2021-04-21 PPS School Board Charter Schools and Alternative Programs Committee Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-04-21
Time 16:30:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: Board of Education’s Charter Schools and Alternative Programs Committee - 4/21/21

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would you support us and um would you be willing to do a land acknowledgement for us i i will i think i was gonna ask um i didn't know um erica were you gonna try to share your screen i don't know if i'm able to do that but i can definitely try to do that let's see here roseanne did you want or cara did you want to do that well we can have cara can you give erica permission to share i just have to say i love that we're starting our meeting off with this this is i love this practice well i just have to say i love your lipstick too put it on just for you but i love this practice too not to take away from that and i love how it's always a little bit different and um it's important [Music] erica you should have the capacity to share okay let's test this out here [Music] um share screen you're right now i just need to find the right screen so i was actually going to ask if there was a volunteer to read the land acknowledgement okay do you guys see this screen here and then i'll press present yep we see it yet thank you kara okay and uh just tell me next slide when you're ready for me to flip i like having this responsibility it keeps me engaged to have like an active role flip it there you go ding flip it flip it yes please okay all right that's awesome um [Music] yeah she she is amazing um ding do you prefer ding or flip it depending on the mood of the slide i don't know your call so i just want to um to um uh join director to pass and and director constant and just welcome everyone to today's meeting and um just here is what the agenda is and then and you'll notice that the land acknowledgement is our first is the very we're going to center on that but just to give an overview so um just welcome to the charter school and alternative programs school board committee and so we just have a couple updates our hybrid updates um so just sharing where our multiple pathways schools are with hybrid um sharing doing a check-in since we last met we've received um notification of opal schools closure and so wanted to give you an update around how we're um taking care of students and engaged in that work um and then we've and also a exciting announcement around where we are with our cbo rfp um and we are have completed our intent to award um and then the conversation that um the conversation around funding and equity-based budgeting that um director constant had um had requested that we have so that's what we have on our agenda for today wonderful and then i'm curious if we have anybody who would volunteer like to read the land acknowledgement how about you i would love to read it um amy i didn't know what you said i would love that director to pass go for it had to read it we want to take a moment to acknowledge the stolen lands on which we meet today from our various locations around the area this land has been home since time immemorial to the native nations of the multnomah kalapuya chinook clackamas malala kathlamet tawalatan peoples among others native peoples hunted deer and other animals fished for salmon and other fish gathered traditional root and berry foods traded lived within traditional spiritual and governmental structures and more and still do smallpox and measles epidemics brought to this area by settlers missionaries and traders decimated up to 90 percent of the population in the early early 19th century boarding schools tribal termination racism and other aspects of colonialism have continued to negatively impact native people since that time we can't undo what was done but what we can do is honor acknowledge the descendants of the original peoples of this land those who have passed as well as the land itself as we gather today we focus on building connection with and learning from our current
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native students families and communities thank you michelle and thank you whomever wrote that or wherever that came from that's a particularly beautiful and meaningful acknowledgement i appreciate that me as well thank you um so um so our first update is uh um is a hybrid update and um and i think we're kind of just gonna just kind of pass the baton so i'll start um i'll start i'm sharing about the dart schools and then erica can talk about the cbo's and lorna can talk about the in-district schools and tara can talk about the charter schools so with regard to the dart schools we have four of our six campuses that are involved in hybrid we have our perry residential k-12 we have our edwards k-12 school we have our clinton school which is grades six through twelve and we have our nickerson school dirt school which is six through 12. so we want to go back yeah sorry about that that's okay um and so we have four campuses uh four dark campuses that are currently um that are currently in hybrid our sage residential campus as well as our breakthrough and counterpoint schools those schools because they have the choice and it's within their purview have chosen to stay within cdl at this time and then erica do you want to share about the contracted alternative schools sure we currently have three schools that are open for hybrid um helens view and open school more recently have opened for hybrid and i think helensview was before open but depaul because his residential has been open throughout the pandemic and so while they're not technically deemed hybrid um they have been you know in session so i wanted to make sure to include them as well and then i'll pass a baton to lorna for in districts thank you so metropolitan learning center um started hybrid actually with their k5 then they added their 68 and their 912 cohorts and [Music] they have pretty high attendance so they're pretty excited about that and then um both alliance high school campuses also have started um their in-person hybrid classes to supplement the comprehensive distance learning and i think i will pass it to tara thank you lorna uh all of our charter schools came back in some form of hybrid learning after spring break and the each individual charter school has their own hybrid blueprint uh operational blueprint that they submit with ode so each of them are on different types of schedules everything ranging from one school that's doing two hours of outdoor education a week with every student that's opal school and another school all the way to four days a week with all students in all day long and that's lamonde french immersion so we have everything in between as well and the two state schools cottonwood and ivy are both in full hybrid as well all of the schools are still offering cdl to students and families that want it we have various participation in hybrid though we had one school that was reporting 90 percent and higher of people that were actually participating in hybrid and coming to on-site however that was emerson school and they just recently moved to full cdl because of a student covid case so they're in full cdl for 14 days with the support of the health department and they'll be returning to hybrid when that's completed that's the charter school update thank you so um well the are alternative schools who haven't returned to hybrid have they uh decided to stay in cdl for the rest of the year or are any of them just taking a slower start i could say for cbo's and you know of course cbo's there's a lot of cbo representatives here so they can speak for themselves but i believe that many are discussing the possibilities of reopening and or remaining in cdl depending on their specific population of students i think for a particular population safety not related to covet but other kinds of safety concerns have arisen and in previous meetings as well and so they're just making sure that they are doing all the things that they need to do to ensure that everybody can return to school safely um i'd be in um i'd be interested in hearing um what some of those factors are and how they're weighing the pros and
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cons of that and um if the district is able to be responsive to the concerns that they have around going back to to hybrid but but y'all can update us on that later or perhaps those of you that are here on this call can can jump in either now or later in the in the meeting i i also am curious about that as well and um i think i know who you're talking about but it's you're saying like certain populations in certain schools and so yeah i mean i could also say if we need to protect certain populations but if we're talking about like black students or poor students it would be helpful for me to know who we're talking about absolutely and i could say it would be different for each site and i'll also mention those are you know those are not the only concerns also the size of the schools of course being so small makes it very hard to provide both cdl and hybrid simultaneously and some sites have limitations for sharing sites with boys and girls club for instance that make it very challenging to have students in cohorting in the building and so depending on the individual institution there might be a variety of different concerns yeah i appreciate knowing that i mean it sounds definitely like logistics are at play and also building by building specifics um it helps to get the full picture i appreciate that all right we can move on so all um i'll start i'll start this and then just um and share with tara is um one of the things that we're very sad to hear um and sad to learn about since our last meeting um because at the last meeting we were moving forward with opal school renewal as well as uh um [Music] a second school portland arthur academy um renewal and so since that time over spring break um the portland um children's museum announced their closure and as the portland children's museum is part of the opals the opel school is part of the portland children's museum they're they're therefore impacted um so there's been a lot of work done and um and i just want to say two things number one we are so sad and we are we are all grieving we grieve with the community um the community of families and the community at large um because the opal school has been such an important part of our charter school um of our charter schools and part of our district and they've brought at so much to us and so much light and so we're we are all very sad um and the other thing that i will say is i um i am in gratitude for all of the work that the leaders at the opel school have done um they through very difficult times have just been amazing and i just want to say that as well as just extend gratitude to tara and to judy brennan um and to others jenny braden who've worked really hard um taking care of students and families at this time and with that i'll let tara go into kind of some more of the specifics thanks karina and um uh i do want to talk a little bit about the way that uh the district enrollment transfer as well as the charter school's office has tried to support families and help them as they make a transition for next year so we did write as soon as the announcement was made and as soon as we were able to have it ready we sent by email and also by posted mail a letter to individual families all the families at opal school that identified by each student what the neighborhood school would be and also gave information about how to apply for pps lottery based schools with links and other information and the enrollment and transfer department did extend the deadline for all of the lottery based programs that had not already been um closed which i think was just about everything to not allow i think 10 whole days from the time of the announcement to when um to when they postponed the deadline to for everyone to be able to apply as it turned out uh somewhere close to half of all the opel families did make an application to some of the lottery based schools with pps so i think that made a big difference and people feeling like there were options and and places for them to look at for transition for their students in addition to that the my office as well as enrollment and
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transfer contacted every family by phone to offer support and answer questions make sure they understood the information in the letter i think people at enrollment transfer as well as my office did a lot of just helping people through the system and showing them where the links were and making sure they understood uh just filling out information for the for the lotteries and um and uh it appears from how quickly the uh the number of phone calls with questions reduced that that made a huge difference in in how comfortable people felt with what was gonna be coming for them for the following year so and tara this is about 75 kids yeah the total was about 75 and it was about 63 families when you counted siblings there were a few additional that we had not thought of uh incoming kindergartners who had been given lottery preference who had planned to come in and we hadn't really thought that through until those families actually called so i'm glad they did so they have been notified they were able to participate in the lottery they were notified those were just younger siblings of current students so that worked as well um i know we have beth and mary gage on the call and uh i mean in the meeting here as well i believe that pretty much the families were well taken care of they've also been provided a lot of support by their own by the opal school leadership good well next time we meet you can give us an update on where where they've landed thank you thanks to uh extend our thanks to enrollment transfer too for all the um really personal attention will do all right so this is beth from opal school and i'm wondering if there's an opportunity here to say something absolutely please do and thank you for joining us so thank you for having us and um i wanted to just give our thanks to the charter office and enrollment and transfer and how quickly they were able to take care of our families i should have brought my kleenex here i was thinking maybe i could make it through without getting emotional it's your life's work it's okay yeah so we've been grieving it's you know not at all where we thought we would be and i think that um what i'd like you folks to consider as you're thinking about other charter schools and cbo's is that um i think every one of us has a tenuous existence and um i think that we hesitate to paint that full picture for you because we need you to believe in us in the same way that we're working so hard to keep going um i think our personal our individual circumstances were unique but i think there's um i think it's relevant to the conversations you're going to be having around funding and equitable funding and all of those questions so i just wanted to bring forward um there was perhaps an invitation at an earlier meeting to talk again about what the statutory funding requires and what the level of funding could be and i think i'm wanting to advocate for you folks to take up that conversation and consider that each of these small schools does not only the work of every neighborhood school but all of the work of the central office as well and it's a very small group at each school who's doing yeoman's work and uh in our renewal we tried to point out what happens to salary compression when the funding is less and the expenses are more and it's really real so most of our teachers with experience make entry-level salaries when we applied to the state recently for a waiver in the lottery to consider a preference for staff we were chastised for not paying our teachers better and um it feels a little um like there's only so much we can do about that so without a long story about how we got here i think i'm encouraging you to think about other charters and the cbo's i saw a job posting
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recently for a teacher and i was thinking oh they look like they're in a similar situation to us when i saw this salary so um you've got some really sweet programs and um i'm hoping that their existence is maybe not quite as tenuous as ours was thank you beth and thank you for your leadership and your work and the community that you fostered and nurtured and i know you will continue to nurture in some way shape or form with your work and i hear you in the in your recounting of the systemic issues and um we maybe have made a little bit of progress in paying a little attention to these issues in some recent policy we work we did on our facilities yes um but absolutely some of the outstanding issues that we'll be addressing in our conversation today with our cbo's are still outstanding issues for our charter schools as well so thank you very much and um we have nothing but appreciation and respect and admiration for you and your staff and um we'll continue to endeavor to take care of all your beautiful children and all your families and make sure they have a have a soft landing great thank you very much thank you all right would you like to keep karina or would you like me to well i was just gonna i mean i just um i just on a i just want to acknowledge again beth and mary gage and all their work um for so many years that's been made such a difference for hundreds and thousands of people um and then i want to just pivot to the our next topic which is very exciting and and um and i would say um wonderfully positive um so and i would thank erica for all her work this year which she'll give an update on thanks so as you already know this year was a year where we put out our rfp for contracted alternative school programs in schools and we have finally just summed up our rfp process and um just granted intent to awards yesterday and so it's fresh news on the block and we have um our list of 10 awards here listed on the slides that you can see and many of our programs who currently contract with us will continue to um hopefully contract with us and the many of them will start july 1st as some of them roll over through summer in a year-round programming and others will kind of begin up again and finish this year and begin up again in the fall and so the process was a very detailed and specific and hard process so i want to appreciate all the hard work of all the participants that are here today and all those who did participate in drafting a proposal a lot of work went into them and it was really great to be able to dig deeper into some of the programming and policies and practices of some of the programs that we've either contracted with or new programs that we welcome so erica can you tell us please uh who we have here that's new or who we have that's adding uh new grade bands uh yes so everybody here is um a long-standing partner except for acceleration academies which is a new program that um proposed to start an alternative program and we will be following up with them to dig a little bit deeper into what they're proposing as we work towards contract negotiations so can you tell us a little bit about them or about um sure what they're so they are an outfit that has programs in several different states around the country um one of the things that really impressed us with their application was their um level of student centeredness and kind of the humanizing factor that they brought to their programming they have i'm trying to think about i don't remember the exact number of districts that they currently have contracts with around the state but they have several sites and they're 9 through 12 currently but we are going to follow up with them to kind of think about different ways in which they might be able to serve the local community in their proposal they are very excited to kind of engage in that conversation with our district and see what needs may not be being met
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and design something that might meet that need and so we're excited to engage in that conversation with them and any new grade levels for any of our uh current cbo's um nope i think open school um this year as you i believe already know is only serving high school students and so they will continue to serve only high school students um nine through 12 and all of our other programs plan to continue with the same grade bank may ask a question about especially the new entrant the acceleration academies do we have in our rfps any language that requires these um these alternative programs to serve representative um you know racial demographic how does it handle in other words you know ideally every school would be reflective of yes you know yes absolutely demographics but but that's not the case because of you know residential you know racial segregation but how do we handle it with with alternative programs that actually can can kind of pick and choose somewhat absolutely korean i see do you want to talk or i'm happy to respond if you'd like how about we tag teammate i would say a couple things so yes we have racial equity and social justice at our core and so that was at the core and this and centered in our proposal um which we um which we have a lot of eyes on and um go through that process as far as how are we asking questions that elicit information um that elicits the information that we need as we as we continue to assess that with regard to contracting as erica said we've we've done the attempt to award now we've moved to contract negotiations phase um which which will be where we will be for the next four to six weeks um and so um and so the other part that i would say is twofold one is we really look at what's the data and who are the students and it's not a surprise um unfortunately we've uh pps falls along state and national trends around who we push out who's getting pushed out from schools or who's getting pulled out to take care of family obligations and other and other um and other reasons that they're not able to attend school um and so looking at who our community of learners is we follow the data with regard to how we shape our contracts and how we'll shape who we're asking our contractors our vendors our contractors to serve and then the other the only other piece i would add is that reconnection services so we work as a system with our re-engagement work around and at the hub of that is our reconnection services team and so we're really looking at all of our cbo work really closely with our reconnection services teams as we have families that need to be reengaged and that are seeking their next best fit school reconnection services is very well aware of when everybody has their orientations and when they're taking students next and what that schedule is and then they're accompanying them our students and our families and being that not just a handoff but being with them often during those orientations to really help our students land and so it's it's a share i would say it's a shared obligation it's a shared responsibility and a shared it is our work um both internally within ppes in reconnection services and for all of us who are pps employees working with this community of learners and then it's our shared expectation for those that we're contracting with as they're receiving these um these disproportionately students of colors these disproportionately black native latin necks um students with disabilities um homeless students kids in foster care kids with um um that are pregnant and parenting so we're really clear about who our learners are and that's part of what we're shaping and then the last thing that i would just add is the contract as a as eric has noted on here is the contract the next we do this every five years and so we also have an opportunity it's a continuous improvement process for us internally with regard to how do we do contract negotiations this year and what we ask for may vary with what we ask for three years from now as we look at what the data is and who are the students needing and and how are our demographics shifting so we do that on an annual basis okay so there's flexibility reading written into the contract that negotiation piece offers some flexibility for change as so the situation on the ground changes you're able to adapt thank you yeah i will say some of you um wanted to touch on some aspects of the proposals and i'd be remiss if i didn't
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share that of course there were many lessons learned in this previous year or since covid um for many of our cbo schools in addition to all of our programs across the district and so many schools were very sensitive to include different aspects of programming that might address the needs of different styles of learners realizing that online education has been really successful for some students and in-person experiences are also necessary for different groups of students so i think that level of flexibility and adaptability that our cbo schools provide um enable to be nimble and shift to meet those needs was really impressive in the applications and i'm looking forward to seeing how that transpires as we contract yeah that's great hey um karina back to you you're what you were saying about reconnection services can you give us a sense of how many of our students that return to school with the help and support of reconnection services how does that break down in terms of return to our alternative school schools versus our comprehensive high schools so at the next meeting in may we want to kind of do a deeper dive in um in in other mphd programs and so we can certainly provide a lot more more specific um data at that point but typically like some of the data that we do know is that and this is not unusual for this past year um and it'll be it'll be very interesting as we'll we'll all wait and see kind of how as we're working and looking at what the data will look like a year from now given this current school year um but when we look at our fifth year graduation rate like one of the things i i think i've said it many times is one of the things i'm really excited about is that our this our cbo partners do a lot duo do many things meant very well one of the things that's very um identifiable in our data is our fifth year graduation rate is rises um in part because in large part because about 80 percent and all and i can get more specific numbers but more than 80 percent of our fifth year grads are often our year over year come from our cbo partners so um so when you think about kid students that are off track um they're overwhelmingly served um in the alternative ed system both in district as well as our cbo partners i could just add to that karina i want to kind of specify that reconnection services is one arm of our re-engagement strategies but our cbo's of course play a huge role uh just as our you know reconnection services do um in re-engaging youth and working in in accordance with reconnection services in the district but of course they attract and engage many students based on the own staff that they have to try and that are committed to the same goals so it's kind of great that we have all these partners and different doors open around the city so that students can enter in any door and learn about how to get reconnected and many of the engagement people working in our cbo's if a program is not a good fit for a student they're often referring to other programs and of course back to reconnection services to make sure that kids are not falling through the cracks so i just like to paint that picture because reconnection services plays a critical role but you know it's um it's important to note that cbo's also provide a great deal of service for that particular group of youth yeah really important that street level outreach from all of these partners that's not just getting kids back in school but connecting them to so many services that they need to all right thank you and karina we look forward um to having that conversation at our next meeting and specifically talking about you know summer programming and lessons learned through the pandemic about uh you know virtual scholars and summer scholars and credit recovery and how we can be innovative and nimble in terms of adapting our own systems as we move forward to meet the needs of these students in particular i would if i could just add one thing i do want to just make sure and say one of the as you have all heard but when we really look at our high school success plan we're really looking at how are we one district and so there is really good how we really look to individualize what every student needs and for some students what they need is to stay in their comprehensive high school and and those and that team and those teams in our comprehensive high schools are wrapping around those students and working and working to to have that happen for many of our students and for the majority of our students that don't graduate in four years their families and the students are choosing um are choosing alternative ed but i just i do want to just articulate that we're working with our student engagement coaches across
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every school opportunity and and how are we really putting that in front of students and families so they're the ones choosing which opportunity fits them thank you okay and then i just say arrows on these slides it's like funding funding funding funding coming everywhere now we're down to the pencil and the dollar sign here we are i was actually going to change that graphic but erica likes it so much i just think it's so funny funding there funding here funding there where's all the funding it's over there no it's over here okay i'm joking now and i'm gonna move to the next slide um so i i would just say actually if you want to go back to the first sec sorry i'm just gonna i'm just gonna share that um we are responding to the request um that came that that that uh director constant you requested that we share um at this meeting with regard to um with regard to um getting answering some questions that the committee had with regard to the amounts that are in um it's very complex there's different funding streams and just trying to really break it down and provide some um some just some factual information around what we have right now because the landscape for funding right now looks different than it did 18 months ago with the student success act and with sia and with esser dollars and so um we're happy to share with you kind of what we have and where we are right now and we just um acknowledge that um there's there's more moving parts there have been a lot of moving parts in the last 18 months with regard to the kind of the federal funding streams and other things so we're sharing um there's an overview that just shares kind of the specific dollar amounts that you had that you had requested and then both tara and erica can share kind of the specifics um and then i my understanding is then then you all as a board wanted to have that conversation and cbo leaders are here um to provide their feedback um feedback as well so i just wanted to kind of give that overview great and that is not lost on that on us that this um these questions came forward and that we're we're discussing this right now at the beginning of our budget process so we do have a proposed budget a budget that has been proposed by the superintendent but i wanted to provide this opportunity to really address some of the concerns that our cbo partners have raised specifically about the how equitably or inequitably our cbo students are are treated in terms of funding allocation not just from the general fund but queen as you said through our student invest investment account funds and through now our pandemic relief esser funds so um the time is now all right so erica and tara however you wanted to to describe your columns yeah so i mean we put together this table to give a general synopsis of some of the variety of funds that are available for some of our programs it's fairly self-explanatory these are the bulk amount of funds distributed amongst the different programs in that specific column and so as you can as you note for instance in cbo's it goes through a general fund down to sia um and then um s-r-fund cdl being zero and so on so forth for measure 98 um there's a little bit more detail and nuance in terms of the overall amounts and some of it is funding fte that's centrally um managed and others are given directly to the schools um but other than that is fairly self-explanatory in tara i'll let you provide any information you need about charters sure so the charter schools uh we have two columns one's for our district sponsored charter schools the others for the two state-sponsored charter schools and they in this past year were treated a little differently in which funds were available to which groups their uh equity allocation dollars really are are for those schools that meet the minimum thresholds that are district sponsored charter schools so we did have three schools that were eligible for those dollars this year uh the sia allocation was distributed to both district started charter schools and the state charters the um state school funding [Music] minimum statutory amounts are different so the
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district sponsored charter schools minim minimum for k-8 is 80 pass-through for the state-sponsored charter schools the minimum is a 90 percent pass-through so the amounts the total amounts are not necessarily based on the same um on the same formula but uh the amounts are there and then esser one was not just was not shared as uh funding with charter schools however charter schools did have access to devices and hot spots and learning platforms though the learning platforms weren't used by all the charter schools but those were things that the district made available with esther funds to charter schools and then the state charter schools received funding for the esser the sr2 funds will be shared as funding with the charter schools so we're working with that now and then many of the other funds are either not applicable because the charter schools are all k through eight so if they're high school related funds then they're not applicable to these current charter schools that we have or they just aren't shared with the charter schools because they don't apply so i have a question about the asker funds because i know that charter schools were not specifically called out for their eligibility but when this says zero um does that really mean that the district didn't make any um any decisions to pass through any of that for specific um purposes for our cbo's and charters well i think one of the things that tara just mentioned is that um and i and again tara and erica can um can follow up also but i think part of what tara and erica both just mentioned is um when we when we say a zero on this chart um is with regard to kind of a specific amount that was given but i would also um as far as like a check but i would also add what and reiterate what i just heard tara say and erica is that how the district has also used some funding with regard to hot spots or chromebooks or um or different types of supports such as that um to make sure that all of our students in pps that all of there was no division um around the supports as we set up for um in response to covet in this moment and another one another one i didn't mention was nutrition services so students from charter schools or anywhere could go to any of our meal sites and pick up meals etc yeah but so could everyone true that is true yes um there had been some money for sr2 set aside from my understanding there are actually some cbo leaders that can probably speak at more length around esser because they've been going down the wormhole of um the eens pot of money which i believe is kind of branched from that same pot of money that was initially set aside for sr2 for private schools to be able to apply to since a lot of districts did not provide that but from what i understand it is much more restrictive and there are a lot of elements of that ian's pot of funding that make it very challenging for cbo schools and private schools private alternative schools to be able to use for what they see fit based on the restrictions a la only contracted services managed by the state a la not allowed to use the funds if you used if you had ppp loans before and so there's other kind of things that have been um challenging for them to be able to use that other set aside from the state what is that word or acronym you used erica eames ins e-a-n-s what is gosh i don't even know what the acronym stands for isn't that so sad but i can look it up and find out or maybe somebody else here knows the answer i'm not just applying for it but i i think that i i don't know what the acronym stands for off the top of my head but i think what erica's articulating is the kind of changing landscape or inc um or kind of expanded landscape over time that we as have been um we have been receiving um fred from the federal government since the beginning of covid so i think i'll i'll just say that just as an example of the ian's funding i think it was initially communicated or at least understood maybe maybe inaccurately but understood that more resources or additional resources might be available for community organizations but then when you kind of peel into it the different restrictions that erica just said um have been realized that that have been barriers to uh to our some of our to our community-based organizations
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receiving that that um source of funding yeah for non-public schools thank you i just i just googled that as well i know this last round of esser funds does include the provision for private schools and i don't know how broad that definition is but within that bucket the allocations still generally would follow a title one formula for those federal funds is my understanding somebody feel free to correct me if that's not right i know that the title one formula is the formula they're following as they distribute it out to the districts but once the districts receive the money they are not required to follow any specific title one formula beyond i don't know how that imp how that impacts the private yeah i just know that that's a proviso that's attached to the um when that private schools were added back into this last round of that federal funding um okay one question about the sia allocation so what we see there is just a number but remind us again how our cbo's and our charters were treated there relative to our in-district students so the charter schools were are included on a number per admw so they receive a equivalent admw amount for the district charter schools the state charter schools had an amount that was set aside or reserved by the state so their per admw amount differs from what the districts per admw amount was um just because of whatever it was that the state set aside for their charters and for cbo's it was a direct allocation following the same from my understanding the same allocation as it was per student across the district based on their enrollment and um you know it was initially set at one thing and then when the district had a reduction it followed in suit with the reduction that the district took so right same with the online yeah same with the charters okay anybody have any other questions about this chart again the acronym but i also just googled it it's a weighted um membership average daily yes so the when that becomes significant is the average daily weighted with the w on it is different than the admr which is the regular so the weighted then takes into account and ends up getting more funding to those schools that have a higher poverty level a higher historically underserved emerging bilingual teen parent etc the different weights that get added in the weight is it's have more heavily weighted toward higher need title one schools correct okay okay so this kind of gives us the lay of the land and i don't know what more you guys have from your presentation but then we're going to hear from our our people on the ground about what is and is not working so i would just encourage erica do you just want to i think we just have two slides left yeah i think that we've already give yeah these are basically just to give an overarching view of like the general funding for these schools outside of the um other state funds and just talks about the um rates that schools receive i believe everybody here is pretty well versed in that at this point but we can leave space for that tara if you want to add more or i yeah i think i i might have already covered these points when i was talking about the funding in general so i think we can move to the next okay and i think once again everybody is kind of familiar but um that we provide eighty percent of the districts not net operating expenditure per student slot for our cbo schools which meets the minimum of the state statute amount that's allowed and we've kind of outlined all these these other points in the table i think so we can move forward as well i would just want to point out that um that i think it is because of feedback that we've received from our um appropriately so from our contracted
00h 50m 00s
alternative schools as well as reflection and feedback from this committee last year that encouraged us as a district one thing i'm really proud of is that this year is the first year that we've distributed equity dollars so if you go back on that chart it was 846 000 dollars that the contracted alternative schools received this year for the first time which i think is one example of um pps showing up and and living out its racial equity work so i just want to point that out we made some progress yeah which leads us to our conversation around equity-based funding um and i don't know if there's questions people have about previous slides or want to just go from here well i had this is joe i don't know if you can see me can i can i can i try man yeah okay absolutely i'm on uh i'm helping my mom out so i'm a little uh she was a little under the weather so i'm a little scattered and running around trying to be helpful you're all the best right yeah yeah so i i would just say one of the things that could be helpful well first of all i appreciate all this work so i would agree uh i've been a part of see the cbo world for 26 years working with pps and have seen lots of progress so i want to i want to say that and i feel good about this discussion and past discussions and always felt like our we our voice was heard so we never we never get everything we want which is which is fine but but but our voices heard so i'm coming with that spirit uh when we talk about equity i think it's important that when you put columns up like that that you put column i i think there were if i mis and check me if i'm wrong but i was looking for a column that um would call out in-district alternatives and what those dollars look like and then also um traditional students and for me and i think others it would also be helpful if we could just break it i like the the deeper detail but also just look at the total investment so so what's the cost per so what what does portland public school how much does portland public schools invest in a student that attends jefferson or any other traditional school and then compare those numbers to what uh are invested in a in a student in a charter school and an alternate uh cbo i think that would be helpful and and we have that in our school profiles i think i think i think the point is a really good one um joe thank you for saying that but the way the data was presented was made it very difficult to read across and compare uh apples not apples with apples but to to to come up to the conclusion yeah i think it's just if we could i mean i'd be happy to even take a look at it but i don't even know the language necessarily i'm trying to learn as we go along today but the the data was was presented in a way that made it very difficult to try to um to conclude um which is why you present data in a table right so you can look side by side and see um compare well and also just have this per the student the student perspective instead of the the total investment from the system look at it from the students student's eye view and and we we have all of that and that's why you know i love we just released our new school profile book right and so that's one of my favorite things to do is go through there and see okay are we walking our talk yes yeah it wasn't uh like a criticism of the table it's just that if the table is only useful if you can look across the columns and see what the you can infer from what's in the data and how it's presented what the what the there is that we're talking about what the per student i think you're asking is that correct joe what is the per student what are the differences by based on whether it's an in-district charter a state charter yes or in-district alternative school or just a traditional student that goes to link or benson what what's how much does the district
00h 55m 00s
invest what does it cost what's the investment per student right because otherwise we talk about the racial equity lens and we don't have any way of telling by the way that data was presented whether the students that have more need are actually getting more support through the through the budget well and that's been an issue with our uh terry you even mentioned this earlier that's been an issue with our equity funds as well because they are apportioned to our schools based on the students within those school communities that um that are in need but but correct me if i'm wrong historically we haven't done a good job of tracking once they get to those schools that they are specifically being used for those students and i would add you know things like and i'll just add this in and maybe this will kind of bring it home a little bit in terms of kind of walking the talk uh when the students success act was cut there were three there were three buckets and in one of those buckets the top priority was it was all about students of color and students with disabilities and my understanding is that those were the that bucket took the brunt of the cut and the other two buckets were held harmless now i could be i could be off here but that's how i heard it from ode which then of course trickles down to the community but that to me so the one bucket that focused on kids of color that focused on kids with disabilities was cut by 68 so i i don't i i just it's hard i mean i i don't know how it could be all about equity when when decisions like that are made so karina eventually been here i just wanted to have the per student is so because so can i just let people assume that there's a like a lack of numeracy or whatever but i think it makes it easier for us to make a decision if we can see the per student and compare that across different district industries regular student etc so you said that we have it easy enough i wonder if we could revisit that before our next meeting so can i just respond so i i really appreciate um the questions and i really appreciate um always joe's perspective um and joe's information so i i just want to start there and one of the things that i just um want to do and want to share that we didn't share so we are happy to get any piece of information and we are happy to follow up with with um with requests that come out that come out that we are think follow up and get information of anything we are requested to do i do just want to also share one piece of information which we probably should have said neglected to say a few minutes ago so when we go back and we talk about noe and so erica actually even if you want to move it back one slide may or may not matter but um so the state the the way that conf for cbo's this is not for charters but with regard to cbos the state directs the minimum the state identifies the minimum um net operating expense that is the reimbursement amount for contracted alternative schools currently so what that is is a net operating expense is kind of what joe was just speaking to which is and not completely because i i heard more nuance and more specifics than joe's request but i just want to share um what net operating expense is is it's really looking at what does it cost to run the district and then um and then how do you divide that by the number of students and it's more complex than this i do not work in the budget office like let me be clear but with regard to net operated expense it's really and then the state statute currently says that districts shall provide a minimum of at least 80 percent of noe per student with it for student for students served in con and con in all in all in contracted alternative schools and so what part of i'm simplifying this a bit but part of what joe's asking is what one of the questions i heard joe ask is what is noe and we we can certainly figure that out erica probably has that already but what we are how the statute
01h 00m 00s
instructs us to pay is 80 of noe so it's not 80 of admw it's 80 which is larger than admw because it costs more with regard to facilities and with regards to nutrition services and with regards to a whole variety of things on the operations side and then we take that amount and 80 percent of that amount is what is per slot per day for a contra a student in contracted alternative schools and i will just say i don't i can get i can use a calculator and find noe i'm sure erica already has it but one one figure i do know off the top of my head is it this year so so what we do every year in our budgeting process is we ask our budget office to identify what noe is because that's the state term and then we get that and then we determine when we receive our um our budget line item which is tuition reimbursement for altern for private alternative schools which cbo's are and then that's based on 80 noe this year 80 noe is 50 54 dollars and 14 cents per kiddo per day and so one of the things that we have is every year we have a calculation and i don't want to get two in the weeds because again i'm and i'm happy to um to to go to follow up and we can do more particularly with our budget um team but but what i do know is how we figure that one of the things that some of you many of you are aware of is that the legislature this year representative alonzo leon and um and a couple others in response to both districts and community-based partners cbo's said it's time to re-look at the funding formula for alt-ed and see is it really meeting the needs and so there was a bill i'm forgetting the number right now but there was a bill um and some of us provided testimony on the need for for us to revisit that and with the importance um tom was there other don la jolla jackson who's on this call testified her students testified many folks in the alt-ed community have said it's absolutely time for the state to re-look at this um but i just did i did just want to say and i don't want it don't want to take too much time and go back to mr mcferrin or other people that would like to share but when you ask what does it cost to run for a student that is kind of basically the same definition as noe just just wanted to give everybody that context karina did that bill die died in committee um and there's and and so the hope is is that another one will come up next session um and the hope is is that we can give feedback to that there's an adequate amount of funding um that's in the proposal as it goes as it heads to committee very appreciative for uh representative um alonso leon for for championing that so thank you that was really helpful yeah and and um you know let's keep that hope alive and let's be a leader as a district in that discussion to to try to um to get some change there but in the meantime what we can control is that that 80 percent is a floor and not a ceiling and so that's under our discretion as a school district um if how we want to make things right um within those those constraints um so so i wanted to highlight if possible one other thing that i think the table didn't represent which was brought up in the cbo proposal that i think is critical which is around the mechanism by which some of the schools receive funding and so there are a lot of limitations um due to the fact that it's reimbursement based a lot of the funds that they receive the small economies of scale that many of these institutions face and um not only with their contract funds but also with a lot of the state school funds that they kind of follow in a trickled way and so by the time a lot of these schools receive those funds we're hoping next year to really get them out earlier now that the sia wheels have been greased a little bit more and we've kind of like established as a district how to really um what our process is for distributing those around the district and so we're hopeful that next year some of the funds will be more useful because they will be received earlier in the year um so many of these allocations albeit like it's great that they receive them the timing with which they receive them in my opinion is not adequate well i was i was surprised by that in in your letter because um this seems to me like something that is uh eminently fixable and uh you know that's one of the advantages for the cbo's of having a relationship with a large
01h 05m 00s
and financially sound organization that you know we should be able to use some of our sort of stability and security to um have a more student-centered way of doing business on something like that so without getting in the weeds too much is this a conversation that has um that we have had just around financial processes um and uh i mean because because these are not funds that are in question these are obligations from the state or in some cases from the federal government the district knows they're going to come in um so so it it does not seem quite right for our smallest members of our system to be on the hook for the cash flow issues what can can anybody give me any any color on internal discussions on this issue or have they not happened yet reena might be able to speak a little bit about previous discussions um but i can speak um about the state funds and conversations that have been had but joe i hear you or joe is this something that you all have to wait yeah so yeah yeah so again i just want to continue to say that that the district has been responsive even though we don't we don't always get what we want there's always a conversation in good faith and so tom and i i can't remember last week met with jonathan garcia and um tom gave him a tour you know tom likes to give you the tour you know and of course because he's still awesome right and we talked about it and and i felt really good he didn't make any promises he just said it makes sense you know we just it's it's it's you know we talk about equity and i'm and i'm saying to the district why can't we receive our funds the way you received your funds where there's a where the administrative process doesn't hold up to cash flow and then we can we can do the administrative jumping through the hoops and synergy and alignment we can do that throughout the month but for us it causes a lot of stress when we can't send an invoice until after we get all the synergy uh steps you know coordinated and everybody signs off on them now i'm not suggesting that process is necessary but i don't i believe that we can do that process without affecting cash flow so i'm i'm proposing as you guys know if we just get 10 equal payments uh for our contract and then twice a year we can just sure you know kind of sure it up true it up that's not exactly but that's not exactly what you i just pivoted there but i would say um taking that same approach when it comes to the initiatives that come out um like measure 95 etc so yeah i think that and and i and it wouldn't cost you it would it might from my perspective it doesn't cost any more money but it the the uh impact that it will have on cbo's is tremendous because we don't have to you know basically corral everyone in the building to figure out how we get this invoice in so that we can meet payroll or meet other our other obligations erica knows it's intense when when it's building up it's intense they made me carry the suitcase with a chain on my wrist one time to go pick up the check just kidding just kidding okay that's uh thanks to you guys for bringing up that particular point you know our role here is policy and governance but it's also to provide um a place for all of you who are doing the work to bring forward you know concerns and questions that you have and allow us to amplify them and and um just make sure that we're living in accordance with our values and um so that's that's an important little piece there and i think that as part of our budget process i know um one of the questions i will want to raise is this question overall of you know here is a breakdown of the student population the student demographics of each of our alternate you know our our in district and our out of district alternative schools here's a breakdown
01h 10m 00s
of their funding here's a breakdown side by side of our um you know take a look at our say we just do high schools take a look at each of our comprehensive high schools which among themselves varies quite dramatically as well um and then just see where that conversation leads us but i think that that's an appropriate conversation to have within the context of the the general budget process um just to make sure that you know are we off or are we not are we are we serving the students um that we that we say we need to be serving karina does that make sense yeah absolutely so we can talk about um just exactly how you know getting that information so that everyone can have it as part of our budget our broader budget conversations as a whole board amy don has her hand up i was just gonna say if i might i i see jill walters i see dawn i see pam there's there's many leaders who are here and i i would love to hear their thoughts hi everybody this is dawn flynn jackson i'm the principal at donald e long detention and helensview which are both run by mesd and i so appreciate joe you always like break down the numbers and i appreciate that so much and when we talk about equity funds and we talk about that per slot amount for different schools what lives with me is just all of those statistics that we get to play out every day right they're not on paper they come to our schools and i think about the fact that like 85 of the kids at helen's view are students of color 99 are free and reduced lunch a third of our kids are parenting and we're running a child care in the middle of a pandemic we can't serve students with 14 kids and child care anymore right um 38 of our kids are now houseless um and they are spread far and wide and with the ongoing gun violence trying to get them to school safely with their babies is not only really hard and not only like an ethical responsibility but it is expensive because our kids aren't coming to school because they don't feel safe on the buses we i know we talked about this last time we had lost eight kids at that point we've now lost 14 to gun violence and not only is that a huge you know weight but it's also very expensive we have mental health we've we've brought in people for trauma-informed care we're trying to figure all of those pieces out so when those live statistics butt up against a budget that doesn't quite work for us it has very real consequences in terms of equity um so anyway i just wanted to throw that in there we've been open since october we took a little break and now we're in hybrid and we have students coming up all of the time and it just takes such a juggling act to safely and comprehensively serve all of the students that we have to serve so thank you for listening to my voice and um thank you karina and erica for working so hard to keep us open and to keep our budgets in line thank you for being with us and advocating for your kids and just sharing the experience of your kids and please um know that we think about your staff and your students and just these hard times and thank you all for just being there for them yeah thank you i i really appreciate hearing um the lived experience conversation because that's real and um just glad you're here grateful that you're here for students i'm grateful that you're taking a trauma-informed approach to working with those students whose lived experiences um homelessness is no joke parenting at 16 is no joke you know poverty is also no joke so i appreciate you i just want to add in you know we've been doing oh i'm sorry go ahead dawn that's okay i was just going to say michelle thank you so much and when those things intersect right when you're when you're running from gun violence and have two kids and live in a car um which which is happening with some of our kiddos i just i appreciate that acknowledgement
01h 15m 00s
i don't want to go sorry again i hate these videos go ahead hi i'm jill walters and i'm the executive director of portland youth builders and i certainly echo what's been said about our needs i also want to just appreciate the willingness to have the conversation about the floor of 80 and raising that i mean we a hundred percent of the students that we all serve are very very high need and marginalized and 80 percent of the noe is just not adequate when we are all fundraising all the time to supplement what we get from the district just to be able to meet the needs that our students have so um i appreciate the willingness to consider you know raising that level it would mean a lot it would help a lot thank you great i thank you for taking the time each of you from our various cbo's it would be great to hear from each of you if you have something that you'd like to share hi pam blumenthal i'm the director of links programs at pcc um i just my colleagues have said a lot of what i was thinking but um having been doing this for um in some form for 15 years um i i can say that we have come a distance and i think some of what joe said that you know there there's been progress and engagement certainly this opportunity to meet with board members in this consistent way is new um it certainly was not this way 10 years ago or even more recently than that so that's really appreciated and i think that that you know getting the equity funding that's a big step um and something that um had been talked about and um you know i think it makes us feel more seen but as everybody's been saying our student needs are um are really high and we don't have the um some of the same resources of the comprehensives do and some of the same scale and you know through the sia funding we've been able to hire mental health counselors although you know we're at pcc and there are counselors at the college but they're maxed out so to have um some in our department providing mental health services um the equity funding will will support that as well that's that's a huge need because our when i ask our staff what the what the biggest challenges for our students in the pandemic there are so many challenges but but worrying about um suicidality and um you know just depression and anxiety and all of the things um that that we know everybody's experiencing but are vulnerable students even more so so um you know weighted funding looking at you know the populations we serve and really um really continuing to push because we know that that the need is there and that that we can create even more impact if we have the resources to do so sure that's true thank you announce with us today that like to share anything um good evening and nick elder youth progress um thank you for for this great conversation today and the continued investments into the work that we do just the the one piece that i wanted to add in is this thinking about the young people in foster care that my organization serves and has kind of the direct connection with who there was not direct conversation about the needs of young people in foster care and look at the 35 graduation rate that young people have who experience foster care that means three out of every 10 students i'm in the district who's in foster care um are able to graduate from high school three out of every 10 from high school that's those are our own statistics within pps our own foster kids yeah that's my that is my understanding yes yeah um and so i just think about you know where those additional investments could be made um we know and i won't you know go into the detail of you know people in foster care end up on the streets in our community if they're not graduating from high school we know where they're showing up um and the impacts that it's having um long-term impacts on life and well-being so i just think about you know not only the per student investment i mean where those investments can be made but really thinking about what are the systems level investments what are the changes that are needed to
01h 20m 00s
have you know equity um for the young people that we're serving especially intersectionality of youth at risk of homelessness system involved youth and youth in foster care um students with disability and how we can invest not only so that cbo's can make our payrolls but we can live out our mission and do the work that we are all uniquely equipped to do to serve you in our community thank you very much thank you for the work that you do i just wanted to add a level of complexity to what everybody was saying and i appreciate everybody's word so much and of course speaking on behalf of your students and families um you know we've been conducting site reviews every um spring we conduct site reviews of all of our cbo programs which is in our updates section later in the slideshow but it's been incredible to speak with staff and teachers as part of our interview process we interview a variety of different stakeholders and just to show how this lives out imagine being a teacher in a classroom serving 15 to 20 students each of whom have a variety of different barriers similar to those that are being addressed here and across the board you have 20 kids 20 different problems and this is true in all classrooms but think about the level of acuity that's needed for a teacher to address the varying needs of the different students coming at different times and in different ways and our schools being open all the time to enroll students throughout the year the level of complexity involved with that kind of programming versus a more programmatic and systemized approach like our comprehensive schools i just wanted to add that because it kind of came up recently from teachers in a lot of our interviews and i feel like it's an important point to raise because it's not just at the administrative level or at the organizational level or at the funding level it's really at the direct service level where these impacts are being felt the most all right so um joe thank you for sharing a little bit about your meeting with our new chief of staff um that's promising and we'll continue to kind of try to make a little progress on that issue which is in my mind a little easier than the more systemic broader issues but i just i just want to say from my perspective as a board member at the beginning of our budget process now i will bring these issues forward and we will have a conversation as a board looking at the demographics of our students in all of our contracted programs and really line that up with the investments that we make in our student population overall and with the priorities that we have identified and with the values that we are committed to so um thank you all thank you all and um scott and michelle i don't know if you want to add anything before we leave this conversation but i'm just really grateful for each of you and and helping us understand what your needs are um i don't have anything to add but also just want to express my gratitude it's really helpful for me as a i'm not a new board member anymore i can't use that excuse but um just i'm hearing from people that are actually on the ground doing the work has been really helpful i just want to um again share my appreciation for all of our partners and two uh when we specifically uh we usually don't look at foster status when we're looking at demographics and that might be one more piece that we should add in when we're looking comparing profiles i totally agree scott i do too we all know the foster system is but i think it's broken everywhere but it's certainly has been broken in this state for decades i'm encouraging you to bring nick into that conversation when you do because he has a great deal of experience and might be able to provide some uh detail around how we might be able to do that effectively i invite you all to come visit our schools once things are a little bit more normal and have the opportunity to see programs in operation and talk with students cannot wait i would love that as well
01h 25m 00s
yes please thank you um okay i think um karina do you have anything else for the good of the order well i was just gonna kind of um wrap this conversation when we're ready and just to reiterate what's already been said which is you know we are um we we ask and have as part of our internal process every year like identifying we've already requested for this year asking the budget office around what noe will be for next year um so there are some additional um information and um as joe and others have pointed out um joe and tom met with um jonathan garcia and roseanne powell the other day um and just getting um more uh more information and so um i just want to acknowledge that we've received a proposal um and so internally we continue to um we're reviewing and and responding and so conti are continuing to gather and and and articulate that information so we'll be able to just sharing our response back so want to thank the the cbo community and leaders for submitting the proposal and and want to acknowledge um that we acknowledge the need and and mostly just how vital um each of them are as partners and how much we value each and every one of them very diverse very diverse schools very diverse approaches like i love um listening to jill walters talk about you know an a very established nationally known youth build program very different than nick talking about the focus with kiddos and dhs care very different than joe talking about um a specific focus with violence impacted youth so i'm just we're just really honored in pps to have the depth and the breadth of um of um cbo schools that we have and um and appreciate them all and appreciate you um director bailey director to pass and director constance in um in requesting this conversation so more to come and and just to just just in gratitude for everybody that's on the screen thanks everybody um take care take care of yourselves thanks for everything you do


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