2021-04-15 PPS School Board School Improvement Bond Committee Meeting

From SunshinePPS Wiki
District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-04-15
Time 16:30:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing


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Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education's School Impovement Bond Committee - 4/15/21

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michelle i'm the chair of the school improvement bond committee and a member of the school board and i'll pass it to uh how about john lyons good afternoon everyone my name is john lyons i'm an architect in the planning group at pbs i'm here to talk about long-range facility plan i will pass it to dan young hello everyone dan young chief operating officer good to see everyone and i'll pass it to mr peterson hi i'm tom peterson i'm on the bac the co-chair and i'll be giving a little update later this evening and i'll pass it on to scott i'm scott bailey board member not on this committee i've been involved with facilities for a long time amy good afternoon this is amy constand my serve on the board nice to see you all did you want to pass it to someone amy oh sorry about that how about marina thank you amy marina cresswell i'm the senior director for the office of school modernization and i will pass it to deputy superintendent parts well i've just been introduced so i'm glad to be here with you claire hurts and i'm going to pass that to our new cfo hi good afternoon everyone alberto delgadillo um and i will oh geez it's like one of those white right towards the end uh to uh uh karina ruiz hello everyone i am i'm karina ruiz i am one of the founding principals of brick architecture and we are honored to serve um as the consultant doing your long-range plan we'll be helping john with the presentation um this afternoon and i will pass it to dr amanda perez hi everybody my name is amara perez and i'm also part of the project team for the facilities plan and my role has been to be a consultant on critical race theory in this project and i will pass it to [Music] cara redshaw hi i'm kara bradshaw i'm the executive assistant to the board and i'll pass it to dana white hi i'm dana white i'm the director for planning and real estate i may be last uh i think director scott is last i mean someone has to go left yep absolutely i'm andrew scott a board member and a member of this committee glad to be here thank you everybody did we i'm sorry is mary with us is he married i am i am sorry i i didn't know about the meeting so i'm on a run with my kids but mary weiner i'm managing the instructional resource adoption for otl has everyone had a chance to introduce themselves well i'll just chime in to say good afternoon everybody i'm roseanne powell i'm the board manager who should have probably gone first um do we have any public comment tonight we don't unless jordan got something that i don't know about i have not okay so the first thing on our agenda then is um the update from the office of school modernization um yes thank you thank you director de pass um i'll go ahead and get started with that uh i'll try to go through briefly but um i tend towards wordy so um give me the high sign if i speak too much 2012 program we're 98 spent uh we have two primary projects still sitting on the 2012 program and that includes roosevelt phase four and the grant upper fields improvement um roosevelt phase four we have some delays due to permitting but the work is proceeding we'd hope to have the new um extension to that wing completed for the start of the 21-22 school year but we are now looking like october for our completion and we are working closely with the administration as far as accommodating that change to the schedule for grant upper fields improvement we're generally on schedule with that um however we are in the middle of land use permitting and that has a tendency to be unpredictable so we continue to look for opportunities to improve the construction time we do still have some fun excuse me it may interrupt just to ask um as you're giving the update there the materials we
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have the materials in front of us are you going from the um bac presentation or in our meeting materials packet are you are you referencing our meeting materials all of this information is in the materials however the materials that you receive are the same materials that we present to the bac and that is typically a two hour plus presentation so i try to summarize um get us through quickly with just a quick overview okay i appreciate that you're trying to hit the high points and i was just wondering um if if it would be helpful for people to follow along but i understand that you're hitting the high tops not the full in-depth um report so thank you um so just to note that we do still have some funds available within the 2012 program to accommodate any additional budget needs for the two projects that we have sitting out there for 2017 we're excuse me marina one second before you move on from 2012 i understand that the two pieces that you just highlighted are work that's ongoing but aside from that does that mean that we're completely closed out on our contracts from 2012 um for example uh grant had been outstanding for a while we are not completely capable of all contracts for 2012 projects we're working through all of those right now we've come to agreement with the grant contract we are um just finishing up the final audit for that contract so it is not closed out yet but it will be soon okay but we've come to agreement okay thank you so much you're welcome uh 55 spent on 2017 program kellogg uh substantial completion has been reached and we are in the middle of installing um ffme furniture fixtures and equipment we are working with other pps departments to transition to operations and we are currently projecting the project to come in one million dollars under budget mcdaniel high school um as i've said before mcdaniel is the modernization from 2017 that had the tightest of schedules we have not had great luck with delays related to covet and the wildfires that we had over the summer those did impact our schedule it will be tight however we have been working very closely with the contractor doing overtime in very selective ways whether it's critical path items or clearing other uh tasks that needed to be done in order to maintain critical path and we are also working internally with a transition team that's made up of members of it feels like pretty much every single department at pps um since everybody is impacted by this so we are working closely to talk through that the schedule coordination for mcdaniel high school to move out of marshall and into its new site we are anticipating it will be completed on budget however that does not include covid related costs and i think i said this before too that um our strategy with covid cost has been that if our projects are able to pay for those costs out of their existing project budgets they will and the amounts that they cannot pay for out of their budgets will be paid for out of the program and i've already been setting aside funding to do so but to the extent we can keep it within the project budgets we have it does not look like we will be able to pay for all of those coded costs out of the mcdaniel budget lincoln is still on schedule it is also still on budget the steel structure the roofing exterior panels cmu walls at the gym all those things have been uh completed i think if you are around there you'll see that the the shapes of the buildings are there most of the extra envelope looks pretty pretty solid uh and we have interior framing in progress as well there are some risks ahead of us we still anticipate staying within budget for benson the swing site work is progressing we've been working hard with our teams and with the transition team to coordinate all of the moves of the summer and just a good note with the transition team that um that includes moving benson into kenton and marshall those two swing sites as well as moving daniel out of marshall and it's just a note too on the impacts to pbs operations as a whole at the same time we're completing kellogg and so we have been working hard to transition
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catalog to operations now so that the rest of the pps teams have to do work within their can get in do their work there and then move to swing sites and changes to uh you know the the campuses of benson and mcdaniel so it's a it's a delicate dance um we're definitely working hard with lots of different folks to make it work the benson team is currently negotiating aspects of the gmt with our cngc contractor our initial cost estimates that the 50 cv fees came in over budget however the team worked hard to get back on budget in order to be approved to move forward with mpg they are on schedule they recently completed their 100 sd phase the initial cost estimates for the uh at the 100 sd phase did come in very high however the team is still reviewing all of the costs line by line and we will of course work on value engineering as necessary in order to get back down the budget um we're certainly not complete with that set of cost estimates there's still quite a bit of work to do however we've certainly also been sharing out that information with our steering committees and with our bac because we want to provide full awareness that these are costs that we're we're working very hard to get back under control um one last quick note for benson we are expecting to fence off the site middle of june 2020 not a lot to to report on the 2020 work other than we are working hard to get all of our structures in place for it structures generally means staffing for new projects so of course we need new staff in order to take on additional work because our existing are already very busy on 2012 and 2017. we also have new processes and procedures that we're putting in place to accommodate work being done by the office of teaching and learning otis our technology folks and um others who are moving forward some of the work scope under the 2020 bond so we've been working very hard on that we also are putting together implementation plans for several of the scopes of work for the 2020 bond that we'll be bringing forward from the sibc later the program as a whole um has been increasing staffing to make sure that we have support in place to manage all three of those programs um adding the 2020 bond was certainly adding a significant amount of work and so not only do we need new project managers we also need new support staff to help us with invoicing with finance with contracts any number of operational supports that allow them the work to move forward efficiently we are also as a program working very closely with our performance auditors on fieldwork for year three they anticipate having a final report in early july they have started talking with us about a draft work plan for year four and we expect to take that to the bac um for a review in our maybe and that concludes my portion of the report unless you have questions no one has questions or i should ask does anyone have questions about what what you just heard and seeing that there are none we should move on then to the uh bond accountability committee update and that's uh that's that would be you tom okay well uh thank you all for one uh keeping me around i went i didn't expect to be here uh but uh i'm still here so i'm the only uh remaining member of the original bac so and i have kind of volunteered to co-chair with kenichi to kind of make the transition with the new bac and i have to say um you know i've been been around for a long time but i'm really excited about the new uh the makeup of the new bac which is part of the reason why i volunteered to chair uh and so uh i think we for the first time i think we've we've we've achieved the diverse diversity of perspectives and backgrounds that we've been struggling with have been struggling with for for many years so i'm excited about that
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however with that there's a lot of new people uh within the last year there were three new members added to the bac in 2020 and now four more so we have a pretty uh pretty new group of folks uh although a very confident group of people um but uh and then with the addition of the 2020 bond and and the the challenges with trying to cover everything um we're approaching the the bond program a little differently so i think if you saw my report there's uh we we had an off-site in january instead of our usual report and in that we besides getting to know each other we had a chance to kind of rethink how do we want to function um how do we want to meet and report how do we have more opportunities for discussions on topics as opposed to predominantly our meetings where staff uh trying to cover all the all the details which could be overwhelming at times so i think the key thing uh that we're transitioning is and if you look at the report is this new work plan where we're dividing it up so when you get reports early reports from from the bac you're not going to get a report that covers the entire bond program we're going to kind of bite it off uh in different chunks uh so each time i report to you it'll be focusing on maybe different aspects of the bond as opposed to the entire program which we hope will lead to more meaningful discussions as as well so uh this last uh uh meeting in in uh march we focused primarily on the modernizations uh marina touched on uh most of the stuff that we covered i'm gonna just add a few comments to uh some of the concerns that came out of the bac kellogg's a great story with the exception of the exception of the business equity performance it led to a bit of a discussion because the performance was was pretty low i think it was around [Music] my notes say make sure you get the right number anyway uh less than 10 which is is pretty low which uh can be a challenge uh on competitively bid projects and if you look at the history of some of the other competitive projects in the district those are a little more challenging to get aspirational goals than the negotiated work so that was a concern but other than that i think everyone's pretty well pleased with how kellogg's coming along it came in well under budget it looks great i can hardly wait to get a chance to see it at some point mcdaniel has been a challenge as marina alluded to the budget uh has been really challenged and so um hopefully there are funds within the program to to offset uh the anticipated overruns you're gonna see on mcdaniel we also inquired about if there's any opportunity for reimbursement through the federal uh program for proven relief to see if there's an opportunity to offset some of those costs the other thing that was uh concerning about daniel and that was it's a cmdc and the business equity was very low as well uh and i recall getting a presentation from mcdaniel on mcdaniel about their efforts and i think they lost some key subs and they've had a couple of things happen to them that are driving those numbers but it's nonetheless it's still uh disappointing because those types of contracts there's generally more opportunity and generally we have better success on lincoln for example 21 they're hitting the home run there uh so you know what is it about mcdaniel that they're not able to hit those numbers like some of the other contractors are excuse me tom yeah do you have any speculation on that uh well i think the intent in in one of our upcoming meetings is to focus on the whole business equity issue and to get a better get a better sense of you know what happened uh there what can we do differently are there different ways of reporting success um just tracking the dollar spent is you really don't know until it's done and by then it's too late so there may be some other ways that we want to look at how we approach this whole business equity maybe we look at what do the contractors say and commit to and how are they performing against what they said and commit committed to uh or are there other things that we can we can look at to um to do a little better but mcdaniel
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is is disappointing uh given it's a cmgc contract usually they can perform uh much better with those numbers so i i think it's great that the bac is planning to focus on that and also our external bond performance auditor is looking at business equity numbers and um you know i think one of the things that you're getting at which was highlighted by dan's recent memo which dan was really helpful um regarding the benson project is that you know i think we should be thinking about what we can do to support um the accomplishment of our goals downstream because what we've seen happen is we've seen aspirations um you know stated and recorded in the bidding process and that things go awry not in a way that necessarily violates our contractual agreements um sometimes it's understandable but nonetheless they go awry and our end result is not what we want and need it to be which as you just said we've seen for mcdaniel and for kellogg and so what do we as an owner need to be doing to work with our contractors all along the way to make sure that they are able to fulfill those aspirational goals that we have we've gotten burned here a couple times where we just get to the end and we say oh that's a drag you know that's not what we want and need it to be and at that point it's too late so um i really appreciate the bac looking at that and and we know that frankly i'll speak from my own sort of uh investigative work in our community we know that other public owners do a little bit better job of nurturing minority business partnerships and so what do we need to do downstream um to to better position ourselves to to reach our goals yeah yeah i also want to um just echo um what director constance said and appreciate i mean um i feel like i should call you mr peterson i i hope you can call me tom i'm i'm very informal thank you um i i really appreciate you being here you know and being this um long-standing uh bac member and providing that institutional knowledge but also you have a um your area of expertise you know at the port was around business equity so i think i'm hoping that we can have um upcoming conversations about this i just checked your notes by the way and the kellogg uh business contracting was at 4 which is just it's really really low um we need to pull it up i know that we plan to hire the district plans to hire uh someone in the position that will be focused solely on business equity and i think that's a great idea um hopefully we can get an update about that that that may help that might that outreach piece but um i echo again what um director constance says around other um our neighboring public entities are doing quite a bit better and and we know we can do better because lincoln is at 21 so we're doing something right on some of the projects and we're i'm completely missing it on on others yeah well i i've had my share of challenges uh when i was with the port uh and we you know it's not uncommon for the best laid plans by a contractor and then something goes south the sub goes out of business or whatever and then they're scrambling and and then sometimes you know all those public agencies we're all competing for these same resources and so there's a lot it's a it's a fairly complex issue and problem um but um i you know i'm looking forward to figuring out how we can do better job or how we can help provide provide some guidance anyway uh for the district and and approach this the audit should we should bring out some things i know i put the audit committee in touch with kimberly from my former colleague at the port and she was really great she also ran the protege program so i'm sure she'll have some good insight for them okay i'm sorry tom i just wanted to add really quickly to i did sort of echoing those comments i i think it's great that the bc is looking at i'm glad the audit is looking at it i would also be interested in in recommendations of is there anything the board can do that would assist staff in this whether whether it's a policy whether it's giving more flexibility in terms of how we contract but you know what are the things that that um you know that our staff need in terms of tools uh to make sure that this this this is happening right whether it's enforcement tools or incentives or or whatever it is to make sure that we are hitting those numbers i think it's going to be really important as well yeah well i'm hoping a lot of ideas will come
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out of your audit as well along the line but like i say i think our july meeting business equity is one of the is the topic so i'm hoping we can have a good discussion there and we can draw from some of the various expertise we have within our group and some of their experiences as well and maybe we can come up with some unadditional ideas um as well tom i don't want to in on on your presentation either but i just wanted to bring out the point one uh i appreciate you bringing up that the intent and that the july meeting is to have this discussion really have a holistic discussion around business equity uh really really from top to bottom around what the policies are what the data says uh what what that efforts that we put in place that have worked which ones have not what do other jurisdictions do which one what are successful what do they look like so that's what we're intending to do both with the bac and i just want to point out to this committee as well the intent is to come to this committee and have that same discussion and so we've got a number of pieces moving at the same time including our performance orders so we want to align those and have a robust discussion in a couple of venues and then when oh i'm sorry is there anyone doing a landscape a landscape scan right now that you know of i know the pdc used to do every ten years i guess did a study a disparity study um i don't know i haven't heard of one happening for some time but is there anybody on staff that has the capacity to do a landscape scan looking at the research from other jurisdictions to compare notes and maybe get some best practices in place part of the scope of the auditors is looking at uh how other agencies operate so that will be a piece of it uh and i don't mean implied that that will be all of it but i think that will be kind of a good uh first look and then i think we can expand from there and dan when do we get that uh external uh bond performance out is that june i believe we are looking at a draft in uh anticipated in june we'll see if marina which way her head is moving either up and down or side to side i think we're we're not expecting to see a final that we can share with the board until early july and so we weren't sure we were going to be able to make it onto any of the committee scheduled committee meetings prior to the summer recess so we're just we're kind of waiting to see but our concern is we might not be able to to formally present it until committees return or you know how crazy we are we might just have a summer meeting hey we would love that we'd love to be able to present it to you sooner so we'll really be looking for those opportunities who knows maybe he'll be in person okay where was i uh so uh i think the other uh concerns that came out were were budget uh both lincoln and mcdaniel were experiencing uh challenges certain to kobe related costs uh um but they're you know the team's working hard um however they're working a lot over time and those all those costs all add up as well and so the budgets will be a challenge going forward but i think you know everyone's working working hard to try to make sure make sure they can bring it in within budget um benson uh is coming together of wealth as marina stated um budget is our big concern there as well you know these projects and i experienced it myself back when i was support they tend to grow uh during the design and they you're constantly having these estimates to come back from your contractor that are above what you thought they were going to be and you go through this ve or other types of exercises but eventually you get a point where well it is what it is and with construction costs escalating still and so forth there's a there's a possibility that mentioned budget could be a challenge going forward because it still is not done with design yet and so it's not all bit out so that remains a concern but other than that it's uh it's coming together well and then as marina pointed out nothing really on the 220 bond um be looking forward to um getting that kicked off and but right now if i understand they're they're busy trying to put their teams together and you gotta have the bodies first before you get a lot done so we appreciate that uh as i also want to acknowledge uh
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they continue to bring on some some great staff um so we've been um that's encouraging and that's always that's been a challenge from day one but uh i've seen the osm grow quite a bit obviously from the early days when dan was what was your role when i first started working here again but uh anyway it's it's a it's grown to be a very sophisticated and well-run uh organization i'm really impressed with how it's it's come together so it's been uh fun to be a part of um i will say one other comment uh about the new board um one of the things that is that came up when we first had our meeting uh our planning meeting with marina and kenichi was kinichi asked a question about job site culture and um you know is it safe are people being subjected to are they being treated properly and so forth um and um that's kind of a new program obviously i don't recall that being an issue when i was back in the day and but obviously an important issue and uh so this is an example of something that's evolving in the industry uh and maybe other agencies are acting on i don't know but it could be a could lead to a policy issue for the district is as to how you want to address this and are there things in your contracts that we need to implement and help ensure we have a safe work uh work site for our police and there's a number of other the other of these potential policy issues that i recall some came up over the my time you'd have someone show up at a at a bac meeting advocating for solo for example or or energy conservation or something and you know it wasn't really clear what the policy was on some of those issues so i uh so i'm anticipating with the new with the makeup of the new board they're going to be seeing some more of these types of issues where they're going to have a specific issue or concern that they're going to want to advocate for and the district may or may not have a policy on it so we'll be maybe serving up some some areas where you may need to give some thought on on how you want to address some of these issues so i've i'm i've kind of gathered a list of concerns and from the various members to kind of get a sense of what their focus will be and as we plan future meetings we'll make sure we start addressing some of these issues and make sure we get them served up to you as well so with that uh i answer any questions tom i really appreciate you bringing up that last point and this is something that i've had a few discussions about with regard to our performance our business equity performance because what's what's dissonant about some of those results is that they don't don't align with our stated values as an organization and pbs has come a long way in the last few years and your your tenure with us in terms of articulating what our values are as an organization we have a vision that we refer to with you know all of our work we're about to deliver a strategic plan that has grown out of the vision and so uh the fact that the bac is thinking about that and um how our investing in our workforce work workplace culture um connects and is aligned with our values and our vision as an organization is really exciting and important and i think that i think that's a critical piece of the business equity work too because it's not just again about those those end results at the end of a contract it's about what are we doing to nurture those partnerships all the way along in a way that authentically reflects our values in an organization and i think you could say the same thing about sustainability and um there'll be some language around that in our strategic plan so it's it's wonderful that you guys are thinking that way and speaking for myself as one board member i think we would welcome an invitation to revisit any of our policies or concoct new policies where we see voids on on some of these issues so thank you very much for bringing that up not a problem i i faced the same challenge in my time at the port we would i remember art was a challenge for us no one wanted to acknowledge an art program yet we would always implement one in our in our big expansion programs but we never had budgeted for them and uh
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you know it was so it's a it's been a hot issue for me for a long time uh so as soon as i hear these things that if i'll be assured it'll raise a red flag for me and i'll make sure it gets elevated so anyway i also want to say that that's another issue the job site culture that's really personally important and it's a place where an extension of what we say we want to see in our workplace culture the city of portland recently had an incident on one of our job sites with an outside contractor that where a noose was found and we had no before this happened hadn't had anything codified or written and so of course we do have now a statement um in case something like this happens on on a job site and it would i think be great if we could be prepared for the worst which is you know someone some bad actor um doing something like that better to be prepared and have a statement prepared and have a policy to back it up i'm also really happy that you brought that up i know there are members of the bac that are also interested i'm also interested director con stem is interested director scott director bailey i'm sure i'm sure we're all interested in um the culture or on our job sites but i don't want to speak for them um did anybody have any other comments i just um point oh sorry scott really quickly on that point um dan i want to put you on the spot right now but i would be interested you know we did sign up portland public schools as part of the um construction and careers pathways project with other regional um governments and as part of that workplace culture is um a key component of that um that there are things that i don't remember specifically um as part of that program what what comes out of that but i know it is something that we're collaborating with other governments to improve culture particularly for women and people of color on job sites so i'd be interested in the future just hearing an update on on how that's going and and what that what what what actions we're taking as a result yeah not a problem we can provide information about that program and then some of the other programs that uh our contractors participate in as well so just wanted to agree with the workplace culture issues and also to say we're working on a policy on uh climate fossil fuel sustainability um uh i just finished a draft that we're going to be discussing tomorrow um so i want to make sure we double back i know a couple of people on this uh in this meeting have been part of that process so i want to make sure that we are in alignment with our bond work from that uh multnomah county today came out with a resolution saying that any new building will be well they said fossil fuel free but what they actually said was all electric so those things are different yeah i was thinking oh are they going all solar and windmills but uh so uh i don't want us making a statement like that unless um you know we're truly fossil free but um that's the direction we need to go in sooner rather than later i i'm going to be really curious about that because that was another being electrical engineer originally energy conservation has been my thing throughout my career and um and we we've we tried hard at the port you know even had a lead platinum building uh but but it's challenging uh and we had we had done a study to figure out how we could be car reduce our carbon footprint by 20 and it was pretty enlightening how what that meant and um so i'll be anxious to hear uh hear about that because uh this kind of near gear to my heart i've spent a lot of time on that subject as well over my career so that's fantastic um and so did i and in fact i'm generating power right now so much so that's going out to the grid um i'm i'm i'm providing power for my neighbors on either side of me really no solar i do have solar i have a three kilowatt system oh cool and it works even on cloudy days here in portland so it's it is really cool i thought you were pedaling as we speak i am actually sometimes but not today but yeah no they're doing their job upstairs um i'm also really interested in um the carbon the carbon piece and seeing us um you know go to renewables as much as possible well i could talk a lot about that but i want to i don't want to bore you tonight another time maybe
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over a beer that sounds fantastic um were there any other comments um on the on that bsc update or questions anyone had i think tom just speaking to the expansion of your agenda is just a great advertisement why diversity and representation matters because it just encompasses a lot more life experiences a lot more viewpoints and it just improves our collective work so yep absolutely so i just gave a presentation this week to a national conference about the business case for diversity and you want to have diverse uh people in the room thinkers because it does reduce your risk it now broadens your reach into the communities reduces your risk in so many ways because you've got more eyes on the problem on any issue and also um just an interesting aside usually diverse groups make better financial decisions so i think for the bond accountability committee that's that's really apt so thank you for serving uh tom i appreciate you being here my pleasure um i'm glad you kept me around me too at least i'll be able to see some more progress uh and i'm hoping once when i when you finally have to say all right you've been here too long did you still invite me back to see the schools when they're done because it's been a lot of fun we we do have a protocol in place for uh we we just say we'll see you in a couple months you can take some time off but um we have your number still in your email so hopefully you'll be around to mentor any incoming new new uh new people so but for now we've got you so that's great yeah um thank you so much um we're gonna move on to the long term facilities uh plan and i'm not sure who's who's delivering that i can start us off i'm gonna go ahead and share my screen thank you very much it's a real pleasure to be with you um we're up to some very very cool work we're about halfway through still a lot of work to be done which i will share with you this evening but we will be back to present the final product um probably to the full board in october so i'll just look for some head knobs can you all see my screen great okay so long-range facility plan um you can find more details on the project at pps.net lrfv we'll begin posting progress documents to this site as well so the outline for today um i'm gonna give you a really brief overview of the operations document landscape and that's just to help with some orientation and i think give some broader context to what this document is i'll give a long range facility plan overview including a process and timeline and then i'll pass it over to dr amara perez to talk about critical race spatial lens and then karina ruiz to talk about some some key outcomes that we found so far so just looking at the guiding documents within the operations group today we'll focus on the long-range facility plan but we'll review some examples on how these documents work together to federate a complete story about how we translate our values into the built environment so we're in a unique time for our group we are currently updating literally all of these documents so quite busy so we have the opportunity to coordinate for a shared vision for our schools these documents all work together in coordination with one another they they all speak to different audiences and foreground different voices for different stakeholders and just to illustrate that in a matrix this matrix provides a little more detail about how the documents differ from one another so you can see that the long-range facility plan is has the widest range both in terms of audience and stakeholders but it's also a document required by the ode we must complete this document every 10 years so the previous long range facility plan was completed in 2012. so okay so just really quickly i'd like to unpack an example to illustrate how these documents differ from one another so just looking at how our buildings can support social emotional learning the long-range facility plan will contain statements like this all buildings must support a continuum of social emotional learning both inside and outside the classroom just an example um of course we would
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say more than that but then looking to the ed specification that we would then provide more detail on and more specificity for our spaces so the ad spec will detail a set of performance requirements um we see here a sensory path the ed spec will describe both what a sensory path is and how it should perform um in this case an ad spec must or excuse me a sensory path must support motor development sensory and emotional regulation and healthy physical outlets then we get to the really glamorous statements in our design standards which are materials placed on the floors and walls must be compatible with district cleaning systems and all materials on interior surfaces must be low voc so um definitely an indirect statement about social emotional learning but incredibly important and incredibly valuable so that's all i had to say about kind of our document structure i'll pause for a b see if there are any questions about that otherwise i'll move into leverage yes i have a question sorry go ahead um i was just going to say um the low poc materials are really good and that that we're um being considered about the materials but if we're um we've got this climate policy and we've got um if we're using toxic chemicals to do the cleaning we're impacting the indoor air quality so i'm hoping that as these um documents are being updated that we're considering you know less toxic materials to clean i know it's a hard time to talk about using vinegar you know during a during a pandemic um just that it'd be nice for us to be consistent across the board in terms of you know what we care about um and how how we know that toxic chemicals impact um climate absolutely and health i have a question john about um i appreciate you making a reference to how the long range facilities plan will inform some revisions perspective revisions in our ed specs so can you or can someone speak a little bit to that process um how how we intend to revise the ed specs once we have a long-range facilities plan in play and so the the ed spec and the long-range facility plan are concurrent processes that we're we're currently developing so one specific example i can point to is the philosophical foundation for the ed spec that's currently being revised is universal design trauma informed design and now critical race theory um which is a new concept for me and and for for much of what we're doing with the the built environment um the the i believe i'm i'm scheduled to come back and talk in detail about the ed spec in about a month so i don't want to go too down too far down this rabbit hole um but but there will certainly be downstream impacts as i think the the the philosophical approach and also the long-term vision begin to saturate and um kind of infuse with ideas to their related documents that's great so that work is underway now those three new overlays on our existing ed specs absolutely so um we've done hundreds of hours of interviews with educators for the ed spec um and are getting lots of input on universal design trauma informed design um in relation to the the ada transition plan so for sure that's fantastic i'm really excited that the critical race theory is also being applied um the built environment i work in you know planning and sustainability and we're actually embarking on a spatial justice uh set of programs and um it's a it's a great consideration i can't wait to hear more about it other thoughts or questions we're okay cool okay i will move on uh long-range facility plan overview uh and just bear with me through this i just want to give you some orientation and then we'll get to the cool stuff when i turn it over to amara so the purpose of the long range facility plan is to forecast the district's facility needs for the next 10 to 20 years so reaching quite a bit into the future our primary purpose is to
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align facilities needs with the district's educational vision um and then we're committed to a plan that will advance racial equity and social justice and education we're doing that through critical race theory uh spatial theory to prioritize capital projects and we are using critical race spatial dialogues to garner feedback from our community in addition to program discussions put slightly another way um a long-range facility plan is an alignment of educational vision enrollment and capacity and facility conditions so we're going to look at the data from our fca or our recent enrollment forecast and then we're doing lots of conversations with our educational leadership so just to speak to how long-range facility plan relates to a bond um this this diagram outlines kind of an ideal sequence of events of course we just passed a bond so we're going to be set up really well for the next couple bonds again this is ideal few districts ever um are able to choreograph their their work in in this precise way uh and then we missed it by just a little bit this year um but again we'll be in good shape for the future bonds just to speak to our governance structure a little bit so we have our core team which is some of the folks here it's dr valentino dan young those folks it's across disciplinary teams so educators engagement uh enrollment transfer planning and osm are involved in that we have our crick coalition um which everyone here should have an invite to our summit for next week and then we've conducted a host of community dialogues this past winter that we'll get to hear a little bit about in a minute we are looking at all of these initiatives that are happening right now in the district so it's a lot there's a lot going on it's allowed to get our arms around but our hope is to federate many of these initiatives into a single vision for the future or at least set us up for making really good decisions in the future uh the document's gonna look something like this um this is a bit of a bluff or or a ways off from this but just to give you a sense of what the thinking is and and um how this is all gonna come together so our phasing in timeline so we began this project in november with a couple months long listening and learning where we were sitting down with different community groups students principals teachers who whatever whoever would hang out with us right now we're working with our coalition to develop the ideas garnered from those conversations to synthesize and analyze those findings to reflect the voice and stories of communities and then later this summer we're going to move into an action in the accountability phase where we're really creating the document we're sending that back out to the folks that we heard from and talk to getting their feedback and we're revising and with that i will pass it over to dr kiras thank you john um so part of the strategy that our team put forward was the use of critical race theory to really support the alignment of facilities plan with the district's commitment to racial equity and social justice so putting critical race theory and conversation with spatial theory has offered a sort of integrated socio-spatial framework to understand and transform this really unique relationship between the built environment and equity in education so we're going to do a super quick review of some of the guiding theoretical tenets that have really grounded our work knowing that this will you know would really require more conversation but it gets you an idea of what this lens is really inviting us to acknowledge inviting us to examine and more importantly inviting us to practice so um we're going to share just a sample of some of those tenants um the first one is you know really a principle we can go the next slide john um can i move yeah okay so the first one is the idea that um racism is embedded and ingrained in all aspects of society this is really important because often we think about inequity and education but don't necessarily look at the planning practices or design practices that also function to reproduce inequity within education so this is meant that we're paying very close attention to our practices the second tenet is about dominant narratives um dominant narratives particularly in planning and design and space are narratives like objectivity or
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neutrality or color blindness all of which we really acknowledge act to hide racial and social inequities and so particularly in the business of sort of planning and facilities we often think this work is sort of too technical to objective logical universal to be thinking about social issues around race and other dimensions of diversity so paying attention to those narratives that act as if this work is neutral is um one of the strategies we've been using to make sure that we keep connected the socio-spatial and spatial lens the third tenant which is everybody's favorite is the idea that space is not neutral and in particular space is not racially neutral and so part of what this really invites is for us to look at how space is actually more of a sort of cultural artifact the idea that space often reflects um dominant value and belief systems and this allows us to really interrogate how is space acting to normalize or reproduce the status quo in ways that we can actually transform and put in service to equity and inclusion the next tenant is about the idea that advancing racial equity in facilities planning for example actually will help to further the district's commitment to racial equity and social justice and the nice thing about this tenant is it just shows what our role can be to contribute to equity and inclusion district-wide and then finally the tenant um we really are excited about practicing in this project is acknowledging the experiential lived experiences stories of black indigenous people of color and these communities and acknowledging that when we hear from bipol communities we actually hear the very stories that counter those dominant narratives which act to conceal institutionalized inequity so this has meant that so much of our work has been really amplifying the voice of bipod communities to really understand the sort of lived experience of uh educational spaces and understanding how space acts and also being able to really understand the diverse ways in which people perceive space but more importantly the diverse ways people can reimagine how space can really work in service to equity and inclusion so these are just a real review of what those tenants invite next slide so we've been using that in engagement as john spoke about we've just finished this listening and learning um phase so this has been a really important part of our work and being able to understand but again the socio-spatial context of neighborhood schools and understanding more largely the perceptions of community members and so one of the strategies we developed was having community dialogues where we invited people to share their personal experiences ideas and perceptions to create a more nuanced understanding of what some of the key pressing issues are impacting the school district and being able to provide input on those issues and emerging themes so these were the guiding questions for our dialogue sessions one was to just invite people to share their social identities what we know is that our identities our lived experience and our positionality shape the way we perceive space and so what we wanted to do was to acknowledge our identities matter by inviting that to the conversation we followed that up with questions that helped us to understand how do you perceive traditional school space to communicate racial and other social inequities and then finally given your multiple identities and lived experience how can school space actually advance racial equity and social justice what are the socio-spatial ideas for creating a more welcoming and inclusive experience so these were the broad guiding questions that drove our dialogue sessions and i will now pass this on to karina who will talk about what we learned through these sessions uh before i start i just want to provide a moment to pause because we we gave you a lot of information about the approach and so i want to pause for a moment before we start talking about the things we heard and how we're starting to apply those to just allow you to respond in any way or ask any questions about mata about the approach so this is very interesting to me um i you know years ago read works that analyzed uh the spatial array of say prisons hospitals schools all very similar command and control kind of layouts um but never from a specific viewpoint of race um so i if you have some resources you can share i can do some more reading on it i'd appreciate it i won't take up any meeting time um and again always getting into the
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specifics and examples always helps ground me in this as well so great thank you for asking that scott um we've been working with some student interns who have spent the last couple months building a repository of resources so we can make sure and share that link with you that will provide all kinds of really interesting readings to um to you know get you thinking so thanks for asking that i wanted to just give an appreciation for the discussion um as a black portlander also who grew up in you know in in guadalajara really understand what you're talking about here and appreciate you naming um just to name this the elements that are going into this um inquiry and really excited um to see what what comes out of it thank you you know on the ground for for our children i really appreciate you being here thank you me too very inspiring um ahmad i was going to ask it's wonderful to hear about your interns i was going to ask of you and john in these extensive interview processes are we talking to our students yes yes thank you amy we've had quite a few dialogue sessions with students um as young as third grade we've had two classroom sessions with third graders who have an incredible critical race facial analysis even at that age so we've had dialogue sessions with students we have students who are serving on the crick coalition and so our commitment has really been to make sure that our all of our community engagement is bi-pop focused and student centered and really being able to track that that amplified voice in everything we do fantastic okay anything else before we start outlining kind of what are some of the things that we heard and how those have started to now apply themselves to the work of the crit coalition okay so just that we should hear from third graders much more often i mean they're going to be inhabiting the building for a very long time and they are really uh they really add a lot i think it's wonderful to hear from them indeed um and i will congratulate your teachers of the classrooms that we went into um they had already done a lot of the social justice priming um and so when we went in it was really just about okay how do you apply those lessons now to the built environment right because that i think is always the harder link for even adults to make i will say um quite frankly the kids might have been more apt to make those connections um than some of the adults so it's it they were great conversations so i i totally agree with you um okay john will you ask for this one yeah so um what we identified as we went through i can't even i can't even count the number of hours of um sessions were these um emerging facility planning issues right so um we talk about them as socio-spatial issues but really thinking about kind of how they inform our facility planning because we're talking about a 20-year horizon right and so if you think about tributes to white dominant narratives things like what we heard from folks where the iconography and the forms of statues murals images names of schools as you're already dealing with that act to perpetuate and celebrate white dominant narratives in school space um next one is under representation of bypoc communities that the voices histories cultures and contributions of the bipoc community are not readily reflected in the schools in the architecture of the art the images flags display cases in schools the next one is the need to better reflect students and the local communities so again students communities local neighborhoods were neither integrated nor reflected in school space fourth one is unwelcoming and gatekeeping school entrances so building approach everything from the street to the school entrance contributes to an unwelcoming experience and the diminished sense of belonging for your communities experiencing diversity or communities on the margin this idea of a school community divide right that schools do not act or feel like community-owned resources due to insufficient space for community partners as well as policies and building structures that strictly limit neighborhood access to buildings and grounds the next one is monolingual space so english only signage and wayfinding acts to include exclude sorry communities and families from navigating engaging in and accessing school space sterile and rigid classrooms so the lack
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of color uncomfortable furniture fixed facial arrangements and limited access to natural light really diminish comfort a sense of safety and discourage risk taking and relationship building right those are some of the connections that we heard individual individualistic classrooms and so traditional spatial arrangements discourage cooperative and collaborative pedagogies that really limit student agency and restrict the agility needed to foster the diverse learning communities that you're trying to build and then binary space so presenting gender as a socio-spatial what we call kind of organizing strategy can can serve to other um space is designated for women and girls for your trans community your gender non-conforming users right so really thinking about the need and to to not think of spaces to not think of programs as binary marginalized and hidden space so school space dedicated students is is missing it's often difficult to access difficult to find out of the way um and and really um yeah um and then um finally your unequal and inaccessible spaces so um both the idea that um that we heard that there was unequal access to or a perceived um difference in quality depending on both whether or not you were part of a bipod community and also socioeconomic class and then also having accessible features like accessible playgrounds was was strongly held by the group as well so before i get into how we then apply these i just wanted to pause for a moment um to talk about um have you talk about any of those anything that you want to ask questions about so we're real quickly i toured some schools in finland a couple of years ago and the the furniture there for kids is really kid-friendly and the spaces there that they have set up it's completely well it's very different from here and and the other contradiction we faced they designed their schools to be physically open and welcoming to the community we have to design our schools to be fortresses and that's that's out of concern for student safety but that's also racialized given given who goes to prison in this country and what those feel like so design wise we have a huge contradiction because we want our spaces to be community spaces and open um and they have to be secure yes um director betty that's exactly right and so what we're what we're working part of what we're doing as you'll hear here in a minute is working with the coalition to sort of unpack these and then also figure out where where things are in tension and where um you it's not an either or you know we believe strongly that you can have safe and secure spaces that are welcoming and create a sense of belonging um but there are it requires what i like to think of these are as pause points right so the that anybody moving forward with projects after this long-range plan facilities plan is developed will be able to look at these and say okay as we're coming up upon this issue if we are required to pause and ask those most closely impacted by the problem to help us develop a solution right any other questions it um comment in the question this is absolutely fascinating and kind of riveting so i just thank you so much for this it's really it's really great i'm going to pick up on on scott's point i mean i um all of these actually are are things we need to be taking into consideration i mean i i will just say i absolutely hate chain link fences and um i don't think i've ever shared this with uh school district staff i was sort of holding my back pocket but i would love a policy that said this district will never put up another chain link fence anywhere on any district grounds or actually any fence for that matter because i think it again gets it to those um school community divide and i think it's an interesting thought of you know even if our schools need to be secure the buildings you know you know less so grounds and i think there are ways to to to meet that but that's just one of the whole thing and i think i think it's really fascinating
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my question is how um how easy is it to find this um integration of critical race theory into say architecture firms construction firms you know general contractors and i'm thinking a little bit i'm a public finance person and when i was in grad school 25 years ago no one was talking about applying an equity lens you know when it comes to like public finance decisions or budget but starting about 15 years ago 10 to 15 years ago that began to change it's been a very slow changing process but most um you know it is now very common at conferences you know at seminars at different places like that's that's all people are talking about how do we apply you know um racial equity lenses to to budget decisions finance decisions spending decisions etc has that and so my since i don't know much about the building you know and and i'm hearing about a lot of this sort of application for the first time is this a relatively new area that will be challenging to partner with people in the private sector or or have they also been making this journey and and we will be able to find again design firms construction firms etc that understand this and can partner with us on this work um yes so um i we brick architecture is an architecture firm this is i answer your first question yes it is nathan i will say um and not just because um she's on the call and we have her on our team but the work that dr armada perez has created in linking traditional critical race theory with spatial theory to create what we're calling the critical race facial lens um is like you can't find books on it other than her dissertation right you find pieces you find articles um and so it is rather nascent i will say that over the last probably three years there's been um an awakening and it was accelerated obviously in 2020 about the fact that we as an architecture industry were complicit in designing ourselves into this situation and we have a duty and responsibility to design ourselves out of this situation and what that means is not just designing different outcomes but designing different processes and so that is why when we um approach this work we decided to approach it through that lens does that make sense yeah no and thank you thank you for doing this work it's really great yeah thank you so much i i also i mean we talk a lot about racial equity and applying a lens um and and we're really got we've gotten comfortable about talking about it it's actually what do you do differently than what you've always done before and i really love that you're addressing um literally the foundation of the thinking that goes into you know deciding a master plan and pre-planning phases and who's impacted and who's included is is all really amazing um i worked for the parks bureau about 25 years ago and at that point we at that time we just passed a bond and we actually hired a dutch firm to come in and they had taken thousands of photographs of kids uh middle school kids and um in in outdoor spaces and they never sit in a chair you know so they ended up designing furniture that was meant to be kind of lounged in draped over because that's how they noticed that kids were you know using using the built environment so sure i just i really um look forward to seeing what you um what you come up with with um particularly like in classrooms and in school school school entrances um thank you yeah thank you um so i know that you have other things on your agenda so i'll try to move through these a little bit quicker here but um now in terms of giving you some examples so we'll just take a couple of these tributes to white dominant narratives with each of these we have really compelling quotes like the one that you see here from students from parents from community partners that then john allow us to dig deeper next into um kind of what how we apply this to um you know this is where that intersection between the various documents that john was talking about because some of these things belong in an ed spec and some of them belong in a long-range plan right so an example of how some of these can apply to planning principles is really thinking about the role of history in place right thinking about franklin and the renovation of franklin the modernization of franklin and the fact that um what we heard from folks is the at was great there are spaces that are that are great but it still is um i still don't see myself as a bypoc member reflected in this and we continue to um to promote the inequities that have existed before us rather than using this design process as an opportunity to disrupt right and so now
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we find ourselves next you know really kind of struggling with the tie to um to spaces that don't feel comfortable that quite frankly are antithetical to um the the bypoc lived experience and so partly um a way that this really kind of um manifests itself in the plan is next is in thinking about you know analyzing what are the challenges right so obviously you have a number of buildings that are on the national or state historic registry um and oftentimes those same buildings have large bypass student populations and so are there opportunities now moving forward to think about allowing some of your existing historical agreements like you have with ship of the state historic preservation office to expire or to significantly modify them such that they don't become impediments to starting to really disrupt the the building systems of oppression next i just would like to pause for a second on that third bullet point yet with there with regard to historic preservation that is really a whole new lens and really important and it's just a great example of how it's not just reframing the way we look at things but dismantling the other structures that we're a part of that perpetuate just doing things the way they've always been done for sure yeah i mean i think that's what a lot of this work has been is really it requires a critical hence the word examination of all everything that we've thought about from a built environment standpoint next john yeah so another one that we'll take is unequal and accessible space as an example and if you move forward so thinking about um you know the quote here is one that really talks about inaccessible playgrounds and so how that can manifest itself in a planning document in alignment also then i will say with the ada transition plan and that john is also working on the way that we think about it from a planning perspective is um next to really think about um developing guidelines around inclusive play in collaboration with the community right the long-range plan will then outline an implementation strategy that takes into account your existing playground conditions community and educational vision the financial constraints and kind of creates a plan for you to be able to move forward in that way so um next we want to talk a little bit about what we're now what we're doing with this information and how we hope you can get involved so um we have as john mentioned earlier we have a coalition summit coming up here um well i should start saying that the dialogue sessions that we held over the winter were both listening and learning but they were also recruitment because oftentimes we go directly from a steering committee or our core team directly into a guiding coalition of hand-selected folks who sometimes again aren't those ones that are most closely impacted by the problems we're trying to solve and so we decided to use the cr the dialogue sessions that were bipark focused and student-centered often held in affinity group settings to use those as recruitment tools to identify members for a quick coalition and so now the work that we're doing with our crit coalition next john is um to really start to say okay we've recognized that if we think about trying to align your facilities with your educational vision which is as you recall john saying is kind of one of the main purposes of this document the pps reimagine has so beautifully talked about the graduate portrait and educator essentials and what are the educational system shifts needed to accomplish and support the inner rings but a missing element is the fourth what we're calling the fourth ring and the purpose of the crit coalition is to develop the fourth ring that are really facility planning characteristics that then support educational shifts that support educator essentials that then support the graduate portrait and so that's the work that we have moving forward any questions we and we invite you i think john has extended an invitation to you all to attend that meeting and really specifically in that meeting what we'll be doing is we have already laid out to them the themes we'll be bringing those back um and then asking them we'll share with them some of the ideas that we heard in the listening and learning sessions translated into planning language and then asking them to help us brainstorm other
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ones that can then serve to start to create those facility planning characteristics and that meeting for anyone that's interested is um scheduled on the 22nd thursday a week from today from four to seven and there should be uh there would be a an invitation in your in your inbox i wouldn't miss it thank you thank you so much for having me really appreciate that you're centering the voices of those who usually are you have to have work harder to get to um and solving for for the issues at those at that level and watching the benefits trickle up it's really exciting work thank you for thank you for uh being here yeah thank you for having us and we look forward to seeing you next thursday did anybody have any other last finishing final comments before we move on to the um the bac charter this is slightly different from the 20 2012 of the 2012 uh long-range facilities planning process that was sorry that was a little snarky this this is incredible well i think it reflects the fact that um you know in 2012 was 2012 and we've had new information coming in um particularly sparked by you know the racial uprising that happened in 2020 that that forces us to to actually address what we're hearing address this new information and i'm really glad to see that we that we're doing it because of because it's the right thing to do but also because we we have new information now um since 2012. it's partly that but it's also really the depth of the effort with uh you know just the list of documents that was laid out earlier this is uh it's just way way different so all credit to our staff and assisting consultants on this and we have um leadership that that cares about these things and that's also reflected in who's um who we've hired to do this work and our focus on it um it's it's fantastic thank you thank you and yes i'd love to see your dissertation it's one of the resources it's in the repository thank you goodnight everyone thank you our last um and final item and we might we might we probably won't get on time out on time tonight it's about six minutes till but dan is this is this um your topic the um edited bond accountability as a charter it is i'll i'll tee it up and i'll i'll be quick and then we can just we can move to questions i've i've got a a presentation it's just a few slides but i'll just talk through it and if we get into some more discussion i can throw i can throw some throw them throw it back up for the discussion piece uh in your packets is a redline version of the bac charter and that's there for a couple of reasons one we're amending the bac charter because we passed a bond in november of 2020 so we're adding that scope of work into the charter uh it was also an opportunity to align the charter language with the bac deliverables we were looking to better solidify the correlation between the bac charter the bac's deliverables and the bac materials those are kind of three different components that all work together and when they align really well it's a really efficient process and so the charter as well as the materials updates uh and looking at how the bac delivers uh their reports and their progress and their status updates those are all all things that we've been working on since roughly last fall we've been looking at the materials since i think last october we approved a bond of course in november so that adds to the scope of the responsibility of the bond accountability committee we've added new members uh and because of because of these moving parts that's why as tom noted earlier we had a bond accountability committee retreat in january to go over all these pieces make sure we're on the same page and make sure that expectations and responsibilities are understood very clearly between the board staff and the bac uh so i'll i'll pause there and just see if if the committee members have had an opportunity to look through the red line changes when i looked through it again right before this meeting you know my eye kind of caught it looks like there's a lot of changes really they're they're pretty simple they're just trying to clarify and reinforce what the primary
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deliverables are and cleaning up some some language about what the what the reporting process is so with that i'll pause and ask if there's any questions i don't hear any questions i i also don't have any i don't have any comments i just reviewed it again before our meeting today this afternoon and see the changes but i don't have any a single comment i also don't hear any questions and i think it goes without saying that if this isn't an overhaul it's really just uh some clarification so i'm not totally surprised that there are any questions next steps will be uh we will take this the updated version to the full board where the full board will vote and approve on the changes uh and then that scope will be complete do we need to formally approve this to send to the board or can we just send it to the board in in past practice there hasn't been a a formal vote that's more than what's is there consensus of the group i think you probably should decide to if you're going to just refer it to the full board um for a full vote so we can state that roseanne has spoken go ahead go ahead andrew no so roseanne you mean you mean you think we should take a vote to refer yeah evo or agree to refer to the full board okay i agree to refer it to the full board i think it looks great it's very formal but i i'm okay with that as well so we'll make sure that that's on an upcoming agenda in the next few weeks maybe without the red lines or we can provide maybe both both redlined version and a in a final version happy to provide both and a staff report and a resolution um thank you for your work on this dan um and it looks like we have no other comments is there anything else tonight for the good of the order seeing as there's none we want you to keep your reputation intact michelle it's 5 59. i'm going to say good night everyone and we'll see you guys i've got two minutes of nonsense why don't we do that over a cup of coffee that sounds good


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