2021-04-26 PPS School Board Policy Committee Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-04-26
Time 12:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: Portland Public Schools Board of Education's Policy Committee Meeting - 4/26/21

00h 00m 00s
um okay so uh this is the uh policy committee meeting for april 26 2021 um and um this is at an unusual time for this committee so uh thank you everybody for um accommodating a sort of late change um so i think we're going to just um leap into the agenda um so we have um again a pretty full agenda um we have several uh policies that we are hoping to vote out a committee for first reading um and the the first one is the responsible use policy and i think we have a staff presentation yes sorry one second okay thanks so this is our responsible use policy and this is really a replacement of an existing policy um we covered this uh during our last meeting and i was asked for examples of privacy clauses that were included in it so kind of moving towards that point um and one of the one of the issues that came up was the um what we what we have in here is no expectation of privacy and that is a part of our existing acceptable use policy which is what this replaces but was asked to find some other examples of that in where that exists in other districts and around the country so the first one we found was beaverton school district and doesn't say quite as succinctly no expectation of privacy but files and other information including emails sent or received generated or stored on district servers are not private and may be subject to monitoring um so one of the things like uh like this is that the the language is a bit software but it does convey similar meaning we would just need to con change the language at the end of this where it says district owned email system to just district systems rather than just email another example is in washington schools so washington schools use a similar policy book through all schools and um this one's um probably a bit more abrasive than something that we'd want to put in there the last line um or the second to last line the district reserves the right to disclose any electronic messages to law enforcement officials or third parties um probably uh probably a bit brusque for what we're trying to do but it does have a lot of great detail on where that where that no expectation of privacy exists what a different way to do that because um sorry um thank you for the presentation um just the different examples one question would it be like lots of public entities um at the bottom of their email have like a you know this is a public record so instead of saying like we're going to provide it to um to lawn law enforcement which seems to kind of reinforce this may reinforce the thinking of a school-to-prison pipeline of more like these you know it's public it's you're using a public resource i'm just wondering if that's like a different way to disclose that something's public um and that that's certainly good but the this is not limited to email and i'm not recommending that we use the washington language by any means i think that that's that's probably a bit stronger than what we'd want um but it the no expectation of privacy also includes you know that bringing it back to that real world analog um if we saw smoke coming from a locker we would open that locker um you know if google calls us up and says somebody is sharing a copyrighted movie file out of their google drive we have to act and that's the reason why but when we go in and we would act we
00h 05m 00s
would also take a look at well they told us about this one file are they sharing dozens or hundreds so that that's a part of why that language is there and our language is soft it doesn't doesn't have a reference to law enforcement if you look at um it's under four uh a paragraph for fostering safety and security of users we give an explanation as to the as to the why which i think is helpful um and then what the length the actual language is the district may monitor intercept and review without further notice activities occurring on the district's technology resources users should have no expectation of privacy while using district technology resources so it's a little softer than what washington put forward while still being very clear to the user um what to expect i have a quick question about the disclosure to law enforcement by not stating it in there does that mean we are not allowed to disclose it to law enforcement or is it just that we're not including it in the policy just not including that reference in the policy if when law enforcement comes to us with subpoenas we are legally required to provide it additionally when there's when they're accompanying dhs for a child welfare investigation we were required by statute to provide them information so just other examples that we we found in uh just a precursory glance um eugene has something similar they refer to a network network is really not appropriate in the cloud age you know we would have to say something like systems or have a definition of network that includes our intangible and tangible assets like google cloud accounts and that sort of thing and uh san francisco unified has a very detailed but still kind of gets down to that same one and yeah we also find this when we look at other districts like boise clark county denver cincinnati public sector entities like city of portland multnomah county and companies like nike and columbia so why do we do this first and foremost it's a warning you know the last thing we want to do is uncover information that somebody may wish to be private so if there's something that you would rather people don't ever know don't store it on these systems uh second it's a bit of a disclaimer kind of like i mentioned you know if google calls us up and says somebody is sharing something out of their account we have to act um and something something about that also is that if we don't there's some pretty draconian consequences from somebody like google they can actually shut off that student's account and then we have to find other ways for that student to get access to those technology resources and then the third you know it's intended to shape behavior there's knowing that there's no expectation of privacy may prevent somebody from doing something and protect us from the actions or the the implications of that activity but the other thing it can help us do is identify systems where we may need to keep information confidential and private if there's something like an anonymous anonymous reporting requirement let's get a system put together that can establish anonymous reporting because email by its very nature is not anonymous you you do have a lot of metadata information that comes in with a received email that could identify potentially inadvertently somebody making that report however we can get systems that would produce something like that we actually have a system that does it now we have um we refer uh people to the safe oregon site which allows you to report anonymously so that's currently i think it's on our student uh support web page it's also on the title nine webpage um and i think we're talking about including it in the if i recall correctly in the complaint policy perfect and and that's also something that you would use for um confidential conversations with students um through medical professionals uh mental health professionals to be specific so i have just a quick technical question do we i'm looking in the packet of materials for the meeting do we i'm not seeing um the proposed policy do i just need to go look at it somewhere else i'm looking through the like where is the pps the proposed language there there was uh i think there was an error in the
00h 10m 00s
posting and um if you were if you're on the board book um if you refresh it uh the the computer use policy is now posted okay it wasn't yeah there are no changes from the last time but it wasn't there until this morning actually it's called the responsible technology use policy in the new direct so any other questions i know i just i find this very helpful as we consider this language and i do agree director from edwards that i mean i think we we want to be clear with people but i i think you know um stating law enforcement uh might receive this i think that's the extreme case we want to be clear with people that they don't have an expectation for privacy but i think we don't want to bring law enforcement into it unless we need to because that is not our first avenue so what say you um we have some alternative uh language um some examples from other districts uh do we want to amend the language that's currently there um i think i think where we've where we are is that the the gist of the um existing language um needs to stay there in some format in order to protect both users and the district we don't want anybody to be under the misapprehension that there is that their their use of um district systems uh carries any any privacy um so we want to be clear uh but we want to be a little uh politic i guess [Music] exactly and this is slightly off topic but how do we inform students and reinforce that notion around privacy so it is in the student handbook and i know that one of the things that the dsc was talking about doing was creating like a student bill of rights or just sort of a one-pager for students to kind of articulate um what students can expect jackson is that something the dsc is still working on um we've talked about it um we've just been kind of working on covid and reopening for a little bit now um but that's something we are considering yeah so one one would be that a lot of large oh i'm sorry go ahead i didn't know you were last year when we had talked about some of this stuff with the search and seizure policy was um stickers or um you know things on lockers or signs at school signage at schools also to help students be aware of that um that that was one thing she was contemplating but i don't think anything ever happened with that director from edward sorry to interrupt you oh i'm sorry i wasn't didn't know you hadn't finished um so one thing is you can when somebody turns their computer on on the sign in screen that's a pretty common place for that disclaimer to appear is one one way um so like essentially you get it every time you you go online um just a reminder one thing i think we should be careful not to compare our policy to the private sector because if you're an employee of a business like you're an employee and i think our student relationship relation to the district is different um and so i just i think it's better for us to use public sector examples um and i don't i think there's an i appreciate the sort of sampling of different languages that can be used i think we need to like lead with some sort of value statement um and like why would we be doing it because to me otherwise it reads a little
00h 15m 00s
it comes across a little bit as big brother versus like there are legitimate reasons for as i've been cited already in this meeting for why the district would um would do that but i but i'm not seeing that in the draft policy and i think that might be a disclaimer i mean i know like when uh the whole all the file sharing apps came out at first um you know uh i i know personally some um teenagers who were students at pps at the time who were really surprised when their like their access got shut down because like hey everybody's downloading that free music or whatever and it's like oh yeah but it's copyrighted and um you know there is the ability to um shut down that if you're violating copyrights which is you know i think not something that we should be turning over to law enforcement but like sharing with our student population especially high school students about the value of intellectual property and why the district should be um we should be protective of intellectual um property and well i follow the law also but to me that's maybe a couple sentence lead in of just like why we would do that versus like we're interested in what you're sending to your friend or what you're emailing your teacher about um yeah i think just for me julia the scope and the beginning of the policy where it says sort of lays that out of what are the values that you know we see technology as a tool to enhance student education but that we're also interested in digital citizenship which is what i think you're talking about right like respecting intellectual property is part of digital citizenship so as you know the cyber bullying person um and so maybe we talk about we can be a little more explicit in the scope portion to outline some of those values but i feel like this part is really cut and is is trying to say with some value you know not saying we're going to go through your stuff but when there's an issue we we are going to do that to like stir ensue ensure there we go ensures the word i want ensure safety and security we didn't add um and we talked about this and travis you can probably speak more to the the specifics of the laws but there are two laws that are really driving a lot of the the the monitoring requirement that's our federal laws and state laws sipa and coppa and and i don't know if that would be helpful to understand the why that's because that's part of the the why when we we talked more generally about the security and safety and those statutes require us to do certain monitoring force for student safety so travis can you can you help me out here sure um sippo is the children's internet protection act and um under it we are obligated to protect students from two things um pornography and what is very loosely defined as harmful content and when i say loosely defined it it's not um it is one of those things that is kind of up to the community to interpret so um there's some obvious wins there right you know hate speech and drugs and gambling and things along those lines that really just don't have a whole lot of academic merit um so we kind of bound those together and that's what we we protect um via sipa but sippa is also one of the few laws that have teeth in this regards where we actually have a financial incentive to do this based on our e-rate reimbursements so we are actually asked are we complying with sipa at the time that we go and ask for the these reimbursements and this reimbursement comes to several million dollars a year um and then coppa is the children's online privacy protection act it does reflect uh largely the vendor's obligations to protect our student data but part of that is needing to be able to see what is in that student account or needing to be able to see for instance like flipgrid um is an example where you would have a district district account um established on flipgrid but it is owned by flipgrid and the the third-party relationship is between pps and flipgrid being able to say that a student is sharing a piece of content out there that is inappropriate means that flipgrid doesn't necessarily act on it or the the workflow for that would be a student told a student who told a teacher who then comes to us in i.t and we have to go and pursue that that would be a a long conversation with the vendor we
00h 20m 00s
really don't have a direct administrative access to something like flipgrid but we would engage with flipgrid to try and get to the bottom of what is in that that student's account and try and get that content removed before it was viewed any wider so would it would it be possible um maybe it would be helpful to um have a couple of sentences um under um looking at number four let's see uh two under purpose uh no uh for fostering safety and security of users um would it make sense to have just a couple of sentences saying that you know pps is required to comply with you know some federal laws and you can mention what they are um and as kind to to sort of frame the the frame the rest of it you know and and that means that you have no privacy um but it it kind of um it explains the reason for no privacy and it kind of um provides some some parameters for the circumstances under which um the district might have to uh you know go in and look at things or take things down would that be possible i don't think it should be framed solely because we're only doing this because we have to i think they're good reasons for protecting our students right right nuance there yeah um also i i mean just this is the way the world works like we're we're also having to um educate students about behavioral expectations out in the world when they leave and out in the world um if you are using someone else's system you are subject to their um constraints um and there there is no privacy i mean if you're using in the public sector or in the private sector um if you're using your employer's um system you you better be careful which put on it because people are gonna know or they could know privacy period regardless of right what you're using yeah yeah and i think we have to balance that also with um if you're a parent who works during the day doesn't have access to a computer or to like be able to call a teacher or stop by a classroom at the end of the school day during non-dependent times you would send something like i have a concern about my student and it may be really personal and you send that by email and like oh this like somebody's monitoring this i think that's why it's i mean parents are gonna need to be able to use that and i also think students will use it in a way to you know maybe disclose personal things that you know there's nothing wrong with them but they would want to keep them private because they're you know deeply personal and right so so in that you know if you add the sentence about the statutes that are governing it among the statutes governing it things like ferpa yeah and put in layman's layman's lay people's terms um what what that is and i think uh there was probably two sentences that i could have pulled out there of like like the descriptor of what what those statutes do and it's like oh i'm not writing about you know like i'm not file sharing or using somebody else's like you know intellectual property or not you know spewing hate speech um but i am writing something intensely person personal about my child to my child's teacher and that's obviously not in this other category so i do think that is helpful so one thing i also want to point out is that this is this covers staff as well as students so there may be a time where we are aft throughout through a proper process by hr to go in and investigate a staff emails or a staff member's emails that may not be reflecting any particular law but in regards to their performance so i'm i'm very reluctant to restrict this down to a set of laws that govern this action like it this is this is not necessarily for the laws we comply with but for the things that we can't predict if you know it's it's that smoke coming
00h 25m 00s
from the locker example i don't know why smoke would be coming from a locker but i should be able to react to that if i see it so you think um making a specific reference to statute would um would be too restrictive in unless the sentence was ended with or other reasons okay i could certainly do that okay perfect i'm okay with that because i think it gives it gives like the rationale for the average person like yeah i'm that this is not a this is not a smoke signal that i'm sending out there this is like which is what they're looking for or there's an example so i kind of get why they might they would be monitoring for that but this is like something that doesn't appear to fit in any of those categories so um okay so travis do you think would you be willing to go back and take another crack at crafting a sentence sure um and i think so let me ask would you be would you be willing and able to send it around prior to the next committee meeting yeah absolutely um because uh you know we're we're running out of daylight um for the school year uh we've only got uh i think two meetings scheduled after this one i think it's two maybe three at most three um so um i think ideally we want to get this out we want to get this on the books prior to the start of the next school year um which means that you know we're running out of time um so ideally if you could uh send around some draft language that responds to these concerns um maybe a week before the next board me the next committee meeting i can do that um and then i will ask committee members to to look at it as soon as you get it and if you have any any concerns or want to suggest some edits or revisions um then alert the rest of the committee so that when we meet next time we can hopefully um finish this discuss you know sort of come to a resolution of this issue and voted out a committee so that the full board can consider it for a first reading fantastic i absolutely can do that i'll get that out as soon as possible okay that would be great thank you okay um all right uh the next item is um thanks again to our staff i think we're really really close so yeah thank you i think yes i think we can do this um we'll we'll get it out of committee next time fantastic thank you okay thanks um okay next order of business is the climate crisis response um draft policy and um we have we've had several revisions and um uh who who's so liz who is going to be leading this discussion is it going to be us or staff i i think at the outset you and scott were going to lead the discussion to walk through how we got to this draft and the work you two directly did to that also i um i don't think we have introduced uh our newest dsc member so i wonder if we want to oh yes and i don't know if nathaniel or jackson you want to make a formal introduction or what would be helpful um if the oscars here oh jackson do you want to take this yeah sure um since um jillian left this committee we had i guess a spot open for another rep and oscar calvert the rep from mlc um took up that spot and oscar i don't mean to put you on the spot here but i also want to make sure we acknowledge your present you want to introduce yourself just briefly and tell us a little bit about you
00h 30m 00s
hi i'm oscar i use uh keve pronouns and this is my first year on the dsc and yeah i'm really excited to be on policy committee welcome okay we're excited to have you thank you okay i'll just plunge in yes okay um just in terms of process-wise uh so since our last exciting episode um rita and i sat down and uh so the last draft we saw was the first uh or one of the first drafts with the four pillars um we sat down and looked at that structure and ended up moving a few items from one pillar to another because they thought they were better aligned we changed a little bit of language but made mostly some minor adjustments uh while trying to keep the spirit of the policy moving forward and as well keeping that overarching goal that has a numeric value that's pretty unique i i don't know that we have policies that have a numeric value like that in terms of reducing our carbon footprint we thought that was important to keep though um and then we've been working with aaron and monica and other staff to kind of go back and forth to make sure that we're not asking the impossible and really keeping the focus on what can we do what's what's the most effective way to move forward that has the biggest bang for the buck so to speak in terms of reducing our footprint um though some of the later latest iterations came from monica around clarifying and expanding language around student engagement we thought it was important to have things in the policy that uh engage students around the the day-to-day life of the student which might not necessarily be a huge step forward in terms of carbon footprint but impact the you know plastic forks in the cafeteria are a thing um and so it's important to include pieces like that uh the other language i tried to add in was to say hey this is really uh it's almost like a 20-year policy policy that we're looking at so just because something isn't in the policy doesn't mean we expect it to be addressed right away again uh part of that is because uh some of it would involve some pretty extensive infrastructure work that should be best rolled out through our bond program as we rebuild schools to do that most effectively [Music] and other things just just take a long time and immediately aren't really uh the highest priority in terms of uh lowering our carbon footprint um and i think monica had i mean just some changes just in the last couple of days so that's where we are process wise um i ran this by uh mike and amy and jane from the climate committee who have been done such great work in informing this policy um what i'm hoping for is that this meeting on the next meeting probably the next meeting we end up on a a good final draft that when we can then take out for public engagement because shanice is just sitting around twiddling her thumbs waiting for things to do that was a joke i think shanice might be the busiest person i know um so that's that's my kind of 30 000 foot look at it um so how about if we have um staff weigh in um i think aaron's our rep right now who else um is here on staff and then um
00h 35m 00s
ask if uh who's here mike chain and noel [Music] have have any comments after having some time to digest the draft that i shared with him last week i'll just add a couple more things um so our goal between now and the next meeting is to meet with all the departments that are involved and just to kind of go over each step and make sure okay are these still okay what do we need in order to get to this eventually what kind of you know phase-in plan are we looking at so we have meetings on the books over the next couple weeks with nutrition services transportation and purchasing and also our maintenance and grounds department to just kind of walk through the specifics as it relates to each of those departments to make sure that um everything looks not impossible and that if it does look close to impossible how can you strategize to make it work so there may be a few tweaks um either there's either going to be tweaks to some of these items or there's going to be tweets to the way that we have to change the way the departments operate which is you know going to be an implication of a lot of these but we just need to make sure that it all everyone's on the same page and that we can make it doable okay um and just want to invite um well noelle jane and mike if you have uh um comments questions yeah thanks um we didn't have a chance to go through it and overall um we were happy with the edits and think that the documents really shaping out um we really liked i think all of the additions that you put in the kind of more specific items under the pillars um and there was some strengthening of some of the wording so that all looked great we do have what i would like categorizes some fairly detailed comments that we won't pull everyone through in this discussion but would be happy to share them by email share a markup with um our detailed suggestions via email and would be more than happy to also have like a an offline meeting about that to walk through some comments and questions that we have as well um i think one of the higher level questions and comments we had was we noticed the um the item uh talking about setting a district source energy use intensity goal was taken out and we would love to see that stay in because it's such an impactful source of emissions from pps the building's energy use um yeah i think i'll just pause there i wanted to know also if there's some clarity at this point chinese around community outreach one of the things we talked to scott about was that it might not start till the fall and so we were wondering if we could collaborate a little with you on that and hear some of your at least initial ideas on how that would work absolutely i can hop in i can help and now i know there's a question funding as well um so i think that's right especially um just considering um the just the next couple of months for for high schools in our schools um and uh having and considering our board resolution and the work that you all have done to kind of really build up uh the crisis the climate crisis response policy as it stands i think that um there's really uh i'm left with some of the next steps in uh previous work that has really shaped where we are and and so a lot of touch points with organizations and young people um and i think in the spirit of of the resolution and kind of building up uh the goals for our system um the having that participation from frontline communities i think in folks uh him impacted by climate change
00h 40m 00s
and hit hardest um i think could be an interesting consideration for for thought partnership or additional insight on some of the priorities right that that are called out and so i think at pps our theory of action especially is thinking about our communities of color our black and native students and um can have some space in the fall where where we do a few things we have many kinds of spaces where where students are finding a sense of place and belonging and increased resources uh to kind of build those up and so i think the indeed between indigenous student unions and pacific islander clubs and bsus there's some capacity to reach students um in in those spaces um have class visits um and connect with our student rep or folks who are participating on the policy committee as well i think could give some insight um on uh additional pockets of students including the district student council so i think those are some uh initial thoughts um and i know there's some community organizations that may or may not have insight that's already shared uh but um i know specifically our bipod community organizations that have an interest um especially with this intersection of climate action and youth engagement um could be even poic to be honest is really engaging with organizations like verde and apono and so i think those those come up for me but i think there's a lot of opportunity we could absolutely work together and um think about um how we align right the the work that's already thank you and i actually think that engagement actually moves the policy forward by you know starting to live the policy essentially or continuing to live the policy so um this is i think an opportunity to really take our time and do some deep deep work will further the goals of the policy i just want to address jane's comment about energy use intensity so we we try to focus on not having a lot of metrics in the policy itself we do have eui targets in our design and construction standards already established so those will be taken care of through through the bond work um and and if you look at goal 1.1 it does have a more vague description of you know use appropriate industry standards when designing new and modernized buildings um so that'll that'll feed into like leed certification and um like net zoo already buildings and ui targets and that kind of thing i had oh i'm sorry well i just yeah i want to support that um and say that the place where that i think is the plan as opposed to the policy or the plans so i had a follow-up question on that and maybe it's for aaron um one of the goal that we set is net zero ready is there a reason why we can't with um new construction move just to knit zero um it just depends on i mean it's hard to set that right now in terms of like the current bond because budgets are set um solar is expensive um so it's just it's just hard to think about that in this sense but going forward we could definitely we can definitely make that i mean i don't want to speak for everybody in the office of school modernization here but i think it's something that we can work towards um and we can probably change that language a little bit the reason we say netzer already is because oftentimes solar is not it's just too expensive like with all the other competing priorities in the budgets and when we already have the bond budget set for these upcoming projects then um we just make a net zero ready and then later on we can add solar at a more cost effective manner so it's definitely something we can we can discuss though and then i just had one more follow-up parent not a follow-up but one more question aaron i didn't quite get everything you said about
00h 45m 00s
working with the other departments so just so i understand there's some more um collaboration feedback you need from the other departments that might impact the draft that we have now yeah it's just a just a check in with them so we're just a courtesy that we're meeting with the department directors and say okay here's the most recent version of the draft do you have any questions do you have any concerns okay great and you know one of the things just in closing um a lot of the work we did to get to the draft that we submitted came from collaboration with aaron and his team and some of the department heads so i just wanted or all the department heads and i just wanted to acknowledge that and thank them because they put in a lot of time to you to get to this point and it was really appreciated up front saves time later down the line so okay any questions from committee members julia i have a question um but i i do want to just um thank jane and mike and the community members who did the really heavy lift to construct what i think is a groundbreaking policy draft and so really want to thank um you all for bringing that and i'm looking forward to like your your details uh your detailed um sort of feedback on this draft and thank rita and scott for um sort of moving it through the process um and i don't have a lot of big changes but i'm glad we sort of pivoted away from hey just have a big like a big broad vision statement in policy and then [Music] and that's it i think this is really will create a great framework for the district um in how we think about our work so and i think it's really comprehensive and does a great job and i look forward to you know where there may be gaps or things missing that um shanice and team when they talk to our students in the community that that gets fleshed out but um i'm excited about the work and really appreciate um all the community engagement that has happened to date and that we've got a solid draft uh to move forward haley has a sick child so she may be tending um jackson i don't have anything just making sure to check in um i think it's called the climate um student advisory group or climate um there's a climate advisory group with students just to make sure to check in with them um yeah otherwise i think i like it it looks really good oscar um i think this is a good policy and i think it allows pps to step in the direction towards and what actually when reading this it became you know we're entering an environment where we're preparing for uh climate change rather than saying uh let's prevent it so it was kind of and reminding me that we're entering a different stage with dealing with climate change and that this is a good step to ensure that we're prepared yeah that's an important piece of it um great okay if um shoot me and or read an email if reading over it another thought occurs i think when we do go out uh for that engagement i know every time that we've talked to students about it they want to get that specifics they want to get to the number of the plan which is great um and i think it's important to remind folks there's policy and there's there's plan um and what what the difference is going forward so that we don't end up in a wow i'm really frustrated because i had all these particulars that i thought should be in it um that's kind of a i think an important distinction to keep in mind um as we move through this uh okay i think we're good then um so um [Music] mike and and jane and noelle um i'll shoot you an email and let's set
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up a time real quick do you think staff need to be in on that or um i think it would be helpful if aaron and or monica at least was part of that meeting yeah yeah i agree okay we'll set something up then thank you rita you're muted thank you sorry about that um so uh just thinking about timing um how soon do you think you you know that group can get together and um and consider additional um edits um do you think it can happen prior to the next committee meeting can we shoot for that oh yeah oh definitely definitely okay i think that's definitely on my end yeah it's it's up to aaron yeah i think aaron when we talked what 10 days ago there was the goal was to have done those staff reviews before the may 10 meeting so i would look to you to make sure work with scott to try to get that sequencing right and maybe the sequencing doesn't matter that but i'm guessing it would be better to finish the staff reviews than have the meeting with mike and amy yes we have a couple yeah that makes sense we have a couple this week and a couple next week so um but yeah i don't see a reason why we couldn't schedule it in between it's up to you scott i'm flexible yeah okay that's good um let's touch base and uh we'll figure out how to set up a meeting timely okay um so i think just to just to remind everybody um like what this is going to mean ultimately um we are not going to be um this commit this iteration of the policy committee is is not going to be able to vote it out for a first reading because we're going to we're going to get it as um as refined as we can make it and then it's going to have to be on pause pending um the community engagements that will happen next fall so just sort of making sure everybody understands like how this is going to work out um i am going to make a request that um the uh incoming board members following the election one of the things that ends up in their onboarding packet assuming we have one is this policy so that um they can be brought up to speed um like from the get-go um and can be it can be kept apprised of the development even if they're not on the policy committee ultimately um and then my final request is going to be that scott and i be invited whenever this comes before the board next fall for for adoption it would be nice if scott and i could be there to applaud so anyway um okay so we'll continue with we will tentatively put it on the agenda for the next meeting um if by some chance you guys don't get a chance to to meet up and we're not ready we can postpone it a minute but but i think it would be nice i like the momentum we've got going here so it would be nice if we could keep that up until we settle on um a draft that that we're pretty pretty happy with and we can and at that point we can put it on pause and hand it off to the next generation of policy committee people okay um just one more thing uh and i apologize our student rep on the climate uh working group is is that you jackson it was nathaniel and myself i couldn't make the last meeting but yeah um so do you want to be involved in our our meeting with uh jane at all i would like to um i have a pretty busy schedule so like don't like try to schedule around me i'll make it if i can i'll just keep you all informed awesome
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okay um all right so thank you to everybody who's been working on this it's um i i think we're really heading toward a a nice final draft um okay um let's move on to the next item um this is going to be led by mayor kane and um it's kind of a uh it's going to be a sort of extended introduction to a suite of policy changes that we're going to have to be considering um and this is the first time we've broached this subject so mary's going to walk us through um why we're looking at um a suite of anti-harassment policies and what we need to do with them so i'll hand it off to mary so um the 2019 legislature um passed a number of statutes around uh sexual harassment harassment and we have been working for the last year and a half incorporating them into our policies um and or creating new policies such as the workplace harassment policy um we were starting on [Music] developing new policies to to fulfill those requirements and realized that just adding a number of other policies which was more confusing would be more confusing to readers you don't know which policy you fall under and how it works and so we took a more holistic approach and and and looked at the policies we currently have and look to see where we could incorporate some of the new required language or processes into our already existing policies so that it's a kind of a one-stop shopping while we were looking at this we also reviewed some of our policies current policies to see if they actually um made any sense um and and so what you see in the the there's there are two matrices the one that we're going to focus on is the for this committee or the policies but just uh for your edification i wanted to tell you that we've also been working on the administrative director directives uh as well um to look at the different processes but um uh and liz was so helpful in in helping me put the final touches on these policies and so what you can see is we have incorporated uh in one instance of the two student um uh student centered policies uh four three o six o and four three i wonder if we might get roseanne or someone to put the make the matrix up so when you're referencing the numbers people can follow along on the screen i think that might give me just a moment i'll be happy to get that up super and while rosen's doing that i just want to say oh no thanks mary and leanne uh who have like been working on this stuff and grinding through it for a long time the the statutes that were passed i mean they're a difficult group to reconcile and they have a lot of specific requirements so it's instead of being able to craft kind of an objective driven set of policies the statutes say the school district policies shall say this and then repeats in a slightly different subject area and then repeats again in a slightly different subject area and so it's from a drafting perspective i think it's it's difficult and i i expect at some point that someone in the legislature is going to try to make those work together better but that's not where we are and so the the hard work that mary uh and lenient have done to try to slog through those is really um admirable so i am grateful actually for all the work they've done all right we should have the matrix up in just a second and for anyone following along on the work plan no worries um these were formally labeled the title ix policies but they're actually quite broader than title nine which is just a federal statute so we thought it made sense to refer to them as the anti-harassment policies but if they are not intended to
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be different just more appropriately labeled you have it up wonderful thanks so can everyone see the matrix for the policies of the policies the the enlargement is is uh gratefully accepted by those of us who are old so um what we have done is made amendments to existing to the existing um anti-harassment non-discrimination policy 1020 we've also made amendments to [Music] the workplace harassment policy that was just um passed i think was it last year that's 51060 um and then to the professional conduct policy and i'm sorry it was just before the full board in february but we needed to include um this is what liz was referring to earlier the the definition of sexual harassment in the various statutes is slightly different and so in order for um one policy to um be complaining about for all the statutory requirements we we just need to we needed to add some additional language the one big change is in the student the two student policies one is 4.3060 anti-harassment and the other is 4.3070 teen dating policy the anti-harassment policy is really focused on bullying cyber bullying um and it it it it melds well with the teen dating violence domestic violence policy because that too is also directed around um cyber stalking sexting um um uh harassing uh and so we incorporated the requirements of the two um policies into a single policy so we're asking that you um we need to rename it um 43060 but then um and once you look at the language and see how we've incorporated the team dating policy into that then we can rescind the team dating policy we can also rescind the um or we're recommending that we rescind the grievance procedure sex discrimination this is a policy from 1976 and it outlines um title ix as it i mean it's a it's a lovely historic relic um but it it doesn't reflect turn current title ix requirements um we're also recommending that um we uh rescind the sexual harassment staff to student i don't remember offhand when this this is also a very old statute and and we address the behavior in the professional conduct policy it's not necessary here mary yes um just a comment i would suggest that on our written materials um that if we're rescinding something because it actually is covered somewhere else that we be like crystal clear that that is versus like we're just rescinding our you know policy relating to teen dating violence just so that that always travels that like it's not that we're getting rid of the the concept um but it's incorporated um in some something else it's just it worries me to if you do a quick scan just to see that second column um right and so how do we we can what i can do is expand on that in the staff report leanne and i can work together to explain uh very clearly the why we are asking for rescission of certain of certain policies um um i i guess my assumption was that these would go as a portfolio together but um i i don't know what you're you all are thinking if you want to take them one at a time it's just an overarching comment um that because things are gonna people are gonna look at individual pop like hey they're gonna resend this policy it's just like it's almost like you know say let's take the teen dating violence
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domestic violence policy like rescind slash you know content move to whatever number it's almost just like taking the far right hand column and marrying it with that second column so that it's clear like we're not rescinding the concept it's just going somewhere else i can do that thank you and i do recommend to your question mary i mean this is obviously very much a committee member's call but to the extent possible i think having these as a suite of policies moving together gives context to how they all work together and keeping them as a package if possible is helpful as people understanding what the board is trying to accomplish it's our intention to work on them all together because there is so much that they are so interrelated um and we have a subgroup that is meeting on may 3rd so um the intent there's an error in the agenda actually and i apologize for not catching it before now that the staff recommends voting out of committee today but that is actually not what the uh staff recommendation was even though um staff including me worked on the agenda so to be clear the the goal with today was to have an introduction to for the full committee to see what the the suite of policies that are involved have mary walk through at a high level and then that may third meeting that's already calendared is to be where the work group can dig in on a more detailed level and look at those with more specificity okay so um does everybody who is on the work group know that they're on the work group so my understanding it's um ailee and julia and um i i'm not entirely sure i believe jillian was on the work group so jackson [Music] uh um and leanne okay okay so um we will be revisiting this uh i think at our next meeting on may 10th that was the plan okay all right so um any other questions before we move on to the next thing this is just a general question are we gonna have a break at 1 30 like a 5 minute well i think i was thinking actually i'm having a break right now i wouldn't be opposed to that either um because i think we're we're blowing through this agenda which is a little unusual for us so um we had a schedule don't jinx us rita don't jinx us okay we are not ahead of schedule no um but we are able now to take a break um so do you want to make it 10 minutes okay so we'll meet back here at 1 20. and next on the agenda is um a discussion of some technical amendments to the complaint policy and um these have come up relatively recently um and um and they're considered important enough that we need to um reopen the complaint policy which we had kind of put on pause um and um i'm going to make a suggestion that um [Music] that we take this opportunity since we're reopening the policy uh anyway and we need to get um some technical changes into the policy prior to the start of the next school year um i'm going to suggest that we reopen the entire policy and consider consider making we consider sending out for our first reading the entirety of the complaint policy as we have revised it if you recall the complaint policy came onto the
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agenda of the policy committee last fall driven largely by some uh a request by staff to make some technical changes at that point um in order to respond to some issues that um have arisen over the last two and a half years of implementing the policy um [Music] since we were opening up the policy um we also took the opportunity over many many months um to to look at the entire policy and make a substantial number of revisions most of them intended to clarify the language and make the complaint process more accessible more understandable and more accessible to students and families and we had largely reached consensus on the draft but there were some issues that um one one committee member requested that we pause the the policy pending additional community engagement um and so we did that in march um but i think at this point since we're reopening the complaint policy again i think it's in the best interest of the students and families that we have the best possible complaint policy on the books in force by the beginning of the next academic year so i'm going to request i'm going to propose to the committee that we um we look not only at these most recent technical changes but also take another look at all of the revisions that we have considered um over the past it's probably been at least six months um so uh are there any objections to that purpose i just have a question about kind of what changed and why it has become urgent now when it wasn't i guess a month and a half ago i'm gonna ask liz to respond so we looked at the collection of changes that um as this policy when it was put on pause would be not updated on our website for many months but if engagement started next fall before hopefully by the end of the year it would have been through so we looked at where the clarifying proposed languages that's in all the yellow hell yellow highlighted portions um that can either clarify there's a wrong oar reference it's just inaccurate um those changes were designed to be those that would be very helpful to those utilizing the policy between now and the end of the year um there's some discretion in what's included and what's not of those uh change policies are those those recommended changes but that was the the gist is that they were mostly clarifying or technical corrections and we didn't i don't think when the committee made the decision in march to pause we really stopped to reflect on what those technical changes might be and how they might be helpful between now and the end of the calendar year so jackson maybe a different um just perspective also to share is i was on the sort of work group on the technical changes and over the last um several days over the last week there's been a number of back and forth one of the changes was primarily to protect and clarify the superintendent's role in in complaints um in the complaint process and i was willing to like have that be expedited um i i'm not supportive of undoing the pause and moving ahead be um because i just found out last night at like 10 40 that this that the broader package was going to be moved and just like with the climate policy i think we got some initial feedback that was done by staff last year and pretty comprehensive report that was feedback from former complainants that shared their perspective of the policy and their and their and their engagement with the complaint process at pps that to me um
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you know somebody from you know who's been on the other side as a parent um i think we should consider all those things together and i'm fine i'm fine with the very technical pieces and the and the one piece that probably um staff has highlighted which is again being clear about the superintendent in his administrative role versus sort of a broader role of filing complaint against the superintendent but i think we should go back and have you know longer conversation and more community engagement just like we're going to be doing with the climate the climate policy um and then bringing the the substantive substantive and non-technical changes back to the committee and then having a first reading um so i say i i do see um there could be an argument for the technical changes to expedite them but the rest i don't particularly see that there's a rationale that they need to be rushed through well i would argue that these revisions would hardly be rushed through we've been looking at this policy prior to putting it on pause in march we looked at this policy for i haven't added up months but it's i mean grand total probably eight months um at least six um we it was on as i recall pretty much every meeting agenda um during that time um so we went through i think an enormous amount of work to um to develop all of the revisions um i think the only revision that's here that uh we probably didn't um didn't consider an excruciating detail was the draft alternative preamble um which i think was late edition um actually when we paused it was so that we could have community engagement with relating to the feedback that we got about the about the policy and it we we did have a lot of discussion about the changes that we made to date but we hadn't yet had community engagement around either the changes we were proposing or other other changes so but most of the changes that we made um as i recall um were essentially they were not changing the process itself they were um intended to clarify what the process is and it's within you know even if this committee and this current board um [Music] adopts the complaint policy um it is you know future the future boards and a future iteration of a policy committee can certainly reopen it um to to have the community engagement and and talk about further revisions but i think it's um i think it's a missed opportunity um to to keep the existing complaint policy [Music] largely unchanged with the exception of a few relatively minor um revisions that that are highlighted in yellow now um but keep all of the rest of the language that we found wanting eight months ago on the books right but we haven't had any community engagement over this process we had one survey which showed that people's experience with the complaint process is like woefully inadequate um and raised for me raised a lot of questions um and good questions that we should answer and it may be after we go through that process we still land on the same language but we haven't gone through that process so when we had this discussion in march and decided to put it on pause i was okay with putting in on pause because that was gonna have happened and like i say it's new news to me as of last night that um we're gonna go ahead without engagement with the the other changes versus the technical changes so i agree with rita here julia that i think the the language changes that are being proposed in this document
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and the yellow technical changes are sort of all of one piece as far as taking the feedback we have gotten and saying here's some low hanging fruit here are some fixes we can make to this process now and that as far as you know doing further engagement and changing the complaint process that that's a really valid point but this doesn't change the complaint process this tries to more rapidly address the feedback we got from families feeling like the complaint process isn't user friendly feeling like they aren't heard to sort of clarify and and support that now and that for me um doing this first reading and bringing this forward now doesn't end the conversation about the complaint process or the complaint policy it's just a next step in that journey of being more responsive and more transparent with the public so i think it's i would like to see us move more quickly on this because i think you know we want to be responsive to our community and the need that folks have to have a clear and transparent pathway to make those complaints and to feel sort of certain about the process and i think this new language really helps us to do that i don't see any of the language with the very few exceptions i think it's mostly um from the district side i don't think it reflects the the feedback that we that we received or that we even had a discussion about it um and that so i i mean i just i just went back today and we looked at the memo and the survey and there wasn't anybody that like we didn't we didn't share the policy or like here's the issues you raised um and i say it it wasn't just mildly critical it was very critical of like how the process seems you know unfair not responsive um hard to find so i to me i i don't think that was part of our process and so i'm just if the will of the committee's to to move it out um that's fine i just want to be clear that when i was asked two weeks ago to participate in the tech in the technical corrections um it was based on the premise of there's a very narrow range of issues and one very important issue that we want to move right now we need to move right now and that's how i engage with the the larger process but it wasn't that we were going to move this other package without community engagement um i just like to note that at least one of the revisions um that we talked about at great length um that that helped to precipitate the this committee taking another look at the complaint policy is not among those that are highlighted um so and it's uh what is it under four d other provisions um there's some important changes that uh that were made to um to the language around the uh resources that are available to complainants um and that was you know last summer that was considered as sufficiently important that it it you know precipitated us taking another look at this complaint policy to begin with and it's not included in the late in among the highlighted um sections that um that your work group worked on um and it just seems to me that this draft was um we worked on it at great length it was a fairly high intensity effort over many months i think it is a better text i think i think the revised text is uh much more accessible to students and families it does not change the um the actual process and that might be i mean that might well be something that the future board wants to take a look at and change and i would agree that in that case it probably would be helpful to get additional um community engagement um but in the meantime i i don't i don't see it
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as useful to keep on the books language that we knew eight months ago was not effective scott i see you you've unmuted do you want to say something well this is what i was in favor of a couple of months ago so we're i think the board is going to have to come back relatively soon to revisit this policy we talked for example about changing from a three-step to a stu two-step process to streamline it and make it and i and i think that's probably a really good idea and i think that would be important to do sooner rather than later but that's going to require some public engagement in the in the meantime we need to make some changes they're going to improve the process they're not going to get us to where we need to be i think the board has acknowledged that and come [Music] fall will be a time to re-engage with the public around this policy but right now let's get it done that's this is sort of uh parent engagement i mean just i'm sorry that's what i feel like is being was being done because because we talked very deliberately he's like yes we need to do that and we're we're going to do it at a time in the future and now it's like but we're now we're not going to do it and that's i mean that's i i guess i'm i i thought we'd agreed upon a path to this which of the specific changes give you heartburn i'm it gives me heartburn to move ahead with changes to the policy without following up with the parent engaged the the the parent responses that we got from people who engage with the complaint process like moving from three to three to two may be the right thing to do but i also want to hear from parents whether that's the right thing to do so i don't agree i'm agreeing with you i don't necessarily i i don't i don't know because like we we did a survey it came back very um negative about the policy and that we agreed like we need to engage with with the broader community and this you know some people who've had experience with the complaint policy and then now we're deciding that that's going to happen at some point in the future so i just from a process standpoint i um i say i i support it i'd like to pass the climate policy you know get a first read and move it on but we heard earlier today is like we need to engage a broader group of people before we remove that so yeah i think here's the difference for me between between i mean each but we're slightly different technical plans so the first is we all agree we need to do further engagement around the complaint process and around the complete needs i think we can what i feel like is we can make some immediate changes that will make this better in the interim while we wait to do that longer community engagement so we're not saying we're not going to do it we are still going to do community engagement in the future we're still going to work on the complaint process but can we right now after doing the technical fixes change some language to help make this even clearer for families this is not ending this policy with the climate policy i feel like with that one when we do we're hoping to end it right we're going to do this community engagement and we're going to finish the policy this is a step in the work on the complaint policy this isn't the completion of the complaint policy so that for me is the difference here is this is the language and the technical pieces that we can easily adjust on the complaint policy while we do further work on the complaint policy piece it's kind of like on saturday with the board leadership question you know we we have some bigger conversations to have as a board about what is the role of the chair how did it turn the vice chair relate what does it mean to have um you know these roles but we created a more equitable elections process now that's not going to solve all the problems but it makes it more clear and more transparent around board leadership i feel like the complaint that what we're doing in the complaint process is akin to the board leadership election process which doesn't necessarily mean we're making board leadership more equitable or we've dealt with all the issues inherent in leadership it just makes it it's the first step in making this better and that's what i feel about this proposed language and the complaint process i i appreciate that um except for all the people who have a
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relative point of view or at the table with the exception of potentially the new the new board new board members the difference is we asked for people's opinion they gave it to us and we're just going to move on and say like the next board is going to um is going to deal with that and i just i i don't agree with that and to me if if there were things that were technical then i was opened you know there was a menu of things like here here's what we think from a staff perspective is technical went through it and i think 95 of the time like i agreed on what was technical and like okay this needs to be done now the other ones like i don't need to be done now and i guess i want to from my perspective um i'm not and i i respect it appears that three people want to move ahead i and but i'm not supportive of moving it ahead um with that process so but you know everybody makes their own choice makes their own choice i'm but i'm not supportive of of that well i would argue that most of the revisions that are in here probably all of them are to some degree actually responsive to the feedback that we got because a lot of the feedback was it's an arcane policy that's very hard to follow i don't understand what i'm supposed to do or how it's supposed to work and most of these revisions are intended to clarify for people um what the existing policy is whether it's i mean it's it's a separate point whether um whether the policy the the actual complaint process needs to be changed um i think that's an open question that we're not going to be able to answer now um but there are some changes that we can make now that will improve the process that's that exists um and i think it's i think it's in the best interests of students and families to move ahead with these revisions that will clarify um and then the next board can certainly reopen the question and talk about substantive changes to the poli to the process itself there's there's nothing that we're going to be doing here that will preclude um further revision of the complaint policy okay i i think the arguments are on the table um from the adults be interested in hearing from the students if you have a point of view on this um yeah um we keep saying additional feedback we never elicited feedback around any of our changes we just asked generally how is this process for you so i just like to clarify that we never really asked how any of these changes any parents and students were never involved from the get-go um so generally i'm kind of against any moving forward of policies that don't include at least some student involvement um and i do i think that's all i have at this point i honestly only reviewed the technical changes because that's all i thought we were moving forward on so i'd be uncomfortable at this point moving forward if i was a board member because i haven't gotten to review all of the changes that we are moving forward with um the one that really jumps out to me is changing the timeline for both the district and the complaints submitting information before like the hearing um we're changing it to 24 hours before um that is in my opinion pretty big um so yeah that's what i have to say about it i guess [Music] we're gonna make these changes let's ensure that that they're adequate and let's bring them back to people to see if they complete you know or if they answer some of the questions they had or changes are accurate or the concerns they had about the existing process i i i would say um i mean i don't disagree um and i think there is um [Music] there will be an opportunity for the next board and the next iteration of the policy committee to do exactly that um but in the meantime um
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we can make some changes in the language that will clarify what the existing process is um because realistically any um i i would hazard a guess that um any community engagement process especially if it's going to um if it's going to include really substantive changes to the complaint process itself um i would expect that the um a a next edition of the process and the policy would end up not happening until probably sometime next spring which means that for a year the existing policy would be in place and we already know that a lot of the language in it is extremely difficult to understand and there are a number of technical fixes um that staff wants that we would not be that would not be included in the existing policy so this is by no means the the last opportunity to address the complaint policy um this is an interim step we can make it better than it is now it's not going to be you know still needs work but at least it will be better than it is now and it will be on the books for next school year well just said no sorry go ahead ask her let's just make sure that this clarifies the concerns and by asking our families if this clarifies that we shouldn't move forward with something without making sure that it clarifies the concerns that people have so the problem is that we when the question of additional community engagement came up uh the decision was that under the current circumstances we really can't we we don't have the opportunity um students and families remember this is much students and families were going to be you know for the rest of the school year we're going to be you know thoroughly occupied with returning to classrooms and finishing out the year and and all of that so it wasn't going to be possible to do the kind of community engagement that it would take to get the kind of feedback that you're asking for um and that just is what it is um but in the meantime we think that these revisions we as a committee i mean we we talked a great length about most of these revisions about all of them great length um we have chewed over the language endlessly um it's our best attempt at this point to address at least some of the problems that um exist in the current language and i see rita i mean what i'm hearing we can either do this now and address what we have heard or we can wait a year leaving what we know is problematic and not helpful on the books because we don't have time to do community engagement in this moment so we have a choice to make whether we continue to allow what we know is not helpful policy to sit on the books or we can do this kind of some quick fixes here now knowing that we have more work to do but that that if we to get to the ideal part is going to take us a year so i'm in favor of doing what we can to be responsive to the com the we are we had a survey and people gave us their feedback we are being responsive i i also struggle with the we want to do community engagement but there's a level of we asked for people's opinions they gave them to us we can be responsive and make changes yes we're going to go back to the community eventually to further um smooth out this process but it's at what point i mean and then we make changes and then we go back and then we make changes and then we go back that's the cyclical nature of policy but at what point do we put something on the books because until it's on the books we're still stuck with what's actually technically there which we know is wrong um so i don't want us to we we need to do community engagement and it's super important but i don't want us to continue to cause problems for families because we don't have capacity community engagement for another year and so that's my concern i feel like this is important to to begin this process to be responsive in the ways we know we can now we have asked our families if this is an adequate
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solution so how do we know if this is adequate for our families change for the next year if we haven't asked them have you reviewed the oscar have you taken time to review the prior policy what the family said and the current policy okay some of it is direct feedback from what people said in their um responses i understand but i think we still it it should still be you know family should still give their input on what we have in front of us right now to do that we don't have the capacity to do that until next year so that's the choice we're making and and when we don't have that option that's always the best option but we don't have that option right you have that option um so a question i would have for staff is just the the technical changes that are highlighted does that get you what you need in the short term because that was my understanding that of the technical changes is that what it was needed in the in the short term for by the by the end of this into this year so that i mean that's the spirit by which i engaged in the technical corrections work group is that you know try and work with the staff to get what was needed and what was truly technical so we get you know i i'm okay expediting something um without going back to parents in the community if they're technical in the nature it's just the rest of it isn't so my question for staff is do you have what you need and the technical corrections julia i think the highlighted areas are the ones we thought were most needed uh at the earliest level or so simple and clarifying like they corrected oar reference that it made sense to use them there i think um what the phrase i'm struggling with is is what we need that was those highlighted changes are the ones we recommended that had the greatest sense of urgency or made sense to include because they're just rather obvious and straightforward and non-substantive and probably don't need parent or community engagement like we're not going to ask people are you okay with us changing a statute i agree i agree okay i'm going to call the question um i'm going to ask board members to vote on the question of whether you are in favor of um reopening excuse me clarify something first okay good the document that was in the board book had only the technical changes the document in the board book was um it inadvertently when originally posted suppressed the red lines as they existed at the time the policy was um paused in march so on saturday morning and where zane can correct me on the timeline but i think on saturday morning it was the right version so it had the highlighted portions but it was converted to the full red line so everyone could see the highlighted recommended technical changes on top of where the policy was last left off in terms of recommended changes the highlighted the yellow highlighting is the represents the technical changes proposed everything else goes back to march right but but in fact um i mean so the question is um you've you've highlighted uh i don't know three or four specific language okay a few more than that it's more than that it's more than that um but you've highlighted you know a relatively few very specific language changes that um that you want to have you want us to approve um but um what need what i need to clarify is that in the absence of reopening the entire document those very few highlighted changes would be made to the policy that is on the books right now correct none of the other red line changes that are included in
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this document so we go to the original correct so so if the technical changes only were voted out the document that would be posted would be just those changes on the existing policy right but for the committee's full context about because you had worked on this and maybe that was more confusing i thought it was actually helpful because i think when you decide what's a technical amendment or not there was some discretion used about what was included and i wanted the committee to see what our recommendations that were highlighted stood up to what we chose and what we didn't um of the the changes that had been proposed before the may or the march pause so scott did that answer your question right so now i'm i didn't i had the earlier version now i've got the whole yeah it was confusing scott because how it was posted for the committee the agenda was this was the technical changes and so then when you if you went on on saturday it wasn't actually it wasn't clear what it was and so it wasn't until yesterday that it was changed so that you saw both the other changes and the technical changes and it wasn't until last night that it was proposed that actually it wouldn't just be the technical changes that we'd be considering today in committee i don't know roseanne when were the when was the full red line apparent in board books when did that happen uh i think it was i think it was yesterday yeah because i i don't think i i think i downloaded them sunday anyway regardless okay so the the question at hand is um [Music] uh and this is for board members are you are you willing to reconsider the entire policy um [Music] and and all of the revisions you know all of the redlined revisions that um the committee considered um as opposed to simply the the very few um changes that are highlighted in yellow are you willing to reopen the whole policy for consideration yes no it's not not not to move it out of committee um i'm i'm open to having to to reopen the policy but it's also going to be my expectation would be with community would be with community engagement before we move the other changes so i'm not opposed to reopening obviously i think it still needs a lot of work but i think it needs so i'm fine with the technical package of changes that staff said they needed that were technical okay understood scott yes okay um all right so uh i'm not suggesting that we voted out a committee today i would suggest that since it's been a while since we all looked at it um i'm i'm suggesting that um we come back on may 10th and consider the the full package of revisions and is it help is it helpful as we prepare materials for that i just would ask all the committee members what what you need for that review would you like the yellow highlighted taken out would you like it kept in how how can we support the next step because i know we have a quick turn but i go ahead i'm sorry well i was just gonna i'm i do think it's helpful to highlight because these are these are the newest additions um so i think it is helpful we we haven't as a committee been able to we haven't we haven't discussed these these newest changes at all as opposed to a lot of the others several of the highlighted most of the highlighted changes are the same they're just highlighted just so you know um oh okay just yeah so from from my perspective
01h 50m 00s
i'd like to have um the technical corrections package at least be in some other like keep it highlighted or something so that we know what is considered technical again just like the package of policies that came to us previously i'm not expecting like a deep parental engagement process around around those because i view them as primarily technical um like we're moving content of one policy to another policy and so therefore i'm okay with a sort of expedited policy and so i want to just be clear i'm okay with an expedited review if it's really needed without going through sort of the parental or family or community engagement process so i'd like to keep those two at least a separate color so that i can distinguish between those two because that is the process that i engaged in over the last week or two weeks to like what's technical well then i then i think we we start getting into the you know that's so let me finish my sentence um we have a number of revisions that were in here from the very beginning because at the time they were considered technical that are not at this point identified they are not highlighted as technical changes but at the time when we actually considered them they were they were framed as technical changes um so i think it's i'm open to staff coming back with we think these these other ones are technical i mean clearly some of them are substantive um but so how i engaged is like here's what we think is the technical ones and i just went through like yes yes yes maybe tell me more yes yes yes is kind of how i went through that set of packages and so if something is technical but it's not highlighted as technical it's not because i objected to it that it's and bought it not technical but it just wasn't flagged so happy to consider other ones the technical the ones that we don't think need to have any sort of community engagement that is i'm open to that okay um so i think for the next meeting um i do think we i i correct me if i'm wrong um but as i recall the draft alternative preamble um was a relatively recent addition when we left it in march so we might want to look at that a little more deeply than some of the others um any objection to that no because i view that as non non non-substitutive not that it's not substantive but it's not a like directional it's you know a statement of values um i would also ask that um just back to scott's question to the two student reps on the committee um is um you know getting feedback from uh the district student council on is um frankly most of the comp a lot of the complaints we have um are you know parents filing complaints on behalf of theirs their students um so any sort of feedback of like also whether you think those are technical or not i had just an overarching question um from the user guide that was proposed i think in like august of last year um are we still requiring like resj lens to be filled out at the beginning and if so could i have it for this policy i don't know that there's an existing document that satisfies that request jackson we can look and see if there is you can have it as we go through this at our next meeting we may end up with just the yellow it could very well be after discussion but there may be some other things that we decide
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are technical and won't be an improvement so well what what's next um okay i i just want to clarify that um we're going to be looking at the entire document and i i i would strongly suggest that everybody go through this document pretty with a pretty close read prior to the next committee meeting um we are not going to be able to relitigate every every word in this document so we want to we want to focus on identifying changes that um are that will improve the experience of people who are interested in figuring out the complaint policy [Music] whether they whether those changes would qualify as technical somehow i i don't think that's really the the essential question i think the essential question is um do these do these revisions make the policy more accessible so if we're going to go going to go through each of them again i'm only willing to move something on an expedited basis without community engagement that is somewhat technical in nature if for each of the changes that are proposed if there can be something writing from staff about the rationale and it can be like you know wrong statute number i mean as simple as that i'm gonna i'm i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna exercise um the chairs prerogative and say i'm not going to ask staff to do that um all of these changes we talked about over the course of eight months um i don't think we need to have staff spend their time um coming up with a rationale for every line in this document so all right well i i feel like i would like to if if we're gonna be looking at the whole thing i'd like to ask some people what they think and i'm so i mean i can put my my impression of what the rationale is um so i'm happy to do that i can do the work myself um i thought it might be a more objective um and neutral document to have like here's here's why this change was made okay i mean if you choose that that's that's your prerogative um but it's also worth noting that um there are great many word changes in here and most of them in fact came from the committee rather than staff as a result of extensive extended sometimes excruciating discussion over many months of a very limited group of people i'm just i'm just saying like i want to go out and if there's a rationale and actually there the base changes that originally came to us were recommendations from staff you go back and look at the documents so again i'm always happy to put forward whatever the rationale is and that's being proposed and liz asked what we needed and that's you know seemed i'm just just answered the question that was asked of okay um any other questions i i think we've exhausted this topic so okay so we will talk about this at the may 10th meeting um and uh i think that um i think those are the only uh things that we have on the agenda with the exception of public comment do you have any public comment we do we have beth kavanagh and i just sent her over to the panelist so she should be available a second hello um my name is beth cavanaugh she her pronouns c-a-v-a-n-a-u-g-h as most of you know i've been working
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with a group of parents and teachers across the district advocating for reform to the current foundation fundraising policy that allows individual communities to hire additional teachers and staff in their schools and yet the status quo persists month after month i'm disappointed to be here again at the end of april after this policy having been pushed off the agenda multiple times since january but i still have hope that um you will demonstrate the leadership necessary to commit to addressing this policy this year my group has heard each current member of the board acknowledge the inequitable results of this policy we've presented data illustrating the differences between the distribution of these funds across pps schools we've seen communities with long-standing foundations take steps to increase visibility of this issue by hosting meetings to discuss the topic even in the case of laurel hurst and beverly cleary directing donors to contribute directly to the pps parent fund or covid relief fund but real policy real change will not occur unless you as directors of the school board take responsibility for this policy in his testimony drafted for the members of the boston school committee ibrahim kennedy succinctly explained why it's important to eliminate racist policies in our public school systems candy wrote i am not going to speak to you about what is best for my child it is not your job to do what's best for my child it is your job to do what's best for all boston children and i am one of many boston residents who share your perspective thinking about what's best for the community of latinx and white and black and asian and native and bi-racial and low-income and middle-income and upper-income kids in this city and what is always best for the community is admission policies that create equal opportunity for all that's how we should be assessing proposed and existing policies are they reducing or maintaining racial inequities because if they are reducing racial inequity then they are anti-racist if they are maintaining or expanding racial inequity then they are racist i'm here once again to ask you to commit to bringing this policy to this committee and then move it forward to the whole board as the continued reliance on private fundraising to meet core educational needs such as hiring staff within individual school communities is a barrier to coming together to address the gaps in robust and stable funding for all pps students as one district this is one simple step that you can take to have a lasting impact on a more equitable unified districts going forward encouraging school communities to join forces and determine our potential to be better together thank you thank you that's all that we have signed up for public comment okay um i think we are uh unless there's something else for the good of the order okay um we are done for today and uh thank thank you to everybody for um active participation and we will see you in three weeks


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