2021-05-04 PPS School Board Work Session

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-05-04
Time 19:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type work
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Work Session - 5/04/21

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um i have things to say uh this meeting is being streamed live on pps tv services website and on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times all right um deputy superintendent hertz i'm gonna turn it over to you to kick us off for this work session well thank you for part two this evening for the board work session we are we met last week and it in late in the evening we proposed the budget and um due to the lateness of the hour we wanted to come back um and give more as uh more substantial time for the board to um you know ask questions get clarifications um and really uh um make sure that we were getting to um after you've had that initial review that you have you're getting your um questions responded to so with that additional week you've also had time to review and and we hope that you're thinking and we want to hear your initial thinking on the budget and recognizing the investments we have made and really responding to the pandemic as well as continuing on with our strategic plan and long-term goals and then we'll want to make sure we get all to your questions and if we have the information to you we have a whole group of senior leadership staff members in the green room that are here to respond and go into a little more depth in areas where you would like to learn more and then if we can't respond to it we will we will put it into our written question q a and respond to it that way and get it back out to all of you as well as posting it for the community so this is just the continuation of our original proposal um budget meeting and with the board and we're continuing now with a work session to continue the conversation so i with that i want to turn it back to chair lowry and it's unless there's a question about process i think what we're going to do is um go through and invite board members to ask their question ask invite you to ask one question if you can keep it to one we'll go through the whole list to make sure everyone gets a chance to ask their burning question um and then we'll come back to um if folks have additional questions and we're going to go ahead and do our um the order in the year so those people with birthdays closer to january get to go first and those people with birthdays closer to december get to go um later so that means director depos is our january baby and so did you have a question a burning question about the budget michelle i don't but i just texted you that i am going to turn my camera off i am starting to react from my second shot so i'm going to lay low tonight all right thank you uh michelle chair lowry can i ask a clarifying question so we we also um were asked to submit questions through a budget form uh which was which was great are those the questions you want us to ask tonight or or were those sort of additional questions we'll be getting answers back to or yeah the one the ones that were submitted in the forum will be getting um having staff respond to we did we got them you know this afternoon and um i think we have eight of them now but we will uh roberto will be putting out the process um so that you can continue to um you know turn questions in by this day and we'll give you responses by that day he'll get that out to you with the responses to these initial questions but so we're right now we're just kind of so we're not um if you want to get it out into the community conversation but and if we can't answer we will but it's not intended to be the eighth that you've submitted yeah so i know like for example director broome edwards i know that you often like to ask questions both in writing and then also in public so the community can hear the questions you have um so if it's a question like that please ask it again tonight if it's a question that you can wait for an answer from staff then then please uh wait um and we wish director depos the best as she um recovers from that second dose of the vaccine um i i know that it can be a real struggle for some folks so thanks michelle for hanging in there and listening while we uh we do this important work um it's really hard when you don't feel well nathaniel you come next as our february birthday um do you have a burning question about the budget that
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you would like to lift up at this time uh can you come back to me yeah after a couple of members go absolutely all right then we turn to director scott well that's surprising we're already to june i know um yeah yeah and i just want to note i think we're scheduled for like um five hours of board work on my birthday this year so i hope someone's bringing donuts or something donors um yeah uh so one ques actually one question and it involves um uh the testimony we got earlier tonight i would like to better understand how nutrition services is funded in in in the pps budget and and again i think an explanation anything we have tonight would be great or if there's a place to to to point me um in our budget document that would be helpful my understanding you know we see federal funding for this and so it's a separate separate stream but i would just love to to understand a little more of the mechanics behind that and and what the limitations are whether those limitations are federally imposed or or sort of district policy imposed that'd be helpful and if i could just piggyback on your question andrew that when we get a response to that by email i'm assuming um also please just elaborate on what the recent federal decision um to provide um you know full free lunch program what that means to what our budget otherwise would have anticipated for support there because that's not entirely clear to me so i would uh respond that there are both state and um governmental accounting standards board that um tell us to not put it into general funds um at the state of oregon department of education they tell us to use a special revenue fund for nutrition services and if you go to government finance officers association they would many states put it as an enterprise fund but we follow the state of oregon program budgeting and accounting manual that states to put it as a special revenue fund so there is guidelines to us and that we follow in terms of how we categorize it now the difference between a special revenue and a enterprise fund an enterprise fund is meant to be separate by itself and meant to be where your revenues and expenditures are tracked so that they truly are meant to be used for the full purpose of balancing that fund in that enterprise if you will another kind of fund like that might be where an esd has the print shop that they create an enterprise fund so that they can bill all their districts for all the printing that they do that's another example um for because of the federal funding um it's in the state of oregon it's in because of the federal fund funding it's in a special revenue which doesn't which um lends itself more to taking the self-pay from staff and students when in a normal school year when we're not in the pandemic and combining that with federal funds um to support the program um districts um small and large um strive for putting the best quality of food on the plates for our students and and um providing the best meals in the service some districts end up um meeting especially smaller districts will need to transfer from general funds to support a program uh historically in portland we have been able to uh stay within the special revenue fund and not made general fund transfers so hopefully that's a high level um probably more of an accounting lesson than you wanted in your questions you asked but that's um there is a reason why it's not in general fund but it doesn't mean that general fund can't um general fund is allowed to support through a transfer to the special revenue fund no thanks and of course i'm always up for an accounting lesson so um no that's helpful and that was going to be my follow-up and there's no there's no restriction on that but of course there's a trade-off right the general fund dollars you know are you know obviously it's a limited it's a limited buy um but what i heard you say is we generally haven't have we supported that in in prior years with general fund um ever is that just is that kind of a stated policy or an unstated practice um just recognizing the scarcity of our general fund dollars and where they go
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it's it's not it's been a practice i don't know how many years but um certainly um in my tenure here and previous to my coming here it was also that was the case um but in terms of um um this year that is that would not be the case where we have used our fund balance and um even with the year-round food at um being paid by the federal government because there's so many locations and needs of students across the district there isn't necessarily as many meals served because of um the students aren't all coming to school to get meals and didn't necessarily you know many families signed up for delivery but not all family so we um overall we are running at a loss this year and we anticipate we've set some esser funds aside to support the program as needed thank you all right i get to go next as the july birthday my question comes from page 66 of volume one which talks about the additional investments in staffing to assure um complete arts discipline pathways and i know that we've we expanded those at jefferson and roosevelt um this past year um and it says we're going to focus on franklin cleveland and madison clusters this coming year and it's kind of a two-part question one is um if you could share some of the specific things that are happening in those clusters to ensure that and then the second question is when are our other high school clusters um what's our plan for those clusters to have that um pathway um well i think i'm going to answer your questions and reverse torture i think the plan is to absolutely have a pathway for each of our clusters um that was part of the vision um you know several years ago in terms of our commitment um to expanding a myriad of our arts offerings throughout each of our communities so we want to continue and continue to fulfill on that commitment every year as we continue to expand on that promise your first question i think was um actually asking about the specifics in terms of what it entails um and i know that we have um very specific um you know feeder programs in terms of the course offerings and and what we're specifically expanding and i can get you that um uh chair lowry in specifics if you're looking for um you know what what does it actually entail in terms of um actual expansion of program partially i just want to celebrate the work we're doing but also wanna you know um just zoom in a little bit to see how that is playing out um and i know that you know we it's our goal and it would be nice to you know think about talking to kids who are going to benson that they'll be an arts pathway for them at some point if there is going to be because i know benson again with the tech program is a specialized school there absolutely if oh i'm sorry superintendent guerrero i was going to introduce dr valentino who can share a little bit more um but i'll turn it over to you superintendent guerrero um uh chair lowry i think uh well this is one of those areas we were hoping to do a thorough work session on because there's been incredible work on the master arts education plan i got a nice preview in the same way that directors have previously seen a universal matrix for all of our cte programming and you've noticed year over year how so many of those cells and those gap areas in certain schools it's the same thing with the arts pathways we've seen where those gaps are we know that they were particularly prevalent in underserved communities and there's been some wonderful you know new programming expansions there but our cao i don't want to steal his thunder well no i mean you i think good evening uh everyone chair larry board member superintendent so um there's not much more than i can add other than understanding that one of our objectives well over the past three years has been to set a foundation across all disciplines in the work and the teaching learning practices so that we could build off of that and so as we build off of that one of the things that we have to do the superintendent indicated in filling the gap is to solidify the pathways across all four sectors of the school district to ensure that we have equity in place whether it's music whether it's advanced programming in in the content areas whether it's identification of students to make sure that the supports are there so that's a big effort that we began during the pandemic phase uh it's been a little bit more difficult to do clearly but um the the entire team is now aware that uh in the instructional side of the house is aware that this is the work
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now that we're going to have to do is to address equity within the rvsj framework in a way that actually does um in concrete ways demonstrate our our interest in achieving that and chair lowry and directors i think we have on the on an upcoming uh board discussion and opportunity to hear from kristin brayson and the growing team there and the exciting work just as a state of the art uh that we like to culminate the school year in so you can look forward to that too but you'll definitely hear how there's been uh additional fpe and programming in a number of our schools that just have had either absent pathways or uh uh incomplete pathways and i think there's been a real attempt to to fill those in so stay tuned for that meeting in june thank you director moore do you have a question you'd like to ask now yes um so i have a question about the um state school fund and um i think it appeared in last week's uh powerpoint presentation um but my question is uh the state school fund is currently proposed to be 9.1 billion dollars for the next biennium um uh school districts have determined that actual in order to maintain actual current service levels um the state school fund should be 9.6 billion dollars um the proposals on the table at the legislature are 9.3 billion and we have budgeted for a 9.3 billion dollar state school fund um can you talk about what the implications are for pps and its students if um we don't get additional um funding for the state school fund thank you dr moore for for the question and i think [Music] as part of the the budgeting process is being able to think about all of our resources where applicable but at the same time how do we mitigate disruptions and so um just from a mathematical perspective when we think about the what the the state school fund provides general rule of thumb is about for every 100 million dollars that's about that's an impact of about 3.5 million dollars for portland public schools so as that our budget's at 9.3 so 9.1 we could be looking at a difference of about seven to eight million dollars and so really what we're contemplating is being able to leverage the fund balance to help cover that and in addition to leveraging some of the federal dollars that we have although right when we think about the the primary intention of the stimulus dollars when i say federal dollars i'm referencing the stimulus dollars is to really springboard us and and pushes to uh um tackling the unfinished learning i was trying to find the right term from our our summer learning team and and it's it's it's really you know unfinished learning and not to plug in holes and and and and gaps i mean it's allowable uh but it like the intention as we we pursue that um it's it's um you know if it's been due to covet there's a reduction so what what are the things we're taking into consideration so really as this budget that we're putting together we're contemplating a 9.3 billion dollar budget which would be reliant on leveraging the fund balance by about 16 million dollars and furthermore proposing about three million dollars in reductions on the general operating side of the house and those reductions are in areas that are primarily non-personnel it's about i think i mentioned three million dollars and really looking at areas to find additional savings but i think it's also important as as we think about whether it's it's a stable budget which what we're proposing in with a 9.3 billion dollars is stable from the perspective of continuing and mitigating and braiding
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all of our resources but also thinking about the the continuing opportunities to assess how we function and so as as we think about what is the summer going to look like what does then the subsequent investments look like we're thinking about maintaining stability but then also starting to think about what the next few years will look like so and somewhat long-winded answer dr moore but i think just from the perspective of being able to put it into perspective besides just a number it's just additional context and and i'll invite deputy superintendent hurts if she wants to add any additional detail i think you explained it well thank you okay well can i add my commentary since i think you're being very kind and gentle and i am not um so if i understand correctly what this means is that at the current proposed funding level pps will have a shortfall of essentially 19 million dollars we're going to make up that difference with three million dollars in reductions in service and you're trying to target it to non-instructional expenditures and we're going to take 16 million out of our reserves do i get that right yes okay so we're looking at a 19 million shortfall because the legislature and the governor have proposed budgets that don't even maintain current service levels um and it is resulting in school districts all over the states having to come up with budgets that will end up cutting services because essentially every school district in the state is experiencing budget shortfalls because of this low state school fund level am i wrong no you are not okay so um i'm going to ask that my colleagues and everybody else out there contact your legislature legislators who are now having town halls and requests that the state school fund have increased funding to at minimum 9.3 billion dollars to the next biennium okay i will defend the soapbox and uh that's all i had thanks thank you dr i i would just add that that would be very welcome rita as always kudos for consistency i am nothing if not consistent yes and and unfortunately uh it seems like so our legislators sometimes that it's a habit in oregon that when we have additional funding come in whether it's the state school fund or others that we then have a shortfall in the state school fund um the student success act so again encourage our state to be proactive in in fully funding our schools okay can i add two more sentences yeah um because i i think it's important i'm not sure that you know the folks out there or even some legislators understand the implications of the state school funding level so i just want to underscore that the common perception out there is that school districts are swimming in cash because of federal funding that's federal funding is first of all one-time money secondly it was intended by congress and and the biden administration to supplement existing funding sources at the state level it was not intended to supplant so the the new federal funding is not supposed to be used to backfill shortfalls coming from inadequate plumbing at the state level and that's what school districts all over the state are going to have to do if we don't increase the level of the state school fund and that means that districts are not going to be able to support the kind of additional resources that our students need as we emerge from this pandemic to to have the experiences they've missed out on for over a year and um have the the kinds of um interventions that might be necessary in order to
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um respond to unfinished learning so okay now i really will get off the soapbox thank you i'm gonna say that was more than two sentences but still uh very important uh sentences all right directly this is why we need you uh to be in your copy editing mode director's gonna read some i heard i just heard i heard semicolons throughout so don't encourage her all right director broome edwards you're next in our birthday lineup what is your burning question for our folks tonight yeah well i'm just um before i go to my burning questions since this is like more than everybody i guess i guess it gets more than a burning question um what i would say is just about the last commentary about engaging with the legislature and the federal delegation is um i do think people are going to look and see a billion dollar operating budget and we have an obligation to be able to share how we're spending that and i um i think we have a ways to go at the beginning superintendent guerrero talked about an elevator speech i think we need more than that for example on the sia funding the reference to pages 121-123 even as with a college degree as somebody who's looked at budget budgets for 20 years it doesn't tell me exactly what we're doing it's a number of budgetary line items so i think we'll be really effective in talking to the state state legislators and our fellow federal delegation if we can translate that into what it means in schools and their districts because right now it's it's it's hard to describe how the money that we already have is going to be utilized because it's written in a very dry budget language um but my burning question speaking of the federal money is um it's a two-part question and um it relates to this fall and going back to reopening schools so and the first part of the question is just a yes or no does this proposed budget make the investments and expenditures needed so that all schools can open this fall so that every student attends school every day in person for a full instructional day even if the three foot social distance requirement is still in place so that's just a yes or no and then i have a follow-up yes great so we don't need more bus drivers like this budget will cover everything that we need even if the three foot is still in place every day kids can go to school for a full day yes okay um i'm gonna have to um sort of uh deviate from what you're hearing senior staff say i'm not sure that's the case i think this is a proposed budget for playing school the way we traditionally always have i think there are very real facility implications certainly very real staffing implications you don't have a proposed budget that accounts for those contingencies and so that really needs some analysis and we don't know what the guidelines and requirements are going to be or what to plan for accordingly and so it's all conjecture at this point and unfortunately you know as much as we're pushing back today on our state leadership including today again uh you know we won't know until mid-summer what's the case so we know we have to prepare for scenarios that may not come true but you're right it's going to require more teachers more staff more buses more facilities just because i got two different answers just to be clear that this budget we can't guarantee to parents that even with the three foot distancing that they'll students will have a opportunity to go to school every day for a full day because if we if we can't do that i think we need to have some sort of beside budget conversation about what what's needed because i certainly think that's the expectation of most parents uh that you know we we have the funds we need we've got whatever six months to prepare for the start of school that we would utilize that time and the resources we have to make sure that happens since we know that three foot social distancing requirement is currently in place now and then my second so i'm concerned about that answer um if if we have a plan for that and then can we just take a minute there because i feel like the fact that some of us you know the staff some said yes and the superintendent said no i'd like to just unpack that a little more because i think that is very concerning to lots of folks that are going to hear that that sound bite of yeah can i have the second one because i think it they can answer probably both at the same time it's a can give a combined answer because the second piece is
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for those students who for whatever reason next fall can't return to a school building does this budget include the expenditures necessary to run a comprehensive distance virtual school at each grade level um for those students not a hybrid but a separate right like a virtual scholars thing so that we can next fall move ahead which i think what is what most people think is going to happen based on statements that have been made to date so i think you're right it's going to be really important to be accurate about the terms or the models or what choices uh would mean if families elect to engage in them right so when we you know if there's if there's an interest and certainly a level of demand or for very legitimate reasons why families would elect uh or prefer a fully virtual option it probably wouldn't look like the hybrid cdl model that we look like now so i'll have deputy superintendent claire talk a little bit about what's being mocked up to sort of think through well what does a virtual k-12 school option look like how do we staff it how do we teach for it and how will our families perhaps need to understand that that doesn't necessarily mean you would be participating in your neighborhood school uh teacher taught sort of afternoon cdl course we're talking about something different if we're looking to maximize the instructional day for the students that are choosing to come in in person so that's just an example of one variable here but if deputy query if you could share uh with directors how staff is starting to sort of really think about how do we gear up and prepare for and set aside the investments to be able to offer that kind of a choice to our families absolutely i mean when we also think about learning acceleration we're also doing that parallel with how we're how we're thinking through you know what does a comprehensive virtual model look like as well that's going to run tandem you know to our actual comprehensive physical spaces we do have a virtual scholars platform that the superintendent alluded to um that is a phenomenal model that we are absolutely looking at how we can replicate that specifically for a k-8 model um that will be that we could potentially have available for our students um who prefer a who prefer you know a virtual learning platform but like the superintendent alluded to um it would be something that would be potentially be very separate and be very and and be separate in terms of a separate program in a separate school with very specific teachers not necessarily that it will be attached to their current program we do have chief academic officer dr valentino who is leading um that work as we speak we actually started thinking about a skeletal plan earlier in the fall but as we started to pivot and thinking about lippy and into hybrid what we did was we ended up you know pushing the pause button so we can make sure we were gearing up for a successful spring reopening um but right now what we've done is we've taken the skeletal plans and we're currently digging in right now also in tandem as we are planning our virtual model for summer programming but we have our learning acceleration team as well as our virtual school planning team um led by chief valentino and dana nirenberg and and dr hamel um who are planning this work and we are hoping to give the board again more information as we alluded to in our last presentation um that um you know later into the summer time you know we're looking at um potentially you know then sharing the board what the next step of that work does look like um but i can i can invite in dr valentino um just who can give just a really quick overview in terms of you know what does the planning the work look like as of right now and what are some of the things that we're thinking of as we're entering into the summer space just to go back to i appreciate that works being done on that i do think the bigger question is going to be for the vast majority of the students who are expecting to go back and their families expecting to go back in the fall full time so um i guess i would say as i i'll appreciate getting information maybe after the meeting or you know additional but i'd really like to go back to the original question where there was a disagreement between staff about what we'd be able to to do because i do think that's a pretty central question for next year for our families and i can i just jump into um director for medwards on on this question because i think it really is important but i i guess i i want to i want to see if we want to reframe it a little bit there's a there's a budget question here for sure but i don't think the the budget question is really the main question it's it's a it's an operational logistics you know planning question that involves state mandates and all kinds of other things and so i would not have expected the proposed budget to to plan for um you know um three feet of distance in the fall because we don't yet know whether that's going to be required and my understanding and you know uh director constance has been asking this
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question for for months now um you know what what would it take right at the current requirement and i believe staff are doing that analysis some of our buildings we would be able to open mostly you know get most of our students in there three feet some of them we wouldn't but it would you know so so again this this question and and i don't want to mince words i am 100 with you that we need to plan for a full reopening you know come the fall no matter what the the variables are but there are some of those variables i mean i it's easy for me to say that you know if we had to rent tens of thousands of square feet and and hire hundreds of teachers there becomes a question of of can we do that and so i guess i just want to reframe it i would not have expected or frankly wanted this budget to include say hiring 300 more teachers right because that would have taken money from everyone else until we have a little bit more clarity the challenge we're going to be facing as a board and superintendent as you know and his staff is is can we get guidance from the state early enough right to plan if if the state is going to lift the three feet requirement we need to know that um you know as soon as we can so that we can plan for a full-time reopening sort of as normal if the state's going to impose a three-foot requirement or continue it it's already imposed in the fall we need to also know that like now so that we can be doing exactly what you just said which is all that contingency planning and by the way which i'm i'm fully on board with if we know the problem is we don't know right now so yeah well i i appreciate that um director matt word can i just finish it because i um i appreciate andrew adding another dimension to my question i would like to have the question answered though be um on the budget standpoint because there's a statement made that um which i'm supportive of that we're gonna fully reopen in the fall and i think people will be surprised if in the fall we say we can't do that because we can't hire 300 teachers or whatever so it would be useful to actually be able to both describe the operational but also the budgetary implications because if we all adopt a budget with a yeah we think this is going to mean one thing and then it means something very different and that's not what we've shared with families um i think um we're not in we're not a good place with our school community so i'd like to hear a little bit more of the answer about how the planning and and the budget will track that director brim edwards uh going back to the um the yes no and the difference in answers there uh to superintendent guerrero's point a ways understanding the budget from the perspective of like standard school uh and like being back uh but not thinking about it from uh the three-foot rule uh lack of space and those additional requirements that would need to be modeled out uh and so i i think that is that a known factor and and to uh model out what that could look like inclusive of what would families choose and and there's just variability there uh to continue with uh limited in persons or or to continue in comprehensive business learning there are some of those variables there that i think it would be difficult to model out but to the original question uh i i 100 agree with superintendent like it no there's just like unknown uh variability there yeah well i think we need to be really clear with our school community because i think they took the um statements that have been made over the last several weeks that this fall is going to be a full reopening as a it will it will be a reopening yes there may be some modifications because of any um health and safety requirements but that students would be going to school every day for a full school day right um i think we're going to move on to director godstam because i think this has been asked and answered that uh director lowry i think superintendent had one thing a response there that would be good to hear well sure and i'll try to be brief and you know stand by the statements we fully expect to be open but i gave the caveat when i made that statement right assuming the requirements permit us to and we don't make those up so the community might be disappointed so would we and so it partly depends are we talking about making sure our families have a choice in a virtual option or continuing a hybrid model because if it's a hybrid model then you see some of what you're getting now as sort of the school model if that if that restriction is is lifted
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or is a different kind of requirement then we are able to more fully open and maybe plan some contingencies around the edges where we might need some more staffing and so it's these kinds of variables and the lateness of the continuing to change dynamics and and variables and guidance that makes it very difficult to plan this is not a pps unique situation i just spent two hours this afternoon hearing from all the superintendents across the state who are wrestling with this exact same question so you know we're going to continue to sort of try to get some some exact requirements here and and i'm not faulting our state leaders because they're they don't have a crystal ball and they're seeing what's happening with the health metrics right now as well and so i think everybody including me is trying to be conservative and thinking about the health and safety of our community our students and our employees well i think a perfect example of that is what's happening right now with the high-risk categories that you know indoor dining closed last friday in several of our counties now it has reopened again so um the thing then hospitalizations didn't hit that 15 number benchmark and so you know it's it's a moving target um director constant would you like to ask your question now thank you very much um so first i have kind of a comment and i've um i've said this before and had a bit of ongoing discussion with staff around this but on a structural note regarding how the budget proposal reads i feel like it's really important for us to break down our special revenue fund and particularly our federal funds this is considered a national best practice i think it would be easy for us to do um i think one question that i have that's a subset of this um opinion is that i i i believe that our priorities for our esser funds are the same as our priorities for our sia funds um superintendent would you say that's generally the case the the intended purposes for each of these state and federal funds i mean they have restrictions they're not you know a free check you know or a blank check for for school districts they have intended purposes in most cases they they do but my question is um the framework that we're using the the the budget proposal doesn't have much specific information about the framework for prioritization for our special revenue funds both the student investment account and the measure 98 funds and the esser funds um and so i i guess maybe we don't need to answer this now but one thing i would like to get really clear on is whether or not our framework for prioritization is the same for our esser funds as for our sia funds we'll set measure 98 aside because those are much more specific and they're basically just to carry over from the priorities that we've had there in past years that have been well articulated right um so i i would like an answer to that question but it doesn't have to be right now um but my other really um more important point is that i think that as a matter of um transparency and communicating with our community it's really important for us to break down that special special revenue fund i mean two hundred and uh 236 million dollars i think um with those aggregated funds um i think it's really important to pull out those esser funds and to show the public what our priorities are and to also show the public how they specifically fit in and track with the federal um federal uh guidelines around how those should be spent and then over time we should be able to show our families this is how this showed up in a given school community this is how how we've appropriated this i don't think this is a lot more work in terms of a different kind of presentation for the budget proposal but i feel strongly that um that uh creating a narrative that expresses that clearly is is something that's really missing from this budget proposal so um that's something that i would like to see just from uh from a structural perspective and from a communications perspective um so i'm going to keep i'm probably going to lay down die over that i'll just tell you that right now and also just to be clear um it's that's considered a best practice for all of our districts around the country and i served on the national panel of board members uh specifically about um these esser funds so um i'd like to see that and be able to talk to our
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community really clearly about that um my my question with you director constance i'm sorry what did i say i'm in complete agreement with you okay i i think we all agree that 500 pages of a two volume budget book or 35 page executive summary still isn't digestible or palatable to the broader community we need to be able to give sort of that that high level sort of these are the important ways that we're investing each of these funds i appreciate the feedback the reason we should have included the former sia narrative because that's what we worked on we have it we could have inspired it in the budget book our list didn't change we're just now have the full sia fund to support those things we already spent six months going through the prioritization exercise for that we spent many a long night with the board discussing so you know it's just reminding people sort of that you know we we've had many of these conversations so we're filling in the blanks with with some of these new funds i do i think we need to pop that in and also measure 98 and also any explanation of how our strategies have deviated and also um some narrative around evidence that our strategies have been working because we do have some hard data on on some of that which is um always good to put in a budget proposal um and then um my last thread as far as other questions i've submitted some already i'm happy to have just um those conversations by email but my other thread which is a little messier that i want to raise here um has to do with the conversation we've been having with our community-based alternative schools so so right now in terms of the way they're funded um and i'm happy for anyone to um correct me if they think i'm mischaracterizing this but the way i see it is the way that they're funded is really from a system perspective from a system lens in terms of the the the mechanism through which these students are served we make decisions about how we're going to fund via that particular channel and i i would like to change that whole lens and i think it makes a lot more sense to really look at the students that are being served and what do they need and how are we resourcing them relative to certain students being served um in different channels in different ways through different mechanisms and then have a conversation about is our status quo equitable um because i think we've received a lot of um really good information from our um community-based um alternative schools our partners about uh you know what what they do how they're resourced relative to our comprehensive high schools for example relative to alliance high school for example and one thing you know i i love my i love me my volume too man i love those school profiles and um there's just so much information in there and it's just really um also i'm so proud of it because it is an artifact that really shows how this district has has flipped our school resourcing from a an enrollment-based um strategy to a student-centered need-based strategy and and we see it loud and clear that our highest need schools really do receive considerably more resources but our community-based alternative schools aren't included in our school profiles so um i would like to see i think i've already made a request for this but some more demographic information about the students that these schools are serving because we know that there's a high proportion of special education students we know that there's a high proportion of students in color we know there's a high proportion of homeless students and foster students foster care students so um i'd like to see that and then um just advance this conversation about are we or are we not equitably resourcing those programs um based on the students they're serving um and so if anybody i can re-articulate some of this um in writing but also um no alberto i'm happy to have a conversation follow up after this and um karina wolfe has been in some deep conversation with our our community-based alternative partners so this is a this is um a request that i that i intend to carry forward in this budget process um specifically um looking to increase their pass-through rate by at least 10 percent at least from 80 to 90 if not 100 and then also talk about are they getting equitable school-wide supports like counselors and you know athletic directors and all those you know let's look at it from a kid's
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kid's eye view uh as opposed to a system my view we'll appreciate the observation director constant that we have continued to move towards differentiating our resources more equitably to a greater degree for our more underserved schools who need those additional conditions and supports but your point is well taken we know who the alternative schools are serving uh and and they need those similar types of uh supports as well so i know staff is engaged in doing an analysis right now for for our cbo run alternative schools and i believe there's also an upcoming meeting uh happening with with the school leadership and administrators there so i i would say stay tuned because because we are taking a deeper look at it in the same way that you know the reason you're seeing a little bit of and maybe i'm just not up to speed here but the request for for staff to sort of sort of lay out clearly sort of the analysis around some of these contingencies on full reopening so you know all we're we're operating in real time here so uh but but the questions and the themes are what we are looking to draw out from directors tonight and that's exactly what you're doing because it tells us you know there's there's this additional work and context that we want to make sure is clear to the community and to directors between now and adoption thanks appreciate that all right i uh inadvertently skipped director bailey so i guess we're moving his birthday to december um so director bailey did you have a question i'm gonna take both this year then um yeah um so i want to first start off with sort of a meta view of this book as a communication and i think it's gotten a lot better as we have gotten much more systematic about we have a vision and now it's flowing down into a strategic plan that's really well articulated here and the next step is to really make concrete those pieces of the strategic plan with line items because the line items uh has been said before sometimes jump out so if you do look at page 110 and 111 which is the grants fund detail and that's where uh the federal money is coming down and i understand that the book doesn't uh reflect the latest thinking on where that is that um because of timing there were essentially some placeholders thrown in there but you can look there and see the big jump in nutri um nutrition services because we'll be feeding kids all year that's a big deal it's uh you know 10 or 12 million something like that um that's a big deal and it would be nice to call attention to that in the narrative and make that connection um you can see in the student investment act uh the big jump in both regular staffing for especially elementary and middle um as well as instructional specialists so you you see what we didn't get last year or this this year because of the low revenue that came in but hopefully we'll come back next year to fund and that's a big piece of the story that we've been saying is that we are pushing instructional specialists into our uh media schools our csi and tsi schools um that's key to our strategic plan to our vision so uh our and our commitment to racial equity so there are pieces there that i think we could do just take that one more step to call out um connecting the plan uh that it's connecting the narrative with the actual line items and i think that's that's where uh again take taking this and taking it one step further is when we call out uh like the very first objective in the strategic plan was to improve at the school level that uh collaboration and innovation uh really changing the the culture and structure what isn't clear is
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what in the budget is supporting that not to mention what does that look like in the grand level if if i'm working at a school and i read that and go okay what's how's that going to be different from for me but in particular for a budget document where does that show up and then the second uh strategic plan objective where does that show up in the budget uh with some specific numbers would uh really um as uh a member of the public you go through and say wow okay they are putting their money we are putting our money where our mouth is and and living up to our values so that's that's my kind of overall commentary um i want to agree with director moore about and we saw in a slide earlier money coming in from the state school fund dropping as a piece of what's going on with state funding and i'll be going to one of those legislative uh town halls tomorrow night to make that point um that's something really important because it again if there's a deficit there it forces us to backfill with dollars that we need to dig our kids out of the hole that they're in right now because of the pandemic uh it forces us to lessen that effort to do basic operations um i'm i'm i'm going to stop there and say you know it's it's almost all there um and with a a little more infill of some attaching some specific dollars uh again i'm really happy with the direction that we've gone in to make that that connection oh okay there is uh one thing that came up um we've talked previously about a return on investment um achievement and it's been mentioned for a couple of years how close are we to actually implementing something like that um and how uh how does how does that show up uh budget-wise so as we roll out the strategic plan in june um in the middle of june that will include metrics and um that also with the um the next step that you're just discussing um about getting to where we're monetizing the strategies um and putting a dollar per student cost on implementing the strategies and then also looking at comparing the dollar for student costs as well as the increase in meeting the metrics um that's the what's needed to be have in place and are able in order to do the academic return on the investment work so we're get we're getting closer and i know that our cfo delgadillo is planning on bringing some of that expertise that he has in this arena and will be helping guide us through that as we move forward and especially the next fall we'll be um doing some community outreach based on the strategic plan so in preparation for the following year's budget and i should have prefaced my question by saying return on investment for achievement is a measure of how a specific intervention to help students how effective it it is per dollar um and if we can suss that out then we know where to put our dollars to be more effective compared to some other programs that might have some impact but are either incredibly expensive or just not as effective in terms of dollars spent you're singing our song director bailey and i don't want to be a ball hog because i know dr brown and i have the same dream to tie performance management with investments i'll let them just give you a teaser i saw russ pop up there but is are we going to hear from russ now is that the yes microphone russ there's an old documentary of los
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angeles punk bands called the decline of western civilization and one of the lines is the members of the band reminding the lead singer to sing into the microphone as because he's kind of wandering all over the panda into the minecraft well maybe we can come back to him can you hear me now there we go uh you know we we go between different environments and zoom for whatever reason has way more options for microphones because i tried every button but what i what i was leading with uh was i'm thrilled to have uh chief uh dio here uh with me because we've started have these conversations the conversations that uh the superintendent i've had along the way around being able to really not only look at um academic outcomes climate outcomes for our students um as articulated in the strategic plan but also the alignment of dollars to them and to to look at those uh return on investment uh pieces for it it's work that i had done uh previously uh and i think uh director bailey you you articulated it well it's this idea that you know if you have two things that are both producing academic outcomes but one is much more expensive than the other and the outcomes are very comparable um why on earth wouldn't you expand uh you know the use of the the less expensive of the two it's you know it's a basic sort of budgeting sort of process and uh stewardship of resources as we move forward and so yeah really looking forward to the release of the strategic plan with those those um metrics associated with it so that we can begin to to do that work moving forward of course it it will be greatly facilitated by being back in person and and actually being able to do measures in the more traditional importantly traditional sense as we move forward and now i'm intentionally turning off my mic uh one more piece um that i think uh i was really happy to see um and that's the uh discussion of special education and intersectionality between uh students receiving special education and and race um we we've talked about that before and it's it seemed like they were compartmentalized before and i'm very happy to see that recognize that intersectionality recognized and called out um yeah i can't quite it's on like page eight or page nine it was like yes oh it was the mindfulness inclusive on page nine and when it's talking about the next uh level of the strategic plan the next tier of priorities so i think that is a big step forward for us and when it comes to the budget it's notoriously difficult to track what's going on with special education uh in part because special education funds sometimes are mixed in with other funds and not not separated out so to the extent that we can um get that get something pulled out sooner rather than later um and have those expenditures related to or the strategic plan would be great and in particular last year and this is relatively small in terms of the billion dollar budget but speech pathologists in csitsi title 1 schools previously had had a lower case load or more staffing per student in recognition that the students they were seeing often showed up with a whole array of issues compared to students with a speech issue at a a wealthier school and that was done away with last year which basically increased the workload of folks really in the trenches in those schools i and i would like to see that something like that returned into the budget i don't know where you know i don't know where to find it in here um but i'd like to see that addressed uh for this coming year um and something like that
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uh hold it back into the budget director bailey i just want to thank you for you know you're exactly right special ed is absolutely a priority i mean when we think about um you know all of the students that we serve i mean 15 percent of our of our population and pps are special needs students we service close to about 6 000 plus students who are identified as special education so we are really excited to have that as a priority um that will be um very very visible to the community in terms of how you know we are um developing strategies um around ensuring that we are providing all of our specialized students you know access and opportunity and all the supports that they need uh specific to your question around the csi supports with speech pathologists i do want to invite brenda martinek into the conversation so she can just talk just really quick just about um you know some of the supports that we still have in place to how we are still pushing in to make up some of the areas that you were mentioning so if i can go ahead and call chief martinek into the conversation um hello brenda good evening thank you um craig uh good evening uh directors and um director bailey thank you for asking the question about uh special education uh last year we did um have a few reductions that we needed to do in regards to our speech path supports so that we could actually put more students into more speech paths into service and we're still looking to see how many of our students are going to continue in a virtual environment for next year and how many of our students are going to come back in person currently for special ed we're seeing about 50 percent of our students that are coming back into person and about 50 of our students in cdl so as we continue to look at that we will look at the budget and what the needs are to support our students with special needs thank you um and again if we're planning on everybody back which is what this this this budget is in everybody back um then my question still stands about um the caseload issues with speech paths in uh csitsi title one yeah that that's why we actually uh reduced um our slp like a it was like a tosa uh position uh we took away that position so that they could actually serve students uh in order to decrease those caseloads for our slps what we still continue to do is sometimes have issues hiring for those specific positions ots pts speech paths there are always positions that are hard to fill positions so we will continue to to look at those positions that need to be hired in addition to our csi schools for speech paths what we have done with the sia dollars is we increased our school psych fte and um we're looking at more of a comprehensive school psych fte in order to um make sure that our students are served in a holistic fashion and so some of that will help with some of the speech pathology especially in regards to the tiered supports or interventions and um additionally in regards to that the speech paths for our csi and tsi schools we look to provide additional supports and services in other areas as well but we do follow the contract the pat contract for speech paths so whenever they're over a contract we do compensate them well i'd be interested in getting more information uh as this is assessed out in the budget um and
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again keeping keeping a flag there um on that caseload issue i'm i'm happy to do that okay thanks all right nathaniel are you uh ready with a question at this time and i um what we're gonna do is we'll come back around i know some people i asked folks to ask one question some folks were able to do that other folks kind of got caught up in the moment so we'll go back through the list because i know for example andrew has a couple of additional questions and some other folks that might have more as well so everyone will get a chance to ask more questions don't worry about that but nathaniel first to you uh yes i have got one ready um and it is pretty specific and i imagine there is a reason for um what i'm looking at but i just i'd like to hear the rationale um so i i'm glad that the majority of our schools would experience an overall increase in the force in poor student funding and that at least for the 2021 2022 fiscal year the um sorry for at least the 2021-2022 fiscal year uh however i'm interested in hearing about the poor student funding levels at wigler uh why would a school with 85 percent with an 85 percent underserved population 8 math proficiency and 18 ela proficiency as them as measured by the 2018 and 2019 smarter balanced testing see its funding decreased by approximately 12 on a per student basis compared to this fiscal year when it appears that many comparable schools with a similar level of per student funding both now and in the past would not i don't believe we have that information right here in that detailed level um for this meeting but we've taken down your question nathaniel we'll be happy to um respond to it once we've had a time to research it all right thank you all right director scott thank you um all this uh these are these are all pretty quick um and and they may not require and don't require an answer tonight um one question i have is if it'd be interesting for me to know um i believe minimum wage in oregon is going up to 15 an hour in 2023 i may be wrong about that but i think it's 20 23. i'd be interested to know um how many positions we have in the school district that uh entry level is currently under 15 an hour and what it would take to increase that to 50 an hour as part of the 21 22 um budget and i understand it's not just a matter of increasing those folks there will also be compression issues potentially so so it may be a more complicated analysis but i would be just interested in knowing what that what that what that um delta would be um and then this question is not super well formulated but um so it's maybe more of a statement than a question i've heard you talk a lot and and and in a really good way about the one-time federal resources that are coming our way and and ongoing resources that we can count on and i just i want to just reiterate the importance of that approach and again it comes through in your budget document so i know it's something that superintendent you and your staff are focused on but you know how we how we look at those federal dollars and and when i say one time maybe we do stretch it out over over a couple years but just recognizing those dollars will go away um and then what that what that ongoing funding level is and i i do share um director morris you know concern that if if that ongoing funding is decreased and even if we can backfill for a couple years that leaves an even larger you know cliff um a couple years from now but just making sure as we are budgeting that we're being very clear about the fact that um those one-time dollars are being used for one-time expenses or if they are being used for staff that we're very clear that they're limited term staff that we have a plan for ramping down that the staff are only going to be there so again i think that's already happening in this budget but i'd like to just make sure we keep talking about it as we go through and not just so that we understand it as a board but actually the community understands it as well um that you know the federal resources are going to be extremely helpful and they're time limited and i don't think we can count on another um funding later um so those are just um two questions and then just so the board knows and just to put it out there publicly um the questions i did ask which i'm happy to get answers whenever they're ready um one was about um custodial staff and just understanding what i know there is an increase for custodial stuff so how many is that what does that get us to and then can we put that in historical context um someone told me that as of the early 2000s we had i think 445 custodians i don't know if that's accurate or not but i'd be curious if our looking back at those records um you know what what what was our custodial staff what is it today and then is there a metric uh a standard industry-wide metric you know square footage you know per custodian or something along those lines that we can sort of gauge um the appropriate or i don't want to
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say appropriate where we are in terms of overall funding um and whether we want to sort of think about a long-term plan you know to increase that again and then relatedly my second question but it's it's just really a larger picture of that first one is um operations and maintenance funding and i is there a way to estimate the o m funding that the district is currently spending and again can we put that in context of of you know industry-wide standards i know that one's going to be harder than the custodial staff because how you define o m is very challenging um so we may not be able to get i don't want to pretend there's a level of precision there but sort of what i'm really trying to get at is as we're investing billions of dollars in new facilities um have we absolutely positively dedicated the o m to maintain those assets um and i'd like to make sure we're maintaining all of our assets so that at least they're not continuing to decline but definitely in terms of those new assets because they're nothing will destroy that public trust more than if one of our new high schools ten years from now feels run down um and in need any need of repair so again that may be a long-term question about where is our own now and where can we build it up to over time because again it's as with all budget i you know people hate to hear it but it is a zero sum game um but figuring out what that um where we are and what that would look like would be really helpful so thanks great go ahead superintendent i was just going to say all all great topic areas and we'll make sure to sort of elaborate responses to each of these areas which i know have come up uh previously and then i just want to thank you for bringing up once again uh these recovery or relief dollars their one-time assistance dollars and so i think we tried to be really careful in sort of how we created our visual matrix of all of our revenue streams along the top and all of our priorities along the left and we're very judicious about what level of funding was coming from what column because we don't want to find ourselves in a pickle where we've made investments in non-sustainable areas and look some districts will need to fill their budget gap you know with an inadequate current service level uh with those monies which is too bad because it's really intended to support students you know getting supported and getting caught up and i think some of our legislators you know it's become clear don't understand that and might see that as politically expedient but this is this is a real issue i think everybody needs to understand thank you superintendent um my question is more on sort of the operational sides and um superintendent it's a conversation you and i have already had but i thought it would be good just for for public to um as we talk about the the budget and the strategies that you've chosen to get us towards our strategic plan and those board goals um some folks have asked about why not um extend the calendar and i know that your strategy has been instead to invest in supports additional staffing um and i just wanted to ask you to just in kind of broad strokes um speak to that a little bit about that um that choice of um the best way to use those budget dollars to really serve especially our historically underserved students sure well speaking of the current service level if that was increased to a consistent sustainable level we'd be talking about you know what level of additional school days is it time to add back but when you have um when you have to be more targeted you know with with additional new resources around where you need to apply those uh more equitably you want to be targeted you know we're just having the conversation around impact uh and where we need to see that and where we need to apply those those dollars and interventions is is why you see sort of the myriad of strategies described uh to you in this way and at some point you want to come back to turning the dial up for everybody uh in their experience and quality of educational program but we're we're still in this we're building capacity we're being targeted we have some schools that are sort of not not in the same sort of uh a realm of of condition uh and so you know we're being a bit more deliberate and judicious at this point thank you because that's that's probably the number one budget question i get it's class sizes and um school days and i really appreciate again this very clear priority pps to be targeted to be strategic and that adding days or times of school year benefits every student which is great but right now we're really trying to build that capacity and really target those students that are need the most supports um and so to use those funds to to create those extra positions those extra supports is it's the strategy at that moment so we can meet our board goals um thank you for articulating that just so we get it out there again and again about um this i think i think it's remarkable how pps has had such a clear vision and i think director constant you raised this about
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the staffing not being focused just on numbers but on need as well which is really important there's another phrase that my colleagues around the country sometimes use like let's work at a better day before a longer year and so we still have a little bit of work to do there which as you've heard some of it's focused on core curriculum some of it's focused on professional learning and instructional coaching some of it's focused on giving our school leaders sort of the flexibility to adapt for their communities context and the gap areas that they have with the specific students that they serve you just heard about sped 15 that's a big number of our population that's a general education issue frankly and so how do we all work at being able to differentiate for the diverse learners that we serve i love that catchphrase a better day before a longer year and i think about just how um you know trying to improve days especially for our students who struggle the most so thank you director moore do you have any further questions rita you're muted i think you have to unmute your phone can you hear me yes yeah okay sorry um i have submitted a few questions um so i won't i won't bother to talk about those tonight um i guess i just want to uh say a couple things uh which will more likely be comments in the form of comments rather than questions um i i i echo um comments from my colleagues about um uh sort of crafting a message around the budget that is more um really more accessible to the general public in in understanding how we are using scarce resources to advance the strategies that um you have identified as as being the most powerful to address the inequities um and i i mean i think it's worth thinking about the budget as a um like a communication document um and as it stands it's um it's it's very hard to get through so if if we can come up with some um smaller documents that that really spell out the the essential message um i think that would be really helpful um um i agree that we need to be more explicit about how we are using um the federal funding um i think it's doable and i and i also agree that we need to be more explicit um probably much more explicit about um the implications for pps uh i'm going to be a little more maniacal tonight the implications for pps of the um of the shortfall in state funding um i think it would be very interesting to get a document that spells out in in fair detail um what you would do with the money if we actually did receive current service levels like where would you put that money that we ought to be getting if the states were adequately i'm not even going to say fully adequately funding public education and art um and um i also want to underscore that a lot of the earlier discussion about the um is this budget going to cover you know all of the costs that might be associated with next year if we include you know some some proportion of students might end up opting for distance learning so it is going to cover it then and the answer was we actually can't predict with great precision what the conditions are going to be next year um which is not a satisfying answer for anybody but i think it's accurate and it underscores the need to preserve the additional covid related federal funding so that we have the funds to respond to the conditions that exist come september and if we end up having to use them to backfill inadequate state funding it defeats the purpose of those monies and it's going to harm our students it's going to make it much much more difficult for the
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district to be nimble and responsive to ever evolving conditions on the ground um so for all you know for the hundreds of people who are watching this on youtube um i i'm going to reiterate my request that you get in touch with your state legislators and emphasize the fact that it is their duty to adequately fund the state school funds in order to allow public schools to serve our students as they come out of this pandemic the way they need to be served okay i'll stop there thank you we we could as as you know dr moore i welcome our long discussions on topics like these but when you ask uh i'll try to distill it uh what would we do with additional resources well the things we would always want to invest in are the things that increase school communities capacity to create conditions to accelerate student learning outcomes right i'm going to invite our regional soup dr keeley simpson here because as the supervisor of our csi schools i think you always learn from the schools that are improving and the things that we're trying to do there that are high leverage strategies are the things that we always hope to take to scale as someone who used to be in keeley's position supervising turnaround school so could you just give our directors a little sample list of the kinds of things that you've worked closely with area senior directors and your school leaders around you know where they believe they can you know really leverage investments to whatever degree we make available to them sure good evening directors so a lot of what we spend our time with in csi schools is around instructional improvement and what's happening in the classrooms and so we work the principles a lot around what's happening in our plc's intentional planning alignment across all of our classrooms standards-based instruction and so those are the things that we spend the most of our time on as you know our csi schools also partner with uva and so we're working on day cycles of improvement and working on trying very specific things and then measuring that to see if we're getting the impact that we are really focusing on which is student mastery of standards so um just really focusing on professional development professional learning but very targeted and intentional around standards-based instruction which again starts in our plc's our principal spend a lot of time in the classrooms coaching our teachers working with our teachers you see the increased supports with our instructional specialists and that's what they're working on as well it's just alignment in our standards-based instruction and our strategies that we're using hey um i want to thank those directors who who have um found opportunities to visit our schools accompanied by our principal supervisors and our regional soups because hopefully uh you're you're gleaning uh it can be instructive uh to to sort of see how on the ground we we are trying to uh improve uh student outcomes for for our uh for us for our students um so just a little sample set there around to try to answer the question here around what would you do with more dollars we would do more of that more professional learning time talking about the problems of practice and what to do about them all right director edwards did you have any further questions you wanted to ask tonight i know you've already sent some in via email i do i have actually a lot um but i'll ask one that i'm often asked about these days um by parents who are concerned about um just what happened over the last um a year and a half and a half and sort of the the either curriculum or subjects that students didn't get to um just because of the you know changing curriculum or change in schedule um you know so and that they're not going to be ready for um or the negative impact it has on the readiness for them to be ready for the next grade so if they're in third grade they didn't get some something that is sort of a foundation for fourth grade and then they're behind or that is they're not going to be prepared for their post pps plans and i guess i use math as an example so we know lash from the met the maps testing data that showed that students um didn't make the progress as expected in in math um so good news uh more so on reading but not so in math and that we
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also know from based on that data that um large gaps um and achievements still exist between our black indigenous and students of colors and between white students so i'm interested in um it seems sort of um sort of sprinkled throughout that we're gonna have these investments um in um either our csi and our tsi schools or in specific classrooms but i guess i want to click up for a moment because we have black indigenous and students of colors and all in all of our schools so not just our tsi and csi schools and we have students who um all students who um for whatever reason didn't have unfinished learning or gaps or losses and so what are we what are we doing at a a macro level in every school in every classroom to [Music] address what maybe students missed or is it going to be like that's that happened to everybody in pbs and we're just going to move on um but i'm at a loss looking at the through the budget document to be able to answer that question for for parents who are concerned about their students readiness for the next grade or that they're going to be that they're progressing in their growth thank you dr director brent edwards i mean that is a very very important question um and those are questions that i'm also hearing as well from community and families that are concerned you know um with students that have um that have not gotten the full experience of what um in-class schooling looks like and so so that that your question is in multiple layers um we could talk about investment specifically one thing that really comes to mind is the critical investments around professional development and the professional learning series um also you know dr valentino will talk about the work that he and his team are currently doing in terms of looking at the curriculum units and um you know strategically making adjustments to be ready for the new year we can also pivot and talk to dr himmel you know who can talk about specifically around you know how are we addressing some of those issues as we're entering into the summer space also how are we developing a plan in the fall that's going to carry us into future years that's going to help continue to close some of those opportunity gaps um and so with that being said um i'll first start with dr valentino who could talk a little bit around um you know what his team and what his team is doing specifically around curriculum um around curriculum developments around professional development and professional learning and then dr himmel around learning acceleration so dr valentino and maybe the best place um thank you maybe the best place to focus on because like professional development i'm not saying if a student missed like two months of algebra i'm not seeing how or geometry or i'm not seeing how professional development is going to get them that two months back so maybe it's the other piece of like what what are the what are the things that kids absolutely had to have that they may have missed and how we're gonna fill that in right and that goes directly to the learning acceleration as we're thinking about summer and and fall programming and the r and dr mel's gonna specifically talk to that the only reason i was highlighting professional learning and development director bryn edwards is because again you know we're all going to have to kind of reinvent in terms of what our practice looks like um and as we enter into the full space you know how are we differentiating instruction how are we scaffolding and individualizing you know um instruction for every individual student um also you know how are we accelerating through some of the units um to make sure that we're we're you know we're guaranteeing mastery of specific content areas so and that's the only reason why i said professional development because that is a very very big big piece um to enhancing pedagogy and practice as we're entering into the fall space um but dr hamel i think this question is mainly for you as we're really thinking around similar programming and and how we're building you know the foundation for you know what does learning acceleration look like as we're entering into fall by the way by the way i appreciate the explanation the professional development that's helpful and i think uh to even build on that director brim edwards is that one of the ways that we're hoping to accelerate is uh with strategies that teachers aren't necessarily as familiar with like interdisciplinary project based opportunities for students and so that means uh incorporating standards from their own courses with standards from other subject areas and so the
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this takes some practice and some and some specific time for teachers to create those kinds of project based learning opportunities for the students and and that's one of the key strategies that we're working on this summer is providing opportunities for our experts our teachers and our tosa teams and our curriculum folks to get together and really slim down the standards so that we can focus because we know that there's so many standards in each of the subject areas and it's really important for our teachers to be able to target the key standards and and then um work those in to their their projects and their lesson plans so that the students who may have gaps from exactly what we were talking about may have missed some of the standards from last year that there's opportunity to if we're focusing on fewer standards in this grade level then we can infuse standards that students may have missed from the previous grade levels in and and one of the ways that we're trying to do that instead of making it like worksheets or today we're going to do something from last year is by the one of the strategies we're hoping to do is project-based learning so the kids are learning those specific standards in engaging ways that can go across the subject area so that the students aren't only learning those standards in one subject area siloed but they're being able to make the connections across the subject areas and so that's one of the ways that we're really trying to make up for some of the learning loss and another key area is we're really looking at some high high-dose tutoring so using the data that we get from map testing for example in the fall that map testing is great in that it shows specific skills that our students have not yet mastered and that they're missing per grade level so we're able to see as for example a sixth grader some of the fifth grade standards that they may not have achieved yet so then infusing that tutoring and having tutoring options targeted on those standards that they may have missed is an another strategy that we're really hoping to leverage i'm sorry and is that during the summer and like is that for you know one percent or like 20 of the students because that's a good question i talked to like all see like hey my student didn't get x where am i how am i going to get that so this summer we're being really targeted about who we're inviting so similar to lippy we're inviting students to participate who um we believe had the least interactions with their teachers that the students that have the hardest time being successful in the cdl model so it'll be a similar invite and then as we move into next school year we're using we're hoping to use this summer is like an incubation period for some of these innovative ideas so that we can then take um the the projects and the ideas and the the um the standards that the focus standards that our educators uh focus on that we can then bring that to scale across all the classrooms in pbs next year so so this summer you're right is going to be a very um small targeted group of students but with the idea that we need to build the foundations build that knowledge so that we can then take it to scale i'm sorry just one last question the high dose tutoring is is that done by i'm thinking about again this sort of division of the buckets with the there's the federal money that's like maybe one time or shorter term and then there's the long the general fund which is the sort of ongoing funding is that something that we'd paid for with for example our federal dollars because this is we're giving them high dosage to sort of address that but it's not an ongoing expenditure to address the issues that director moore raised exactly you're exactly right okay thank you all right director bailey i'm not going to skip you this time did you have any further questions or were you able to get out everything you needed to last round and remember we also can email so this is you know we have multiple avenues of question asking to get what we need before our um next meeting or our meeting on the 25th next meeting we'll be talking to cdrc so did you have anything else director bailey
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that's popping up right this second but i i reserve the right to uh interrupt one of my colleagues when i do get a question so we we are going to end at nine o'clock tonight because we do have lots of other opportunities to ask questions so in honor of staff time we are gonna we are gonna end on time this evening um director constant did you have any further questions you wanted to ask tonight um nope i'm good with email but i just want to double down again on this sort of notion about structurally how are we explaining these different buckets because it's been we've caught a couple of different threads and the questions that other people have brought up for example um director scott talking about you know the importance of the federal funds being used only for sustainable activities and these are the type of things that we need to be able to clearly communicate and delineate for the public so you know we had a wonderful presentation from um nirenberg about some of our summer offerings so i would like to see some of that replicated in the budget proposal so that it's really clear to the public this is what we're talking about in terms of direct activities that are targeted at addressing um you know some some of the learning needs brought on by the pandemic so again um i hope that the budget itself looks different at the end of this process but i think we're pretty close in the sense that a lot of this information and a lot of this the threads of this kind of storytelling um and a lot of this work already exists but it should be reflected in the budget about um this is how this this is more specifically what those strategies and priorities look like so people can sink their teeth into it i i think you're absolutely right director and other directors have have put the same idea forth around that kind of communication collateral in fairness to staff the proposed budget content sort of went to print weeks ago right before we had opportunity to actually think through you know what the design and the concept would be for this summer so there's some really good stuff there we want to make sure and include in this next version and yes that's exactly what these targeted one-time funds were for but back to the performance management and impact conversation earlier and if it works well if we see acceleration for kids who are furthest behind why would we not consider when we have more sustainable current service level to keep doing that kind of tutoring or other strategies if we think that you know if it's showing if it's demonstrating a positive impact on students so this is a real good time to to incubate some of these strategies because if they pay dividends then we should actually incorporate them into part of just the way we do our work all right thank you superintendent okay um nathaniel i'm gonna go to nathaniel and then we'll come back to you director bailey is that okay or unless what is your is your question related to this that guadalupe just said okay uh nathaniel go ahead uh i don't have any more questions at this time i'd just like to echo uh director moore's comments on the proposed decrease of state funding um it's really ridiculous to lower state school funding just as we're beginning to emerge from the pandemic because we received one-time assistance from the federal government intended specifically to address the incredible issues covet has presented and i also agree that um all of us should contact our legislators about that because it's completely unreasonable and especially you nathaniel let's get nathaniel to salem student student perspectives are always the most compelling and that was a very articulate and passionate uh response there so so whatever support you need from us we're behind you be our spokesperson thank you for that demonstration of our graduate portrait sense of agency and advocacy there nathanael all right director bailey will uh come back to you uh yeah buried uh deep in the back pages is and i uh i make a point of asking about this fund once every six years and i get an answer and then you know it's never in writing or posted anywhere permanently and
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there you go so my six years are up but i actually think i asked about it a year or two ago it's a fund 308 the pers ual debt service fund i would love to see a like permanent brief explanation of what that is where it came from what's our strategy for spending it i see it's been increasing somewhat what are the restrictions around spending it uh is there a long-term strategy because we know our our pers payments our first bill can go up and probably likely will go up over time as that part of the strategy is to mitigate that going forward uh left to see something in writing permanently suck on the on our budget web page as an explanation thanks that's the great question for the president of international oasville deputy hertz let's get in the weeds i was going to um refer um director bailey to the descriptor of perjurial debt service fund in the budget that describes what the use of it is for and just to uh it is our we issued um pers bonds um we've done it three times in this district 2002 2003 and 2011. and um what it has done is saved us hundreds of millions in pers costs by issuing bonds to pay our unfunded actuarial liability or our future pension costs um for all of the um employees that have um retired or will retire from pps so it is a way um go ahead i was just going to say and has put us in a very different position than other school districts in our state so the way the funds come in is at the percentage of salary so we only expense what we need for the debt service payments to pay the bonds back but when we invest those bonds in the pers side account it has outperforms at a higher interest rate than what we have to pay on the debt of the bonds that are issued and that arbitrage in between the two are what is um um what where we realize our savings and that's a perfect segue to our next board meeting because we'll be bringing carol samuels here roberto delgadillo our cfo will be presenting the possibility of going for a new pers bonds for our current um pers pension liability do i get an assist for bringing this up now that's perfect thank you for the time i will say there there is a page and it has a little bit of writing on it but there's a lot of white space in there that could be filled up for just a little more um a little a little simpler and a little more extended discussion of um because that's a chunk of money and it has been going up slightly uh so an explanation here's the trend here's here's why we're we're holding on to it here's when we might spend from it or i you know anyway yeah or or we will always spend it only on paying the debt of the bonds that we when we have a very structured schedule of when we make those payments and how much they will be dear lowry yeah we're yes julia um i have one additional question i'd like to ask if you've gotten through yeah we have nine minutes left of our meeting um julia has indicated she has a question is there anyone else who has a remaining question before we end our time all right seeing none uh go ahead director brim edwards okay um so i'd like to know in this proposed budget are there any school-based because it's it's hard to take the two like 400 pages and be able to tell this are there any school-based cuts that aren't tied to enrollment changes um like an example would be like we're
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going to give kids like less pe or that cut the adaptive pe so that's one question are there any cuts embedded in that budget and then second at the at the last board meeting it was here's the set of assumptions we have um that we're making since we're in the middle of the legislative session and based on this that we uh believe that there's going to be a need to make three million dollars in cuts and i would like to know uh whether before the uh we're being asked to approve the um the budget if staff will have identified that three million that they would cut or what what list they would work off of well we'll have deputy hurts um talk to the second part of that but what i didn't want was dr sean bird to feel left out this evening so who else better than to speak to you know the resourcing to our school communities than our chief of schools sean good evening directors good to see you all again uh thanks for including me uh super point i could bring you into the conversation yeah so the school staffing that we're pleased to report is uh is has not been reduced uh unless there were enrollment changes that would have caused a reduction but otherwise uh schools are maintaining the level of support that they've had in the past and in some cases increasing support so yeah csi schools tsi schools a single site admins sites will get additional uh assistance in many cases it's building on investments we've made in years past is just building on those so for example at csi schools they had 1.0 instructional specialists now they're going to have 1.5 and tsi schools had 0.5 and they're going to have 1.0 so it's increasing if we hear from us like a solitary school like you know art's being cut in half or this is of the change the likelihood is or what you're telling me is that would have been something that came about because of enrollment change or potentially a non-general fund and say something was foundation funded and it's no longer funded that would be okay that's correct and then there um you know some principles uh some schools purchase additional things with equity funding and as you know more schools are getting that this year so there's a slight change in the in the amount so some principles are having to readjust some of their equity funding in order to pay those positions but it would be it's generally tied to enrollment changes is why um schools would uh quote lose some things but in most cases it's fine great thank you and then the second part of the question that's for claire so i i just want to make sure i'm understanding the question and you said if we had had to make a three million dollar reduction what would we prioritize as reductions is that i wanted to make sure i heard the complete question i'm looking at the presentation from last board meeting and it's well there's no page numbers so it's about it's page six and it's proposed investment plan and it says in order to balance the general fund with the projected state education budget of 9.3 billion required us to identify approximately 3 million dollars in savings from the general fund some um it sounds like maybe you've already identified them so can you tell us and maybe with specificity or send to us what those changes are what those reductions are i don't have this specificity but i can tell you that um they i our cfo uh naberto del scadio referred to it earlier this evening that it was mostly in centralized services and non-personnel costs although some of it were open positions that we decided not to fill okay it'd be great to get that detail so that um we know what what um centralized services are important too so that'd be great thank you all right thanks everyone for a great discussion um and thank you so much staff for all of your answers and your willingness to um all teleport in from the green room uh and we are going to go ahead and adjourn our next board meeting will be on uh may 11th thanks everyone have a good night


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