yeah we cannot present to you to see a model of it but it's going to be beautiful and the students in the committee loved it i think it's it is going to be beautiful i don't think you're going to be displeased i don't think the family is going to be displeased nobody is going to be displeased with it and especially we're keeping the colors that the whole community is used to that is green and white and they love it thank you broome edwards did you have a comment you wanted to make i i did um i want to thank uh director de pass for raising the issue um because it just came up um i know some of us were contacted um and i want to um thank martin for your and norma for your um sharing your perspectives from the commit the committee members it's very helpful um i would be most comfortable since um you know as we talked when we changed the name of the high school that um this is one of those legacy issues you know for the next hundred years um we're making decisions um that will chart a course for that school in southwest uh portland that it seems that um we should take the same care with the mascot and i i would personally be most comfortable if we may be delayed for two weeks and just checked in to make sure that the things that we're assuming that we have talked to others and just um before we take that step versus taking the step and then making the assumption that it's okay so i would be more comfortable with that um i being a like michelle i'm a i'm a northwest native so i i love the evergreens i've got a park full of them behind me and the symbolism of strength and sustainability but i do think i'm also weighing that with um you know iw wells barnett um devoted her life to stopping lynching as she described it as our our national crime and so it seems prudent just to before we make this sort of long-term lasting decision um to just check in um since since it wasn't um considered as part of the earlier discussion so that's what i'd be most comfortable with and i'm happy to make a motion if other board members think that's um appropriate yeah i've heard from both uh director de pass and you director from edwards that you'd feel most comfortable voting on this after a little more uh investigation especially with the idb wells barnett family um so ms large can we do we need to vote to postpone this or can we just as a board decide there's no motion on the tape there's no motion on the table so you can just move it to the next agenda so um i think what we'll do is we'll move this to the next agenda and ask that the um group um check in with the family and um take some time to consider um some of the issues that director of past has raised about um lynching and again the work that iwells has done especially as director bermed was raised in that um area and if this really is you know i think um sometimes we i i think the evergreen is a beautiful symbol and for all the reasons you raised and normal like you said when i first heard evergreen i'm like oh okay and then as you all described it i i kind of fell in love with it and then as director to pass raised her viewpoint um which i think is a really really important one um you know it's like oh let's take a step back and really think about this and so i think coming back in two weeks um with with
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that a little bit more of investigation i think we'll make this the careful wise decision that i know you all want it to be um so let's do that director scott yeah thanks i just wanted to in actually really just just react into um director de pasa's comment that i think you know we we do need to she does need to hear from from the whole board and i will say is one of one of two white men on the board sometimes i i do try not to be the first one to speak which i think is sometimes um um something we should we should keep in mind all the time no i really appreciate the conversation it was not something that i had thought of um and i think it is worth taking a little bit of time to make sure we get it right i also really appreciate um miss hamilton and mr osborne's comments and particularly mr osborne's comments about symbols are complex and and have lots of different meaning and i think that um um that's just really valuable as we go through this and hearing the committee and and how they thought about it and how they arrived at it um hearing these concerns i think doing a little bit more um you know sort of research and due diligence because it is a long lasting decision makes sense um and then and then really keeping that in mind right that that symbols are complex they can carry a lot of meaning and and really they carry the meaning we we give them um and then i think you know no matter what the decision to move forward the the the what what will um what this mascot will carry will be the meaning that this committee put into it and that the community put into it and that this board and this district put into it i think that's going to be really important moving forward so so thank you for raising in the conversation any other thought from board members before we move on to our next agenda item all right a separate issue that maybe this is just for the next time we consider um this topic is um in the board policy sorry this is kind of a dry technical budget issue but in the policy it says that if the name change and i'm assuming because we are changing um because the high school name changed and subsequently the mascot name changed that if it was changed for a discrimination reason that um the school community would not bear the cost of um of all the changing the the gym floor the reader boards the uh the stationary all the things that um even if you keep the colors the same need to be updated and so i'm as as we start moving through these and it's a little bit different with id wills barnett than with say franklin because uh the school is all being redone and you just put the new the new mascot name on the floor and the colors and the fonts and everything um so i would be interested to hear from the district staff about how that i'm assuming this would be but maybe that's wrong included in next year's budget or part of the more the facility deep facility changes that happens when we modernize the high school but i i'd be interested in finding out more about that because having been there this morning everywhere i looked i kept seeing the word wilson um and so it was it was hard to remember that i was at ida b wells barnett high school um when i was there because the language and the mascots and everything are all over the place they're beautiful but they're it's the wrong name so if we can have that accompany whatever information on how we're going to pay for those as a district when we consider it next i'd appreciate it thank you julia superintendent hearing the request uh staff will come back and certainly there's uh quite a bit of rebranding as as you pointed out that would need to happen and we want it to be at a reasonable cost and something prudent um but staff will will come back with a ballpark uh on what that looks like because the whole point of the name change is that our students see their community reflect the change all right anything else before we move on to our um next item thank you for raising that director to pass um and for helping us to think in new ways and for calling us um to do better all right our next item actually is about us doing better as well so thank you to our staff and students at idb wells i'm sure we'll see you back in a couple weeks as we do some of this again um but superintendent guerrero would you like to introduce
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this next item that we're actually not going to talk about tonight yeah i think that might be the theme here um just to be transparent with directors i had a conversation uh with chair about postponing this next agenda item uh not because uh it's not long overdue uh that we have an updated ada transition plan uh which hasn't really been looked at since 94 kind of like a few other items in the district and not that there hasn't been some good community input on it or that staff isn't ready to talk about it i just think the conversation might come across a little bit incomplete because it isn't just about compliance to a law that the district should be uh you know recognizing uh in its facilities but how does do we do we have a bigger vision and aspiration for making all of our facilities universal in their design and part of that is yes it should be ada compliant but there are a lot of other elements to our buildings as learning environments as play environments that long-term facilities planning uh as we dive into another uh bond investment uh and i think it warrants a conversation about our aspiration at being a more udl oriented school system so that we can place in context all of these elements and how each of them begins to fill out a more complete picture of of what our school system uh who it's intended to support and serve and so for that reason and because i know we have a couple related uh bond committee and school improvement uh our school bond improvement committee discussions but it also gives us a chance to sort of really spell out the kind of more visionary narrative that i think we want to um share ownership in being clear with the community what our goal is here and so for that reason i've asked chair lowry if we would consider uh this uh at an upcoming meeting i don't mean a year from now uh but to give us a number of weeks uh to to really try to formulate um a statement like that and i know there's been an offer by at least one director to to help with that uh and and so if if it pleases the board or chair i would like to put this item off for for a future upcoming agenda sounds good i think roseanne's going to be thrilled with us that she's not here tonight for this meeting and we've already you know messed up the agenda by moving this one and then the ida b wilson's coming back so um you know this is what happens when she leaves us on our own uh i see that several people have unmuted and want to make comments i did have one question question superintendent aguero you said udl which is universal design for learning look for learning okay i i didn't quite get what the l was for so udl is universal design for learning great um other comments uh amy thank you um thank you chair lowry for your willingness to postpone this and thank you for the way you framed that superintendent um one of the things i'm really proud of with this district in the last year is that we i think do a good job of grounding our work in our vision that we created with the community and i think here we miss the opportunity a little bit and i'm glad we're taking another shot at it because we really um we really uh have a wonderful opportunity to ground our vision of equity and inclusion um in our our in our vision to ground ground our accommodations for all of our different learners in our in our ideas around inclusion so um i don't think we're far away because i think that the plan actually reflects that in a lot of the work but we need to connect some dots and i appreciate your your willingness to do that we had a lot of great great conversations around this when we were doing our bond planning and i think we made a lot of progress in evolving our ideas on how what we wanted to include in this 2020 bond um but i appreciate um just framing this a little bit differently so it's aligned with our with our values dr bailey um yeah i i think this is great uh and i just want to uh recognize former board member julius barza-brown who advocated when she was on the board that are office of school modernization would have a udl staff person an expert on board who would influence the design of our buildings and i see this as a as in in that spirit um where we actually can elucidate
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uh a udl vision for our buildings and instruction um to really guide us in the future so thank you i'm also um thrilled that this is being delayed um i feel like there's we're kind of wrestling with a sense of urgency and getting this plan out the door and but yet i appreciate the opportunity to take a deeper look into really aligning our values with the plan our built environment is directly reflective of our values and in the case of design in buildings especially in 100 year old buildings it's designed for the mainstream dominant culture that would be able-bodied people and so for us to take a a little bit longer more time to more carefully consider the implications the um you know the challenges the strengths opportunities and weaknesses um in this moment is just i'm just grateful for it i'm glad we're stepping back a bit and really also happy to contribute to that conversation i did um go to design school for this i studied um americans with disabilities wasn't called universal design yet but because it was still early on i was in the late 80s but we there was attention then to um creating spaces for all types of users and and i'm just i'm grateful for the conversation director from edwards yeah thank you um i think this is uh a really important move that we're making tonight um i was maybe this is the night of symbolism but i was afraid it was going to be a night of symbolism that we'd be embracing compliance as our standard and i know that we're better than that and we want more than that for all of our students and so i really appreciate the conversation both with superintendent guerrero today but also with um dan young who we had a great discussion about how we got to this point there's been a lot of history in this district about talking about a transition plan and last night i pulled out about 10 10 years of notes and questions that i'd asked staff over the years none of the staff who are current that are currently here um about the ada transition plan and how we can move it forward and i'm appreciative that dan and his team have moved it forward i think that we can co-create a plan about accessibility that's much broader than just compliance and i looked to the board's early action last summer of setting the bar above compliance and looking at how and putting voting affirmatively to put in the bond 33 million dollars of improvement so all of our main floors are are accessible to students families um also appreciative that the voters affirmed and embraced that that plan and i know the staff will do a good job of executing off of that um that plan the work that has been funded in the 2020 a bond um so when i think about it we have when i look at the ada transition plan and my conversation with dan this is really in some ways a compliance document and when i read through it um you know my heart sync a little bit thinking about um we had taken this action earlier this year that had been co-created with staff and affirmed by the voters and yet we were going to be rolling out a plan that um for a host of reasons left us with compl not in compliance until 2041 but as i look through the materials that dan and team had put together especially for the last meeting we had about it i thought it i actually got re-excited again because not you you have this sort of compliance element to the work but um there's so much more that can be added and i think we um can uh approach this not as a effort towards um hey we're going to be in compliance finally since after you know since 1994 um but rather there are some things that our community and in the focus groups that the community identified as really important facility upgrades that aren't just about physical barriers but really about allowing our students to access um
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things that currently even with an ada transition plan wouldn't be um wouldn't be implemented so adding things like accessible playgrounds to me you know seeing kids being able to play if you go to harper's playground is a great example of a playground that's accessible to to all and so i if i think about this what we're putting forward it's not just for compliance but part of a larger package that increases accessibility for for all our students that that is something that we can look at is not just a routine compliance vote but something that really creates creates a new future for some of our students and um so i wholeheartedly support and i'm happy to help work on sort of this broader broader framework and just on the last note i thought it was um interesting just to think about um kind of the message we're sending to to our students and families when we aspire to be more than compliance um yesterday in the new york times they had a um it's called an overlooked obituary so it's like an obituary they should have written but they didn't write at the time but they write it later and it was about a woman named kitty cohn and she was the lead organizer and strategist for the 504 sit-in and it was a four-week long protest in april of uh 1977 in which 150 disabled people and their allies took over the san francisco office of the u.s department of health education and welfare um but the 504 act was eventually paved the way for ada and it's really a compelling story about when you move beyond when you move away barriers um and move beyond sort of just the the bare minimum and fully include people um of what is possible it's anyways it's a great it's a great life story about somebody who um really moved the dial uh for accessibility and i hope that we can create something that is lasting and beautiful for all of our students so thank you i'm glad we're yeah thank you director edwards uh we will i had a final comment and that's that when i just typed in um overlooked obituaries the first thing that came up in my search which was on google um was ida b wealth it it was from the new york times 2018 and so um i thought that was just really kind of eerie um that hers was the first name that came up all right well we will uh we have more to talk about with ida b wells barnett and we have more to talk about with our ada and the the work that um kitty um did in her time to sort of bring us forward to do more for all of our students um so but what we need right now is a break um i know that we have engaged in some deep conversation and a lot of thinking tonight and we have more before us so i'm gonna ask us to take a five minute break and we'll go ahead and come back at 7 49 thank you back from our five minute break and moving on to the next piece of our work together which is our update on kovid hybrid and lippy so superintendent guerrero would you like to introduce this next item on our agenda yes thank you chair lowry if cara you wouldn't mind teleporting the assorted senior staff um well what i can tell you directors the one thing we're not going to postpone is the opening of schools this week uh so we're excited to see our youngest scholars coming back this thursday and friday and the rest of our elementary students on monday but here for the latest update is dr russ brown and other senior staff who will i'm sure introduce themselves good evening i'm pleased to join you superintendent guerrero members of the board and larger community for our regular update on both the health metrics as well as our preparations to open our schools for our students something we're really excited about i'll be joined this evening by dan young our chief operating officer sir and sean byrd our chief of schools who will also be providing components to the update as well just waiting now for the slide deck to come up
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okay and if we could just go on to the next side please so tonight um i may give you a brief update on where we are in terms of covered rates in the county and then briefly an update on our response rates and who we've heard from in terms of interest in hybrid instruction both for our middle school students as well as our high school then i'll hand things over to dan young who will give a brief update on our health and safety measures and some of the last minute things we've done to prepare for our students return and then we'll close with sean byrd who will we'll talk uh briefly again about uh the anticipated return of our students schools something that we again have all been looking forward to next slide please you know throughout this time again we've uh have guiding principles that have really organized all our work uh just briefly again uh everything that we talk about uh and plan for is centered in racial equity and social justice and obviously we have consistently been talking about the health and wellness of not just not only our students and our staff but with the larger community as a whole and throughout this time again we've talked about the importance of relationships and we've seen time and time again how our staff have come together to support our students through this time and and our community partners how they've leaned in and helped as well and then finally um this year has been full of innovation in terms of providing opportunities for our students to learn next slide please so please to say that you know the the case rates in multnomah county have remained low they dip down to mid 50s and have plateaued now in the low 80s for the last couple uh cycles uh we are well below the the threshold for uh reopening uh for hybrid instruction and uh i'm pleased that we're in a space that it it's safe to do so at this point in time next slide please you know we talked a lot about uh the the survey for our k5 parents we introduced a survey for our parents in middle school and i just want to begin to go through the results for that next slide please again this is relatively new at this point this was launched on march 15th and and a couple days later we went into spring break and as of this morning we had a 71.7 percent response rate uh with 73.3 percent of our families saying that they wanted hybrid for their students and you can see that the response uh the interest for hybrid for our black latino and native american respondents were in the mid to upper 60s and at this point we had heard from 61 percent of our schools with a fifty percent or higher response rate uh that was the the data that i sampled this morning i looked uh briefly just to see the overall response rate it's gone up to over 75 percent just during the course of the day because we have teams that are actively reaching out to contact families and to to gather that information for the purposes of planning for hybrid instruction the cohorting and transportation next slide please as you can see uh as of this morning there was uh variability in our overall responses you can see that again the overall was 71.7 this morning uh with the lowest response rate being from pacific islanders to 36.7 percent um again we're seeing a very rapid uh rate of increase in in response rate right now obviously a lot of folks are are very interested uh in in making sure that we have this information for planning next slide in terms of preference for hybrid it's a little surprising to me that the preference for hybrid was actually higher so far for our middle school students with 73.3 percent of families expressing an interest in hybrid instruction for for their students uh in in middle school it's a little higher than what we saw in k5 again moving target we're gathering more information and i would expect these these numbers to continue to move as we move forward moving on to uh the next slide we're going to go into the uh well pardon me i'll talk about the school list again about a quarter of our schools have an 80 or higher response rate as of this morning about half have a 70 percent response rate and you know over 75 percent have over 50 response rate at this point in time and again moving target and as before we're aiming for for at least an 80 response rate across the board and again have uh phone banking going on to reach out and including
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uh language support to reach out to families whose first language is in english next slide please same same thing uh 9 12 interest survey again trying to gather information to better understand how to to cohort students so that we can bring them back excited to do so this this survey was actually launched the day before spring break uh so it only has uh you know a couple days behind the middle school survey and we'd expect the numbers to be a little bit lower next slide please and in fact they they are as of this morning we had a 63.5 response rate again fast moving target it's over 70 percent right now 64.4 percent of our respondents went hybrid this number is a little lower than what we saw with middle school and we can see that there's more variability here with our black latino and native respondents with a little bit less interest in our families for middle for engaging in hybrid as we move forward we've had three schools that that really jumped on this and got a fairly high response initially grant lincoln and ida b wells barnett and they've gathered again over 80 response rate and again other schools are coming up rather quickly as we move forward and this is data we collect in order to be able to cohort and determine how to safely organize our schools to bring students back next slide and with that i'm going to oh well i'll break down uh here on in terms of race again um our overall response rate again 63.5 percent again you see some variability again with pacific islanders having the lowest response rate at this point with 24.1 percent and again at this point we're actively reaching out to to contact families and gather information and both at school and central office level dr brown yes um uh it broken out um by special ed um we talked about that um previously for the k5 and then also do we have it at all based on um sort of socio-economic so one of the benefits of of the way this survey was designed is that the individual links are per student and they connect back to our student information system so anything that we know about our students within the student information system we can aggregate the data that way so yes we can we can talk about response rates by special ed tests we've talked about response rates based on english language learners or students who are eligible for free or reduced price lunches and when i put together a final summary document for all of these that that will certainly be included in it as well i i don't have those aggregate numbers in front of me right now but they are things that we can do great thank you not at all next slide please again uh the preference for hybrid instruction varied uh and we see a little bit more variability here than we we saw when we're looking at the k5 model uh and here you see that that actually our asian families have shown the least amount of interest in having their students return to hybrid instruction whereas on the other hand our white families have consistently throughout this expressed the greatest desire to return again this is a rapidly moving target we're gathering data just during the course of this day again this uh participation rate went up nearly seven percentage points during the course of the day due to the the really extensive outreach efforts being made by our schools as well as as the central office teams to do so with that if there are no questions tied to the the surveys i'll be happy to pass on to the next section which is again an update around our health and safety measures next slide please just dr brown yes director bailey uh just a quick comment uh based on this survey uh or the previous survey response rate and you know this this survey again extremely high response rates that's phenomenal work by your staff i just want to thank you for that well i i have to thank you uh director bailey i wish i could take credit for all that but i honestly i i have to to give tremendous credit to our schools as well as the central office team particularly the folks in communications and community engagement who have made sure that we are reaching out to our families for whom english isn't their first language and i also as a parent of a high schooler experienced a lot of reminders on facebook from other parents in the community so i think a lot of our community members are also working hard
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to make sure everyone gets a chance to turn in the survey and reminding each other to do so well well done everybody dr brown i have a question about um i know that uh these weren't open-ended questions in the survey itself but um i'm wondering about any anecdotal information you have from our engagement team because i've certainly heard from a lot of high school parents who have said that given that the the in-person instruction being offered to high school students is so limited that their students are choosing to stay fully remote um either so that they can keep jobs that they've taken on or just because you know they don't want to upset the apple cart so to speak but that families have said if it were if it were more like real school and if it were more instruction um their families would be making a different decision um have you have you gotten any what kind of color have you gotten from our uh engagement team as they're actually talking to families not just the those that are filling out the surveys so the survey itself again was really designed to to inform the process of cohorting uh students um it wasn't necessarily designed to to gather that that sort of qualitative data what i will say that it has bubbled up and we actually met with a group of students today and heard their concerns was really more around health and safety that that their you know the students were expressing some concern about again extended family what it would mean for them to go in some acknowledgement that you know there is a differential risk for um you know the the transmission of covid for older students and really that's that was really more of what i i've heard uh is again concerned about health and safety more for extended family um you know and for for folks who who whose family members perhaps had health issues that would make it dangerous for them to be exposed to cohort um and you know the desire then for those students again to just continue in cdl for that purpose thank you so so i was going to bring that up at some point which is that we're seeing a number of states a pretty rapid increase in cases and we're hearing that this brazilian variant is affecting younger people much more seriously rising hospitalizations among younger people in oregon we've seen a slight uptick but it's way too early to say that we're on that same path but it at least certainly bears watching uh and i would say primarily for high school students based on you know part of what we know about the age breakout um so i'm guessing uh you and our senior staff are aware of this and that's kind of in the discussion in terms of things to watch yeah absolutely and you know we will continue to to be monitoring the rates into county i look at them literally every day to see what's going on with that and you know certainly in consultation with a health advisory panel we've talked about the potential for for yet another wave and i think um you know the larger dialogue around this is sort of the race between vaccination uh and the expansion of those other variants at this point in time um i can say that in in again speaking with the health advisory panel the efforts that have been um that continue in this community to to suppress that curve uh have paid off and have lowered hospitalization rates and we are much better poised as a community than many other communities because of those collective efforts and again just want to thank everybody in the community for taking that so seriously because again it positions us in a place where we can have students come back to our schools yeah um i just read an article today that washington state university's main campus the president basically told students they need to shape up or he didn't say what or else but it was implied another shutdown because students had been partying and cases had gone up pretty dramatically in a short period of time so it's again smart smart behavior going forward
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uh in the community among our students and adults as well is really important going forward in that race against the variants i agreed this is i think is a wonderful segue to a conversation around health and safety oh i thank you dr brown next slide please tonight i'd like to just briefly highlight that our staff as well as our partners and our public health consultants have been working hard since last summer to put in place dozens of health and safety protocols practices and trainings uh many other efforts can be seen when you walk through schools like the audit committee did today at iwls including signage that promotes distancing and proper hand washing plexiglass and offices and distance desks hepa filters cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer in classrooms many others you can't see such as disinfection protocols developed by our custodial partners safe busing practices created by our transportation teams contract tracing and testing procedures that have been developed with our health partners and of course our school-based staff have been essential in developing school specific reopening plans to outline building entry points at each school safe restroom procedure proper classroom setup and much more these procedures when put together operationalize our multi-layered risk reduction strategy and create safe learning environments really thanks to the hard work of our staff and our partners we feel confident ready for students to return and with that brief overview i'm happy to answer any health and safety questions you might have i have a quick question um the other day actually yesterday i met a friend in bend at her co-working space and in order to get into it you had to lean into a like a temperature screening do we have anything like that at our entrances it's a great question temperature checks have not been a recommended uh part of the procedure for entry uh the and we've been working with our health partners in particular mesd on what the screening procedures look like so they recommend visual screenings so when all students and visitors come in uh there is a visual screening that is done and if there is what appears to be a symptomatic student they are then taken to the the symptomatic space where they can have a more thorough check but we don't do the temperature it's so strange because places like casinos says a friend hospitals have you know a temperature check the doctor's office if you go in person um and it seems like a good way to at least i mean that would that could potentially illustrate show someone that's that's asymptomatic but had a temperature or had a fever yeah it's been a topic i know for quite a while and if i'm not mistaken i believe our health advisory panel is also weighed in on this and i guess the the data behind it is the the temperature checks are just really uh ineffective and that they don't have they don't often show the results that you would expect them to get so they don't recommend that we use those i wish i would have known that before i went to the doctor in person but yeah thank you i do know they're popular yeah i think it seems one of those things that makes people feel better but as it actually hasn't been very successful in screening it out dan can you talk a little bit about the testing protocols just remind me again um when when does that kick in when when are we administering testing in what circumstances uh that was a great question i apologize i don't have a bunch of specifics on testing uh the person who would be brenda martin nick and i don't know if brenda is waiting in the in the green room or not then i can i can answer that one so we our principals have all uh register for the at the you know they have to go through a registration process to be able to order the testing kits and uh there's some training they have to complete that the name of designee which is the either the school nurse or the shah and uh then the kids are ordered and so they'll be in schools uh you know as the those processes are completed then they send the testing kits to the schools and we will test symptomatic student-centered staff so right so if staff or students present a symptomatic then we then we do a test and that's when also if a test comes back positive we would we would do the contact tracing from that point are we asking families to report um their own positive covet results or will we be if it's outside of our school yes that is correct it's my understanding is that we are asking if if they have a positive test that we are asking that they report that to the school okay great i know there's no i don't think there's any way we can require that but i think the more we emphasize how important that is um because again i think what we've seen um nationwide is is you know there are of course our
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covet outbreaks as there are throughout the entire community but a vast majority of those come from outside the school right it comes from family get-togethers or social get-togethers or other types of things and so um to the extent that that you know families do end up having a test and have a positive notifying the school so that we can again figure out what that means and do the contract tracing is going to be really important so we're going to really rely on the community to do the right thing in that circumstance so yeah absolutely we want that information exactly for what you said for the contact trees uh and can you can you comment there's been something of a debate around the value of random testing yeah random testing cool testing yeah um and uh and i want to thank director scott again for arranging for a conference call a month or two ago with a health expert who said that wasn't an effective strategy uh could you comment on that any further is there any cdc guidance on that to the best of my knowledge there's not any guidance on that and none of our health partners have recommended that we proceed down that route i think it's something that we can continue to talk about and that might be a topic if we have not done so already discussed specifically with our health advisory panel um can i follow up on that um since this is something i've pretty consistently asked about it every one of these things um and i i actually think that the the question is probably better addressed to the state um because i think it is uh i think we ought to have a statewide strategy on this or at the very least we ought to have um some transparency about the state's thinking around um pool testing um and i would say not just for schools but for many other locations um and my fear is that we're going to repeat the mistakes of last year where we had inadequate testing which allowed the pandemic to to rampage uncontrollably without us even knowing it so i continue to be interested in getting more information about what options might be available to us to do i think especially pool testing has emerged as a a strategy that is being picked up by a number of districts and states um most notably massachusetts um and i understand that the district is constrained by potential legal liability um and licensing issues if the um if it diverges in any way from the states articulated strategy around this but i would like to get more information about what conversations if any are happening at the state level church or more i'm happy to take that back to the group and get you some more information on that any other questions uh yeah i've got a question right nathaniel uh so i'm concerned about uh scout quality and ventilation uh so from what i've heard from students and community members uh there are a number who are worried about uh when we return to hybrid that uh ventilation will be insufficient to protect the health of students that air purifiers will not be present in some cases or not be powerful enough to sort the area they have been designated to serve and indeed at ida b wells just this morning and if i recall correctly there was an air purifier that was assigned to an area smaller than its stated capacity so i wonder what's being done to mitigate these fears when we start bringing back students in mass yeah that's a great question we've taken really a three-pronged approach to ventilation uh and it's and it's something that we've worked very closely with public health partners and our subject matter experts including our certified industrial biogenetics
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so what we've done is one of the first things we did was focus on maintenance and inspection so we had our certified industrial hygienist create a ventilation specific checklist that we were then able to turn over to a third-party mechanical firm to go out and check all of our buildings to ensure that our ventilation systems are operating properly so that firm went out checked every one of our schools against that checklist uh and whenever there was a deficiency that was identified we assigned that either to an outside party or one of our internal hvac technicians to go and address that deficiency so we're happy to say that they completed all those assessments in january all those deficiencies have been taken care of and we're starting it all again literally tomorrow so we're going to do this quarterly and we're going to start the assessment all over again tomorrow we've also looked to increase airflow in all of our buildings and we do that in a couple of ways we run our systems longer each day so we start them about two hours before they would normally start and turn them off two hours later and we run them continuously throughout the day so they don't shut off throughout during the school day and we've also adjusted them to increase the amount of fresh air that comes into the buildings we've opened the dampers that more fresh air comes in the building and then the third part is filtration where we've taken a belgian suspenders approach so our buildings inside their mechanical systems they have uh air filters and we have about 8 000 of them throughout the district so the ones that we are able to upgrade to a higher filter type we are in the process of doing that but we also know when we have that many and you have a lot of older systems you can't do that with every system so that's why we're putting the hepa filters into every classroom into all the learning phases and so it's really this multi-pronged approach that creates uh it's not just one thing that we're doing to address air quality it's the layer of all these things and and each in each layer has its imperfections but when you put them all together it becomes thanks dan any further questions uh yes could you uh address nathaniel's uh point about um or is that just one of the imperfections that we have uh a filter that is in a space larger than its capacity yeah so the the portable filters they're going to they're going to move air they're going to filter the air the smaller that the space is it's going to be more efficient uh the less people that's in the space it's going to be efficient uh the larger the space it's going to be less efficient so it's going to still filter air it's still going to still move air through the system uh it's just going to do it at a slower rate when we're looking at large spaces like cafeterias or gymnasiums or libraries we're going to put multiple units into both systems so they will still help and they'll move the air um but certainly that there are a number of variables that go into just how quickly it turns over the filter exchange there's been a lot about opening windows and i'm not sure if you said this already but are we are we opening windows wherever we can yeah we are encouraging windows to be opened where it's appropriate so uh as much as we can we'd like the windows to be open sorry if i missed that earlier um and then our i've heard that uh basically computer labs won't be used that students will have to use their own device uh i don't know if i know the full answer to that question i know the preference is that the students use their own device i'm not certain if that means that none of the computer labs will be used i can double check that um yeah i was talking to a high school teacher who went in today and that was what they learned let me follow up on that i have a couple questions they're not health and safety related can i go ahead and ask them absolutely i just have a quick comment that is health and safety related before we move on okay go ahead and then i'll go after that um i just want to say i just want to thank the team for the training that's gone on so in addition to like creating all these strategies around layered risk reduction um i had the opportunity to be at woodmere and to walk through the building with the principal and you know we always rely on our principles to be managers in so many ways and to deal with so many things but this is just a whole new level of responsibility everything from you know traffic flow to coordination with the custodial staff
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at a whole new level to you know it's really remarkable and then the training just as it filters on down through all the employees in every single building i was joined that morning by some of our community partners erko latino network so everybody who has a presence in our school is being trained in all these health and safety measures and um it's it was really clear really explicit um great signage like uh it's a huge huge effort and i just want to recognize um dr byrd and your whole team um and all of the training you've provided um i think we're ready to roll and it's really um impressive so thank you to everyone for attending to just the myriad details so the question i have is um well the first one is about instructional time for um or in school time for middle school students and i have heard anecdotally that there may be a couple schools because of the number of students coming back that they would only have every other week which i don't think is what we pitched uh to to families um are we going to be able to i mean as as it is to after you know two half days is is not very much um are we gonna go below below the standard of two half days a week we're working very hard to not do that where we have some we have two schools that that's a concern the space plan is a concern and i should have some more information uh later this week about uh if we're able to uh work on those uh classrooms there were some some schools needed to be uh measured uh you know use a formula at first and so then in some cases we need to go back into schools and see if that was accurate or if we could um if there was availability of more space so then i don't know if you want to add to that yeah the there was a formula that was used to estimate uh capacity district-wide and so that applied evenly to all classrooms or 3000 classrooms throughout the district uh and then when we when we run into issues where we see space constraints we go in and we look at that individual classroom and measure that individual spaces what's the what's the actual capacity in there we have two middle schools that had quite a few capacity issues so we've had our staffing consultants go out in the last week and then again this week to measure each and every one of those classrooms uh and sean you will have that data tomorrow so we'll be able to take a look at both of those schools tomorrow to see if uh if we're if we still have those concerns in general the model that we used was very conservative uh so we're when we're going and looking at individual classrooms we're most likely we're usually able to add a desk or two if not more and still still meet all the spatial requirements of the six foot distancing think egress great so that what are the two schools that so we've got it we think we have a covered at least two half days or the two the increments of the half day twice a week but all schools middle schools with the exception of two and what are those two it's the wood and hotspot is that correction yeah and i'm going to show you yeah in the next slide i'll show you those and then the other question i had um was about um this issue that was raised earlier i think by director constance of the with the survey of you know who's choosing to come back and whether there are some families that can't come back because not that they don't want that experience for their child but because of work schedules a whole variety of things for k5 not to be able to you know go back and forth and pick up a student during the day and i'm wondering um what um arrangements or what sort of supports we have for families where that may be the barrier that may that may be the only barrier for wanting to come back um just in terms of like are we marrying child care or other support so that that doesn't become the reason like i i have a full-time job or i can't leave in the midst of work to either drop off or pick up my my child because it's not the normal school day and so i'm curious whether we're doing that and how widespread that is well i'd spread it is i don't know i can get some information about that i have
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not i have not heard um i mean of course anecdotally i've not heard a lot of that i've heard some of it um and then there i know that schools were working with families to some for some families it was easier in the afternoon or the morning so i know that prince individual principles uh have taken into consideration like keeping households together as much as uh possible so that for ease of um of of you know these kinds of uh individual issues i'll get back to you with more i can i can find out uh how much principles i've been hearing from families but it has not been something that's that's come up a great deal yeah it'd be great to know because i know when we had we used to have half day kindergarten uh for parents who worked this was a big issue and this is sort of like that for elementary school that people just can't go midday and pick up their kids or i mean it just doesn't work that way so and we had a pretty good network of providers that um sort of filled that that gap and we do have child care uh several of our schools um already that's been in operation you know throughout this this time and uh we are continuing to work with our partners uh for you know after-school kinds of uh activities and care but uh you know that would that only works if you're in the afternoon part and if those providers are able to come in person so we're still working with our sun partners on a variety of different scenarios so we can give you an update on the specifics of that thank you and i just want to just remind everybody quickly the next slide please that we have uh of course as the superintendent mentioned at the beginning we have our pre-k first grade students at pre-k kindergarten our first grade students who are coming back this week we're very excited to welcome those students back either on thursday or friday depending on what cohort they're in and then students in second through fifth grade will be returning on next monday so i'll have several first days of school coming up uh and again as you just mentioned director bremed where students will be in school for two hours and 15 minutes four days a week and again the focus is on foundational reading and math skills as well as social emotional learning so we're very excited about this week and next week and then next slide please then for our 6 12 students uh just as a reminder our staff members in 612 will have professional development for three days prior to the reopening of school so that'll be the april 14th to the 16th while teachers are doing their professional development and getting their rooms ready for to welcome students back students will have asynchronous learning activities much like they did at the beginning of the school year and then those students that first day of school will begin on monday april 19th depending on their cohort assignments and as we talked about earlier we as our goal to have all secondary students who elect to come back to be able to come back for two days a week for uh two and a half hours so they'll get some dedicated time and be able to see their teachers in their classes and uh we'll have an update later on this week about any uh issues to that but so far looks pretty good for uh two days a week for for all the students that's just a quick review for you if you have any questions i'll take those so so chief bird um this is we have not met since the cdc changed their guidelines for schools um through the recommendation on three foot distancing so have you or have staff had any conversations with the portland association of teachers about revisiting that issue um in the agreement that we had reached given the new guidance and given what we know as is possible yeah we haven't at this point uh that guidance came out right before spring break and then we have been uh busily preparing for the uh the reopening cohorting has been done transportation has been routed so uh as you know in the process of being routed so we've been focusing on the plans that we have in place right now and so we have not gone back to them formally to talk about uh any change of the agreement but it would require it's a it's an impact bargaining issue so it would require a further discussion with the with that labor partner and if at some point we were able to make a change to give our middle and high school students if we were able to reach an agreement and make a change um to give our middle and high school students more in-person instructional time um how how easy would that uh transition be in our buildings in your opinion so off the top of my head you would be able if if that were the case you would be able to have the instead of having cohorts if it was let's just hypothetically say if it was three feet that's about the normal distance in a classroom uh give or take so you would instead of having um [Music] you would be able to come like four days a week instead of two you would have you could probably collapse the cohorts in some schools to just one cohort and they would be able to come it was still in the afternoon but they would be able to come four uh days if
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that that's hypothetical depending if the numbers worked out that way and um but look at what we have so far that's what it would be around our kids would get twice as much instructional time it would be a it would be it would be perhaps yeah depending on the number of students rita did you have a thought yeah i just want to remind us all that um we had a fairly long discussion about this during our last board meeting and um [Music] and my understanding this was my comment at the last meeting based on my discussions with staff my understanding is that um any change at this point in the um the physical distancing requirements would require considerable staff work and and would probably take as i understand it somewhere between four and six weeks to um to do all of the to to redo all of the um logistical arrangements that have that the staff and various partners have spent months and months working on already um so i while i think it is um it's tempting to think that this is a doable prospect i think the reality is given that we're talking about perhaps uh 10 weeks left in the in the school year i think anything that delays us getting uh students back into the classroom as soon as possible is it is not helpful to anybody and relitigating this question i i think is is not productive i do think this is important issue to resolve because actually dr byrd last week you you pretty much said the opposite that if we just if all we were changing was the distancing we would be able to implement on our same plans so um well you would have to it would it would require transportation that would that's the biggest uh issue is transportation rerouting i mean in terms of like the because the students are coming like if you're a student in cohort a or cohort b you're coming to your class is one two three four monday tuesday so that that's cohort a cohort b is coming month thursday friday one two three four so in terms of that that means that you're just gonna come you could if you could collapse the course yes that would mean you would have four days but you would have to reroute transportation and you would have to come back to an agreement with uh with pt uh so by the time high school students come back there is i think there are only eight weeks left in school when they when those students return haven't we remember most of our removed desks from schools i mean haven't we taken furniture out so we'd have to bring back all of the desks and all of the furniture and reset all the schools isn't that is that true as well yes that's true yeah most of our high school students don't have district provided transportation uh yeah there are so well except for um um mcdaniel and uh lincoln there's some transportation routes there and then students with students on ieps do have transportation some of them take trimet many of them take tournament i i think i want this is a it's a it's actually it is an important issue i want to second what director constance said and and and not and not ignore what director moore said because i think they're they're both important the logistics of this are important but so is the instructional time and you know i i i very much supported moving forward we we negotiated the agreement we did with the rules that were in place at the time um we had no idea right i mean we had there was potential talk of it but we didn't know when or if the cdc would change its guidance and i very much supported moving forward with that agreement because i was concerned that sending it back um would delay getting her kids back so our kids are coming back on a schedule now i do think exploring this issue and i think i guess what i would say is this if there is the ability and and maybe it is only at high school i mean that doesn't feel very fair to our middle school students but because the transportation issues at high school are easier um you know maybe there is a way to bring them back for four weeks in the current schedule but um again as we you know get agreement now that we've got you know the new three-foot rule um if it's relatively easy to just start sending them back four days there aren't that many you know transportation issues we should address that if the logistics really are insurmountable and that is the superintendent's recommendation that given the amount of staff time and the difficulty and and and let's be clear it's not just staff time it's families being disrupted as well and you know one of the things we've heard from some families is that they don't even want to make this change right now with the
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remainder of the year so there are opinions all over the place i think if it is a logistics issue though we should be really clear with the community that that's what it is and i feel like you know the problem we keep running into is there are very different viewpoints out there and you know there are 60 70 will find out percent you know who want to come back for hybrid and would probably like a lot more there are still significant numbers of families that don't you know want to come back maybe that changes over time but i guess i just i i think we owe it to the community to be really clear are we still looking at that as a potential option maybe again four more weeks you know in or if we've taken that off the table because of logistics issues we should just tell our families we should be very clear that's not going to change the schedule we have is the schedule we have and then let's look towards a full reopening in the fall i mean i think andrew or dr scott the schedule we have is the schedule we have because changing it would be um only at the result of bargaining and so we would have to make the decision to go back to bargaining with our teachers union and to see if we could get them to change that and then implement so i think i mean if that's the conversation we use the board need to have is if we want to direct our staff to go back to the bargaining table with this i for when i'm not in support of that i think that we need to move forward with this year and begin to focus on summer school and on next year i think that the amount of energy we would spend on trying to get a change to our agreement with our union is not worth the amount of instructional time we'd end up getting out of it i think we need to be focusing on summer and fall at this point but i i think we need to say to the community this is the schedule unless we as a board direct our staff to go back to the bargaining table i agree so sorry to be off screen there maybe the topic triggered an asthmatic attack but maybe i should turn this over uh or give sharon a crack at this given that she pulled duty here at the bargaining table because i think we're talking in hypotheticals what if could we you know there's another there are a set of labor partners here that we've we've had to come to agreements about for the schedule that we discussed in our last meeting um sharon do you want to shed a little more light on this well the hypotheticals only work if we get agreement with our labor partners and the the runway to get we went with our labor partners is uh quite long uh i'm and i suspect that the outcomes uh are not necessarily guaranteed in fact they are not necessarily guaranteed so any uh in in terms of how long would it take uh to make a change here we have to we can't dismiss that element of it because i believe it is the most time consuming of um changing that spacing issue so i'm a big believer in asking questions because i don't think we know the answer until we've asked um and i think i guess what i in no way wanted to to um understate the bargaining impact of course we would would we would need to bargain it um and have that conversation with our partners i would expect we would um i i guess i'm i guess i'm just curious you know pat argued for the six-foot rule when the six-foot rule was in place um the six-foot rule was in place and we finalized our negotiation and then it was changed you know like a day after so i think i i think it is worth asking the question um whether now that that the guidance has changed both at the cdc level on the state level on whether pat is interested in adjusting that guidance um and i think that would that can very easily inform the rest of the conversation so i guess our next steps here need to be um i mean i'm not sure what our next steps here are i don't know if we can get guidance from ms large but if it's to say i mean do we as a board need to make a decision in this moment to say we want to direct our staff to look at um returning to the bargaining table with our unions or is this a conversation we need to have in an executive session i'm not i'm not really sure what what to do next liz that that would be ask our superintendent to direct our staff and maybe we want to have a superintendent weigh in first yes i apologize it is not the board's role to direct staff um i i apologize for miss speaking there there's a substantive decision to be made and then there's the procedural path and i think it's the substantive decision first and then the procedural path will follow and i think superintendent may have some thoughts on the substantive decision it is chair i'm trying to get clear here is the board asking me to re-engage our labor partners and re-bargain based on this new information from cdc i believe that that is what director constant director
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scott have raised i do not know that that is the will of the board i'm just asking is this a convert i mean this sounds like a conversation that director constant director scott are bringing forward if i'm incorrect and speaking on your behalf let me know but then we as the rest of the board need to say yes or no um because i think we do need to say to our families this is the schedule for the rest of the year actually i think there was a fundamental maybe an underlying question which is maybe the procedural path like to have the just to have the discussion about whether the board is interested in that is that an executive session topic or is that a public meeting topic uh the board is allowed to go into executive session to discuss bargaining i guess is it allowed or should we i'm just wondering whether this is the this is the if you can have is looking for instruction from or like what the will of the majority is that discussion you have in public or is that an executive session it sounds like we can go but you can you cannot make a decision in executive session so you can confer with those who sit at the bargaining table about labor negotiations in an executive session and that's often a very helpful place for the board to have those conversations but no decision can be made there regardless i'm just going to say publicly once again that i do not support um going back to the bargaining table on this issue i think we need to move forward with the rest of the school year i think that asking families to change the schedule again four weeks in it doesn't make any sense i don't think it's in good faith with our labor partners and i would be opposed to going back on this issue i think we need to move forward with plans for summer and for fall do we want to move into an executive session to have this further conversation or do we want to just finish it here and now wouldn't we have to notice that or no you can move into an executive session inside a regularly noticed meeting we can also have the conversation publicly and if there's not the will of the board we certainly don't need to spend time going into an executive session i i just i guess i just want to go back and just reiterate none of this has to do with uh violating you know sort of goodwill with our labor partners at all we have an agreement we are abiding by it um that agreement includes things um that are changing and i think any time you incorporate into a collective bargaining agreement um you know health metrics other metrics other things that are going to change um it is important to to continue to go back and read i think it's important for both sides to go back and revisit that obviously um the pat does not have to do that um because we don't have a reopener clause in that contract that i'm aware of sharon um and so you know they don't have to i think it's worth asking the question and i i guess i'm i'm i i want to go back to what i said at the beginning because i'm trying to walk this middle ground i am not being dismissive of the logistical issues and and and chair lowry i think you're you're raising really important issues and and you know if if it is insurmountable then let's say it's insurmountable i don't actually i want to be really careful that we're not blaming pat for not being willing to agree if what we're really saying is that as a district we don't think we can make that change i think that's important to be really clear as well and again i'm to the extent that the superintendent says um this is too big of a lift for for the change that's fine i can envision at particularly the high school level um adding an extra you know two days as a relatively straightforward change i don't think it has a huge impact well i think it has a huge impact on families but i think that the impact is positive um and if we could do that for a few weeks npat agrees it's worth it um you know if logistically we can't do it or pha doesn't agree then we won't and we'll continue on through this year i can only say director scott and directors that it's been a lift to get to this point so conversations with our labor partners aside and what the outcome or length of time required to come to new agreements there there are a lot of logistical pieces that have gone into carrying forth the remainder of the school year and maybe maybe some could be resolved a little easier just by nature of the design of the instructional model that's been thought forward but there are other pieces perhaps unrelated to the schedule that would require in some cases some staff reassignment transportation routing once again um etc it's hard for me to sort of go down the flight checklist but i know that there would be some changes that would that would need to happen and you know if it's taken us weeks to construct those here i don't know how we overnight sort of would retool those uh in some instances so is it possible i suppose anything's possible uh but i also know that for weeks straight including through the spring break staff's been working to be ready to open
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on thursday so is it possible to ask them to dive in again assuming labor partners are all thumbs up um for to to to get another few weeks of uh some additional secondary instructional time in person and i'm not sure okay i i haven't heard from director moore director bryn edwards or director bailey and i think that we um need to go ahead and move into an executive session um so i'm going to ask that we go ahead and do that now um move into an executive session to finish this conversation so i'm not sure what the logistics of that are kara yeah we're not in a meeting type that i could put you in a breakout room so i'm going to create a calendar invite and invite you all to it we'll have a different link um liz i'm not sure who i should invite though can you uh it should be yeah i'll i'll call you i assume we're going to take a short break while those logistics are taken care of and cara i will call you and we'll work out the logistics let's take a short break and reconvene in our executive session at 8 50 p.m so will we be looking for an email from cara okay we're getting an email from cara with the link and we'll be in our executive session at 8 50 p.m and i imagine i will not be invited to the executive session correct all right thanks nathaniel pursuant to oregon law and uh no decisions were made in executive session but we were able to discuss the matter further and at this time it is clear that we will not be um asking the superintendent to direct um staff to go back to the gardening table and so superintendent guerrero's is coming he was going to speak next uh he's joining us right now um but so our families can rest assured that the schedule that we have will be the schedule for the rest of the year at this point um and that our staff and all of our folks will be focusing on um summer and what comes next in the fall superintendent guerra did you have anything to add i just want to underline what i shared uh closer to the top of the meeting and appreciate all of our employees for the hard work it's been a year of a lot of difficult transitions and fluctuating guidelines and changing scenarios and fortunately they've gotten better maybe not as quickly as we had hoped but uh i feel we're ready and staff has worked really hard to be prepared to welcome our students back beginning this thursday i'm appreciative for our labor partners who i know share the interest of having our students back on campus this is what we do as educators and for all the people out there that support this school district and operating efficiently who have also had to do their work differently i'm thankful for that i think we are all looking forward to fully reopening and welcoming back our students and being fully open and refocusing our attention on our our students continued growth and ability to thrive at pps so uh i'll be out at schools first thing thursday morning at sunrise and i know all of our directors will be as well and so we look forward to seeing you there hey kara can you promote amy um and i do know that many of us are hoping that fall will look like um school as we remember it and as it has been but again we'll continue to um work with our labor partners to review the latest science and to have those conversations as they come forward so um there's much more work ahead of us and speaking of the work ahead of us we are moving now on to our second reading of our comprehensive health education policy director moore would you like to introduce this next item yes thank you um this policy was originally approved in 2018 as the comprehensive sexuality education policy with the understanding that it would be reviewed every two years in conformance with state statute staff recently recommended that the sexuality education policy be embedded in a larger policy around comprehensive health education to align with current current best practices the goal of these revisions is to make the policy inclusive of the many laws mandates and policies that support comprehensive health education staff propose transitioning from a stand-alone comprehensive sexuality education policy to a comprehensive health education policy which includes a section specific to comprehensive sexuality education on march 9th the board of education had a first reading of the revised policy we have received no comments it's now uh before the board for a second reason reading and to consider adoption
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thank you director moore um do i have a motion in a second to adopt resolution 6277 resolution to approve the amendments to the comprehensive health education policy 6.40.013-p it's removed second director broome edwards moves and director bailey seconds the adoption of resolution 6277 is there any board discussion listing again thank you to staff for all their great work yeah really thorough good staff work and um i think this is a national model i know that they uh came up with a lot of it from scratch they developed their own best practices and it's just really good work i'm really thankful for the ability to think about our students um whole health and includes all sorts of different types of health in that and to not have those separated out but to really think of our students is full of people so um thank you to staff for the incredible work you've done on this all right ms bradshaw is there any public comment on this matter no all right um the board will now vote on resolution 6277 resolution to approve the amendments to the comprehensive health education policy 6.40.013-p all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6277 is approved by a vote of six to zero with student representative shu voting yes all right so um one of the initiatives our board took on this year at the recommendation of our superintendent was some learning topics and engaging more deeply in some of the work of the district that's not sort of the on fire things uh not that anything in our district's on fire but let's say the pressing topics so that we could dive more deeply into the the full width and depth of all that our um school district does and we've had a great opportunity to learn about our climate change curriculum we had a really great exploration of some of our native american lessons we've trying to remember all the things we've talked about there's been a great number sometimes very late at night thank you staff for for staying so late to do those learning topics with us but in an effort to respect staff time and board capacity we moved to asynchronous learning so that we would kind of experience what our students are experienced we get a video that we can watch and then we've got some time to discuss it so the tag departments have shared an asynchronous video presentation on tag pps and that's available for the public to watch you can find it on the board books and in the public meeting information so board members i'm going to ask you what were some of the key takeaways you learned from doing the lesson and what does teaching look like for students who identified as tag and the kind of planning that teachers must do i'm going to just begin with my impressions at the beginning of the video you know it's all the information about tag and you were going through the oars and it was you know like okay lots of talking it was it was good information but as soon as we got into the actual lessons with the math and showing you know three-digit subtraction and how that works but then it was the fill in the blank and then create your own problem i was super excited mostly because i'm really competitive and i like wanted to get the answers um but it was such a great um sort of tangible way to show how teachers can take the concept and really enrich it for students and then when we got to the part about the words and just defining words like belittle or judicious you know put them into a sentence um and then moving into write your own paragraph and i um confessed to to chief cuellar today deaf beauty super i never remember people's titles i'm so sorry um mr claire today i uh told him that when i was a student i sometimes would do things like write belittle is a word that i am using in a sentence because you know you're supposed to write in the paragraph and show that you're using the word in a sentence or um judicious is a word that i'm just learning how to spell um and obviously i was demonstrating to my teacher that i didn't actually have an understanding of how to use those words but i was clever in my work around so i just appreciated that chance to sort of step back into the mindset of a student and to really see like how teachers can take a concept like three-digit subtraction or um vocabulary and really help students go deeper and think at that different level so so thank you for that it really made it come alive for me um other thoughts or things you you took away from the lesson board members um i was really uh i've been attending the tag advisory group meeting
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so i already knew this but um it's a just want to recognize uh our tag staff and a number of our schools for increasing the number of um black and brown kids identified as tag uh this year and i think those schools will be you know sort of the vanguard and will bring the rest of the schools along in the district by sharing their best practices and how they're doing that i think that's something we've been as a district trying to work on and not been very successful for years and now we're seeing the needle move and that's a that's a huge first step i was really interested i i um it wasn't clear to me how long we've been using the assessment tool that you described um linda the the n3 and one of the things that i thought was so interesting about that was that it does really get to multiple intelligences i think a lot better than whatever it was we were doing before and you talked a little bit about the over identification of tag students based on reading and literacy skills and the under identification based on other types of intelligences so i'm curious to learn a little bit more about that tool and when we started using it and how how it's different from what we did before other than other than being patently better right thank you yes the um nagliari which is the nnat three it's the third version we started using that last last fall for our universal testing and one of the reasons that we used that or switched over to using that from the kogat previously is that as we advanced in some upper grades laying uh words and some reading all of a sudden was introduced so then therefore any child who didn't have the language of english or didn't have the vocabulary was automatically um at a disadvantage so with the nna t3 there's absolutely no language involved at all it is only the puzzles and pieces like you saw in the video um so it allows students who have not had that formal education or who speak another language or it's all about the thinking and how they think and not necessarily academic knowledge so we're able to really identify students who may not have been identified who or may have been shut out because they didn't have formal education or did not have the language component that the kogat had at different levels so that's why we chose to switch over to to actually help identify the students who are not historically being identified it's really exciting back to scott's point that's how we arrive at having a much broader and more accurate representation within tag right joining on that uh dr khan sam i think it's really um wonderful that students can ask to be screened themselves that there's a path for students to advocate um if teachers or parents haven't done so i thought that was really really cool and how long have we been allowing that for students to be the ones to sort of say i'd like to be identified for tag so that is so that has been allowed um it's not as well known um as it should be right and generally we're going to talk about more students at the secondary level doing that than perhaps uh elementary level although certainly there are many elementary students that probably could share share that they needed to be nominated i feel sure but we would see that more at a secondary level it's great any other thoughts or comments from my colleagues about the tag lesson andrew i'll just i'll echo i i want the answers um because i wrote down what i what i had so uh so um about the answers to the math and to the yeah are you nominating could i be screened please i got a couple of those images i could not figure out so i just skipped them but i wasn't going to admit that publicly but no um no but that was i thought i kept thinking oh they're going to give me the answers soon right they're like pause if you you know and i would like you know write down my answer then i waited and it didn't didn't happen but i'm joking no i i think um the uh the equity issues are really important and i am glad to see we're doing that i want to make sure we keep that focus and you know all the different ways that we're identifying whether it's you know parents or students or teachers you know
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identifying kids and the different ways we're assessing people i mean those those numbers have to be and we're making good progress so we have to just keep keep pushing on that um because it's you know um it's a systemic issue it's systemic racist issue that's been going on for decades and decades and it's time to undo it and i'm just really glad that i'm working for a district that that is focused on that so thank you for that work yeah i want to know how close you could get to 326 or whatever that one was um i'd i want to push back on one piece of it or recognize and push back so it's it's a in yin and that was uh i really appreciated the examples of how you could stay within a topic and go deeper and really challenge uh students who are ready for a bigger challenge and i think that's the kind of thing again where you you push those examples out for teachers to pick up and they'll start creating i'm sure a lot of them all already created their own examples for stretching students so um sorry to be stupid um and i want to push back a bit um and i'll just you know back in the stone age we didn't have calculus in high school in portland public schools and they did my senior year make a pcc night course available just for pps students uh i had so scott you're saying calculus had been invented or was that even pre like pre-calculus at that point uh isaac newton was in the class um so there you go smart guy uh you set yourself up for it oh yeah um but i had you know all they offered in regular school was sort of advanced topics and yeah i learned some stuff and yeah i was challenged by some of it uh but crikey i was i was beyond ready for calculus as were a number of of other students um so i want to say that kind of deepening within is good and we have students who are just ready for like a whole level more um and i don't want to lose that as well and right now to get that for all intents and purposes they have to go to access uh the kids who are two three four grade levels up in math um and i'm sure there are kids who aren't in access who are ready for a s really you know a quantum leap more in some of some of the topics so i appreciate how that can be maybe partially met with some of the examples but i'm not sure if it can be totally met within that classroom and and it's a real oh it's a debate among tag advisory committee members about how far can you differentiate without getting more into a walk to math walk to reading where you're doing multi-age mixing and the and the pros and cons of that as well i i'm saying there's maybe no easy answer there but those are really topics that we need to explore further as a district uh i am excited that superintendent guerrero said that as part of moving access into uh its own building that there will be a kind of a vision process attached to that um i know we're we're building this house one one step at a time one floor at a time that's one piece of of moving forward um it can all that work can't happen all at once but i'm glad to see that it's on the radar screen for us going forward can i um can i weigh in a little bit too um i want to echo everybody else's comments about um all the work that has been done by staff to improve the provision of tag services um i'm especially happy to hear that um every teacher is now getting professional development opportunities um and this is an area that's um that was uh relatively uh underdeveloped for a long time in pps so thank you for all the all the work that you've done
02h 55m 00s
and the progress that we've made um and in the spirit of uh continuous improvement [Music] i just want to mention that i look forward to the day when pps is able to expand the definition of tag and and giftedness to match um what the national association for gifted children defines as the five different domains of giftedness because we're we're currently only responding to two and we're um we are required by the state to only respond to two but the state allows allows districts um to respond to the other three which are creative artistic and leadership um and and i know we're not there yet um so please don't hear this as criticism in any way um but it would be i i think those three domains in particular um really speak to the the vision that we have adopted for pps students um so i i would hope that over the next few years we would start thinking about how we could expand the services to address those other domains that we're currently not not testing for or not looking for i know that having said all of that i do know that you know teachers and um counselors and you know educators are providing opportunities for students to develop in those areas um a huge amount of work has been done recently about artistic um but it would be i think it would be helpful if we could have a a kind of district-wide um more comprehensive uh definition of tag to provide the infrastructure and support for those efforts so anyway thank you for all this so i also want to just commend the good doctors here himalayan smith for for a lot of progress in this area i think you're right director moore and others um you know that's the beauty and the challenge of serving diverse learners uh you can have your formal tag programming and it should be more inclusive of those other categories um but here's here's sort of the beautiful opportunity we have as we think about bringing on board and curating curricular materials and we work on our pedagogy how do you create open-ended performance tasks that creates inherently in the activity and some of you noted this in the example for kids to take a deeper right so and how do we in our visioning work i'll use middle school redesign as an example how do you personalize the learning into a plan so that students are able to pursue where they gravitate or have a particular passion or gift that that we could help to uncover and cultivate so how do you create those exploratory wheels those more project-based inquiries uh where kids can can really shine so there's a lot of opportunity there but i know that this work and tag will set an important foundation you know as part of a continuum of as an educational program uh here in the district and certainly we can have programs that will serve as demonstration sites and look forward to you know what we can create with the flagship coming soon um but how do we create those kinds of opportunities for every one of our students in the other domains i think is the right question by the curriculum and the instruction and the rigor that we offer them yeah and just just maybe a final comment we know um that the more differentiation there is across the spectrum of learners that those very teaching techniques and tools have spillover effects to students who aren't identified as special in some way or another uh it and it's that's an important that's really important here and and our our tag members will remind us that oregon is one of the lowest funded tax states in the nation i don't know if we're we're number 50 but we're maybe 49 or something like that down there and that's again part of the issue for us going forward
03h 00m 00s
all right thank you so much aurora and linda and to all the tag department staff that were part of that video it was a really great job or did you want to add something i just wanted to say thank you for your support and your uh ideas and we're uh just really excited to keep working towards the superintendent's vision so thank you for having us chair lowry can i jump in can you hear me yes sorry i was nodding and uh not figuring you know just keep it brief because i know everybody because everybody else has really provided i think some great observations and perspectives um and besides i think i was playing dodgeball when haley you were doing your your writing um so i'm all for dr moore's looking at those other those other areas of brilliance uh i think the thing i want to just say is i really appreciate the opportunity to learn in a different way i thought you guys did a great job of presenting the material and i will say as a parent um the whole tag thing is is a mystery so i mean this was obviously presented for created for us as a board but i'm wondering if there's a way to present something that's really understandable for parents because i think um most every parent thinks their child is brilliant um and it's all kind of a mystery and it's like what parents know how to get their kids in and i think it would be a great service to parents in multiple languages to share the material um so that's one thing and then the second piece is i'll just say in 2000 when i first ran for the board the very first person who called me when it was in the paper that i was running was a very active tag parent talking about the lack of progress in the district and as i was watching the video i saw pieces of a system and foundational things that are going to really help our students who in the past because it was less of a system or wasn't a system um we didn't catch them all or we didn't catch them equitably so um thanks for helping build the system i mean i just think back you know the the progress is being made and thank you for that i learned a lot so thank you all very much um for allowing us to share some highlights about tag and um kind of sharing some basic information so that you can share it with your constituents and um by ptosis and i and my data clerk really appreciated this opportunity so we want to thank you again for for your time um it's it's been great thank you all right um we are not going to have any more asynchronous learning for the rest of the year because we are going to have staff focusing on reopening um so our asynchronous learning will come back to us in the um summer and fall um so i know we as board members get a little break as well but we will continue to delve into learning topics uh in the future but just know we we don't have any on the docket at this moment to honor staff time as we think about all that it's gonna take to get everything back and ready for our students so thank you all for your for your work not just in creating this for us tonight but also in all the work you're doing as you prepare for uh return all right um we are on to our other business and our committee referrals um i have one item which i had emailed out to the board ahead of time which is that we wanted to talk about in-person board meetings and so the question is what do we need to consider as we begin in-person board meetings um and i did get a couple notes from folks um one is that multnomah county recommends remote work if possible still at this time that no pps buildings are currently open to the public sector risk level chart doesn't um exactly cover local government meetings but the closest is 50 occupancy or 100 people whichever is less that six feet distancing and masks are still in play for adults and that the esc building is governed by osha rules because it's an office and that not all pps besc staff have been fully vaccinated what other things do we need to consider as we begin in-person board meetings one thing i would say is that we should consider that we all are going to have individual um comfort levels with coming back and that we should um be comfortable
03h 05m 00s
with that um because it could be somebody may not be comfortable to come back till you know next spring for a whole variety of reasons and i think it's going to be important that we recognize and accept that and that you know it we all we need to just adjust to be flexible without being judgmental i'm gonna take notes of this and i'll email it out uh to the board after this meeting what other things do we need to be considering as we think about returning to in-person board meetings yeah just to repeat the the state and county regulations and guidance um and also the um i wouldn't want to put staff at risk especially if they're not vaccinated or any of us um well maybe andrew i don't know i'm just getting back at him because he got me early because he called you old he asked if calculus was invented i don't think we should joke about people getting a deadly disease though i guess i would be curious about any of the um considerations of a hybrid approach the technological considerations so if some of us are in person some of us board members are in person some are not some staff members are present some are not um you know do we have the capabilities to manage all that i'm a guest yeah roseanne had sent out an email saying that um one of the thoughts was to have us each at our own devices with headphones on and masks at the dais um and so there is the ability to have we would we would all have to still use our laptops and some of us could be in person at the besc building but we would still then each need to use a device so um it wouldn't be like four of us would be at a regular meeting and then the rest of us would be at home we'd all still be on this screen and that's what the public would see and and members of the public would give their testimony remotely we wouldn't be opening it for public in-person testimony we wouldn't be reopening to have public attend the meetings um my biggest concern is staff risk that you know if you look right now at this um we've got 15 people in the attendees and those are all staff who are here excitedly watching us as we continue to meet and i don't know you know if unless they're schools unless they're student-facing staff they haven't been vaccinated um and so i know our staff is super dedicated and would want to show up and be present and be committed um but i'm concerned about them being in a place of putting their health at risk so that would be one of my cautions um as we move forward but i just worry about that wouldn't um if we were doing what was just described with the laptop and the headset like they they wouldn't have to actually be there though right right i mean that model yeah and that's what we would encourage um i'm also i mean i i kind of want to go back because i'd like to at least bang the gavel one time um as chair you know you can get a devil at home i know i do my daughter has a gavel i should just borrow it from her um but you know if we're having to wear masks in the if we're sitting in the besc and we're wearing masks um i wonder how that's going to be for the public or for those folks who are at home so what do you guys think about that so i mean the basic question is what do we gain by meeting in person and and i think it's pretty minimal uh when we meet virtually there's always little snags here and there that are inevitable in terms of the technology um i don't know that it impacts our functioning all that much but um maybe others have a different view on that and nathaniel has his hand up so go nathaniel yeah so of course i wouldn't want to put staff or board members at risk and i want to be mindful of public health guidelines and in fact i for one have yet to be vaccinated however i think leadership by example is also important and that if we are reopening schools for many of our students including older and non-vaccinated high schoolers we really ought to consider doing likewise ourselves as a governing body well i think scott's question is a good one i mean i think we can say that students going back to the classroom gain that social connection ability to engage with their teacher what do we gain other than the leadership by example question which i think is a valid one
03h 10m 00s
what else do we gain by returning to in-person meetings yeah so i think that's a good question um i'm sort of with nathaniel um on it and i have thought a lot about this because i feel like just in my other professional life um you know i haven't been with our my team for a year and i think there is a big loss there's a lot of informal interactions that happen and conversations that are less intentional and just more by happenstance and um i think there is an element to our work that is um done better in person i just and and and i say that i know it's like that's not our saying like hey you know tomorrow we need to be back but i just think i i do think uh virtual meeting is lesser than a in-person meeting so i'm and i don't say this i want to acknowledge that um i think the formal meeting there isn't that much of a difference to me it's i totally miss going to besc and just walking around hanging out connecting with staff and occasionally board members as well but mostly staff without informal conversations uh what you're working on that kind of piece i totally miss and i miss that in my work life those informal conversations but i don't know that that having a formal in-person meeting gets us there as opposed to you know having a cup of coffee virtually or spaced in person with another board member just as an informal hey what are you thinking about these days kind of conversation i think for me the most important thing is that we're following the scientific recommendations and we've done that for school reopening uh and i think we we we've done it well um for school reopening and i think i am really excited to get back to meeting in person and i think as soon as as cdc and oha and multnomah county say uh in-person meetings of adults um you know are are okay as long as you've got these mitigation measures in place then we should we should move forward with it i don't think we should do it prior to that um just like we didn't reopen schools um you know prior to to to the guidance you know saying that it was safe so for me it's just following the same principles we followed from the beginning so ailee can you um give us your thinking are the current thinking about um how we are going to make this decision a great question so um i had made we had made a decision i had made the decision that we would come back uh for the april 27th meeting the meeting i wanted us to wait till after school reopened um we talked about coming back for this meeting but knew we couldn't pull off the logistics um and then i've had several colleagues say i'm not sure that's the right timing what would it look like and so we just wanted to have this conversation of what all do we need to be considering i'm not sure liz correct me if i'm wrong if we can really meet i mean i think yeah you can't have the public in the meeting in the in the sense of the normal meeting that you want to have under uh the current event can you sit masked um six feet apart in the same space yes the guidance is only do it if you have to and um the bes is is office space so i think um that's the thing that's the game so you it's not mandatory but it's recommended that if you can work remotely you do that uh so for for me i mean hearing that it's um i'd like to go back into the space um but i don't think we're there yet as far as um i'm not sure that um the purpose of us being back um is worth the time and energy that it would take to pull it off and that the quality of our meeting i don't think we would get i totally agree with you julia i miss i mean it felt like michelle and i always had to go the bathroom at the same time so we'd often have these little chats in the bathroom like during meetings you know um and so i just missed that i missed like just joking around with michelle
03h 15m 00s
or you know the after a meeting when we all chat and kind of process we don't do that anymore um yes if you haven't had the pleasure to sit next to julia she always has a huge stack of materials and i would just start thinking they were mine during the meeting and steal them um or i used to steal rita's pencils too um but i just missed that relationship piece those conversations we could have um i miss seeing our staff and and connecting with them like you said scott um but i'm not sure that going back where we're all on devices masked socially distant in a room helps us to continue to do our work of a public-facing meeting that's transparent um so i you know this is going to be a continued conversation amy i haven't made a final decision um it's it's kind of weighing you know what liz just said about that advice of work remotely unless you have to go back we don't have to go back and while i understand nathaniel what you said about um leading by example and that you know we're reopening for students um that the science is different the cdc recommendations the osha recommendations are different for high schoolers than they are for adults scott were you going to add something um just that if if we were meeting with masks seeing a person's face all of it is part of communication and that if we're wearing a mask there's actually a subtraction from communication yeah you hear the words but the face is part of the communication as well that we absorb a lot of times unconsciously one of my gifts is over emoting on zoom i do a lot of smiling and nodding so you all would miss out on all the smiles if i was wearing a mask but i think i mean i think that's an argument for going back and meeting in person [Laughter] you won't be distracted by all the crazy cartoon faces i make um i think that uh we need to to continue this conversation i think it's important that we do eventually return um i think it's something we're going to work on i think we want to wait till we've reopened schools because that's where we want our staff focus to be we have talked to terry and the the kind of communications people and outside is not an option because of of having to broadcast to the public and the sound issues so we did talk about what would it look like if in you know say may we met outdoors in a space at one of our fields um so we're continuing to try to come up with a way to meet that's safe that continues to have the value of the meetings and make sure that we are you know doing our work as a publicly transparent body leading by example nathaniel julia connecting with one another in those informal ways um i love you all but i'm really tired of zoom so i would like us to be back um so i haven't made that we haven't made a final decision but it is one we'll make together as a group one thing i think we should consider um i mean i think we all we all did what we needed to do um you know we've never been through a pandemic before but i do think um that having the possibility that board members could have an office that they could um be at the meeting like at the meeting virtually from um because you know i know i know it's just it's a challenge um having a quiet room just you know you're what's in the background um you know i and we don't have the benefit like the superintendent of being you know in an office setting which i think you know i i would prefer um versus you know being in my house at a meeting yeah i'm in my spare bedroom so yes i will continue to have this conversation i know that staff has been listening attentively um to this and and will continue to try to find a way to um meet together again and help in in person and find some logistical answers that will make that a high level meeting that that does all the things we need it to do so thank you for your input is there anything else before we adjourn tonight okay i was wondering if it had been discussed whether or not we can meet at one of our other sites like say in a high school auditorium or something yes so we could meet so uh the besc if we meet at the desk we can fit five people if we were to meet at a high school or somewhere else like that um we'd have to still wear the masks do the headphones and have the devices um so then we also run into you know just logistical issues about everyone bringing their device and does everyone have headphones but yes we have talked about that and that is an option we're exploring as well so yes all right anything else before we adjourn
03h 20m 00s
okay thank you everybody for a robust conversation on lots of different topics tonight the next regular meeting of the board will be held on april 12th and this meeting is now adjourned remember that we do have agenda session agenda setting tomorrow at 11 so if you're a board member and you have an item for agenda setting make sure you email that to roseanne and i tonight

Sources

PPS Board of Education, BoardBook Public View, https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Organization/915 (accessed: 2023-01-25T21:27:49.720701Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)
PPS Communications, "PPS Board of Education Meetings" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbZtlBHJZmkdC_tt72iEiQXsgBxAQRwtM (accessed: 2023-10-14T01:02:33.351363Z)
PPS Board of Education, PPS Board of Education - Full Board Meetings (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk0IYRijyKDW0GVGkV4xIiOAc-j4KVdFh (accessed: 2023-10-11T05:43:28.081119Z)

2021-03-30 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Board Meeting 3/30/21

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