2021-12-08 PPS School Board Facilities and Operations Committee Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2021-12-08
Time	16:00:00
Venue	BESC Wy'East Room
Meeting Type	committee
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: 12/08/21 PPS Board of Education's Facilities and Operations Committee

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we want to go ahead and get started um so we'll get started um once again we thank everybody for being here uh today let's just can we go around just like real brief introduction so we all know please do um let's start on my on my left down again and go this way and go around hi everyone i'm john lyon senior program manager for atomic schools hi i'm sarah miller i'm a first grader at windsor elementary school i'm vanna white i'm the grunter planning and real estate the research i'm pierson county real estate company i'm eric girding senior project manager for the lincoln high school replacement project director for the offices for monetization i'm angela jarvis holland i'm the executive director of northwest disability support and i also sit on the bond accountability community i'm gary holland i am supportive member yes here [Laughter] is julia from edward's board number committee number where sam caldwell foreign hi um my name is byron mcmahon and i'm cleveland's um cleveland high school student rep oh i'm also um deputy student as well awesome thank you all right so we will start with the ada transition plan we'll let them just a couple of seconds uh so you have a transition plan on the agenda tonight as intends to go before the board fairly soon for adoption uh so in your packets you've got a few materials including the draft plan and today we're going to do a short presentation and with that i'll enter it over to john thank you very much so i'm going to walk us through our transition plan i'm going to be co-presenting with the amazing human being sitting to my right sarah um i actually mentioned a bps parent of a first grader at peninsula so sarah's going to jump in and talk about some specific accessibility i think uh features that we want to discuss but also um amend where i follow so we'll do uh so this afternoon we'll discuss the proposed sequence of the district's ada transition plan as well as accessibility at the district mortgage on this latter point and as foreshadowing i want to really foreground that accessibility for the ada is only part of the complete accessibility picture for our students you can see our work for the the ada transition plan at pps.net slash accessibility this includes the draft plan as well as an index of all the barriers district-wide as well as a summary of our engagement so looking at the outline today um we'll first talk about the accessibility gap at portland public schools we'll discuss the regulatory background of the transition plan the requirements of the transition plan and then we'll take a very important bird walk to discuss inclusive play spaces which i think will help really illuminate the extents of federal accessibility but that is the ada and then at the end we're going to transition we're going to talk about the transition plan phasing and timeline the underlying message here and my goal for today is that i want to widen our view to a deeper dimension of accessibility because those two are not synonymous so just a reminder that our buildings are very very old the average primary construction date for district buildings is 1944. um looking at where 88 falls within this sequence only about nine buildings were constructed after legal productions for students with disabilities existed at all um these standards 1991 were then updated in 2010 so so
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strict compliance we only have six schools in the district that that meet ada guidelines 100 so 91 percent of district buildings were constructed before the ada 24 district buildings need elevators we have over 1600 documented barriers and to fully transition the district it's an estimated 69 million dollars so and talk about the regulatory context for the the ada so the purpose of the transition plan is to transition a public agency into full compliance with the americans with disabilities act and programs could be made accessible in one of three ways uh we can move programs we can move students or we can modify the architecture and we'll we'll talk about this third one primarily today modifying architecture but it's worth noting that we largely meet the mandates the ada by those by the first two by moving students and moving programs and i just want to highlight here that that's not in line with district values that's not desirable but it's what we do in the absence of a barrier-free district you might add a little context to that and i'll share more as we get through the presentation but for example we live in north portland we live right across the street from columbia park and our daughter is a zombie peninsula elementary school my husband i feel like it's really important to send her to her community school because you know you go to the grocery store we live like you said across from columbia park we've bumped into other kids um that are in her first grade class our daughter's first grade class in the park it just um that extension of the school extends beyond the school and so far into your community and if you know that you're going to be sending your child to a school that is not within that community not only does the family and the child miss out on that social extension but i believe also that the community misses out on the benefit of having a diverse population as well thank you so then looking at the requirements of a transition plan we need to identify barriers again those those can be found at pbs.net accessibility uh we need to establish a schedule to remove those barriers and we we need to do community engagement specifically with individuals experiencing disability to do that we connected with community vision fact oregon and the oregon council of development disabilities and we held three virtual town halls last year um we also put a public review of the transition plan with the comment form and we conducted spanish language interviews i'm sorry for those was that community engagement like just invited or was it a running open house yeah it was a 100 percent open so what we did is we had the organizations that we just spoke spoke about they broadcast on social media they did their email list serves we basically leaned on them to help us reach our community i can add a little bit because i was on the receiving end of the experience as part of the community members um i was actually alerted to the tom falls through another parent who invited me to join her daughter um went through a saban school district and is in high school now also a wheelchair and power chair user and because my daughter was so young she was like you know your daughter's at the perfect age you should join these calls and so i joined the calls and that's where um i met john and um they were really interesting um there's just such a deep body of work um that was shared and then there were quite a few people i'm not sure exactly how many i feel like it was about a year ago um there were two or three calls that john had posted and um shared the progress of the work that he had already done and then asked for extensive feedback and there were a lot of it was a very diverse group of people representing a wide range of disabilities so you know my experience as a daughter as muscular dystrophy is very different from a child who is autistic and so um john did a really awesome job of sort of collating all of that feedback together um to capture the highest level themes that could bring the greatest benefit to all kids on playgrounds yeah so the resulting kind of phasing structure from that engagement work is what you see on the screen here so main level accessibility is what we'll address first uh phase one and two are are covered within the 2020 bond and then we're
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going to look to future future bonds for phase three and four we're going to return to the phasing and timeline at the end of the presentation so i'll just ask if you if you want to dive in deep just hold those questions for a minute and we'll come back one thing we want to talk about today is during the engagement we surface many many conversations around physical supports that our students need but are not addressed in the americans with disabilities act so today we're going to talk about playgrounds but we could easily talk about any of the things that you see here so restrooms acoustics and broadly access we'll touch on access a little bit but i really want to contextualize the ada within these things and i can talk a little bit about the history of the development of the ada maybe shed some light on why that is but it's really critical that we put the ada in context of a wider accessibility conversation um so here this is ada is really just a small portion of the conversation we need to be having here so we're going to talk about inclusive play spaces as an example so what the ada requires for play spaces is an accessible path from the building or parking lot to the edge of the play area and then an accessible path from the edge of the area to the equipment then surfacing that complies with this standard indicated here there is nothing about the equipment that itself that needs to be accessible something to ask is is this presentation i'm not saying there's no gemini missing it in the new materials it wasn't submitted um so i want to talk about this space um so this is park just the eastern metropolitan learning center uh this this play space meets the guidelines of the ada um mark chips believe it or not are ada compliant uh and beyond the bark chips the ada really concerns itself with with the path that's highlighted and read here so this park is managed by portland parks and recreation i think they understood the gap in their community and what the federal standards were addressing so they undertook a design effort to make a radically inclusive playground on this site um these are some preliminary sketches today the playground looks like this and it's really wonderful if you've been there you know this um it supports all types of play for uh to it to accommodate a wheelchair user and anyone else it's just fun for everyone so this is another photo of anna and abby's yard and in forest grove uh so you can see like not only is this great for for kids but also provides access for caregivers as well so at this point i'm going to turn it over to sarah let her introduce back to dana so this is my daughter mac elena she's about to celebrate her 7th birthday on december 19th um she's very excited she's going to have a science themed party she's super into chemistry and science right now we just got our new microscope um she's in first grade at peninsula which i've already mentioned um we just um started the enrollment process for her in the talented and gifted program and um the community at peninsula is really wonderful and she she's very well supported through the special education program there and we've had a really wonderful experience so far um she has a form of muscular dystrophy so she's very weak and uses a power chair which is what you see her in there um while she's outdoors or traveling far distances and then uses a manual wheelchair while she's in school at peninsula elementary um she's our only child and as a result of the experience i've had as a mother who experiences physical disabilities i have found myself in a place of advocacy and i'm also a board member of harper's playground an organization that focuses on making the world more inclusive one playground at a time so thanks for having me here and um this is a video with magdalena playing on the playground at peninsula elementary a couple of weeks ago uh because magdalena doesn't swallow she goes to school with the nurse and so she um i asked her a nurse and she would take some video footage of her because i know um that she doesn't play much with other kids on the playground because she can't get physically to them the barrier of the wood chips that john described
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makes it really hard for her to get to the space of the structures and even when she can get to the play structure spaces she can't actually do anything once she gets there so what happens on the playground comes up a lot in conversation at home prompted by my daughter not me where she's telling me you know what she's doing on the playground and kind of what happens because you know kids want to run around and get on swings and climb on play structures and things like that and it is free play so it's funny when um john and i were preparing for this presentation we just had her iep on monday night and her first grade teacher shared with us not only in our iep but also in her our parent teacher conferences that there are some concerns about her socially because of this barrier that happens on the playground and it actually prevents her from being able to make really strong social connections with her peers because this is supposed to be a time of free play and so if it's not structured then kids are going to do what they want to do and they're seven years old so they're not thinking about being necessarily extending inclusion at this point in their social development so my daughter has made up a game that she placed by herself with a hula hoop and a wiggle ball um to help pass the time um other times she has come home from school and told me that um because she can't play with anybody or can't get to any structures that she's going to take a book and sit on the playground and read a book by herself um and i think what's interesting is john had mentioned earlier like ada does not request that those structures actually be compliant or inclusive play structures so um she can get out to the playground and be on the playground but what is the structures that are there do not allow for her to actually engage with her peers um these are some pictures of magdalena um at anna and abby's yard which is an inclusive playground and then also at harper's playground with some of her friends when she was in kindergarten we had her enrolled in peninsula elementary but she was in a pod a learning pod with three other kids that went to peninsula and also to beach elementary and they would frequently go to harper's playground where she like i said can't maybe you can't she can't get on that that piece that they're on but she can sit wheel up to it there's like a paved path so she can get up there with them and then can go down and meet them at the bottom they like we're throwing balls and things like that so there's opportunity for creative play where she can still be actively engaged and you can see like they're happy that she's there just as much as she is happy to be with them and then some more pictures at anna and abby's yard that just sort of show how things are designed and um created so that like this piece of it's like musical instruments that allow for a wheelchair user to actually get underneath there and to be able to reach some of those um like the mallets or hammers um associated with each of the instruments and then the image to the far right is actually at esther short park which is a community park in vancouver washington and this is an elevated play structure but underneath they've you know put something under there that can be manipulated if it's a game that could be played with a peer or a friend or a family member so there even though she can't get to what is above there's something down below for her to do with another kid and here's another piece of playground equipment that is really cool and i think this goes along with that theme and sort of the values and philosophy of pps's approach to a free play during recess um is that it's organic um that is actually like a little spinny cup for a kid to sit in um my daughter can't get out of her chair and get in there herself but she can put her little stuffed bat in there and turn it around and have just as much fun so it's they're adaptable things they're they're things that you know a parent could sit in that with their child or a child can put their doll or their stuffed animal in there um she could push a friend in there um so just thinking about the equipment that is on the playground in a way that it's not like she has to do everything that all the other kids can do but that there's an opportunity for creativity and engagement at the same time the services for the wheels here is just absolutely critical we could not do this with chips just more footage playing the musical
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instruments um of anna and evan's yard so again i just wanna to really emphasize like these things aren't required in marriage with disabilities act there there is a huge gap there and the ada is not feeling an essential need for students um so recognizing this and after the ada transition plan we started an inclusive playground group which involved uh community members like sarah but also our staff from from pe from special education from other areas of the district where we developed a set of inclusive playground standards um that will be documented within the forthcoming version of the spec and moving forward all improvements to playgrounds will be inclusive and the way that we're defining that is that the coolest thing on the playground has to be accessible by everything that's a great difference that typically means the thing that's highest up so so a lot of slipping surfaces but we'll take it we also included in this work a case study uh so we looked at woodmere elementary schools title 1 tsi part of their essay subgroups are students with disabilities they currently have two students in wheelchairs and also a blind student this is the current field um the travel distance you can see if you can see my mouse yes um kids come out of here need to to travel across this asphalt expanse and then arrive at this this play structure here and and speaking with the principal that it largely reflects what sarah told us about it's it's students that that rely on wheelchairs basically come to the edge of the playground and watch their peers play uh so we wanted to take a look at this as a as a case study we wanted to dream big um so this is what we came up with based on the standards that we developed with our community and i just want to highlight some of the the components here so we have a continuous circulation path with a surface that's acceptable for wheels we have a double slide or a companion slide so that students who may not be able to support themselves going down the slide can go down to companion we have a continuous path through all the major play features um we have cool down areas for kids that get over stimulated um we can go for some refuge but not be socially isolated from the space itself we have an outdoor learning space and we have musical instruments so kids experiencing some form of autism can go and express themselves express their autism comfortably we were dreaming big here but if we were able to for instance implement 20 of this across our elementary schools the impact would be profound so i just want to summarize uh playgrounds here so playgrounds are profoundly important for socialization and ideal setting for social learning they're also a really really important public statement about accessibility yeah i might just add a little bit to that i think also um you know the importance of kids being able to play on playgrounds together and like i there are so many times where my daughter will see some like really colorful fun looking play structure and she'll want to go and you get like partially there and you realize there's a curve or there's a set of stairs or like there's all this other like a series of barriers that are going to inhibit her ability to even get anywhere near the play space um is i i mean it's apparent as a parent it's hard to witness and she's i would say generally well adjusted to um encountering those barriers and sort of like finding another way to entertain yourself like a move in the whittle ball um but that doesn't mean that it is right and i'm sure that it is extremely disappointing for her um and also i just think one thing that has really struck me like as i think about our experience at penance look which is so focused on diversity and inclusion and i love that about the school um but then when you bump into these architectural barriers that actually go against the values that we're teaching our kids we unintentionally um create like a separation when we're telling them one thing but what we're actually doing is totally the opposite and um like i i think about that a lot as a parent um where she goes to school and she learns all these things about equity and then um experiences like something
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completely different when she goes and gets on a bus that is separate from her peers which is different than what we're talking about with playgrounds but um i just think it's really important that if we have this opportunity to do this something like this particularly in a place of play which has such a high impact on social development not just for kids with disabilities but for all kids it helps everybody to learn and understand and to practice and experience the benefit of playing with all different kinds of people and to make friends with everybody um is really valuable beyond school and far reaching into the community so i want to shift the conversation a little bit and this is going to be a downer i apologize [Laughter] i want to highlight one area which which is legal it meets the requirements of the ada but we would not consider accessible uh and that's cleveland high school so what we're looking at here this is 26 this is southeast franklin this is 28. the the primary engines of the building the front door of the building is this orange triangle here um the accessible entrance for the best side of the building is this green dot uh to get to the accessible entrance the slope on palm is too steep so you actually have to travel all of this distance so if you you can just imagine how exhausting that would be using a walker a crutch or a wheelchair when you get to the green dot what you find is this and as an architect this hurts to look at um it's unacceptable this ramp is a mess um but i i want to just emphasize here that this is this is compliant this is ada but it's also you know retrofit and jerry so that's one of the main reasons why we're fully modernizing all of our comprehensive high schools and working our way through the rest of our inventory because you know legal uh is not to say that anyone holds that as our idea so just returning again to the transition plan phasing as i said before main level accessibility district-wide will be phase one and two and is covered in the 2020 bond and then we're going to look to future bonds for multi-level access middle schools and k-8s starting with title 1 csi tsi and focus option and then phase 4 will be multi-level access for our elementary schools i'll just speak a little bit about the rationale for this phasing so looking at phase three in middle schools and k-8s we have kids that are rotating between classrooms so there is generally more movement that we want to support if there are specialized classrooms on a second floor for example we want to make sure that everybody's able to access those um that's why middle schools and kas prioritized over elementary schools where kids are typically in a home room for most of them so um the board made the decision to put 33 in the 2020 bond and i guess what i want to know is um looks like you're committing to do that in phase one and phase two and so that's still 73 million and um on what what timeline is that in terms of years so so the bond passed in 2020 and so it says so in six years the 33 million will all be spent and you'll have effective main level accessibility in all the buildings that's correct yeah so we need to touch basically every building in the district except for six with the 2020 bond and then the next increments so you're saying it's going to be two even though they're in the same box that phase three and trace phase four look like they're too actually confused because one is a five one is a six year and the next is a seventh year but are those years married to bonds are they for something else they're they're a conservative estimate based on on the sequence of elevators so for instance if we were to look to the 2024 bond um we would of course change that date
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and push everything up here um so looking specifically at the duration uh we've got about 12 elevators in both phase one excuse me there's nothing specifically tying us to a bond commitment within the transition plan um but i would look to phase three to fund hold or in part in the 2024 bond so the timeline and that's not to say that we could start immediately um given staff allocation all that all that stuff but yeah it's certainly fungible i'm sorry because i thought you said that um i thought is that the bonds that the primary funding mechanism is the bond then it seems like the phase of this will be so i think this is more a potential timeline it's not anchored on the financial components of the bondage so if he's now saying we look at three and four to go to the 2024 bond and that's a more decision than the prioritization of what fits into that phone then then those dates would move up so they'd be sooner if it was in the 2012 but it's also a high phase three individuals but it's also hybrid between a pragmatic uh understanding of how we could sequence the work and the availability of the vendors and contractors to do the work as well as access to the capital we need whether it's from the bond or general fund or whatever so this is very preliminary and not to the extra reason yeah again i'm trying to see how it gets to main endpoint um like for example if the board hadn't voted to put the 33 million dollars in accessibility what what would this timeline look like or was there some other well just that we hadn't completed our transition plan i think this will stretch out longer right it would stretch along we wouldn't be able to complete them we wouldn't have funding to complete and then my other question i love playgrounds because um that's where i found my like creative cell and the place directions like glencoe are still the same ones i played on just for the record um um i love that idea i'm like is that baked in here or is that like on top of because i think like it's like i want to buy that and we need to buy this so what what is the whole thing and is that incorporated in the transition plan because you know i think the the basics is becoming successful this is like the found foundation and the other pieces to make it really accessible on top of it so like what what does that that all cost is that baked into the transition the idea transition plan is specific to ada i think john has more presentation answer some of those questions it does and so there there are a set of legal requirements for the transition plan the transition plan must only speak to the requirements of the ada the very narrow scope that we discussed here because we are legally accountable to to track and incorporate all resolutions to all of those documents so within the transition plan um we we need to focus solely on the ada uh so as i've said we have we have inclusive playground work we've worked with the community on developing those standards those are documented both within the long-range facility plan and within the district's aspect uh we don't have any specific scoping requirements um but i would anticipate in terms of planning for the upcoming bond that we would develop those if you would like to do uh for instance we have a 45 elementary schools if we would like to address intensive playground equipment at 20 this is what we do but we need to do that within the specific budget amounts for fun so the intent was this is about the ada transition plan but we just want to give that additional context like that ada compliance and accessibility are not one of the same and there can be very high value accessibility improvements i'm going to go after playgrounds restrooms acoustics and some of the gun that's called out that might be you know as important or more important than some level of ada
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compliance so we just want to be able to give the committee that level of contact uh when instead of just hyper focusing on the ada transition planning people not understanding that relationship so i understand there's a ton of work to just be responsive to this compliance obligation that we have here but how much uh how much analysis or how much even explanation of the scope of those other issues have we done or will we do specifically so for example um inclusive playgrounds like inclusive playgrounds but also you know there's all sorts of improvements within classrooms in terms of accessibility that are not required by ada but are you know humane improvements that we would like to make i mean there's also there's a whole range of things not to mention things that address disabilities that aren't uh manifestly physical yeah um so i'll just say we we have a long way to go i think as part of our work on this bad bond development we we've made progress on understanding what the gap is uh so i think we're getting our arms around that now um i think what i would advocate for though is is in addition to spending in future bonds on accessibility we have a continuation of the sped scheduled work or or some more generic accessibility improvements but to answer your question we would need to look at that carefully we are the farthest along on inclusive playgrounds we have a pretty good understanding of what the the gap is and it's very place to start yeah it's a very very big campus so i'm just speaking as one individual board member but also one who chaired the last one i i would hope that pbs would have a accessibility plan and underneath that this is like one piece of it um because it's sort of in some ways it's possessed it's almost itself it's like a false choice like you can choose the legal ones and that make and if we do that we can do it faster or we can do it slower and we can add these other things which are accessible and it's like i want them all but it seems like we should what's the most inclusive to um our students who need our buildings to be more accessible is to have this overarching plan yeah we just have to do this but i think it can't be like well we're not going to do this we're going to do this over a way long period of time because we want to do all these other things that aren't planned it seems like better to be what's the big thing look like and then this fits under it as the legally wired or maybe the floor um but it's not the whole idea i agree with that approach um and then that's something we can talk about and we're happy to continue the dialogue with our community about what that looks like i think the the four things that i mentioned at the beginning um so so playgrounds access uh acoustics and uh missing restrooms i think they all need their own individual program plan so we we heard i think the loudest and the most consistently about playgrounds so we got started on that almost immediately and we're pretty far along we have a capital plan for playgrounds we have a capital scoring criteria we have a set of standards uh we're ready to go we just need that ones and that's not the case with bathrooms that seems like that would be like a pretty foundational uh bathroom so we make various accommodations from about restrooms um through special education special education that 13.4 million dollars is going to accommodate that in part but so just to back up and get a little context that the ada requires uh restrooms to be accessible an ada accessible restroom can be as small as 35 square feet with five by seven which does not work for a mechanical wheelchair as well as some support i would not say that that those kids are unsupported in our schools right now it's happening but it's happening in kitchen restrooms it's happening in multi-stall bathrooms that are being ported off it's happening in other ways so just does the main floor accessibility does it does that cover that means it does yeah okay like otherwise we're not going to get the 180 square foot bathroom at every site that we want and our kids really need but we can do a lot of that you know the other thing that we need to think about is that um you know we've been focused on our high schools for our full modernizations
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which are outrageously expensive because they're so big but as we get through that work we will have two more to finish out on our next spot um we'll be able to to spread the spread our projects more broadly so we'll be able to modernize more of our inventory because they're not going to be 200 million jobs you know so that is another way even if we're not just applying it to accessibility improvements but full modernizations or significant modernizations that include accessibility so that's going to become easier and speaking forward with our program that's exactly right i just want to end by acknowledging that that 20 years is a very very long time to wait for work that should already be completed there's just there's no other way to say that this work should be done what's up uh the 20-year timeline is a conservative estimate based on the expected duration of installing 24 elevators and it really is just elevators elevators are extremely specialized construction type they take minimum about a year to install uh we have about three elevator manufacturers in town so that supply chain limitation would could potentially connect distinct projects creating supply chain disruptions which we're hearing all about now uh this could easily cause an elevator project to be delayed for a year or more so turning at a school construction site for over a year and then just to end the this the parallel accessibility investments like the ones that we talked about today could elevate the experience of our students in the near term while we continue to make compliance we don't have anybody in here from special education but clearly you might know this i mean uh do we know how many students we have to reroute away from their neighborhood schools as their for example the kids the school where my kids went to elementary school uh got an elevator in 2012. but before that uh students with any physical disabilities wouldn't attempt their union school there there are um for instance i recently visited a middle school that they actually moved as a wheelchair goes through different grade levels and their multiple levels building the full grade levels too different for the main floor to accommodate the wheelchair because that comes and another one comes through they move classrooms around from four to four so it's not really an ideal situation but it really it depends we make it very individualized uh elevators are something that is needed in this is not just about accessing the classroom either it's about the cafeteria and the library it's the whole um it's just it's not just students too there's there's yeah yeah staff members it is not accessible all right you have any other questions you have a new one um other than the 20 elevators are there are the 24 overviews are there other things that would happen it would take 20 years the elevators are the driver for that duration they're by far the most expensive accessibility yeah but what i meant is are you not going to do other things because you have like this the whole argument like well when we do the elevator we do x y and z so by saying like this the elevators take 20 years does that mean the other xyz are going to happen on that long time frame i see what you mean so the the multi-level improvements like restaurants the multi-level so improvements to restrooms on the second level of the building without an elevator is phased is grouped by the elevator for that building we could move that off um
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i'm going to be in the same place i was before because i don't think the timeline has immediately changed i um i said the aba passed a long time ago and i totally look like i'm totally supportive of um we need to do more than the transition plan but also like i don't i think waiting another 20 years and that's dependent on all the bonds passing is too long for the basics um another big basics plus i i would hope you have like a more a more robust plan because i i do believe that playgrounds would in combination with a shorter timeline make really measurable improvements uh for students but waiting 20 years and this and then not not necessarily even moving plans and other things i'm not i'm not applying or just say no potentially um i'm gonna certainly work for the next bond and look to file for improvements but i think also to be able to look for more like you need a bigger plan so having just an ada plan which is sort of the floor like i'd rather i'm always a big believer like what's the vision and then we can fund it versus finding the funding and then having the vision following pieces so i think when people aren't inspired by the vision that they um do amazing things that's right so since we are going to be voting on this one to recommend yes um sorry hi i'm mike rosen and i'm the board chair of um disappearance we're an organization representing 5 000 families i am testifying today to ask the facilities and operations committee to reject the draft need me transition the reasoning is simple easy to ask my organization supported the last construction bonding because it allocated 313 million dollars to the first floor that was fully accessible we were told at the time that we cost an additional 70 million clear that part of our support is contingent on tps finishing the job now we are being focused on that this is unacceptable to us this plan must be revised to assert that the next six seven million dollars to complete the job and that the work would be getting immediately finally i want to take issue with the public outreach program to seek feedback on the development graphic transition in the prioritization section of the plan it says and i quote recognizing that the district has limited funds and cannot immediately make law schools fully accessible district stakeholders and committee members were asked to consider their organization criteria so before the process of reading it would start the district misleads this does not need to be a process of transition racial equity social justice civil rights in the law cannot be doled out in the convenience of the district what the district should have said is that through the capacity of bonding we can correct this injustice with deep ace help us plan for that just hello i'm angela jarvis holland
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and this photo is the signing of aba 31 years ago this woman's a friend of mine she said did god another 20 years when i told her what was being discussed i do not think it's appropriate to discuss the civil and human rights of people to belong in a law that was passed and this is an ada plan and when we discuss an ada plan and say as a district we accept 20 years do we really reach for anything do we really have a commitment to equity and the health disparities and racism of this country mean there are more people of color with disabilities that are impacted by these decisions and do you know what it means if you say that you don't have multi-level access it means you systemize segregation you decide that you will solve it by sending children with disabilities to the schools that are accessible you further marginalize them and the message it sends to the community is we don't really care about people with disabilities they do not belong there are volunteers there are teachers there are students you could have shown the video of the students that a student from cleveland made and you could have shown one that has my son who has a significant disability who ends it by saying finish the job in the next bond i'm going to ask you to really think hard about what you want to agree to an ada plan is about ada minimums yes we want more than that but that ada plan in past gives the opportunity and there will be changes in hierarchies in stat and we will be back where i was 14 years ago advocating again and again for the same cam that gets kicked down the road these are real people in real life and if you need to stand for equity you have to say take this back and look at it again 20 years and that timeline does not work and yes i sound very passionate because i am and i don't disrespect any of the words of the parent here the person that went that founded parker's playground went through a training of our organization to be learning about how to avoid the segregation that systemically happens in eps and as a friend of mine so i think there was a bit of smoke and mirrors about this getting into other discussions this is a legal ada plan that would mean that pps would have to comply with that timeline and i'd like to see that timeline changed thank you thank you i have a question about about that point angela because you know this is a really difficult conversation because what you have laid out is rooted in pragmatism and sort of feasibility because you can't make any commitments for any future bonds or any future decisions by boards that are different than our board now um but it's not my understanding that this would be a legal commitment it's my understanding that what we have is this is a minimum this is the floor of what we expect and i think with a little bit of i mean i would be happy to work on resolution on this our board resolution but i think with a little bit of um more uh positive and visionary language about what we aspire to do i think we can find a happy medium we can commit ourselves to these minimal commitments but also somehow express uh our intention to accelerate that work but it's really tricky when we're talking about policy language because we can't make any commitments for anything that's bond funded and we can't make any commitments for future force but that said um i think we can really make it clear that this is this is our minimal expectations for how we're going to have an inclusive district i mean do you want to just abuse me of any of that based on just the the tricky bureaucratic compliance aspect of this no i agree with that 100 i would support that wholeheartedly um i'll just say like this is really challenging for me my wife is a wheelchair user and photographed in many of the pictures here and this is extremely challenging this work should be done but i think if we were to commit to doing this in the next month 2024 i think there is a very high probability that we would fail and that's not based on money it's it's market capacity it's just we just yeah we're running into manufacturing roadblocks they're very real
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yes so we have um dr aisha musa hi thank you i'm dr aisha musa my last name is spelled m like mary you s like sam a i hold a ba in an mit from portland state and a phd from harvard and i'm addressing you today as a concerned disabled taxpaying citizen of portland my family has a history with the portland public schools my maternal grandfather was a teacher and principal in portland throughout the 1920s 30s and 40s in 1965 i was denied entry to my neighborhood elementary school buckman because of my disability we were told that i could only enroll in the holiday center for the handicapped my mother and i visited that school i don't remember the school at all but i'll never forget my mother's reaction we got back in the car and she turned to me and said you're not going to that school i would not send my pet pig to that school you're going where you can get an education we were members of saint francis of assisi parish and they had an elementary school so my mother arranged with the priest and the school principal to cook breakfast and lunch five days a week for the students in the cafeteria so my brother and i could attend i share this story with you because now nearly 60 years later and nearly 50 years since federal law required public schools to provide disabled students with equal access to a high quality education portland public schools is asking for yet another 20 years to provide that access 80 years to provide access access delayed is access denied to yet another generation of portland students a vote in favor of this transition plan with the current timeline is a vote in favor of the continued segregation and marginalization of disabled students that concludes my remarks thank you and now i will share a video from harvey yes is on it should come through the polycon um hi everybody thank you [Music] [Music] is the plan that's being presented doesn't have anything with you necessarily
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acceptance um attention okay with a um the video included a teacher from the school foundation that experiences a disability and she's very disappointed to her 20 years the person that did the video is also a student so for me the school board members bringing that voice from people who are in school is really important so i appreciate that you're going to look at that video um all right so i have a couple couple comments um i don't believe conditions can happen waiting to begin i think the learning like um director confidence was saying can be worth a differently to to show the emergency that we want to have but knowing the realities of what's going to make those happen um and so i think if we can go back and kind of put those wordings in there to show that we are we are urgent we want to get this done and we want to make sure you fall in love we want to make sure we do what's right by our kids um with the caveat but these are the stuff that we haven't gone through a lot of stuff on the sunday and somebody comes then like you said you could be done um so i think that would i mean that would be like the best person actually um so leaving one team recognizing this in the back you come [Music]
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are we looking at accepting the ada transition plan as a war just being reefed on it and accepting it or being asked to vote on it is there a requirement for approval or is it silently just it needs to have there is a requirement oh there it is so we do need to vote on it that's correct so and one one thing that i would say is that this is a plan showing what we need to accomplish um and even goes beyond that in terms of what is important in terms of accessibility for our students and families so and then remembering that the board also has the decision-making process around putting bond pathogens together right so there's going to be much further discussion i think i think all of us agree that we need to do this work as soon as possible but this is not something that we want to have our community what we want is accessibility for all of our our communities and what we have to look at is logistically how many elevators can we order of a year and receive them and how much do those costs and how much of the bond package financially is that going to take and so then the board will ultimately make that decision because we're putting bond packages together every four years on how much we're putting in for many significant programs throughout so i don't think this signs our hands to a specific timeline this is stating this is what we want need to accomplish and what we need to do in our district okay so can we can we articulate that in 88 would you just say i know we'll get the second agent there we can articulate that and i wonder if it's in the plan maybe to a resolution or maybe a little bit of both like first certainly in the resolution and i'm happy to work on that and it sounds like that has to be to say if it's coming yeah i mean tomorrow for next week you can vote out of the community um i i think if you having the document though 20 years from now you know i've been around pts for 50 years and um you know staff and board members come and go and i know like we've had our first vote to put the 33 and i want to thank director constance for being the one other vote that first put the money into the 33 million years because that wasn't in the package and that went down like some midnight vote and then came back and downloaded in so i'm i i worry about having a date and a transition plan that's approved by the board that says one thing and then ask motivational language in a resolution that may not mean anything or commit anything so but i think there's maybe a little bit of misunderstanding or misrepresentation about how it is characterized in here i mean i don't i don't know if you do feel like there's an ability to revise some of the language to make sure that it captures our our full intent or yeah so a couple of options here so we could we could put a condensed time like 10 or 15 years and commit to revisiting the transition plan itself prior to the future bonds as long as we have that common reference point and that stake in the ground to guide us what i don't want to happen though is to commit to a 10-year plan and then fail yeah i think that would be devastating both because we did we are unable to find the resources or because we're unable to execute work given the market conditions i don't i don't want to think when i kind of know about elevating it because of the market and doing it so it cannot be articulated as well exactly the only thing we're talking about as far as that's gonna take a long term is the elevator piece knowing that this
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it's also the disruption in the schools yeah remembering that if we're trying to do you know let's say three elevator projects right so let's say it's three schools about disruption so it may make sense to do investors separately from the lawyer because you're not going to expect school too much it might make sense together because they really they will disrupt it less by doing quality so i just want to say logistics sometimes actually doing work they're always trying to get it as quickly as possible you can't make history this is that's the exact same question i asked maybe a half an hour ago about the x y and z in addition to the elevators because it's just it's and i don't want to use the elevators but is it like the elevators in xyz and i think you want to ask the question and i've heard it's like oh we can still do x y z often with you know there i think there's only twenty four schools that made it believers but there's probably more than twenty four schools that need accessibility issues as well before right so there's going to be projects moving forward in lots of other tools with elevators so that's that's the piece where it's going to say it's going to take less time because we [Music] there's no specific deadline but what i'm what i think i'm hearing is let's make some some changes to the language not substantive changes more directional genes and then we can bring that back and i think right now we're on the agenda for the transition plan go to the next board meetings people need to pull that off it's a lot of time to develop the plan then probably probably that june uh that doesn't have an official impact it doesn't and especially now with the phase one and phase two of the plan awesome any other questions comments around this all right let's get to the thank you guys for the presentation thank you let's go to the parks in the government really quick i would like that would be so great um so yeah this is an update on the portland parks and recreation i ai was i don't have a collaboration agreement whatever um and so this it will actually be fairly quick um the purpose of it as many of you know is is to provide both of us pbs and pb r with accessibility to different kinds of assets um the current one expires at the end of this year working for about 18 months on this i think marshall's actually on the phone as well thanks and so we just we spent about a year going through with a consultant um really kind of airing things out i have to say the relationship between the two entities has not been good and there was just a lot of anxiety and everybody convinced that they're going to be shorter than the stick so it's tremendously time consuming to go through all of the detail of that but it was i think a really good thing for us to do as a team so um as mind-numbing as those meetings can be i think that we're absolutely essential so what we have decided to do now is we have an agreement with parks on our sports agreement we're going to go back to the way we used to handle this where we bifurcated the real estate piece and the sports piece
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so the sports piece is where we're at right now that'll be ready to go to the board of january also has to go to city council because they'll pass more than fifty thousand dollars um when you say buy for paid you mean two survivor intergovernmental agreements absolutely not really okay yes so that's that's what we're uh we finished that first part and of course like i said this is primarily for our benefit of our athletics department yeah is this presentation also posted uh i don't know so is are there two things that are coming um to us are they um about all the specific properties or is it a larger like a larger framework so the first thing that will come is the athletic agreement and this is all of our exchange of assets between the two entities um and all that detail actually then would world start will become a real estate piece in january that is as complicated as this was that will be uh much more political of the difference between real real estate because a lot of this seems like it's connected to both who's going to pay to improve grant park um when we don't you know access access right the beautiful pooch that's on our property in which pieces each of that like so let's take grant or benson's um so city property pbs uses it like benson you know they they're leasing it out to you know uh another school it varies so is that in the real estate or in the sports that's in the real estate what the sports does it says here's our agreement on how we're going to share our assets we're going to give you this many hours of food and you're going to give us this many hours we get into capital investments and we've discussed not wanting to put capital into each other's properties that's where the real estate piece comes in because benson's a great example of a huge problem that we have dan and i just met from parks last week and said you have to we need you to commit to fixing this this is so important and you know they're in the same position we are in the sense of being able to make future money but they recognize the defense and they're willing to have that to be part of hard work this is priorities to them as well so i think that but what you're talking about when you talk about whether or not we are going to put money into something and have exclusive use or something like that the sports is really the here's you know 50 000 hours that we're exchanging and all the places that we're doing so we actually agree that hours agreement yes yes we shall serve as our babies so we can go forward yeah one of the biggest things that was important for us to get was we had to build schedule change from uh we needed four to seven which parks felt was costing them you know at least a hundred thousand dollars a year in and revenue that they would be losing but we were able to get that and we gave them more access to gyms for volleyball and volleyball volleyball was not in the original agreement and that's an important component for them so i won't read through all of those uh he go back for sure what about specifically the clause in our prior intergovernmental agreement that was not honored by parks and rec which gives public schools for first right to taxpayer private part facilities so as we start to get to right now this is our this is our balance we will i want to say equity because it's not cool exactly that the use of each other's uh they have given us everything that we want that they have to give so this agreement now says you're getting this priority i don't know does that make sense uh well does it specifically address that clause which is that if there is a need for a certain parks and rec facility um by public schools then we have first right to that because that was a specific clause in our prior agreement that was not routinely not honored by them yes so that they could double them i totally get it actually though partly it was because pbs didn't was i'm going to make capital um
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i'm willing to put money into like the benson project that was you know like st mary's came in and pcu came in and said we'll put this amount in and pps was the last to the table and you know they came in finally with some money and they got the time they asked for but they weren't like first to the table so i i hope that we are matching our we want to be prosperity but also that we're going to be making an investment because we passed it those there wasn't there wouldn't be a field there but for the fact that pc saint mary's put money i understand um in this agreement what what we'll say actually is that this that if there's anything here that we cannot do then we will make we're going to make sure we do everything we can to provide something else so we have to kick somebody off in the field because you maybe pbs needs to move for some reason that happens with parts then we have the criteria for that so you'll probably we haven't gotten all the language completely done on them yet so i'm guessing you probably don't want to see the detail we keep going and see where we okay yeah um the other things that came out of it were uh ppr reduced their reserves on our fields by about two thirds which was great freedom a lot more fields for us um and we have agreed that while we're agreeing to this is an equitable sort of sharing um anything that is direct cost will be paid so custodial for example you know that's a big issue to them um so we have so we've gone through the athletic staff on both sides and come up with these exchanges and then this will be a three-year rolling agreement so that on the second year we're back to saying okay what's our baseline for the next three years so that we're not every year going through hundreds of hours of okay we need mondays and tuesdays from three to seven it gets really complicated and it was cell nessie before that it was just a constant source of irritation marshall did you want to add anything yeah i wanted to uh get good afternoon everyone i wanted to add um back to amy's point um because i know there's some very specific properties that we wanted like done away and what we were able to do was to look at all our athletic programming across our system and they decide what fields we're going to use over this three year period and make sure we had what we need in order to get our athletic programming done in that there are some agreements that park bureau does have where they like buckman where they have agreements with outside parties and we have to basically work around that during this one to the end of whatever those contracts are what's i don't know how long dunaway is enough you may know buckman um they they're on their last extension and they probably have another nine years to go um parks has said they absolutely don't want to do that anymore but you know nine serves those yeah all the big investments they had they had an original agreement and it had an extension option and then the other part of that comment is that if there were places that we that they traditionally had permitted to someone else um and we were programming somewhere else we weren't able to just go we're going to take that from you they it was more like okay well where were you using it we want to make sure you get that and get to 7 o'clock which was which was a greater priority for us the 4-7 shift was heathcliff you can't have that so marshall's team's done an amazing job i have to say uh on the incredible level of detail at since kirsten trying to get this atlantic agreement put together so we're starting to draft that now we're hoping that that will go to city council and our board in january maybe early february it takes about a month to get something on the council so it's longer than non-process it needs to be approved by both entities and we'll start working on the real estate use so marshall do you feel like this is an improvement uh it's significant i think um as we said been able to go from four to seven with our late bill schedule uh was incredibly important um i also think that um to be able to go to detail for each particular facility so like at pier park where we thought we might want to play softball in the past uh we're able to go and look okay do we
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really want to play here okay if we do then what needs to happen we got to have lights how does that happen can you do lights i mean we're able to go to that detail on the properties which i think in my tenure was the only time we've gone that deep so i think that was really really good as well and then i um i think the other thing that well maybe what the most important thing was that we were able to identify um who was getting the best part of this deal i think that was a a a really sticky point because we felt they were taking advantage of us they thought we were taking advantage of them but better go through the process i think we were able to clarify that and then uh be able to move forward with with some um clear understanding about where we both are so everybody's happy because it's sub-optimal for both of us awesome it's terrible for us for the taxpayers we're good [Laughter] it's like she wrote i guess i'll say one other thing now you guys got me going here um is there are things that we didn't get amy because they don't have like we need more pool time right we need more turf fields that are baseball softball i mean those kind of things they don't have so we we didn't get but the things that we could get i do think we got majority of what we could have asked for in the deal i think both sides did i don't think we have much more to give than neither do they we use there just isn't capacity in the city and this is more like a political question but do you have an agreement with two elected bodies that have to agree to it um hey my neighborhood you know part doesn't have x y and z is it um how is it going to be previewed or is it just going to be here's the whole thing it's like yes or no um i don't know that's not your question i'm just like yeah i know i i understand i have shared this yesterday i shared this powerpoint just this very high level of saying hey we're starting to work on the language but it's been going on so long i felt like i needed to give you guys an update um and and they'll want to i'm sure share that internally as well how this goes to council i don't know like what their process is before that presumably there's some kind of education session or something that for just lands um yeah us i'm just curious like when we get it and it's like hey here's here it's it's it's all interconnected so it's a one thing and you'll have time to like look at it and ask questions about it and it's one thing and the council will have the same thing so i would hate to have it be like the school resource officer where like we got the agreement and then the city ever it was just like it was lopsided so like the mechanics of something that maybe is like has been contentious to help make sure that we have a path that like we pass it and then they're like hey i want to pull out these three or four other perks and we want to do something different and then we're like we just passed it right and so the way we're structuring this is um the iga that's currently in place we'll extend that for several months so that we have that there and then as we replace the athletics piece we still have a real estate piece covered too bad that stokes expires um but i know what you're saying i think i don't think this agreement will be that complicated um i mean we'll have an addendum that like we'll show the schedule so we really said this is it but it's not going to be the specific of uh you know hey we want to make sure we have basketball so tonight was just intended to be like here's an update we want to wait under the water we're going to get you the draft as well so you can write comments and then before the opposite feels but we also want to make sure we're walking hand in hand with the city so we're not completely out in front of them and so before maybe we have draft we get some sort of feedback from them you know you guys testing the waters on your side that this is largely acceptable or exactly some deal breakers okay yeah absolutely all right
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any more questions thank um there's another item we want to continue that home but i don't want to do this time all right being able to post on it to the next week i've got a short presentation i can go through probably three minutes um it's basically the update that one to the floor last week it's more or less not just providing some more context to round it up okay we get three more minutes from everyone to go through it okay so just just a question all yeah so i write i did read the update so is there something for the contemplation of that certain point in time they'll be able to specimen or this is just like to elevate it in public you know much better yeah and there was a public communication there was a communication that went out uh this week and then it was really just to make sure everyone understands where we are kind of the context the background and the process going forward what that looks like so that was the the intention of this discussion so i guess i have a powerpoint it's a handful of slides it's basically just pictures more less i just kind of walk through the context all right so can we hear them first and then we'll go into yours that way we can kick in so i'll tell you what um if you could do the public comic books awesome um let's go with the public comments first we have cody vickinson please should be able to underneath now uh yes i'm here um good evening my name is cody dickinson last name spelled d-i-c-k i-n-s-o-n and i speak to you today as a sophomore student at lincoln high school i am here to address how the lack of equitable opportunities for student extracurricular participation and availability of recreational areas are due to the lack of multi-use field space within the lincoln cluster the impact of this reality that there is a drastic effect on pbs sports people are testifying about the current health and safety issues but i'm testifying to tell you how the building of this field will help fix these problems the implementation of this field will not only add a great facility it will also improve the community and people around it due to the recent pandemic there has been little outside engagement and unhealthy habits in our community a multi-purpose field in an easy to access space or develop interest in the community i've experienced this firsthand as a person who grew up in a community that integrated a multi-purpose feel instead of staying inside we would play outside this integration improved our healthy habits outside engagement and got us more interested in playing sports i think that this new field would have a similar effect the field would cause more interest to go aside and increase the enrollment in local sports this enrollment is very important to our sports right now many pbs sports have lost players and participation due to lack of facilities i have five friends that have left portland public schools for local private schools due to the availability of facilities and fields that other schools have if we build this field the community as a whole will benefit as well as pps athletics i believe we can agree this is unacceptable your approval of the development of multi-use field space at wells sylvan to be compute to be completed in 2022 will remedy this issue for our community please take action now thank you for your service and consideration thank you [Music] later but it's my understanding this is like being freeze like this is the surplus of like the funds would be used but the 2020 bond had to cover 180 million dollars um that the 2017 bond was short to finish benson so i guess i don't understand how we would have any surplus because we were short 180 um million by 2020 bonds so i i'm just i'm going to make my hair important dryer been characterized as a surface there are unmet needs there are on a variety of fronts right but i guess that's you i'm thinking about and this is anyone just full disclosure i have a son who
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played baseball for me for weekends so i've seen how bad gabriel park is and i've also been played on every other baseball if you've been to every other baseball field in else um four years um so i recognize the need i guess i'm just thinking about the funding because it seems like it's coming out of the 2017 bond um and whatever it's called it's coming out of the 2017 bond my understanding is that we were 180 million dollars short so i guess i'm not quite seeing how it fits but that that's a bigger question since we're not looking at it too well but that's kind of what i want to see and then i think about all the other needs in the city in sports and there are many um of how we allocate if it's being you know used to just bond funding how we're going to help you yeah okay that's your advance for the patient i just want to respond one quick thing and you're very sensitive to this i know but one of the complicating factors in this conversation has been that people tend to conflate the long-term needs of the lincoln cluster for athletic facilities with the commitments that have been made for swing space during construction and the fact that there's no no where to play and so we do have an obligation there's a difference of opinion as to exactly how that was characterized in the master plan there's actually a discrepancy between the commitment that the district made to the community about swing spaces during construction and the way that it was explicitly articulated in the master plan which is really unfortunate but it's two different things we're not talking about investing from the 2017 bond and the long-term needs for the athletic facilities in the cluster we're talking about the commitment that we've made about swing space i'll watch i'm gonna run through this quick so uh at the last committee meeting we heard public comment recommending improvements at uh west sylvan to support lincoln athletics we just heard it again uh plus there's been some recent email other communication conveying the same message uh and so committee members who have been uh been at vps for a while on a new issue a new topic and staff has provided updates uh did a couple times back in 2020 and then just again recently last week but we thought it'd be worthwhile to uh review the topic again tonight so uh let's start with a little bit of context i want to go through this quick and then it'll make sense in a minute i hope um so big picture context pbs modernization projects start development of a project specific master plan master plans are effectively the marrying of these items here ppss education specifications along with community and stakeholder engagement and existing site conditions building conditions and school programs master planning process is very like but typically they're about three to six months master plans are ultimately approved by the board to effectively align the project scope schedule and budget and more to the point what master plans do is they define the project parameters and then direct the project team to go and design and construct the project as approved the project teams returned to the board if there are any significant changes in the scope of work from what is improved in the master plan uh touching on each one of those three items very quickly our education specifications uh are also approved by the board uh pbs has developed at specs for various school configurations within high school of middle school ka and k5 and the primary function of the ed specs is to identify the number type size and function of each teaching and learning space so thick number of science labs size and media centers uh et cetera uh and ed specs are really the master planning jumping off uh existing site conditions unique school programs these things necessitate deviations from the generalized ed spec guidance and the final project specific master plans those denote the deviations from the inspects uh community engagement and stable engagement is exactly like it sounds during master planning is when this engagement kicks off earnest notably it's when our public-facing design advisory groups are stood up those groups include the school principal students parents community members uh the school alumni association typically there's business representatives uh board members are part of it as well and one and then feedback obtained from community and stakeholders helped shape the project and master plan and then finally existing conditions in school programs so each school program building campus is unique it must be carefully considered during development of the master plan and in-depth discussions with school staff and district instructional leaders begins in master planning but continues throughout the course of the project so uh
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now getting closer to the point uh lincoln like all the modernizations uh has followed this process of the board approved leaking master plan in august 2018 uh and like all master uh modernizations lincoln's master plan does not align perfectly with the inspects certain aspects of monetization are below uh the the general ed specs for example number of open flex spaces and outdoor athletic facilities are both the specs whereas other areas exceed such as the dedicated resting room the photo lab and dark room uh of course there's always robust discussion about these trade-offs during development swing space getting closer to the point uh is an important component of all master plans and it's and swing is a term that we use to refer to activities that are displaced because of construction and notably i think this is this is where west sylvan enters the conversation um but construction by nature often causes service impacts and the bigger the project often the bigger the disruption so for schools like mcdaniel franklin grant and benson polytech now construction disrupted the school's operations completely uh requiring all of those schools activities to to move off site two locations uh lincoln was in the unique position that allowed the majority of school functions to remain intact with minimal disruption by remaining in the old school building while the new school was constructed on the site of the old track and field which you can kind of see here but removal of the tracking field for construction caused those activities to have to find locations during the build generally uh to determine the best option for swimming activities modernization project teams work closely with department and school staff to identify analyze and coordinate with temporary location relocations uh for lincoln track and field there's no one perfect other tracking field out there to move all the sites to so a variety of options are currently being utilized including ricky hamilton park wells wallace park and others initially west 7 was viewed as a potential option for some field swing sports i think mostly it was for practices and i think workouts as well not so much for games uh however to use west sylvan improvements were needed to extend the hours of use uh and so mainly what would needed was lights so we could send ours use there's some minor fencing concerns as well installation of new lights required a conditional use approval from the city of beaverton that's what the school is uh and this i think is really the starting point of the confusion and some of the conversations about west silva as required the project team submitted a conditional use application to the city of impertinent and early 2020. uh eventually beaverton planning staff recommended approval of the conditional use the planning commission agreed and it was approved subsequent to that approval uh the the west silva neighborhood association appealed the decision to city council uh the new restation neighborhood association generally opposed the project and their their aim was to limit the use of the fields so uh staff we attempted to work with the neighborhood association prior to going to city council ultimately it did go to city council they approved the conditional use but they added conditions of approval onto that this decision materially changed the usability of the field for lincoln athletics and added significant costs in the form of required right-of-way and site improvements the combination of less usability and additional costs caused a devaluation of west sylvan as a useful swing site and the team then turn their efforts to other temporary locations such as reiki where we do have temporary field lights now really to the point uh separate from the lincoln monetization project there's been ongoing discussions about the lack of permanent facilities at lincoln for some out some outdoor athletic programs such as softball and baseball so west sylvan had been considered a potential site for permanent location of these programs in an effort to provide additional information regarding the validity using west sylvan as a permanent home for lincoln athletics the latest application that was submitted to the city of eriton also included athletic improvements not associated with the modernization project including uh a synthetic turf field and softball on baseball field furnishings so no funding was identified for the scope and no schedule was set for the improvements and even though staff was clear with beaverton planning staff that this is a two-parter where the first part is funded the lights and the fencing the second part is not ultimately those that that detail got lost in the broader context wrap it up uh so just to be clear currently there are no improvements planned for west sylvan neither the short term the lights
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in the fencing or swing site or the larger build out as i noted earlier this is not a new topic and there is clearly some uh support and community interest in proving muslim for lincoln's use um so there is a potential plan moving forward there are two relevant factors here there's no identified funding for the west living project and the project has not been authorized by the board but the plan forward is this the lincoln modernization project team led by eric gerding here uh it has been asked to take a look uh oh let me back up the lincoln project is currently progressing well but there is still a lot of risk out there with the volatile construction market with the supply chain issues we've seen there's still plenty of risk in the project and it's still got a year and a half or almost to go or maybe more for full completion uh but we have asked the team to take a look that has near's completion if there is savings within that project that could support some or all of the west civil improvements the lincoln modernization steering committee will convene and they will discuss and they could recommend that that those budget savings be spent by silver uh and to be clear we don't know that yet the earliest that we think we would be comfortable with saying that there will be savings would be next summer but that could certainly change we are seeing the market act and change and react rapidly right now uh but in the event that there is savings and the committee does make a recommendation to allocate those savings to best sellers the board can authorize the allocation of those questions yeah so we talked about the savings uh from the foundation all those things can be used to add to the still been expansion on the modernization for the field multiple fields where else can that money be used for can that go back to the general fund for contingencies on other projects or it's a great question so the funds can be used for anything that north korea wants to tackle this but anything that the bond language allows uh so generally when there are savings what you're going to do is you're going to want to hold on to those funds to make sure that the projects that you have already approved you want to make sure that those get completed so that at the end of the day with all of your projects but the bond language is relatively broad and so it can be used for other purposes uh and for scope that is not approved or or specifically identified within the bond the board is going to make the decision how to allocate folks to make sure that we are within the definition of condensability which we'll look at inside the scope of the image bond measure we'll also look at ensuring for example the capital improvements suggested to maintenance of to your question gary i mean historically in a couple of times where there have been contingency plans available the two things that the project teams look at are where were their value engineering decisions that were made maybe early on that we could possibly build back things that had been cut the other is where is there a real um uh deviation from the end specs like dan was talking about like where is this where is it clear that this project is not meeting our heads back and is there anything we could do to address that at this time um we don't have to belabor this i just want to uh react to a couple things in your presentation dan one is that um he kind of tried to wrap it up pretty neat and tidy that the conditions put upon the west seldom work by the city of beaverton devalued the the potential for that site and that's not that's not at all how it's perceived by the community or those who are involved in athletic programming it did it did limit the hours but it would still add considerable time and field use possibilities for student athletes so it does it did not um it did not eliminate the value of uh what those improvements would mean for student athletes yeah just and to agree with that point when i said the value it was specifically looking at
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what what someone was used for for swing purposes where they needed those later hours because it was in the darker months so and even within that it still adds to it but anyway um i i think uh there's a real disagreement within the community that there there absolutely have not been um equitable accommodations made for athletics swing uses during construction as we heard from a lot of students and families um really really inequitable untenable and unsafe conditions that students are being put into if they want to participate in athletics during construction um maybe on paper you know it's like send them here for this and i'm there for that but it doesn't work it's not work and that is a commitment that was made it's really unfortunate that those of us who had eyes on it back then way back when um weren't more diligent about making sure that the master planning language was very specific about how to about what those swing accommodations would be because now that's being thrown back in the face of the community saying well we can't we can't do it because it didn't specifically say that these improvements would be made so yes it's great to see that the project team wants to look at you know whether or not that long-term value can be added in late in the project and it's fully within the range of appropriate uses um that doesn't do anything for the student athletes who are um you know being denied a reasonable way to participate um in the meantime during construction and that's really perceived as a broken promise in the community so uh i mean personally i've been trying to respond to people about what this situation is i've been trying to advocate for people and it's uh i've gotten there have been more roadblocks on this than just about any issue that i've worked on which is kind of ironic because a lot of them are really more on the face of them much more serious um so it you know i don't see a path forward for the district to meet its commitments to student athletes during construction and it's just it's uh it's very uncomfortable and sad to be put in a position to have to just admit that to the community like sorry you know we just we we through a condition through a combination of very difficult um you know lack of resources in that area which is nobody's fault and the lack of commitment and foresight for the district on how to address it during construction you're just you know out of luck and we got kids on the freeway from coming from 10 8 miles away at 11 o'clock at night so good luck with that it's kind of where we are unless somebody decides that it really matters anyway i i understand um my daughter is in the same position uh people with convincing peace and you know her being able to move out to marshall it was an interview for her and so we moved you know so i i understand and i did it for the whole facility that was another reason oregon city and to sandy for her practices and all that stuff so i i totally understand i appreciate what you're saying is there any other questions or comments marshall you have anything you want to say we can't hear you if you're talking yes well first i laughed and said gary why'd you call me out but okay [Laughter] well i i think i think i i don't want to diminish the fact that oh i guess i want to take the opportunity to again reiterate that as we've done value engineering as we've done these projects you know there has not been an investment in athletics and so as amy's talking about wes sylvan i think that the the it's a part of the bigger question of are we going to make a commitment so that our kids are not needing to go to private schools because they get to be in nice athletic facilities are we going to make sure across our system that we have
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equitable athletic facilities so when we have the phenomenal facility at mcdaniel but then at roosevelt we didn't finish you know grant we really didn't finish at franklin we didn't finish right and so it's almost like we we did this great thing almost great right we link is going to be phenomenal but we still didn't take care of athletics roosevelt's but we did and i just hope that we can see that that has to change and this board will make that commitment the second thing i want to say um is that amy i i concur that this is a very unfortunate situation and that um hopefully as soon as possible we can figure out how to um it's not correct or wrong but make sure that we don't get in this position again in terms of the details of language around projects because the the collateral damage is immense in the lincoln community and then the last thing i'll say is you know as we look for the investments you know we are looking to add middle schools uh to our athletic portfolio because our middle school program has over five thousand kids uh almost the same amounts we have in high school and we're sharing with the high school facilities uh in our long-term uh facility plan middle there are eight middle schools that we're asking to be complete and i do think that whether it's today whether it's a decision or an august there's a decision or when long term we do need to make sure we do have those eight middle schools of which west sylvan is one of those schools that we we think needs to be done thank you any other questions concerning comments awesome well we will adjourn thank you

Sources

PPS Board of Education, BoardBook Public View, https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Organization/915 (accessed: 2023-01-25T21:27:49.720701Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)
PPS Communications, "PPS Board of Education Meetings" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbZtlBHJZmkdC_tt72iEiQXsgBxAQRwtM (accessed: 2023-10-14T01:02:33.351363Z)
PPS Board of Education, "PPS Board of Education - Committee Meetings" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk0IYRijyKDVmokTZiuGv_HR3Qv7kkmJU (accessed: 2023-10-14T00:59:52.903034Z)

2021-12-08 PPS School Board Facilities and Operations Committee Meeting

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Event 1: 12/08/21 PPS Board of Education's Facilities and Operations Committee

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