2021-04-24 PPS School Board Retreat

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-04-24
Time 09:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type retreat
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Event 1: Portland Public Schools Board of Education Spring Retreat - 4/24/21

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and so we're gonna go ahead and get started um and we are gonna start with an icebreaker um well first what uh yeah we're gonna go ahead and get started with an icebreaker and then i'll make my big speech later um so when i was at lane middle school this week it was really cool because what they're doing is the students are staying in a classroom and their math arts and social studies teachers or no maybe just math language arts and social studies teachers are rotating to the students and so to make it fun for the students what they did was they named each classroom after the students favorite places in oregon um so they have the student boat and so they have an oregon zoo room sandra i thought you'd like that they have the wye east room and they had oaks park room which i like as a southern resident so i thought as we think about this we're going to be like the lane middle school students what is your favorite place in oregon metro convention center i mean could we name favorite place in all of oregon well that that or the metro waste sorry scott i thought the icebreaker was going to be what's your favorite metro like facility well apparently it is what's going for waste management no my my favorite place uh i would say cascade head and why is that it's an incredibly beautiful hike that i've done any number of times um you're in this incredible hemlock forest and it can be all kind of drippy in there and then you come out into a headland um overlooking the pacific and it's just beautiful and if you're really lucky you can do a day in january where it's you know one of those 70 degree freak days at the coast i had one of those there once and it was just a great day michelle we went ahead and started at nine and we are sharing our favorite place in oregon oh i'll go i'll go next well where does popcorn whenever you're i think andrew's ready yeah well no it picks up on that i was actually the oregon coast generally but specifically cola state park um i uh i had my first job ever at the um uh sea ranch stables there um just down at the at the north end of cannon beach um and then we used to go up to cola state park all the time um and it's beautiful and it's gorgeous and incredible views and i've taken out-of-state friends there all the time and i proposed to gretchen there back in two 2003 three so um anyway it's got a lot of uh of that and then cascade head is just north of god's thumb is that right scott like that whole i can't hear you scott morning everybody hey julia we went ahead and started and we're sharing what our favorite places to in oregon and so far we've got the metro waste facility and the convention center and the oregon zoo nike headquarters of course as i said andrew must have had something to do with those answers uh we watched the eclipse from that hill uh right at the south end of lincoln city which is a great spot for it um and then a couple days later i did that god's thumb hike with my niece that was amazing yeah i just did that last november for the first time it was amazing yeah not for the faint of heart i mean it's yeah good morning amy we went ahead and started at 9am and we are sharing our favorite place to visit in oregon i want to hear what scott just said that i missed what was amazing well i started with cascade head but then also the the godstom uh hike which is right adjacent to it great i i did um god's thumb my family went to the beach god it wasn't last november it was two novembers ago and i did i did that um hike with my brother and my nieces for the first time the gods them gorgeous slightly terrifying slightly terrifying it was it gets pretty windy out there and it's like you got to watch your step my place would be um the hisita head lighthouse in florence area when we and then there's a
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hike near there in um just near mapleton oregon called sweet creek and so when we lived in venita we would often drive to sweet creek hike the hike there's three waterfalls on that hike and then drive over and hike up to the lighthouse um and that was sort of a you know saturday or one page was little and didn't have school like a monday we would go and do that um and it's just you know again just so beautiful and peaceful and um i love the beautiful viewpoint that would be my my favorite spot in oregon these days i'll go next i i had an amazing hike on uh on sunday in rowena um and all the all the flowers were out but my absolute favorite place in oregon is in joseph and some friends of mine started a brewery there about 27 years ago and an enterprise and i just love it out there it's got native american history chief joseph is buried there um the scenery is just amazing the eagle eagle cap wilderness areas amazing to backpack through and all of the little uh places in that little town but i'm generally more of a mountains person than the beach i can go hey julia so um i wouldn't like have like one particular place but like the type of place is like anywhere in central oregon camping with my kids where there's a stream nearby would be and just that uh sort of warm summer day with a crisp cool night and a starry sky is my sort of favorite oregon environment and julia this icebreaker came courtesy of the kids at lane who picked their favorite oregon places for their classroom names um so that's where that came from i i for a minute i thought you and i were at lane together but no it was franklin we were at together so [Laughter] this week all right amy or rita do you have a place you'd like to share you want to go ahead radio no you can go um that's a tough one but um i guess i might have to say the timberline trail because for the last 19 years i've gone around the timberline trail ran the timberline trail with a group of eight other women in two days and so to just get to know a place so intimately over the years and see how it changes is a really special thing and it uh you know ranges in elevation from about 3 000 feet to about 8 500 feet and all sorts of rivers and streams come down and lots of flowers and it's i highly recommend it you can do little day hikes there it's 41 miles the loop but uh there's lots of different places that you can pop in and access it but um you just see we just see the whole range of terrain from high alpine to deep dark forests and um it's pretty great it's covered in snow right now this is a very heavy snow year which is good for all of us i was going to ask if you have to register for that or is that just first come for serve in terms of if you're going to camp on the trail uh you need to get a campsite but um yeah you can just access different trail heads at all different points cool nathaniel i um we also haven't heard from you so nathaniel rita who would like to go next or you can pass you can choose not to participate that's okay too um i can go um personally i think my favorite spot in the state is really the city of portland um i'm thinking a bit of a different track um i mean just the city like in the early night or early morning with all the lights on it's just incredible um but if i were to pick a more like natural area i suppose like silver falls state park is absolutely beautiful like there are a couple times i guess my turn um
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i'm gonna i'm gonna go rogue and stay anywhere in the summer the garden has the best summers summer weather really i've ever experienced anywhere no humidity no no humidity no bugs certainly not washington dc yeah or any place really on the eastern seaboard is terrible too bad it's only five weeks all right well thank you everyone what about kara yeah cara would you like to participate sure um though i'm just gonna say that the oregon coast i i've sat here this whole time being like i can't decide uh you know maybe lincoln city pacific city like that at least that's where we spend the most time because it's the most accessible of the but the whole thing i can't it's all wonderful terry would terry would you like to weigh in thanks for sharing terry all right well um thanks everybody for gathering this morning uh luckily it's kind of a gray rainy day so i know this would have been harder to do last week when we did have a little taste of that beautiful summer weather um today we are um looking at finishing up some of the work that we set for ourselves when we did our board self-evaluation in august um and uh looking at some of those findings we had about what we think we need to do to be a healthier more effective board and we actually added on the leadership election process as we um journeyed together through this year recognizing that that's a place where our practices are maybe not what reflects our values so i'm going to turn this over to michelle we've got a a draft a seven-point draft from uh scott julia and michelle about a proposed direction for our leadership elections and so what we're going to do is we're going to walk through that edit it talk through it together and at the end of our time have sort of a draft that we'll then take to legal and to staff to make sure that we're not in violation of any policy or state statutes um and then we'll bring this forward for vote in may because uh if we go with this there are some things that need to happen by june 1. all right so michelle would you please lead us through this portion of our agenda this morning sure so if you'll bear with me for just a moment while i um pull the proposal up and try to adjust my view so i can see people so um the topic of word leadership came up um i guess a year ago maybe um it's been a while and we we've touched on it but we this time want to bring forward a proposal that will help us become a more equitable board that will help us address the disparity in what we see i think i've you've all been in the room when i've read up the statistic about um the players all throughout the education system from the secretary of education to the superintendents the principals teachers school boards and presidents and the statistical pull-out is that school boards even though school boards are 80 80 white throughout the country but the chairs and the presidents are 96 white so we're bringing this proposal forward in an effort to live into our racial equity values to uh make the process transparent um do our work in front of in the view of the public uh julia and scott and i um collaborated on this set of seven proposals uh or seven seven points in the proposal but the goal is basically to um provide a transparent path for leadership um to reduce the some of you will say it you know it's not happening in the back room but to to just make the process um more transparent um to provide a place for um or diverse or divorce board members to be in leadership and and to develop um although all of the talent on the board um did people have a chance to read through this it's only it's a very short proposal but i'll just it's kind of a process um a
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process piece so in order to be considered for the leadership role we're proposing that board members and members the left alike notify the board chair in writing prior to the june 1st and prior to the december i'm sorry june 1st for the july election or december 1st for the january election that would be to state your intent to to make it known to the board chair at the first board meeting in either june or december then the board will publicly confirm board members who are interested in the roles a board member must a board member i'm sorry not interested sorry i need to adjust my view just just a moment we're proposing that someone that's not interested in the leadership role serve as a facilitator for the process to serve as a neutral third party the board vice chair will be limited to a six-month term where our thinking on this was that uh that people that were interested in board leadership would cycle through a vice a vice chair position um the vice chair will be limited to six month term in order to give more people um the time and the development opportunity to cycle through um co-chairs and co-vice chairs will be allowed and that's an effort to distribute leadership um the board elections will continue to take place at the first board meeting in july in january um and the transition to a new board chair will happen after the board meeting in which the election happens in other words there will be no gavel passing in in the middle of that first meeting in january and july thank you michelle for first of all just raising this issue way back when and and asking us all to pay a little more attention to how we do things and how we might need to do things better i really appreciate that and then for taking the lead on um coming up with these recommendations i think they're great i have a couple little comments on a few things we can go into after other people want to share their views but um generally speaking i think this is really helpful and i think it will improve our our governance thank you and i i mean i know you gave some input and we tried to reflect that in in what we see here um thank you i also want to note i um i failed to do one of the tasks that i assigned myself and that was to talk to other board board members of color in previous years we identified um just the board members of color i did not send a survey out to them but i think we can we can um knowing what we know today and what we've been learning about racial equity and racial outcomes i think we know that the board members of color that have served in the past years have had less access to power um and and uh and and i think that that's i i think that as we diversify and we start to build a board that's more representative of the kids that we're serving uh it'll be important for us to address uh you know the ways in which our board culture uh contributes to district culture contributes to the outcomes that we see for kids of color so as somebody who served on the working group generally um i mean we can have a discussion about the exact wording um i think this captures our discussion about the election um but we actually had a much longer discussion um about things other than the election which it um the scope got reduced just because um apparently this this was that this was just to be the topic this specific item but um that a lot of other things need to happen or should happen um that will actually lead to different outcomes because we could we could go through this process and still have a sense that there's not a a path there's a process but there's not really a built-in path and i'd be happy to share um michelle took a lot of notes i added into them but there are things about like um trainings and um how work gets assigned and being really deliberate and looking at leadership so we started with the premise that everybody who gets elected to the board sees himself as a leader um and how do we share um ways in which people have opportunities to demonstrate
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their leadership even if they're they never want to or or serve as the chair or the vice chair and that i think this process piece is our first step and then once we have a clear process then i think we begin that bigger conversation about how do we look at leadership development as a whole board and that's something that you know rita and i have been trying to work on all this year um with some of the trainings and and the board self-evaluation and and having shared of our work as a board and i think what you're saying is really important but i also know we we don't have a ton of time today and i'd really like us to focus on this leadership election process and completing this so we have something so we can finish this first step towards changing the way we do leadership and the way we are can i i i i finish my statement yeah i feel like it's important i think i appreciate the context you're bringing because it is more than just putting a process in place it's really um understanding and defining what leadership means leadership in the traditional sense is white and male um and and and that produces that that leadership can produce outcomes that we see today locally and nationally and i think the context is really important i'd like to hear um i appreciate you filling us in on the context and our conversation that we had yeah so so what i was going to offer is just that we we had a much longer conversa conversation about the the different pieces of it and how to really create this sort of pipeline where people feel ready they um and they view them and they view themselves as leaders and we talked about the you know the duties of the vice chair as well um again and like setting up a process by which we we we developed these other aspects of how we um not just the election because i say i look at the process and you know i i think that we could say we changed the process but there's some fundamental things that i think also need to happen in order for us to have a really different process and not just have a process by which more people have access but also that people feel ready and recognized as leaders so i anyway i can i can send around the the notes the other notes just for people not not right now and i appreciate alien that's why we kept the scope narrow but i i don't think just doing this is going to get us a more diverse leadership or people necessarily feeling bad about it it's one piece of it but i do think we have to do some other things as well i think on that point i think the one piece here about um uh vice chairs rotating every six months will make a really substantial difference in terms of leadership preparation and distribution of leadership i i do when it gets down to brass tax i think we might want to amend that to say like consecutive terms because it's not not necessarily clear that everybody's going to want to serve and that you're going to have enough people to rotate through if if you restrict it to that but i really like that part of this proposal and i think that that'll that'll make a real difference yeah and and thanks for contributing your your thoughts about that um i think that maybe we want to keep it flexible so that we have the conversation um and that we want to you know really good leaders in my opinion develop really good leaders and so um i i think julia what you might be saying is you want to it's more than just the process by which we do elections um and what i also don't see in here is you know we have traditionally had this uh vote on a leadership election the last agenda item and um even though our agendas are full um some these votes have come i tallied them over the last two years i've been on the board have have always been after 10 30 at night and regardless of whether uh that's right or wrong i think that we need to do the business of the public in the view of the public when they're when we start our meetings um to be more transparent um if we're doing a mid a vote at 12 30 in the morning it looks like we're trying to bury something whether we are or not you know michelle you and i have this conversation and for me the board leadership election is an adult centered piece of our work and so we try to have student-centered pieces first and so that's why board leadership has been at the end because you know this the whole idea of
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student-centered and and leading with the things that actually are more about students but i do understand what you're saying about public transparency and so i think that's the conversation is um it's it's currently it's up to the board chair to set that agenda and so given your feedback we've moved it to the beginning but i think that that's a continued conversation about how we want to show up and where we place things in the agenda um that we need to continue over time i think it's um i think it would be okay in my opinion to make an exception for this particular agenda item and i understand the child-centeredness student-centered um but we're also elected public officials and we we do need to carry out our business in in view of the public at a time that's convenient for the public maybe for just that one meeting um yes agenda to the back and which is not really a student focused agenda item just i mean just for one meeting um i think it's a good point haley but also i think that's what we have yeah it's what we have done but i think we need to continue to have that conversation with whoever's chair and as a board as we think about these things but i do appreciate your perspective on that michelle and we have come a long way in that respect andrew i know you had raised some some questions about uh number three on this list yeah thanks and actually let me just start by saying i i really appreciate this work that's been done and michelle i really appreciate you bringing this up i i think this is absolutely a fundamental reform in terms of how we do things sorry mike i think my kitten just knocked a bunch of dishes off i'll go clean that up later um the um but i think it's really it's it's fundamental to how we do our business and i think there are ways and i think a lot of them you know in here are really going to help and i have to make one comment based on the the conversation we just have about doing the public's business when the public can see it i agree completely and a hard cap at nine o'clock on every one of our meetings would go a long ways um towards making sure that all of our business whether it's the child centered or the adult centered parts are done when normal people might actually expect a board to be acting and voting but we can have that conversation later um specifically and so i like i like i like i i like almost everything here i love the idea of of sort of publicly declaring um and actually ali is it okay if i just kind of go through sort of my thoughts overall um okay i'll be i'll be quick about it um i love the idea well because she's facilitating this part of the meeting but i would say i would say yes too i'm really interested in hearing your thoughts i'll try and go through i'll try and be quick um i think like i love the idea of public declaration declaration what i would love but i don't think we can do would be that that every board member who is interested has an opportunity at one board meeting to to publicly state their own interest and reason for being interested and then a vote later that would work in our january um election it doesn't work in july because of state statute and and i think that's just really unfortunate state statute requires that we take our first our our organizing vote at the first meeting in july that first meeting doesn't have to be until july 30th so we could potentially delay but it means there would be no meeting where new members who are interested in leadership would be on the board and be able to publicly declare and again i i would love to see that changed in in in statute because i think it means that and and particularly as boards throughout the state are diversifying it means new people coming on um it's much harder for them to to enter straight into you know a leadership position as a result so i like what you've done you've created in this process a way for new members who might have been elected in may who are interested in leadership to let the board the current board share no and we can publicly um state that um so i i think i think that works that works really well i still think it might be important for individuals to to to talk about why they want to but but that can also happen at the election um you know itself um and then i on number three the concern that was raised that i thought about um uh is the question of um whether that actually is legal under our public records laws and i know this was not the work groups in intent obviously you're the intent of this whole process is to service things publicly but i'd be curious whether that came up at all in your work group what i what i was concerned about was it sort of says hey we're going to take someone who's not interested in leadership and make sure they're facilitating conversations among candidates and board members um that to me gets dangerously close to violating oregon's very strict rules around um you know you know around sort of those those communications outside and particularly if we're being we're sort of formalizing we're going to make sure these these conversations about the leadership vote are happening but they're not happening in a meeting so i would i think we need to have liz take a look at that
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is that what that's intended to mean because i read that to mean facilitation in the meeting itself no oh oh i agree with you then andrew that's facilitating offline serial conversations about yeah i think that's how when we drafted this i think that's how and and this scott was your idea so i think this is how we meant we did mean to have a a third disinterested party sort of uh facilitate the conversations but i can see where it can be it would be problematic um very closely too i had a full i had a follow-up conversation yeah i had a follow-up conversation with liz about this after andrew raised some questions in writing and and she you know basically said this is not a viable path um given the serial meeting laws um and and i don't think it's something we need i think that people can do this work themselves of of reaching out to one another but scott since it was your idea why don't you why don't you share your thoughts on it yeah um and it's probably the wording um you know my thoughts and the wording have not are not quite in sync the idea was just to not to facilitate a conversation and that's that's the wrong word but just to ensure if um say we have two candidates um is to say hey amy have as uh have both candidates reached out to you you've had a chance to talk with them great uh michelle have both candidates talk to you great just to ensure that there there has been a communication about candidacy well i can't i'm curious about why the person who's interested in leadership me why we need that role that it it should be on the person that's interested in leadership to to take that initiative i'm just very similar that perhaps it's up to the people that are interested in the leadership position to take it upon themselves as professionals to communicate with them with their colleagues on the board i agree i think that is but if we haven't like in writing and sort of like this is the framework we use that you don't need to memorialize it with a or have a third party in there and effectively the board chair the current board chair would be i mean if you're declaring and writing to the board chair wouldn't the board chair kind of in fact be that person the board chair might be running again so that i think that was why the need scott was thinking a neutral person i mean we have heard from some board members that they felt left out so this was a this was the intent and so make up your minds well if we put it on if we put it on the candidates though is that that's the expectation that you talk to everybody on the board is like we're all adults and leaders and if that's the ex if that's the board's expectation then candidates who you know want to be in leadership need to do that right so i would propose that we delete three um and just take that bully out and i would also propose i've if you're on the april retreat google doc i've edited um i added a sentence in italics to number one which says the chair will reach out to members elect in may to inform them of this process because i think it's important that the the members elect are made aware that they have the opportunity to inform the writing by july one and then on number four i added amy said something so i added a vice chair may serve consecutive terms that because if we don't have people who are interested in running i don't want us to paint ourselves into a corner that we don't have a vice chair or that someone serves who doesn't want to because that's crappy too so ali maybe instead of eliminating number three we just state an expectation not that there's not that there's a facilitator but that um if individuals are interested in leadership that the expectation is that they have a conversation with their with all their colleagues because this this gets to the and so it's not a mandate there's not a third party doing it but just the expectation that um that that happens um yeah and just to just to clarify i i think that works really well um i i think just we're in a public meeting right now and i just want to sort of state for the record the goal of this is for individuals to express their interest to other board members my understanding and liz can obviously correct me if i'm wrong that is perfectly allowable any one of us as
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individuals can talk publicly we can call our fellow board members to talk about ourselves and our views what we can't do is is call and say hey you know how are you going to vote or how is one of your colleagues going to vote or do you know you know what's happening around this and so i just i think we need to be really crystal clear about that um that again the goal is simply to share um you know your own interest in in running and why and i think if we're clear about that the process works really well so i i appreciate that one really can i just throw an idea out there um it just occurred to me would it be possible to invite would it be possible i'm thinking about for the july meeting in particular for the last meeting in may to be the meeting where um current board members declare their interest and members elect are invited to testify if they have an interest and would that solve this issue of of of having sort of everything going through the chair that literally each member who is interested in leadership including our board elect can can in a public meeting say hey i'm interested in chair i'm interested in vice chair here's what i hope to accomplish and here's why um it's very public it's it's out there everyone gets to hear it at the same time and then we sort of know going into that that vote meeting um in um in july so it actually could be i'm sorry it doesn't need to be may it could be it could be one of our meetings in june this would be a great idea i like that i like that a lot too andrew so i just added to number two members elect may publicly testify at this meeting if they have declared as leadership candidates is what i added to two to capture that andrew and then to three julia what i put was leadership candidates should engage with other board members to have conversations about their own interest in running and why ahead of the election great i like that haley thank you so it gives some flexibility but it's an expectation so the other thing i think just generally and this this is going to apply to all of the um the the things that were we discussed today is they should have an asterisk on them because you know there will be a you know new board um in july and it shouldn't be like hey this is what this is what this board you know this what the old board decided and he here's what it is i think we should have a you know not a total rehash of everything but here here's you know here's what we here's the course we set in um april and may and you know i want to get your inputs because new you know new new board members are going to bring new perspectives and i think it's and if that those are the rules they're going to operate under um that we should there should be a conversation that just checks in with them and see just to see if there's anything missing maybe added or a different perspective that this board hasn't considered and i think this will be this will be the process that governs because this process starts in june this will be the process that governs the next election but of course you know like with anything that's board policy or board process the new board has the right to change that um i don't know that they'll want to jump in and change leadership elections the first thing but we need something that's better than what we had for our next election but it's constantly a work in process i think julia you're right yeah well i just like the communication pro protocols and everything is like we all we all bring a specific perspective and i say you just get different dynamic every board i've been on um and it's now almost 10 different boards because just the different ones they they all have different perspectives that people bring because of either their experience as a community member or their experience on a board or another board so i think it's just a good check-in like yeah so is there anything else securely because um move on to communication protocols a quote that i just read this morning said those that are most proximate to a problem are also the most proximate to a solution and so when we talk about leaning into racial equity values and i mean every staff member starts off every presentation saying talking about racial equity i think julia what you just proposed is a good way to actually operationalize that that idea that value it's doing something different than we've always done it before so i like the fact that it's somewhat flexible that we can use the talent of um any newcomer any newcoming board members as input and it also creates a welcoming um environment for new for new members amy did you have something you wanted to add i did so um number five co-chairs and co-vice chairs will be allowed
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i don't support that i support co-chairs but i i don't think there's any practical reason to have more than two people in in a leadership role it just doesn't make any sense and especially with the provision that we're going to rotate vice chairs which then um distributes the leadership and gives more people an opportunity um so i would recommend removing that it's it's also a violation i don't know if we how much we care in this document about what our current policies are and whether or not we need to change them um you know the call both of those actually are a violation of our policy now but the determination from outside counsel is yes and there's nobody who would ever really care you know so it's kind of fine but um i just think um you know it just doesn't it doesn't serve a purpose i'd like to speak to that at this point um because i do think that um we've got it had a determination that it's it's fine um to do that and having been in that model both in 2001 with lolenzo poe in the co-chairs role and then into in 2017 with rita and julie um i felt um i thought it was a really good model because we we had a heavy lift to do we had different perspectives um you know i i felt that you know when we were tackling a big issue getting rita and julie's perspective um or you know different people could drive things to me i thought it was a way in which um we really broadened the base the base for leadership and i think that's what our board is for well i i felt like in the in the governance of it um it was useful and again this this is somewhat of the topic that we talked about about developing leaders is that there's nothing there's nothing it's only additive so i don't i don't see that it has any specific harm and to me it's additive and it gets other people um an opportunity to participate in in the leadership and so like i say i i to me i've seen tremendous value in in having a broader leadership base than um that what there's this you know statutory base just my point the other way which is to say that it just begins to centralize more decision making um away from the rest of the board and there's just no practical purpose i support i think co-chairs is fine and if as opposed to a chair and vice chair but um you know i've never seen any other board do that i don't think there's any practical reason i think it's it's just silly and especially with the rotating rotating vice chairs which i think is an awesome idea um i want to speak to that also so because we have we did have discussion about this and there's several reasons for um it this model doesn't make sense in a hierarchy and in our you know our hierarchies are all in service of um a white you know this racial hierarchy so so distributing the leadership amongst chairs and co-chairs brings um i think julia you said different perspective but i work full-time and i also consider myself a leader and really literally from a practical standpoint wonder um how i could be the chair or even a vice chair by myself so i really like the idea of this distributed leadership model it doesn't make sense because we're operating in a hierarchy right now and we we're operating in ways that that are not beneficial for people of color so to distribute modern distribute leadership i believe would allow i'm just wondering like in the future we might have a another single parent that serves that wants to be able to contribute but is not able to take on either role full-time so it's providing an opportunity um for people to i mean not i don't know how i i don't know how you would do this job without this model i think maybe you're working full-time and parenting for instance maybe people don't agree with me and um you know we should move on but i really think that the opposite argument could be made which is why other boards don't do this which is that it just concentrates leadership away from your seven duly elected board members and you know in terms of decision-making responsibility michelle and the time it takes um i mean there is always the ability
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for all of that to be distributed among all the members by policy the responsibilities of the board chair as distinct from the rest of the members of the board are very minimal and so there's no reason why generally speaking if we want to dismantle a hierarchical system we can't in every way every day distribute leadership more broadly i mean we've some of us have served in situations where there has been an inappropriate appropriation of sort of decision making by the board chair and the lack of transparency and it's it's really problematic and so you know i think it's good to elect leaders i think we should elect to i think we should find and use every single opportunity to otherwise distribute leadership responsibilities relatively equally among the other members of the board but this concentration um i think is is problematic and um it just doesn't doesn't add anything to me just doesn't make sense but we don't need to belabor it if other people don't agree but i i think it's it's silly and and i also um i just i take issue with like well we've always done it this way or it's not really done this way the way that things are done currently in this country in this city um don't work for black people that wasn't my point was not that we've always done it this way the point my point was that when we have done it this way it has contributed to being more problematic and creating more of a centralization of power rather than a distribution of power which is kind of a part of mine i think what's good here is this says they will be allowed it doesn't mean we have to do it and again it gives us flexibility that's situational and when we talk about let you know um if we are going to elect co-chairs or co-vice chairs that would have to be part of a conversation at a board meeting um so i think it it gives us flexibility to think about doing things differently and and working with folks who maybe want to serve in leadership but but want to do that a little differently but it doesn't mandate that we have to have co-chairs so we we can have further conversations about this yeah thank you and that would be my final point is that this isn't saying we shall this does just offer the flexibility depending on who's in the who's serving at the time so i mean i've added so like i said i've added a line to number one the chair will reach out to members elected may to inform them of this process can you can you put it up on the screen i don't know if you have the possibility i don't know if i can kara i don't know if karen can um i can't just give me a second because i've changed that just for the visual learners among us sorry that's okay in the google doc so in the google doc if you're on that as well as in the meeting you can see it actually i'm not i'm too many tabs open so i know it's so hard i think it's actually no andrew let me know that i was lagging a little bit and then i might be speaking over people i apologize for that we reset our router this morning to try to make our internet better but it's been grumpy so you're freezing a little bit at least for me i don't know about other people yeah for me as well i think it probably isn't uh i think it is important to put it up on the screen so that the public can also see that the work we're doing so and probably for each of these as we go through today's retreat we should we should make sure we're doing that i don't know that i'm in the google doc i have that i'm in it you want me to share my screen yeah um i just shared it with her so uh can everyone see that great okay so you can i the sentences i added i italicized and then i put in red the part that we're talking about striking so uh to add to number one the chair will reach out to members elect in may to inform them of this process on number two ad members elect may publicly testify at this meeting at the june meeting it should say um if they have publicly if they have declared as leadership candidates um strike the language in three and then said substitute leadership candidates should engage with other board members to have conversations about their own interest in running and why ahead of the election and then to add to four a vice chair may serve consecutive terms a board chair um could also serve consecutive terms for our policy so i'm i'm sorry number four are we replacing the advice chair may serve consecutive terms replacing that with because it seems in conflict here well they'll be a limited to a six-month term but they may serve consecutive terms
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that's in case nobody else wants to run if nobody wanted to be vice chair except the person who'd already done it can can we allow flexibility for that person to run again why don't we just change the sentence to say the board vice chair um like is encouraged to or um so because otherwise it looks like we're limiting it but but you can um if we put if no if no other board members if no other candidate declares i i guess i'm kind of getting back to that question of i really like i really like setting norms but also allowing um boards flexibility because we just don't know what future situations are going to look like and so i'm trying to think of language off the top of my head i'm wondering if there's a way to sort of and maybe it was michelle who said this how can we sort of encourage this as a norm the leadership model but also recognize i mean you know if if the secretary of education runs for pbs board and wants to be vice chair for consecutive terms i'm probably going to support him you know to do that right so like like how do we allow that you know to happen if need be why don't we state our value i think that's a good point why don't we state our value andrew um which is we view the vice chair as an opportunity for a broader number of individuals to be participate in leadership um and encourage rotation and and that way we we stated as like like why are we doing it versus just putting putting that in there and so like we understand um the purpose and the value in that statement but still we have the flexibility what if we change will to should let's take let's take out the the word limit i think that's what's catching us and i think i think julia's got the right the right line of thinking i like the i like the leading with values um and then stating and i also agree the limiting the word limited no not the right word for the situation so what if we changed it to it says in order to give more board members an opportunity to get exposure to exposure to a leadership position the board vice chair um serve a six month term instead of will be limited so there's there's a should um could we just say will serve a six-month term well uh they already do okay can i can i make just make note of the fact that um you're setting this up to be for both the chair and the vice chair to have a six-month term so you're already limiting it to one to six months but the fair will oh because there'll be re-election or there'll be an election whether it's a re-election or not is up to the board um [Music] both positions are already six months right so i i think just stating the aspirational uh around the vice chair position the aspirational is to give uh to maximize the leadership exposure if that's the yeah whatever word that is okay but the other thing is if you call out an expectation that the vice chair will rotate and and will be effectively limited to this one six-month term um because you're not mentioning the chair position the sort of implicit assumption is that the chair would be re-upped um which you may or may not want to do i don't know um i think there's some value in having consistency but um i'm just pointing out that by calling this out you're making a statement question is what do you want that statement to be yeah and that's a really good point rita and we talked about that um because we there are there's there's value um in having a board chair serve two consecutive terms um and so we didn't we didn't want to lose that um but we also looked at and this is part of this broader conversation i um mentioned at the beginning is that like all these different ways in which either whether through um you know committee chair assignments or the vice chair that we are building the board's capacity and so so we viewed the vice chair role as a place to be you know really building helping build that capacity um and less so like hopefully the board chair has the combat you know has you know many of the tools not that their
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board chairs don't evolve as as they serve but that this would also be allow somebody to get right into the leadership work and it seemed a good way to do it was through the vice chair versus the the versus changing the current chair model can i rephrase real quick because i think we can land on something uh the statement would be something like the board views the vice chair position as a leadership development opportunity and encourages rotating that role at six months uh every six months and that way does that work i like that scott i think it gets at julia's point of of leading with the value yeah that again scott i didn't capture all of it okay uh the board views the vice chair role as a leadership development position and encourages um the rotation of that role every six months in order to maximize leadership development opportunities something like that and so we've got encourage but we not mandate because there may be times where it's just like holy holy moly we need to stay the course here and at other times where it's hopefully not hopefully more more regular times where um we uh encourage that rotation okay i didn't quite catch all of it but i hybrided it cobbled it together with what you had presented as a group earlier yeah i think that's to me that works the board views the vice chair role as a leadership development position in order to give more board members an opportunity to get exposure to a leadership position uh we encourage the vice chair to rotate every six months it is we should write that in the passive voice it is encouraged for the various years to rotate every six months um can i make a suggestion sort of following up on this um i think um i think you're going to have to do additional um thinking about how you know the sorts of things that that julia mentioned earlier um and i would add to the list of um further thinking through um i i i would encourage you in the future board to clarify uh the roles and responsibilities of the leadership positions um i don't think there's a um i don't think there's a universal consensus on what the duties are um and i think it's i think you're probably going to want to have a conversation about that rita you could have been at our meeting because we that was exactly we we got down into that level of detail because that that it did provoke those sort of questions of like what does that mean is the vice chair just to run the meeting when the when the chair's not there which is what our policy says but um for all of us who've been in leadership we know it's um it should be much more than that um you know partner co-leader taking um adding other perspectives so anybody who wants to run for a position i don't know what the position is so that they can really understand what their you know what they're uh opting into and i agree i agree with that i there should be a position description too and but but the the part that we didn't get to is if you're applying for a job you need to bring certain skills right so i mean we don't have that either i mean we could write a description said you know you must have lived experience with race for instance yeah so i think that's good i think it's at both end i agree with you i think that it would be important to know what we're what we're getting into yeah i agree i like the nursery pretty good process here um we've got a pretty good process here so i think if we're okay with this i'll take this to to liz and to staff and then um it's this should appear at a board meeting in may for us to vote on and then we'll have this process for the next election and then of course we can revisit it and update it as is our want um italy can i mean just as a again sort of building the the future pipeline can that be sent out to like i mean
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could you maybe send out a note to like all the candidates who are running just so like you know i know people use your heads down and in the race and then all of a sudden you're done and like oh like what's happening it's just just as a want to share with you here's what the conversation that's happening among the board and if you're elected you know we'll want you to persua participate in the process so it's not just like the day after the election like here's i think that's really great um it's a great welcome and i've been thinking about like how we welcome people in and this is a little bit of an aside but how do we also welcome people out that have served so just we don't have to answer it right now but um we can we can really show up in that kind ways by um considering both the beginning and the end of people's uh tenure yeah i'm sure i'm sure all the board candidates are watching us right now and taking notes so uh okay well it is a uh 10 o'clock so we're gonna jump over the communication protocols for this minute and we'll catch those later danielle had a comment oh so go ahead yeah i just got uh one comment on uh three i would appreciate it if we could add language that makes it clear that leadership candidates are also expected to engage with and have conversations with the student rep or more likely the student rep elect because that has traditionally not been the case at all one of the questions there nathaniel is that the student rep doesn't vote on board leadership well i have in the past both times and i don't see any reason in policy why that would not be the case i'll just add that to have a conversation about their i'll add the student rep elect okay uh anything else before we move on to the ethics statements can we take a five minute break yes let's take a five minute break and we'll come back and we'll dive into epic ethics statement um this again the ethics statement we have introduced as part of our findings from our board self-evaluation that this is one piece of what's recommended by the council of great city schools that boards have an ethic statement there were some things in that uh initial epic statement that was uh brought to us at our last retreat that we talked through and had some questions about so andrew and liz and julia um talked to one another and came up uh with this draft for us to again review and uh as soon as andrew gets back we will um turn this over to him all right andrew we are set for you all right so no yeah i don't think the glass situation need a little supervision so i uh kittens are hard kittens are hard and and and teenagers cleaning up glass also not perfect but i'm not going to criticize they they did their best so um but it was it was not a quite a complete job so was that the kitten that knocked everything over well that's what the teenagers are claiming i believe them it probably was the kitten but you know who knows right now there was something maybe not all i know is there was a lot of glass cleaned up and still some on the floor so that's that's the situation as i as i found it all right let me pull up so we're moving on to the ethics right hey cara are you able to share um at this point the google doc we have a quick question about google docs is there a way so if i download the from board books if i download the document does it it which i've never really done does it download and into the google doc it doesn't that's why okay i have the quick access either it's a pdf and yeah i had sent out an email with the link to the google doc michelle um i was just wondering if i could get it from board book i don't know unfortunately i had to go back and search for the the email from from ailey from a few days ago anyway carrie it'll be easier if you could share so i can jump around to different things as i need them i'm looking forward to my email right now i'll get it up as soon as i cool well i'll go ahead and start um so and i actually think this might be a quick conversation but i don't want to obviously short circuit anything if folks want to have a longer conversation the this is coming out of you may all remember was it the fall retreat i think that you know we were going through a lot of council great city schools best practices and talking
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about all these different issues and one of the things that they talk about was having a um uh you know having board members sign an ethic statement um to be really frank the examples they had were pretty strange right and their ethics statement included some some ethics issues but it also included a whole bunch of of non-ethics issues that are really more about board protocols communication protocols and one of the things on their ethics statement is you know that you'll only you know uh you know you won't direct staff to do work that's not an ethics issue at all that's a that's a board protocol and operations issue so um we we started at our last retreat i kind of had had a document we've begun to make some changes to it um to try and and kind of um make it a little bit make it a little tighter and a little bit more relevant but we didn't have time to talk about it julia um actually rewrote um a much shorter and focused and tighter um sort of ethics you know statement overall and and that's what we went back to um for this document today and it's really just very straightforward um and then ethics and conflict of interest you know um training and compliance statement and and i'm i'm hoping we're able to get it up for folks to share does anyone else have it up that that you could share i'm looking through my inbox for it right now i know i've got so many emails uh there we go looks like ali's haley's got it shared so um good this is just i just thought we could talk through it so it's just it's it's it's five statements it's essentially um you know you know you all know this but you know you're public officials under the understated statute and as such you're required to disclose actual potential conflicts of interest um and then a little bit more definition of what an actual potential conflict of interest you know or participate in official action which could result in a financial benefit or avoidance of detriment to the public official relative of the public official or a business with which you are associated or your family members are associated um public officials including school board members npps employees need to follow the oregon ethics law and observe the oregon government ethics commissions or in government ethics law this is all part of our training that we get every year so it's just really a reminder prior to taking prior to voting or taking action on an issue board members must disclose any any actual or potential conflicts of interest um board members will annually engage in training related to oregon government ethics public meetings laws and public record laws and then annually we will sign an ethic statement and conflict ethics sign an ethics and conflict statement attesting to participating in the training related to rs and pledging to adhere to the statutory requirements district policy on these topics so it is really just a restatement of what again we already get the training every year but it's a restatement that you know we are getting the training we attest that we've gotten it and we attest that we will follow um this public you know uh uh public ethics laws and and declare any conflicts of interest before a vote so very tight very focused um and and i think does it frankly does a better job of of of getting it what the council is the great city schools wanted to get it which is that it's a very intentional act um and i think it's it's pretty straightforward and not too complicated so with that open it up for discussion just two other things to add to this is um this is very similar to what a lot of other public entity boards require and a lot of non-profit boards and then the second thing is and this is just a sort of follow-on from the last meeting that andrew and i talked about in the interim is that i had included senior staff which is um pretty common in the nonprofit world and um andrew um rightly pointed out that um we're different and that this shouldn't be since this is a board adopted um it's not a policy it's a protocol um that it should apply to board members and that um the superintendent is really it's his responsibility to ensure that um senior senior staff well actually all um uh pps staff are quote public officials under the ethics law that they that that's a separate piece that the superintendent really should um run the tr the training and the you know making sure people abide by it um so that that got stripped out so if you recall from earlier that that was in the previous version it's not it now so i'm working on a signed statement piece down here at the bottom you can see that on the um on the shared screen um we need it says that number five we will have a signed ethics and conflict of uh statement so what i'm writing below is i pledge to participate in training related to rs chapter 244 this year and i pledged to adhere to the oregon statutory
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requirements and district policy regarding ethics and conflicts of interest uh can i you probably want to change this year that's ambiguous so you probably want to say something like every 12 months or with within within the last 12 months or something like that actually annually so as a non-lawyer this seems fine but um i signed so many of these each year we should have liz like there's a way to memorialize it that's the sort of the legal fits the legal definition and i do think that will be important because um just when board members um or the board or senior staff are involved in any sort of legal action um we should uh often there's like did you follow the x policy or you know the law and i think we should line that but that looks good it's a non-lawyer that looks good to me all right all of this we'll take to liz and to staff and have them but just so we have something for them to start working with that would be the statement we would sign in july as we start you know kind of re-up our year why wouldn't you put instead of within 12 months just annually so you take the training in july any incoming members and it's done annually well and i anyway i i would suggest that people sign it after they take the training so it would be a past tense thing rather than a future test to doing something that you haven't done yet um i mean liz will liz will deal with that yeah the problem is i don't know when that training will be offered and we want people to say that they will follow the um ethics policy when they start that they promise to just do it when they start but we do need to you know also make sure that they participate in that training my suggestion would be that the board set a date and i would suggest you know earlier than later um so that new board members coming on don't have to wait six months to find out that they may have violated something um so i i would suggest that um the the regular training happened in the summer i i think i think it has been happening like february-ish um could it be part of our um of i mean uh the new board orientation um but i agree with you rita it should happen earlier rather than later and it actually could be part of a work plan for instance july of every year yeah the reality is sorry i'm sure go ahead july of every year as i say the moment um you're a board member elect the rules apply um so i think the earlier the better um you know you could even do it in june there's there's no um no reason i can't do it earlier if there if there's time and again most of these i i participate in a lot of them and they you know there's a pretty set um the ethics commission puts together like their training and pps staff can um you know take that and then supplement it or customize it um but it should be easy to do great are there other comments about the ethics policy yeah admit to being a little disappointed um because this essentially just restates the statute um and an earlier draft um had included some um some provisions that um kind of held board members to a higher standard um because i think oregon's ethical standards are pretty pretty minimalist um [Music] and and i think there have been anyway it's pretty minimalist so i mean it's this strikes me as kind of a pro forma statement um that just follows the statute and yes we should do it but we're bound by it anyway so it's kind of a kind of a moot point um but if if the board is not willing to um to exceed this
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minimalist standard that oregon has set then um i would be interested how how just in your in your thinking um how would you strengthen how would you strengthen this statement and to make it to make it stronger i i i hear what you're saying it's a it's a floor yeah in the in the floor is essentially aim for the floor well i mean that you know the floor is easy to hit so you know um i mean the the oregon standard is is actually very very high um you know you you have to be um there has to be essentially a a demonstrable provable uh financial gain in order for something to qualify as a conflict of interest um and yes that's that should absolutely be the case but i think there are many other issues that are um that could be conflicts of interest or could be seen as conflicts of interest um that would have that would damage the um legitimacy and authority of of the board um but would not qualify for section under the oregon state statute i think so that's a um i the one the one there's a piece of wording in there that i that i didn't see when i was looking through this very late last night and that was the appearance of so not only in fact is there a conflict but there's the appearance of a conflict right and you know actually metro has a pretty strong i think metro's language includes appearance of um that could that could strengthen it perhaps and um sorry michelle yeah but i also wanted to thank you um andrew and julia for working on this very dry but important subject i [Laughter] that's my life um i see uh i see scott has his hand up and and rita just to i guess i would i would say if if there are specific language changes um i you know that we want to talk about today to see if there's interest and and then also as a as a statement or sort of protocol it is something that boards can revisit every year and kind of getting back to the to the question julius raised a couple times of just you know we we are aboard a board that's going to change you know in a few months and so i think this is always going to be a living document and always something that that a new board could add you know language to um or make changes to as we go forward but scott do you want to go ahead yeah i want to say that this may be a floor but at least it's an explicit floor and it and it's it's allows i think more explicitly that revisitation uh the point i was going to bring up is because um you know my wife is a teacher and so before we uh vote on contracts i declare my um i declare that um and then we've had legal uh i'm cleared legally to vote on it because it's it's such a dispersed uh benefit um i don't think it would i wouldn't be surprised if that situation comes up again and i think uh noting that specifically um in our in our in our documents uh would not be a bad thing i um i pulled up the language in the draft statement that we used at our last retreat that we started from and i think that the difference for me is that our values aren't in this ethic statement it is very cut and dried um and i've pulled it up to share on our screen from what we looked at last time but like this one starts with our primary responsibility as a board is to act in the best interest of every student in the district the community expect and we expect ourselves to act with the highest standards of ethical conduct and consistent with oregon law and then the list of what we commit to so i think we've we have made this more of a perfunctory um and then um there's the conflict of interest disclosure form um that we would need to sign that that's what we'll look at with liz but that's the piece that's missing for me is is the value statement around why it's important for us to act ethically that this is about the best interest of students so that that would be the one piece that i would
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think about and we may capture that other places like in our communications and protocols um but that's that's what was missing here for me i agree alien and i agree with what you said rita we've had a lot of conversations over a long period of time about um you know some kind of accountability statements for board members about what are our collective values but andrew i agree with you that like what we have here in terms of the ethics is basically what we need to be in alignment with the state statutes that are fairly limited but i would like to see um some of these more value-oriented statements woven in maybe as an addendum to our communications protocols because one of the issues we've talked about in the past that many boards have and um that rita i know you've you've had an interest in is for example censure like we have no um mechanism for censure of board members and you know we've had instances where members of the community and and fellow board members have you know publicly uh you know detailed instances of you know significant um abuse and discrimination and racism and you know there's there's no way to make a statement that's that that really pegs it to say this is not in alignment with our values as an organization so there is some value in those kind of things i think so yeah and i i really appreciate the conversation for me and i i i completely agree both with alien amy about value statements they don't for me they don't belong in an ethics statement and maybe i'm sorry yeah i heard you say that amy yeah you agree for me ethics is about again operating you know under ethical guidelines and and again it really is about you know personal gain for you or your family members and you know not acting in the best interest of students i i think you know that that for me is not an ethical issue so much as a it may be a protocol that we want to put in place and that i i totally would agree around our communication protocols or other board protocols if we as a board wanted to to adopt something that we would sign i just i i view that as very separate i also think we need to be a little careful about what we put down and whether it is objective and definable right i mean operating in the best interest of students we had that conversation just a week or two ago that we're gonna we're gonna disagree on that and and i would like to think that every single person who serves on the board is is acting in the best interest of students but but it is there are legitimate disagreements about what that can be um and i think we need to have space for that um that you know and and what we don't want to set up is some situation where a board member a member of the public could could file something with the ethics commission because because we took a vote on on reopening that they think was a violation of of not acting in the best interests of students and i i want to be really careful as we as we sort of keep keep the lanes really the lines really clear so that makes sense andrew and i feel like um that is all captured in our protocols so i'm i support this and and you know as it is and i think you know we'll we'll have liz take a pass at it and have her kind of shore up the statement for us to sign and then then ensure that we're signing it every july and holding those trainings maybe in june or july to make sure that we're in compliance so so i feel i feel good about this that it's a very clear communication of what those expectations are and that that more um nuanced and sort of how we work together is captured in those protocols and maybe i would ask rita as a partying gift and i mean that gift you know literally uh as a gift to us if you wanted to capture ways you think future boards could strengthen this that would be a great starting point for our next conversation with the next board about are there anything you know other things that we want to go above the floor as a board that we might want to take the value of that gift may exceed the uh the limit and the ethics state right tangible you can't put a value on it like invaluable all of all of my proposals are invaluable obviously um no i i um i had offered language um during one of the earliest iterations of this um and most of most of the things that i proposed were edited out of the document that was brought before you at the last retreat so there there is existing language somewhere i would have to dig it out i i actually have that in in in my folder so i'll go back and and take a look thank you rita so the other way to look look at this um
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is this is like a portfolio of things that um sort of uh inform uh and are sort of the guardrails we work within so i'm thinking about like the statement about all of our students like this is like the board's adoption of the you know pps reimagined is sort of that the defining document about what our work and what we value and what we're committing to and then there's these other pieces that relate to specific things whether it's communications or ethics and that they're all taken together but they're not standalone documents um and i i would hope that people would look to be like what do we value or what are we committing to with more to our pps reimagined than to a you know a statement we're signing or like a set of protocols about how we operate i think that's really why yeah to say that this is part of that portfolio of of how the board operates and this is one piece three to go well i'm i'm just wondering i mean even keeping this minimal list would it make sense to add in here something about the the fact that as members of the board of education we have a fiduciary responsibility to the district what do you think is missing that that would speak to well it's um because i i mean as i recall uh when we get the ethics training um one of the things that they talk about is what fiduciary responsibility means um and there's a and i am not qualified to opine on this but you know there's a there's a technical definition and there's a a a broader um kind of it's also kind of an umbrella term about how we are essentially agents of the district and um and we have to um we have to act in ways that safeguard the um the integrity i don't know i can't come up with the words but um i'm just wondering if if this would be the appropriate place to add that so um i'm not opposed but i think i might need more information because we also have obviously um a duty to um the broader electorate and i'm what i'm i want to understand like legally how those the inner the interplay is that a question to me yeah no i well you're not a you're not a lawyer um but you can tell me what your opinion is i mean i just would like to um understand from a legal standpoint like um okay so we're elected so to me that creates like a duty to sort of the broader um the broader community and then yes i agree there's we have a fiduciary responsibility with the district and then how how do those interact i guess that's that's what i'm not clear about well me neither which is why i'm not offering language at this point okay maybe that's going to go in the future file for and for andrew because i think it's a good point um i just um i'm trying to think of instances where there might be a conflict um but just to understand what what that means in relation to not what a fiduciary responsibility the district means but when there could be conflicts between what may be the district's interests and the broader communities interest or between an individual board member and the district's interests so sounds like again some future conversation i'm not here in specific language for for today but i think i think it's an interesting point to put on our
01h 30m 00s
future agenda any other i do as well yeah i think it would be really interesting to explore some of the most nuanced questions around like where the conflict actually exists and is it addressed in this document yeah okay any other thoughts on this before we for what it's worth i made a suggestion that nobody responded to because there were other things top of mind um and i i'd be happy to work with liz to come up with some language on that people thought it would be a good idea to make that explicit i'm sorry scott what was that if if you're you have a a board member has a spouse or family member that's an employee of the district i think the guidance that we've gotten there is that you know if the decision before the board affects you know a large group of which that one you know one person is a member then it doesn't represent them correct i'm just i'm just suggesting i'm just suggesting that that guidance uh be stated explicitly um in this statement scott my only question is i'm just worried that there's a whole bunch of of potential um you know ethical issues that each individual board member is going to need to deal with i mean you're you're raising one if you have a family member of the district you know so you know if we have family members who have contracts with the district if we have business relationships and so i guess i'm just a little i mean i okay fair enough does that does it fall i i i does this capture the fact that each one of us individually needs to be exploring those things and getting that advice our legislative agenda also some place where this stuff is relevant yes so i think this is it's it's a good call-out um scott and i do think andrew also raises a good point so for example i don't know like two legislative agendas ago i like raised uh the perce potential uh that they're you know i work for a company that has um you know legislative work as well um so i think there's individual interests and i think maybe the best way to approach that is when there are clearly times when it may be like this could there could be the perception that as part of like this either the staff presentation or how things roll out that it just gets part of the you know in if you're part of a larger class and the best example i have of this is um serving on the oregon state university board so there's a number of board members who have children who were at osu i mean for example two years ago and then when you get to tuition setting it's like um you know do you have a conflict on voting on what the tuition is because you have a student attending oregon state and you know the the legal um the general counsel at oregon state provides uh you know like every vote because there's always some board members who have students um who have children who are students and so there's this like language they use so that you're elevating it so it's like hey we're not like not talking about it but just to be clear because people like oh that person is a conflict they voted on the tuition because then their student goes there um that that's a way to do it so that it's not like a specific member but it just hey makes clear like there's no but there's no specific benefit that this benefit this impacts abroad class you're right i'm good i'm good yeah i think again like like with our board leadership um piece this is a step on a long journey we have to getting to the place that we um you know we know as a board through the council of great city schools work that we would like to be but i think thank you andrew and julia and liz for the work on this um i think it's a great starting spot and then we can continue those conversations um as we go forward andrew is there anything else before we move on nope not for me thank you thanks everybody thanks julia in particular for for helping with this all right anything else on this before we move on to the comms protocols okay i'm gonna open the i'm still sharing my screen so i'm gonna open up the comms protocols um so we um did a really great job at the last retreat of all of our other protocols and working through those and making changes um and then we got to the comms protocols and we kind of hit a place where we needed to take some conversations offline because they involved some uh confidential legal matters and some other issues and
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some things we needed to think through um and so we did that and we've come back with um some suggested language uh we didn't resolve everything though so we're starting off the columns protocols with this um italicized two options that we as a board need to look through and it's um whether we want to say board members are encouraged to communicate directly with the superintendent or board members will agree to communicate directly with the superintendent and or members of the superintendent's leadership when board members have a substantive question or when a significant concern about pps operations is voiced by student staff member or parent other community member so that's that's kind of the the first big conversation um i support the board members will agree i think we need to to be really direct that our our work is to talk to um the superintendent and the leadership team directly which includes our legal counsel when there's something substantive um and that encouraging people continues to allow for room for people to um sort of operate in ways that undermine some of the leadership but i know that there are valid concerns about why that feels restricting um so let's discuss do we want to be encouraged or do we want to agree so maybe i can just make this a shorter discussion because i can i can live with either one and um for those of you who i had conversations with after the last meeting and i shared what my concern was it is primarily in the rare instances where um there is something related um misconduct violation of policy um where your um the the appropriate course of action is not to take it to the individual that um is or an individual in the reporting relationship i can live with either one of these because um when you know whenever we approve it um you know i i i would make a statement that just in in the rare cases in which there is something that we we have an obligation to take it outside that i would do that but i think you know day to day um and certainly under superintendent guerrero um i there's there's not really any issues that i see that um it wouldn't fall into you know either encourage or agree so if that's that's helpful and i can't i don't think there are any issues where the the broader definition of the superintendent's leadership team wouldn't um solve the problem um because and um i mean i guess this doesn't explicitly include our board outside council which is another one um but anyway um ailee i agree with you that i think this should say agree and i think that as a if as a group we land on encouraged then we kind of need to go back to the table and have this conversation with the superintendent and the leadership team because this is not you know this is a mutual relationship and so if we don't end up agreeing that we will all um communicate you know directly through the superintendent and the leadership team um then you know the superintendent should be part of that conversation and and really then okay well that's how you guys feel what does that look like so julia would yeah i had just a very just just to clarify it's just a very narrow specific um issue and it wasn't just general district issues i'm was speaking to either and again i want to make absolutely crystal clear this had this is not related to our current superintendent or the current leadership team is if there is um cases of misconduct harassment you know violations of policy that um that would be the only category not the hey this you know there's this huge issue and i'm going to you know as a board member instead go somewhere else to have the conversation so julia i'm trying to capture what you're saying so it sounds like you're we're on the same page about board members will agree to communicate directly with your superintendent and then amy said something about outside counsel being so would it work to say board members will agree to communicate directly with the superintendent member of the superintendent's leadership team and or the district's outside counsel i mean wouldn't i would have an issue with that okay
01h 40m 00s
um i don't think board members should um should have an open line to outside counsel very very uh very quickly add up to a significant extended yeah um and i and we there's there's a reason why we why we have a general counsel and if we're talking about a rare instance of um a situation where there's an allegation of misconduct i would say that's a whole other thing that should not be referenced in this general protocol around communication that that deserves a you know a whole separate category do you want to add a sentence julia about in rare instances or do you agree with rita that that will be no i um i agree with rita there should it's not like an open kicker to the outside counsel and mate um i'd also be i know this is going to subsequently go to um to staff for their comments and i would welcome since um our contract general counsel is intimately familiar with the issues that um that are at play that ask her to provide some sort of uh guidance on that so i'm perfectly comfortable with that um could we could we list out the specific instances where it would be important to i mean could could we be specific about those exceptions why don't we ask liz to provide that because i think i think that's a good idea michelle it's just it's probably way more efficient for liz to come up with those where where you'd have chain of command i mean they're really yeah um you want to get you want to move those things out of the pipeline i mean i serve on another board in which um actually the general counsel this this is a a specific issue with the leader and then the general counsel providing advice and being in the chain of command creating um a really significant legal issue so um i think we should get guidance but that's a good ide maybe a good idea to call it out and i'm comfortable with that like i said i think it's it's narrow and it's so hopefully you don't have to have a big discussion about it all right so we this has been circulated to us twice now once for the last retreat and once for this one are there any other um places where people want to talk through that was the that was kind of the the place where we were stuck um can i make a floppy edit yes please do can we take out the will where they get it oh yeah this is going to be your legacy rita well you're going to miss me when i'm gone sometimes remember when she took that word will out and how impactful that was it's all about all about the oxford commons baby go ahead scott uh ailey before i forget um speaking of copy editing on our last one uh uh yeah yeah it's the uh it's where uh uh directors elect oh that's on the election thing okay okay uh it's where they're in i think we should say they will be invited to come to testify because it sounds like they can only do public testimony if they're talking about their board candidacy yeah otherwise we don't want to hear from them that's right in fact they're banned ali i think this there's a piece in there about the superintendent in the case of a superintendent transition which is a little stands out a little bit in this document as being um uh sort of not at the same level as the uh as the other issues that we're raising so i would suggest we either take that out or if we really want to leave it in there then this is an instance where i think that that should probably be funneled through the board chair because this is someone who is you know not yet under our employ um has another job that is their you know working to extricate themselves from and i think that that's just doesn't smell like good governance so i would i would recommend either taking that out just because it's a piece of minutiae
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that is a little dissonant with the rest of the stuff in here or at least making that um amendment to it the reason that was added was the idea that like if we can take things to the superintendent when if there's a change does can we can we start talking to the new person and if they ask us a question can we respond um so that was in there just just to answer that question as far as chain of command that times of transition are um difficult but right we don't want to be inundating the new superintendent until they're actually on staffs you're entirely correct amy but no obligation to you know spend a lot of time right yeah but of course they would want to i just i don't know it just seems dissonant to me you know it's interesting um a couple weeks ago i was in bend and i met with the chair of the school board there she's one of the founders of school board partners and she was getting ready that night to have dinner with their new superintendent so as a courtesy this person had never stepped foot in bend the new hire i didn't know the community didn't know the restaurants and so it was kind of just a welcome so i that was a social occasion not necessarily a chance to download all of the issues and uh challenges but um i just wonder during that transition time it what what level of communication is encouraged and what isn't and that's why we tried to leave it very um very kind of like fl we wanted to give the flexibility but we also want to um uh let's just what if we put respecting that the um new super superintendent is not yet uh yeah actually haley can i can i jump in before we do too much more editing i think it's a little bit so we have a we have right to communicate with anybody right right and so that's i mean you know um i don't think we need to restate that as just individual you know people um i think what we're getting at though is this question of if you're communicating about official bore or official district issues do we need to have some protocols around that i think we really do and i kind of like the idea of of going through the board share so i'm wondering if this it says you know in the case of a superintendent transition you know any communication about district issues should go through the the board share prior to the superintendent taking the position i just think we need to be really clear as someone else said they're not our employee um it would get very confusing for a new superintendent to be hearing from multiple board members are they are they telling me things that a majority of the board believes or just they believe and frankly we still have a superintendent up until that date the superintendent in place is running the school district is our employee and you know i understand there's some history here and other other concerns which are which are really valid but it feels to me like we need to keep managing the district through the superintendent until we have a new superintendent and if there are specific things that need to be communicated to superintendent i think they should go through the board chair actually i would suggest taking this whole thing out i mean i think it's um and i mean they're like again we shouldn't let um we shouldn't legislate because of specific things that happen in history and and i acknowledge like like i have a really good example of like when that needed to happen um but i also think it's a like just that if you have an incoming superintendent you want to ask them like what they want because most of them are eager to establish working relationships with all the board members because board chairs change um so i think that's it it's better to like you know put a pin in it for when we actually do that and to seek the um input from whoever that new person would be you know in the future hopefully not not in the near future um i think we the last time i talked to guadalupe i told them we're planning on 10 more years so hey ailey um or whomever is keeping a running list of things that it would be good for us to revisit in future uh governance retreats um i think it would be worth our discussing processes for onboarding a new superintendent not that we anticipate doing that anytime soon i'm down with your 10 years haley sounds good to me but also for board members because for example um you know there are a lot of best practices around onboarding new superintendents and introductions to the community and we just didn't do that at all last time with our superintendent and um i think it was a real failure on our part as a board um so i think even though you know it seems hypothetical i think it might be worth um as a board spending some time putting some guidelines around that and also
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talking about um you know onboarding of new board members because the staff does their part in terms of trying to introduce people to you know the structure of the organization and substantive issues but as a board we don't really do much with new collectively with new colleagues and to support them so um i think i think those would both be good things to talk about i know that i completely agree i completely agree with that um i just gave a training a national training about diversifying boards and uh one of the best practices i shared was to create a really strong onboarding and that's when you can't assume that everyone's on the same page in terms of what they understand about an organization and some of the cultural you know things that happen and i also agree we should probably get an onboarding for the superintendent before we need it so we're not you know jamming something together really quickly uh reacting we're actually prepared and we can develop a strong a manual over time um we will have a chance to um affirm our support of our current superintendent as we look at contract extension with him and a retainment offer so just put that away file that as you think about um how we continue to um talk about the superintendent we have now as well as think about the future because we know that um uh many people would love to have the sort of visionary leadership that guadalupe has brought to portland in their districts um anything else on this communications protocol any other copy editing or i've deleted the thing about the new superintendent i think you're right julia that that's a case-by-case basis as we um when we get to that stage we can have those conversations um anything else in this document that you would like to lift up or edit anybody yeah haley can ask a question on the um under the request for information or decision making just two two quick things is there a difference between enf here the e says that staff and superintendent will have the board book and supporting documentation available four days before the board meeting except with second century circumstances which i'm fine with and then in order for borders to be adequately prepared the board office will provide materials they're the same right i thought the same thing i thought that they were basically the same saying that we would have materials in board book four days prior to the meeting and they actually said thursday is the day well and i think um the board book the e addresses all meetings right it gives us that you know like i know the um policy meeting that's on monday we were trying to get stuff out friday so it was four days um so can we delete the the and just make it board meetings and then delete f yeah sir so amy yeah i agree with that oh i couldn't tell if you were saying yeah or no okay thanks and then um another thing related in the same section i don't unless i missed it i looked through a couple times i don't think there's anything in here about how request to questions from board members information is provided to the entire board that's been a practice i know we put in place that you know if a board member asks a question the response goes back to the entire board but i don't think unless i missed it i don't think that's in here so the question i would put to my colleagues is do we do we want it to be i like that practice and it gets a little tricky defining because i don't think it's you know i don't think it's necessarily to every small thing but i it's for me if there's some way to define you know oh i've asked for you know for factual information um you know that that it's just it's nice for all uh board members to receive that back so we all have the same information and then the other thing that was missing here and it's a little bit this is tricky because we're writing our board protocols and this is a little bit more of the superintendent's um place but is there is there a um uh sort of a limit here in terms of of response and and we we do get to it with this sentence of um um yeah staff staff will respond to board members requests and provide options for information fulfillment if the request is time-consuming so that begins to get there and you know for me it is more a question for guadalupe but is there a point where the superintendent says you know what that question is so involved that i need i need direction from a majority of the board before i direct staff to go down that road and i will just you know we've had this conversation before i will say that is common practice in in other governments it's definitely common practice at metro that you know relatively easy information request of course will respond to any member but when you start talking about something that's going to take two three four hours of staff time um that is often where the ceo will go back and say i'm happy to direct staff to spend this
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time but i need to make sure that the majority of the board wants the staff to be spending their time doing this work because otherwise you get into a situation where you know all seven of us could be directing you know literally tens or even dozens of hours of of staff time and i think that gets very untenable very quickly particularly it has happened i mean this is where that has happened so it's it's not a theoretical issue i just did some copy editing on the fly andrew there i realized that it's b is actually the heading of this section providing documents and that those six points all relate to documentation so we needed to lose the letters because we switched from letters from numbers to letters oddly in our document um and then i moved what was the last section of that about questions during board meetings because that's not related to documents that's related to information requests but i do think we need to add a two here saying um when a board member asks a question um we encourage staff to respond to the entire board for clarity i mean how do we want to word that i think that's that's fine because you know all we can do is encourage because we can't direct them but but andrew i agree that it's an important omission here that it wasn't recognized before yeah and um also agree that in some way we need to um address uh sort of the prioritization of time consuming requests yeah maybe maybe in the paragraph right before and again i'm just thinking on the fly i like the sentence that says staff will respond to board members requests and provide options for information from one of the because it's time consuming you know that for you know uh the superintendent may ask the chair um you know again it's on the fly you know um is this the will of the board yeah ma may ask the chair for you know for additional information for you know for for for very time consuming requests there's better language than what i just came up with i would say that's uh that's okay and i'd be interested in guadalupe's thoughts about that i mean i think ones that are related to things we're going to vote on um you know that if board members have questions they should get answered before we vote on them because we're being asked as individuals to take um you know action or vote on something and we should have what we need to be able to to vote on something but for things that are like hey i'm curious about you know how many transfers into you know just because i'm curious because somebody asked me in the community like how many transfers into grant and franklin are you know x and then asking staff to do some like deep analysis that's not based on anything before us i think that i i i think the language that's being typed is i'm supportive of i just think it's it's a different if it's something that hey we're asking you to approve something yeah julia on that julie just really quickly do you see any limit though on that i mean i hear what you're saying and i generally agree but it still feels to me like there has to be an outer limit and again i just i go ahead and here's um andrew what i would say to that is i think sometimes like um so for example if i ask a question and staff comes back it's like hey that's a huge question it's like oh i really actually was just looking for x i mean i think there's there should be dialogue with the the board members like hey this this is gonna you know there's no way for us to compile that information or we're gonna have to do you know x y and z um and these are mainly for things that haven't maybe come through a committee process because i do think when things go through their committee process it's you know pretty much most of the questions have been asked and answered and it's more when things that haven't gone through that and i i do think like the professional just having a professional conversation with a board member of um if it's something for the board meeting is like we can't possibly provide that information to you and here's why um or like here's the status of that um like i had a question the other day you know yesterday to guadalupe of like you know i'm seeing a lot of media reports about um covid cases and you know can you know what's what's going on with the dashboard not like give me the dashboard just like give me an update on the dashboard and you actually sent me something from the link to oha and that like totally answered my question and like hey i don't i don't need the thing i asked for and really it took just a couple minutes for that interaction which could have been perceived as you're asking us to do x y and z and i really wasn't i was just trying to figure out and so so i
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wouldn't i think we should encourage that if there is something that might be a big time-consuming request that's not related to a board vote that that that be a conversation with like first with the board member because they made unintended and then second they may be able to narrow the scope and then second that it i think going to and i can't see the language because you guys pictures are covering up my um the document but the second of being able to like have a mechanism to go back and whether that's you know the full board it's going to want to just make a note about when we say is it the will of the board because the board isn't just a blob um and if we have a diverse board and that means diverse perspectives live lived experience um you know professional backgrounds um we might there might not be a will of the board um so majority i think is that you ailee adding in the word majority um i think that's a good clarification um to assume that we are all bringing those different perspectives and lived experiences etc etc i i am proposing that we delete the line staff are encouraged because it is not our role to direct staff so i think we switched we delete that and say the superintendent is encouraged to discuss time consuming requests with the requesting board member or the board chair um i mean and staff can say you know not now i mean i feel like um i know there's a power differential um i think julia you mentioned that yeah they should be able to say you know if it's something that can be done quickly if it's related to something we'll be voting on is an important point to bring out but i also think if it's something we're voting on doesn't mean just because we're voting on it doesn't mean that we can ask staff to do hours and hours of work i think there's a there's a line there of just because we may want information doesn't mean it's reasonable to get it even when we're voting even when we're making a decision so i think we need to have that boundary that the superintendent can discuss with the requesting board member or the board chair to say you've requested this information regarding this vote and this is not something we're able to provide you i think that that's an acceptable boundary member couldn't say on the day they didn't get what they wanted there's a judgment about relevance and i think the question is who's making that judgment i don't know if you guys read that article that i sent through from san francisco but was kind of there there are many layers of issues going on there but that was one of the clauses from the superintendent in order for him to stay for another year was like these tangential requests that are swamping my staff from the board and keeping them from doing the work of figuring out how to get our kids back in school um won't be tolerated so there's a question about relevance if there's information that's truly relevant for us to do our work and make important votes um i think that's what we're getting at so and i would say truly relevant um given the the level of information necessary for a board member to to do due diligence so one thing i would i would change this is to instead the superintendent is encouraged is may so again we're not instructing the superintendent to do something um but this may and i believe that the best places place to start is with the board member who's asked it because i think you're going to actually spend way more time if there's like a go around i mean we're all you know elected the same and you know i i say i had a perfect example yesterday where i wasn't wanting a huge project to be done i was just like a quick update and what guadalupe gave me was it took him a few minutes to answer and it it totally addressed the issue that i had and i i think it's better it's way better to do it that way and try to narrow and if you can't get it narrowed yeah then go to the board chair and go through this process but i think the does that sentence that i've added work for julia that it says the the board chair the board member is listed first it says the superintendent may discuss time-consuming requests with the requesting board member or the board chair by just listening at first it doesn't actually mean that it's the firs first in order um or to like understand the request i say
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most of the time i think of things it's kind of like i look at how like ryan vander vendelay when he you know responds to somebody who has a public records request that you know like that's going to result in like 2 million responses like i i'm sure that's not what you wanted you're looking for something specific and i think he does a really good job of getting like okay let's make this a you know get you what you want and it not be like an onerous time or financial okay so the superintendent may discuss time consuming requests with the requesting board member to understand the request and then discuss the board chair to determine if the request and resulting resource expenditure is the will of the majority of the board anything else in this document we want to revisit or yes look at yes okay can you go back up to that paragraph um so the first sentence um you know feel free to communicate requests to any member of the leadership team the board office manager and use best professional judgment which by the way has no e unless you're in the uk um on who else to copy on communications um i think we might want to throw in something there about respecting the administrative chain of command okay that might also be where we put in to andrew's point about copying the whole board on substantive responses since it's no place else i added that in number two on this yeah me staff are encouraged to respond to the entire board when replying applying to board questions for information so i've had my hand up for a while i think that was amy's point um is that board members should be encouraged to if we get a substantive response again there's there's judgment about you know having an issue but that we share you know information that we get back if you know occasionally staff will space out see seeing everybody and i think the spirit of what's happened over the last month has been a good example of board um recognizing like that staff is um primarily focused on reopening and that's the most important thing right now and you know just in that spirit it's like um full commit like a lot of communication between senior staff and the superintendent and the board i think is a positive thing so um i don't think any board members have bad intents and it's the so again i guess maybe elevating like this communication is so is so key um because sometimes it's like hey i didn't know that landed on your desk on the day that you know xyz is happening um and and often it's like hey okay that that's that's fine i you know this isn't like by the way it's not a it's not a big hurry or i'm just raising it for you because there's this other time element that maybe you didn't know about you know so again communication i think is key i'm going to put the board part of that first um on to just to again say that it's our responsibility and that we're encouraging staff to do this but primarily this is the board responsibility to share information all right anything else anybody has on this document for edits or copying copy edits or suggestions we are going to take this to staff to review before we vote on it as a board good i don't know about the rest of you but i can't read that fast oh sorry no i was just scrolling for me to see like what i i'm like i'm making notes of like oh that's out of alignment i need to fix that so there will be some scribner's like three like two and three right here both have there's two twos and there's an extra dot on three that's all the kind of stuff i'll fix so ayleigh one actually i see scott's hand is up did you is that intentional scott he's anyway i'll just one quick thing um scott did you have a question uh no that was the old guy leaving his blinker on okay
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i can only see four people so sorry about that hey ailee just really quick uh one of the things at the very end about contracts and it just notes that um the actual contract will be available electronically and i just lost the threat are we are we okay with that are staff already doing that i know there was there is the sort of security issue around that um i just want to make sure that that's something that that staff are okay with i think it's great as long as we've resolved that issue i think we did talk about that and that was the resolution right julia yeah okay thank you okay well i think if there's nothing else on the comms protocols that yeah actually i'm sorry go ahead um those the contracts are available just to board members but the but that's but the staff memo is external facing right that right which i think addresses andrew your issue about the sort of keeping our the specific contracts details secure to avoid fraudulent activities um i think it's in line with the audit we had but that the sort of um any board memos on the contracts are external facing great thank you good clarification and don't we have to request those contracts julia no they're they're just uploaded okay anyway i mean if people if it's like if you go to print out the board book if you actually print out the board book it's you know something like 500 pages usually um because you get all the contracts in there as well yeah i don't do that for just for the record i was going to say that like completely negates any sustainability goals around saving paper yeah all right any further questions on this click do not print oh my god i learned my lesson all right anything else before we move on to our break carol will attest that like i have like struggled with this but gotten much better i know you like to have your things printed out to make notes on i totally understand that so but not all the content underpaid contracts no that's not sustainable all right well thank you all for your great work on that um we had scheduled a half hour break but we've gone 17 minutes into that time so would you all like to come back at 11 30 or would you like to come back at 11 45 what are your druthers 11 30 11 30. i was gonna say 11 45 but 11 30 a little begrudgingly okay well i will see you guys let's do let's give ourselves a full 15 minutes so that will be 11 33. well actually i okay i think only three of us like um so it may just be that amy and i spoke up first so i don't want to i'm 11 33 as well youtube who else is going to do a 17-minute workout with me you can do some good squats and planks in that time yeah totally all right let's give let's do let's compromise let's do 20 minutes so we'll be back at 11 38. okay bye everyone lead us in an initial conversation about guardrails um we don't expect to have guardrails by the end of this conversation this is just um some learnings about uh guardrails from council of great city schools training that rita has done and her coaching work um to kind of help us further this conversation we've been having all year about this piece um kind of secondary piece to our goal setting rita hey rita before we get started just so that i can pull up whatever is going to be the base of the conversation is it the last thing you said or are there multiple emails that well there are multiple emails because um i one of the attachments that i messed up the pages i printed it out and somehow the pages got all my stuff so i would look at the the last the one that with the subject line is corrected materials and that has everything that has everything yeah thank you yeah yeah um so um and and i've pulled him up so theoretically i could share my screen if i can um but i just wanted to preface all of this by saying that um this is all new material to me so um i i generally prefer to talk about things that i have a you know really deep understanding of
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before i go public uh that is not the case here so um i'm gonna have to ask for a little grace um it's um so i've been doing this governance coach training director more i'm sorry i'm just looking at the live stream and see that it still says we're in a break terry has that been changed over just want to make sure we don't proceed without that okay great thank you okay great thank you thanks carrie and carrie i just combined your names cara and terry to uh for keeping us legal in our uh public-facing work thank you okay um so uh this this training has been eye-opening in many ways um and in particular the discussion around guard rails um if you if you remember looking at this student outcomes focused governance manual um that's what we have been referring to especially around the superintendent's evaluation um and and our self-evaluation um that manual doesn't go into great detail about the different components and it's especially i think um a little a little confusing about what the guardrails are so um a couple of months ago i had a training on guardrails which was revelatory for me um so um and it coincided with with the last board retreat which is why i wasn't present um so so i'm going to be presenting my best understanding at this stage about what the guard rails are and how they fit in the in the council of great city schools governance model um so i'm going to start off talking about kind of the the model first and then go into a little more detail about guardrails as i understand um and this was um you can refer um most of this is gonna is reflected in the email that i sent last night in the text of the email so you can refer to it at a later date if you haven't looked at it yet um so so overall what big picture um the the council governance model is grounded in four foundational documents that that they think every district ought to have and the four documents are vision goals guard rails and a strategic plan um and and to some degree ideally um the the four documents should happen kind of um in sequence because there's a sort of cascading um [Music] element of of getting more and more detailed about um the operationalization of the vision so the first thing is the assumption is that every district should have an educational vision like what are we doing why are we doing it what's going to be the student outcomes so it's an aspirational a picture of an aspirational desired end state um it's developed by the board and superintendent um with with a great deal of collaboration with the larger community and it articulates a common understanding of the outcomes we want for students um meaning what do they know and are able to do and that once you codify this vision everything that the district and all of its component parts subsequently do should be designed to advance progress toward toward that vision okay um and thankfully we now have a vision um which is very aspirational it's very i'm uh you know it's a uh it's a sort of best possible world i think um and based on the vision
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um we have adopted goals so the goals are developed by the board um and they're supposed to be informed by an assessment of the current state of affairs versus the desired states embodied in the vision right um and the goals are um an attempt by the board to identify the highest priority outcomes that we want the superintendent to focus district system improvement efforts on right um the goals are supposed to be um developed in collaboration with the superintendent and his team informed by um you know data and an analysis of where we are um relative to the vision what are the barriers that are standing in the way of achieving the vision and um and what are the what do what does the board think are the highest priority areas of focus in the relatively short term so it's like one to three years um and then under the goals you're supposed to have um interim goals with metrics attached so so you know all of this is supposed to be based on data um data can be both quantitative and qualitative um so you know we went through this exercise it was a pretty pretty extensive exercises that we went through over the last couple of years to determine the goals and then associated metrics um and the metrics the the overall metrics that you know there's the goals are supposed to be smart goals so it's um uh what a smart specific measurable achievable result oriented and time limited um and there and the board is supposed to be uh progress monitoring for all the goals okay after the goals come guard rails um so so the goals are kind of putting into action um pieces of the vision right the guard rails are expressions of values um and the values are informed by the principles that are embodied in the in the vision so the board identifies a set of values that should underpin district improvement efforts um often um if you look at the cgcs materials they talk about um guardrails being couched in negative terms so prohibitions are constraints um parameters with when within which the the superintendent has to act okay but they can also be framed as positive values um principles that should guide the superintendent's improvement efforts again the guard rails are supposed to be a kind of collaborative conversation with the superintendent and i think based on previous discussions especially at the at last border retreat um i think this board has expressed a preference to to have guard rails that are positive rather than negative um and and i actually endorse that um because i i think it's a i think it's a more productive way for the board to interact with the superintendent and and it's and it gives a um i don't know i think it's much more accessible to the public if we frame it as a positive as well okay so the the fourth major sort of foundational document is the strategic plan right it's a medium horizon roadmap for system system improvement that's developed by the superintendent and identifies the improvement strategies that are going to be used to address the barriers right including this timing and sequencing of their implementation and the strategies are intended to be appropriate to overcome the identified roadblocks um to achieving the vision okay so um the idea is that these four documents
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um together set the direction of the district and they work in tandem which means that they need to be fully aligned um and they need to be doable so um you don't want to have um you know a whole bunch of goals with with specific measurements specific progress measures plus a whole bunch of guardrails with again um a whole bunch of metrics attached um so you want to have a limited number of of kind of target focus areas um so that the district efforts can be you know can be really coordinated and focused and and you're not just going off in a million different directions um and they all need to be aligned so whatever we have in the goals and the guard rails um should should be aligned with the strategic plan okay i think that's relatively straightforward but is any of it unclear at this point because the next thing i want to talk about is guardrails specifically i think you did a really good job laying that out rita okay thanks yeah yeah i was gonna say the same i thought that when i looked through this last night the first time and again this morning i thought it was really um it's linear and in a way that makes it really easy to digest okay thank you um before we get any um before we start narrowing in anymore i want to ask a question of you so first of all i feel really proud and grateful that we have three out of four of these pieces in place or with the strategic plans soon to be in place but in your opinion before we dive deeper what are we missing by not currently having guard rails in place um that's a good question and and i have to say that's one of the things i've been sort of struggling with like what exactly is the purpose of the god rails um and and again you know i this is this is new to me still so i'm sort of early in my thinking about this um but i think what the guard rails can do if you think of guardrails as as values value statements it's a way for the board to call out specific values that the board thinks are um so um so important they are so foundational um they should be that you know the board is sort of proclaiming these not only to the superintendent but to the community as well so these are kind of uh when we get to the philadelphia guardrails um they call them um non-negotiable conditions um and and the idea you know some of this is is grounded in the idea from the the literature on school board governance um which is interesting in a lot of ways um so the you know probably the essential function of the school board is to create conditions that will allow students to achieve their fullest potential right so setting the conditions um by picking out a discrete number relatively small number of critical values it's announcing to the world that um no matter what else happens these are the conditions we want to be present in every school because we think these are essential for the well-being and the um uh sort of educational advancement of our students um so i think what we're missing by not having these value statements um
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i think what we're missing is a distillation of a lot of the values that are embodied in the vision um but the i mean the vision the vision document is is big you know it's kind of hard to wrap your head around it um it's most people are not going to read it um and even if they do there's so much in there it's so forward-thinking and so comprehensive um that a lot of people can get many different messages from that i mean i think there are a few essential messages that come through but um by having guard rails it will allow the board to call out um three or four kind of essential values that no matter what happens the board wants is is requiring that the district activities embody those values does that make sense yeah it does the only thing i would say is um just for us to pay attention to redundancy like if if if if those if that absence is really to our detriment then i think this exercise is important and we should call it out um but like you i have a little bit of a hard time wrapping my head around this exercise i do i'm not i'm i'm not a hundred percent convinced about what's missing and why if we you know strive to come up with these things it's going to enable us better enable us to create the conditions that our kids need right i'm not i'm not saying that i disagree i'm just saying that i don't i don't see that yet and i've kind of always felt this way about this exercise yes um maybe one way to think about it i guess um i think it's it's hard but like we're elevating some things to like these are you know as you operate and you have wide latitude to operate as long as you're you know you've you know focusing towards the goals and knowing that that's what we're going to measure against these are these are things that are elevated um values like not all values are the same i mean one thing could be like for major decisions or programmatic there must be some sort of you know be informed by student voice just as illustration could be like we're just elevating three or four things to as you go about your operational work that we value as a board and as a you know leadership of the district i don't know that's maybe one way to think about it so it may be redundant but it's an elevation perhaps yeah so i'm hearing you talk rita i'm sorry did you you had your hand up and andrew did as well um michelle had taken off me a couple minutes ago so go ahead michelle i was just um as you're um kind of giving us this um intro rita i'm i'm thinking i'm i'm recognizing the importance of actually putting these guard rails in place as a way to operationalize equity work you know i'm here because of the the achievement gap frankly um that's something that's important enough for me to volunteer for and to pay attention to and we uh historically haven't done a great job there and and i just feel like putting the guardrails in place gets us that much closer to one articulating our values and giving us the uh agency to to act on those values and and so i i'm really happy and grateful for the exercise today um even as i don't know i you know as i was reading through and seeing how things were feathering in together wondering how we would apply guard rails to our vision and and i believe somebody could correct me if i'm wrong but aren't we currently in strategic planning but it has not been completed yet so anyway i i'm feeling hopeful that this gives us a tool it's a tool that's very very important to me so just um the strategic plan um i got an update this week and um it appears that
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we're going to be getting um a it's still a draft but it's it's progressing toward a final version um and i gather we're gonna get that probably within the month so mid-mayish um anyway so really i was just gonna give the example like as we um we've got some of these values embedded in our goals a little bit but because we're still forming like our readiness for high school and readiness for post-secondary life goals you know we would not want to sacrifice arts right we know we have a lot of broken arts pathways and that we've been working to resume those arts pathways and we actually recognize the value of arts in closing the achievement gap so one of our guardrails could be that you know arts education would not be sacrificed or you know social emotional wellness in pursuit of academic right those are already values that the district has established that are in our vision they're already mentioned in our goals but the guard rails would would really dig into those values that we are not just about creating academic success although although that is very very important we also recognize the wellness of the whole child and that we need to be looking at cte opportunities and arts opportunities and have that be sort of one of the guard rails because you know we we had a system before that had sort of allowed in some ways arts and cte and other programs to slip and and we don't want to go back to that part so that's kind of how i see the guard rails michelle functioning a little bit in relationship to closing the achievement gap in those ways yeah along those lines i want to make sure that we take credit for the work that we've already done because when i was reading through this and rita was very helpful thank you for all the research you've done on it but i kept thinking in a lot of ways we've already done some of this work so we've established you know reading and math goals for our students and as part of that we've established the fact that no subgroup within the district will will fall behind right that the data will be provided broken down and that and that the district is not to achieve that goal with with one group but leave the other groups behind i don't have it in front of me just i can't remember exactly how we came up with that yeah i believe that's a perfect example of a guardrail that we already have in place we've also talked about um you know the need for as we as we do communication right and you know with the district that we intentionally um go after groups that have been underrepresented or have not you know been consulted in the past and you know we reach out and and that's something we've already sort of established as a value and i appreciated the fact that you sort of called guardrail's values i i will be frank with everybody i hate strategic planning processes because there are a whole bunch of people who get paid a lot of money to write books where they just rename everything every couple of years and they call it something different and it's a new way of doing it's all the same process and your email was really helpful rita in terms of laying out like yeah it's a vision and it's values and it's you know and setting goals and a strategic plan and and it's the same way as it's been for for 30 years right and this is all that as well i want to make sure and kind of getting back to amy's question i i don't have a problem with the value here i just don't want to duplicate something that we've already done um and for me maybe some of it's just elevating these things that we've done we can slap a guardrail name on him if we want to um and then and then sort of move forward and there may be additional things we want to add in there but i just i want to make sure we're talking about things that that we already have done in this in this area so let me let me i address that um do we need this um i guess my short answer is i don't know um i i'm not saying we absolutely positively have to have this um i but i i wanted to bring it forward um so that the board can think about it um and let me just mention one other thing that distinguishes god bales from the goals so and and this is this is using the the council model of governance and i guess you know as you guys go forward one of the things that you're going to have to figure out is whether you want to adhere to the council model of governance and if so how closely but let me you know the the way the model is set up um the goals are supposed to be only student focused so it's only about the students and and where and they should be around student outcomes okay the guard rails on the other hand are are able to deal with adult behavior adult related
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issues so it's a way for the board to kind of set values or parameters depending on how you want to frame it specifically around different kinds of adult behaviors and the the guard rails are supposed to be logically linked to the goals so um there's you're supposed to be able to um draw a line whether it's a you know a solid line or a dotted line um between the guard rails the the whatever issue the guardrails are meant to address and their impact on achievement of the goals of the the student outcome goals that you've set so there's got to be sort of it's going to be a logical link even if it's not a um you know a direct um like administrative link can i can i interrupt just to put a more cynical spin on this i think what it sounds like is council great city schools came out and said all your goals should be student focused period and then they very quickly realized in all the large districts that that was not sufficient when it came to setting goals superintendent evaluations and now they've sort of said well okay your goals are student focused which i actually fully support they should be student focused and now we're going to create something called guard rails that allow you to get back to some of those those other measures and i guess i just want to want to remember this is the exact process we went through where aj came in and said every single goal and your superintendent's evaluation should be student focused that's it and then not only the board but guadalupe realized pretty quickly that's actually not sufficient because there are other things that we want to talk about that are really appropriate to talk about and so again i just i feel as though we have already gone through a process where we added the adult focus things and we use the osba temple we could use other templates as well to get to the same place where you know council great city schools sort of recognizing their initial guidance really wasn't comprehensive so that's my cynical take on what we've got going in front of us okay so i i can't speak to how this developed you know before my time um and and i'm trying i mean i'm not i'm how do i put this i'm not saying that we have to do this i'm to some degree i'm conveying information that i've gotten um and and some of the things that you're mentioning are things i have struggled with like what why are you doing it that way um [Music] and i haven't yet decided how much of an acolyte of the council governance model i want to be when i grow up um so this is you know you're i i'm sort of struggling with this my own self um so i'm not here to say we absolutely have to do this because you know ordained by god um what i'm saying is this is what the model says we've sort of bought into the council model this is part of it we should at least think about it whether we want to do it and and even if we want to do it even if we do want to come up with a list of guardrails one or more of them may be ex just extracting from some of the goal work that we did um [Music] you know or not or you could decide never mind redundant not helpful i don't see the point yeah and i see scott's hand up so i'm sorry to but i i guess i would start i actually think it makes some sense i think we've already done a lot of this and i would go back to michelle's comment this is important work it's important to talk about our values and operationalize those maybe we just take the work we've already done and we can start talking about garbage and then decide if there's anything we want to add or change to that work to amplify it yeah yeah i mean that's i i think that would be fine um uh and we but we can talk more but there are a couple of other features that i want to mention about guardrails but good scott go ahead thanks um so i um i've come to con conclusion that this is really important um and i was thinking back my experience uh with a local educational institute that i won't name and this was years ago where they embrace
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the the board is only gonna do x um and it was those you know brief number of goals and oversee the head of the institution and that just opened things up process for some really unfortunate things to happen which ended up uh sabotaging the goals of the institute but i i think um the guard rails can be ways that uh can do two things uh one is to like set down some rules guard rails whatever direction of those values around in this case it was collaborative working relationships there were a whole lot of just top-down boom decisions that came that that blew things up but the second thing is communicating to the public about some really important values about how we do things yeah um and and so you know we've talked a lot um and michelle in particular but all of us have talked about uh the makeup of our staff and uh i can see that as a guard rail i can i can see you know i i liked what ailey brought up around the arts because uh i've seen what happens when whoa arts is it tested so there's nothing to measure it by so it doesn't matter [Music] which was a pretty awful result um i like collaboration i like student engagement as uh as a goal so i think there's there's any number of these um i would support uh the next board going through a brainstorming process picking out a limited number and it's not like the others aren't important but it's it's the ones that that rise to the top and i think that would be a really good discussion for that board to have both to engage with a couple of new board members um to pull out those kind of values pieces i think would be uh be really great ali um i think andrew really set a beautiful path forward that we already have some of this embedded in our very work we've done and could we begin by pulling out some of those like the disaggregated data and the equity and in fact not the the like focusing on um black and native student success and then pieces like arts and social emotions are also already embedded there and and would that be a pathway to get us i i really love the philadelphia gold guardrails i love how positive they are and how they they dovetail so nicely with their strategic plan which is online and um i think that that that that we're already doing the work like andrew said and so how do we we not create too many redundancies like amy pointed out but but celebrate that we can really um and a pathway for all students whether that be arts or cte or college or what what have you i i love the idea of actually also um answering that question that rita posed about um is council for great city schools the best model or is there a better one um i know and i mean oregon school boards association you know they're they're in they're in baby steps of their equity path they're not known for being the most you know racially diverse organization you know but they're trying they're addressing um what they can with the leadership that you know that that's there um and so i think that's a really good question is there is there another is there another besides council of great city schools i mean maybe perhaps school board partners um has has has guardrails or has some examples of guardrails that we could also um look at um and andrew i also like the idea of not being redundant and just seeing what we've already got um the one the what i'm looking at right now on my screen is the philly um it's slide eight and it's guardrail four and it's addressing racist practices so it's not necessarily student focused but it's it says our students potential will not be limited by practices that perpetuate systems racism and hinder student achievement underneath nested underneath that idea could be different theories of action or different inputs that we can look at
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such as hiring teachers of color teachers and administrators of color or even no net loss of you know teachers and administrators of color as an example so i was just really quickly i was so excited to see that guardrail in the philadelphia example and then i was so disappointed to see that they don't define it or measure it and yeah they do define and measure their other guardrails so i i'm less enamored frankly with the philadelphia stuff as i went through it but you know we can talk through that but like like this is where again i i feel like you know they put this on all the other guardrails they listed they have all these very specific metrics and how they're going to measure them this one they don't and and there's one thing they refer to in terms of i think um suspensions right high school suspensions um but but they don't they don't all the others are are smart goals and this one is not maybe that's because it was really challenging or i don't know but i hope we don't make that same mistake i think right well i mean this is systemic and if anybody knew how to dismantle systemic racism you know we wouldn't have the problems that we have today you know it is a big it is a big piece to chew off and it and and i don't know that we i don't know that we have uh anybody in in leadership positions that actually knows how to do that and maybe even people that aren't in leadership what i do know is uh the people that are most proximate to the problems have very good solutions many times so can i um can i just talk about the other feature the guardrails we haven't about much it's the the metrics attached to them the or uh philadelphia calls them indicators so the the board establishes the values statement the guardrail um the superintendent establishes the the indicators right so um the superintendent is um is going to talk about the how it you know the the board the guard reel statement talks about the what the the indicators the metrics talk about the how and um and this is this is where you have to keep in mind that everything's gonna be aligned you know top to bottom so um [Music] the the indicators for each of the guardrails um is presumably going to be present within the strategic plan and so how they tackle the guard rail how they address the guard rail um it's got to be aligned with the the larger coordinated system improvement efforts right and um and the those indicators um or goals attached to the guardrails that a lot of the terminology is a little fluid i have to say so anyway i'm doing my best here to translate into english um so the the goals under each guardrail are intended to be like one to three years with an annual refresh so it's supposed to be evolving um and specifically designed to address some of the barriers to conforming with the guard rail that you know root cause analysis and data analysis and all the rest of that has identified already and then and there's supposed to be this sort of iterative process where the um the district side takes action to conform with the guardrail right um so and yeah they're supposed to be smart and all that um so it's i think the pr i mean when i think about it seems to me the principal advantages of having guardrails called out um it's a it's a way for the board and ultimately the district to to proclaim these are the foundational values that we hold dear and in our oversight of the district we will ensure that these values are not violated because that's what we're saying to the superintendent so i think it's i mean to some degree i'm gonna say this um and i don't mean it as a demeaning thing i think to some degree it's a pr exercise like it's
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it's a public pronouncement um and it's um it's something that the the larger community can hold the board accountable for hey rita i i really like the way that you just framed that and it's all starting to coalesce a little bit more for me um i and i like where you ended up because i think it's actually a an accountability measure more than a pr exercise and um to me i mean i'll just say that what makes sense structurally in my mind is for us to go back to our board goals and to create more of like a preamble like the because where we ended up at our board goals was pretty wonky and pretty um data driven and not i mean of course our values are embedded in each of our board goals but there isn't really much of a proclamation or a value statement around them and so maybe instead of a separate you know guardrails or whatever we revisit our board goals and we put more of a stake in the ground about how they represent our values and if maybe in that conversation we might find something missing in our board goals and then we have to revisit that process again but um that was starting to make a little bit more sense to me and have a little bit more utility okay julia thanks so um i was just thinking through this and like thinking about they indicate how they're set by the superintendent i'm thinking maybe this is the place this is like the the place where we're weighing in on the how so through the board goals we've described the what and the guard rails are as you're getting to the what these are the important things about how you do it and we're not gonna we're not gonna be prescriptive because that's not our job um in like directing sort of the operations or or the how but there are some ways that that i do think could get into the the how we do our work um you know we we operate the work needs to be done in an anti-racist way or informed by student vote voice and to me those that's different from we want to see x percent gain in student growth for these groups and i say as long as they're high level and um and there's a only a few of them i i think they they have value but if you try and get into being really prescriptive about the how then we're obviously um in the place and not in the wrong lane so that's just my take about the value and what they made you do yeah ali uh so i think you know uh we brought up andrew brought up the educators of color and i know that that is something that we've we looked at we've used the osda guidelines leadership guidelines for the superintendent's evaluation um and i'm wondering if you know as we put in the guard rails that those could also dovetail with our evaluation and we could move away from the osba one if we wanted to but i know that like that was one of our values that we stated to the superintendent as part of his evaluation is we want increased numbers of of educators of color staff of color um and so that that all kind of to me fits in with you know our our goals are kind of the basis if we're using the council great city schools model which again is not perfect but if our goals are our basis for evaluating the superintendent it would make sense the guard rails then are part of that and it's a way to for us to shore up those values that we've expressed in other ways so the other thing to keep in mind is under the council model the guard rails are included as part of the superintendent evaluation um so so it is a way to um the the specific metrics used i mean the indicators used for that evaluation are chosen by the superintendent um but they have to be you know consonant with the the value that the board has established so i was going to say something after amy at some point it went right out of my head um why don't you let me say uh something please um and that is um and it's something
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that michelle brought up earlier um that i want to flesh out which is and actually you started it off rita by saying is this the system that we want to use um so i want to say two things one one is the the best available research that we know of at least is that it is a second thing is we barely started using it and while i'm all for a learning organization and seeing what else is out there if we if this board jumps from one thing to another thing to another thing um i think it would be more useful to stick with what we have and really let it play out see it work you know fine-tuning it as we go along and this is one of those adjustments that we're talking about as opposed to saying well we just started doing this thing but this looks better over here i i want to say that not to do that but i think i think there's a balance there um that we should pay attention to michelle did you want to did you ever hand out michelle i did thank you i was curious um so that's interesting that kind of is that called like initiative overload where you do something to change right and and then you don't let it a shiny thing look at that over there without without giving um the time without allowing the time to actually see the change that you're expecting but it made me wonder like um in terms of evaluation are we using what are we using to evaluate our successes are we just using state you know testing data or are we are we using third-party evaluators are we uh i mean i know that part of this maybe the secretary of you know the audit might be taking a look at and we're following up on those things but how will we know our change the things that we're putting in place to change have been successful if we if we do nothing i mean how long would we expect i think i've asked this before is it a three to five year we have specific goals that uh with measures uh that we've laid out and two of them are still works in progress the the eighth grade sort of capstone piece of high school the high school piece where we have certain measures like cte completion [Music] college credit dual credit kind of participation and again broken out by race and gender and special education and and all those groups so even our goals are still a work in progress that we haven't fully refined yet but i you know work we at least have that structure set up um my question was more about um the evaluation piece um how how we'll know who's doing the evaluation are we relying on just testing data yeah well i think you know rest reports to us it's not just testing data it's that participation [Music] and we should be hopefully hearing um you know getting an update on the middle school redesign which will embrace that sort of broader capstone uh concept going forward so that that's that's in how that's like an in-house evaluation do we are we relying on in-house i mean do we do we use a third-party evaluator to to assess where we're at with this well i think i think that's the function of the goals that and and you know if we adopt god rails that would also be part of the evaluation process but i think that's the function of the goals and if we're not happy with the comprehensiveness of the goals then that's something we can you know you guys can take another look at the goals but i think that's really the function of it to come up with goals that are that get at um what you know what out what student i mean if we're going to keep it the model that's student outcomes so what student outcomes are we admitted to
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and and the the goals and their metrics are intended to provide the ability to assess how we're doing andrew you've been okay yeah i i still so we have we have a goal and we want to measure the progress against the goals but also like how close we've gotten to reaching the goal and i the question was about how will we know when we've reached the goal and and who's doing the evaluation yeah can i michelle because your points i've actually seen what scott and you were saying is so so complimentary right scott's saying let's not let's not just jump to something new but i and and i hear you michelle saying from the very beginning and now like but i mean how do we ensure that we're getting there i i'm gonna uh where did it go i'm going to share my screen um if nobody minds so and i don't know for sure if this is can folks see that um i don't know for sure if this is the final uh document or not but the superintendent's evaluation for this this year i just want to point out a few things and remember we you know we're still tracking all the data for our our student goals but because of the pandemic year we're also put more focus on these osb a goals when i look at these right i i i'm going to keep coming back to this team i see a lot of guardrails so under visionary leadership 1.4 right if if sort of leading with racial equity is one of our values 1.4 says you know makes progress on pps's racial equity and social justice strategy with a focus on professional development strategies in their history framework well we haven't so it's here what we haven't done is is sort of operationalize this or put a performance measure around this in terms of michelle i think your question you just asked how do we know that we've achieved that i'm going to show sorry if you get seasick i'm going to go down here to communications um you know under communications under 5 2 5.2 engages and effectively communicates with diverse families community partners and other constituencies to strengthen student learning that's another guard rail i think we've already established but we haven't put data around this to know that we've achieved it and then when i go down to organizational management yeah 6.1 under organizational management implements equitable strategies processes and systems to recruit hire develop and retain high performing personnel oh wait that wasn't the right there's one in here um around hiring diverse you know um uh personnel in the district and maybe it was in a different one of the leadership standards but again we've got the guard rail there but without the data in terms of of of how do we establish it so to me i feel like we're really set up well to go through the evaluation process this year which starting very soon um and as part of that evaluation process begin to identify what are the guard rails that we want to focus on for next year and then when our new board members join us and we finalize next year's evaluation operationalize those michelle which i think is i think if i don't put words in your mouth i think is what you just said how do we know we've achieved it and and and then actually like like define those guard rails a little bit more in in detail in terms of of of how we measure those rita am i wrong that that's kind of exactly the process that you've learned about cgc cgcs is laid out yeah yeah um and it's you know i started off by saying there's sort of a cascade effect of of fine-tuning operationalization in order to get to the vision so yes and we've got goals and the way we do you know we can pull out all of this stuff that's embedded in the evaluation instrument that we chose but um but attach some metrics to them and and in the process you're kind of highlighting that to the community like this is what we say we're going to do this is what we say we believe in and now we're going to show you that we're actually you know living into our values right and this is how and the process you laid out is that we as a board would would highlight a few of these right maybe we picked three four five six of these guard rails and then the superintendent would say okay let me develop some metrics around that yeah come back we'd measure it yeah yeah and i love that the superintendent um it's really that the board establishes the what and the superintendent um you know it's in his wheelhouse to to say the how or or or provide the indicators could you send around i'm sorry because i don't have the current version could you send around to us just so we all have that the link to that document yeah i'm not sure i'm going to ask roseanne to send her on the final evaluation document because i i can't remember if the what i looked at was the final one or not so okay great thanks andrew just thanks that really clarified i was you know i was coming from one angle
03h 10m 00s
michelle from another and i was i was trying to and then and you you you pulled that together thank you appreciate that yes and this is a great example of you know something that we all heard from our parents and that's two heads are better than one and that's the beauty of diversity is that we're all um we've got the same goal but we're cutting at it from different perspectives and have different questions so um [Music] let me see if there was anything else i needed to um i think we've kind of covered what i wanted to say um so i guess at this point um i think what i'm hearing is um an expressed interest to uh to take a look at developing guardrails um starting off with what we've already got embedded in our evaluation instrument and the goals and all the language around it um seeing if we can pull out uh a relatively small number of value statements that um that would convey um you know a sense of uh the the board's prioritization of the the foundational values that we want to um we want to embody as a district did i get that right like you're not dismissing this exercise out of hand i i still think there's a little skepticism but i'm sensing that it's diminishing a little bit um so is do do you think it's worth going through an exercise yes okay and that's really interesting to see because everyone you know has something valuable to contribute where that where the skepticism is and if we can you know actually work to address it like in service of improving ourselves continuous and continuous improvement morning that vision piece i think is really important visioning you know um we've got the vision we we need to figure out how to operationalize and how to make that a vision that we can all kind of consensus around i'm curious since nathaniel hasn't said anything um whether you have a point of view on this nathaniel yeah so i'm like many of you struggling to see exactly what the point of guardrails would be um i i do understand they could have some money um i just i want to caution us against making um our i guess overarching goals more complicated than they need to be and more opaque i guess because if we've got different documents that are basically laying out what our goals are it becomes all the more difficult for the public to actually understand what we're trying to do um so i i i don't know i mean i'm certainly all for looking into it more but i think that we need to be mindful of that what were you thinking about for next steps i mean i i think that the idea of looking at and extrapolating guardrails from that that that excites me but i'm not sure what you were thinking as far as our next well i think um i mean i think andrew's sort of hit on it um we're about to embark on this superintendent evaluation um so we're all going to be looking at this instrument and we're going to be we're going to be getting information from him and then each of us is going to go through the instruments and you know do our own evaluation um i think as we go through it each of us should sort of look at the instrument and see if there are pieces of it that we might want to extract and um and kind of elevate into guardrails um i i guess my one caution is that you don't want to have too many because it's like you know if you have if you have eight goals that means you're not actually going to do much on any of them um so it's it's better to have a small smaller number than than bigger number um but we can certainly start off
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with a long list and and you know kind of winnow it down um and i i would i guess to to try to make this more concrete um it might be we're not going to have an enormous amount of time uh during the evaluation um because we're we've cut it down to two sessions um so it you know we're not gonna be able to wax poetic um but it might be worth allocating um some time at the end of the evaluation process you know in that second session um where we can have a a brief discussion of people's thoughts about any pieces that we might want to convert into god rails our executive sessions that our evaluation things are executive sessions and the guardrails conversation might need to be a public meeting so i think what might be better is to have a schedule a work session after the evaluation session to pull those out and begin that process of thinking about guardrails um that we would then take into the beginning of the next year does that does that sound reasonable um okay but but i i would if we're gonna do it that way which probably makes sense um i would strongly recommend that you take good notes as you're going through the evaluation instrument yeah that it should come we can have a conversation at the end of the second executive session about guardrails but then to to actually make decisions or move forward we need to do it in a work session oh absolutely yeah yeah yeah yeah totally and and and i think you know if you remember how many how many times we had conversations about the goals um and and the goals could still use some work i think um i this is not going to be a one and done sort of thing um so yeah um but i think it's um i mean covet braided brain is a thing and i'm getting old i don't know about the rest of you um and my ability to retain thoughts from one hour to the next is limited so just as you're going through it and you know at your desk at home um because you're going to be scoring and giving short comments for each of these sections um i i think that's where you want to start taking notes about ideas you might have about what can be converted into a government does that mean that's a really that's an interesting point so if we if we work on the document in google docs we will all be able to we can't do that we can't we can't um share the google doc because that's considered like in that way because that's correct okay i would be happy to be the quasi guardrail guardian in the evaluation process and just really take notes with an eye toward um those subsequent conversations okay so that i guess that the next the next question about next steps is um [Music] are we i don't remember the answer to this um are we going to be having another retreat um in june okay yeah so i was gonna when we were finished with this conversation i was gonna kind of talk about the broader next steps so i'll just open that now so the plan is that we would have another retreat in june and at that retreat in june we would invite the newly elected board members to join us um and that we would go through our board self-evaluation um to kind of give them some insight into that tool but also you know the new folks won't be able to evaluate because they won't have been here for for this past year so that we would do our board self-evaluation in june which would give us the areas of things we might want to work on for the future and then if we add other things into that june retreat um we could for now the the school sort of agenda item is the board self-evaluation really thank you and this i think fits um within that context is um i know we are focused on reels but i really want to make sure that we come back to the middle school the eighth grade piece because i feel like one of the things we were waiting for the staff said they were waiting for the hiring of the middle school director and we have that person in place and i really feel um right now it's just based on the s back scores and i think we all agreed that that wasn't what we felt would be representative so i'd i'd love for us to before the school year gets started and we're off and running
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that we go back to that because i i feel that's just a piece that's uh super important as we're you know sending kids off into into high school that we've defined sort of what what what the goal is that we're aiming at um okay is is there anything else that we should talk about rita i just want to say thanks for doing this and for very capably leading this pretty complicated conversation i think it's really important that we had it and i think we have a good pathway to kind of keep winnowing in on these issues but um you did a great job and appreciate the work me too you can tell there's a doctor in the house a somewhat confused doctor well i may still send you emails about copy editing just saying but we could just send you stuff to edit keep you keep going sorry michelle what were you saying i think we talked over each other i said we can send rita things just to edit to keep her out of trouble oh i don't know that that's possible to keep her out of trouble but but it what does it say about me that i actually enjoy copy editing it's lots of things they had no comment yeah so it sounds like we have a good path forward we've we've kind of come to consensus on the pieces that were before us today again these are all just first steps our you know shifting board culture is going to take all of us working together for a while to undo some of the white supremacy that's innate in our system and also some of our bad habits um that are not they don't let rise to the level of that but all are all maybe not um as healthy as they could be so thank you everyone for your work on this i feel like we've made great progress um again next steps we'll take all of these materials that we sort of um worked on today to staff and especially to liz for an overview to make sure we're not doing anything that causes problems and then um we will schedule our next retreat to do our self-evaluation and that's where we are and we will vote on all those pieces at a board meeting in may so we can kind of formalize this process okay anything else before we adjourn thank you bailey and thank you again rita and really good work today everybody yeah go team all right thanks everyone have a good rest of your day


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