2022-04-19 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2022-04-19
Time	18:30:00
Venue	BESC Auditorium
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: 4/19/22 Board of Education Regular Meeting

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education for april 19th 2022 is called to order for tonight's meeting any item will be that will be voted on has been posted on the pps website under the board and meetings tabs 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 good evening it's nice to see everyone tonight the superintendent has let the board leadership know that he's out sick and therefore won't be joining us this evening subbing in for him tonight is deputy superintendent claire hurts thank you for being here and i can see that we have a full house tonight the portland public schools board of education values public input in making important decisions that affect portland's children we also believe in the right of community members to observe and participate in board meetings and we also want to carry out the work in front of us to ensure that both the public has an opportunity to attend school board meetings and ensure that the board can conduct the important business of the district i want to remind everyone here of some basic rules of conduct which i expect that we will all follow we ask that all members of the public attending this meeting tonight treat each other staff and the board with respect and that's the expectation that we have and and that i have as adults we are models to our young people and we want to model civic engagement and um and you know good discourse individuals here are encouraged and even strongly urged to engage in conduct that allows the ability of other individuals here and virtually to watch the board meetings and does not infringe on the ability of other members of the public to offer comment to the board or that interferes with the ability of the board to conduct its business and i want to repeat that again but i the basic just as to to just be conscious of each other be mindful of each other and be graceful with each other those wishing to display play cards signs and our banners must remain in the auditorium foyer be behind the seating area and may not block any attendees view of the proceedings and also please be mindful of keeping the eye the walkways clear and the aisles clear in general we would appreciate if you can just be mindful of others in the room the words that you use and be aware of who's watching and including our community's children i'm speaking for myself i value input from all of our community members and i also have a high tolerance for conflict but it's important that we collectively create a space in which the board can conduct our business and we can hear from those who wish to be heard i wrote that myself i'm gonna um if you'll bear with me for just a moment while i'm signing in the first thing we have tonight is a resolution to recognize teacher and administrator appreciation week um i can't think of a better way to start off the evening tonight than to recognize our amazing educators and school administrators deputy superintendent hertz would you like to introduce this item please certainly would thank you chair to pass teacher and school administrator appreciation week is a favorite for many as it is a tradition for students and families to recognize their educators and their lives that make such a difference i'd like to invite chief human resource officer sharon reese up who will say some more about this year's resolution thank you deputy superintendent hertz and good evening directors and student representative weinberg it's my pleasure to bring this resolution forward this evening it's been a tough couple of years kobe keeps throwing punches and our teachers and our administrators keep getting back up again and again they keep showing up for kids day after day month after month i'm pleased the board is recognizing and appreciating these heroes tonight and during teacher administrator appreciation week of may 2nd covet and current conditions remind us that there's no entity with bigger impact in a community than its public education system its school district our political social economic systems rely on the education of our citizens within that public education system it is our teachers and our administrators who have the biggest influence on students and student achievement we have high hopes and high expectations for our students our vision says a graduate of portland public schools will be a compassionate critical thinker
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able to collaborate and solve problems and be prepared to lead a more socially just world that's a tall order and it's becoming a taller order all the time in a time of increasing social division where social media is designed to and does an excellent job of spreading massive misinformation fomenting outrage and hate dehumanizing and disconnecting us it is our teachers and our administrators who can and do every day strive to create the conditions where learning can thrive did you know that researchers are documenting a shift in college-age students a decreasing ability and capacity for empathy and an increasing ability and tendency towards narcissism yet empathy and connection are the necessary conditions for dismantling racism it is our teachers and our administrators who are on the front lines of teaching our students civil discourse of modeling and teaching empathy of creating connections it is our teachers and our administrators who are on the front lines of creating places where everyone belongs even when they disagree and are on the front lines of building relationships engaging constructively and empathetically so that our students can exceed our warm demand to be a compassionate critical thinker able to collaborate and solve problems and be prepared to lead a more socially just world let me share oops i just had a let me bring up three quotes the voices of three teachers who were asked why do they teach first teacher said i firmly believe that my fundamental job as a special educator is not simply to help students navigate their school career or prepare for post-secondary outcomes but to help them claim and reclaim their lives this charge serves as my humbling call to action each day teacher two i dream to see my students soar to their greatest potential teacher three i love when each student walks in and sees me and my smile and can relax feel comfortable and have a stable environment it is an amazing feeling when they smile and tell me about their future goals and new adventures i love being their biggest cheerleader and will always help them achieve whatever goal they set directors education is our antidote to it ails us as a community and our teacher nurse and our administrators are the providers of the attitude thank you for your attention tonight thank you that was very moving um thank you sharon um do i have a motion now in a second to adopt resolution 6478 resolution to recognize teacher and administrator appreciation week so moved okay director brim edwards moves director scott seconds the adoption of resolution 6478 and is there any board discussion i i know one of the teachers that's getting there 35 years this year and um i was talking to a friend about her the other day and miss frisbie and the friend was doing a clay project in the classroom and walked in and she said miss frisbee didn't even really need me there she just knows how to work with her students she's such an expert handles all sorts of things and it's amazing to see you know those seasoned veteran educators who have given so much to so many students um and especially as parent volunteers to learn from them when we're working with our own kids or volunteering in classrooms and so just really want to honor the so many years that teachers have given and our administrators thank you i also want to remember my grandmother who was a teacher certified teacher she was certified to teach negros and the photograph i have of her is of her second year students some of whom are 16 and 17 years old that was the they weren't able to go to school until they were teenagers and so she had them in their second year of learning how to read and some of them are taller than her so um you know we've come we've come a long ways i just want to recognize her and then my mother and father are both educators as well so i have a deep appreciation for the for the practice and and the profession um i just wanted to note um since i print out our board books still um um just as i scroll through it we have pages and pages i know but as as i scrolled through it and i printed it out we have just i look at the just a number of the experience we have in this district how fortunate we are you know just stop starting with you know chris webber who's been um with pps for 40 years pretty amazing um so it was mainly the length of the list
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that made me think about just the depth of experience we have in pps and how lucky we are looking through it i see you know teachers who over the years taught my my kids my friends kids are taught in neighborhood schools and also administrators who have been in schools all over the district so um just really appreciate uh the the tenure and what um because you know our people it's what makes our district um so appreciation to all the teachers administrators and the years of service thank you and i did not um print this out but i think we might consider a practice moving forward of naming the people that have been here 35 and 40 years they've given their entire careers to this district and should be recognized by name also notice that we have kurt to curtis nelson uh curtis wilson so um curtis wilson is going to last for a long time here they're brothers yes that's right they're brothers yes they are i've forgotten that they're both principals yes they are yeah it is not a typo so thank you um that was our board discussion i said was miss bradshaw is there any public comment on that item there is these have elizabeth teal oh um okay and hi um miss teal um student representative weinberg yeah i just wanted to also extend um recognition to all the teachers especially both my parents one who works for pbs and they've both taught for a combined of over i believe 45 years and my mom has actually taught for over 25 years in intensive skills so i see that every day coming back from um teaching middle school which in itself is a challenge but also teaching kids with special needs the additional challenge the amount of iep meetings dealing with parents unfortunately that is part of the job and i just see how how much work how much energy is being sapped by the school district that's just taking so much from some of these teachers who have been here for so long so my appreciation goes out to them thank you we can clap for that thank you hello um good evening chair to pass vice chair scott student rep weinberg deputy superintendent hertz and the members of the board and thank you for taking this time this evening to reflect on and appreciate the incredible value of our professional educators in portland public schools and thank you chief reese for your remarks as well as a pps parent myself i could not be more appreciative of the educators at vernon and mcdaniel who have deeply impacted my own children teaching them not just knowledge and skills but also how to be in a community how to create positive change how to pursue what you love embrace what makes you unique and support others to do the same i want to thank every teacher that has touched my own kids lives but as president of the portland association of teachers i have the incredible honor of representing more than 4 000 of some of the most dedicated and community-minded workers in our society every educator i know chose this profession because of a profound belief in the promise of our youth a passion for learning and a desire to actively build a more just and equitable society this passion and commitment shows up every single day in every school in countless interactions with students and as you know these last two years have been particularly and incredibly challenging for educators in the last two years educators have redesigned their practices over and over again and have been there at every step to support students facing new levels of struggle and challenge despite the uncertainty in our society educators do more than seems possible to make a stable joyful responsive and productive day for every student that comes through their door in this year even educators with 10 20 30 40 years of experience all have met challenges beyond what they have ever seen i think we all agree that what schools provided before is not adequate to meet the needs of today knowing that teachers across the district ask themselves every day what do these students need now what is most important how can i provide it for them just so as a district we need to ask what do our students need now and what do educators need to provide it for them
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as we reflect on the value of our professional educators please know that the things that educators need to feel appreciated are the same things that inspired us to become educators in the first place first educators want the teaching and learning conditions that honor the role that public schools play in our society and in our students lives which chief reece so eloquently spoke of this includes clean and safe school buildings and classrooms and thank you to our custodians we need more of them and we need to pay them a fair wage and this includes supports for our students in the building including whole child enrichments and more special education than ell staff [Applause] educators number two educators want to be provided the tools we need to meet the needs of our students and that includes time in the workday to plan and collaborate and communicate with families and class sizes and case loads small enough that allow us to give each student the attention they deserve and finally and most simply educators ask to be treated as the professionals we are and listened to and i want to appreciate all of you for your commitment to appreciating honoring and listening to educators all year long thank you for the time this evening thank you too thanks for your comments the board will now vote on resolution 6478 resolution to recognize teacher and administrator appreciation week of may 2nd so a little early week of may 2nd all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6478 is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative weinberg voting yes the board will now vote on the consent agenda board members if there are any items you'd like to pull for discussion we'll set those aside for discussion and vote at the end of the meeting um and ms bradshaw are there any changes to the consent agenda no and director scott yeah i'd like to pull resolution 6484 on inner district transfers for discussion at the end of the meeting just a question on that about moving it to the back of the meeting were the individuals who wanted to comment where are they commenting because if if they're they're ready now maybe we should move it to the end of the meeting we can take a testimony yes we can take their can we'll take the testimony now and then we'll move the any questions for staff to the end of the meeting okay um thank you for accommodating also um i have a question about the education resource strategies um and i can ask it at the end and i apologize i thought it was a question for dr proctor it's actually a question for deputy superintendent claire hurt so i can wait till it's for um chief delgadillo okay okay so um anyway i can wait until the end um and i apologize that i it's just getting the heads up to the wrong person oh it's the one it's the under expenditure contracts and it would be education resource strategies okay so we'll we'll pull that for discussion as well um aside from um pulling six 6484 until the end of the meeting and then i guess pulling the individual item under the expenditure contracts um we'll go ahead and vote on the consent agenda with those changes um board members um let's see mrs branch other there are no are are there comments we do have two people sign up for public comment excellent so we'll go ahead and um take their testimony now okay they're both here virtually and i'm going to move them over right now we'll start with sarah beagle [Music] this meeting is being recorded this meeting is being recorded ms beagle hi yes can you hear me we can hear you thank you great um you know thank you for for
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having me give public comment today i definitely appreciate the opportunity and we have sent some emails to the board members and so it sounds as though you've received those so i'm probably going to read some of it and then maybe address a couple things and definitely appreciate your time here today so you know we are writing and we were speaking today regarding the standard inter-district transfer process for the upcoming school year and we have two requests my husband and i of course responded with you and miss judy brennan over the past couple of months regarding this issue and we also had the opportunity to talk with our zone representative vice chair scott last week and we're grateful for everyone's time thus far we do would like to consider the following as our public comment we reviewed the report titled 2022-23 standard inner district transfers which was released to the public on friday april 15th on the website in that report there is language that states as general transfers are not allowed between pps schools without a hardship reason or to access specialized programming general transfers out of pbs would not be aligned with district transfer priorities therefore staff has not included a general release category in the 2022-23 recommendation to us this rationale falls flat we assume that the enrollment and transfer staff are referring to general transfers among pps schools i.e within district as not being allowed however general transfers into pbs are allowed for up to 100 students without a hardship reason or access to specialized programming to say that having a parallel priority category of general transfers out of pps is not aligned with district transfer priorities is disingenuous again if pps is allowing up to 100 general transfers in the pps schools then they should be allowing up to 100 general transfers out of pps schools in addition the general transfers into pps are a direct result of neighboring districts providing for general transfers out of their districts again we have received no real transparent rationale for why a general transfer category out of pps is not being proposed request number one we are requesting that the board add a general transfer category for transfer out of pps for up to 100 students to be in alignment with the general transfer category for transfer in to pbs for the upcoming school year second we know that this report was prepared by the director of enrollment and transfer miss judy brennan as well as the deputy superintendent claire hurts superintendent guerrero has concurred with the staff's recommendations for the standard inner district transfer procedures for the upcoming school year these recommendations are being proposed to you for your review and vote we appreciate the effort in the analysis being presented in the report and we recognize that it is a lift for the staff to prepare this information for you on an annual basis if you look at the procedures recommended by the administration we would like to state that we are actually in support of the procedures listed as number four and number five in the report on the first page these are the same procedures are captured again in the table above superintendent guerrero's signature what they state are students enrolled in a different district to move to a pps address in which to remain in their current district and siblings of students enrolled in the requested district in 2021-22 who will remain enrolled in 2022-23 both of those categories could be released ms beagle however we don't miss beagle yeah i'm sorry to interrupt um we allow everyone to testify for three minutes and i don't know if you heard the signal go off a few seconds ago so we we do have oh no we yeah it's it's it's not a problem um we we do have your written uh testimony and um if you have additional thoughts you're welcome to submit them as well okay i do have two sentences of his word saying uh i just want to point out that may 19 2016 the language in there is what is in the report that is language from the oregon department of education and i will forward that to you all now so you'll have it for the end of the meeting for your discussion thank you thank you we have james tully who's also virtual james i've tried to move you over you have to accept the request um
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well we're actually waiting for someone that has public testimony so we're it's someone that's appearing virtually and we're allowing him the space to connect well i needed clarification obviously so are we having difficulty okay or um i don't know if he would like to present something in writing if he's able thank you so so um director lowry has reminded me that we will be speaking to this issue at the end of the meeting and um and and and so if if he'd like to we can try to get him at that time i'm not sure what the what the tech difficulty is but so um do i have a motion and a second to adopt the consent agenda minus the um resolution 6484 and um to speak about to speak to later well thank you i'll make that motion i'll second and the only contract for education resource strategies um director green was that was that you i i did i i made that motion and i second in that emotion i'm sorry chair to pass did we pull two items from that okay we pulled resolution six four eight four and then we pulled from the expenditures contracts um from resolution six four eight four the one item it would be nine one four one five education resource strategies okay but i i missed the second one i'm sorry no worries um okay so i have a motion from director green and director constant seconds the adoption of the consent agenda is there any board discussion on the consent agenda besides what's happening over here to my left um i want to make sure we hear from our student representative on what his thoughts are on the consent agenda is this me voting yes this is you um sharing your thoughts if you want to we can't tell you how to vote i will be voting we could hear your thoughts i'm thinking i will be voting yes okay that's it is there any public comment ms bradshaw we did have it the board will vote on resolution 6479-6485-6484 and the expenditure contract education resource strategies all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes oh opposed please indicate by saying no and are there any abstentions in student representative yes the consent agenda is proved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative unofficially voting yes we'll turn now to student and public comment before we begin i'd like to review the guidelines for public comment first the board thanks everyone for taking the time to attend the meeting tonight and providing your comments as we all know and you know public input informs and improves our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and or concerns our responsibility as a board is to listen and to that end i would ask each of us here to give our full attention to the people in front of us our board office may follow up with you on board related issues raised during public testimony we request that complaints about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter and if you have additional materials or items you'd like to provide to the board or the superintendent we ask that you mail them to public comment all one word at pps.net please make sure when you begin your comment that you clearly state your name and please spell your last name and you'll have three minutes to speak you'll hear a sound after three minutes which means it's time to conclude your comments ms bradshaw do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment
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yes we do um and we have nima cruz who's providing virtually hi hello miss cruz hi my name is craws and i'm a sixth grader at harriet tubman middle school as you guys know there have been walkouts from hdms to this building and we're not only doing this for mr chu but also because we feel abandoned because you guys took the only teacher that cares about us and can relate to us away the environment at our school is way too toxic there have been many fights and students out of class not learning anything and because the environment is so chaotic it makes the teachers not want to come to school which means we have to have a sub and then kids don't learn anything which causes us to have teacher shortages and sub shortages for example we have had lots of subs in the seventh grade math classes and in the sixth grade stem class because sadly our teacher had to leave due to the mass mandate coming down and her health issues with that and because of that the kids all the kids do in that class is have free time and don't make build or learn anything in that class like you're supposed to and i'm not sure if you guys have made an effort to find a new one or not you guys have done nothing to help us besides hiding this building and take away our only good teacher i just have one question for you guys do you care about us and you guys should answer it because your actions are not speaking i don't know if you could see and hear that applause yeah i can but are you guys gonna answer should we go down the line i care about you guys yes i'm gonna just thank you for your comment and your question is uh is a really good one thank you we're not we're not to respond from the deus thank you yeah we're we're going to move on i appreciate uh ms cruz i appreciate your comments and your question thank you aaron cruz aaron are you with lima i don't think he's gonna be joining us here okay thank you okay then we have rada wiley sewn good evening good evening um good evening board members my name is radha wylie w-i-l-e-y hyphen s-o-o-d and i am an eighth grade student at harriet tubman middle school here just just a moment i miss what we're resetting your your timer okay no worries can i start now you may yes we just want to make sure you have the full time okay thank you good evening board members my name is radha wiley sued and i am an 8th grade student at harriet tubman middle school i'm here today to talk about the effects of the i5 freeway expansion on harriet tubman students we can only be outside for recess arrival and dismissal my friends and peers feel as though we are not cared for by the members of the board i'm sure now is the point where you will say we cannot control what does but that's a blatant lie you said that you were unaware of the project but a simple search shows that this plan has been publicly known since 2010. if any of you put on the local news chances are you would have heard about this i'm sure many of you like to be updated on current events so i'm certain you've seen it on the news at one point or another as a mixed indian i privileges that my family does not i want to use those privileges and ensure that my voice is being heard and that you will actually take action because i have plenty of peers ready to protest the paltry compromise you'll inevitably make i will not stand for the board making claims of diversity while harming and ignoring students of color you all have the power to make change but rather ignore the prominent issues and actually care about your students it makes me incredibly disappointed and sad to see people of color on the board who are not advocating for students like me i would love to have such strong members like you go to bat for your students yet you seem to be apathetic towards the community you serve i also wanted to mention the suspension of mike salmon and brian chu i understand you cannot comment on this because it's a personnel issue but your reasoning is flawed as to why these teachers are suspended in mr choo's class we have a new sub every two days there is no reasoning provided for prophase salmon suspension except that he was known advocate for mr two your administrators flaunt so-called discourse while you silence student staff voices you're not actually
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learning anything and your idea was to solve staffing issues with more staffing issues quite frankly i'm enraged disappointed and frustrated with the board and i feel as if you don't care what happens to your students you have no empathy or remorse for how your decisions are affecting students social emotional and mental health you are making empty promises to get us into contact with odot and having one-sided conversations with students where you repeatedly say you cannot comment please for me my pure sakes do better thank you for your time thank you danny cage um good evening directors i'm gonna move this uh good evening directors and community members i am danny cage uh grant high school's district student representative and student representative to the pps board of education policy committee recently on april 6th dozens of harriet tubman middle school students walked out over a recent teacher placed on leave brian chu dozens of students are demanding questions on their education being disrupted and reinstating of their teacher we must be clear and realistic students do not walk out of school for a bad educator as a civic leader organizer and representative i often interact with his students through civic engagement and pps his students gave vital input on the climate policy that we passed often show up to our student engagement events and participate in community organizing they often fulfill our graduate portrait which is what we as a district strive for through the leadership of mr chu as an educator and he's to thank for this last week i visited whitman elementary school i wore my whitman shirt when teaching a couple times there throughout the day i had black male students come up to me and tell me your hair is like mine pointing to their hair those words hold so much importance because representation matters to our students more than we think i bring this up because we have people in schools because when we have people in schools that look like our students it creates safe spaces when we take away those safe spaces it disrupts them i stand before a board three of you are black and understand the representation and why this matters lastly when having conversations with educators in pps many teachers of color have said they have been under scrutiny compared to white educators i joined teachers community members and parents in demanding there be an audit of hr practices because of this i love pps and i care and i know many others as well when we we do not donate our free hours if we do not and i believe that we can reverse harmful choices like this and set us on the path back to progress for our students thank you thank [Applause] you with chloe wolfson um hopefully everyone can hear me my name is chloe wolfson and i'm a student at harry timmon middle school and a student of her boy into mr two i would like to talk about how to change without him and why we need him in our school um mr two just is a really great teacher he has made sure of supported and he has done everything in his power um and he's also talked about stuff and has the assessment system made me think of a lot of different stuff that i've never thought about and be more educated and i've learned a lot from him um when we came back he was suspended and it was certainly different though there's been steps in the classroom there's been signs up on the scoop on the back and i ha ha ha ha and it's only been different the classroom hasn't felt the same since he's left his stuff has some of his stuff has been taken out and i really miss him being in the classroom he was a really important teacher to me
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and he actually like talked about stuff that like other teachers didn't bring up like he talked about stuff that like he had to talk about like problems with the school problems with the air quality hey hey um like problems about like how like they yeah well like right next to the highway and well i have i i think i've heard some other teachers about this but we've never had like a full like discussion with the class about this and i and so i'm bringing this up of how like he has he's just like different teachers he really seems to care about us and i would really like him back in the classroom like he like though like one of the examples of things like he's brought up is his in the classroom as a topic is how black history month is the show's month and i've never thought about that like i never thought about how it's the show's month and how that probably was like that how that was like pope's fault and like i like there's been so much i've learned from him um thank you for your time thank you so much thank you miss wilson with moira finnegan good evening my name is moira finnegan my last name is spelled f-i-n-n-e-g-a-n i'm a speech language pathologist and i work at franklin high school i've worked in special education in pps for 10 years i've worked at many schools during my time in pps from kindergarten through post high school services for young adults i truly love my job it's challenging but very fulfilling i know i am making a difference in the lives of my students i'm here tonight because i am concerned about a proposed budget cut of 1.7 million dollars for special education next year while the overall pps student population is decreasing the number of students in need of special education services is going to stay about the same next year yet we are projected to lose 16 special education positions next year that means we are going to have fewer special education teachers and other providers to serve the same number of students i can tell you that special education staff are already spread so thin that we are at a breaking point this year if pps goes forward with these proposed cuts an unsustainable load will be placed on both special education and general education teachers and students that's because special education staff partner with general education teachers to support students with academic and behavioral needs in the classroom if we are cut our general education colleagues will feel it too we have experienced a much greater need for behavioral supports for our students this year as students have struggled to get re-acclimated to full-time in-person school after being home and doing school online for over a year the district has acknowledged that there is a need for increased mental health and behavioral supports for our students but they are effectively decreasing these types of supports for students with disabilities by cutting the special education budget why are special education positions being cut our students are among the highest needs students in the district our students include historically underserved black native american and students of color we know these students have experienced inequitable educational outcomes due to the effects of systemic racism added to that our special education students contend with the challenges of learning disabilities developmental disabilities autism and other challenges cutting supports for these students is not in keeping with the district's values and does not align with the district's goal of improving academic and life outcomes for historically underserved students what will the district be spending money on next year that is more important than direct service to our highest need students my understanding is that pps will have approximately 26 million dollars more next year to spend than we've had this year why would we be cutting special education staff or any teachers or student support staff for that matter when we will have more money next year please do the right thing and restore the 1.7 million dollars to the special education budget for next year thank you thank you
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[Applause] courtney brown good evening deputies superintendent general counsel director student rep my name is courtney brown b-r-o-w-n i'm a pps parent of two daughters i have a freshman at grant and i have a 7th grader at harriet tubman i am here tonight to comment on the disciplinary action taken against mr brian chu the actions taken by the district are wrong and they hurt tubman students as you just heard i don't have to tell you how brutal the last two years have been for our kids they have suffered mightily through the pandemic and the impact on their mental health is well documented at tubman these effects are on display every day and the situation is made worse by the fact that as of monday our school has lost nine full-time teachers my daughter has lost her science teacher her compacted math teacher the health teacher and then the district goes and puts mr chu on leave and on monday she lost her spanish teacher for reasons that have yet to be explained there is a rotating cast of subs who have no connection to these students and consequently are ill-equipped to deal with the difficult dynamics of the classroom let alone to teach them anything our principal reported in a ptsa meeting just last thursday that our kids have had to quote endure a lack of consistency and relationships the kids don't feel valued everyone is exhausted morale is low and that mr chu's absence quote took it to a whole new stratosphere do you know that the kids love mr chu do you know that he's particularly good at connecting to them it's ironic that this meeting begins with a resolution for teacher appreciation week because [Applause] mr chu is exactly the kind of teacher that his students will never forget he he listens to them he values them his classroom is say is a safe space for them so why would you go and rip this beloved teacher out of the classroom with a teacher with so many deep and important connections to his students who desperately need him right now why would you do this it seems like a drastic step for pps to take was he harming students was he posing some threat to to the classroom um i i don't think that that's the case i think he posed a threat of harm to you and that you are retaliating against mr chu because you don't like his criticism and you were insulted by some of the wording he used at a board meeting i simply cannot understand how any of these alleged offenses weren't ripping this beloved teacher out of this community especially at this time at this school and this teacher these kids are suffering for your vendetta against mr chu it makes the district look petty it is unprofessional it is vindictive it makes you look bigoted but worst of all it makes you look like you don't care about our students my hope here tonight is that you will see that our community loves mr chu that we want him back in the classroom and that we support him without reservation miss brown miss brown hi please put the best interest of our students i allow time for people i i allow additional time for people that have a harder time getting here thank you [Applause] jason mcleod okay hi mr mccloud hi mr mcleod hey how you doing all right can you guys hear me we can't allow it all right here we go hi my name is jason mcleod mcl eod i am the head custodian for lane and green thumb campuses and the custodial co-chair for seiu
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good afternoon and thank you for having me appreciate the time so custodians are angry and tired of this staffing crisis it's been hard we only have 210 custodians at night minus 20 absenteeism and pps is averaging two custodians at night in each school this is unacceptable imagine having 200 kids come into your house that don't care about it for eight hours a day and then not being able to clean the bathrooms and kitchen and other spaces properly for weeks or months on end this is the state of our kids schools the solution to this problem is simple raise custodian wages so they're competitive when pps bus drivers were short staffed and could not hire anyone the school district or school board approved a three dollar race for them their problem was addressed i thank the school board for their action in authorizing 30 more custodian positions but unfortunately sorry excuse me but unfortunately because our wages are because our of our low wages these positions are still not filled a year later do you know whose else's wages are not competitive nutritional service workers [Applause] as of july 1st this year nutritional services will make less than minimum wage this workforce is predominantly women do right by these hard-working women and give them a livable wage mcdonald's starts at more than minimum wage we can do better this is not a 90s r b song request we're not asking for the moon in case you're wondering where i was going with that pps should provide liberal wages to all of its employees nutritional service workers matter custodians matter what you decide after this meeting matters i just want to be able to afford some captain crunch okay i'm tired of buying my kids the off-brand cheerios this is this is my life the 15 of our members have public assistance 20 of our members have to work two jobs to get by and 35 say they can't afford to live in portland these struggles are real we're here and we're here well before the pandemic i don't know how schools could run without custodians and nutrition services and i hope we don't have to find out thank you for hearing me i look forward to these problems being addressed thank you [Applause] thank you virtually we have nick christensen hello hello director directors student representative weinberg deputy superintendent hertz thank you so much uh much like others i'm asking for something today um earlier today i went to work and it was my second day back in the office in two years but it was cut short because i had to go back to east portland to pick my kid up from school i am fortunate to be one of the people who is still telecommuting mostly during the pandemic uh every morning at 8 30 i walk my daughter six blocks to oliver lent elementary and every afternoon at three i pick her up earlier this year i was surprised to find out that of all of pps's elementary schools oliver lent is one of just four with no on-site after school care the other three sitton cesar chavez and rosa parks are in similarly similarly low social economic status communities while lent offers limited sun programming that is only available on certain days and it is space limited accesses by need and by lottery i know my school's principal has tried to make a connection with campfire to offer after-school programming but there are financial challenges to putting that kind of after-school program in a community where if more than 95 eligible for free and reduced lunch from what i've heard it just doesn't pencil out to offer after-school programming at a campus that doesn't have enough students of means to offset the cost of offering a program at a discounted or free rate to families who need the i consider myself to be one of the lucky ones my wife is a pps teacher so she can't help with drop off or pick up but i at this point have the flexibility to leave my office at about two and finish my work day after three from home but i know there are plenty of other families in my kid's school where other one parent has stopped working or has had to take some really challenging
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shifts in order to cover for child care i know there's not a magic wand that any of you can waive to fix this problem i'm just here to make you aware of this situation and ask that you request specific follow-ups from superintendent guerrero and other leaders on the ability of pbs to provide after-school care to every family at every school that needs it thank you thank you also virtually it's chris reiser can you hear me we can thank you mr reiser dear children of harriet tubman middle school my name is chris reiser r-i-s-e-r he him pronouns dear children of harriet tubman middle school we love you we see you and we are here in solidarity with you dear pps we are calling upon you to stand on the right side of history on the side of children over money and politics though there's a healthy skepticism you ever will pps whose central office is named for a racist superintendent will not be remembered at this time for its racial equity and social justice practices this period will be remembered as one of false scarcity digitization privatization and the reproduction of white supremacy in new culturally and linguistically diverse forms further pps human resources seem to be actively ridding the district of the educator sharon reese just recognized in the resolution for teacher appreciation week for example monday january 10th at the height of the omicron surge a vast majority of staff at ockley green called out for various reasons including positive covid cases on wednesday the 12th 19 of us were placed under investigation and sharon reese issued an email to all 4 000 pat members warning us that coordinated action to be absent is an illegal work stoppage ppshr spent weeks investigating this and found nothing but the resulting sense of institutional intimidation is still fresh ppshr prioritized having labor relations investigate educators during a global pandemic over ensuring for example that every school has a full-time principal because ockle green is still without a principle or even a communication until just today about the principal hiring process as of this meeting all of this impacts children because we now have several powerful critical educators at ockley moving on to other sites in search of institutional stability then there's harriet tubman in their fourth year of startup no permanent principle they've been without seven full-time educators across the curriculum because they had taken various leaves this alone should have sent immediate alarm bells off for pps the middle school and pps with one of the largest black student populations and is named for one of the most rebellious and anti-establishment figures in american history the famous fugitive from state and federal law minty harriet tubman and those seven educators were already out before brian chu was put on leave one of the greatest educators i've ever had the good fortune to observe who has clearly impacted the lives of countless children and adults how can one not feel safe and connected to an educator who sees you your life and well-being as his assessment did pps hr employ the pps racial equity lens in this decision how are black and native student groups affected how will black and native students experience a greater sense of belonging are there any potential unintended consequences for other specific groups or populations are there strategies in place to mitigate any negative impacts it doesn't appear that ppshr checked its own racial equity policy in this decision students want their teacher back and i stand in solidarity with the students the community and my mentor colleague and friend so we're here demanding an end to even the appearance of silencing targeting intimidation and retaliation per employment law brian chu has served the students of boise eliot and now tubman faithfully diligently and without respect for white supremacy in any of its many forms he has shown up even when you didn't expect or appreciate community input to ask questions make connections and hold this district accountable for serving black and brown students we would all do well to get on his level in the words of code of the friend y'all selling out for the check we holding out for the kids please reinstate you thank you [Applause] then also virtually we have karanja cruz hello
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everyone thank you for this time appreciate you um i know you guys as a board you have to operate um through board policies so i just wanted to highlight a board policy for you hopefully you take notes but i also wanted to note um a non-response is a response so a non-response is a response so just because you don't respond then you are responding um so board policy two one zero zero one dash p it is the racial educational equity policy and item number eight it says the district shall provide every student with equitable access to high quality and culturally relevant instruction let me repeat that it says culturally relevant instruction if you understand that pedagogy and understand the person who actually coined that term who is one of my favorite scholars dr gloria lassen billings you will understand and do the research and learn that culturally relevant instruction is what true embodies so basically what mr chu and how he teaches as you can well heard from the students and from parents he is practicing culturally relevant instruction so therefore what i'm asking you as the board i already stated these issues from the top of the year you guys had voted on an inconclusive complaint that already highlighted for you but there was still no response so this is well documented so understand that so also what i need you to understand even though you're not going to respond today hopefully you will respond tomorrow we are asking we need a it's a state of an emergency as you can hear but we also need to plan for next year so what i'm asking is a comprehensive planning session maybe that would include some board members so we can have a better next year but in the meantime we need to deal with the now we need to bring mr chu back right now and we also need teachers in the building right now thank you for your time thank you mr cruz that concludes we have signed up for public comment we i did get a message from the person who was on the consent agenda who said that their their technical difficulties are over did we want to ask them to provide comment now or wait till the end if if he's ready to provide it now we'll go ahead and take it so james tully james tully mr tully can you hear us good evening good evening uh thank you for having me apologies for the earlier delay uh i wanted to say especially a thank you to uh board member scott for earlier meeting with us last week virtually to discuss the pps inter-district transfer policy as uh earlier speaker uh sarah referred to what we are looking for is a i've heard the word a few times tonight in many of the different uh presenters the word equity uh i think it's a it's a wonderful word uh i feel like in this case with inter-district policy it is a token word of equity that we are not seen and enacted in policy we are requesting that uh in similar to transfer out of district we have very little recourse there's basically no uh allowances that are similar to transfer to in district in district is if you move if there's other extenuating circumstances but then there's a catch-all a 100 students can transfer into district meeting none of the other criteria which is fine that's great but why is that same uh provision not allowed for students to equitably leave the district why is there no catch-all for students for up to 100 to leave the district i guess i'm just very confused if you look at your own stats for the past six or seven years transfers into district in 2014-15 634 out of district 36 for a net gain of 600 students similar stats all the last five six
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years 350 yen 94 out 250 yen 50 out every year is a net of 100 to 400 students that game i guess i'm just confused why uh students are not allowed to leave in a catch-all situation if they don't meet any of the other criteria and it could be as simple as a lottery system where 100 we have 100 spots to leave if you're lucky enough to to hit the number then good if you're not then then tough luck so to speak um i guess i just don't understand a lack of equity i do very much thank uh member scott for his transparency and meeting with us and saying hey you might not like the answers but i'll try to get you some answers so far we haven't heard exactly what's behind this lack of equity in our thoughts so if if there's not going to be any changes to the current policy let's just call it what it is and say that each student is basically assigned a dollar value and pps while happy to take those dollar symbols in is more reluctant to give those dollars back away to other districts liberal policies are abundant in neighboring districts districts clackamas lake oswego they're happy to release their students into pps but we for some reason are very reluctant to release our students with any sort of uh catch-all so we encourage you to if equity is something that we value as we keep using it tonight and we've used it in the past let's make it applicable and let's make it a reality and uh and shown in our policy not just a token phrase that we throw around mr tully i'm sorry to interrupt you we allow everybody three minutes and when you're virtual i don't think you can hear the signal um but we've we've gotten the notes and i think have the gist of your testimony thank you very good thank you all that concludes our public testimony um thank you all for your comments um they're uh they're important to us and um if you have anything you'd like to follow up with you're free to connect with our senior board manager roseanne powell if you have something specifically you'd like to follow up with the board office sorry i'm i'm a little bit lost trying to sign in so the student representatives report yes i'm just trying to sign into my my device not being very successful i can give a very short report just a thank you to all the public commenters especially the students who came forward and gave their public comment thank you authorizing which is yes which is why i wanted to verify so i had my attendant open but i skipped them all all help is welcome um [Music] i even if it's wrong um but i appreciate the effort that was very kind of you to try um we're now going to move to authorizing the agreement for the joint use of portland public schools and portland parks and recreation athletic facilities deputy superintendent hertz i understand you're going to introduce this item yes thank you chair de pass i would like to introduce i'll give them a minute to come down on down we have um i'd like to introduce dana white our director of planning and real estate management dana okay diggies and david dana white thank you i wasn't expecting her to get up there and turn letters i'm old enough to remember that i don't i don't know if direct director green is though oh probably not probably not so different so now now you've met uh diana why did i i'm going to go ahead and introduce the rest great thank you marshall haskins senior director of athletics good to see you marshall and dylan paul from portland parks and recreation they will be presenting the agreement tonight thank you i believe you have the materials in your packets and we do have a brief presentation that we can go through quickly and i think cara do you have that pulled up no [Laughter] okay it's yeah we it is in the packet it is in the packet okay she'll she'll load it for us so we can all review it together all right that sounds great
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hmm thank you okay great so tonight what we're bringing forward to you is the first of two parts of our agreement that we're working on with portland public parks and several months ago actually almost two years ago uh we engaged in this dialogue with parks and we engaged um eco northwest to come in and help us understand where are we what's going on how do we how do we make this relationship more fruitful and beneficial for both parties and for the community as a whole one of the recommendations was that we bifurcate the athletic agreement with the real estate agreement so what you're seeing tonight is the athletic agreement between ourselves and parks next slide please so the purpose of this is really an exchange of asset use parks needs gyms we need golf courses pools fields things like that that we don't have so we are worked very hard to try and and exchange those the use of those assets next slide this is the negotiation team you can see on pbs i was myself and kirsten cowden and marshall's group um who did a tremendous amount of heavy lifting to get this over the finish line and at ppr um dylan paul as you know as deputy hurts mentioned is here with us and his team working uh very hard on on putting this whole thing together next slide this is the process outline i won't read the whole thing to you because i know you can all read um but we've gone through for the last you know almost two years a really detailed evaluation of where are we where have we been what do we want this to look like in the future let's put the past behind us and move forward um and so this is this is what we've come up with for today uh we did take this then to uh the facilities and operations committee and now we're bringing it to you all and it's scheduled to go to city council here um in may next slide our key issues were really around modifying the hours of use in our practice fields there was a bell schedule change and i know marshall can answer more questions about that than i can but this was a big shift uh for us and a big shift for parks because it really changes what they have to offer for the community when we change our hours so they did the best they could to accommodate us in as many places as possible um we wanted to make sure that we had sort of a priority use for their fields we had some concerns about the use agreements where there are third parties like soccer at buckman i know everybody knows that particular example and we have some constraints at area facilities like uh dunaway park and some things where they're just really overused and we have trouble getting on there next slide so what changed in this new agreement is uh we did get the hours of use at most of the fields that we requested uh we have a three-year commitment for both parties and you'll see in your appendix a it's by location day hour it is the nitty-gritty and so you can imagine a lot of people put hundreds and hundreds of hours into this um parks significantly reduced the number of fields of hours that they are utilizing opening those back up for the general public each party committed that any material change in a jointly used facility like sponsorship or a big construction project that we would that we would talk to each other before that happens so that we weren't blindsided by things like that in the future and and then we had made a commitment that each of us would prioritize our jointly used assets that we both use in terms of our capitalization next slide we created a joint management team for oversight and for dispute resolution one of the things that we noticed did not happen with the 2010 agreement was really that ongoing relationship really building that strong trust and that
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ability to try to work things out and i think we've come a long way and now we have a framework for that um like i said we have outlined all of the uses for both parties to the degree that there are additional uses that may come up and certainly if there are direct expenses for example custodial that are out-of-pocket expenses we will pay each other for those this agreement covers three years it's a rolling agreement but we've now been able to to codify for the next three years our needs and and as as has parked so that we can then um permit those and make schedules for for teams at the end of two years we'll look at it again and i know i know marshall can't wait for that he's very excited look look at the joy on his face um and then if we have any material programmatic changes that we would have we would give each other two years notice so we would have a chance to talk about that um if if we if parks needs for a funding source to to to try to go to a third party let's talk about that first and see if we can do something together because we both agree that we would prefer while not improving each other's assets we would really prefer to work together rather than a third party next slide so the next steps of the presentation we did to facilities and operations last week and then tonight we are with you hoping that we can get your approval dylan has scheduled city council uh for may 18th and then as soon as we have everybody's uh blessing then we will talk about how we communicate this and begin the negotiations for our real estate agreement and i think that's the last car i think that's the is there one more yeah questions so does the board um i have a question as um the facilities committee um director hollins did you uh have any any uh thoughts about the presentation you heard earlier uh yes i did and i um expressed some of those concerns at the facilities meeting but i wanted to make sure that the rest of the board had some input on the issue one of the big issues that i had was the fact that it seems like two organizations when you look at the times with some of these agreements it pushes out any community groups to have use of facilities out at a later time and that's one of the things that i had mentioned that facilities and operations committee um as well um i don't know exactly what could or should be done about that i don't know if that's a you know policy something a policy at pps that we look at to make the cuv process a little bit more favorable and i'm only speaking from you know coming from a place of trying to access cub processes before and so looking at that it just to me it just looks like it's it squeezes out everyone else and just makes way for pps and portland parks when we look at other things like when we talk about um agreements where other organizations are putting money in for instance uh buckman where you have other organization who puts in money in the way i look at it as an investment for their kids they get access to it um unfortunately pps haven't done that yet as far as putting investments into stuff because um buckman's track that benson high school still uses is still not fixed i don't know if that's a pps issue or a parks issue but i know it's a kid issue that hasn't been done since i've been running on it when i was in high school and so when we look at these type of agreements um i just want i just kind of make sure to make sure that we are keeping our kids interest um all of our kids not just pps kids not just the kids that programs that parks uses for but all of our kids so you know i'm back and forth on i think it's great that we're getting more access for our kids but once again i think it's i don't know how we can maneuver this around so that way it's not just for our kids but other community kids and other clubs that handle our kids when pbs doesn't or when parks doesn't um to be able to have access to these facilities as well and i still want to know i'm glad we got the parks guy here what's what we're going to do about buckman's track i got a question well i don't want to get an answer though yeah i'm happy to answer um can you hear me okay yeah i hate you clearly so um
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i think we represent um kind of a continuum within portland of uh i think all sports across the city and you know we really create an amazing access we have a problem with having more asks than we have available resources we also have a hard time maintaining the resources once we build them we have trouble funding them we have trouble maintaining them and so there's a right mix that i think we've tried a lot of different solutions we're getting better at it i don't think we have the answer today for how to make this all work so there is a balance i think to be had this agreement represents um i think a future for us where we're working more together to meet those challenges over you know i think a more noble trajectory but i don't know that we have the answers for how to fix some of the the failing infrastructure so it is i think paramount to us um as well so as you talk about working together is that where we can work together to get that track fixed bringing it home i i think where there are sites where our properties overlap we are bound we have very similar missions um though some of our our mission alignment is often you know as we grow as entities and we become more unique some of those have created conflicts so one of the things we seek to do is to create new solutions rather than just using the old tools so where you have a track that is adjacent to a pps site you know how do we ensure that the right resources are always on that right so when it's completely within one group's portfolio it limits the amount of options available so we don't generally want to improve each other's properties because it creates a more complicated equation but some sites we're going to be either coupled together forever or we're going to work out some sort of a different solution that we haven't come up with yet okay so help me understand because i i like the political correct answer that you gave but like for the kids that's there that's running track that's and this that track has been in disarray for like almost 20 years that's not a real acceptable answer for them and the the fields that they have to use so when we talk about so when you talk about these agreements is there a maintenance and upkeep proponent to these agree this disagreement as well so this agreement primarily was about the exchange of available resources the next part is going to be harder and it will talk a little bit more about some of the assets so i would expect that we will work to to solve some of those issues historically a lot of these assets have failed um pretty severely before there was enough support to to fund the repair it's not something that um deferred maintenance i think haunts us all right so um i hope that we find the solution for some of these sites that are most critical to us though in my experience most of these sites that are high use do have solutions that present themselves um normally it comes in the 11th hour i'd like to do better um but we only have what we have to work with that's what that process so with the new parks bond has passed without help provide other funds because i look at my property tax bills and i'm loving the fact that we're investing in it but i need to see that action i wish we could use it for capital improvements it's primarily or it's solely for operations so um it doesn't allow for cap capital projects but that do free up that do free up because you're not spending your budget on capital improvement don't that free up capital improvement dollars it filled in our deepest ravines right so brought service levels up back up to a minimum bar though it did expand some programming that was new and different but i can tell you that as far as diverting resources it would be i think um fair to say that we we won't be finding extra money at the end of each year so that's my comment that that was um i appreciate that i just want to throw that out there for the record because i don't have politics but that was a political note okay that's all right okay we're going to go to director brim edwards we're going to go to director to pass we're going to go down the line all right i think you have something to say to me so i had um sort of three general lines of questions um one uh you know really applaud the district um for uh starting and uh expanding middle school sports which we didn't have before um and one one of the results of that is increased usage uh because we have
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you know in a good way more uh of our students out um practicing and i'm wondering if uh this is my first question one of as part of this agreement we've um have increased use of our own facilities or because i know like when my kids were in middle school um at a title one school other schools use their gym but they didn't get to use it so i'm i wanna just wanna make sure that we in this agreement uh for all of our middle school programs are utilizing you know if you your kids go to a school they've got a sports middle school sports says pps that they're getting to use their own gym or or field if that's the case so that's my first question yes um i'm not going to speak for dylan but his predecessor would say that we took the fields back and the gyms back so i feel confident that we through this agreement have what we need for middle school i'd be remiss if i didn't say that part of our problem is that some of our middle schools are not adequate so when we had uh kellogg for example we had two gymnasiums there and we had two athletic fields we built a new school we have one gym and no athletic fields so part of our lack of resource is that we recreate it i do but within the agreement i think we uh moved past uh part of the language uh in the agreement in the past agreement was that it only the agreement only addressed high school athletics that was pil now the agreement address is pps so we we use our facilities for whatever we needed whether it be club sports and or pil or piou sports great because there was nothing worse than getting kicked out of your own gym by a non-school team um the second question i'd have i have is somewhat related to director hollins and sort of the maintenance and the capital is as we as we think ahead to our our next bonds and we make um if we if we choose to make very deliberate um investments in our um our capital facilities as is contemplated in the long-range facilities plan um how is that a separate agreement um or are we planning on any sort of like parks and pbs going out at the same time because we have this issue and then we can take care of director holland's track um so i'm just thinking about how because to me i see it's like we're going to be less scarcity and more as director um green always likes to talk about abundance um how do you see that and how would that disagreement are we getting ourselves locked in or is there the possibility of future cooperation then well i think there's always opportunity for collaboration and i think at a level of mind there needs to be a conversation about uh how do we look at uh athletic facility across the across our city there's not enough even if we as a director holland said if we take what we need for pil and for clubs within pil and for unified sports within pps and then portland parks does the programming they do there's always going to be the mom-and-pop programs that are spring up that's going to say hey i want to do au basketball or i want to do asa softball and so since we know we need more and if we look at the suburban schools outside of us you can see what we unfortunately we get to see what it looks like like literally we're renting hood view uh which is north clackamas one of their high schools facilities to play softball because we have no terror softball field so it's all rained out right so we know what it looks like so i think it would be great to have some type of collaboration with portland parks so that we could have some better facilities for the city the second part of your question um as i hear it is will we have enough for ourselves what i think that part of the agreement is uh as high school facilities we don't normally use cubs for outside users because we we use them all right so then the question becomes for youth sports and middle schools and elementary schools as we build them do we build them to capacity uh thinking about athletics or is athletics secondary so and i got to put it out there mac like director hollands now so in our previous bond we had 35 million allocated for athletics the bond basically doubled and we went to zero so i would hope that in the next bond there could be some
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prioritization of athletic facilities that then could be used by us portland parks and then the the city of portland as a whole that wasn't a complete setup for you but it was yeah you did a nice job and then my last question is and this is as a parent of a female pil athlete is who often didn't ever practice or play on her home in her home school because the boy that's where the boys practiced um i'm wondering if we've done an analysis of just um how these are divided up and whether um we've looked at it through the lens of title title ix of like who gets who who's practicing where and i guess that most like softball baseball or just how it gets divided up and maybe that's not part of this use agreement but but maybe it is because there's an awful lot of parks facilities that girls teams use that aren't near the school well i don't think it was uh intentionally a part of the agreement i will say that we have had a couple title nine situations occur including grant as our as our latest that has forced us to move beyond where we were even at grant we perceived that as a multi-purpose field when it was built it was built and softball said they didn't want to be at grant they wanted to have the whole dirt because they had someone who had been a olympic softball player who believed that softball shouldn't be played on turf so we proceeded down that road i think that the lesson we've learned is that um from my office we need to look at through that lens of title line all the time no one's going to have a you know girls get to say they want to be somewhere else you don't get that option anymore we're going to build it with all of those things in mind an example would be we were talking yesterday about lincoln with their [Music] project manager and i was like okay tell me where the lacrosse lives for girls are tell me where they are for boys they both need to be on this field brother the girls want to play here or not because we can't go five years down the road and then someone say we don't have the girls here on on campus why isn't that so so we have learned some lessons um that i think that is going to make us better stewards of our facilities and certainly in compliance with um not only title ix but doing what's what's right for kids i i think that's at the forefront that kids should come first and prioritize what their needs are short and long term thank you i had questions about that whether or not there was a community oversight board with both entities to talk about things such as director hollins mentioned that was one question also i worked for the parks bureau for a long time managing bond construction projects and the fields are challenging the dog parks are very very very challenging so i know there's um as we urbanize and get our city grows that we're going to have more demand for fields and so i was curious to explore this time of use from three to six to four to seven and how that impacts pps uh kids versus the community and then my last question has to do with sports equity and just a question of whether we're investing as much in sports such as track and basketball as we are in lacrosse and and soccer fields as a community so so was that three-parter it's kind of a three-parter yeah it was about community oversight whether whether there was a joint pps ppr oversight board or if that that was a consideration was curious about the time of use and how that impacted pps kids versus the community at large and then just curious about the sports equity if we consider investments in sports such as track and basketball it you know as compared to lacrosse and soccer so it's who who's who's playing what sports and do we invest equally in in all of our guests i'll answer them in reverse and i'll let dylan and and dana answer the the first question so regards to our investment in individual or particular sports like lacrosse for we have pil athletics lacrosse isn't one of those they're considered club sport and in our district in some other district they consider them a park so they're part of their budget and those things uh we we do support them in a way but technically they're not ours but when we do build uh fields turf fields they are considered and then they are used in terms of
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do we have a robust uh 6 through 12 lacrosse program that's that's that's sanctioned supported with resources from pps no we we don't um i there is a move right now um internally to bring all sports to my office so whether you're club sports or not so then we could ensure perhaps more ensure more opportunities for kids who want to do those those non-traditional sports track is a traditional sport so there's so i say lacrosse ski escape not skateboarding um snowboarding rugby those are probably the major ones that are not pil sports and then in terms of access for any population i think bringing it in house increases the probability that those things will happen currently those things are by choice at clubs based on what kids at a particular school want to have we do have kids who are participating in clubs that are not at their school so there's kids who like franklin plays cleveland lacrosse because cleveland doesn't have it franklin doesn't have it we have kids we have a rugby team that's kind of almost like all city rugby team that practices at roosevelt but all the schools don't have rugby i do think at some point in time given the resource to do it i think we would like to provide that opportunity across the city i think i would say in terms of the oversight group we right now that consists of our two groups um i will say that parks relinquished about half of the fields that they had been reserving so quite a few fields have opened up after that as we go forward and we start looking at maybe the longer term use and how we plan in the future to to accommodate the community and our growing needs getting additional community input would be really valuable i totally agree and then your third question uh which was about the time change time of use yes it was building on director holland's question about it so and what the impact of that was so since since uh director hollins was in school before me when he was in school school got out at two o'clock long long time right so school got out at two o'clock so this agreement was you got out of two so if we got the skills the parks from three to six that made sense well now schools are out at 3 30 so now it's a problem even from four to four to seven it's really to be a problem to be honest just because your kids are going to have to leave school we're we're really concerned right now that in the spring tennis softball baseball we've rained out pretty much the last two weeks right anticipating more rain the next couple days so we're we're behind and the only way you catch up is you're gonna have to play the games earlier in the day the play places that have turf in order to get them for that to happen which means kids might be out of class a little earlier than normal to get to somewhere to play so you can get to get their games in um and we re the backside of that is at several of the sites we were there at six we finished at six and there was no one behind us anyway so i think that those sites it was easy to give us to seven i think there are other sites where uh literally um at benson for their soccer club when we're it's 5 59 in 59 seconds they're going to start phil here's a permit get out of the way um so so it's a it's a it's a balancing act i don't think that we were intentionally trying to displace it any place especially for baseball softball because the youth programs baseball and softball are actually our youth programs that's part of why park bureau is upset with us because we brought them in to say we want a 6 through 12 program rather than maybe someone has a program and maybe someone doesn't when we start calling pil youth sports then the permit really is we get done at six and then our youth sports go right after us right so that's how we kind of set it up so some of it is is language um uh but i don't think we at any site do we displace anyone that's connected to us or little league or asa softball any of those things to get to seven o'clock okay and i i understand the challenge of um scheduling the the fields um you know as a little league parent um yeah there's sometimes there's somebody right behind you and it's all evening um those were my questions thank you you want to go ahead hermit i think some of my questions got answered i want to when i'm looking at um how this works i want to ask a question it one is
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i had to the community oversight which she brought up um like i know that we're involved and they're involved but when i think about our fields and how the community is is using them and you know have we have we brought the community into play to say you know how is this going to work out for everybody involved and i say that specifically thinking about roosevelt as where we have a strong um marshall probably knows the folks that come up on saturday every saturday been doing it religiously since the um since the field open um to play soccer as an older adult league from and so how does something like this displace a group like that if it does at all or maybe it doesn't and so if you could just speak to that for me i would i would appreciate that um and then with our um with our gems with this agreement and i and i think of the gym specifically because you know we have we have a lot of youth programs but we also have community programs that use our gyms for different things and so with this relationship with with parks that in turn um not afford some of them to have access to the gyms during times because parks has um has reserved that time for the space and then my last question um or is really for we're all here you know trying to get this but i just want tell me why i hate this marshall i want you to i want you to tell me why i hate this and so because it's easy to get up there and say why we should sell it but i feel like in every debate we need to understand both sides of it and so i'm asking you to tell me why i hate this otherwise i'm going to go back and figure out why i hate this and our last meeting at our last meeting i spent a lot of time telling them why i hate this and then he told me why i shouldn't hate it so much so you know it's hard but you guys ask these really hard long eight part questions i gotta try to keep track here well we're a warner alumni so i know that you're educated enough to handle all them things that's my that's my guy says way way back he knew this was a long-loaded question when i stood up as a preacher he knew this that's true so um well what i would say is in any negotiation you never get all that you want let's just start with that right so we didn't get all what we wanted because it was up to me we would use our fields all the way until every pps kid said i'm done then i go with pps good luck right but so in the in the in the spirit of of collaboration i i think we got what we needed i i i would be remiss if i didn't say that i am upset about a couple sites that have not been taken care of i guess vincent is an example i'm not happy about some of the agreements that they have with outside users that we were not prioritized again like benson and buckman the soccer club um i would say that um those would probably be the two big ones wouldn't it probably oh and and and and the fact that we don't have pools uh our golf courses or tennis courts uh courts we're totally dependent on on them i mean honestly we are i mean we have uh in the spirit of trying to grow programming tennis used to be a 12-person team we have teams that are 36 because we want kids who want to be engaged to participate so we need to use gabriel park because it has eight courts right but at cleveland they got two courts and marshall they got one court so just us not having enough causes some angst in the relationship because we need more than they have to give so that's why i would hate oh one other and then they do have kind of in line with that they do have places we really really wish we'd have and i'll i see amy i think about dunaway because it's closer to lincoln than where we were gonna have to have lincoln go to do some things but at the end of the day um we have some high schools that are on some land that there's no land around it so we're going to have to travel anyway right make the best of it um in regards to the people who want to use pps facilities i don't think this is going to be less use for them i i think that actually the use is going to be greater from pps because portland parks is using less than they used to use um i do know for a fact that uh there's permitting and then there's using so the people that permit our fields i think they're for the most part pretty happy the users just show up and if we're not there to put them off they're there and so i'll use marshall on campus as an example we've had an adult soccer league out there every sunday for probably the whole time i've been here right because they go there there's a track we leave the track open for community use and then the turf fills there why wouldn't we
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we use it right so uh so they're permittees and then they're users so i think that we're not gonna we that the user piece is not gonna get solved we're i don't think we're ever gonna because if we put someone out there until five o'clock they come at six if we put them to six they come at eight right they don't have the ability to turn the lights on so that's probably our only time they wouldn't use our our fields um in terms of internal in terms of gyms i don't think we'll ever have enough gyms um right now i think park bureau is i wouldn't say happy but satisfied i think we're satisfied but not thrilled right um but and then the the users uh i think become seasonal so you have gym time during your peak season of high school basketball right but then after that it's just about permitting people just need to learn the process and come permit there's gyms there's availability and they do that i think the same thing with volleyball i think park bureau does volleyball in the fall then they're turning to do it in the spring and then the and that's only half of the use normally of gym so there's gyms available for people perhaps the question would be outside users do they know the process and how we communicated that to them in a way that i'm johnny and i want to start a program for girls basketball i want to use jefferson's gym how do i do that maybe they don't know how to do that so they're complaining they don't have access because they just show up so perhaps we can do a little bit better about educating the community as a whole as to how to access would be the answers to those or perhaps even just you know portland parks puts out a comprehensive seasonal um schedule for community members i wonder if there's a way and i guess one other part i think that the people who play aau basketball or people who want to play basketball use the gyms volleyball or basketball they're either in park bureau they're in our plu sports program or their aau right aau has always had to go find their gyms there's no way for us to take care of all of them smart aau programs are in their program part of the time they're in our program part of time and they're double dipping on gym use that's that's that's how it has to happen there's no other way around it and why you hate this agreement is that nobody wants to say no especially not to youth and certainly not to other community members who live nearby a park or a school the reality is that you have a pretty amazing team of good negotiators that actually this is about as good as it gets so why i love it is that we've maximized the the benefit we could use twice as many of your gyms there are barriers that you know we have to work through in order to be able to do those things there will always be parties that are displaced when we change hours what we've learned is that community engagement around projects is amazing community engagement around policy is amazing oftentimes in difficult negotiations where there's not enough you know it's tricky we have different stakeholders to bring to those sorts of things so i don't know that that would be an amazing fit between two separate entities but i will say that as we look towards the future we know that lights and synthetic turf extend usable play hours so they are a priority for us moving forward they're also more expensive to replace they're cheaper to maintain so oftentimes you forget about those so having a consistent approach to expanding and growing with the growing need of our region of new and different sports we can't build you know that what 60 gyms that we need to use we would never be able to afford that on our own and and we offer different assets that may not be you know economical for schools to to maintain but as to regional entities i think we're maximizing value but there's always going to be more work to you know to do but investing in different resources to the overall benefit i think is is is is what we're looking to do in some capacity but it's it's going to take it's going to take resources as well and commitment and you know work in the meantime we're going to say no to some groups because we have to prioritize um you know in line with our unique missions and to make sure that we have a full range of sports i mean as a region if you can't start off in youth play and go all the way up right then you know we're then we have gaps right and so is that the most important thing or is having the most you know youth youth program available we debate this every day at portland parks and we we don't have the answer but i think that being curious about it and expanding that and focusing on the type of improvements that you know meet
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the larger needs of the region as well as our own and when possible doing them on our own property to make sure that we have that priority use already built in i think it's going to be critical for the future but you have a great team they got a lot of of of great compromises from our sports team who worked very hard with them so i'm proud to be you know here tonight and also to be sitting next to your staff who um i i think they did amazing so i think the other can i just say yes i think julia our director brim edwards um raise a good point about what are things we could collaborately talk about at a level way higher than mine that um like for us the fact that like i said before we're going to hood view and north clackam is to play softball games uh to park grill's credit they've done everything they can to try to make delta park playable for us but it's wet it's been raining right so a great collaborative project might be that how do we help them do something to get turf fields at delta park so that we can be there same thing with more turf fields at delta park that we use for soccer a lot of times when we build our high school facilities the thought is wow we got a softball baseball complex a grant we've taken care of it well that's for one team but grant has three baseball teams or maybe four they have two or three softball teams where are the other teams going to go play and then now we have a situation where we're going to take care of our city because they go to the playoffs or whatever but jv might lose three quarters of their season because there's nowhere to play because of rain so how we could work to collaborate to up upgrade each other's facilities so it's more access for kids would be the last part of that question and they should all get raincoats and we should all be playing in the rain on turf on turf yes so it doesn't tear the sports fields up okay and then we're gonna um after your car i want to help conclude this conversation but um first i do appreciate like an obviously greater sense of collaboration here which i think is going to be helpful for our kids um moving forward i think the reason that this conversation is so hard and that we've spent so much time on it is because we have a real scarcity of resources which is really bad for our community and to me it's a bad reflection of our community that we're not investing in our kids and will take some responsibility you know in terms of not prioritizing athletic resources in our bonds i will also say that for a long time i think portland parks and rec has really de-emphasized the recreation and athletic aspect of your their mission um and just really under invested in these resources for our kids so the to the extent that we can all come together and try to um really increase these opportunities for our kids i just think it's hugely important i think that you know there are funds available now where people are trying to address our epidemic of community violence and i think athletic resources is a response to this very um this this moment that we're in that is um so terrible to live through and and is taking so many of our our children so i think we should be creative in that sense and looking at all different kinds of resources specifically with this agreement um i am going to be very interested in the the real estate uh discussions i think there still may be some potential swaps that could make sense for us um in terms of actual ownership um i also think there may be some you underutilized properties that we both own that could be put into play pun intended if with a little bit of investment we could make them usable for our kids spaces that aren't usable i certainly have my eyes on ones that are owned by the parks bureau but you guys might have your eyes on some that are owned by us as well so i think that should be an important part of that conversation and then just to the last point i do i was told in this agreement that the the clause that in the previous mou that stated that public school students had right first priority to publicly funded parks and rec properties is coming out or maybe may be renegotiated in the real estate agreements and that the current agreements with third parties will move forward and that those third parties are likely to have an opportunity to renegotiate those same agreements those parties that have invested in parks facilities is that true
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so that i think if you're referring to buckman the party there executed their last term from a deal that was negotiated several decades ago so there is no um there's no field that i'm aware of where there's any unilateral right to extend or what about places like dunaway were there it wasn't from an original investment but it's just an existing agreement that it brings revenue into portland parks i think what we have is a really mixed history around trying to keep fields open so most of these came out of fields that failed where there was no revenue at the time from any party and there was a an opportunity to activate that field some of those agreements i think worked well others worked less well yeah i think that as we move forward we're looking for things that are sustainable over the long run so having an initial investment but then having it you know be returned in the same state is never ideal so we're always looking at how do we provide at a minimum you know access how do we make sure that our regional partners are involved with those decisions as we move forward because the only way to get there is together we need to coordinate our resources regionally in order to be successful so i agree i i think that it's a difficult question to ask because it's site-dependent based off of the history and former commitments but we are looking towards having a far more collaborative process around solution solutions problem solving for these sites so i think i think you hit on a couple of really smart points for this next section with how do we you know make sure that the right management and ownership exists where um the the sites are so heavily dependent on on on you know programs that are adjacent or you know active at your i like the sound of what you just said and i like the notion of having public private partnerships where we're getting some investment into our public facilities what i don't like is double dipping on part of the public entity where the taxpayers are paying for the underlying asset and then tax paying citizens are having to pay again to use them or they're being displaced by for-profit entities that are um paying to use taxpayer taxpayer-funded properties that's a piece that i think has to go away yeah i i would agree that some a deal like that today would not go forward have a deal like that at dunaway park with uh it's not it's not well maybe with some for-profit uh clubs soccer clubs as well as st mary's private institution but not uh public schools which by our previous contract which was in place until about five minutes hence from now was supposedly prioritized public school students so that's a total violation i appreciate the comments and we've got two more questions i'm going to ask the people that have questions if it could be answered in an email because i'm trying to move the conversation along so the and student representative you asked first but i just the answer is yes so go my very quick question it's going to be a yes or no question um is i've seen in my own school in other schools a prioritization of certain sports especially when seasons overlap for those sports does the amount of time four to seven allow for flexibility for sports using like the same gym yes okay that's it thank you and my question can be answered by email but it revolves around sport being a tool for inclusion and between uh pps and city of portland who own sort of the united teams um which are okay you can tell me you can tell me how this agreement supports that by email this is really just 30 seconds right now no no one owns it because it's easy we're all complicit no one owns it this year next year uh piano athletics will on it okay i want to thank staff for your input in portland public portland parks and rec always a parky i worked under charles jordan he was amazing um anyway i appreciate you and the work that's got into this and look forward to a healthy collaboration in the future um so do we do i have a motion in a second to adopt resolution 6488 authorizing the agreement between for the joint use of portland public schools and portland parks and recreation athletic facilities so moved second on cue director green moves and director brehm edwards seconds the adoption of resolution 6488
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i want to make sure we hear from our student representative on what his thoughts are and then we'll ask for i think we had our board discussion do you have additional thoughts to share uh student representative weinberg nope that's all thank you and ms bradshaw more swimming pools um do we have any public comment ms bradshaw no okay the board will now vote on resolution 6488 authorizing the agreement for the joint use of portland public schools and portland parks and recreation athletic facilities all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no and are there any abstentions resolution 6488 passes is approved by abort a vote of 7-0 with student representative weinberg voting yes great um we're going to skip over the student representatives report um thank you um so we can move through this board and committee conference reports do we have brief updates um anything burning our governmental is canceled this month see us in may excellent thank you for your brevity there um director greene nothing to report at this time director scott director broome edwards there's a policy committee meeting tomorrow and i would just flag for board members that we're going to be discussing the climate crisis committee application and charter so um that we come to the board but we're looking for people to send that out and then second um while we have the calendar vote later on to tonight there'll be a discussion about the issue that director constant the students and the student representative raised at the last uh committee meeting oh sorry the last board meeting all right um director hollins did you have a report on facilities and operations uh yeah so um the recommendation for the sports facilities with the partnership with parks was the main one that we talked about at the facilities and operations committee we had a update on modernization um reports as well that was excellent thank you um director constant anything for audit no report all right um thank you everyone for your brevity um we're now going to move to the resolution to approve the school district calendar will vote on the 2022-23 school year calendar at our last meeting we heard public testimony from three students at ida b wells barnett high school to consider a change in practice to assure that we are inclusive of the diversity of students and the religious holidays and cultural events they observe and are requesting that the district avoids conflicts for students to the best of its abilities so that students do not have to make tough choices between school and religious observances and that was a very long sentence i'm not sure who read the wrote that um it wasn't die yes it was it was hard tonight i propose that we that was a long sentence no no criticism there just long um so tonight i propose that we move forward adopting a calendar for the upcoming school year so that families can begin making plans and allow for more the more thoughtful discussion to be worked through at the board's policy committee i believe the policy committee chair um brim edwards has already placed this on the agenda for tomorrow's meeting as she mentioned and um so i'm gonna ask now if i have a motion and a second to adopt resolution 6487 that's the resolution to approve the 2022-23 school district calendar so moved second director green moves director com stem seconds the adoption of resolution 6487. is there any board discussion just briefly i want to did you were you not finished i was um going to i'm trying to change my practice so that we hear from the student representative first and adult second um just for that it's not performative it's really to to inform the adults in the room um on the student perspective so yeah my only comment is i appreciate that we're actually moving forward on the um talking about the calendar and willing to go through an engagement process instead of kind of just making the decision up here um without further engagement about what religious or cultural observances are we putting on there what exactly are we going to do with this either resolution or policy saying like what is not allowed or what is discouraged during those days and then what it looks like for students who end up missing those days makeup work tests after school sporting events and all that so i appreciate that i just want to add uh we kind of arrived
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at the path of going to the policy committee for that under the leadership through the leadership of jackson and oscar calvert and xander levine who are really going to take the lead on this issue in terms of addressing how the calendar might have notations around other special days of observances that won't affect the instructional hours or the days of the year that kids are in school so i want to thank our student leaders for that and thank liz large for helping us chart the path and we're good to go and i'm very enthusiastic about addressing the issue too understanding that we have a broad diversity of cultural traditions and requirements from shabbat to ramadan and are addressing those issues will help us attract student uh staff and administrators as well teachers included that want to be able to you know show up as theirs as their full selves without fear of losing their their positions or whatever so ms bradshaw is there any public comment no any additional um discussion um i wanted to thank the staff for their willingness to i look at that this for next year um just as i mentioned at the last meeting this has been a perennial issue for the last two decades and um i'm glad we didn't just say we'll we'll do it next we'll do it next year but we'll take some tentative steps because i think that's really important um to to move ahead now and to do it um thoughtfully i also um am appreciative that there's an openness to look at actually having the dates on on the calendar some mechanism that more than just the principal gets the information because as we all as we all know as active school community members lots of people schedule things individual teachers coaches external parties and i really think we we need to make sure that um for for it to actually um have its intended impact that it needs to be sort of anchored into the the base the base calendar so i i want to just thank all parties for being open to having the discussion this year versus waiting till wait until next year and i'm going to support the calendar this year based on that thank you the board will now vote on um resolution 6487 resolution to approve i apologize no worries um have a quick question so the calendar we are voting on now i want to make sure i'm asking the right question if this if the calendar changes for any reason do we go back and change it or is this what it's going to be for 2022 2023 i think that we're proposing that in the policy committee that we if that if we do come up with changes that we would adopt them next year is that correct so and this is my interpretation is that sort of the first and from talking to the students or communicating with the students who are here last meeting is that it wouldn't actually add no school days but that it might impact what can be scheduled and then how students who may be absent how how those are treated so it wouldn't actually impact the additional calendar day or the school year is extended or anything like that for this next year but it will be primarily focused on making clear like this is not a day that you should be scheduling you know a final exam or the start of school or things like that yeah and depending on when we end up like coming to a decision it might be closer to the start of the school year stuff started getting planned so we might at that point need to have a grace period just because stuff has already started being planned um but i hope that we're not like waiting until like 12 months from today to do anything no i i think that there's a way to kind of feather in i mean at least put markers on the calendar for next year and if there has to be if if the following year we would need to uh put those markers down and then add conditions um but yeah i think i i think we're we're we're solving in the moment and the the um sort of superstitious part of me when you ask that question director hollins about changing the calendar you know we got an extra week of spring break in 2020 uh because the governor shut down schools so the calendar can change due to forces beyond our control so i just want to name that because i feel like not naming it opens us up for the possibility that's my superstitious scl days like just this year even so right yeah and there's the social emotional learning days we also had a
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snow day so um that's built in but there are factors um that might impact the calendar beyond uh that wouldn't necessarily require a vote from the board like the governor shutting down schools good point um planned parenthood of columbia willamette has an amazing and very inclusive um annual calendar that has uh it's got every you know trans day of remembrance it's got ramadan it's got you know ev everything so if you want that for reference um take a look at that so we're gonna vote now on the resolution to approve the 2020 2022-2023 school district calendar all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all those opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6487 is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative weinberg voting yes i just want to thank our students on the dsc and also the students who spoke for their advocacy thank you noted okay i believe our final um our final topic is a resolution to recognize juneteenth as a paid holiday for non-representative non-representative employees non-represented employees uh deputy superintendent hertz can you please introduce this item be happy to do so director excuse me chair to pass as you know last year on june 17th president biden signed a bill approving juneteenth juneteenth as a federal holiday and on june 19th governor brown signed a bill recognizing juneteenth as a state holiday so as per board policy in order for the district to make this a paid holiday for non-represented employees the board must approve by resolution thank you um so do i have a motion and a second to adopt resolution 6477 resolution to recognize juneteenth as a paid holiday for non-represented employees so moved second okay i think all the black people was ready to move that one i'm waiting for the nose um is there any more discussion on the holiday that can't be answered in an email yes because i haven't i'm being a little facetious maybe a technical question the title of this is for non-represented employees but it actually might include some represented employees who are working during that day is that correct so i don't know if we need a title change um no there there's there's no non-represented employees who would there's no represented employees who would get this it's just a different mechanism so uh our pfs this began uh with an ask from the pfsp team uh and in the successor contract uh pfsp we had to negotiate with pfsp to add this holiday um for their workforce so the mechanism for other other than non other than represented i'm circling sorry it's late i'm tired um our non-represented uh process for adding holidays is board resolution uh otherwise it is voted by on by the board in a cba ratifying a cba pfsp uh dcu and sciu all have it reflected either through memoranda of understanding or in their collective bargaining agreements yes so this would be the last group whose work year is over the 19th uh well there there might be situations where it might be in some of our pt members uh work years and of course we have an open contract with pet so we'll be uh addressing that yeah and maybe this can be addressed later but it seems like if we have a holiday whoever's working there like that would be yes i mean so this is the last group for this year right uh who uh where we need uh approval to move forward that's what my question was so every other group has it in their cba or through a memorandum of understanding with the bargaining unit yes i know we don't often add holidays as looking back the last of my ad holidays but it does seem strange that it's if we have a holiday for the district that it would be like you have to bargain it any benefit you have to uh the requirements are that you bargain any benefit even if it is even if you're just gonna yes okay yes okay yes okay and the last holiday that was approved was martin luther king
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so i just want to clarify because i'm hearing two different things okay and that is on pat we have we're about to open their contract for bargaining and right now it's not in place for that group is that correct this year it does not impact their members because the school year does not go over okay and there's june and there's no this year would be june 20th there's no pa team members that would work on that day so this is not the mechanism so a board resolution is not the mechanism yes but i think i just heard director brent edwards say this was and that is bargaining that's negotiations so you're saying there may be people if we're not done bargaining who wouldn't have this is uh no wait uh no sorry i know we don't do this very often so i'm just trying to understand how it works we are not going to have a situation where we don't offer the holiday to people who are working in this year thank you thank you thank you um sharon i appreciate that ms bradford is there any is there any public comment about this no okay so the board will now vote i'm sorry have we already voted on resolution 648-7 okay so the board will now vote on resolution 6487 that's i'm sorry it's i'm looking at the wrong number six four seven six four seven seven thank you um we'll we'll vote on six four seven seven um resolution to recognize juneteenth as a paid holiday for non-represented employees all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no [Music] and are there any abstentions and i vote yes too i think i forget failed to say that so resolution six four seven seven is approved by a vote of uh seven to zero with student representative weinberg voting yes okay i believe that concludes our business for the evening we pulled stuff from the kids oh i'm so sorry i am yes we do have the it's 6 4 i thank you it's 6 4 8 4 and then the expenditure contract for education resource strategies i'm not eager to leave um neither am i well i'm close so director scott you wanted to pull yeah i'm uh i'm eager to leave so i'll be quick um no i wanted to to pull this resolution and and i think do we have um uh ms brennan available virtually um and and i just i wanted to just just ask a couple questions on the record and so and i will admit this is my third year i think approving this this um resolution i i am going to vote in in favor of this but i do think it was worth just having a a very quick board discussion about i did um as we heard testimony earlier i did meet with um a group of parents um who are a little bit frustrated you know by the policy and and and you know from their perspective again you heard in their testimony the question is because pps allows up to 100 students um to transfer in and there are other reasons why students transfer in and out that are allowed under state law but we have discretion to make this decision we do allow up to 100 students to transfer in they're essentially asking why don't we um simultaneously allow up to 100 students to transfer out and you know i think they're they're um there are lots of different reasons why families students and families might choose to to want to leave the district um and and i think there are and in talking to ms brennan earlier today um there are some really good sort of policy rationales for this and i just again i know it's late so we don't need to talk long about it um but i think just just if if you wouldn't mind giving a really brief overview of why we do sort of allow those students in um and and how that serves the programmatic needs of pbs i think that would be beneficial thank you director scott and uh just just want to make sure is my audio working it is yeah yes thank you can you hear us we can hear you are you able to hear us let me take that as a no sorry i'm not sure if i'm uh we can hear you okay um i lost uh okay there we are i think uh i now have sorry for that technical pledge can you hear us can you hear us i can hear you now yeah thank you sorry
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for that problem um so this is the uh time of year when um districts uh each district approves their plan for transfers between school districts so this is an annual duty of the board and the staff recommendation to develop the plan every year we look both at what the the general strategy is for transfers across pps schools and then try and apply those um the same theories to drive our decisions for students who are coming in from other districts or who are requesting to leave pbs to go to other districts we also have to follow a pretty stringent set of state laws around this so specifically regarding um general transfers of students in or out of pbs what we have identified and you'll see in your packet is that the demographics of students who come into vps from other districts do not fully mirror the the general district in that it's higher percentages of students of color higher percentages of students who speak spanish at home what we know anecdotally is that these are more likely to be students who've been impacted by gentrification and the ability to remain in pbs to finish at their current school provides a vital stability for these students we also know that because of the nature of the state laws the only mechanism that we have for allowing students who live in other districts to access our language immersion programs which are not available everywhere and allow students to access instruction in their home language like our russian immersion program and our vietnamese immersion program the standard inner district transfer in is the only mechanism for doing so and then finally it is our only mechanism in place at this time to allow students who have been displaced from portland to return to albina schools for black students whose families are no longer a resident in our district but who live near in other districts to attend some of the only majority black schools in the entire state so these are priority programs and initiatives of our district and the standard inner district transfer that general transfer in is the primary mechanism for achieving that we don't know of any similar programmatic or equity-based um initiatives that are parallel for students going from pbs to other districts if there were so and um we're open to exploring reasons to release students that have to do are that have a similar equity focus as the reasons that we give for student that i just articulated for students coming in further because we allow a lot of transfer in pbs [Music] we allow students to move through our lottery we have many district options but when it comes time to transfer between neighborhood schools we look for a reason we want it to be a substantiated hardship need and not just general interest and so that's another reason why we don't promote transfers out of pbs unless there's a reason that falls within the state's hardship definition great thank you i really appreciate that and just to sort of summarize um because again i think it it's exactly what we want to be doing as a district is is looking at what is our vision what is our goal and i think what i'm hearing from staff is there are very good programmatic reasons that benefit the students that transfer in in the district overall for allowing those um there there are fewer reasons why we would allow students to transfer out i do want to express i understand the frustration of the families and from a funding standpoint if they choose to leave the district and have to pay tuition once they've done that pps doesn't retain that state funding and nor does the new district get it in fact it stays with the state school fund and then gets redistributed statewide so i can understand from their perspective they're sort of saying if you just release my student i won't have to pay tuition that money stays in in the local area as a pbs school board member what i explain to them is i have to think about the impact of these policies while i i completely understand where they're coming from and see that frustration i don't want to you know pass any policies or make any changes that would encourage more students or as you said make it easier for students to transfer out of the district than we even allow in terms of inner district transfer so um again i i can understand that the frustration of the families but i think staff you know have thought through this very well and i'm going to support the resolution moving forward thank you
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i i also wanted to just appreciate you for articulating um those strong compelling reasons for allowing the russian vietnamese spanish and black students to transfer in due to gentrification access to language programs and things that we know that will help our students of color succeed so i really appreciate that and i also appreciate your articulation of the reasons we wouldn't allow we would want to apply similar equity considerations for transfers out and want to see that there's a substantiated hardship so i just want to appreciate you and let you know i'm also i'm going to be in favor of of uh the staff recommendation i'm sure just a question um about the uh just the change um and again i think just i'm gonna support this uh but also want to just make visible if we um between uh 2016 to 2018 we had a different policy was that did we change because there was a change in law or just this change in practice at pbs uh yes i can address that so the state changed laws in 2014 and 2015. there were administrative regulations that came down from ode that was late in 2016 so it didn't affect our 2016 practice our 2016 plan but what we learned later was that we we weren't actually fully in compliance with our 2016 plan for example we allowed students who were already enrolled in a school to be considered eligible for priority transfer as it's defined under state law when in fact ode clarified for us in 2017 that you only can uh you can only be eligible for that priority if you were attending the that other district before and you moved into our district so what had happened is there were families who had enrolled in a district um as tuition paying families and then applied and it for that one brief year received priority because they were already enrolled we didn't fully understand that um it's only limited to students who were enrolled and moved into our district not just we're attending as our residents but on tuition so we um corrected the plan in the in the future years and um and we understand that there were families who were looking forward to that rule being um continuing but indeed um our guidance was that it was not compliant with the language that's in state law and then it also doesn't um doesn't match the broader district goals that we just described great thank you i think there's it's always a value to share when when we've had to make changes or we've made changes based on just the evolving regulatory or state law thank you is there any additional comment um before we vote on the resolution on resolution 6484 that's the resolution to approve the staff recommendation for inner district transfers all in favor please i'm sorry we need emotions whoa i just wanted to be second because see andrew had already so i just wanted to make sure that we were clear on that that was that was slick um so so we have a motion by director scott in a second by director green to approve the staff recommendation for inner district transfers all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6484 is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative weinberg unofficially voting yes great and we have one final item and that is the expenditure contract for educational resource strategies there's a 743 000 contract for developing a strategic resource analysis and plan is that separate from the budget or i'm just curious if it's new or what what is it where does it live yeah so um it's it's part of our current budget and it's uh in-depth analysis regarding how we use our resources so people time and money across our school system as we start doing a deep
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dive into assessing how our opportunities whether it's how we distribute funds to school so some of the conversations that we've had is around like how do we allocate resources to school to support our specific strategies so that's an example of some of the information we can obtain from ers ers i probably should have taken a step back ers is a national nonprofit organization that's worked across various uh school districts districts across the country uh large urban districts whether it's chicago philadelphia boston la unified and they do in-depth analysis to really give us insights into where are our resources going in respect to our new strategic plan how does that benchmark against other districts that are following similar um strategies or exploring uh some of the opportunities to re uh assess how funding is managed whether it's at a school site whether it's taking a look at a staffing formula and how is that staffing formula supporting core requirements how are then the core requirements being invested in to support the instructional uh framework so it's pieces uh all of these all these pieces come into play to support the broader instructional framework when we look across all of our resources and try to get into this like clean look as how are we spending now in relation to our strategic plan how does that then compare to other districts or pursuing similar investments but then the uniqueness of our circumstances as we look to roll out our instructional framework how are we going to find the resources to continue to support that scale it over the next few years you said it's currently in place but it looks like it's a new contract unless i'm reading it i incorrectly when i said currently in place i meant for it is a new contract i'm it's uh in place for this year and so this is so we already have it we this is or no no sorry yeah so we do not it's new okay just thank you and then second um like how would the public see what irresist totally to inform like staff staff thinking i mean it's just a large amount so i'm i'm curious yeah it seems like so as you describe it it would be yeah there would yeah there would be artifacts generated from this inclusive reports that uh we can that would not just help inform us but also help inform how we engage with our term i'm coining thinking about is like our annual planning process and engagement in the different work streams whether it's community engagement how we work with our school leaders how we work across departments so this would then feed into that and and by default we would naturally be able to see the results uh to uh particularly school sites and our departments and so i i i'd be excited as we get through this process to also be able to share a report of like what are some of the opportunities we can consider because this isn't just for next year this is to really set the foundation for long-term sustainability when we think about or all the amazing things we want to do and then just how are we ensuring that we're investing in all the right things thank you i had a really quick question my question was so with understanding about where the money is going does that also tie back to the effectiveness um so kind of like performance outcomes like how effective is what we're spending money on um does this analysis allow us to see that that would be part of it yes so for example how are we investing our resources in specific subgroups of our population and then how does that tie into we want to see it won't get into analyzing or making determinations of the outcomes but it'll help raise awareness regarding how our funding our resources being spent as effective as possible so like what are the outcomes of the spending but not whether yeah so it's like what are the outcomes on the spending now it's up to us the board to determine whether those are the outcomes we desire thank you so ultimately it's very helpful to us yes thank you chief del gadio i i appreciate your comments tonight and director brim edwards we spent in director comstown we spent years working with the secretary of state and this would also help us with one of their recommendations on the national benchmarking that we um yeah i was
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going to say something yes about that but thank you for putting that out appreciate that um in terms of process then are we then just voting on resolution 6480 when okay so i'll make a motion to approve the contract i'll second andrew's motion this is a pattern and i have a question yes [Music] i'm just trying to understand so it's i try to keep stuff like basic so this kind of like a audit internal audit of what we're spending our money on our it's just tied to the teaching plan strategic resource audit so how much of this could be done internally versus contracted out not much um partly because we don't have the capacity to do that we don't um we don't have enough people to then take on this work above the baseline work that we do but the additional critical component to that is the benchmarking against other districts we don't have access to all the data so all of these other districts whether it's dallas isd palm beach they've participated and have gone through similar processes like this and so ers has like all of their data and so we can benchmark and so when we have questions when we look across our our spending at the central office when we look across spending at school sites like how did how does that stack up against other comparable districts that are trying to do the same work we're doing could we hire i'm looking at the number of the amount could we hire a couple folks or i'm looking at this budget a few folks we should do this work and still save money from we could always hire but we would not get the same caliber or have this be able to find the same skill set to perform this but then we'd also be it would be the skill set with access to all the backend data that we don't have access to so these are nationally renowned experts in this field i get that yeah i get that part you know just i guess i'm looking at the number of the dollar amount of number and we just seen our nutritional services and our janitors and stuff and you know we're spending 743 or 850 000 dollars for a report um that it just doesn't fit necessarily well to where to to look at our effectiveness when i'm thinking that the quality of people that we're hiring and the in this talent that the the folks that we're hiring could could potentially do some of this work and you know you're saying we don't have the expertise but they have the expertise to hire and do this work and i'm just i'm sure it's going to be at a less amount that we're paying out for this so i just that just kind of just doesn't sit well with me when we're sending out this money for a report unless that is going to directly affect one our kids and our kids outcomes which i didn't hear that it really affects how our kids are performing in the classroom which we're here for to how does that help like with our budget gaps when we're spending almost over it it will help inform us where we need to be shifting where are some of the considerations we need to be shifting our resources to support the student outcomes we want to see but don't we know that already because that's part of the strategic plan and some of the initiative that superintendent has been talking about as far as shifting resources to schools or you know places where it needs to be done at so i guess it just seems like it's redundant that we're going to have someone tell us the same stuff that we already know it's more than than a report it's a process they lead a process in the district they'll engage many of us including the board including you know senior leadership they will i don't have all the steps in front of me this evening but it is a process that goes over set more than one fiscal year and it will help guide us to really look at how our resources are being spent now and what we need to what we need to adjust in order to be able to realize all right now we don't if we wanted to do our complete strategic plan we don't have the resources to do that so how do we have the conversation with our internal staff our community our our board about what what are the right places to go to get to where we want to be so i guess i would need more information i think i would need more information on what that process looked like to warn the amount of money we're spending because what they're telling me seems like it was told to us before as far as like what our audits you know we have our audits and it's and some of the things that we're talking about as far
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as you know where we're supposed to put our funds at and how we support our kids we i seem like i've heard that argument before and now i see i'm like hearing that same argument again just from a nationally renowned organization to do that same stuff that i've already seemed like i've already heard so i guess for me i just really want to know what we're actually getting that's going to benefit one of our kids first um and then the district second before i can support something like this just so i know what that is because they're saying oh we're going to give 850 000 to me it seems like another audit whether it's a more detailed on it or what have you it just seems like it's another audit can i ask a question it sounds like some board members have some questions uh is there urgency to the approval of this contract at this board meeting versus holding it over there there is and just from the perspective of being able to start collecting the data that takes three to four months to start going through and combing the data because ultimately we will get to an action plan that will then help they would also uh ers would also support us through this process with as superintendent superintendent hertz was sharing that would involve additional supports designing helping to design additional tools and in preparation as we get into next fiscal year so the idea is to ramp up over the summer with collecting data and so the sooner we can start the better but obviously you know uh want to be responsive we hope to have this and work far enough along so that as we are budgeting for 2324 we have the data and the process has been been brought along far enough to be um to inform the following year's budget so and it is a multi-year shift over time it sounds to me like a big part of what this is about and tell me if i'm wrong is about really decoding a lot of the inputs that we have and connecting them to the outcomes that we're looking for because right now we don't have a good way to map where our resources are being allocated relative to the academic outcomes that we're looking for in our kids and to be able to track those metrics which is something we as a board are interested in and to me it sounds like that's a big part of what this exercise is that's one of the big components and then the subsequent component to that would be then the what do we what what are then our considerations to then implement or changes we'd like to see when we look at our resources i i think i understand the frustration about you know this is a it's a big dollar contract and saying you know is it is it um is it going to create an impact but i think in our in our state audit one of the findings was that there were all these um initiatives it was like an initiative overload and we we weren't really measuring you know we are trying this and trying that in a not in a very coordinated way and so to me what i understand is this contract allows us to align our the inputs and the activities that we're doing with our the outcomes that we want to see and it's a long process it's i mean it i don't know who has the time for this either like this is a it's a long-term change uh it's a long-term change change management which um we're not going to see the you know the on-the-ground benefit for some time but it's important to it's important to understand um which of these initiatives that we that we put forth and that we implement are actually creating the change we want to see and if we don't have that investigation then we're still just throwing out you know one thing after the next and moving people around and it's it's creating the same outcomes which are not positive outcomes for the kids so i guess my question then would be what have we been doing are we just being spending money without programs and math programs and no i understand what you're saying but going by what you're saying at least what i hear is that you're saying we've been spending money and we haven't really paid attention to how we were spending it what we're spending it on and now this is going to kind of tell us what that is and where we need to shift maybe if i'm wrong but we really just adopted our strategic plan and at the beginning of the pandemic so this is yeah in june 2021 was when the strategic plan was adopted and so we now think about what the strategic plan lays out the four themes the strategic outcomes how does that what's a through line with our board goals it's like how how are w what is the allocation of our resources right now what's the gap
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to get to that and then like the second phase right because that's a data that's a discovery that's the analysis and the second part of like what are then the pieces that we need to be putting in place or having conversations about to put us in a place to shift those resources not just for next year but then like how does this lay over the long term of the district's health when it just comes to both our finances but then our our duty to our our students and and the outcomes so when the i wasn't here for the win the strategic plan was brought forth so when when the strategic plan was brought forth did it have a financial impact that went along with that so we can see well hey i'm proposing this this is what i'm expecting it's going to cost so i guess i guess when i see a strategic plan normally it comes with some kind of financial impact and it has the data and stuff that you're talking about attached to it and then usually after it goes for so long you come back and assess what how that how that worked i i'll defer to i'd have not seen one because that was also before my time so just kind of seeing the the creation of that to where we are now i i think uh and correct me if i'm wrong that when we arrived to our strategic plan there there wasn't then like the the the [Laughter] and so like a price tag associated with it and but we know that we have our existing resources we have a strategic plan that was uh built up with a lot of community input and this is what you know as a board we put our stake on the ground this is what we want to accomplish so now then it's assessing okay what are the resources we have available how are we investing those right now we have a general idea but then benchmarking because like we may be thinking about it in a certain way that then it's like well that's that you should be considering some other opportunities or a different way and then how do we then execute on that i think it's also not only the secretary of state's audit but also like consistent reports from the cbrc saying like we have all these initiatives is what we're spending money on for these initiatives for the goals that we have laid out is it effective that these are the strategies we should be using so that's kind of what i see coming out of this that's one component is thinking about like the academic return on investment and and that right you need several some data to then assess and so that would be okay what have we what outcomes have we received based on what we've been doing but then also we know that our strategic plan are forward together this is where we want to go so what what is the gap from what we're doing now to where we want to go and what are then some of the key decisions we need to be thinking about to to repurpose reallocate advocate for additional funding whatever the case may be to then put us in that direction and i'm wondering if some of this might be also like thinking about how do we depl so what i'm hearing when you say we're going to look at our resources and think about how we deploy them to get to the outcomes we've said we want is looking at our structuring you know everybody who's come before us about the budget has said get rid of administrators but you know we we really need our administrators to do things like plan the budget and catch the fraud and resource the teachers and plan the pd and advocate for our spread students but i think this is also an opportunity to say are we how are how are we deploying our resources efficiently to do all the things the school district needs to do and can we make cuts in administration can we show up a certain segment that we have we've maybe been under funding and that's trickled down to the classroom and that students are getting supports in these different ways um and so that's what i'm hearing when i hear this is it's going to be sort of this global view on how are we arranged how are we using our resources and is it actually the best from an objective viewpoint rather than it it feels like it's working that's kind of what my yeah is what this is it's that and to put in a very like just example you know we have our equity formula and and so like how does our equity formula stack up across the school district what would it look like if we wanted to increase that or change it um like what are then those uh i don't like to use this word trade-offs to assess or or to advocate because we feel that hey we want our funding formula to be more equitably driven what would that design look like what would be some of the considerations sources take into account because we know that if we then fund schools accordingly more equitably then we can push the outcome we can push towards the outcomes we want to see so these are some of the considerations that we'd be exploring over the course of the next few months so that when we get to next year's budget so i know we're just starting or we're just talking about you know next week we'll be talking about next year's budget but it's like what is the through line the long-term sustainability through line okay i have to say last two things and
02h 50m 00s
i'm done um so one thing is because like i said i asked the question i haven't got an answer as far as when the strategic plan was put forward was there a financial impact with that to go along with the strategic plan um no we did not have dollar amounts on the strategic plan okay so now so we didn't have a baseline so now we're going back to basically trying to get a baseline for what the strategic plan and how we can accomplish that that's what this is for we had actually hoped to bring these folks in last fall but if the the two variants kind of our focus changed again back to the pandemic and we had hoped to start much sooner than this so we really hoped to inform this year's budget but because of the two variants that came through and we really had to focus on just staff and student safety and keeping people educated right and keeping education services going okay and then the second thing right the second thing and the last thing is i guess for me i would just really would like to see what this entails um you know data wise what they're collecting how it's going to be disaggregated how it's going to be you know that's what i would want to see as well they can share much more and i think one of the most valuable things is their interactions with large urban dish school districts public school districts across the country or even sure you can even share the rfp that they've started i'm similar they submitted uh yeah the whole complex happy to share that with you yeah i think the um the fact that we're comparing with sister districts is going to be really valuable because we'll be able of those urban districts will be able to know which ones are successful or more successful at student outcomes and starting from scratch with that to pay someone to collect data from those different districts um i think is going to cost more than just having somebody that's done it already has they have a dashboard already so so speaking of that i just want to make clear what we're vote what we're voting on so the 750 is for this april 20th to march 31st of next year and there's an option to renew and it says the total through renewals is 8.50 but so i'm we're paying a huge amount up front and then the add-on is that two-year renewals is just another hundred thousand mm-hmm or am i reading this that's how it looks like on the yeah so yeah to clarify that it it would be if there were um the add-on would be just a hundred thousand dollars if whether it's for uh if it happens to be two years or if it happens to be two months if any sort of additional work that may stem out of this if there's like so the baby's there's here is 750 that gives us the base of the dashboard or whatever the thing is and then the it's just a hundred thousand total it's not going to be another 750 the following if it turned out we would be here having a conversation uh if there was additional layers or fake net layers phases of work that stemmed out of this that there was uh interest and and additional conversations um that we want to have we would have we would bring that to to the board but then the renewals don't come back to they'll come back to us and do no i don't think so no not at a and it would be capped at a hundred thousand dollars so if it was anything more than 850 we'd get back but staff would do the just the renewal and the 700 and 700 some thousands for one year correct well we we have a motion on the table to adopt uh resolution six four eight zero expenditure contracts including yes just thank you so the motion on the table is to approve just this contract uh with education resource strategies um director scott moved and director green seconded it but we're ready for a vote now thank you will now vote on it's not the resolution it's contract number 91415 education resource strategies all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all those opposed please indicate by saying no no no no are there any abstentions the motion passes by a vote of four to three in favor and
02h 55m 00s
student representative weinberg yes thank you all um i believe that that is our final business for this evening thank you steph for staying so late

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 - Full Board Meetings (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk0IYRijyKDW0GVGkV4xIiOAc-j4KVdFh (accessed: 2023-10-11T05:43:28.081119Z)

2022-04-19 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: 4/19/22 Board of Education Regular Meeting

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