2022-05-10 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2022-05-10
Time	18:00:00
Venue	BESC Auditorium
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: 5/10/2022 PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting

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pardon me we're i'm sorting through some stack of papers here um so this board meeting of the board of education for may 10 2022 is called to order for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on has been posted on the pps website under the board and meetings tabs the 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 playtimes um goody good evening everyone and thanks for coming it's nice to see you tonight i see we have a full house mostly full and the portland public schools board of education values your input and making important decisions that affect portland students we also believe in the right of community members to observe and participate in board meetings and we want to carry out the work in front of us at the same time to ensure both the public has an opportunity to attend school board meetings and ensure the board can conduct the important business of the district i want to remind people of some basic rules of conduct which i expect will follow tonight we ask that all members of the public attending the meeting tonight treat each other staff and the board with respect and that's the expectation we have and i have as adults and we see we have young students in the audience we're modeling um that that conduct to our young people individuals 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 those wishing to display play cards signs and our banners must remain in the auditorium foyer behind the seating area and may not block any attendees view of the proceedings and please if you would keep the walkways clear and aisles clear and in general um we would appreciate if you can just be mindful of others in the room and the words that you use and be aware of who's watching including the um our our community's most precious cargo i also want to note uh for everybody that we have two um board members that are attending virtually um director hollins and director greene are joining us uh virtually tonight the first order of business is to recognize may as asian american native hawaiian and pacific islander heritage month may as you know is asian american native hawaiian and pacific islander heritage month and portland public schools recognizes the important contributions of asian americans native hawaiians and pacific islanders a pps our student and staff population across all academic programs and mission areas represent a wide variety of aan hpi ethnic groups including chinese vietnamese japanese filipino korean indian and more as we've seen a spike in anti-asian sentiment over the past years i'm pleased to note we have several student affinity groups across the district where students can better excuse me can develop a better understanding of how their own identity shapes their experiences as well as help students develop healthy self-identity and build networks both within and beyond the group through sharing experiences and strategies additionally last week the district communications team sent several resources that are available as we work together to create an environment of belonging a connection to caring adults and needed support to ensure our students are prepared to lead a more socially just world do i have a motion in a second to adopt resolution 6489 resolution to recognize may as asian american native hawaiian and pacific islander heritage month so moved second director brum edwards moves and director scott seconds adoption of resolution 6489 is there any board discussion yes i'd like to thank staff for bringing this forward and also i also want to acknowledge there's a reference to it in the resolution but there was a recent um statewide survey that came out that pointed to i think what what we all know but really validated i think what we've known and seen what's happening in our community that the number of race-based hate crimes against against and harassment of asian oregonians is on the rise um so i want to just appreciate the district staff for providing support to our students who you know sometimes it's happening in our schools and also in the broader community and
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so i i'm appreciative that we recognize that our students and staff need support especially times like now thank you director broome edwards is there anyone else do we have any public comment on this item the board will now yes if there's no other comments i i would love to share just a few examples to accompany the the resolution just uh to share some current efforts uh in the spirit of the resolution um i want to share an appreciation for a lot of good collaboration with culturally specific community-based organizations that are helping to increase access to services and mental behavioral health supports for asian american students in particular at this time given some of what we're witnessing um i also want to say on the workforce diversity front uh our new director of recruitment has really been prioritizing efforts uh to do some targeted recruitment uh at hiring bilingual and racially diverse administrators especially candidates of asian american descent we're pleased this summer that the nonprofit that supports our vietnamese dual immersion program is working with us to host a summer camp for students who continue to be immersed in vietnamese and in addition senior staff they're working right now to establish dual language immersion community advisory groups for our vietnamese mandarin and japanese family and community members uh to hear directly from our parents and families uh and educators uh to to to encourage the dialogue around how best to serve and support our students so i just wanted to call those out because there are some some ongoing efforts right now that seems fitting to mention thank you so much for bringing visibility to those efforts um i appreciate it and our community appreciates it too i'd like to hear from student representative weinberg if you have any thoughts about the resolution or from a student perspective and then we'll take a vote uh nothing right now thank you put you on the spot there um the board will now vote on resolution thank you for joining us director holland i just announced that you were going to be virtual whoa okay that was fast um the board will now vote on resolution 6489 the resolution to recognize may is asian american native hawaiian and pacific islander heritage month all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes all those opposed please indicate by saying no and are there any abstentions we the resolution i'm sorry 6489 um passes by a vote of seven to zero with student representative weinberg voting yes thank you thank you um 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 madam chair i had noticed that i wanted to um have a discussion about the but i'd rather um not have it at the very end of the board meeting if that's okay but the the summer the summer programming okay so did you want to pull that item that and and you as well okay sorry i'm toggling back and forth but it just has a pointy courtesy does staff do we need to have it at the end of the meeting i'm trying to you have some questions about the range of our summer programming i do okay i mean we have something like eight million dollars in contracts uh very robust menu of summer programming we're excited to start telling our families about pending your your consideration but let us know staff would be happy to describe all those efforts so do you want a motion on the business agenda and and then we take up this issue at the end of that vote i just think it's a courtesy for staffing process wise can we vote on the resolutions minus 6492 well you can you can leave it in i just want to ask some questions about it okay is now the time to do that then i heard you say you want to leave it in so do you want to just ask your questions before we take the vote then or do you want us to vote on the consent agenda and then vote on this separate item it does it can be all together let's let's do it it's easier to have one vote let's do it yeah i don't want to do it at the end of the meeting because that's and i'm not opposed to it i i just um it's a big chunk of money so it's a big chunk of money and uh we have a
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really long meeting and we're gonna we'd be talking about and it's i mean i think it's amazing the opportunities are being offering yes so let's let's go ahead and talk about um what are your questions do you want i sir do you want the motion i actually had some questions about the head start too which um i didn't send till this afternoon and mr cantwell i think has joined us virtually so he's available to answer those too so we'll throw them all together so six four nine three six four nine four same conditions where we ask questions currently i didn't um get the questions that you had this afternoon some of you we could do is put a motion get it on the table um and then just open it up for discussion yeah motion for the consent agenda yeah second next were you are you first were you first i'm second ending it okay okay so um we'll open the floor for questions then did you want to go ahead actually i think response by email will be fine so uh i'll just ask mr cantwell to reply to all of us um was that on both resolutions uh head start yeah okay thank you that's 6493 and 6494. and we'll get the responses by email and so the the next um item would be the expenditure contracts and you had a comments or questions so in the um packet we have a eight eight million dollars or maybe not quite that many but in totality all the summer contracts for the rp and i was i was trying to make sure i understood um how the where the money flows are coming from and how they interact so um i guess i'll ask these to the superintendent and you can um answer or have staff answer but um so it's my understanding the contracts that are in the agenda tonight um and there's a number of them a lot of them millions of dollars of them but they're primarily focused on enrichment they look like great opportunities for our students um but primarily enrichments and there's um 7.8 million and it's it's my understanding that's coming from esser and then the my second question because i actually thought that was going to be this the um the academic programming so there's a second tranche of um funding that is coming out of the that is coming from the grants from the that is another eight million dollars that will be the academic programming is that is that right and will that then will that come to those grants they would come to the board for approval because they're we're receiving the grants so we already accepted the grants and it won't come back sorry that was right so question sure we can certainly talk about and we mentioned in our last budget work session how these new summer programming monies are helping to support activities that were already under development so um so what we have dr proctor or i don't know if dana narenberger is here to talk about the academic uh component of it uh and there is extended learning in addition to the enrichment opportunities with our culturally specific organizations but we had a pretty rigorous and comprehensive uh new formal rfp process which danny can certainly describe how it's intended to to complement uh you know the more the more academically uh focused uh we do have a wonderful range of as you saw uh activities that will be made available to families but uh maybe between our two senior staff here they can yeah just like totality at 16 million because i was thinking it was just eight but it turns out it's eight and eight for a pretty amazing summer so that is that is correct is there a specific could you ask there is so i understand that because we have all of the contracts that are in the um in the consent agenda that are really the enrichment the programming i mean it's amazing for all levels like whatever kids passions are i think we've got something that matches that so my my question was on the academic or the unfinished learning piece of things is that um where will we see that or where's where does that program reside and how is it going to be rolled out i kind of have a good sense of reading all the contracts how the enrichment which is um so for the academic programs we are um scheduling uh the four week long summer in summer academic academy um and we are hiring teachers and we are
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building programming to support students with unfinished learning in the areas of math and ela and this will be for students in grades three through eight excuse me one through eight and uh we're we are uh in the process of identifying staff to hire uh we would need to hire a large number of uh teachers over 400 to address the learning needs of our students and we hope to support you know thousands of students as we indicated before in previous board meetings so that is exactly how those funds are going to be used and just to make sure i understand so the contracts for the summer enrichment um will there be a catalog for for students and that families will proactively and then for the academics will it be by invitation invitation it's by we've identified students based on data that would need and benefit most from the summer programming in addition to opening it up for um for a large larger broad body of students so that we could support their learning needs um in terms of the um what dr proctor might also add is that dana has been working since last summer really sort of like building on the presentation that you all received uh it last summer about summer acceleration academy and the all of the feedback that we got from parents about sort of selecting students being data driven that all has been and many of your feedback has really gone into what has been um like seven months of planning from dr proctor's department around and coordination so the um the idea is that we really want to make sure that we're offering as many services to meet the wide range of our student and family needs so uh the you'll likely see presentations like we saw last year but they're deep in planning right now okay and and part of uh you know the the cost factor includes identifying the the instructional materials and and intervention resources that would be used for students for the summer programming as well to kind of bridge their learning my last question was if if they're invited to participate in summer school i can imagine how that would have gone over my house um but if i participate the are the enrichments um structured in a way that it wouldn't be kids like hey if you're invited to go to summer school you're not gonna have an opportunity to participate or are they um designed to be like time and schedule wise that you could yeah i think that the the goal has been to make them as complimentary as possible so within families we know that there are some students who are going to be identified um to to go to summer acceleration academy and then uh the update that you got to the um to the to the memo included the sites because we wanted to show how all of the programming will be happening in these buildings so oftentimes what we anticipate is that we'll have family members so that the whole family can be served um the other thing is that uh dana and the team have done a really good job of working with our sun partners so if you do get called into summer school right there is a really engaging enrichment portion to that that gets carried out through our sun partners and so the the way that it worked last summer is that they really focused on academics and learning in the morning and then in the afternoon they still had that sort of enriching enrichment activity so summer school was um the same place where you could get creative learning and play as well as in the the sort of formal sort of camps that were happening and again the idea is that we want to give students as much options as possible and so just to try to meet their needs and so we'll sort of see that through through i think the program that's really complementary i have a quick follow-up question about um just are the so it are these happening across every or all of our buildings or in specific buildings we've identified 25 schools of which across the uh city that we will be offering the programs and then are will students receive transportation if they're if what they need is in another building we will give them the option of it is it is the idea is the reason why we're offering in so many buildings is so that students can attend in in the location nearby thank you director holland i just wanted to make sure to clarify on the unfinished learning since it was the question so a significant portion is of course going to all the robust summer programming but it's also going to evening and saturday scholars uh credit earning opportunities teachers to make sure students are keeping up on diploma requirements so there's also the year round supports that are that are addressing unfinished learning as well that we're using these one-time monies for
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thank you for those uh the great questions uh director hollands thank you i just wanted to make sure we highlighted this program and what we're doing and that's why i pulled it from uh i think it should have been actually a actual resolution that we actually got to talk about in and hear more about these programs um you know when we look at some of these programs like sdi blueprint which i am a huge fan of um as we are looking at giving these monies to these summer programs and this exposure for our kids that don't usually have um i think this is one incredible thing that we're doing right now and this is literally talking about being children focused and children centered this is what we this is what we should be about 99 of the time um and so i just wanted to make sure we highlighted that and if you can tell a little bit about maybe one or two programs that you that warms your heart you know um just so we can kind of get a sense and i was also invited to um go and visit some of these programs for the summer so i will extend that invitation to any and every one of us on the board to go and staff to go with me because i think it would be good i think it's going to be awesome thank you so i will do a very quick overview and um i don't have any favorites but um what is in front of the board right now are only 14 of 51 different summer programs these are the contracts that are over 150 000 these are programs that are serving you know upwards of 60 100 700 students these are our programs that get to scale and so we have everything in that set of 14 contracts now this is just 14 of the 51 from uh traditional sort of child care like through campfire boys and boys and girls club that is sort of moving away from a traditional sort of drop-in center into being more focused on sel activities to really support students social and emotional learning and in talking with their executive director they are really interested in wanting to train up their staff to be really in alignment with some of our academic offerings and wanting to make sure that they have the knowledge that they're really supporting and complementing the district's academic work we also are partnering with as you you'll likely hear this summer we're very concerned about wanting to make sure that we're doing prevention around gun violence and what we know about works and prevention is two things is that we're actually engaging students in positive pro-social activities like mentoring relationship development making sure that their basic needs are supported and also employment and we are really excited to partner with organizations like poic and erco who have been doing that work successfully who are also have really strong employment components but we are also really excited about some of our newer organizations like i am more that is taking a literal a literacy approach to social emotional learning through the summer really working with students who have been impacted by the pandemic and sort of getting really amazing writing and literacy activities to support that as a way that can be really therapeutic and during the summer in a way that's really engaging i'm really excited about some of our traditional partners like sei native american youth and family center but we're also excited about some of our newer programs i talked with director greene recently about during the school year we partner with about 20 different culturally specific organizations and in the summer this is an opportunity to reach out to the community and try to think about new partnerships and partnerships with different types of organizations so an organization like feed the mass that focuses on health and nutrition and the science of cooking in a way that's really culturally relevant and if you want to see students doing knife work and handling fry bread and some of that that makes me nervous uh it's a great way to see just like all of the um the agency and the expertise that they got out of a program like that um that's partnered so these 14 are just a sort of tip of the iceberg we're hoping that upon the board's approval we'll be able to publish the the catalog of summer programming on the enrichment side by this friday there will be a website that we blast to everyone that we want to make sure that folks know that will be available in multiple languages because we do want to make sure that our students and families have access to this free summer programming that our partners in in partnership with us are and with your approval of the funding to support this um really amazing opportunity for families in in the area to be able to have these opportunities so um thank you for highlighting this there's more to come and we again i i hope that this summer along with visiting what the amazing learning that's happening in the summer acceleration academy uh that folks will in the same building kind of pop over to see the
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the cooking and the robotics and the steam and the plays and the sports and the wild diversity there's there's so much there so thanks for the opportunity so if i could just take the moment to thank danny and her team for a whole lot of work to vet and partner with over 50 organizations to to produce this range and since you're asking director hollands i do want to shout out one particular program uh that's our pil summer math program it's being slated to be staffed mainly by uh staff of color we're excited about a lot of our black educators who are really committed to working this program uh in a combination of math instruction and sports at the middle school level uh and we're also employing a lot of our high school students that are going to be helping to provide tutoring and academic support plus the athletics and that's being hosted at mcdaniel and roosevelt so i want to just highlight that particular program as well it was a real hit last summer yeah i visited last summer um because hoops is my my thing and it was amazing um there's a lot of math going on but also um a lot of mentoring by the students um which is one of the things i was just going to say do you want to make a pitch for the what the older youth are doing as part of a lot of the programs it looked like that was a complimentary piece in addition to service to younger students yeah so um one of the things i forgot sir thank you for that i'm off the script so we're really excited last summer we had about a little over a hundred employment opportunities for youth and this summer in partnership with all of our partners they'll be offering um summer jobs for over 522 students which is amazing students will be students will get to be interns camp counselors some of them will be stage managers some of them will be able to really explore um and we think that you know in addition to the positive uh you know opportunity and all the things that happen when you're employed and you have that ability to learn a new skill um great for violence prevention and also you know a lot of research talks about how important this enrichment activity goes into students developing agency in their learning and which you know has a connection to their ability to graduate so we're really excited about about that thanks for the thanks for the prompt thank you um i want to also just recognize um director hollins for when you when this item was first pulled i was like oh boy i wonder did i miss something but the modeling um a culture of appreciation i really appreciate that and just starting us off in on the right foot tonight because we have a long night in front of us so thank you for that modeling that culture of appreciation and inquiry appreciative inquiry i see you and i'm also really excited as someone that spent um a couple summers actually right down the street from harriet tubman uh with my siblings and my grandparents owned a home there um it just went on the market and it sold for 40 000 over the asking price um but um just how these enrichment opportunities i remember actually going to tubman i actually had a job at dublin when i was 16 but prior to that i believe the year before i was involved in those enrichment activities and all of my siblings were as well so i just think of you know what we would have been doing in the absence of these planned activities and i'm just really hopeful about um with you about the impacts that these um these dollars will have um we'll now hear from student representative weinberg yeah uh again also appreciation i was a part of the academic side not so much catching up but just advancing my education over the summer the past two summers actually and i just have seen so many other students especially my close friends who have engaged in the enrichment and academic side of things um had an amazing time so thank you and i had one question i think director hollins orbert edwards asked it about transportation um will there be transportation for students oh sorry it's okay that overlooked a lot so i'm sorry i apologize um we were saying that the reason why we offered so many locations is because it affords an opportunity for students to attend at the location that's closest to their home so there won't be transportation then to students okay on the enrichment side there will be some opportunities so as part of some of the budgets that you'll see some of our partners are sort of being creative with bus tickets with sort of getting like a common bus some of our partners through funding through other philanthropic funding were able to buy like a van so our partner coalition of black men has a van now and so they're taking students on field trips and really sort of using that so we've we've really um we're a really strong community because our partners have been so strategic about sort of meeting those different needs um a big shout out to whitney
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because in addition to providing food for the summer uh acceleration academy at the same sites we're offering food our enrichment partners will be able to be able to access that food as well so is there going to be a virtual option for any summer enrichment or academic activities sorry can i go back to your question about transportation but there's more so yes so i also just want to make sure that that the board knows that trimet uh earlier uh announced that they're preparing to launch a new state-funded short-term pilot that will provide up to 30 000 free summer passes for high school age students across our service district so so this is the first summer summer where they're going to the high schools are going to pi so as you know during the school year we have a partnership with trimet so that our high school students have access to these free passes that will continue at least for this summer with the state-funded program which means that you know from our end we will work with trimet to continue to advocate at the state level to that to ensure that we have we secure those funds through the summer so that's an exciting opportunity for you know all of our high school students this summer thank you and i i just have one final comment and that i would love i know we're looking at the contracts that are 150 000 and over and you mentioned the blueprint foundation i'm a huge fan of the blueprint foundation too it's very connected to the work i do at work which by the way your name came up and everybody loves you um anyway i would love to find out who those other contractors are just you know to stay connected in community and hear what's happening in other corners that aren't you know in front of us in in in writing and for anybody that's interested there's a fantastic podcast interview from the numbers fm x-ray fm this show is called the numbers and it's an interview with uh the founder one of the founders of the blueprint foundation um duron coles who's um it's it's a fantastic um view into climate action work for students of color and what he's doing to create a pipeline a workforce for uh 21st century portland thank you very much i just wanted to make one quick comment you kind of glossed over it um danny but you know one of the the best practices around spending for these one-time dollars is to really invest in in people and activities that will have long-term benefit and that will build our capacity moving forward and i think we're really investing in a lot of our partners many of these partners that we see on this list are those that are in our schools all year round and we're really investing in their capacity and they're hungry to hear about you know our literacy training and using our next the next generation science standards in their you know outdoor activities and that's i think a really important and lasting benefit here so as much as we can bring them into the fold in that respect um it's to our benefit thank you sorry my question the virtual opportunities are there any for students over the summer i'm sorry i didn't hear are there virtual opportunities for students over the summer so the programs primarily are designed to be face-to-face programs we are looking at the possibility of making an addition for some virtual options where we find that we are not able to have the students that are most needed to participate in the program so that they can have the option as well but primarily we're aiming for the programs to be face-to-face thank you very much i'm sorry um i think we're now ready to vote um on resolutions we have a motion on the table in a second we're now ready to vote on resolutions 6490-6496 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions the consent agenda's approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative voting yes thank you and um director greene i i you were you were a little bit quiet on this topic so i just want to make sure you didn't have any any comments quickly before we move forward no i just recognized that i talked a lot already and we were all on the same page about how amazing a lot of these programs are i was extremely excited to go down through the list and see not only a lot of the the larger organizations that we're familiar with seeing but to see some of the smaller organizations as well that we all know do great great work with the kids that need it most in the community so i'm extremely excited about this past um and about this getting through because this is a a direct impact on the kids that we're
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looking to serve so thank you for giving me the time to share but i'm trying to be brief because i know we got a lot on the play tonight thank you so much and i also wanted to just call out that we do have um a minority business enterprise um and uh listed in this um list so happy to see that madam chair just it was totally buried in the consent agenda but i just want to recognize the work that the dsc and oscar calvert did around the bylaws it was a lengthy assignment and done very well so i want to just acknowledge our students hard at work and active in the governance of our district thank you and i let's see i think we're ready to move on to student and public comment thank you for that director berm edwards before we begin i'd like to review our guidelines for public comment um first the board thanks you for taking the time to attend the meeting and providing your comments public input informs and improves our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board to actively listen to that end i'd ask each of us to give our full attention to the people in front of us our board office may follow up with board related issues raised during testimony we request that complaints about individual employees please 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 border superintendent we ask that you mail them to public comment all one word at pps.net and please make sure when you begin your comment that you clearly state your name and spell your last name and we'll make note of that 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 um ms powell do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment yes we have both our first person is nema cruz are we uh starting with student yes we're starting ms cruz was miss cruz uh joining us virtually i don't think so i don't see her here we can come back and try her again if anybody sees miss cruz please please let us know and we'll allow her time to speak the next is lauren lachman [Applause] can you please state your name and then spell your last name my name is lauren lockman l-o-c-k-m-a-n [Applause] uh i want to start by just saying uh mr guerrero it's so great to see you i wish we could have spoken sooner at the walkouts but good to see you now um on behalf of students families and community members of harry town middle school i'm here to talk about the suspension of mr two and the crisis that we are in to take away mr chu is to take opportunities away from students mr chu is more than just a teacher he's like family to us we count on him and he believes in us we need teachers that care about us and mr two was just that i've had him for two years now and whenever i'm having a bad day i instantly feel better when students go into his classroom we know that we'll feel safe respected and heard removing mr chu is extremely detrimental to students mental health because we no longer have this critical connection to our teacher for pbs to rip him out of our classroom without a word without any move towards helping us through this trauma is abuse neglect and violence against our education [Applause] mr choose removal is an immature example of pbs putting their petty workplace politics before students education [Music] [Applause] in four out of my seven classes i have subs and my friends have even more out of the entire school on any given day there's an average of 15 subs out of 34 teachers and these in these classes we are not learning anything at all mr true's social studies class where we learn about social justice and civil rights has been replaced with meaningless videos and worksheets you claim to care about our education yeah you take away mr chu and don't even let him leave sub plans i'm worried because when i go to eighth grade and then high school i'm not gonna know anything and i will be way behind do you not care about our future it is also very telling that you took away one of our very few teachers of color to us it looks like pps is continuing systems of white supremacy when we when we demand that you reinstate mr chu
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we are demanding that you consider our most vulnerable and our most verdant do what mr true would do this will benefit us benefit us all we have shown up to the pps administration building six times and have been ignored almost every single time the one time that we were not ignored the employee talked in circles and gave us no real answers we should be treated with the same respect you would give an adult because there is no pps without pbs students [Applause] [Music] our demands are our basic needs as students access to education repair the harm you caused and bring back mr chu i'll close with some quotes from other students that you might have heard if you hadn't shut us out last friday in this building there's a sign right at the entrance that says our kids are worth it how is it if you're not hearing what we're saying to you at all if our opinions aren't being taken into account we're not worth it at all i like six subs like for every class it's like one teacher in every grade level bro it's not funny i had six subs yesterday i need a teacher i can't go to high school playing football doing all that if i have no teacher to teach me if you want us to get our education we need the actual educators here we want our education if we don't get our education with the subs we need actual educators i have a literal language arts teacher in my math class how does that work it's been over three weeks and you haven't told us anything more now you keep telling us that you don't know or that you can't help us or on your on our side but it doesn't really seem like it because you don't seem to be responding to anything we're doing what pbs is doing for our school is nothing and it's not helping us for our education and we can't learn like this we can't end the school year off like this if you think taking away teachers and staff members is going to take away our voice our voice then you are wrong [Applause] oh good okay thank you perfect i want to just uh we're going to be uh playing video testimony and i understand the sound isn't really great so um we the the video has been captioned it's a youtube captioning so bear with us but this is the best we can do technology wise tonight thank you this student is kelsey wong my name is kelsey and i grew up grown up in the lunch area since i was a little baby i've been at lunch when it was a still a k-8 i was the last eighth grader there so i went from kindergarten to eighth grade there and i've heard that you've been wanting to like split it up make that spanish immersion and move everyone that's english to marysville and i've been wanting to say that i don't think that'd be a very good choice considering that lent has a very vast community full of different people and i think that's helped a lot people just growing up in a lot a more impactful environment and be a lot more accepting of the world around us and if you were to split everyone up my little sister that would go there she's loved she like since you've incorporated spanish into the school she's been learning a lot more about it and she's been really happy and interested in it and it's just made me a lot happier to see how in touch she is with the community at school and i felt the same way when i was out there and i'm pretty sure my older sister would that went there as well will also feel the same way and the problems that would probably come up when you move out everyone that wants to go english and to marysville would be transportation my house to blunt is actually a very close distance two blocks and it's easy to walk so i was saying for families that usually have parents that are out and do their jobs earlier than school opens and to have kids be able to be able to walk to school or to have like the usual bus set up that even though it's a bit right now and be able to reach school quite easily and with all the changes happen with the pandemic my little sister went through kindergarten the last part of kindergarten and like the entirety of her first grade in quarantine isn't impacted her a lot and with the changes that it's become only a k-5 it's impacted lots of people it's like showing the community up quite a bit
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and the teachers that go in there i think it's too much of a change for a lot of people especially for the younger kids and thank you thank you i don't know if she's watching but that was amazing our next student is dulce zarita hernandez hello hi my name is luisa um i actually grew up in lance k all the way from kindergarten all the way till i was in eighth grade now i'm a junior in benson and when i heard about you guys wanting to like break down the school or whatever i feel like that school has grown up with that community for so long and so you guys splitting up the school and then splitting up the families and making everybody go like everywhere i feel like this the way that the school is now was able to bring communities and different cultures and all these diverse things together and everybody was able to like you know get to know each other and so you guys wanting to put split up the school and like send everybody down to levinsville i feel like that's very um that's going to impact a lot of families for example like the transportation to just get there the way the teachers grew up in that school the kids grew up in the school the families grew up in that school and so i feel like it's something that you really just have to consider not just for yourselves and what you guys want to do but for the kids for the next generations that are coming for the family that are coming and i mean like i feel like it's just i feel like it's not the best thing to do for the community itself and a lot of people are gonna lose more from it than they are gonna benefit from it so i feel like it's something that you guys really need to take into consideration for the kids that are growing up you know and um yeah i think that's why i have to pray just say your name again um and my name is and my sister also went to lynch so now she's in kellogg middle school since you guys like broke it down or whatever but yeah all good um roseanne what was her last name just so i can document zarita hernandez sarita hernandez okay thank you next we have a group of lent students who have submitted a combined testimony the lent leopards hi my name is jessica and i'm in fourth grade and i'm part of the dli slash spanish immersion and um in my opinion it's bad because we're separating our community and a lot of us have siblings who go here so if like um parents have like um children who went to high school middle school and elementary school and maybe preschool um then it would be like a really long drive for all of them [Music] and which could lead them to be late or them having to wake up really early and like um them being really tired during school like them being tired will like make them not pay attention because of how tired they are [Music] action i don't want that school to be spanish immersion only because i want my baby brother to learn his home language and english more than expansion immersion and then after that you can learn spanish the reason why uh lance shouldn't separate all american and hispanic everything up because some people i don't know some moms and dads could be struggling and don't know another school to put them at and that's why i think that everything right [Music] is [Music]
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and hi i'm rudy duncan i'm a fifth grader uh in deal in the doi program and um me and jessica here are gonna make a video so what is going on uh so there is a proposal called proposal f3 that changes uh some schools into a full dli and then separates the english neighborhood program in the dli uh and then they send the english to a different school and why it's bad well it could set it separates the community and it mostly affects our our school which is lent and bridger's in the bridger school so in my opinion if this proposal comes true it will affect the youth that go to the school on a time consuming level and at the most known level it would separate uh both groups and so if you have friends of eli your and deal life for example you would be separated for at least probably a year and so it also affects uh it affects the students really it's bad because the teachers come here to see the students some of them come from at least one to two hours away from the school they have a connection with the kids so that's why they come here that's why they haven't left thank you leopards um we all decided to allow video testimony which i think is really effective and they actually stayed under three minutes each i think they did a really good job sometimes better than the adults um yeah i should just note rudy's mom who sent those in one of the reasons why they couldn't come to testify is transportation so lent is in the furthest southeast corner so um appreciate yeah thank you for that yeah they have farther to travel and thankfully we've got video options next we have chloe wolfson [Applause] okay um hopefully everyone can hear me um can um do you mind um saying your name and then spelling your last name please i'm chloe wilson w-o-f-s-o-n um w-o-o-f-s-o-n so um as a proud student under mr chill shout me out talk about a few things one as it's been said before there have been many steps at the school and makes me angry with their mouths some people to adjust to i think something everyone in this room can agree on is students have to have have gone through a lot this year and at our school we have gone through a lot with mass mandates social distancing the two weeks where we were on hybrid school or online school and now we have to just to many many many subs today i had five subs haha hubs in place of five teachers there were only two t-shirts today in my class that were they actually teachers and won't subs so it brings me to my next point when you when pbs decided to spin message ii it didn't feel like you did for the students it felt like it did for you it felt like you saw mr cheers of threat and you sprinted him to do it for you the students have woke the students to get to my next point the students at the school have worked very hard to get answers so far we've gotten many protests one last friday on friday students begged for her people who are part of the district to come out and listen to them yet no one came out people in the district being acted like scared and while the students begging francis acted like brave adults they worked very hard for answers and yet we still haven't gone the full answer
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students really need a full answer and i'm scared that i won't be prepared for high school since i have three three he long term tips in my classes his and i know there are a few steps at the school who are doing a good job but a lot of them aren't doing a good job and i don't think i'm gonna be prepared for high school because there are so many subs and i'm really upset about that i'm really upset that you never asked the opinion when you took mr true away there was he really makes the school feel like much safer his classroom quite a safe space for us and he provided food for us because i'll be honest scrunch food is terrible and for students who didn't like it he provided cup of noodles jojo's um and people and i did see a sign i'm not sure if it's at this schooling as well i'll finish in just a moment but her husband mentioned that he does bring pump on noodles thank you thank you [Applause] next we have chris walters hello mr welters good evening my name is chris walters w-a-l-t-e-r-s i am the nutrition services lead or as i like to call myself the head chef at mcdaniel high school um it is a lovely lovely high school um beautiful building and well worth the 200 million dollars spent on it um which brings me to the next point there aren't enough custodians to take care of this high school um the custodians we have work incredibly hard but they're constantly in crisis mode because there aren't enough of them and as a taxpayer as well i have to wonder why should i vote yes on the next school bond if you're not even going to invest in the custodians to take care of the buildings you already have [Applause] another thing with mcdaniel every morning i get an email because i'm on the staff email list a unfilled sub email because there aren't enough teachers there aren't enough subs and there's always at least one position open every day usually more than that where they're begging teachers to give up their planning period to cover for other teachers because you all don't have enough teachers and i kind of gotta wonder why this this is happening i mean you've got all these people with fancy suits who are telling you we need to cut teachers and i'm guessing these people with fancy suits are telling you that the custodial problem will work itself out at some point and they may be telling you that it's okay that nutrition services workers are paid poverty level wages and i mean it's budget time i'm guessing the folks in the fancy suits aren't asking to cut their pay but everybody else seems to be on the uh downside of the cuts and i think it's time that you all invest in people invest in the people who teach the kids invest in the people who feed the kids invest in the people who keep the schools clean and safe and healthy for the kids thank you thank you greg myers all right you guys couldn't pick somebody else that's a tough act to follow i can't tell you right now uh good evening my name is greg myers m-e-y-e-r-s and i am a head custodian for the portland public schools i've been head custodian for 16 years i'm here tonight to talk to you about the ongoing staffing crisis that we are having in our custodial and nutrition service department there are several factors contributing to the crisis but the overriding issue is the substandard wages that the custodial nutrition service departments have been experienced for many years now this
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isn't a this isn't a thing that just popped up with the pandemic this i've been here 16 years it's been a fight every contract to get three percent uh i'd like to present a couple of examples to you how non-living wages are directly affecting our ability to hire custodians and to properly staff the schools with our existing custodians we started actively recruiting custodians at the start of the pandemic once we knew that we were going to need to bolster our staffs to meet all of the sanitation regulations by the state at that time we had anywhere from 10 to 15 applicants each week three weeks ago we had three applicants scheduled to be interviewed none of them showed up in addition to the numbers of people applying for custodial positions dwindling the quality level of the applicants has also diminished we need to have the ability to attract quality people who want to make this job a career it's a career for me i'm not leaving i'm staying as the job market has gotten more competitive over the last year it has become obvious that our attempt to keep up with the private sector is still lagging behind these people are going to take jobs that are paying more than what we're offering in the private sector and believe me somebody would much rather get paid twenty dollars an hour to flip burgers then get paid 16.70 to clean up toilets vomit i mean that's our job that's what we do we have no problem with it but we you've got to compensate us for this another example of how our wages have affected the existing custodial staff an offer was given to the custodians who work on the east side of town to transfer to west side schools which the west side schools are always desperately short on staff i believe maybe one or two people actually transferred over there the simple reason that more custodians did not transfer is because the majority of our staff live and work on the slightly more affordable east side of town and with no compensation you would in effect be giving yourself a pay cut due to the cost of having to drive the extra miles if you're not being paid a wage that you can live on why would you volunteer to take a pay cut anybody want to answer feel free i'm not i'm not taking a pay cut i'm fighting to get every penny i can another example oh okay well i will i won't give you another example i will say though please amend the budget to fund competitive wages so we can hire enough staff to ensure safe and healthy schools for our students thank you for your time thank you very much i also um i'm sorry i didn't get your last name i didn't get your last name but if you'd like to submit uh your comments in writing we will we will take that to consideration i i have a question i have a question i have a question no no come on i got you because you're talking about a living wage what would that living wage look like for you guys well that's interesting you asked that because uh we did have a conversation with one of our board members uh that gave us some actual numbers that were provided by the city of portland the the wage this was from i believe two years ago now to live in the city of portland it was basically you had to make twenty dollars an hour that's just bare minimum and we are currently starting at sixteen seventy an hour and the reason for that is is because over the last 15 years our wages have been kept at a minimum including us having our wages frozen for three years so every year that we have lagged behind at three percent three percent we keep falling further behind and now with the inflation rate climbing we're going to just keep sliding down the hill so 20 dollars is just to keep a roof on your head and feed your kids and that's what we're here to do thank you we appreciate you next is beyond you [Applause] i wanted to apologize for my impact if comparing the three-fifths compromise the eod policy offended any board members the way we counter students for the budget and the three-fifths compromise are not on the same scale i want to recognize any potential harm created from that comparison
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beyond you why you speaking on eld policy in hopes the board will amend its inequity from our budget it is true that all pps students are counted at least 1.0 which largely goes to funding classroom teachers and building wide supports however eod teachers are funded by a separate body of federal and state money the majority of which is eod state dollars that state allocation is four thousand three hundred dollars per student if we multiply that by our 3737 students the state budget for eld should be around 16 million dollars but the budget reports around 12 so where is that 4 million dollars when i say eld students are being counted as less than one for their eld educators it's because we determine how many eld educators are available in this district by an annual alpha test we give each year we then use that eld money to staff our eld educators after the test we used to count all students as one in the new policy if a student scores higher than an emerging score they can be counted as less than one in staffing eld educators for them eighty-five percent of our pps students score higher than an emerging score counting students who need support as less than other students based on an annual standardized test is the racist policy i'm trying to point out we have not received full elpa test scores in almost three years this model's impacts will likely be felt when the district readjusts for test scores in future days to come last week this district reported that eld staffing increased by 10 but the budget shows it only went up by 1.3 teachers and 2.3 educational assistants the district stopped counting kinder dli students for eld staff in 2019 the recounting of those students is being used to praise this model when it has nothing to do with the actual weighted formula itself we would see an increase from our 16 dli elementary schools and their kinder students if they were counted with the old model or the new one my hope is that this board understands that if we give more to a group of 500 emerging students at the expense of giving 3 000 potentially less that it cannot be called equity we want to counter newcomers as more than one and increase eod services for them we just don't want that to come at the expense of providing less educators for the majority of our eod students what district leadership shared with you last week is nowhere close to the conversations they had in private with educator groups so our frustration is coming from the lack of transparent communication with this district under this board's management how do we trust the system when educators are told one thing and the board has told another thank you thank you isabel johnson hi my name is isabelle johnson sorry once again it's a little nervous here um this is some tough acts to follow so i'm gonna do my best um i think i feel i'm at the risk of sounding like a broken record but i just feel that we can do better for the students and the teachers i am the parent of a glencoe elementary student and i'm also on the pta board and i have i met working on a joint letter from other ptas and i've contacted other schools and there is not one school i've contacted that's excited about the budget understandably so but every school is being affected even schools that aren't experiencing large cuts it's all of this it's very destabilizing and so i've gone through and i've talked with different schools and to back i had i had the opportunity a couple weeks ago to sit in on a listening session with rob nose our oregon state representative and one of our educators at glencoe also teaches that groud had invited some other educators and he kind of wanted to find out you know what was going on in schools and she said this is the hardest year of any educator's tenure and he was really surprised he actually thought that the pandemic would have been the harder year and she said no she said i'm in two schools every week and every week there is an educator crying in the hallways and i just again feel that we really need to support teachers and what i heard the student from tubman saying
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is they have subs every day and they're not being supported so but why do we have so many subs i don't feel it can just be because teachers are out sick teachers are burning out and the students are the ones that are then suffering and it just feels like we need to support all everybody we need to support the students and the teachers because at the core level if we don't have students and we don't have teachers we don't have a school like their i understand you know we have the district and we need the board and all of that but we wouldn't need them if there were no students and there were no teachers so and also i don't want to leave them out the custodians and the nutritional services people who are working so hard at all of the schools and i just i don't want to say that it has to be an e is it only smaller class sizes or do we just do the targeted interventions but can we have it all i spoke to my friend at woodmere and she works with an ea who's been in the district for 40 years and she said back in the day we used to have an ea in every single class and i just wish and hope that we can get to that point again to where we're supporting fully supporting all of the students and all of the teachers thank you thank you grace groom hello grace groom here thank you for hearing me tonight i had hoped to speak with you during the work session so i feel kind of badly taking up a slot here during the board meeting but you ran out of time you had a long night ahead of you and unfortunately during teacher appreciation week you couldn't hear from a teacher for two minutes that was kind of a bummer but i'm here tonight and i would like to share with you um uh first of all elevating my own students voices some letters from my students and what they're thinking about and caring about these days we were studying opinion writing so they took their pencils and took some action in my opinion the school district should spend money on teachers the reason why is because teachers are fun and exciting one of our teachers is being cut our technology teacher it is fun and exciting to go to technology for example kindergarten through fifth grade won't be able to learn typing the right way also you learn from computers and technology is part of our school third of all we're working on transition words typing helps exercise your fingers in conclusion that's why we should keep technology sincerely romeo dear school district i think you should not close technology the reason i think this is because if you close it down how will kids learn typing they won't learn graphs they won't learn coding this is why i think you should not close down technology that was from everett dear school board i know you're probably going to shut down technology at our school but please don't in my opinion i think you should keep technology at our school i think this because i love technology for example technology closes if it closes down at our school how will we learn typing also if we have also if it closes how will we learn to understand things on the internet then we can't understand important information in life it's also a lot of people's favorite and if you close it down next year they will be devastated this is why i think you should not close down technology from our school from harper and the last letter to share dear school school board do you like technology well i do i think that we should keep technology next year in my opinion technology helps us learn for example typing helps our muscles and our brains too a lot of kids love all capitals tech just because the bigger people are bigger and have more power doesn't mean they get to make the little people suffer please don't cut teaching positions please love presley i heard um director com stan you mentioned earlier how great it was that our summer program is investing in people because that's best practice with spending these one-time funds it's best practice in spending funds period in schools investing in people and i i would ask all of you to bookmark your board book volume 1 page 278 fte by major function and employee type the areas that as far as i can decipher are closest to the students since we are
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all about centering students have grown um actually nutrition services has gone down three percent and this pandemic i'm sorry to interrupt you the buzzer went off um about 20 seconds ago and so i just what we might would ask you to wrap up your comments please we have a long meeting ahead of us and we um i really appreciate you sharing um your students and also for the invitation to visit your classroom which was the highlight of that week several weeks ago thank you so bookmark page 278 and you will see if you do the percentages that all of the categories that as far as i can tell are closest to students and serving students custodians teachers special education uh nutrition staff they have either gone down in spending from pre-pandemic to now or only increased minimally according to your numbers um at most seven percent whereas uh the things that are furthest away from students have increased close to 30 percent such as support services um in central office um support services community services activities it actually says this activities that are not directly related to educating students has gone up 35 percent invest in people and best in your students thank you miss groom [Applause] and last is natalie spears natalie spears okay um if natalie spears is not in the house is miss cruz in the house and if not we'll com we'll conclude i did learn that she had cancelled okay can we get one more comment from the waiting list who's the first one on the waiting list jamie ackerman harvey yes jamie ackerman harvey i don't know if she has a link though jennifer stackhouse lucia mello ingrid fish stephen siegel [Applause] thank you you'll be our final commenter uh mr siegel hi i'm steven siegel s-i-e-g-e-l i am a parent of two students who have gone through portland public including a freshman currently at mcdaniel high school i'm also a special education teacher at a neighboring school district and a proud member of my union and a union leader i'm here today in solidarity supporting mr brian chu and the students and community of harriet tubman middle school i truly believe that an injury to one is an injury to all and i'm modeling a culture of appreciation for the harriet tubman community i'm here to talk with you about two things i care deeply about academic freedom and restorative justice firstly academic freedom is crucial for good teachers to be able to move beyond the constraints of a limited curriculum and engage students authentically in real world problem solving for those of you who have not yet read it or have forgotten what the contract for pat educators says it includes the following in article 10.1.1 professional educators may introduce controversial materials provided such presentations discussions and materials are appropriate and relevant to course content in grade level subject to accepted standards of professional responsibility that is exactly what mr two did with his students informing them of the plan to expand the freeway and close their school building and helping them to find ways to express their feelings and concerns about that prospect perhaps if you had been genuinely engaging the students and parents of harriet tubman middle school in the decision-making process the response would have been different but when i hear that you lock the doors to this building when the students walk out and
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show up here i'm concerned that demonstrates how interested you really are in their feelings and concerns pps portland public schools has a long history of ignoring students and community here's an opportunity to do better secondly the data clearly shows there is no more effective way to address harm to others than through restorative justice mr chu has allegedly caused harm he has also been harmed rather than taking the familiar route of punitive action turn instead to restorative practices i thought this was a district seeking to move away from exclusionary policies and toward embracing robust restorative practices now it's time to put your money where your mouth is and do it restorative justice works please wrap up this investigation in a timely manner facilitate a restorative process for all those harmed and allow the students of harriet tubman middle school to get their teacher back before the end of this school year thank you thank you thank you all for your comments um and your concerns uh feel free to follow up with our board manager uh should you have something specifically you'd like to follow up with and we'll uh we're gonna move forward thank you for showing up and thank you for your testimony tonight can we take just a two minute pause just a little a little breather stretch break so good evening chair de pass vice chair scott student rep weinberg members of the board and superintendent guerrero yeah it's good to see you and first of all this is off script but um i want to say and i know our sci friends i think have mostly gone home but i want to make sure my my 16 year old is going to be working this summer for the city which is wonderful and a lot of our youth are going to be working for pps my my 16 year old will be making 15 an hour which is a fair wage for a 15 year old i really hope that our nutrition workers are making more than our student workers this summer thank you um and then back to my scripted and that's you know for a 15 year old or 16 with a job um is like that's amazing that's i'm going to go buy my own clothes it's a thrill to her and i'm glad she's doing it and that's good for everybody in the house professional school workers yeah yeah thank you thank you um so first of all uh thank you for engaging in the work of overseeing our district and your commitment to making sure that next year is a better year for our students it has to be the work of setting the budget creates the parameters in which our district can endeavor to meet the needs of each one of our students i want to thank you for listening today as i speak on behalf of all 4 000 of our professional educators who i have the privilege to represent and for listening to all the community members who have written and testified about how this budget these numbers and spreadsheets impact our students in our schools and classrooms every day bridging that difference making sure that our high level plans are in service to our daily reality that is our task so i want to start with a little history of where we've been this year with the budget and staffing about two months ago pps informed labor leaders of a plan to cut 18 million dollars from our classrooms and the rationale was a belief that we would lose eight percent of our state funding due to a loss in enrollment that was in february since then the financial picture has gotten much rosier we are not losing funding in fact you announced last month 118 million dollars in new spending much of this from additional one-time sources however a majority of those 120 teaching positions that were cut in february when pps thought that we had an 18 million dollar shortfall remain and we are and are currently written into the draft budget so i'm here again today because we still have the opportunity to make sure that next year is a better year for our students the question before us is how to best use our funding to accomplish that goal the budget is huge and complicated i have it here and all my dog marks i appreciate all that work went into it
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i've really enjoyed it um but i want to bring this back to what is simple our students needs are greater than ever our educators are more overworked and more demoralized than ever and we have a stable general fund for next year in a windfall and one-time funding it is your charge in passing a budget to direct these resources where they'll make the biggest difference to our students and that is in the classroom and while the budget is complicated there are simple answers to some of the questions that keep coming up and i want to get some of these facts on the record excuse me and we got slides thanks for helping yes okay so first of all and this one came up even last week did pps cut teaching positions so i want this to be really clear yes this is from last week's materials from may 4th pps has cut 54 elementary school classroom positions 5 k5 classroom teacher positions and 24 middle school school classroom teacher positions in addition we learned through an information request that special education staff is being reduced by 26 licensed student-facing positions and about six fte prepare educators so yes we are cutting teacher positions here's what these cuts look like in many schools it means combining what had been three sections of a grade into two sections so for example if there are sixty fourth graders this year in three classes of 20 pretty nice number next year they'll be in two classes of 30 each that's what that's one cut right um in some schools it means combining two grade levels into one classroom fourth and fifth grade together with the teacher splitting their time trying to do both for students staffing cuts mean that each student gets less attention and support every day of the school year so the next question is do we have to cut teachers so our general fund is stable funding from the state is slightly up per student for next year and it is slightly up overall plus unlike any other district in our community we have the teacher levy which maintains 900 teacher positions that this fund is based on property tax and won't decline even if enrollment does that's a third of our teachers and the student success act was passed to reduce class size and support student mental health and behavior needs these funds are stable so funding is not the reason to cut teachers we have the funding the rationale i've heard recently for cutting teachers is because of the pps staffing guide so the pps staffing guide is is behind you from the budget materials when we entered the staffing process this spring pps used the staffing guide from before the pandemic to determine where we had too many teachers and then those positions were cut so where did this guide come from and does it represent what students need it's important to know that our scot our staffing guide did not come from the state it is not based on best practices if it were we'd probably be using the quality education model it is not an agreement between pat and pps actually we do have an agreement about class size from pps when superintendent guerrero first came on and and director brim edwards was there as well one of the first acts of collaboration was to agree on class size thresholds the idea was that these numbers weren't hard caps but they weren't lofty or aspirational either we agreed that class size should be below these numbers whenever possible and that this was an achievable goal but that's not the guide that pps used in deciding to cut teachers back to the pps staffing guide it's simply a tool created by people within pps to distribute teachers across all of our schools given the constraints of a budget at a certain time the chart the numbers in the chart were created and are easy to change and in fact it's been changed this year all the numbers in bold are bolded because they were adjusted down during this staffing cycle using these pre-pandemic ratios and enrollment projections for next year pps determined how many teachers each school should have and the rest were unassigned so this is that moment where i'm going to ask you to think about your role bridging the difference between spreadsheets and high-level thinking in the reality on the ground in our schools and the question is are our schools overstaffed this year according to this staffing ratio guy the answer is yes and that's the reason for the 120 teacher cuts which is now down
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to 88 thank you and the 26 special education cuts that are now written into this draft budget but according to the lived experience on the ground our schools are desperately in need of more adults in the building so this weekend i asked the people who know best the teachers the educators at our csi tsi and title 1 schools whether their schools have sufficient staff to meet the needs of their students i received 37 responses from the building reps at 29 of our csi tsi and title 1 schools and the first question i asked them was if their school has the resources it needs this year to meet the needs of their students 75 percent uh disagreed or strongly disagreed that their schools have the resources that they need this year to meet the needs of students yet seventy percent of their schools said they're losing staff and in fact only five of those csi tsi or title one schools reported that their schools are gaining staff i'm looking at next year only one of our csi tsi or title 1 schools reported agreeing that their school has been given enough staff to meet student needs that's the next one so the idea that our schools are overstaffed this year does not ring true to the people in those schools i want to take a closer look at our k5 schools so again i applaud you on making the making 24 the maximum class size for our csi kindergartens this is a great first step and along with having eas in each class would make sure that our youngest learners in csi schools get a level of attention similar to what is mandated for students one year earlier in preschool but our tsi and title one school still have kindergarten classes as large as 28 our csi schools still have fourth and fifth grade classes with as many as 32 kids this includes saban a tsi school where kindergartners and first graders will be in classes of 29 and 4th graders will be packed into classes of 31. this includes chief joseph a tsi school where kindergartners will be in classes of 27 and third graders in classes of 28. and remember if all goes well those classes will be even larger because we want our community to come back to our public schools not to leave and our class size projections are based on the assumption that more families will leave pps staff has already improved our elementary school class sizes since those projections were first shared in february thank you it's noticed it makes a big difference with a little more investment we can ensure a better year for more students including those at chief joseph and sabin as well as grout and glenn coe and louis and bridal mile who all currently have classes staffed to have near or above 30 students now i want to talk about middle school i'm going to take a drink water for this as you know it has been a uniquely difficult year for our middle schools and you've heard about it tonight and you've been hearing about it all year several of our middle schools are in full on crisis as has been reported throughout the year our middle schools are struggling to keep our students safe let alone learning yet according to the class size document from may 4th you are cutting 24 middle school teacher positions according to the budget draft and i don't know how to understand what the difference is here you're cutting 38 licensed positions from middle school that's on page 134 of the printed edition we have eight middle schools that are identified as tsi or title one you probably won't be surprised to hear that reps from every single one of these schools disagreed or strongly disagreed that their school has enough staff and resources this year to give students the academic social emotional and behavioral support that they need yet six of the out of eight of those tsi and title one middle schools are losing staff under the current budget george tubman beaumont kellogg mount tabor and lane are all losing staff every one of these schools will have class sizes in the 30s in their neighborhood programs
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losing staff from what we have now to next year there'll be fewer adults in those schools educators at these schools are pleading for more staff without me making any suggestions the asks from these eight schools were nearly identical educators asked for lower class sizes and full-time building-based restorative justice coordinators additional counselors and wraparound supports fully resourced special education teams and more support with behavior including student management specialists and behavior interventional specialists of course you have all said that if we need to make cuts the classroom is the last place we should look so if you believe it is necessary to cut from classrooms to cut from our middle schools and from special education i am sure you expect to see cuts from the central office as well [Applause] and so the question is has pps made cuts from central office um when some of you asked this question last month um the answer was quickly given yes we have um and then you asked for the details thank you for asking for the details this is a good example of why the details matter the deeper dive you requested reveals that the majority of the 6.7 million dollars reported as savings from central office for this year was simply unfilled positions the majority of which are positioned in our schools that were never filled this year for next year the majority of the 7.3 million dollars in central office savings shockingly is a reduction in 19 special education positions and 13 custodial positions from our schools this is from a document shared last last week in answer to board questions so no it does not appear that pps has looked for cuts outside of our classrooms and no no reasonable person would consider cutting special education professionals and not hiring custodians to keep our classrooms clean constitute a cut from the central office on the contrary pps has grown its central office staff substantially over the last five years and the budget proposal adds central office staff growth again the number of central office academic administrators has grown from 34 to 57 over the past five years and that's from information from an information request and there are currently at least 155 central office employees making over a hundred and ten thousand dollars a year so i want to be clear that's not building administrators that is central office employees who work here in this building an analysis of the budget from 200 2017 to now shows a 44 increase in the amount we are spending from the general fund to support the central office while only a 23 increase in what we are spending on student-facing staff while a strong functional central office is certainly important the clear trend of shifting resources out of classrooms and into the central office is not student focused we can do better hello um for the record my name is angela bonilla i'm the president-elect of p-a-t um i started my career here at pps as an instruction an educational assistant at wrigler a csi school i was part of the first group of bilingual and bicultural dli residents and then returned to wrigler to teach fourth grade spanish immersion i was the first black teacher most of my students had had their entire academic career i later taught at cesar chavez k-8 as a sixth grade self-contained teacher then fourth grade spanish immersion again at scott elementary just in time for the start of the pandemic i'm currently an instructional coach and i support instructional leadersh the instructional leadership team as well as co-facilitate our student intervention team i live breathe and love our title 1 tsi and csi schools it's all i've ever known as an educator over the past few months i've seen multiple families students educators and workers who are on the ground every day at our title csi and tsi schools come to speak to this body i have seen them voice the immense need of our students during their testimony on the impacts of this budget i've heard about mental health needs the fights and trauma exposure responses in our middle schools and i've seen several on this board imply that only our most privileged families are fighting this budget and this push for equity that narrative must end here many of our community have gotten off of work have found babysitters have pushed back the unpaid planning they do every evening to share their concerns with you we come here because we are fighting to
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have great public schools for all students regardless of ability zip code race or home language we come here and speak our truth to your power because we live breathe and love our title one tsi and csi schools so i know you all ran to be on this board because you want to help kids in our schools you ran to reverse the shameful racist legacy pps pbs has when it comes to serving our black brown and indigenous kids we are all leaders because we want to be in a position to uplift all students especially those who have been pushed to the margins but that change can only come from leveraging the power given to us by our constituents into action we need to bring that high level assessment down to the ground level reality so now that you have elizabeth slides and data before you i want us i want to bring us to the possible solutions i firmly believe that we can and must do better because i know we share the goal of better supporting our students at csi tsi and title 1 schools and i know we can take the next step with our budget amending what you have been presented to put our resources where they will make the biggest difference every day for our students and that's in our schools and in our classrooms so here's what our students need we need you to cost out and prioritize restoring classroom educators to our title tsi and csi elementary schools elementary is really close to having a good ratio a few more fte could be distributed and that would make sure that no class is over 28 in a csi tsi or title 1 school title 1 schools like sabin should not have 29 student kindergarten classes so let's remedy that we need to cost out and prioritize a serious investment in our middle schools i heard director greene asked months ago what it would cost to have small class sizes across the district i have not yet seen that assessment and i go through that board book religiously so what would it cost to ensure that no students in our t in our title csi and tsi middle schools have classes of more than 30 students a serious investment in our middle schools includes school-based wrap-around support these schools all need a counselor social worker and restorative justice coordinator in the building having one or two folks at besc who are deployed when there are crises is reactive instead of preventative we need to restore cuts to special education we need educators on the ground in the schools building relationships with students and already there to help before we hit a point of crisis sonia renee taylor states we will not go back to normal normal never was our pre-corona existence was never normal other than we normalized greed inequity exhaustion depletion extraction disconnection confusion rage hoarding hate and lack we should not long to return my friends we are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment one that fits all of humanity and nature we need the district to join us in stitching this new garment please amend the budget to divert resources from the central office to our schools restore special education positions restore classroom educators provide true restorative justice support to our middle schools believe the educators you employ when we tell you what we need to give our kids the schools that they deserve thank you thank you [Applause] thanks sure sure to pass i actually have a couple questions if if you don't mind so thank you for the testimony i really appreciate it and angela i hope you don't mind emailing us the solutions i tried to write them down but it would be great so we can dig in a little bit on what those might look like um i just wanted to ask sort of going back a little bit um because elizabeth you talked about how how pps is not losing funding and we stable general fund and levy and i i think it's true when we look at the revenue side right we do see that that growth you talked about um we also know projections show the expenditure's growing even more than the revenue which is what's resulted in the shortfall and i guess i just want to get from you a sense of do you do you agree with those revenue or those expenditure projections because as we've talked about before i mean it's yeah i mean that's what drives it right so we can the the potential need to make those reductions so yes i believe inflation is real right and prices go up um what i know as well is we were told in february that the reason to cut those teachers was because
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a budget shortfall of 18 million dollars because of a of a belief that the general fund funding from oregon was going to be reduced but to match our drop in enrollment that didn't happen so i i'm not saying that we have all the money in the world i'm saying the cuts that were made in february were not based on a need to make those cuts and i know you and your colleagues have all said that the classroom is the last place that we should be cutting we made those cuts without even seeing what was coming from the state yeah that's actually what my question is about because my understanding from the presentations we've had is that the state school fund actually did decrease and the only reason that we see an increase is due to the transportation reimbursement and so that it's the the transport our transportation costs went up tons and we get a 60 reimbursement from the state and so that's wrapped into that state school fund and without that huge like the transportation costs went up like 60 percent and so without that bump in the state school fund when you're looking at what we actually have to be able to use for teacher salaries we did have a decrease that was my understanding and i may be incorrect i can show you the financials from the state that i shared um a month or so ago does that include that 60 transportation reimbursement in them 70. sorry okay yeah that'd be great if you could share those i think what's what's important to me is i want to make sure that we're starting with the same set of of sort of facts in terms of the dollars because then we can really move on to the solutions and what i'm worried about is is when i because i hear it from you and a lot of your members that write is we don't need to make cuts and and i don't think factually that's true i think when you look at projected expenditures and projected revenues there is a shortfall and we can dig into exactly why and where that's coming from and you know you say inflation it's inflation but it's wages going up i mean it's all it's all those things driving and i've been doing budgets for a long time this is a common it's a common it's very difficult to explain to the public and i get it a lot when i used to be a budget director that they say you used to have a million dollar budget and now it's a 1.5 million dollar budget why are you telling me you have to cut it because their expenses are 1.6 absolutely and i think what's important to remember is that we're not saying there don't need to be any cuts we're saying they shouldn't be cuts that affect student facing building-based positions okay so that's an important distinction because now we can move on to that question of once we agree on what that shortfall is where does it come from and and i think you know going back to noting that you know 80 of our budget is sort of sort of classroom and 20 is is sort of the other things if i'm getting those those statistics right you know again we often hear that you know you know cut admin cut admin absolutely let's look for it i appreciate the information you brought forward today and i think we should you know dig into some of those things but i also know that you know we could probably get rid of you know huge swaths of the central office and we still wouldn't solve the shortfall given given the size of what it is and so i guess i want to be realistic with the public about that as well when eighty percent of our costs are coming from teachers and staff there's going to need to be some reductions there and and and again it is driven by wrong i mean if we didn't lose 4 000 students we would have higher state funding that would be able to make up some of the shortfall actually i don't believe that's true because our state funding was already set so if we have more students the biennium already happened right the state legislature set the funding for two years before and they did not reduce it because students did not come back during the pandemics so actually the enrollment drop is not impacting our our and our funding much because our enrollment is similar our drop is similar to the drop in the state yeah i'll defer to smarter people on that um who can answer the question because because no i actually meant i met elizabeth instead of myself she was smarter than you i'm sorry let me rephrase that i don't know the answer i will defer to smarter people such as you claire hurts other people who know this better oh my apologies for that i got you certainly not yeah i think it's also important to remember that we are not say we specified returning those positions to our title csi and tsi schools so even if there is a divide between what we can cut at central office and and bringing back all 88 of those positions we're pointing out well let's focus on special education let's focus on our middle schools let's focus on our title csi and tsi schools yeah and and then my last question is um you know you talked about the windfall in one time which we do we have a windfall in one time my understanding of the proposed budget we're also spending you know a significant chunk of our of our um reserves about 40 million and i guess my question to you is if if we know projecting out that spending that one time now to say and some of that's going to save teaching positions means that we might lose those teaching positions next year if that enrollment doesn't come back and if the state doesn't you know kick in with a qem model are you okay doing that this year given the learning loss keeping those positions even knowing that could mean actual layoffs next year because that is my understanding of of the trade-off and i guess i would say the trade-off that we're potentially facing and then if we
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were to spend even more that trade-off could get even larger let me go back to what i said before because we need to keep this simple what we're doing right now is not working we cannot continue having our middle schools run the way they are now next year they're not working it's not an option we have to invest in our schools to a point where they are meeting the needs of our students as was said by one of the speakers before if we're not doing that what are we doing if we can't keep educators in schools because they are leaving because the workload is untenable and they're taking leaves and then not coming back we're not running a school district yeah and i guess i would just say if we take ourselves to a fiscal cliff and then drive off of it that also has really significant consequences for our students and our teachers and our families and i appreciate the fiduciary responsibility yeah um and i think we have some options right now yeah thank you for bringing those and you're way smarter than i am so thank you thank you so much for your comments um i think there's more to come and it's a great conversation i would love to see um those solutions that you mentioned um i'd love to see those and would take them you know in under advisement absolutely i'll go ahead and get those sent to you yeah thank you and i just i've got um i can see families waiting that wanna are here to speak and we're running about 90 minutes late so i'm feeling up bad for them i appreciate your comments appreciate your solutions and your insights thank you [Applause] okay sorry for that little side comment there the side conversation we're moving to the student representatives report the student representative who will be graduating in last day of school is 13 school days how many days i knew it was going to be in days he's counting he's counting the days school days there's also weekends there's also weekends and prom which i won't be here and a holiday holiday a prom yes um before i start my public comment or my comment i just wanted to ask if after my comment we could move up the charter pass-through just because i know that's who we have um parents waiting to comment on do i think do we have guiding we actually have two you know both groups are important we have two groups uh with families with children that want to speak and they have to go one one after the other yeah charter pastors just there's stuff in between that and the southeast guiding coalition so if we could move it up as much as possible for those families after scgc and just since a cgc is going to take a while just it will yep yes thank you for that i appreciate it and on to my comments so um director brim edwards already extended her gratitude but i wanted to extend my gratitude as well for the dsc bylaws which was headed by oscar calvert um thank you that was half a year actual work probably two years conversation wise in the making thank you for finally getting it before the board um and i also wanted to just talk about my general thoughts about the budget and some things that i'm hoping to see um maybe altered slightly or just have a conversation about first is the social emotional education and supports for students um we're keeping it the same from last year and just with the recommendation from the american school counselor association the current ratios we have are under what their recommendation was and actually they have several studies which i can share with you all that point that a lower ratio of counselors to students increases gpa increases graduation rates increases attendance increases post-secondary readiness and decreases discipline disciplinary infractions so all of these things seem like something the board has obviously been focusing on for years and i'd like to see some conversation about what it would look like to decrease those ratios i believe in elementary schools it's 400 to one which is astronomically high for some schools um secondly living wages for nutritional workers and custodial staff is probably if we don't increase that it's probably going to warrant a no vote from me on the budget i don't believe we can pass a budget that has our custodial staff or nutritional workers at 30 percent of the median income in por in portland it's just not possible for them to live in portland at all also just as we get into some meteor topics later in this agenda i just wanted to mention to the board that we should really center students and their experiences in this process um especially in the southeast guiding coalition we hear a lot from parents but
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we should really be focusing on the student experience of these proposed changes and unfortunately that is um a little difficult um and i understand the engagement department is very busy but in the entire engagement document i didn't see one mention of any student engagement done and i've been advocating that for probably two years since the southeast guiding coalition started so it's hard for me to really understand the student impact when we're not seeing student engagement in this process thank you thank you i appreciate your candor and i always do appreciate you um i think in in light of where we are um in the evening we would skip overboard committee and conference reports until next time i know everybody's disappointed especially director lowry she really wants to talk about her committee but we have a lot of committee things so we're going to move now to the southeast enrollment and program balancing conversation sorry superintendent guerrero would you please introduce this item yes thank you chair to pass just to recap where we are as you know the phase one of southeast enrollment and program balancing began in fall 2020 and resulted in the conversion of the five k-8 schools a new boundary and program assignments for kellogg middle school which as you know opened this fall subsequently in may the board adopted a phase two charge centering on converting harrison park from a k-8 to a comprehensive middle school and increasing enrollment at lane middle school was was another objective tonight we're going to hear a recommendation from deputy superintendent claire hertz who's joining us remotely but we have other senior staff here this evening who have been deeply involved in this process to develop a plan for enrollment balancing program placement and school boundaries for the southeast the board is scheduled to vote on a final recommendation at the april 24th meeting uh so with that i'm going to turn it over to the team that's may 24th it's been a long day thank you chair thank you it's been a long week and i think it's just tuesday um thank you um people i'm sorry it's been a long day and um good evening chair de pass members of the board and um super tender and guerrero and jackson weinberg student rep thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to present our findings to the board regarding the southeast enrollment and program balancing process for phase two with me tonight team members who have worked on this process i have to my right margaret calvert i also have um judy brennan who is the director of enrollment and transfer and i do have um beth cavanaugh one of our coaches in the process so welcome again tonight we're going to be talking about how our process and how we went about addressing the charge that the board had given to us um next slide please the board charge for phase two was to convert harrison park middle uh harrison park k8 school into a middle school which meant that would have to move the k5 portion of the k8 to a different building we listened to the community they wanted their students to continue to stay in that community in close proximity to their siblings and to their families so they could be within walking distance of their homes we were able to grant that because we were able to um then move the k5 building into the clock building right next to harrison park however that does mean that we're going to have to move the css school into another location the other part of the process was that we increased the enrollment at lane middle school so those are the two things that we looked at um to accommodate for that we um looked at some of our drivers the things that we need to have in place to be able to execute the board's requests so we um also considered the pps reimagined document and strategic plan at our goals for developing and producing graduates that would um send the test of time and also that would be the tenants that have been identified in our um portland public school graduates so what we did was we looked at those
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and based on that we determined that in order to provide very robust programs for our students in middle school we have to at least have nine uh 500 students per middle school the other thing is that we looked at the elementary schools around and in order for us to provide the programs and the supports that our students need at young ages then ideal number would be about 270 students the third thing that we considered was um our streets the major streets that crossed through our neighborhoods we wanted to make sure that our locations weren't such that would cause students to cross these major streets and put them in danger we considered the safe seafoods to schools approach and in doing all of this of course and looking at the programs we also considered looking at our dli programs and our student academic performance in relation to the dli programs the supports our teachers have and the professional development experiences that are intended to create and enhance teacher efficacy so looking at all these drivers we decided that if we were to accomplish these the board charge what we would need to then do is consolidate programs and do some shifts um to increase numbers at um lane to convert harrison park to a middle school and to find a home for the k5 portion of harrison park next slide please in looking at student academic achievement which is really what we're trying to which is really what we're trying to do um we looked at the performance of our students in our single strand programs uh english scholars in our single strand programs do not perform as well as our english scholars in other non-co-located programs so that was a concern the other thing that was a concern also was our ability to provide an immersive experience for our students who are learning um say spanish or um the chinese language and research has shown that the best way to enhance dli opportunities is to make sure that students are situated in areas where they have the best or closest proximity to native speakers so they can embrace the bicultural and the bilingual aspects of the language so i just have a question about the single strand so at the at the bridger meeting there was a statement that said single-strand programs are too unstable to be successful over time particularly in schools with lower socioeconomic status does that mean the district is as a policy a small p okay with single strands and higher in higher income neighborhoods um and if so what's what's the d why was that differentiation made at bridger so single strands are actually not as effective regardless of what the socio-economic status is the question came from somebody in the audience and i think that they specified around bridger just because we happened to be a bridger that night but overall research has shown that we don't have as much success with single-strand programs regardless of the socio-economic status yeah it was on the the pbs slide at the bridger meeting that it said that that so this is just a concern in the the neighborhood the differentiating treatment and whether the treatment's based on socioeconomic status no it is not and if i could just add that the emphasis here is on single strands of the english scholar program the program that is not the dual language portion and the impact on those kids looking at data that came from our research accountability and assessment and seeing the potential impact on those students so it is something that we're looking at across the district not just in southeast and that again the emphasis is on um specifically we're looking at the impact for the neighborhood or english scholar program we'll be talking more about that in a minute i just also do want to add that deputy superintendent um claire hurst is joining us specially she's listening in i don't know that she'll be able to speak though right
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in this process we centered black and native students and now indigenous students as well in doing this one of the things that um the map revealed is that most of them live on the outer edges of the southeast um area as you can see on the map we also provided a table that shows how the numbers fall regarding the schools and harrison park for example in the neighborhood program we do have black or indigenous student count of 190 and which represents 42 percent of the population and then it's on a sliding scale after that so they have the highest number so how do we center their needs how do we create our programs to support them and how do we make sure that they continue to reside in the communities that they're most familiar with while at the same time attaining the academic experiences and opportunities that we have provided for that next slide please so some of the issues that were that we discovered are impacting um our communities of color is that most of them reside in areas where they have fewer students and because they have period students it's harder to create comprehensive schools in those areas without moving students around without moving student bodies around um the other thing that we realize is of course if we do not have the basic or the minimum numbers then it is harder for us to provide programs that are supportive of the academic experiences and the enrichment they need to be able to advance and compete in the years ahead so we looked at the single strand k5 neighborhood programs as well and those limit opportunities by a huge margin for all students regardless of what the social economic status is the difference might be that parents who a little bit more affluent might be able to ex to access a lot of other supports outside of what the school is able to provide but overall it is a challenge to have just a single strand in either the neighborhood side or the dli side the collaboration is really important the opportunity to practice in the target language is really important as well and the immersive experience is important to language learning experiences doctor i had a quick question about this slide sure sorry um this is just a very analytical approach to like the success of a student was there any information on like sense of belonging um sense of community um at these schools in this process absolutely and that's why we moved to the key five for harrison park into the clock building and not out of the neighborhood um it's also another reason that we were looking at um relocating the whole dli school into the lent neighborhood because that's where we have the greatest concentration of our native speakers of the spanish language so yes we did give consideration but the sense of belonging for the lent students the neighborhood students the sense of belonging for the neighborhood students what was the question so i'm just building on jackson's question about the sensible longing because it seemed like what i heard at the lent meeting was their sense of belonging was as part of the lint community so i will let judy speak to that um and the reason is because there was a lot of community engagement around that and if i recall when we you and i had spoken about that i had said that most of what we heard from the community prior to now was very different from what was shared that evening and i went back and i did speak with um the leaders to try to at least glean why we sort of didn't have the same information that we were working from before so yes of course there are some people who have a preference but ultimately when we do center our students we're looking for the academic achievement and experiences of our students around language acquisition and language development and professional supports for our teachers in our buildings would you like that and i'll just add that i i think what what we would hope to do is frame uh the work that's been done over the last year and then um really we're here to listen to your range of questions comments and what else you need and um i i keep looking at the clock behind you and it says 705 and i think but we have plenty of time and yet that's not that's not true so um uh let's see if we can go ahead and get through a few more minutes in the presentation and then we'd love to come back to your questions we'll provide time for for questions wonderful thank you okay did we get this presentation um
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it this this deck um is is emergent it is not um i apologize we this week and we appreciate your patience but this will definitely be available so a lot of data that actually drove this work was obtained from the research accountability and assessment department and that's part of the information that drove the decisions that drove the decisions that were arrived at here so in this lengthy process and it has been just about exactly a year since you approved the resolution for this phase of work our partners along the way an amazing and committed group of parents guardians principals teachers community partners from across the southeast region we we can't imagine trying to engage without uh such a smart committed body of folks um it was probably more than folks bargained for because we really didn't believe that we'd have to complete the entire process virtually but we did uh it was 19 meetings they dug through 15 really intense proposals developed by flow analytics a number of them are here tonight because they're so committed to making sure this process supports kids and their community in schools um you're going to hear from um co-chairs beth kavanagh as well as adriel pearson who's with us virtually but also without voice um and what they'll be sharing with you is a little about their process what deputy superintendent hertz's recommendation um that we're speaking on behalf of tonight is um based on that their final proposal which did have the most votes but did not achieve consensus across that body there were some significant concerns that the scope of the work was not significant enough to address more of the enrollment challenges that exist in southeast including omitting some of the schools that are a little bit further west there are also strong concerns that we did not wind up with a set of middle school assignments that best balances the middle school capacity and that leaves issues undone that's just a very short summary we did offer extra time one of the reasons we're with you now in may instead of earlier when we hoped was to give the committee more time um to see if they could get farther and get better and the effort was thorough honest and they gave out they gave all and um it is disappointing that we didn't come to a full consensus but what i believe is before you is um a report from them that shows where the trade-offs occurred along the way and hopefully um gives you a good opportunity to see if there's any other paths to take um and with that i'd like to turn it over to miss kavanagh for some con dr kavanagh congratulations graduated on sunday hello i'm beth cavanaugh and actually i'll take this off and adriel person my co-co-chair is joining us virtually as judy mentioned she's unable to speak so she and i worked furiously over google docs and text to make sure we had our ducks in a row um so adriel was also a part of the writing team who created the final scgc report that informed deputy superintendent hurtz's recommendation first i just want to clarify our role as scgc co-chairs primarily was creating a line of communication between the scgc membership and district staff so while some scgc members did share feedback with their from their communities with us generally we have not been like myself and adriel have not been in a position to represent the broader community and their feedback so so i'm going to talk to you about the report that a team of volunteers from the segc created to summarize the work of the coalition which includes as shown on the slide behind you an overview of the scgc scope and process a clear explanation of what was included in the proposal that received the most votes a description of the decision points in their relation to each other recommendations for implementation in both the long and short term and also a supplemental document signed by a majority of the community coalition members expressing dissent for the
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decision to limit the scope of scgc's work to just the outer southeast schools adriel and i really want to encourage you to review this 11-page document the writing team worked really hard to keep it brief clear and focused on areas that coalition members thought were essential for board members to understand the section on key decision points includes a table that illustrates the interplay of the elements of the proposal including where the scgc did reach consensus and where there were notable objections to the proposal while this document aligns with deputy superintendent's recommendation in a lot of ways there are there's a different perspective provided here by the scgc membership that we think it's really important for you to as members of the board to be familiar with um and i also want to draw your attention to that two-page supplement that was included as i said it was signed by a majority of the members expressing frustration with the decision to exclude inner southeast schools from the segc process many members felt this was a barrier to successful process both in terms of equity since the inner southeast schools who were not impacted are more affluent overall with fewer students of color and in terms of the math because those are the schools with robust to overcrowded enrollment and because we were not able to shift enrollment east starting from the river outer southeast elementaries are hovering right at or below 270 students meaning this whole rebalancing may need to be revisited sooner rather than later um so we wanted to talk a little bit about the community engagement challenges that we observed we saw barriers to community understanding of what was proposed and this may speak a little bit to what um to that disconnect we're hearing about between the feedback that was collected early on as compared to feedback that's coming in once there's a concrete proposal in front of people and they can see how they're directly impacted there was barriers to understanding of what was proposed and potential impacts there was both too much information to process and also a lack of specific information about impacts to particular communities um and these also tie into concerns reflected by over half of the community scgc members who asked for a second scenario which was eventually developed and extended our timeline for both the segc and community members without the ability to directly compare flushed out scenarios side by side to do a real cost benefit analysis to see the benefits and challenges presented both systemically and for specific communities it was difficult to understand what those trade-offs were in order to provide more constructive feedback and see what are the things that feel doable feel that we can live with and what are the things where we don't they don't feel great necessarily but we understand how they fit into the bigger picture or the things that um that we embrace fully um we heard that language or school specific meetings sometimes occurred at times that made it hard for community members to participate or that they're in within those meetings there weren't necessarily opportunities to ask questions or respond to information it was more an information giving sort of situation in some of those not all the the meetings were structured differently and also limited opportunities for community members to address the board directly with concerns or feedback so our question for you is how will you as board members engage with and hear from community on this proposal now that it is concrete before finalizing your vote how will you ensure that this is done equitably so that you hear from communities who have less support or organization and what you still need from staff to ensure that this happens next i wanted to talk a little about the implement implementation feedback that's provided in the scgc report um deputy superintendent hertz's recommendation was responsive to many of the implementation suggestions that came up in this report but there were a few we wanted to highlight um the recommendation touches on a few key issues the scgc members continued to grapple with and identified as essential areas for support through the transition first there was clear opposition from many lint families about the transition to ldli school the ongoing engagement with this community will be extremely important and was noted in um in superintendent hertz's recommendation also many coalition members remain concerned about enrollment stability at harrison park and thus the long-term ability to provide equitable opportunities when compared to larger middle schools in the region many of the proposed changes require families to travel further or across more difficult routes than they currently do to get to school we've heard from families a lack of faith in the district's ability to ensure safe and reliable transportation especially after struggling through this year's transportation challenges my kids don't ride the bus but i kept on the information i kept on the message mail information just so that i had a sense of how often buses were being canceled to the to hospital where my kids go and it was multiple times a week every week and i'm just thinking to myself i don't know how how kids get to school when if their parents aren't able to get
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them or they don't live close enough to walk so that trust is a real concern this very visceral for parents this year the scgc recommended looking at some targeted boundary changes specifically along cesar chavez boulevard that would not only provide a larger buffer to some of those elementary schools enrolled uh at or below 270 students in the proposal but also creating some safer routes for school for students who currently have to cross that busy road but because these changes would impact schools outside the current scope they were not included in the recommendation that's coming to you from um from claire hertz's recommendation we wanted to wrap up with a reflection on the recommendation itself there were some strengths in that we saw strengths in that there's access created to middle schools and increased opportunities for students in outer southeast some who've been in under-enrolled schools for years and years that it maintains and grows the spanish dli program at kellogg middle school and builds on the robust supports that were implemented when that building was opened it reduces single-stranded neighborhood elementary programs that have been shown not to serve students as well and consolidating the dli programs at the middle school level remaining challenges are the imbalanced middle school enrollment across the region with kellogg over the district's recommended utilization level and significantly lower enrollment at other middle schools the lack of enrol that it locks in enrollment at or below the floor of 270 for several outer southeast elementary schools and that there's increased reliance on district provided transportation in some cases and lack of support for some of the proposed changes from impacted communities however we also see a lot of opportunities in the implementation engaging impacted communities in transition planning is huge facilitating community building among programs that are blending such as creative science and bridger lent in marysville learn from the positive experience staff in kellogg middle school has proven to be from we've heard a lot of really positive feedback from kellogg middle school teachers and students and families and build on that when staffing harrison park and the power of a staff that reflects and represents the student body harrison park is one of our most of our school communities and they need to see teachers that look like them and supports that that support their community um minimizing the impact of future enrollment balancing on those who are moving as a result of this process this was one of our major concerns with leaving inner southeast out of the process is that if that's where our overcrowded schools are how are we going to balance those without then re-impacting again all of these kids that are currently moving around in this process so be cognizant of that transition and those and those shifts and finally um oh sorry not quite finally two bullet points um engage in a transparent process to review the role and impact of k-8 focus option schools in the district we have we're translate we're transitioning to a k5 middle school model and yet we've got various k-8s some of which are still neighborhood schools only some of which have a lottery component some are lottery only how are those intended to and how are they actually functioning in the district and how do they impact our ability to fully robustly enroll our middle schools and then include scgc members in reflecting on ways that we can learn from this process to strengthen the future enrollment balancing work and community engagement that's coming up you have a lot of as was mentioned incredibly dedicated passionate people about this process who had a lot of frustration to be honest and a lot of feedback that feels like it could be useful in having more productive processes in the future thank you thank you good evening thank you sunset working there we go good evening uh chair to pass directors superintendent guerrero student representative weinberg um i'm speaking here this evening as part of the team that has been working with our community and the southeast guiding coalition to bring forth this proposal i also want to share that i'm speaking in part tonight um because chinese clark our director of engagement could not be with us so i'll be sharing some of the steps and the creative um mechanisms she used to work with the community and then also speak to some of the recommendations that we're hearing from chair kavanaugh and that has come through the uh the process as we go so there are a couple pieces um there on there have been a series of uh community engagement that started in the summer of 2021. uh we'll speak uh some to how this has shifted over time and some of the efforts that have uh there have
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certainly been lessons learned and lessons learned about engaging in the misfit pandemic as well the the various details of the community engagement process are available on the pip on the public side of the district website so i just want to make sure you see some of the links here but there there's a significant body of that that is up on the website and then i want to just uh reflect um with student reply student representative weinberg about um where there were places and opportunities for their uh to hear from students and there was student listening sessions that were held in december and then we'll kind of come back to some of those other places but we certainly can elevate and highlight where those opportunities were and uh where they will continue to be as we move through uh next phases so as you will see uh on on this slide there are a number of places um that uh uh our community engagement started in the last summer and um by winter and uh the coalition went back and said and asked that our staff to look specifically at impacted communities at lent and then also to go back and really think about how are we engaging our communities of color our diverse communities also that have you know our language diverse communities as well so in the past a piece that once the draft proposal was completed in uh april um there some surveys went out there were some other mechanisms where uh we went out uh the staff went out and worked with talked with parents teachers um at london and elementary in particular uh there were some open houses there were some pieces where we looked specifically at the impacted schools and and also at bridger we received input from many lunch students with strong advocacy for the remaining for for this for their uh cohort to remain part of the kellogg middle school and to keep lent as it is now with both english scholars and spanish dual language at the site after um as i said earlier that part of what um uh part way through this process there was a request for from the coalition to go back out and to really listen to specific communities and we're hearing that there will probably be a request for a similar um outreach again go ahead yeah some of the highlights and themes that emerged as we went through um some of the work that happened with our black ninjas indigenous families in particular they pointed to some very specific um themes and uh values one of the pieces that came forward was they really voiced that they wanted the district to provide adequately resourced schools that didn't um demand their content what they perceive what they stated was continuous advocacy on their part they want strong interpersonal connections and that they wanted the connections both with the staff in the building to recognize and be connected to their students and the community to be connected to the school and finally they didn't want to have to choose between programs and proximity they wanted to they didn't they didn't want to have to think about what that trade-off was that they wanted the robust programs to be close to where they lived uh i think the other pieces that surfaced um was how the students were being engaged and so that there is this piece around wanting both academic uh passions to be present in in in the robust programming but then also that the students um were being taught in ways that uh were engaging to their their and affirming to theirs to their kids and that they were looking both at um this notion of supports as well as thinking about that as you see that on the bottom some of the what it means especially in middle schools to have robust programming and that was a pretty significant discussion throughout what did it mean to have robust middle school programming you can see and and chair kavanaugh has mentioned that you know this one of the other things that that surfaced is how do we process the vast amount of information that is uh was part of the discussions the pace with which some of the um the the scenarios and the details of in the complexity of it thinking about were those spaces some of the ways that that happened often was with you know principals engaging with families as they were coming into or out
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of buildings at the beginning of the day or the end of the day along with the formal meetings but i think that we will continue to look at how do we present share and work with information so families can make informed decisions and finally just to echo one of the sentiments that uh chair kavanaugh just said was you know we heard loud and clearly and we've heard this loud and clearly from across um communities across the district but in particular for the families here in southeast that they want uh teachers educators folks in the building that reflect the community and reflect their students whether it's by language culture or race and that this is a very high value and that that's something that they we're hearing again and again how can we do and really think about the diversity of the workforce so that students are seeing themselves not only in the materials but in the adults that they're working with in a school so as it was stated up front and we've said it a couple times now one of the big and really critical pieces was around harrison park and this conversion from a k-8 into a middle school experience harrison park is um has the highest black and native student population in the southeast region and it became the central uh sort of pivot point for the decision-making process once there was a that process was um is anchored at harrison park many of the the um the choices and uh changes radiated out from that that spot and so we it is a place that was held really central to the decision making and this particular situation what what uh we heard was we wanted um the harrison park community to be close right so they the the middle school and elementary to be close to each other uh that there was uh interest in uh having the chinese immersion program close to where their uh the j district and where we were seeing um native speakers and then um as a result some of the things that cascaded from there one of the critical pieces was was around the relocation of the of creatus the creative science school and uh to bridger as the recommended new site so once those decisions sort of became the at least the initial anchor points um the the the impacts radiated out kind of across the the city so this is fairly common when we do enrollment balancing is that there'll be a a point where uh there's a um where the all decisions sort of cascade from that that initial framing and this particular situation we really focused on supporting the harrison park community yes and with that every student in southeast will have access to a comprehensive middle school and larger middle schools because the smallest middle school in the region which is lane will grow by virtue of boundary changes altogether there's about 14 schools affected by boundary change in this proposal we are not going to walk you through each and every one of those tonight on our website there is a site where people can type in their address and see whether they are affected by a specific change so we've got lane growing that also means that some of their smaller feeder schools particularly whitman and woodmere are growing as well and getting closer to that minimal 270 number other big elements in the proposal and a place where the committee probably spent more time than they anticipated if you think where we were a year ago probably didn't anticipate spending quite as much time in the realm of trying to find the best fit for immersion but a whole school model for spanish dli is proposed and that it be at lent because of the concentration of native spanish speakers um and then bringing together all of the middle grade strands of spanish immersion at kellogg and all of the middle grade strands of chinese immersion at hofsford just taking another moment on these single strand english scholar programs it is true that in this proposal we would not have single strands anymore and by that i mean what we mean is that for example at lent right now as a k-5 first of all they have almost the smallest neighborhood enrollment of any of the southeast schools the second smallest so it's already a small area as you heard we committed to keeping harrison park students all together and going to clark so that limited the number of other nearby
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schools where we could pull students into lent they operate now with a single strand of english scholars and a single strand of dli at most grade levels there are a couple grade levels where there's two but they're mostly just one each so that's the active configuration now and that is the challenge that we were trying to resolve the resolution converts the whole school to dli but for the older students who are there who wouldn't have the language background to opt in at a higher grade we do need to work on what the best and most successful transition for those students would be i believe that's going to be an important point of of discussion for you so i just wanted to to mention that part now we've identified marysville as a school where children could attend a multi-strand english scholar program and we would provide transportation to that on the bridger side the bridger community also has a single strand of their english scholar program right now but with all of creative science moving to bridger the bridger students will now be a part of a bigger program with the constructivist theme they'll have guaranteed access to that we also know that bridger families were really excited to have the opportunity to go to a comprehensive middle school they had been waiting a long time for that so they will have guaranteed access to harrison park middle school with transportation as well this graphic um is not something that we're going to walk through in detail but it um it's an illustration of all the different um progression paths in southeast and how they would be affected by these changes and we can come back to it if it's helpful i have a question about lewis because i think that part of lewis is going to lane under f3 correct there's a boundary change and the lewis boundary will shift part of the lewis boundary is shifting to whitman and the students from whitman will also become part of lane so no students who are like a lewis fifth grader after the boundary change will not go to lane they'll go to sellwood because i was looking at the maps and that's what i was confused about because lane is not louis is not on this slide under lane and that's where my confusion arose yeah louis the part of louis that will that's not being affected by boundary change is still assigned to sellwood the boundary change part will become whitman and then they'll that section of whitman will go to lane and we still do have kids from whitman then going to cleveland correct correct okay yeah there's no high school changes in any of these purples i'm noting though that mount tabor has 456 which is below the 500. yes so uh we uh that that's notable that um does that mean they're gonna have a staffing reduction i mean uh so we do note that we have middle schools that are adjacent to northeast schools that are in the k-8 status right now so depending on the timing of when the next round of k-8 conversions happening we have available capacity at middle schools roseway heights mount tabor and even hostford adjacent to k-8 schools that could then grow in enrollment if there are future conversions the question is the timing we this will not begin implementation until 2023 we don't expect to have another round of northeast decisions before then so um we'll have some implementation discussions but just a couple more slides i know you're anxious to share your input answer your question i mean one of the things is you didn't give us the presentation so it's it's hard for us to like remember what you've showed us if we don't ask when it's up so i'm just that's that's why we're asking questions because we don't have the presentation but this is all uh it's all in our packet this is we want to highlight that this uh change was there something in the last slide that needed clarification because if so i was wondering if we could just go back one so we could see the total number of middle school students at the lane harrison park kellogg oxford and you talked about mount tabor yeah this will be a theme i talked about a little bit later about the just stability because i'm looking at matt you've got if our idea was 500 we
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have schools less than that and so does that mean that what we found this year is that if you your enrollment drops that means the staff will be taken away from your school so i'm just wondering what the implications for those schools that are less less than the ideal um what the implications are or is there going to be like a hold harmless for schools so that because who knows i mean i haven't heard that there's going to be another i had what i'd heard is the next round was going to be high school boundaries well not another it's not enough i know and i'm i'm but i'm just saying that sort of contemplates like sometimes at some point in the future you're going to have that so like what point in time is that because i haven't heard that there's any plan to do that before we commence a conversation on a phase three of potential high school where phase two is going to need to move into a whole planning and preparation year to think through a lot of these kinds of details and so yeah 500 is a nice number for a comprehensive middle school we don't necessarily have a programmatic ed spec we should have one to to make sure that there's equity and guarantee in the program offerings and i think that's the goal that we share we understand that there's going to be there's going to be some necessary transition supports for each of these schools as they come together as we've experienced and are experiencing you're asking a lot of feeder and reconfigured communities to come together that includes faculty and we want to make sure that those supports are there so these are exactly the kinds of questions that you know the boundary presentation isn't going to necessarily focus on today but they're the right ones for us to parking lot because they're the ones that are going to make the difference to these transitions being successful yeah i'm just i'd like to have more answers though before we actually vote on it next week or two weeks we won't have everything but i do think um it's reasonable for people to understand what the implications of of that is just the numbers being below and because um well so is the question what are we what we'll do to the restorative piece yeah i guess and we so we get into it when we get into the transition but um there is some pieces that i think it's reasonable for people to want to have a better understanding of what the what the implications are so if i made a part of the transition planning is this slide right here so this is that um part of what um uh the transition will be uh to your point is there's always the question about how do you smooth the transition out with staffing right and so this is uh that was raised as a significant question during the uh the process as as we went through and so i'll stop there for a second and and let judy kind of talk through this piece but that's part part and parcel of what is in the recommendation is um acknowledgement of how do we transition and make something to help smooth out some of these transitions with fte in particular so i'll just uh finish up here to say that um there's how the students might actually experience the change from a from just a path forward and then there are all the supports the community building and the important planning that needs to happen just wanted to make sure that the pace of change that's in the recommendation is well understood the [Music] boundary changes would follow the phased-in approach that's in policy that's what our recommendation is while the timing is beginning fall 2023 with your vote on may 24th we would still have time to inform all of the current students about uh the plans and about what their next school would be and a student from the louis area who might want to opt in early to their new middle school of lane would have the opportunity to do that for next year the program changes by and large need to happen all at once we need harrison park to be a middle school for six eight students in 2324 the k5 students need to all go and that's that cascading series of events that leads to creative science to bridger bridge or spanish immersion to lent at lent we have an important question that needs to be addressed and so the recommendation um is a little different and that is that we bring those communities together with school and central leaders to plan that best possible transition we don't want to have such a tiny cohort of english scholars at lent that they're
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not having a full robust experience and we want to honor that they've been in the community for a long time and are concerned about having to be moved so we don't have um it's not an all or nothing at this point it's it's a plan for them to come together and margaret would you like to say a little more about some of the so i think one of the pieces that um i just want to share and i think um you know for many years with uh director bailey it was i sat on the um the district of debra committee and and um some of the student um uh the various committees and i think part of what surfaced when we looked at how we make transitions uh there are a number of transitions that happen in the jefferson cluster from k-5 to k-8s back to k-5s um and we've learned some things in the process and so one of the things that again that we heard from the the committee and from um the coalition excuse me and then also uh that uh chair kavanaugh surfaced is being intentional about how do we bridge some of the transitions and what does that look like so that's part of what's built into the proposal is that there is a some fte that's set aside to address the shifts and transitions and and being strategic about that and that is called out and committed to upfront in the proposal i we also want to acknowledge the bridger and light communities are heavily impacted and that we will work with the communities in an ongoing basis and that the process needs to be guided by the people that are working closest and are most impacted by the decision so this will rely heavily on the voices of educators and families at these two sites um and we're committed to making sure that we are working with our labor partners and all all the stakeholders to make uh thoughtful transition planning and then to implement those planning that planning in a meaningful way i think the piece that um anytime you're looking at this level of shift and change there's a lot of details that are related to how do we work this out so this is going to be a process of really engaging in some um you know rolling up the sleeves like really looking at the details going back and an iterative process looking at the plans one of the things that was that surfaced is um and we've heard this loud and clear that this is not a paper exercise this is not a two-dimensional exercise right this impacts people families and communities and we're going to have to be very sensitive to how we engage and continue to engage in an ongoing manner with the communities that uh that we are impacting um and that's something that we need to do on an ongoing basis i think that one of the pieces that you see up here is around transportation we heard concerns about transportation one of the things that you notice as you move from a k-8 model back out to a middle school model is that that catchment for the middle school is broader than it is for the k-8 so you start to see distance travel times or travel distances shift because of that change um and so there are some of those pieces we also want you know heard people wanted there to be proximity so there are trade-offs that are real that we need to work with families and communities about how are we going to approach that and what are the ways through those trade-offs so that they can have um you know that we can get to the the goal of the of a robust middle school programming in southeast as well as consolidating some of the dli programs and i just want to add that the presentation is not in your email boxes and it is online as well we just got that so yep okay all right um finally i do want to say that i wasn't here for deep rack but i heard all about it and i'm just thankful that i've only had to deal with the southeast guiding coalition side of it um it's been an interest in two years i've grown quickly in portland trying to get to know the communities and the schools and the impacts and the needs and so on and so forth but above all i truly want to thank our southeast guiding coalition members they were dedicated diligent showed up showed up no matter what professional i'm just committed it was great to work with team that center students the needs of the community and looks to the future for what we want portland public schools to be so on behalf of the leadership team at portland public schools i do want to say thank you very much um we created um school coming thank you dr oh and you beat me to the punch and if deputy hurts were here i
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know that she would echo your sentiments to to everyone on the team who's been diligently involved in this process uh particularly the southeast guiding coalition members this has been a a process full of complexity there's there's a lot here to digest i know it's a lot for our directors to think about our communities will learn about the more specific details and you know there'll be a lot of questions that you know we'll we'll be prepared to respond to but uh to get to this point tonight and we're not done uh i know has been has been quite the task so thank you for the thoughtfulness everybody that's been involved right i also do want to say we have um what questions do um we want to know what clarifying questions you have we also would like to know if there are elements or features that you like about this proposal and what concerns you might have we do recognize that a lot of people are not going to be pleased but we do want to also acknowledge that as long as we continue to center the needs of our students and commit to an experience that will set them up for success in the future i think we can all live with ourselves thank you um and so i'll open the floor here and i just wanted to also start by uh thanking the southeast guiding coalition uh for your two years of dedication i understand um how it is as a community member to show up and think you know i've got a year and a half or so two years ends up being five sometimes and then you run out of money and anyway just the amount of emotional toll and time away and frozen pizza for dinner and all of those really human elements i also want to appreciate the staff in holding um these the space for for the the community conversations to happen that also is takes emotional toll and just time to to really listen actively um i want to also uh under i i want to share that i understand that this was um it's a nuance it's a complex uh complex uh project um and not everybody's happy with the outcome and that the the voting and you know the the option that got the most votes wasn't a consensus and and how messy that was i also want to hold a mirror up to my own leadership and lack of like really in um asking for my board members to be more engaged and also kind of participating with the board members um especially at our our meeting last week on thursday where um two of us were at the event and i think it would have been really important for the community to see all of us there um but i didn't i didn't put a call out for my colleagues to show up and it was scheduled in a week a week in advance yeah and it was scheduling 50 people showed up so yeah so so uh and cbrc was also scheduled at the same time as this meeting so you all should be lucky i showed up here we are we're lucky we're lucky that you show up whenever you do um i also want to just um thank the bridger community for their very thoughtful letter um this evening that talks about first acknowledging the discomfort racial equity work is very uncomfortable we're not experienced doing it in portland as is evidenced by our outcomes not just in the education area but in housing access education access income quality of life life expectancy are all um predictable by race in portland and so when we talk about doing work a little differently and um and just comp and leaning into this discomfort this is what it feels like it does feel uncomfortable so thank you bridger community for for bringing that out to express that even in the best of times change is difficult for everyone i also appreciate the bridger community for wanting to encouraging us to take a yes and approach there are some restorative practices i'm hoping that we see particularly around engaging lent community who we heard from uh that that are concerned about splitting up but also that what we can do um what what inputs we can do in terms of investing time and resources um investing in a stable situation for those kids i hadn't ever been to lent before a couple weeks ago and and they need the stability and the attention that our higher income schools get to get to get the benefit of so i'm hoping that we can really lean into that um that restorative practice of giving them the resources they need and providing our this practice about putting more resources where there's more need and there's a lot of need at that school i'm hoping that we can debrief with this senior leadership team about the community engagement because i um i'm a community engagement professional and um i found i found um i found the process of wanting in some areas i don't want to go into now but in the spirit of you know continuous improvement i would love to an opportunity to to talk about it as a as a board leader and a board member um
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i know i'm talking more than i usually do but i have a lot of thoughts about this um one of the if you haven't seen it there was a lot of reading this week but attachment c that came in the packets to our home and that's also linked in board book provides a very compelling case for supporting the proposal that we have in front of us um and that is uh research i'm sorry i don't have a citation but it's it's the it's where's that well it's i actually had my hands on it like two minutes ago it's it's it's attachment c and it provides research about the benefits of this is the analysis of co-located chinese and spanish dli programs which once i read it and looked at the presentation really cemented for me um this idea that we thank you that it's right here it was underneath i've got it um but if you haven't read it it's really a compelling provides compelling data that support uh the support of this proposal as we see it and i'm going to stop talking now i know people have questions um i'm looking at director hall and so in order to keep him awake do you have any thoughts initial impressions we can just popcorn style i think you said something dr o about you know not everyone's gonna like this and i think if we ever had a boundary drawing that everyone liked i think you know we should all buy lottery tickets that day uh because we'd be incredibly lucky um you know there are things i like about it i mean i think again the thoughtfulness the um all the things you said as priorities and those modeling principles and again our our ongoing goal is to take our k-8s which we know have strengths but we also aren't providing our students with the rigorous academic opportunities we want and this is a long and difficult process and um andrew always says uh director scott always says we should be a district that does this regularly and so we don't do the big ones we just do adjustments and so i think uh dr cavanaugh you mentioned so it's fun to get to call you that um you mentioned that we might have to do this again and i think that's going to be you know that's what we're hoping will become the culture of our district is that we do adjustments regularly rather than these big programmatic changes like switching k-8s to middle schools and that is hard and we know that we want to provide stability for families and we also want to be agile and dynamic so i appreciate the work that went into it there are things i could you know complain about that i didn't get my way or what i wanted um but i trust the the collaborative wisdom um and i think if all of us are happy about some things and slightly annoyed about others then maybe that's the sweet spot um so that's that's kind of where uh i am landing on this at this point but just again want to thank you for the analysis and all the work and i know this the dli program thing continues to be a very intense conversation about what what is the best way for those students to thrive and i do appreciate this analysis here so thank you so um i'm just diving because i do have a fair number of questions but i think they're like can be answered with a relatively short answer and i'm just going to say before everybody gets ready to fire off emails to me in the middle of the meeting um i'm going to ask some questions because there really hasn't been i'm going to ask some questions to get something information into the public space because most of the meetings people were just watching on youtube so it really wasn't interactive because of the pandemic and this is and this is the first meeting we have the recommendation so i'm not asking um for any bad reason but maybe because i've had a lot of people ask me about it so i just want to tell people like before you start sending me emails um that that's the spirit in which i'm asking them because they're the pandemic has just changed how people interacted and the fact that we just got the recommendation um so i'm going to start with um you know what i l what i like about it and i have some questions under that um because the charge of the board was to create a plan to bring more equitable middle school experience to students in outer southeast and i look at the two efforts both the opening of kellogg and this as really important work for the district in that over the last five years over a thousand students will have who didn't have an equitable middle school experience well either already have it or will soon have it so um i think that's great and i wanna also mention because there's been a lot of conversation about like do you want to
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go to the you know the brand new school at kellogg or harrison park is i really encourage people to go to harrison park it's a it's it's a huge building um and um there's they've got a really strong stable um t leadership team there um that knows their stuff about middle school with a greater number of students they'll be able to have robust academic programming and diverse electives with the 10 million dollars in upgrades from the bond and hopefully the community will be part of that i've got a question about that later but that will like create spaces that middle school students will want to be in so i i want to just just acknowledge those two big things because like that was that was the main part of the the charge so great on that and like it's additive to to kellogg and i know this the families that are kellogg now it's it's a great it's a great school and um we we always have more work to do um but i i see the promise of what's coming to south outer southeast um so i'm really happy about that so i'm gonna have um and i'm gonna preface this with uh i attended almost all the 20 um southeast guiding last coalition too right i did yes so um i don't know what i'm gonna do with my thursday nights now um i also attended the bridger community meeting that was held last week the lent community meeting that was had last week the open house a spanish immersion community meeting hosted by atkinson the lent leopard leaders meeting last week as well and i also went and visited all the schools in my zone that i felt would be impacted with the exception of richmond and creston because there was minimal impact and then also visited whitman and marysville that aren't my district so in in this that's the spirit in which i'm going to approach my questions and and um and i think you should win a prize for attending the most meetings if nothing else well okay i i'm going to be held accountable to my community um they've let me know that um so i don't want to have missed a meeting that i should have been to um and i gotta say every one of those meetings i learned something i learned something new and hopefully i'm gonna because there hasn't been an opportunity really for the community to engage so a lot of schools had one rep maybe two reps but really school communities didn't engage so hopefully i can bring some of that to um the process um and my issues are really gonna center on three areas implementation excellence support for individual school communities and trust and credibility and so just from an overarching standpoint i didn't see a fiscal impact statement in here and i would expect to have that as part of what we vote on next week um so we have a sense of um how is it we're going to resource this because that's part of implementation excellence and by the way there is a fiscal impact statement but it's it's kind of soft it doesn't have numbers in it yeah well okay i don't know if that counts then um so i had the question for this the superintendent about implementation and i know i asked you this today but maybe just briefly answer that um because there's a leadership change of the executive sponsor just who will be the implementations are or how that's going to be structured because there are once the board finishes its work um the implementation is really going to be key that we do this right no that's absolutely right and as i i'll share what i shared with uh in my response to you director brim edwards earlier um this is this is going to be a need to be an all hands on deck uh approach uh the planning and preparation as i started to describe earlier involves a range of departments in the school district that yes there's the facilities issues there's transportation issues student assignment issues there's staffing issues there are labor relations issues there the whole reason we're doing this is to create a higher quality middle grades experience uh was one of the charges and so uh you know we're not driven by an economic efficiency that we're trying to to find here we're trying to make sure that grade six seven and eight in the in the southeast is in a much improved experience and so um what does that need to include and look like and how do we support it during these transition years or a lot of questions that that need to be fleshed out as you know in 2017 when we came aboard there were three new middle schools that were being reconfigured and we saw uh when when there wasn't uh depth um the depth required in the planning uh you
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know we had to push that off so that so that we could be ready to open and we want to make sure that it's a different experience this time around so there's going to need to be an internal group of people and a continued representation from all of the impacted school communities that find themselves uh either in the boundary changes or or as new members of harrison park and kellogg so um i as you know uh uh you're listening i know deputy hurts um you know she has stayed on uh to help shepherd uh this process six months beyond her intended uh retirement and uh unfortunately i don't have an announcement about her uh successor uh in the same way that we are down a few senior staff positions who are going to be instrumental uh in this planning and preparation um you know gearing up for for implementation so i don't have an immediate response about who specifically uh will be that executive sponsor it it'll be one of these individuals uh who will understand that part of the charge is to continue working with a team of staff who who will need to be involved in these details and and the important thing is to to keep the board and the community regularly updated about how the preparation and planning details are are starting to to develop okay so um now i'm going to dive into the interest in the meantime it's me okay yeah that's that's the thought i was holding um appreciate it um and just it will be comforting i think to the community to know somebody's got it at the end of the day i don't know if it's these individuals um so now to the school specifics so um i say i i think we're in a good place with kellogg with harrison park um i'm really concerned about lent because so lent was a k5 then it became a k8 then spanish immersion was was added and if you look at the demographics for all the schools um in in the conversation they're the ones with the highest level of poverty and how so i'm thinking like the school has got the biggest impact which essentially the recommendation is to close the neighborhood english program and that is what we could define as a neighborhood in pbs so close the neighborhood program is the school with the highest level of poverty and just listening to the lent community a couple weeks ago it was primarily the spanish dli families that were present there were only three two or three parents from the english of the neighborhood side and there was a consensus they didn't want their community to be broken up and so i'm really i i'm trying to i'm struggling with how we came to a recommendation in which this the biggest impact is on the school with the highest level of of poverty and when i look at so i i don't know what to do about it when i look at like us prioritizing um harrison park uh k5 being able to walk to their school because of all the issues of either not having a car or parents working and so kids need to be able to to get there the fact that we didn't have that same priority for the neighborhood um so i'm curious um if that was a priority for the um harrison park and the clark community because of the demographics it's also one of the most diverse [Music] how did we end up in a place where we're closing the neighborhood school at because that that is we can call it something else but like really the neighborhood so if you move into the neighborhood and you're i mean that's what we that's what we call it so it is what it is but i'm wondering how we came to a place that we're closing the one neighborhood school in the highest poverty area if i could say we don't consider this a neighborhood school closure we consider it a conversion of the program opportunity for neighborhood school students and um every lent neighborhood student will have the right to enroll in the dual language immersion program um and i completely understand that there are some students who will either not make that choice or will who move into this lower income neighborhood and be too old to make that choice we looked at the model that we've had between wrigler and scott since 2018
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to see how that's worked for families the vast majority of regular families do enroll at their neighborhood school in the dual language program both students who are native spanish speakers and students who are english and speakers of other languages and like 27 there will be people there will be families where this would be their third language so i i just think i mean i think it's like i think it's hard i think it's hard to and i think we need to be careful to be like honest about like how we talk about it because it will feel like your neighborhood school closing if you live across the street and you can't access because there for some and i'm speaking from personal experience it does it's it's not a fit for every student and so i think anyway i am concerned that we are taking something away that most every other kid student in pps has access to from the school that has the least resources so and i i would say we're not taking anything away in terms of educational programming we're changing the environment in which it's being delivered and in some sense for sure that means changing the community and changing the sense of belonging because those kids those four four grades of kids are going to be in a different building kindergartners will go to marysville and they will not have known what that experience would have been at lent i'm also curious about of all the the quarter of the students in the neighborhood program who are english language learners um are very many of those families native spanish speakers who are not in the dli program at lynn that's something i hadn't talked to anyone about yeah there are some and we've actually um been starting to already hear from some of those families to see if they can move into if they want to join that so out of a i mean you have i'm not i'm not i'm not trying to indicate that i don't think that this is a this is a shift you know when we've looked at one of our primary objectives being to move away from co-location because it's it's better for the language learners but you're looking at an enrollment last year of 151 students in the dli program so minus 20 of that so minus 30. so 120 students um and you know some of whom are are going to be english are going to be spanish speakers who may choose to stay so it's a shift but relative to sort of the challenges that we were looking at um it's not i think it's just important to keep it in perspective well i'm gonna just keep it in perspective because there are whole quadrants of the city that every every student has the right to attend their neighborhood school and southeast has all these programs and this the families that live there didn't put those programs there i mean so any anyway i just i i'm troubled by the outcome and the burden being placed on a community that has the least resources um and so that my question i had is there's a recommendation to move the lent neighborhood students to marysville and in the traditional program but then the report says an option to defer moves for lent non-dli students moving to marysville will be considered after bringing together schools communities to prepare the changes and considering the available facilities capacity at lent does that statement mean just the students who are there now versus because when i went to the meeting you were there dr pass there wasn't anybody who supported breaking up the community um but if i'm reading this is this this is just the like after you decide to move them it's just the current first second and third graders and fourth graders what does that statement mean sorry it's confusing the statement's meant to indicate that instead of saying all the students have to move like the proposal is that link convert to an all dli school with guaranteed access for lent neighborhood students and bring oh bringing over the two strands from bridger so that's the proposal the plan for implementation for the students who are currently in the english scholars program is something that we want to collaboratively develop between the school communities maybe i'm not asking the question but is
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it just for a s the small universe of those who are impacted right now or is this we may defer moving um neighborhood students to marysville no it's it's it's not a plan to defer it's a plan to figure out that pace so that that's weird we're not we're not proposing to maintain long-term a co-located structure at lent we don't believe we can actually deliver the quality of program that lent students deserve if we maintain that i'm just trying to figure out what what i did the statement is saying so it's essentially the kids who are in the upper grades right now there's going to be a conversation about when when they move but it's it's not a statement that it may not happen it may not happen that lent students neighborhood students are going to go to marysville i'm seeing one nod and one shaking we're not proposing to keep an english uh program at lent in the long term we're proposing to find um a collaborative way to make the transition and to phase the program out i don't know what the result of that collaborative effort okay despite the the last community meeting where everybody said we don't want to do this okay i'm going to move on to bridger can i can i make a comment though because i think that there's well i'm sorry but i have a this is our one opportunity after a year so [Music] before we get into a back and forth this is one of those situations where we will have to work very closely with the community the district has a technical fix the district are experts in in in this work the community are experts in their community and what works for them together a solution can be found not one not the other it's a yes and i i really believe then i mean i've worked in a couple of um i've worked on some community-based projects that were very very contentious and took you know twice as long actually more than twice as long and we literally ran out of money to complete the project because the community engagement process was so long and the community are experts in their community and the district are experts in doing the work of balancing and providing programs equitably and centering the kids that need it most so i i'm thinking the the community it's a it's a both end you cheered past and i'm looking at a co-create with bridger and lent um i see that i don't have my glasses on sorry yeah i can see that co-create and and that's what i'm suggesting is that it's not a approaching this is us versus them is not going to get us to where we need to get to get you know the kids that are experiencing the highest levels of poverty the quality education that they that they deserve okay thank you trader pass so bridger um so the bridger neighborhood community has been through a lot um they had family co-op which was a focus program there um then it merged with young sun school when youngstown was closed family co-op moves out they transition to k-8 spanish immersion opens overcrowd of school so kindergarten has to move off-site classes are taught in the gym until the portable is installed neighborhood strand is under staff and half the community is now being proposed to move to lent and the other half would be part of the new focus school for creative science and because of all those transitions the bridger neighborhood community had a number of requests at the community meeting last week and i know they gave this to um deputy uh superintendent hertz um but they requested the following a full-time social worker instead of a part-time one bless you as well a half-time attendance and engagement coach and educational assistant for each of the second and third grade neighborhood classrooms or one that could be split in two allowing the neighborhood fifth graders to transition into middle school next year by being granted admissions into kellogg in order to begin middle school in a comprehensive middle school environment rather than a k with another school transition within the building the following year after and i saw in the report there was you know sort of the non-specific 10 fte but i'm wondering about these really specific asks from the bridger community to be supported what whether those will be things that could be integrated into their recommendation we are definitely going to take those into consideration we're also going to look to see how we can accommodate their
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requests as much as possible so i'm i'm wondering dr berm edwards um i think this is really important work um but i do know that we have members of the public who want to give tests public testimony and so i'm wondering if there's any way if we could ask if we could jump the line and just have our our families who want to give public testimony about this and our families that want to give public testimony about the charter thing do that now and then we can come back to your questions because i talked to some of them at nine o'clock and the kids were tired then and it's now 10. and i really apologize um this is the first time i think that's a good that's a works for me sorry uh director green i guess you let's thank him for still being here though i'm good there are there are young people in the audience and yeah if families switch to both sets of public comment on these two matters i would really appreciate that thank you thank you steph okay thank you so there's no public comment on segc is what roseanne is saying but there is public comment on the charter school vote yeah so i mean just for what it's worth i i had asked whether schools could present tonight because they haven't had a chance to present the board okay or even comment because can we move on to the charter school um yeah comment that'd be great you know me i'm a late night person so well not everybody is i know and some some people have to work at seven in the morning well it's unfortunate that yeah thank you it was a great call thank you um so we have um people in the audience that are that are here to testify not on southeast guiding coalition um because we're not voting okay so the charter school um miss powell do we have speakers ready to to speak we've thrown a wrench in roseanne's system over here she was ready and then we like jumped six things so thank you rosanna and you guys our first person well do you want to start the conversation before you make a movie i'm so sorry uh dr proctor we're we've switched um we've switched the order of things so we could hear from families okay our children are we're just doing public comment only okay just the public comments i'm sorry i'm a little delayed in understanding all right first person is sunita sandoz good evening good evening good evening chair depasque good evening director student representative superintendent thank you for switching things up um i'll try and be brief i might be referencing things that you may have been having in discussion so so uh you'll have three minutes and if you can say your name and spell your last name and then you can start and it looks like um somebody somebody started your timer for yes sunita sandoz is my name last name spelled s-a-n-d-o-z my name is sunita sandoz i'm the administrator of the emerson school currently pps's longest running charter school tonight i implore you to consider amending the resolution presented so that you can address right-sizing the pass-through rate for pps charter schools to 90 immediately this must go into effect for the 2022-23 school year or you may see more charter schools close on your watch due to financial constraints charter schools in portland are facing the same dire issues that pps are currently facing which you've heard a lot about this evening after a lengthy and harrowing pandemic we too are staring down lowered enrollment we too are fighting with every resource available to retain our talented and dedicated staff we too are facing running our schools on a deficit budget as we collect collectively pull through one of the most challenging periods in history for public education for years charter schools have appealed to pps board members some of you up there now to acknowledge the broken funding model that we face as we try to keep our lights on we only receive 80 percent of the state school funds that neighborhood schools receive per pupil and we must lease or purchase our facilities and pay market rate rent with those funds on top of that public charter schools pay the highest pers rate in the state upwards of 26
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as compared to pps's current pers rate which ranges from 3.5 percent to 7 the emerson school pays 17 000 a month in rent and 15 000 a month to purrs for our tiny school of 130 students we must do this or we will close i understand that those issues are out of your control but there is a solution within your control eighty percent of the state school fund is the bare minimum you have the power to pass through more state-sponsored charter schools in portland receive a ninety percent minimum pass-through rate directors a twenty percent administrative fee is unconscionable the funding analysis provided to you from district staff has shown that only four percent is needed to support charter school program even if you right-size the pass-through amount to 90 percent portland public schools would still keep 1.3 million dollars above and beyond the cost of administering administering the charter schools program i'm going to say that one more time even with a 90 pass-through rate pps will keep 1.3 million dollars above and beyond the cost of administering the charter schools program public dollars are intended to follow students that is oregon law tonight i urge you to allow for this to happen last year the abrupt closure of the opal school was a startling wake-up call what i will wrap up watching the internationally acclaimed and longest-running pps charter school closed due to financial constraints was a travesty we cannot wait until 2023 for this change two pps charter schools need to sign new leases this year and we cannot do so without the insurance of sustainable funding in the future do not let us close on your watch do not lot do not let that be your legacy increase the pass-through rate for charters to 90 immediately portland public schools charter school students and their families are depending on you thank you thank you sunita excuse me sorry um i just want to correct something channeling claire hertz from our previous conversations the district spurs rates now is 17 it may have gone up from the past but also to clarify for other people that it is um extremely unfortunate the structure through which they need to pay for their um benefits and their purse but there's uh i i went pretty far deep down a rabbit hole to see if there's any way we could assist them with not with that and statutorily there is not thank you the only question i had was and my kids went to emerson school so it was a great fit for me as a single parent because it was close to where i worked and it was easy to get to and yes sorry i just was reminded we're doing public comment i understand there is more anyway thank you for your comments eric maxson good evening thank you for your time it's eric maxson m-a-x-e-n um imagine a scenario where pps decided to open a new school so they hired an administrator and told that administrator that their state school funding the vast majority of their revenue would be reduced by 20 percent despite this the administrator would be expected to secure and pay for a building using those reduced funds cover the health insurance costs for all the employees as well as the pers costs for all these employees this as you just heard from sunita is exactly how portland charter schools operate in the city of portland in other words these public schools in portland cover tens of thousands of dollars every year in expenses that other schools do not and they receive tens of thousands of dollars less every year from the state school fund these are portland public schools the same kids that attend emerson and schools like it attend the neighborhood schools charter schools in portland are public schools i am grateful that my two daughters attended the emerson school and i'm on the bo and i'm on the board there i've been the treasurer for the last three years i understand how school funding works and i know how challenging things are for portland public charters it was brought to my attention recently that while pps keeps 20 percent of charter state funding to cover overhead for their charter program it actually only needs as little as four percent to break even let's write this wrong and give charters the stability they deserve the extra 10 the extra 10 percent being proposed
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would have a profound impact on charters and the students who attend them meanwhile it would have a minimal impact on the pps budget these funds represent a tiny fraction of the pps budget but a significant portion of the charter schools budgets please do not kick the can down the road i urge you to change the pass-through amount to 90 immediately thank you thank you [Applause] and next we have mark williams who is joining us virtually mark you're muted we can't hear you mr williams sorry about that good evening board my name is mark williams um that's w-i-l-l-i-a-m-s i am a proud parent of three beautiful children who all attend lemon french immersion charter school all my children started kindergarten at le mans french immersion charter school and they are currently 13 12 and 10. one of the reasons i wanted to speak to the board today is to share with you my first hand testimony of our family's personal experience at le mans french immersion charter school we chose to send our children to le monde because my wife is french and we really value languages as a life skill it has been a wonderful opportunity for our three children to learn and grow in a immersive french environment um and i wanted to point out that our neighborhood public school is a very good one even though it has been overcrowded for many years the local grade school is only two blocks from our home and it would have been very convenient to have our children attend this local neighborhood school however we feel that it has been well worth the daily drive to transport our children to le mans every day for over the past nine years when the board talks about creating and funding educational opportunities for students of color in students with disabilities you're talking about my three children my oldest daughter is in sixth grade and she's latinx she's a creative child who sometimes struggles to keep her focus but lemon french immersion charter school has always worked with us to help her thrive my middle daughter is black and hearing impaired she has been on an iep since preschool and with the help of the teachers at le mans immersion and pps special education services she is excelling at lemon french immersion as a child who wears hearing aids and reads lips to to communicate you would think that learning another language would be difficult for her quite the opposite her time at le man has been only positive she is is an amazing communicator in both languages and the staff at limon immersion has always ensured that she has had all the accommodation in place to make her learning experience equal to her peers my son who is also black and he's in the fifth grade his experience at lemon has been very positive he is on a 504 plan for some health issues and the staff at lamont has always been accommodating and responsive to his needs so i just want to thank you for allowing me to introduce my family to you this increase in pass-through funding needs to happen now not next year please we are concerned we will lose our staff and teachers if they can't afford to stay at the wrong charter school this basic funding is what the state provides for students to receive a quality education and i as a taxpayer do pay my share for that funding and i feel that my children deserve to receive a fair share of that funding as well and so i just want to thank you again for taking the time to consider my testimony thank you [Applause] that's it so we can go back to south east getting right we can go back to
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southeast guiding thank you for uh hanging in there with us um those of you who are on the line and those of you here in person um i know it's late and that you guys can probably get home and then tune in to the um youtube and watch the rest of this meeting and our vote on the charter school thing in your pajamas from your bed or you can stay if you want you're totally welcome too but that allows you some flexibility because i know there's some little ones out there sorry for the long wait and thanks to you all for showing up can i just ask as a point of clarification director from edwards how how many more questions you think you have tonight okay i asked just because i know we have this vote we also have the the math curriculum adoption along with the policy i really appreciate that um and when i haven't i won't have an statement because i also want to respect the 20 school communities who this is this this will be this me okay let's um quickly move through um the rest of your questions okay um with uh the creative science school uh whoever wants to answer a question um and then we've got the same question for is career of science school a school or a program and is bridger a school or a program doesn't mind [Music] they're both schools correct yes and which school is going to be you can't have two schools in a building as my understanding which one would be closed we're not closing any of the schools we're moving creative science to correct me from wrong but there's a there's a school id number that the state has so you actually have to close one account you're correct um and since we haven't adopted the changes yet i don't know the exact sequence and it won't be in place until 23 24 but we can come back to you the proposal says it will become a unified school community creative science at bridger well what's important is depending on which school is closed the staffing and so i'm this was an issue before for bridger when they had family co-op there so i'm going to be interested in how the staffing um works because both both the bridger neighborhood school community and the creative science community is attached to their staff so this is part of the um you know a transition and making it a successful transition i know just from previous school changes that is challenging um so thanks for the answer on that i'll be interested just to clarify though in terms of staffing it would remain relatively the same because you're going to have the same student population so you're going to have roughly the same staff staffing formula for both of those schools when they are reunited under the same roof and then there's unless there's some dramatic change to the enrollment because of the change in location that we haven't foreseen but the point is that there's room to accommodate both of those um school communities as a united school community that's our current thinking at this point that's our current thinking at this point so i want to know more about that because that was something that the bridger community and i'm sure the creative science school both communicated that it's really important to them um so and this is this is a question for that i have gotten asked about we're moving away from the k-8 model um all over the city and yet we're as part of this the staff is recommending that we actually keep a k-8 at creative science school and early on it was said it was because of the sped the number of special education students at um creative science school that that was a better to have a smaller learning environment but i'm looking at the demographics for sped and their special ed students across the southeast cluster and there's actually a whole bunch of other schools that have them in the 20s as well so maybe share the the rationale for why we're keeping a k8 when we're actually going through this whole process to change them because it's not because of they have
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higher sped numbers special ed student numbers yeah okay all right so i think um one of the one of the uh significant discussion points we've had is about a portfolio of a portfolio of options for families to have right and so similar to fabian and north east right that is a is a k-8 and sort of what is that model and what does that look like um provides an opportunity for um families that is slightly different so what we what we've heard and and uh we see it similarly at uh various other levels of you know grade bands of what does that look like what's that portfolio of options some some families will choose an option that looks slightly different than somebody else right and so i think that that's the question for why this particular you know why why are we maintaining a k-8 in this part of the city yeah and just to follow on that because i think um judy you said the last meeting that eventually in order to fit the two communities in there that there there won't be that many lottery slots um because of the two communities together so it it will be an option if you live in the bridger neighborhood or not but not really an option if you live somewhere else in southeast and you wanted one because there won't that be that many slots but i think it is similar to fabian in that way right yeah well it it's similar to the sunny environmental school that way i think the other important piece is that the you know creative science k-8 um uh grew to k-8 about the same time that other southeast neighborhood-based schools grew to k-8 now that we're moving back to comprehensive middle schools it could be that there is less interest in maintaining a small option but we don't know that now and we didn't know that in the middle of this process if you recall a year ago you asked us to have them the um smallest footprint possible to make these changes and yet we still had to bring forward an awful lot of shifts and revisions that is one that we did not um undertake in the midst of this process which is like what is the purpose of focus option and what is the best grade structure for it but i don't think that means it could never be a conversation within that community okay thank you i also would like to add that um creative science also does have a special instructional process the constructivist model and they stress the fact that they think it's best when you have it over the eight years that the kids at the school correctly so how that works then um and i don't need the answer to this now this is maybe a next two weeks from now um just the number of students who would be eligible for busing based on the one and a quarter quarter mile or the one on the quarter mile or one and a half depending on which it is isn't it one and one and a quarter mile for elementary and one and a half that's one okay sorry and one and one half one one and a half and then any other um places where there's been a commitment in this recommendation to bus students so i'd like to know just the total number and then i'd like to know who it is is getting bust okay so not just by number but by location like right like it's going to be the eastern part of the marysville boundary kind of just for illustration um then and this can be i think i know the answer but i'd just like to get it on the record for next next meeting just what the supports are in place for the spanish dli echelon and the supports that would be in place for the mandarin dli program and then i just have three things just to say um so this process has been and not at all because of staff or the board um but it's just been destabilizing because the uncertainty and you know uh for for families trying to figure out like what's going to be best for the kids what the changes are going to be how they're going to adjust and then you add the pandemic on top of that um that there are a large number of schools in these communities that um don't have foundations so they don't have the ability to if all of a sudden they're short 20 students because like i'm not going to send my student there because they're going to be moved around or you
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know whatever reasons you know things have happened to change schools so um i'm going to be interested in like the fte to support the transition and really specifically like where that's going to to go because it's been cumulative on top of this on top of the staffing cuts that are um being proposed you have this and then like are we losing students and we're going to have less so i'll be interested in a potential hold harmless for the southeast schools that are impacted and then i because there wasn't an opportunity for people to comment tonight and then the next meeting we're going to be voting i had people who sent me um comments that they wanted to have submitted for the record and so i'll send them to all the board members and then just submit them for the record um otherwise i think next week you know we'll just be voting and it won't seem to be respect respectful but they follow along the lines of um you know creative science school also asking for fte in this transition again then this transition year um you know questions from mount tabor parents about who are in spanish immersion um about um just the the question about the spanish immersion students moving from lower poverty schools being moved to higher poverty schools um in this and then um there is a climate question with the busing how many people are busting how does that fit within our climate plans anyway i'll submit i'll send these to board members and then submit it for the records and i think the people in the community who sent these and gave us questions to consider and um i want to thank um i i'll just say having been on the screen with um these ladies and district staff over the last year you know this is one of the hardest this is one of the hardest things that happens to school communities and i feel like you've held the community um and kept us moving towards like i say what was the ultimately the board charge so i want to thank each of you individually thank you jerick if i could just add a footnote to a comment around the staffing which is an important component here but just a footnote the example of bridger creative science it is quite likely that the faculty would remain intact but until we do the analysis it's also important to remember we also have constraints around a collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union and so until we sort of go through the scenarios it's hard to give you an exact so we certainly want to support the transition but have to do the analysis you could end up with duplicative positions you could etc and so we want to ease the transition we have cba agreements and there's a lot of questions to dig into here actually i'm glad you just raised it directly because i was kind of talking around it but that that is i think we need to be super transparent with the community that there are this is what happens in every that's why i was asking like which school id number is going away because that does have implications in the collective bargaining agreement i think we need to be transparent with that's why i'm bringing it out thank you i have just a couple of quick comments questions and before my colleagues kill me i promise they'll be quick first is i just want to address the sort of dissenting opinion from the southeast guiding coalition on a couple of notes um one was that a big part of their misgiving was that they didn't agree with the scope that the board laid out in the first place and that's on us and i have some misgivings myself about going through this process without with basically holding all the southeast schools to on the west side of this area holding those schools harmless i think we could have done things differently but i think that that whole equation was complicated by the fact that the district has not done a thorough review of what what is the purpose of our focus option schools and who are they intended to serve and we happen to have this concentration of them in southeast portland that you can't have a conversation about reconfiguring schools particularly on the west side of southeast portland without having a conversation about what are our academic goals around these focus programs and who should they serve and how do they align with our equity lens so those are really complicated questions that really should have been addressed in this process but i will be the first to say that i was one of you know all of us who agreed that we had to somehow narrow this scope in order to get it done and that we had
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made a commitment to the community to open kellogg i mean excuse me to open harrison park by um 2023 so it was um it was a necessary um compromise that we had to make but i just want to recognize that that um misgiving that was expressed by so many members of the guiding coalition and there was one other thing in their opinion that i wanted to address oh just take it back a little bit to the creative science unification with bridger you know ideally we'll have that conversation um when we look at our focus option programs and maybe that's sort of like a mini exercise that we can do as we uh look at maybe northeast reconfiguration as well because i think that conversation is long overdue and i i expressed early on in this process i have never seen a strong pedagogical reason why creative science should remain as a k-8 when we're contorting our entire district to reconfigure to elementary and middle schools and we also have harrison park across the street that is under enrolled as a middle school um so you know the balance there would be that you could open up more lottery spaces for uh students who might want to attend creative science who are not in the bridger neighborhood more lottery spaces for k-5 because they're actually seeking out that particular program um and then you have this this wonderful rich vibrant middle school right there which is what we say that we're trying to create so um that i have a pretty strong opinion about that um and then the other thing about the focus option schools as far as an equity issue is that it's always been a huge equity issue are our constraints around transportation for for dli and focus option schools and um it remains one and that's part of this conversation if we're really talking about things with a racial equity and social justice lens we have to look at who has access literally and figuratively to those programs um yeah you know oh just the other the last thing i want to say is that um the other elephant in the room is that we took consolidations off the table and when we look at the numbers of some of these very small schools in outer southeast portland that's not really a logical choice it's a political choice and so that's also on us and that needs to be a part of the conversation i don't mean it needs to be a part of the conversation literally right now where we should you know take this proposal and come up with something new but we need to take responsibility for the fact that that that is a reality that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later especially as we see our enrollment only continuing to decline so those are just some of my thoughts and questions and way back when when you asked what do we really appreciate about this one of the things i appreciate is that the the recommendations around the dla dli programs are really grounded in what is academically best for student achievement and most important for our english language learners because historically that hasn't really been that much of a factor in our decisions around reconfiguring and and moving boundaries and all that and it should be the factor it should be the most important factor so that's those are super hard decisions to make those separating of co-located programs because nobody wants to be dislocated um but um it is i'm really glad that we held firm on that because that's really putting students first so thank you thank you do we have any other comments i i want to echo also what director constance said just i'm always curious about who is burdened who's harmed by our decisions um i uh i trust that the i i know that this is difficult i also know that i trust the data um that i've read that says um that that supports the proposal that's on the table um i want to ask just a quick lightning round if anybody has further comments or should we just move on yeah i haven't had any chance to ask questions i'm sorry i'm sorry director scott just uh but what uh one of our guiding principles in this process was students at the center so
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um i'm sorry um but i'm gonna take some time um so kind of that is my question in our resolution that we passed last year around this time in may um one of those guiding principles was students at the center so i just wanted like a brief explanation of how we like stayed true to that principle by centering students specifically like student voice in this process so in terms of student voice and again i'm sorry that shanice clark isn't with us to be more specific but we did have um student culturally specific student engagement sessions in the fall and in december so those were some ways for students to come in and engage directly um on different different phases of the process and then i would say um it particularly with uh the lent community um and there's probably others that are slipping my mind right now that they um they set the stage for us so i really want to acknowledge where um student communities came forward um to let us know how they felt and um were willing to share that information really broadly um these are younger students impacted by the change and especially if you considered the delay until 2023 like we're talking about fourth and fifth graders not that they don't have um important input to give but i think it's a different design perhaps than what you would typically see with the high schoolers or even um later middle schoolers and um i i believe uh shanice may have more to offer back to you in response to that when she's available on how we tried to center their voice and not just their voice through their parents but but through them authentically we also asked our school leaders to reach out to their student council and um have conversations with them about their opinion explain the process um the feeling there was that they would be a little bit more open with their principles because they're just a little bit more familiar and comfortable with their leaders yeah i'd love to know how many students we got engagement from okay um my second question um was actually i have email questions i'm good thank you are there any final questions before we wrap up we will be voting on this on uh may 24th i'll be attending um probably virtually i'll try to make it in person but i think it'll be virtual um where um where do we direct questions and um if we've got further questions it sounds like you've in terms of process um we're voting on it in two weeks yeah one thing i would just ask is that if there's any sort of presentation like new powerpoint that we make sure it gets posted um with all the materials way in advance because there's a lot of people who have a lot have invested a lot in this process and i think would like to see that um also like i may potentially have some suggested changes in well i guess i'll wait to get some of the answers that i asked for is suggested changes in the resolution nothing that would be if anybody's thinking i'm going to move schools around like that's not what i'm thinking about but it's more like this how do you how do we resource or just provide more visibility to what people can expect um one last um comment about the student engagement is that um it would be fabulous to do a charette type process with students young students they have all kinds of solutions for everything from what equipment to put in the park to what color it should be how high the building should be and it's a great exercise to get them civically engaged you know at the very early ages well they could also i guess one of the things i'd like to have about student engagement is like how are they being involved in the 10 million dollar investment because i saw some of the investments and they were like mechanical systems and that's not what i thought when i was thinking of the 10 million dollars i was thinking about like hey we have this beautiful new school and we also have a a good solid school and how do we make it even better and more appealing to middle schoolers so i would like you student you know the future students of like what do they want to see there what's what's missing um and i don't i don't think they're going to say the mechanical systems not that that's not important but all right so we're going to wrap that topic up we're going to vote on on may 24th um if you've got further questions you ask staff doctor oh judy brennan deputy superintendent still our strong strong leader she's the she's the very last leader fearless leader she's not in front of us uh so yeah so she's direct to um to claire we're going to move on now um board
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members uh we'll be voting to adopt four contracts for the new 612 math uh thank you staff i know it's late thank you um we're gonna we'll be voting next to adopt four contracts for the new 612 math curriculum i hope you've all had a chance to review the video presentation that was posted in board books with the materials superintendent guerrero would you or staff like to share anything about this adoption i'll just say a quick intro as uh staff comes up here to the to the podium as you know this is the latest in a sequence of um bond funded thank you voters uh which allows us to leapfrog uh new curricular materials across content areas and grade levels and we're really pleased to to bring to you at this point uh the latest uh as part of our adoption process which i'm sure the team here will let them talk about but i'll let you take it away um good evening everyone chair depass directors student representative weinberg we're pleased to bring before the board of recommendation for the new middle grades math curriculum adoption for a bit of background the previous math curriculum adoption uh for grades six to eight was completed uh in 1999 with the connect math project and with an adoption of connect math project 2 in 2009 in may of 2020 portland our community supported the bond which included for the first time the much needed funding to be able to fund long-term overdue new curriculum materials adoption across all core contents district-wide on this evening we're going to talk about math the decision to fully adopt mid-school math core curriculum for middle school and mcgraw-hill illustrative math for high school is a highly involved process including across district 6 to 12 math adoption of instructional resources committee and a field test of 612 math instructional resources we hope that directors have an opportunity again to review uh the video that was provided in advance so that you know you could familiarize yourself with what's being presented to you this evening we also have uh susan kovac and kristen moon here today to support any questions that you may have this evening as they worked very diligently in the process and engaging um across sector of stakeholders in uh coming to the decision for this evening so based on the our review of the materials as well as pps student and teacher feedback we wanted to share some highlights about the med school math core curriculum so one of the pieces is going to be that um this curriculum has strong connections with real world applications through multimedia and text which allows students to make sense of mathematics by working through the story in the video and applying their understanding to new situations to quote a student i actually understood what was going on in math this also has an inclusion of robust lessons that show explicit connections between previous and future units to quote a teacher the sequence of the lessons is extremely well thought out to build one into the next so that students see their knowledge growing from one standard to the next this also provides access to progress monitoring and assessment data in real time for not only the teacher but the principal and at the district level as well in addition there is a the usage of a test trainer pro which is a digital application that provides multiple practice with problems and to quote a student i liked how the test trainer helped you work on specific skills and how you can choose which skill to practice and i'm going to share also some student and teacher input on the mcgraw-hill illustrative mathematics we provided a variety of kind of hard data in our presentation but this data you may not have come across and we really wanted to value that student and teacher voice the curriculum illustrative math is designed to spark discussion perseverance and enjoyment in mathematics a student quote from the field test was it brings many parts that serve as examples and others that are
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understood without being explained there was explicit support for our special education and emerging bilingual students a teacher quote i don't think we could find a better curriculum to help students develop strong conceptual mathematic understanding i love the emphasis on student collaboration and voice it noticeably helps students build confidence in their abilities i also think the physical materials are very easy to use and the teacher guide provides very detailed guidance on lesson implementation illustrative also has access to progress monitoring and assessment data that's not just for the teacher but also for the principals to look at and finally i think this is a teacher quote i think this would be hugely beneficial there is rigor that centers the students efforts there are various ways to engage with the content warm-ups routines activities practice cooldowns the teacher guide is huge solutions are given keys are provided for students who are struggling with and all of this cuts down on teacher work time the online component is very useful and beneficial for students and would be useful for students who are struggling to come to school for any reason and are able to work online i know that the workbooks are consumable but i'm sure that i actually saved paper from previous years there is ample content for tag and advanced sections which will support those students and also reduce workload for those teachers i highly recommend it so we're wondering if you have any questions about the math adoption or anything that we can clarify we're very excited about these two um vendors for mathematic instruction that we're recommending to you they both are very highly rated by ed reports they had the top rating so there has been this external evaluation and our own internal evaluation through extensive field testing which began in september and just ended at the end of march by teachers all over the district for both middle and high school we did survey students we surveyed teachers in multiple ways we looked at student work and artifacts we looked at we observed teachers teaching in the classroom we we tried to build a comprehensive evaluation model and we are actually planning on an implementation evaluation to follow up to see how well student outcomes are going to improve because of this new math curriculum i just want to say i've run into some of the teachers doing the field testing in my school visits and it's been universally enthusiastic um both about just their their assessment of the efficacy but also just the engagement and the enthusiasm of the students like it seems like a lot more fun yeah we think it is do we and it's built it's built in the curriculum to move away from kind of traditional math instruction which focuses on procedural fluency to really move towards conceptual understanding and students building knowledge by working with each other collaborating and engaging in discourse which we're really excited because it's embedded in the curriculum i'm i'm really excited to learn more i haven't been in schools where i've seen it or observed classrooms where they're using it do we and i it's my favorite subject so i really love the idea i i don't know enough about how it's taught but i do like the idea that it's interactive and that's collaborative and that it sounds like it's applied math which is really it was great do we do we know how um students of color black students in particular i mean do we have the data during our assessment to know you know is it culturally relevant is it is it you know relatable is it you know how do we have any idea how our black students in particular are taking to this like awesome thing is it is it being effect is it effective from your six months of data collection so from the student survey data one of the part we did ask is about the cultural relevancy do they see themselves reflected in the materials do they see their student voice and feel that's being valued as part of this and we did look at it through specifically the demographics of black native and emergent bilingual student voice and the students gave it the highest scores of mid-school math which actually corresponded to what the teachers evaluated it as well one of the difficult parts to determine is
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the impact we did see that it had a student's black and native emerging bilingual student achievement according to map growth assessment which was the piece that we did have was at the same rate as white peers so it is a shorter amount of time to see how much if that would have a greater growth or not but it did match and was on the same pace as their white peers um so yeah my one question is od we recently adopted new math standards that included data reasoning does this curriculum allow us to kind of follow those new standards that are going to be implemented soon so for middle school a hundred percent and for high school yeah do you want me to answer yeah so for high school um one of the challenges that we have with the new oregon state standards around the data reasoning part that you're speaking of is that those standards are so brand new that there isn't a lot of curriculum that aligns with this and so these materials for high school do not align in that way but we are actually um field testing next year some materials that do align with those data reasoning and data science standards that oregon has adopted for high school math it it does cover the statistics and probability as the sophomore course that would be a 0.5 with geometry so those are covered within the curriculum that we're purchasing the what would be additional would be the junior level plus one full year data science course and we are looking at um a resource an open source resource for that and we are beginning to train teachers to pilot that next year the only caveat for that is we're so far ahead of the game that the universities do not currently accept data science for admissions to the university so so we are only able to offer that data science in pilot to students who've already taken advanced algebra because they still are university of oregon and oregon state we've been talking with them still require algebra 3 4 for admission not data science so with that we are working with the state group that has state leaders and the people who decide emission requirements at the colleges and things like that and collaboration to figure out what that looks like and what needs to be done in order for that to happen and so we're really excited that portland has a seat at that table to have that discussion yeah they're looking to us to be a leader in that area and they're actually beginning to discuss at the university level teaching a data science course that would be similar to what we would be teaching so they can say it's worthy of college entry do we have any other um questions that looks like director broome edwards director hollins director greene director lowry scott i want to say quick thank you to the superintendent for the foresight of including curriculum in our bond we otherwise know that we were on a very very slow road to improving our curriculum resources so shout out to our old friend former chief academic officer luis valentino for having that foresight as well and to our voters for supporting it and just want to point out to our board members that on the resolution that we're passing tonight you'll see that the actual digital resources are separated in the contracts from the personal services or the professional development support that the vendors provide and in the memo i don't know if in the memo that we originally received the description of the contracts with these vendors included both the the resources and the professional development which raised a red flag for me giving what type of activities are are bond eligible so i kind of worked through that today with general counsel liz large and so we do have a revised memo that makes it really clear in the memo how those are disaggregated and then in the contracts that we're actually approving it's really clear how those are separated and paid for out of different funds thank you for uh flagging that um that's helpful do i have a motion in a second to adopt the four contracts for the new 612 math curriculum with resolution 6497 so moved second director lowry moves director scott seconds the adoption of resolution 6497 we've already had board discussion and a student representative did you have any final thoughts is there any public comment
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the board will now vote on resolution 6497 to adopt the new math curriculum for grades 612. all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6497 is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative weinberg voting yes fantastic uh chair we just yeah just thank you to the board for for your unanimous support here uh this is a really important another important step forward we're going to keep these coming to you periodically i just want to commend the team here for their extensive process for the engagement that they described really looking forward to starting to see fidelity of implementation as we jump into the new school year and uh how our educators and students start to experience the material so thank you thank you superintendent director hollins yes i did have a question so with the new adoption piece how's the professional development going to be administered to make sure that the teachers are um appropriately teaching the stuff absolutely so um we have already jumped into to professional learning planning of course there are two summer institutes one in june and one in august that teachers can attend choose to attend both their three days if teachers can't attend those that we do have fall options and we are working to see what the diverse options we can offer with the challenges around substitutes as well and then um we're going to be offering ongoing professional learning based on the calendar that was adopted by the board just a couple weeks ago to support on those embedded pd days that there will be professional learning as well as we are looking at using some staff meeting time to run some professional learning cadres across the district to support that as well and then in addition to that we are working to train our tosas to also become instructional coaches and so they've been working with teachers in the classroom on their lessons and their lesson planning through that and then doing the implementation evaluation to inform how well our professional learning is impacting what is happening with uh students and our teachers thank you yeah absolutely thank you um so um thank you thank you steph thank you for that for staying late i'm excited i think i've asked um early on about that growth curve and when we would start seeing some real action i feel like this is a great i feel like we'll start to see results in a year or two for margaret calvert our regional superintendent for secondary schools and all her school leaders i was just gonna say i think we have her thumbs up so we're now going to move to the climate i'm just going to hang out are we i don't even know uh so climate is that oh we're going to go back to the charter we're going to go to charter oh see let's see i told you that's fine i mean is that what we're doing i'm here i'm here too i'm coming in it's on the clock regardless oh okay so climate crisis committee chartered jonathan we have two charter sort of two titles in the in in our script this is the climate crisis committee charter so not to be confused with the charter school pass through um director brum edwards would you like to introduce this next item yep this should be quick um as everybody knows as everybody knows we passed a sweeping climate policy um earlier this year as part of that there is a climate crisis committee that is composed of not more than nine community members and this is the charter for the committee and it's been built off of using the bac and this and cbr well the bond accountability committee and the citizens budget review committee as um sort of committee community thank you and so this is the charter and i don't i think it's pretty self-explanatory it was recommended by the policy committee and uh the extra piece we have is once we approve the charter then we're going to move into the application process and um i'll turn it over to you to talk about the quickly about the the launching of the committee great thank you uh director brian edwards so
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what you have on your screen is a general timeline here uh that we're proposing uh to you obviously subject should change uh after today's may 10th uh after you consider today's uh charter we would move forward with uh the application deadline a month from today uh this will give us an opportunity to uh reach out to our networks our your networks uh really again you're the you're the you're the decision makers here so um however we can support u.s staff in lifting up we have an application that a few of you have reviewed uh so our goal is to move forward with launching the ccr committee in july i'm also happy to report that we have a verbal off a verbal offer and a verbal yes from our next climate justice advisor who is scheduled to to begin here in june uh to really help launch this inaugural uh ccr committee so uh we expect that the vote the board would vote on june 28th uh to to consider and vote the the committee in its entirety which leaves june 21st when we will narrow and publicly share the inaugural slate of committee members so again this is subject to change um working closely with our with the policy committee to to ensure that that we have a successful launch in july right at the start of the new school year would you like a motion so do i have a motion in a second to adopt resolution 6498 resolution authorizing the climate crisis committee charter did you move from edwards okay and holland director broome edwards moves director holland seconds the adoption of resolution 6498 thank you is there any board discussion my one brief comment is just to call out that there's also two student members that will be appointed at the same time and just really to push out to kindergarten through eighth graders as well not just to high schools yeah we look forward to working with the dsc to identify some students is there any public discussion public comment the board will now vote on resolution 6498 resolution authorizing the climate crisis committee charter all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no and are there any abstentions resolution 6498 is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative weinberg voting yes appreciate it and i want to thank aaron who stayed here until late i've been um so without saying a word so maybe you want to say thank you thank you i'm trying to come up with a really difficult question to ask you so you'll feel like it was good to be here all the time erin sorry what were you gonna say thank you thank you and aaron um i know you're involved with some of the city's um work as i as i am on on our climate response as well so it's nice to meet you in person yeah you do thank you um we're now going to move on um to the charter school pass-through rate um at the april 20th charter and alternative programs committee meeting i understand the committee recommended moving forward a resolution to increase the pass-through rate for all charter schools beginning in the 2023-24 school year director green did you want to introduce this next item well i would love to um in our committee meeting we were discussing the pass-through amount and how much we as a school district retain and how much goes to the actual on charter schools and we were talking about it from a space of um how do we stabilize helps to stabilize some of our our charter schools who are struggling to stay afloat given the pandemic and the rising nature of all of our costs all the way around and although there's at this point without going to legislation we found that there was nothing that we could do as far as like pers and stuff we asked the staff um at that time if they would come back and provide us with um a scenario um around what would it look like to um change the pass-through rate from 80 to 90 and how would that impact us um as a district at that time the charge that um that we gave them was that we wanted to find out what it would look like but we also wanted to ensure that the funds that we gave wouldn't surpass the amount of funding that we got to support the charter
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schools so we wanted to make sure that in their in their presentation that they came back to us with that they provided us with a worst case scenario so from including administrative fees legal fees just everything goes to hell in a handy basket and we're going to be doing more work than we've ever done what would that what would those numbers look like and so they brought back um some figures um and with that um it showed that we would be passing through a certain amount and we would still have a significant amount left over to pass through to the general fund and so we discussed it um it went on the table there was some back and forth on the table um around whether or not this is something that we could do now or if we should do later um and so essentially what we what we decided was let's get it to the board for um let's get it to the board for um a full board discussion um there was you know because it had to leave the committee otherwise it dies in the committee and we didn't want it to die in the committee so we said you know well we can we can live with 23 24 um but that would just get it out of committee and then we'd take it out of the committee and we could talk about it as a full board to decide what it is as a board that we felt would be appropriate and when we felt it would be appropriate and that's how we got to where we are now so i'm hoping that everyone had a chance to read through all the materials that were provided so that we can have a more robust conversation around it thank you director green um director i mean i'm sorry uh superintendent um um still here i'm very tired um it looks like steph is here to yeah they are uh i think you have the the staff memo from from our two deputies uh dr proctor can fill in but but we have the others thanks director greene for that added background and context and we heard some of it earlier also from our community members this this is one of those situations where we might have a slight variation uh uh but it's good that we're having this discussion here with what would staffs perhaps more conservative approach and and when to take up the policy decision and and also the fiscal implementation if we were to move in that direction but but i'll let dr proctor take it from here thank you superintendent guerrero um you know pps holds equity as sen as a central tenant for the work that we do and for all decisions and actions and work uh to eliminate uh racial disparity so we really want to look at um you know taking things through an equity lens the major goal of the school district's vision is again to eliminate some of those predictable factors the purpose for the the proposed change in the charter school funding would transfer and reallocate general fund resources currently being spent to support pps neighborhood schools and programs receiving equity-based resource allocations the charter school funding is within the general fund and is not separate from those funds so staff recommends delaying the policy decision on charter school funding ratios until the 2023 school year to allow for a national benchmarking and strategic resourcing evaluation to be completed by educational resource strategies staff values using the benefits of this work before making an individual long-term financial commitment we believe it would be prudent to look at these financial decisions together as we create our long-term strategic financial plan and with that i think we can see if there's a further discussion but that was what i wanted to introduce and say thank you and i would be interested in hearing from the um other committee members um your your thoughts on this and you're you'd recommended you'd recommended that this be put in front of the board um to be considered 4 23 24. yeah i can give just a little bit of background and then um also i want to acknowledge staff's perspective that dr proctor just relayed first of all back in 2019 when we first created the charter and alternative schools committee or reconstituted it we asked for we talked about this question and we asked for an analysis from the district about that pass-through rate the the pass-through rate is set by the state as a floor the state says that um they have to you have to pass through 80 percent but they don't say they they
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don't prescribe that whether or not districts can choose to pass through more than 80 but 80 is the minimum set by the state so we asked staff to look at that back at that time and look at it with our racial equity lens and the analysis came back that our charter schools first of all we don't have a large student population in our charter schools and our charter schools do not serve the same demographic generally as our district schools they don't serve as many historically underserved students and so in that conversation in 2019 what we decided to do to move out of that committee to the board which was eventually approved was to create a resolution that would create a 95 pass-through rate for any of our charter schools that served more than 50 percent historically underserved students is that right is the terminology historically underserved or is it by race or ethnic race historically underserved by race ethnicity yes specifically that's what i thought uh historically underserved specifically by race and ethnicity and so um i think that was the right thing to do personally and that was approved by the board and at that time and presently we only have one charter school that qualifies for that and that is kairos pdx so we have these four other schools that receive 80 pass through it is tough sledding i will say as we have heard from them they have a difficult time finding facilities especially now as rents are increasing they have a difficult time retaining excellent educators based on what they're able to pay it is a tough financial model and there are a lot of barriers to operating as a charter school in the state of oregon and that is fairly intentional by the state legislature this is a we have a a charter unfriendly political climate i think it's safe to say um so um that was our conversation we did talk about the fact that these four schools do not uh serve a demographic uh that is similar to our rest of our districts so in that sense um a recommendation to draw from the general fund to increase our pass-through rate to our charter schools is not in alignment with our racial equity and social justice lens but um i i will just uh i will just state my point of view and sort of the conversation that we had in that committee uh was that our overarching value is that to a great degree our our values are that the dollar should follow the students and that these students are being served in a different setting but they're still our kids um and so it was with that sentiment in mind that we decided to bring this before the full board for consideration um and uh i uh we we the majority of the our committee just wanted to bring it forward for um implementation in the 23 budget in the 23 school year because when this came to us we were in the middle of our budget process so if we were to consider changing this resolution and doing it any sooner it would mean we would have to direct staff to go back to our district budget and find you know one roughly 1.2 million dollars in savings which is not an easy exercise at this moment and for me personally i don't think a responsible exercise that said i will very enthusiastically support this resolution for implementation uh next year all right so just my um sort of being on the committee my one hesitation with this is that you know we had a gentleman testify tonight about dollars following students and we know that if we look at the you know what we get from the state school fund that was on the pat slide tonight it was about nine thousand dollars per students that's not how pps allocates the money we do an equity-based budget and so when we look at our budget book we see that students in like i think students at alliance is like twenty thousand dollars a student because there's some that's a small program with really special needs and so the way we've always looked at the charter school dollars has not been about the dollars following the students because that's not how we do things in pps and so when we change the pass-through rate to 95 for historically underserved part of the rationale there was to encourage our charter schools to to really broaden their recruitment charter schools have a lottery they can't use race as one of the weights necessarily there's a lot of laws around how admission can happen to charter schools but we were hoping that they would do a little more recruitment to to change the makeup of some of those schools and i know that some like portland village
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school have really worked hard especially with the hispanic community to change some of their demographics so that's the place where i struggle a little bit i'm okay with the 90 pass through i i wouldn't be okay with more just because when we look at our charter school numbers they don't match their pbs as far as um historically underserved students so when you pull kairos out and look at the rest of our charters you know there there is an equity issue there so so i support the 90 i support waiting a year because it is another million we'd have to cut from the budget and while when we talk about our entire budget a million doesn't seem like a lot i think we really are trying to put as much as we can in our local classrooms so so this is really interesting question about money following students and how do we do things differently both in supporting our charter schools which serve our different learners and in keeping our equity priorities in pps so i feel like 90 is a good um compromise there but i do think we still need to continue to encourage and support our charter schools as they continue to reflect the makeup of pps as a whole did you have comme uh comments or questions well i remember a comment um but also a question but first i'm going to start with the comment because uh director green like i'm older than dirt and i feel like i've seen everything and i can't believe that um this is something that the the rates that you shared is not something that actually has been i think put before the board before and i think it's a really great question because i look at the numbers that once we back out the actual program cost expenses just looking at the five-year averages that we received i mean the district i mean charters are subsidizing the districts in so in some ways and i guess i it's been going on for a long time and i if i look at it or at least i'm looking back the numbers of 1718 it's at least two million dollars a year that the district has held back even though it um it's already paid the expenses of the cost of administrating or supporting the program um so i'm when i look at that i'm thinking like what what what would i know differently what would i learn from some sort of national benchmarking that would change my mind in a year from now and i i guess i'm not really sure there's anything that i would find compelling i don't i don't think our the overall and i'd be interested maybe you could share the number of historically underserved students in our charters versus our um uh in our our overall population um i'd be interested that if somebody could speak to that because i think it's like 40 books for the charter meeting i'll look it up for you i think it's like three or four percentage points difference which i don't find different and i also would note just like based on all the conversations i've had over the years with the charters that have closed um is the fact that they have to carry the facilities costs and the you know any sort of there's no transportation so there it's it's not like we just give them slightly less it's like they also unlike all of our other schools they have to actually go get a building and maintain it and pay rent and all those things so i think they have like extra costs on top of it so i i'm trying to think of what what information benchmarking survey it's like the next three slides um i'll look at them in a sec i don't know what a benchmark survey may show to me that would tell me something different than i don't know why we don't pass through more of this because i i do feel that there is a moment of vulnerability for our charters that um they may close and once once you start the unwinding you can't just start them back up again i think that's what we found out with with opel it's like all of a sudden they closed and even though i think universally people felt it was a really important charter in in the mix or an option for our students that like you couldn't once they lost their their place to be you couldn't sort of help sustain them like we would a school community so i i would be more inclined to support moving ahead this this year and the resolution that we have before us is does not acknowledge the staff recommendation that we wait a year for benchmarking it's in the staff report but the
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resolution simply asks us whether we want to vote on implementation of this change in 93. i would also like to add that in my initial introduction of this and i'm waiting to go around the room that i just wanted to simply introduce the introduce the topic for um for a greater discussion and i did not want to in the introduction of that um input where i what my position is and where i was dead because i did not want my position to um change you know i i want everybody i want everybody to be talking about this which is why i shared the information that i did um because i wanted to make sure that everybody was coming from the same page so at some point i do want to come back around and speak to why i feel we should be doing this and why i feel we should be doing this now well it's 11 15 so i i'm all ears [Laughter] normally i would you know i'd be right there with you andrew but i'm i'm in a hotel room and and i'm comfortable so i'll try to make i'll try to make this grief oh boy no so as i um as i as i'm looking at this the funding that that we're talking about using is funding state funding that's allocated to us um for specifically for charter schools and although um it's a it's a general fund this is state funding that has been allocated to us to support um and uphold and to make sure that you know we're doing all that we can to uplift charter schools and of that money the 20 million roughly 20 million dollars that we're going to get um we're going to be using 16 million of that roughly to support support charter schools then we're going to add um another seven hundred and ten thousand um that is going to cost us that we're saying um to administer to admin to do whatever we need to do to um to work with the to work with the charter schools and even if we raise that up to say it's going to cost us a million dollars this year to support the charter schools which is greater by far than any year we have ever had when you especially when you look at the five-year the five-year projection that we've done we've never spent that much money but even if we didn't spend that much money we would still be passing through just over a million dollars into the the general budget the reason that i'm i'm bringing this up is because as we're we're trying to pad the general budget so that we can make up for the 40 million shortfall that that we're going to have we're we're not really seeming to take into consideration that these these two schools may fail not because they're not doing great work not because they don't have the funding but because we want to make sure that we pad our 40 million dollar um our 40 million dollar deficit now to me that's unconscionable where someone once someone said to me well what are we going to do if if all of a sudden that we get all the charter schools and they're all um you know like kairos now and where's that money going to come from then well first of all that's not going to happen this year i think that's safe to say i don't care how much they try i don't care what they do whatever it's not even about being optimistic or pessimists that's just that's just not realistic of it's going to happen but if they were to do it on next year then because there's a weight involved with each one of the students then the amount of money given to us from the state would actually go up and so because that amount would go up then the amount that we had to support the charter schools would go up and therefore we would still be able to do the same work without ever impacting what's going or what would be going into the general the general fund because we're going to get more money so if by chance all the schools are now all of a sudden serving all the black kids then we're gonna get more money anyway so that shouldn't even be um that shouldn't even be a conversation piece because it's sustainable all on its own we're talking about we want to do research and we want to find out and we want to hear what the what the data says when we can look at the last five years and see what the data trends have said and how much we've passed through and how much we've used so i think we have a data trend to go from we have a sustainability option that does not take away from the the current general fund unless unless you pit unless you want a pet now
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serving black kids above serving charter school kids so if you want to make that the argument if the argument is well if we support these schools then we want to be able to we won't be able to support as many other black kids that is an argument that you can make i just don't believe that it's a just one i don't believe it is the one that that we should be making right now because we shouldn't be saying and i get it i i know that we want the the black kids to be you know saying they need to get closer to graduation but when the state gives us funding specifically for um an organization you know we want to make sure that you've got money to support these schools and we want to make sure that it doesn't take away from anything else we're taking away from them to support other stuff while they fail because and we do it in the name of we're going to help all these other black kids i believe we should be helping all the kids and if they've given us money to support these schools then let's use that money to support those schools to the best of our ability one part of me wanted to argue that i don't believe that we should be passing through any of the money i believe that we should be using all of the money to support charter schools and whatever we don't use um for the pass-through amount that we actually use that additional funds to um sponsor events where they're going to be taking kids to and from places maybe we use that money to help them with transportation seeing that uh probably probably it's possible it's plausible that part of the reason that a lot of black kids can't come to charter schools is because they live far away and they need transportation and charter schools don't actually get any transportation funding so maybe if to quote to quote a friend of mine who spoke tonight she said we have to look at transportation and we have to look at it from our equity links and if we are going to do that then we quote um we have to who has access literally and figuratively to transportation so if we're looking at all of this through the equity lens then part of the reason that black kids can't come to the charter schools is because we don't provide any type of transportation to get them there so if we start looking at access to transportation both literally and figuratively then maybe we can do something to increase the number of kids black kids that are attending charter schools by providing them another transportation option because transportation is real and so i don't believe we can wait i don't believe that we should wait i believe that we should do this now the only reason that i and i said this in the committee so i don't believe i'm speaking out of turn or you know saying something that i've never said before i said i'll vote for 2324 if it'll get it out of the committee so that we can talk about it at the um at the board but what i really want is for us to do it now and so i voted 23 24 simply and i said it then and i believe that's public so i can say it again now simply so that we could get it here and we could discuss it because i believe if we truly look at this we recognize that the only right decision the only real decision on the table for us now is to pass this so that those charter schools that are on the verge of closing can have an assurance of some kind especially since we're saying we're we're being kid focused they can have an assurance that those kids will actually have a school to come back to next year and and i will vouch for herman that amy and i were saying delay it a year and he was saying do it for this the 22-23 school year and we said well two of us have are voting one way you're voting another the majority will bring it to the committee and then you can give your passionate speech uh to try to change everybody's minds sure that makes a lot of sense so the policy decision before us is do we pass the resolution as is which implements this in 2324 do we amend the resolution to do it in 2223 or do we amend the resolution to go with the staff recommendation which is to benchmark and wait right those are those are the three options i'm curious the folks i'm curious from those who who want to move forward next year though um what's your idea for where to find the 1.2 million dollars because that is roughly 10 to 12 teachers just to put it in in context so i think as a board given where we're on the budget process and and and i'm going to ask board members to do this throughout i'll hold myself to this as well to the extent we start putting ideas on to move funds around and do different things i think we also owe it to at least at least give some direction doesn't have to be line item but at least give some direction to the superintendent about where we think that funding should come from and so
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yeah and i guess i don't i don't hear is talking so whatever the the back and forth is because that's my bad sorry director green yeah and i guess for me i'm i'm in support of moving in this direction and it for me it's just it really is the timing question and for me it's that trade-off question um what what is the trade-off next year if we move more quickly who will that impact who will that who will that harm we know it'll help the charter schools so the question is who who who gets harmed by that i also would like sorry julia let me uh i wanted to bring it back to ailey's point around we don't we don't fund our district schools on a pass-through dollar basis um attached for this agenda item you'll see the heat map of what our investment is per student in all of our schools and it varies widely you know it's a 2x different from how we fund our high poverty schools and you know our our lowest funded schools and when we look at where our charter schools are right now they're they're they're in the mix there and and julia to your point i mean yes they do have some added expenses but right now their allocations are 7627 so that uh puts them comparable with a school like say which is one of our lowest funded schools and this would bump it up to um 85 81 which puts them comparable to forest park this is a really this is a really important point i hadn't thought about it quite like that because i was as i was going through our budget book i was noticing you know jackson middle school in my zone has one of the lowest per student you know um per capita it's also a very successful school um and and so again that's what as you know we've all been talking about like that's the reallocation of resources which i think is the right thing to be doing but but if we use the same frame i mean we are taking two 2 500 for every student that goes to jackson and supporting some someone else in the district i think that's the right decision right i think that's what we should be doing um for those students so that i i appreciate that because that that does put it in perspective we don't just take the 9000 whatever we get from the district and send it to every school where those kids go we make some policy decisions about where those that funding goes can i make a comment about that too i just want to add into that that looking at the heat map if you look at what the charter schools funding is that 7 000 whatever it is and correct for 20 of their funding goes to a facility so that general fund dollars is paying for their facility whereas on your heat map those school dollars per student don't include your bond fund important point is a very important point and the additional uh uh purse which as you pointed out wasn't as dramatic as initially reported but is still pretty pretty dramatic so correcting for that even if you look at the charter school we pass through 95 percent to at 95 percent they're getting 9 000 ish per student and when you compare to district schools with that similar demographic or student population those schools would be in our ability to be able to transfer and and create more equitable funding would be getting anywhere from twelve thousand to sixteen thousand dollars per student so even with passing through that 95 percent we're still having charter schools not we're not asking that charter schools would be they wouldn't be similar to what district schools are getting they're actually still getting quite a bit less even with that 90 percent pass through when you correct for the if that makes any sense around it didn't get that last part exactly but i think we're probably fine to move on um but if you're just talking about the additional what she's saying is looking at the map and comparing it to forest park isn't really a comparative because forest park the students there and and the principal um have a school that's like they have a facility that's paid for and utilities and everything so it's actually that's a lot there's an overhead that is not accounted for in our heat map um operations you know lights building itself rent roughly 20 percent we also we also need to consider that all of these charter schools uh have active fundraising um endeavors um that help support and uh and lead some of this work as well and many of our school communities do not have that as a comparison they also don't have us as a district going out and finding different um different vendors and different ones to provide dollars that are going to also come back and help the school i mean not
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to this i know this ain't the really the time or the space to count other people's money but the superintendent actually does a great job going out um talking to folks and he's got i mean he's got a lot of folks on the hook right now that are really looking to give pps in our school district millions millions of dollars right now based on some of the work that that he's doing and so i'm not trying to i'm not here to try to pat his back right now or do anything like that i'm here to say the same way you know i'm saying that we're going after even though we have funding coming in we have a superintendent who's out there going out trying to find other monies and other resources to try to help come up with the shortfalls and those charter schools because they're good business people too they're doing the same thing so that's apples to apples right now so let's not i don't think we should be digging into their pocket saying show me your checkbook because they don't get to do that to us as pps so one thing has nothing to do with others so let's focus on this part no i agree director green and i would say you know as you pointed out 80 of of funding you know is is what the state asks districts to do so i i'm assuming that uh directors will you know go to the legislature and advocate for the same percentage across the board across the entire state so that move that means working with our democratic leaders who are probably not in a position to support charters in the state as it's been mentioned before our history here of of uh you know let's be led by labor groups you know this anti-charter movement we need to you know if we're going to be in this position i think this is an opportunity for pps to lead at the legislative level and increase that that percentage at the state level absolutely thank you i would like to get us back to the conversation about are we gonna pass this i mean our three choices before us are we gonna table this are we going to pass it as amended or are we going to amend it for the 22-23 school year and i think what i heard director scott say is if we're going to amend it for the 22-23 school year where are we going to move the money where are we going to find that 1.2 million i guess here's what i would say is i'm with director greene in that i don't think it's sort of a false choice to say if you take it from here i mean the reality is it goes into the general fund and you know staff has made a whole host of decisions throughout the year on contracts that they put before us that you know that's all general fund money as well so i this whole like if you take it from here you're taking it from these schools i i don't i don't buy that trade-off because i mean we have contracts that come to us all the time and i'm wondering if it's gone through the equity lens of you know is this the highest value does this impact students and you know i i don't i don't think that's um a a valid way to say like if you support this you have to go like take it out of another budget there's a big difference here though which is that this issue did not come to us until we had a proposed budget on the table and um you know we hadn't as a charter committee we hadn't discussed this since 2019 and there and our charters hadn't been advocating for this this year they came to us and they said times are really tough we had a couple that are having to renew leases can we possibly renew this conversation and we said yeah that's a conversation that we want to have i don't think at the onset of that anyone anticipated that we were going to upend the budget process in the middle of it which is why we put forward this resolution to say we want to do the right thing by our charter schools i i hope as a majority we want to do the right thing we want to increase this pass-through rate um but uh it did not come to us until we already had a proposed budget so that's the difference in terms of having to look for puts and takes so i think maybe we should just vote on the underlying resolution and if it doesn't pass then somebody can propose a amended resolution and we'll see okay and i haven't weighed in at all because i've been very patient um listening to everybody um so i i can't get over the slide three that talks about the percentage of historically underserved and that's a reality that you know we've got my kids went to your school they went to emerson school um 20 years ago or whatever and or maybe just 18. um and and the school the charter schools have always had trouble attracting or whatever retaining you know black families families of color and so i i would be you know in favor of the pass-through i think that's the right decision um to do and i would be in favor of doing it in 23 24 not not in this year and i'd like to see um
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with that as as i think director lowry mentioned is when we um voted to pass 95 through i believe that was in 2020 was that 2020 or 2019 20 it was somewhere in there it was hard to know with the pre-code 2020. thank you okay it's written down um we my hope was that that would you know encourage these other charter schools to like try to diversify their their their student bodies you know that's that's what the hope was and then and then the the pandemic hit and all that stuff so i'm i would be in favor of of a 90 and i would be in favor of doing that in not this current year in the following year and 23 24. so i'm away in a little bit yes and you're you you're quiet too so i look at when i when i when i was brought brought to my attention i was i looked at what's the purpose of the funds right if the purpose of the funds was for charter schools then as we talk about alignment then all those funds should be geared towards charter schools so whether that is whether it was 80 or 70 or whatever that amount is the remaining of that money is to what it should for me it seems like they still should be geared towards charter schools whether that support whether that's whatever other supportive things that they need to do that should be for them um the fact that we use it for other things that's just that's just what we did i don't know why it was because 80 is the floor so why was that why did we come at that number and what was the purpose of us using those other 20 for what funds and i don't know if that was this administration or last year or whatever but that's kind of where i was i look at this when i when i when this was brought up is what were those other 20 for if it wasn't geared towards charter schools um when that's from my understanding was the purpose of the funds anyway so i kind of look at it as was almost as restricted funds right if this comes into that restricted funds then we would have to use all of this that was to support charter schools however we see fit now if it was told to us that you know we're going to do 80 percent here but the other 20 percent is to go to support charter schools that would make sense to me but in if they're not used for charter schools then i just i that just don't really make that much sense to me of where those other funds is going towards when it's coming for charter schools that's just my take so i will support i mean i support that we're going up to with 90 i think we should do it this year um the fact that we have spent it on other stuff even though that the purpose is it for charter schools that's just something that we have to deal with and i'm gonna push back a little bit on uh director scott saying well that's 10 10 or 12 teachers well we can make that's an error for administration that's maybe like five or six administrations so i mean so i just don't want us to be using that well this is gonna be it could be for this or this could be for that as opposed to saying you know what what is the best going to help our kids in those those decisions and the and the extra money that we use it for sure but i'm going to come back and i'm going to push back a little on on director medwards i i think it's a cop-out if we as a board say you know we're going to spend this additional 1.2 million dollars but we're not going to give you any direction in terms of where we wanted to come from and i think it's incumbent on us as a board to give that direction doesn't mean we have to go down the line item but it means we need to and and maybe we shouldn't be voting on this tonight without without the the superintendent his team coming back and saying this is our recommendation about where that 1.2 million would come from otherwise we're really i mean we we're just we're at we're only doing half i mean if if if mike if my kids say i you know i want to go out to eat two more times a week then and i say sure i mean it's like that's an easy decision but when i say well where's that money gonna come from is where it gets hard right and so it's easy for me i mean everett yeah go to 90 that's fine it's easy um the question is where it comes from and that question is not on the table before us today so i guess what i just want to make sure when they come back and say it's five administrators it's 10 teachers it's you know supports for students in summer school are we going to what are what are we going to say as a board and would that change anyone's mind in terms of of going to 90 percent and and i just it's not a complete question to me without knowing knowing that that answer i'm i'm wondering um so that since there is that 20 gap left on the table um could that be used and part of that would be admin um i don't know what the rate ratio is at seven percent or or eight percent or ten percent but um is there some way to use that twenty percent or what's left of the twenty percent after admin to support the schools in their overhead costs that's what we're talking about is that sentences would just be yeah so we give them so we give them we give them 80
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and then the other 20 about 10 goes to admin on our side the legal things we have to do as a district and then the other 10 the 1.2 million currently goes to like our equity fund to fund other schools so what we're asking is do we take that 1.2 million out of our budget and give it to charters this year or do we wait next year and build that into the budget for that for i guess i'm confused alien maybe it wasn't clear to me and and and that could be because everybody knows i'm a little slow at things but where where i'm confused is that we're asking where is it going to come from when the question is when the well in my mind they've already given us the 19 million and some change of that 19 million that they've given us four charter schools we can somebody pull that up and put it on the screen i think tara had it tara tara and karina made a sheet that we went over in the the committee that showed exactly what the money is and so and it had one number in red and the other one in black yeah that was in our materials from the meeting yeah okay so let's maybe we can get that pulled up or i can just read it off but it was sorry it was what we were looking at was when you say where is it going to come from is going to come from the 19 million that they've already given us to support charter schools they've given us 19 million to search pass through we're going to of that we're going to use 16 million and some change to support charter schools we're going to use 710 000 as some change to support the administrative and then we're going to pass through almost three million dollars left over to pad the general fund 40 million deficits so yeah so so director green those those resources are already allocated in the proposed budget so so i i'm not disagreeing with you that they came for charter schools and i want to be clear i'm in support of moving to 90 but you we can't pretend like we're starting at a place where we're not we are where we are this district i don't know how long has been spending this money on other things so the impact of this policy change is real it's not it's not it's not mythical right we're not sort of like oh you know whatever they can just reallocate the money it's real and i just i mean we don't know you're right and that's why that's why i tell people all the time um andrew i like you because you're frugal you're you're the one that's going to remind us where the money is at and i i think i'm really struggling uh director green because i think there's the fundamental like the way we're thinking about it is pbs gets we get you know we have 50 000 students and our charter students are counted in that they you know they're counted in our students and so you know the state says you have 50 000 students you get 9 700 per student we as a district have a policy that the money does not follow the students so the money um we do an equity lends in our money allocation so students at lincoln get six thousand dollars students at roosevelt get 11. those are not accurate numbers those are just guesses so the lincoln students are subsidizing the roosevelt students if you want to think about it so the money we are given doesn't necessarily have to follow the charter students it's not their money it doesn't it but if depending on how we look at the the money per student it's a philosophical decision now we can say we are going to do this with our charter schools and we're going to have that tax tax money follow those kids and i'm not opposed to the 90 but this language around we're taking money from the students this is our fundamental policy as a board that we do equity funding and so we don't have the money go to each student now if we want to change the way we fund right but and have the money for each student we can do that so if so if there was no charter schools would we get that money yes because they would need pps students so they would get that money regardless if they if they're pps students they came to a school yeah i mean it'd be the same but then they would maybe go to a school where the per people funding was six thousand instead of nine examples so when you talk about the budgets right we talk about 1.8 bills that you're talking about almost 0.00 of our budget so i understand you make it seem like a million dollars there's a whole lot which i i understand is a lot it's a significant amount but it's also 0.006 percent of our budget and of course you can you can make it dramatic and say oh it's 10 teachers it's such and such it administrators three we don't our administrators don't get that much so yes they do we got the budget that's in there don't understand so what i'm saying is i don't want to make it i don't want to make it dramatic it's hard about our teachers or whatever make it about administrators i don't know but don't pretend like it's not i don't want to use point zero zero one i mean that's that's that's that's artificially long it's it's one point something i understand that but what i'm saying is that if this money is allocated for them it should be for them so let me let me put it this way what if i introduced a resolution that said i want jackson middle school students to get the state
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allocation because they get about two thousand dollars less right now so i said you know what i want them to get the state allocation would we just say well that money came for them right their students they got that state allocation it's not coming from we would all say no no that's going to come from somewhere else because we've made a conscious decision the district made a conscious decision i don't know when to to reallocate some of this money we get from charter school students students going to charter schools to other to other places i'm in favor of increasing that to 90 but i i'm troubled by the fact that we're sort of papering over the impact that's going to happen i don't know for me i want to know where that's going to come from because it it's it's going to be a real reduction and and maybe it's a contract maybe it's a you know but you know it's going to come from something i want to just say so what we have in front of us the resolution is two parts right one is to prove a proven increase in the pass-through rate from 80 to 90 percent and the second part of that is um and so it's a pass-through rate of state school funds from 80 to 90 for k-8 charter schools serving populations of less than 50 percent historically underserved by race ethnicity beginning in the 2023 so there's that time period that timepiece are we ready to put a motion on the table to pass that resolution as it is i think we should and see what happens i think what was what did we introduce an amendment that says we do 85 that is the resolution that is the resolution that we have in front of us okay i'm gonna call for a motion in a second i mean we're kind of i think that what we're hearing is that everybody here i believe most people um are in favor of increasing the pass through from 80 to 90 i just want to say like this is a valuable conversation but i i feel like we're really missing this moment of innovation and progressive policy that we're trying to make here because there is no other school district large school district in this state that passes through more than 80 percent and we took a look at this and we said you know what we want to do better for our charter school students they are our kids and we're getting hung up on this implementation question which i mean i agree with director hollins that as a as a as a percentage of our overall budget it's not a lot of money and in the building of a budget next year it will be easy to figure out you know how are we going to absorb that loss of you know a million dollars or so not easy but you know but but i'll just reiterate i don't think it's responsible in the middle of a budget process when we already had a proposal on the table and quite frankly i don't think that was the expectation when we just began this conversation with our charter schools three weeks ago which is not to say that they can't use it of course they can but that was not where this conversation was being directed to when we started to talk about it and they were delighted to find that all the board members on the subcommittee said we support this we think this is a great idea so i don't want to lose sight of like how progressive this is how there's no other large district there's no other district other than a few like practically single school districts in the state of oregon um that pass through more than 80 and so we can be an example um i'm going to be just a little bit more middle of the road than that i i i will vote to support the resolution if you know if the as as written if that's what we want to do i could get to a place of implementing it next year but not before seeing what the trade-offs are so like i'm not i can be convinced to do it next year but not tonight not without knowing of those trade-offs tonight i could vote for the 2324 implementation and if we wanted to delay uh for a couple weeks till then you know to a board meeting and direct staff to come back with where those offsets would because i want to be clear there will be other amendments to the budget so i mean they're you know of this scale or larger so there will be changes there will be things that happen so it's not that it's inappropriate to do that i just don't want to make a one-sided decision without knowing both sides so i could get there i just need some time i i'm with you i could use i i would be happy to um to be to vote in support of the resolution as it's written and if we want to make amendments and i would i would want a little bit more information as well and that could happen theoretically in the budget process in the finals i think it would happen tonight because we need to allow time well we only have tonight there's only 45 minutes or so left for tonight but we're also 15. we also don't want to be doing this tomorrow morning so as in seven days is there a space where instead of doing
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80 to 90 this year we do 80 to 85 and then do 85 to 90 next year i think we should vote on the resolution that we have before us and if it's not supported then we can yes horse trade yes okay so what are we voting on we're voting on the resolution that's in front of us which is to make the implementation in 2324. it's to approve the increase of the pass-through rate of the state school funds from 80 to 90 percent with implementation um starting in the 2023-24 so starting not in this budget year in next year that's the resolution as it's written and that's what's in front of us and what assurances do we have that the staff won't bury it later because you're going to be on the board still well the resolution will be passed but i actually i do a little bit of robert's rules of orders to amy's point i i actually think though if there's a desire by some board members to amend this that that should actually happen before the vote on the final election the final it has been yeah i i heard haley seconded did you second it i did that's what i thought oh i didn't hear that i'm so sorry okay so i have a question for uh director green now that we have the motion on the table do you want to offer an amendment to change it i would like to do the amendment to or do you want to just pass vote on it as it is see i want to pass it but i'd like to do if i can't if we can't do 90 can we do 85 can we horse trade well you you could offer an amendment to change it to 85 and change the year and then step up actually can i make a suggestion if if you offer an amendment to make it implementable next year we vote on that if it passes it passes if it fails then you can offer a second amendment to go to 85 same thing if it passes it passes if it fails then we're back to the original motion or we could vote on the motion that's on the table now but yeah all right so it's up to you if you want to the only reason once you vote and if it if it were to pass then the discussion's done so that's why i want to give an opportunity that's what i was concerned about i wanted to give like director greene just as as the committee chair like the if you were going to offer an amendment i mean and then chips for fall what they may yeah that's what i said right oh i thought you said vote on the motion nope i was saying don't vote on that we're in agreement yes we are okay complete 100 wow now we're getting somewhere [Laughter] my family all right i'm gonna go with andrew's suggestion on this one okay so you're you're moving to amend it to change it to um the year to 22 well 23. it would be the board of education for portland public schools approves an increase of the pass-through rate of the state school funds from eighty percent to eighty-five percent for k-eight implementation he's just changing 80-90 oh it's just just the year we're just changing for years number one okay so now i just want to make sure i'm clear because y'all know this is my first board so i'm gonna make sure i spell everything out so what we're going to be doing what we're going to do is we're going to try to implement try to see if we can get it to go through for um 80 to 90 this year versus next year that's the first run at it if that's that if that fails then we can do 85 this year 90 next year if that fails then we come back and we can go for 20 um 80 80 from 80 to 90 during the 23-24 year yes okay and i start i miss that i'm gonna i'm gonna move that we amend the resolution to change the years to 2020 23. you can second that direct degree and i know you're going to i'll second it out i'm a little bit confused right now because it's close to 12 o'clock and andrew was talking real fast okay so we have an amendment on the table to change the language and the resolution to say the portland the board of education for portland public schools approves an increase of the pass-through rate of the state school funds from eighty percent to ninety percent uh for k-8 charter schools serving populations less than fifty percent historically underserved by race ethnicity beginning in the 2022-23 school year
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and i have a motion and a second on the table we've got um director brim edwards moved and i can't remember who seconded director green second um that so that's what we have on the table now we've already had our board discussion um so the board will now vote on the amendment of resolution 6499 approving the increase of charter school pass-through rate to 90 beginning in the 2022-23 school year for charter schools serving populations of less than 50 percent historically underserved by race and ethnicity all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes no all opposed please indicate by saying no no no no no and are there any abstentions i think what i heard was that it and although no sorry it failed um it failed three to four thank you i'm i'm not tracking very well so i guess we're gonna move on and i'd like to offer another amendment to change the rate to 85 percent and the year to 20 22 23 with a increase to 90 in 23 24. herman you can second that i like i i didn't know when it was gonna be go time second okay so we have a motion um on the table to amend the resolution six four nine nine to um increase the pass-through rate of 85 percent of state school funds this year i'm sorry i'm going back and forth 80 85 percent beginning in the 2022-23 school year and increase the pass-through rate to 90 percent and 23-24 all those in favor please we haven't really had a board discussion about this one so haven't i just i just want to be clear so the idea here director greene and director of edwards is that it lowers the budget impact so i'm going to say roughly right roughly six hundred thousand dollars in year one and then ramps up to 90 90 that's correct because if we do it if we do it this way what the end game here is unlike the other schools that um that aren't um you know get impacted they're not in in jeopardy of possibly closing a school so that's the end game the end game is to do as much as we possibly can to keep those school those kids who are learning best at those charter schools in those schools where they learn best at and not do any further displacement and so if we can minimize that as much as possible and if we can't get the whole thing then let's get a portion of it that minimizes the um the amount that we're going to be um uh you know that we're going to be keeping it increases the amount that we would be passing through so now instead of getting the 1.3 million they would probably get like 1.6 million and so it would only be like a six or seven hundred thousand dollar deficit or something and we just we just approved the contract for for more than that so um can i ask a question about the fiscal condition of the schools i know you all have referenced that a few times but i since i haven't watched those committee meetings like how how dire is the situation for these schools i was just going to speak to that if i may because it is part of our review process and charter renewals we look at um you know academic achievement and financial stability and um you know they're never flush but we don't have any indication that any of our schools are um in in um in the red zone right now now that said the market conditions have changed and we've got schools that are looking for new leases and that is really a burden but we don't we don't have any we have no reason for alarm as far as the viability of our schools it's tough i'm the first person to say you know i'm you're a huge you're a huge advocate um but no we don't have any reason for alarm there and then the other thing um the other thing i was going to say just about this budget process here is that this is actually a coincidence that this issue emerged at this time when the budget happens to be on the table there was not an intention to like shoehorn into this budget that's already been proposed so for myself you know if we're to change this allocation and send
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staff searching for a million dollars or half a million dollars or whatever it is you know to me i think that's irresponsible as the decision makers now if we don't do that i think it's entirely reasonable for director greene or anyone else to bring this up in the budget process and say hey we're talking about puts and takes i want to reintroduce this question about whether or not we should increase our pass-through rate this year for our charter schools and let's have that conversation at the same time that we talk about increasing you know our budget for what we pay our custodians and deciding how many elevators we're going to put in to make our schools accessible and all those other questions that are can end up on the cutting room floor in the budget process and maybe it will emerge as our highest and best use but for me i think this process is irresponsible to consider it on a budget that's already been proposed even even understanding how difficult the situation is and i will feel extremely proud when we make this change for implementation next year but if we're going to do it this year i think we need to do it at the same time that we have a conversation about all of those other things that are not currently in our budget that we wish we saw there and that are really important for our students and i i just have to chime in though and and i and um is tara still at the table or is karina still on the phone she's on her uh and karina is okay so barely and i'm apparently them because i don't want to speak out of turn that um as as i understand it both um portland village and um west juanita school both of those schools have to have have to sign new leases this year and it's going to be um somewhat impossible to do without having um without having additional funds coming in and to be fair to be fair to the to the charter schools they actually brought this up in our committee meeting in february that um part of their issue was the pass-through amount and so it's although it came up for us and so if there's a delay the delay was on our end to say to send staff out to find out about what would it look like but it definitely was not on the end of the charter schools who in february were were screaming that hey we we if you're going to look at anything the two things that they brought up when i went to every school was if you could increase our pass-through amount and if there's some way that you can help us in legislation where we're talking about the purse and so as as much as me and me and amy we we do a lot of stuff together and so this is not uh to speak against any of that but i do want to make sure that we're explicitly clear that although it may seem as though um you know maybe nobody is there the schools have told us that they they have to sign these leases and without some assurances that they're gonna have additional funding come in um coming in that they they're not certain for certain that they're going to be able to to find a space and so there is an urgency if you ask any of the charter school directors um there's an urgency a sense of urgency that we need to do that now and seeming that i am the newest person on the on this committee and tara and karina have been working with the charter schools for um in a significant amount of time maybe they maybe they can weigh in on how long the conversation around the 80 the pass-through amount has been happening and so i i just want to throw that out there um again it is a lesser it's the much lesser amount substantially lesser um so we still got to find it but we don't have to look that hard all right and then and then i actually have a question for the superintendent but getting back uh amy to your point in some ways though what you're saying by coincidence i mean had this come up two or three months earlier it would have been included in this year's budget so that could go the other way as well right in terms of why wait a year just because of a of a few weeks i want to ask the superintendent um how he feels about making change at this point to like six or seven hundred thousand dollars again there will be other changes we discuss over the next few weeks so i i'd like to get a sense of how much of a burden that will be and and maybe even where you think it's gonna come from but then you may need to wait on that i serve at the will of the board so whatever that majority opinion is so obviously it's helpful to know all the variables and assumptions you know as we commence our budget development time which happens every year you know right after winter break uh you know as i've mentioned in presenting my proposal there's an understanding it will be a bit iterative as we get into the details as the board
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has its discussions uh it's better to sort of be hearing considering this conversation the second week in may versus the second week of june um um and certainly you know it would require staff to to sort of go through again with a fine-tooth comb to see where we find some some cost savings or we dip deeper into our fund balance and so i just we would be making a conscious decision that that's that's what we're doing and so uh and and how we incorporate it into our ongoing general funding uh expenses moving forward and so i i think everybody understands it's next spring that will be the difficult uh time so uh it's not an impossible task um but if that's the direction we want to go then we'll have to come back to the board with here are some places where you know we could make that happen okay well i appreciate that i'll just let people i think i may be a yes on this compromise unless someone wants to talk me out of it so let's get this vote going wait for the chair to come back i think i don't know if there's any other board discussion but i'm gonna i'm just to answer uh director greene if you want me to with regard to the to this but any specifics on what we understand about the the conversations uh the two schools are having with landlords but if you if you would like that or not i would like you to just briefly um discuss the extent of the threat to their viability and the conversations that they're having around their leases so very quickly and i might be off um with some months and sarah can certainly help with that um but we it came to our attention several months ago that um emerson school which is located in um uh uh israel temple thank you temple best israel it is a little late um they are located in their school building um and so not the temple itself but they have a separate school building and so the emerson k5 is located there uh monday through friday and um so the that congregation has asked for their building back so initially they were at emerson school was asked to vacate before july 1st this year and then that was they were unable to do so and so they are in negotiations my most current understanding is that they have negotiated through the end of 2022 so they still may need to move and find a site and be out by january 1 in the middle of the year and so so that's emerson and i and that portland village school that their landlord has asked them to be out by july 1 of 2023 so they are also looking for a site and they will need to they believe that they will need to sign a lease before the end of this school year and make plans for their transition both school communities have been looking and has been referenced tonight are taking in information about what current market rate is and working with their prospective school boards around you know their financial solvency and and what decisions they would be willing or able to make given where the market is at right now so that's that's my current understanding they're both that both schools have those are the schools that have landlords asking for their buildings back so that's thank you karina i'm gonna be a no on this i think with amy there about the what you said was really um i thought compelling about this doing this 500 000 or 600 however much it is as part of our fuller budget conversations i think is very appealing for me because there are lots of things that we are passionate about that we do want to include in the budget and this is important and is one of those things so i i like that process better than voting on this tonight so i'm going to be a no on this at this point but you may have gotten andrews you might get four so what we have on the table is an amendment the second amendment to approve an increase of the pass-through rate of the state school funds from 80 to 85 for k-8 charter schools beginning in the 2023-20 i'm sorry 2022-23 school year um do i have a i can't even remember if we have a motion okay so i'm going to put it to a vote um sorry all those uh the board will now vote on the amended amendment to resolution 649 approving the increase of the charter school pass-through rate from 80 to 90 85 percent beginning in the 2022-23 school year for charter schools serving populations of less than 50 percent historically underserved by race and ethnicity all those in favor indicate by saying yes
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yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no no no no and are there any abstentions it looks like the amended resolution 6499 uh passes by a vote of four to three which is good because this would have been extremely unsatisfying for me to not get to vote on that resolution as like the champion of charter schools in our district and then to be the big crouch point of personal privilege okay you could impact that could i yeah and jackson um i'm sorry student representative weinberg i am voting now okay do you have any comments um my only comment would be if i had an actual vote it wouldn't have passed but that's like i said say that again you're if my vote actually counted the resolution that amendment wouldn't pass just so people know okay thank you so now are we um process wise i'm so tired i'm not trying to okay resolution which is the amendment okay so we're going back to the original you can just just call it okay so we don't need a motion a second for this one it's already been done okay so we'll now vote to um on the resolution six 6499 as amended as amended thank you makes it easier i've read it 15 times thank you all those in favor yes yes yes yes yes any opposed and any abstentions and i didn't hear director greene i'm gonna guess your yes he said yes so the resolution 6499 as amended is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative weinberg voting grudgingly yes and one comment i'm gonna actually leave i have an ib test in 12 hours so goodbye jackson good luck tomorrow jackson good luck it's a four-hour ib bio test oh i'll be praying that is true i'm seeing that we still have policy revisions i would vote yes for the rest of it if people would like to know my question is is anything on this time sensitive or is this something we can bring back at our next meeting the revision of the calendar and the policy revisions and rescissions liz can we suspend or do you want to get the clock ticking first reading can't we just say first reading we don't vote i was going to say um we could do the first reading and then the second readings just do all just have a big the second reading would be on in our june meeting okay so the first readings um we have some rescissions that are in in the board packet they come recommended by staff and they were unanimously recommended by the committee for rescissions um the proposed policy rescissions will be posted on the board website the public comment is a minimum of 21 days contact information for public comment will be posted with palsy the board will hold a second reading of those policies on june 14th 2022 and um there is also a first reading on the um is it the it's the gun the weapons we also have a first reading on the um sorry just let me just get it in the packet here so i'm sorry i'm not seeing it the number liz could you it's 3.40.014 p and is it just the weapons policy yes so very briefly um this is the state legislature allows us i misunderstood your question that is the weapons policy and there is one other the injectable okay let me just do
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the weapons policy so the weapons policy were allowed by state as state law passed that allows school boards to also prohibit individuals who have concealed weapons permit from bringing those concealed weapons onto school property and so we are amending our policy to um take advantage of our ability to um say that people shouldn't be able to bring concealed weapons um on our school property so that's that's the first reading so that will be and that was unanimously recommended by that's really important and there's a statewide movement to encourage school districts to bring these type of resolutions forward because this is how it has to be done by individual boards so this is a really really critical measure hermann um that doesn't just give us part of that we had a long discussion on the committee about there's a very narrow exception to no guns other than uniformed law enforcement and so it came out of the committee with a unanimous recommendation for the first reading it'll be posted and there'll be 21 days for comment and the board will have a second reading on that policy on june 14th and then um general counsel large what's the the other one sorry 4.5 0.026 administering medicines to students okay this is also an important um another important um measure that uh policy revision that was brought to the committee by staff we had several discussions about it um i don't know if you want to give i think we should give at least a two sentence description if you could do that because i can't find on my packet right now yeah it it updates the policy to be more accurate about epipens and narcan so it allows schools to administer those um critical pieces that don't require specific prescriptions by individual students but can be used in an emergency setting and i believe there's a training component yeah so there's a this is just a revision of an existing policy but very important so again that policy will be posted on the board website public period is a minimum of 21 days contact information for public comment will be posted with the policy and the board will have a second reading on that revi those two revised policies on june 14th and just in the interest of being interested being complete there are some other cleanup edits along with it but those were the substantive edits that drove the amendment i say it's posted so if people are interested in what what it is and there's also i believe staff reports and thank you to the staff for bringing those forward and then next we'll consider the second reading of several policy rescissions and revisions um director brian edwards introduce do you want to do that now or should we if it's we can yeah we can we can hold it over let's hold it over then if it's not urgent yeah um and we'll just do one big policy adoption all right superintendent you look pretty excited about that i was excited about going home there was just one other item that the board meeting calendar we're finding holding that over yes yeah and also the um resolution to adopt revised diploma requirements oh that's a policy so on the board calendar um i'd actually like because we wanted to have a public discussion about some of the items related the board discussion so we could have that at the next meeting um versus just adopting it well so we have to do it when the public is awake sorry i'm not i'm not following we were supposed to vote today but we're just going to hold it over for two weeks right i don't know if you remember but there was a discussion when it got sent out that people were interested in in talking about the council people being the board not yeah i was going to say who were talking about sorry it was cryptic yeah sorry we were trying not to have a public um a public meeting on an email string and so so we're gonna talk about it at the next part can i just clarify a discussion next week and a vote on june 14th or a discussion next week is that discussion center thing well it's actually important so that we don't have meetings like this yeah well we got two more we got two more weeks to talk about all right michelle are you ready to call us we are adjourned thank you

Event 2: 5/10/22 - Board of Education Regular Meeting (meeting begins at 49:50)

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i suggest
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martini
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because i'd like to talk about it
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[Music]
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pardon me we're i'm sorting through some
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stack of papers here
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so this
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board meeting of the board of education
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for may 10 2022 is called to order
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for tonight's meeting any item that will
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be voted on has been posted on the pps website under the board and meetings tabs the 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 play times um goody good evening everyone and thanks for coming it's nice to see you tonight i see we have a full house mostly full and the portland public schools board of education values your input in making important decisions that affect portland students we also believe in the right of community members to observe and participate in board meetings and we want to carry out the work in front of us at the same time to ensure both the public has an opportunity to attend school board meetings and ensure the board can conduct the important business of the district i want to remind people of some basic rules of conduct which i expect will follow tonight we ask that all members of the public attending the meeting tonight treat each other staff and the board with respect and that's the expectation we have and i have as adults and we see we have young students in the audience we're modeling um that that conduct to our young people um individuals 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 those wishing to display play cards signs and our banners must remain in the auditorium foyer behind the seating area and may not block any attendees view of the proceedings and please if you would keep the walkways clear and aisles clear and in general um we would appreciate if you can just be mindful of others in the room and the words that you use and be aware of who's watching including the um our our community's most precious cargo i also want to note for everybody that we have two board members that are attending virtually um director hollins and director greene are joining us virtually tonight the first order of business is to recognize may as asian american native hawaiian and pacific islander heritage month may as you know is asian american native hawaiian and pacific islander heritage month and portland public schools recognizes the important contributions of asian americans native hawaiians and pacific islanders a pps our student and staff population across all academic programs and mission areas represent a wide variety of aan hpi ethnic groups including chinese vietnamese japanese filipino korean indian and more as we've seen a spike in anti-asian sentiment over the past years i'm pleased to note we have several student affinity groups across the district where students can better excuse me can develop a better understanding of how their own identity shapes their experiences as well as help students develop healthy self-identity and build networks both within and beyond the group through sharing experiences and strategies additionally last week the district communications team sent several resources that are available as we work together to create an environment of belonging a connection to caring adults and needed support to ensure our students are prepared to lead a more socially just world do i have a motion in a second to adopt resolution 6489 resolution to recognize may as asian american native hawaiian and pacific islander heritage month so moved second director brum edwards moves and director scott seconds adoption of resolution 6489 is there any board discussion yes i'd like to thank staff for bringing this forward um and also i also want to acknowledge um there's a reference to it in the resolution but there was a recent um statewide survey that came out that pointed to i think what what we all know but really validated um i think what we've known and seen what's happening in our community that the number of race-based hate crimes against against and harassment of asian oregonians is on the rise so i want to just appreciate the district staff for providing supports to our students who you know sometimes it's happening in our schools and also in the broader community and so i i'm appreciative that we recognize that our students and staff need support especially times like now
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thank you director broome edwards is there anyone else do we have any public comment on this item the board will now yes there's no other comments i i would love to share just a few examples to accompany the the resolution just uh to share some current efforts in the spirit of the resolution i want to share an appreciation for a lot of good collaboration with culturally specific community-based organizations that are helping to increase access to services and mental behavioral health supports for asian american students in particular at this time given some of what we're witnessing i also want to say on the workforce diversity front our new director of recruitment has really been prioritizing efforts to do some targeted recruitment at hiring bilingual and racially diverse administrators especially candidates of asian-american descent uh we're pleased this summer that uh the non-profit that supports our vietnamese dual immersion program is is working with us to host a summer camp for students who continue to be immersed uh in vietnamese and in addition senior staff uh they're working right now to establish dual language immersion community advisory groups for our vietnamese mandarin and japanese family and community members to hear directly from our parents and families uh and educators uh to to to encourage the dialogue around how best to serve and support our students so i just wanted to call those out because there are some some ongoing efforts right now that seems fitting to mention thank you so much for bringing visibility to those efforts i appreciate it and our community appreciates it too i'd like to hear from student representative uh weinberg if you have any thoughts about the resolution or from a student perspective and then we'll take a vote uh nothing right now thank you put you on the spot there um the board will now vote on resolution thank you for joining us director hollins i just announced that you were going to be virtual once okay that was fast um the board will now vote on resolution 6489 the resolution to recognize may as asian-american native hawaiian and pacific islander heritage month all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes all those opposed please indicate by saying no and are there any abstentions we the resolution i'm sorry 6489 um passes by a vote of seven to zero with student representative weinberg voting yes thank you thank you um 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 madam chair i had noticed that i wanted to um have a discussion about the but i'd rather um not have it at the very end of the board meeting if that's okay but the the summer the summer programming okay so did you want to pull that item that and you as well okay sorry i'm toggling back and forth but just as a point of courtesy does staff do we need to have it at the end of the meeting i'm trying to you have some questions about the range of our summer programming i do okay i mean we have something like eight million dollars in contracts we do uh very robust menu of summer programming we're excited to start telling our families about pending your consideration but let us know staff would be happy to describe all those efforts so do you want a motion on the business agenda and and then we take up this issue at the end of that vote i just think is a courtesy for staffing process wise can we vote on the resolutions minus 6492 well you can you can leave it in i just want to ask some questions about it okay is is now the time to do that then i heard you say you want to leave it in so do you want to just ask your questions before we take the vote then or do you want us to vote on the consent agenda and then vote on this separate item it does it can be all together let's let's do it so it's easier to have one vote let's do it yeah i don't want to do it at the end of the meeting because that's and i'm not opposed to it i i just um it's a big chunk of money so it's a big chunk of money and uh we have a really long meeting and we're gonna we'd be talking about and it's i mean i think it's amazing the opportunities are being offering yeah so let's let's go ahead
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and talk about um what are your questions do you want i sir do you want the motion i actually had some questions about the head start too which um i didn't send till this afternoon and mr camp well i think has joined us virtually so he's available to answer those too so we'll throw them all together so six four nine three six four nine four same conditions where we ask questions currently i didn't um get the questions that you had this afternoon so maybe what we could do is put a motion get it on the table um and then just open it up for discussion yeah motion for the consensus yeah the second were you first were you first yes okay okay so um we'll open the floor for questions then did you want to go ahead directory actually i think response by email will be fine so i'll just ask mr cantwell to reply to all of us um was that on both resolutions uh head start yeah okay thank you that's 6493 and 6494 and we'll get the responses by email and so the the next um item would be the expenditure contracts and you had a comments or questions yeah so um in the um packet we have a 8 million or maybe not quite that many but in totality all the summer contracts for the rp and i was i was trying to make sure i understood um how the where the money flows are coming from and how they interact so i guess i'll i'll ask these to the superintendent and you can um answer or have staff answer but um so it's my understanding the contracts that are in the agenda tonight um and there's a number of them a lot of them millions of dollars of them but they're primarily focused on enrichment they look like great opportunities for our students um but primarily enrichments and there's um 7.8 million and it's um [Music] it's my understanding that's coming from esser and then the my second question because i actually thought that was going to be this the um [Music] the academic programming so there's a second tranche of um funding that is coming out of the that is coming from the grants from the state that is another eight million dollars that will be the academic programming is that is that right and will that then will that come to those are grants they would come to the board for approval because they're we're receiving the grants or we already accepted the grants and it won't come back sorry that was right so question sure we we can certainly talk about and we mentioned in our last budget work session how these new summer programming monies are helping to support activities that were already under development so so what we have dr proctor or i don't know if dana and aaron berger is here to talk about the academic uh component of it uh and there is extended learning in addition to the enrichment opportunities with our culturally specific organizations but we had a pretty rigorous and comprehensive uh new formal rfp process which danny can certainly describe how it's intended to to complement uh you know the more the more academically uh focused uh we do have a wonderful range of as you saw uh activities that that will be made available to families but uh maybe between our two senior staff here they can yeah so just saying totality at 16 million because i was thinking it was just eight but it turns out it's eight and eight for a pretty amazing summer so that is that is correct is there a specific could you ask there is so i understand that because we have all of the contracts that are in the um in the consent agenda that are really the enrichment the programming i mean it's amazing for all levels like whatever kids passions are i think we've got something that matches that so my my question was on the academic that are the unfinished learning piece of things is that um where will we see that or where's the where does that program reside and how is it going to be rolled out i kind of have a good sense of reading all the contracts how the enrichment which is um so for the academic programs we are scheduling the four week long summer and summer academic academy and we are hiring teachers and we are building programming to support students with unfinished learning in the areas of math and ela
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and this will be for students in grades three through eight excuse me one through eight and uh we are we are in the process of identifying staff to hire we would need to hire a large number of teachers over 400 to address the learning needs of our students and we hope to support um you know thousands of students as we indicated before in previous board meetings um so that is exactly how those funds are going to be used and just to make sure i understand so the contracts for the summer enrichment um will there be a catalog for for students and that families will proactively and then for the academics will it be by invitation invitation it's by we've identified students based on data that would need and benefit most from the summer programming in addition to opening it up for for a large larger broad body of students so that we could support their learning needs in terms of the um what dr proctor um might also add is that dana has been working since last summer really sort of like building on the presentation that you all received uh last summer about summer acceleration academy and the all of the feedback that we got from parents about sort of selecting students being data driven that all has been and many of your feedback has really gone into what has been like seven months of planning from dr proctor's department around and coordination so the um the idea is that we really want to make sure that we're offering as many services to meet the wide range of our student and family needs so the you'll likely see presentations like we saw last year but they're deep in planning right now okay and and part of uh you know the the cost factor includes identifying um the the instructional materials and and intervention resources that would be used for students for the summer programming as well to kind of bridge their learning are you i just say my last question was if if they're invited to participate in summer school i can imagine how that would have gone over my house um but if i participate the are the enrichments um structured in a way that it wouldn't be kids like hey if you're invited to go to summer school you're not gonna have an opportunity to participate or are they um designed to be like time and schedule wise that you could yeah i think that the the goal has been to make them as complimentary as possible so within families we know that there are some students who are going to be identified to to go to summer acceleration academy and then the the update that you got to the um to the to the memo included the sites because we wanted to show how all of the programming will be happening in these buildings so oftentimes what we anticipate is that we'll have family members so that the whole family can be served the other thing is that dana and the team have done a really good job of working with our sun partners so if you do get called into summer school right there is a really engaging enrichment portion to that that gets carried out through our sun partners um and so the the way that it worked last summer is that they really focused on academics and learning in the morning and then in the afternoon they still had that sort of enriching enrichment activity so summer school was the same place where you could get creative learning and play as well as in the the sort of formal sort of camps that were happening and again the idea is that we want to give students as much options as possible and so just to try to meet their needs and so we'll sort of see that through through i think the program that's really complementary i have a quick follow-up question about um just are the so it are these happening across every or all of our buildings or in specific buildings we've identified 25 schools with which across the city that we will be offering the programs and then our will students receive transportation if they're if what they need is in another building we will give them the option of it is it the idea is the reason why we're offering in so many buildings is so that students can attend in in the location nearby thank you director holland i just wanted to make sure to clarify on the unfinished learning since it was the question so a significant portion is of course going to all the robust summer programming but it's also going to evening and saturday scholars uh credit earning opportunities teachers to make sure students are keeping up on diploma requirements so there's also the year round supports that are that are addressing unfinished learning as well that we're using these one-time monies for thank you for those uh the great questions uh director hollins thank you i just wanted to make sure we highlighted this program and what we're doing and that's why i pulled it from uh
01h 10m 00s
i think it should have been actually a actual resolution that we actually got to talk about in and hear more about these programs um you know when we look at some of these programs like sdi blueprint which i am a huge fan of um as we are looking at giving these monies to these summer programs and this exposure for our kids that don't usually have um i think this is one incredible thing that we're doing right now and this is literally talking about being children focused and children centered this is what we this is what we should be about 99 of the time um and so i just wanted to make sure we highlighted that and if you can tell a little bit about maybe one or two programs that you that warms your heart you know um just so we can kind of get a sense and i was also invited to um go and visit some of these programs for the summer so i will extend that invitation to any and every one of us on the board to go and staff to go um with me because i think it would be i think it's going to be awesome thank you so i will do a very quick overview and um i i don't have any favorites but um what is in front of the board right now are only 14 of 51 uh different summer programs these are uh the contracts that are over 150 000 these are programs that are serving you know upwards of 60 100 700 students these are our programs that get to scale um and so we have everything in that set of 14 contracts now this is just 14 of the 51 from uh traditional sort of child care like through campfire boys and boys and girls club that is sort of moving away from a traditional sort of drop-in center into being more focused on sel activities to really support students social and emotional learning and in talking with their executive director they are really interested in wanting to train up their staff to be really in alignment with some of our academic offerings and wanting to make sure that they have the knowledge that they're really supporting and complementing the district's academic work we also um are partnering with as you you'll likely hear this summer we're very concerned about wanting to make sure that we're doing prevention around gun violence and what we know about works and prevention is two things is that we're actually engaging students in positive pro-social activities like mentoring relationship development making sure that their basic needs are supported and also employment and we are really excited to partner with organizations like poic and erco who have been doing that work uh successfully um who are also have really strong employment components but we are also really excited about some of our newer organizations like i am more that is taking a literal a literacy based approach to social emotional learning through the summer really working with students who have been impacted by the pandemic and sort of getting really amazing writing and literacy activities to support that as a way that can be really therapeutic and during the summer in a way that's really engaging i'm really excited about some of our traditional partners like sei native american youth and family center but we're also excited about some of our newer programs i talked with director green recently about during the school year we partner with about 20 different culturally specific organizations and in the summer this is an opportunity to reach out to the community and try to think about new partnerships and partnerships with different types of organizations so an organization like feed the mass that focuses on health and nutrition and the science of cooking in a way that's really culturally relevant and if you want to see students doing knife work and handling fry bread and some of that that makes me nervous uh it's a great way to see just like all of the um the agency and the expertise that they got out of a program like that that's partnered so these 14 are just a sort of tip of the iceberg we're hoping that upon the board's approval we'll be able to publish the the catalog of summer programming on the enrichment side by this friday there will be a website that we blast to everyone that we want to make sure that folks know that will be available in multiple languages because we do want to make sure that our students and families have access to this free summer programming that our partners in in partnership with us are and with your approval of the funding to support this really amazing opportunity for families in in the area to be able to have these opportunities so um thank you for highlighting this there's more to come and we again i i hope that this summer along with visiting what the amazing learning that's happening in the summer acceleration academy uh that folks will in the same building kind of pop over to see the the cooking and the robotics and the steam and the plays and the sports and the wild diversity there's there's so much there so thanks for the opportunity so if i could just take the moment to
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thank danny and her team for a whole lot of work to vet and partner with over 50 organizations to to produce this range and since you're asking director hollins i do want to shout out one particular program that's our pil summer math program it's being slated to be staffed mainly by staff of color we're excited about a lot of our black educators who are really committed to working this program uh in a combination of math instruction and sports uh at the middle school level uh and we're also employing a lot of our high school students that are going to be uh helping to provide tutoring and academic support plus the athletics and that's being hosted at mcdaniel and roosevelt so i want to just highlight that particular program as well it was a real hit last summer yeah i visited last summer um because hoops is my my thing and it was amazing there's a lot of math going on but also um a lot of mentoring by the students um which is one of the things i was just going to say do you want to make a pitch for the what the older youth are doing as part of a lot of the programs it looked like that was a complimentary piece in addition to service to younger students yeah so um one of the things i forgot sorry thank you for that um i'm off the script so we're really excited last summer we had about a little over a hundred employment opportunities for youth and this summer in partnership with all of our partners they'll be offering summer jobs for over 522 students which is amazing students will be students will get to be interns camp counselors some of them will be stage managers some of them will be able to really explore and we think that you know in addition to the positive uh you know opportunity and all the things that happen when you're employed and you have that ability to learn a new skill great for violence prevention and also you know a lot of research talks about how important this enrichment activity goes into students developing agency in their learning and uh which you know has a connection to their ability to graduate so we're really excited about about that thanks for the thanks for the prompt thank you i want to also just recognize um director hollins for when you when this item was first pulled i was like oh boy i wonder did i miss something but the modeling um a culture of appreciation i really appreciate that and just starting us off um in on the right foot tonight because we have a long night in front of us um so thank you for that modeling that culture of appreciation um and inquiry appreciative inquiry i see you and um i'm also really excited as someone that spent um a couple summers actually right down the street from harriet tubman with my siblings my grandparents owned a home there it just went on the market and it sold for 40 000 over the asking price but just how these enrichment opportunities i remember actually going to tubman i actually had a job at dublin when i was 16 but prior to that i believe that the year before i was involved in those enrichment activities and all of my siblings were as well so i just think of you know what we would have been doing in the absence of these planned activities and i'm just really hopeful about um with you about the impacts that these um these dollars will have um we'll now hear from student representative weinberg yeah again also appreciation i was a part of the academic side not so much catching up but just advancing my education over the summer the past two summers actually and i just have seen so many other students especially my close friends who have engaged in the enrichment and academic side of things um had an amazing time so thank you and i had one question i think director hollins orbert edwards asked it about transportation um will there be transportation for students oh sorry it's okay overlooked a lot so oh sorry i apologize um we were saying that the reason why we offered so many locations is because it affords an opportunity for students to attend at the location that's closest to their home so there won't be transportation then to students okay on the enrichment side there will be some opportunities so as part of some of the budgets that you'll see some of our partners are sort of being creative with bus tickets with sort of getting like a common bus some of our partners through funding uh through other philanthropic funding were able to buy like a van so our partner coalition of black men has a van now and so they're taking students on field trips and really sort of using that so we've we've really um we're a really strong community because our partners have been so um strategic about sort of meeting those different needs um a big shout out to whitney because in addition to providing food for the summer uh acceleration academy at the same sites we're offering food
01h 20m 00s
our enrichment partners will be able to be able to access that food as well so is there going to be a virtual option for any summer enrichment or academic activities sorry can i go back to your question about transportation but there's more so yes so i also just want to make sure that that the board knows that trimet uh earlier uh announced that they're preparing to launch a new state-funded short-term pilot that will provide up to 30 000 free summer passes for high school age students across our service district so uh so this is the first summer summer where they're gonna the high schools are gonna pi so as you know during the school year uh we have a partnership with trimet so that our high school students have access to these free passes that will continue at least for this summer with the state funded program which means that you know from our end uh we will work with trimet to continue to advocate at the state level to that to ensure that we have we secure those funds through the summer so that's an exciting opportunity for you know all of our high school students this summer thank you and i i just have one final comment and that i would love i know we're looking at the contracts that are 150 000 and over and you mentioned the blueprint foundation i'm a huge fan of the blueprint foundation too it's very connected to the work i do at work which by the way your name came up and everybody loves you um anyway i would love to find out who those other contractors are just you know to stay connected in community and hear what's happening in other corners that aren't you know in front of us in in writing and um for anybody that's interested there's a fantastic um podcast interview uh from the numbers fm x-ray fm um this show is called the numbers and it's an interview with uh the founder one of the founders of the blueprint foundation duron coles who's it's a fantastic um view into climate action work for students of color and what he's doing to create a pipeline a workforce for uh 21st century portland thank you very much i just wanted to make one quick comment you kind of glossed over it um danny but you know one of the the best practices around spending for these one-time dollars is to really invest in people and activities that will have long-term benefit and that will build our capacity moving forward and i think we're really investing in a lot of our partners many of these partners that we see on this list are those that are in our schools all year round and we're really investing in their capacity and they're hungry to hear about you know our literacy training and um using our next the next generation science standards in there you know outdoor activities and that's i think a really important and lasting benefit here so as much as we can bring them into the fold in that respect it's to our benefit thank you sorry my question the virtual opportunities are there any for students over the summer i'm sorry i didn't hear are there virtual opportunities for students over the summer um so the programs primarily are designed to be face-to-face programs we are looking at the possibility of making an addition for some virtual options where we find that we are not able to have the students that are most needed to participate in the program so that they could have um the option as well but primarily we're aiming for the programs to be face to face thank you thank you very much i'm sorry um i think we're now ready to vote um on resolutions we have a motion on the table in a second um we're now ready to vote on resolutions 6490-6496 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions the consent agenda is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative voting yes thank you and um director greene i i you were you were a little bit quiet on this topic so i just want to make sure you didn't have any any comments quickly before we move forward no i just recognized that i talked a lot already and we were all on the same page about how amazing a lot of these programs are i was extremely excited to go down through the list and see not only a lot of the the larger organizations that we're familiar with seeing but to see some of the smaller organizations as well that we all know do um great um great work with the kids that need it most in the community so i'm extremely excited about this past um and about this getting through because this is a um a direct impact on the kids that we're looking to serve so thank you for giving me the time to share but i'm trying to be brief because i know we got a lot on the play tonight thank you so much and i also wanted to just call out
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that we do have a minority business enterprise um listed in this um list so happy to see that madam chair just it was totally buried in the consent agenda but i just want to recognize the work that the dsc and oscar calvert did around the bylaws it was a lengthy assignment and done very well so i want to just acknowledge our students hard at work and active in the governance of our district thank you and i let's see i think we're ready to move on to student and public comment thank you for that director broome edwards um before we begin i'd like to review our guidelines for public comment um first the board thanks you for taking the time to attend the meeting and providing your comments public input informs and improves our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board to actively listen to that end i'd ask each of us to give our full attention to the people in front of us our board office may follow up with board related issues raised during testimony we request that complaints about individual employees please 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 border superintendent we ask that you mail them to public comment all one word at pps.net and please make sure when you begin your comment that you clearly state your name and spell your last name and we'll make note of that 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 um ms powell do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment yes we have both our first person is nema cruz are we uh starting with student yes we're starting to study students first thank you mila cruz oh nima thank you ms cruz was miss cruz uh joining us virtually i don't think so i don't see her here we can come back and try her again if anybody sees miss cruz please please let us know and we'll allow her time to speak the next is lauren lachmann [Applause] can you um please state your name and then spell your last name my name is lauren lockman l-o-c-k-m-a-n [Applause] i want to start by just saying um mr guerrero it's so great to see you i wish we could have spoken sooner at the walkouts but good to see you now um on behalf of students families and community members of harry town middle school i'm here to talk about the suspension of mr two and the crisis that we are in to take away mr chu is to take opportunities away from students mr chu is more than just a teacher he's like family to us we count on him and he believes in us we need teachers that care about us and mr two was just that i've had him for two years now and whenever i'm having a bad day i instantly feel better when students go into his classroom we know that we will feel safe respected and heard removing mr chu is extremely detrimental to students mental health because we no longer have this critical connection to our teacher for pbs to rip him out of our classroom without a word without any move towards helping us through this trauma is abuse neglect and violence against our education [Applause] mr chu's removal is an immature example of pbs putting their petty workplace politics before students education [Music] in four out of my seven classes i have subs and my friends have even more out of the entire school on any given day there's an average of 15 subs out of 34 teachers and these in these classes we are not learning anything at all mr true's social studies class where we learn about social justice and civil rights has been replaced with meaningless videos and worksheets you claim to care about our education yeah you take away mr chu and don't even let him leave sub plans i'm worried because when i go to eighth grade and then high school i'm not gonna know anything and i will be way behind do you not care about our future it is also very telling that you took away one of our very few teachers of color to us it looks like pbs is continuing systems of white supremacy when we when we demand that you reinstate mr chu we are demanding that you consider our most vulnerable and our most verdant do what mr true would do this will benefit us benefit us all
01h 30m 00s
[Applause] we have shown up to the pps administration building six times and have been ignored almost every single time the one time that we were not ignored the employee talked in circles and gave us no real answers we should be treated with the same respect you would give an adult because there is no pps without pbs students [Applause] [Music] our demands are our basic needs as students access to education repair the harm you caused and bring back mr chu i'll close with some quotes from other students that you might have heard if you hadn't shut us out last friday in this building there's a sign right at the entrance that says our kids are worth it how is it if you're not hearing what we're saying to you at all if our opinions aren't being taken into account we're not worth it at all i like six subs like for every class it's like one teacher in every grade level bro it's not funny i had six subs yesterday i need a teacher i can't go to high school playing football doing all that if i have no teacher to teach me if you want us to get our education we need the actual educators here we want our education if we don't get our education with the subs we need actual educators i have a literal language arts teacher in my math class how does that work it's been over three weeks and you haven't told us anything more now you keep telling us that you don't know or that you can't help us or on your on our side but it doesn't really seem like it because you don't seem to be responding to anything we're doing what pps is doing for our school is nothing and it's not helping us for our education and we can't learn like this we can't end the school year off like this if you think taking away teachers and staff members is going to take away our voice our voice then you are wrong [Applause] hey oh good okay thank you perfect i want to just uh we're going to be playing video testimony and i understand the sound isn't really great so um we the the video has been captioned it's a youtube captioning so um bear with us but this is the best we can do technology wise tonight thank you this student is kelsey wong my name is kelsey and i grew up growing up in the lentz area since i was a little baby i've been at lunch when it was a still a k-8 i was the last eighth grader there so i went from kindergarten to eighth grade there and i've heard that you've been wanting to like split it up make that expansion version and move everyone that's english to marysville and i've been wanting to say that i don't think that'd be a very good choice considering that lent has a very vast community full of different people and i think that's helped a lot people just growing up in a lot a more impactful environment and be a lot more accepting of the world around us and if you were to split everyone up my little sister that would go there she's loved she like since you've incorporated spanish into the school she's been learning a lot more about it and she's been really happy and interested in it and it's just made me a lot happier to see how in touch she is with the community at school and i felt the same way when i was out there and i'm pretty sure my older sister would that went there as well would also feel the same way and the problems that would probably come up when you move out everyone that wants to go english and to marysville would be transportation my house to lent is actually a very close distance two blocks and it's easy to walk so i was saying for families that usually have parents that are out and do their jobs earlier than school opened and to have kids be able to be able to walk to school or to have like the usual bus set up that even though it's a bit right now and be able to reach school quite easily and with all the change just happened with the pandemic my little sister went through kindergarten the last part of kindergarten and like the entirety of her first grade and quarantine is isn't impacting her a lot and with the changes that it's become only a k-5 it's impacted lots of people it's like shortened the community up quite a bit and the teachers that go in there i think it's too much of a change for a lot of people especially for the younger kids and thank you
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thank you i don't know if she's watching but that was amazing [Applause] our next student is dulce zarita hernandez you hi my name is dulce um i actually grew up in lance k all the way from kindergarten all the way till i was in eighth grade now i'm a junior in benson and when i heard about you guys wanting to like break down the school or whatever i feel like that school has grown up with that community for so long and so you guys splitting up the school and then splitting up the families and making everybody go like everywhere i feel like this the way that the school is now was able to bring communities and different cultures and all these diversities together and everybody was able to like you know get to know each other and so you guys wanted to split up the school and like send everybody down to marysville i feel like that's very um that's going to impact a lot of families for example like the transportation to just get there the way the teachers grew up in that school the kids grew up in the school the families grew up in that school and so i feel like it's something that you really just have to consider not just for yourselves and what you guys want to do but for the kids for the next generations that are coming for the family that are coming and i mean like i feel like it's just i feel like it's not the best thing to do for the community itself and um a lot of people are gonna lose more from it than they are going to benefit from it so i feel like it's something that you guys really need to take into consideration for the kids that are growing up you know and um yeah i think just do your name and my again is and my sister also went to lymph so now she's at kellogg middle school since you guys like broke it down or whatever but yeah all good um roseanne what was her last name just so i can document zarita hernandez siri sarita hernandez okay thank you next we have a group of lent students who have submitted a combined testimony the lent leopards hi my name is jessica and i'm in fourth grade and i'm part of the dli slash spanish immersion and um in my opinion it's bad because we're separating our community and a lot of us have siblings who go here so if like um parents had like um children who went to high school middle school and elementary school and maybe preschool um then it would be like a really long drive for all of them and which could lead them to be late or them having to wake up really early and like um them being really tired during school like them being tired will like make them not pay attention because of how tired they are action i don't want next school to be spanish immersion only because i want my baby brother to learn his home language and english more than spanish immersion and then after that he can learn spanish the reason why uh lance shouldn't separate all american and uh it's banning everything up because some people i don't know some moms and dads could be struggling and don't know another school to put them at and that's why i think that everything is and [Music] and hi i'm rudy duncan i'm a fifth grader
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uh and deal in the doi program and um me and jessica here are gonna make a video so what is going on uh so there is a proposal called proposal f3 that changes uh some schools into a full doi and then separates the english name club program in the dli uh and then they send the english to a different school and why it's bad well it could it separates the community and it mostly affects our our school which is lent and bridger's in the bridger school and so in my opinion if this proposal comes true it will affect the youth that go to the school on a time consuming level and an emotional level it would separate uh both groups and so if you have friends of eoli your and deal life for example you would be separated for at least probably a year and so it also affects uh it affects the students really you can see it's bad because the teachers come here to see the students some of them come from at least one to two hours away from the school they have a connection with the kids so that's why they come here that's why they haven't left thank you leopards um we all decided to allow video testimony which i think is really effective um and they actually stayed under three minutes each um i think they did a really good job some sometimes better than the adults um yeah i should just note um rudy's mom who sent those in um one of the reasons why they couldn't come to testify is transportation so lent is in the furthest southeast corner so um i appreciate yeah thank you for that uh yeah they have farther to travel and thankfully we've got video options next we have chloe wolfson [Applause] okay hopefully everyone can hear me um can um do you mind um saying your name and then spelling your last name please i'm chloe wilson w-o-f-s-o-n um w-o-o-f so um as a proud student under mr two shout me out talk about a few things one as it's been said before there have been many steps at the school and makes me angry with their mouths some people to adjust to i think something everyone in this room can agree on is students have to have have gone through a lot this year and at our school we have gone through a lot with math mandates social distancing the two weeks where we will on hybrid school or online school and now we have to just to many many many subs today i had five subs aha hubs in place of five teachers there were only two t-shirts today in my class that were they actual teachers and won't subs so it brings me to my next point when you when pbs decided to spin message two it didn't feel like you did for the students it felt like it did for you it felt like you saw mr cheers of threat and you sprained him to do it for you the students have woke the students to get to my next point the students at the school have worked very hard to get answers so far we've gone many protests one last friday on friday students begged for people who are part of the district to come out and listen to them yet no one came out people in the district being acted like skill trend while the students begging francis acted like brave adults they worked very hard for answers and yet we still don't go on the full answer students really need a full answer and i'm scared that i won't be prepared for high school since i have three three he long term steps in my classes
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his and i know there are a few steps at the school who are doing good job but a lot of them aren't doing a good job and i don't think i'm going to be prepared for high school because there are so many subs and i'm really upset about that i'm really upset that you never ask the opinion when you check mr true away there was he really makes the school feel like much safer his classroom quite a safe space for us and he provided food for us because i'll be honest scrunch food is terrible and for students who didn't like it he provided cup of noodles her host um and people and i did see a sign i'm not sure if it's at this schooling as well i'll finish in just a moment but her husband mentioned that he does bring pump on noodles thank you thank you [Applause] next we have chris walters hello mr welters good evening my name is chris walters w-a-l-t-e-r-s i am the nutrition services lead or as i like to call myself the head chef at mcdaniel high school um it is a lovely lovely high school beautiful building and well worth the 200 billion spent on it which brings me to the next point there aren't enough custodians to take care of this high school the custodians we have work incredibly hard but they're constantly in crisis mode because there aren't enough of them and as a taxpayer as well i have to wonder why should i vote yes on the next school bond if you're not even going to invest in the custodians to take care of the buildings you already have [Applause] another thing with mcdaniel every morning i get an email because i'm on the staff email list a unfilled sub email because there aren't enough teachers there aren't enough subs and there's always at least one position open every day usually more than that where they're begging teachers to give up their planning period to cover for other teachers because you all don't have enough teachers and i kind of gotta wonder why this this is happening i mean you've got all these people with fancy suits who are telling you we need to cut teachers and i'm guessing these people with fancy suits are telling you that the custodial problem will work itself out at some point and they may be telling you that it's okay that nutrition services workers are paid poverty level wages and i mean it's budget time i'm guessing the folks in the fancy suits aren't asking to cut their pay but everybody else seems to be on the downside of the cuts and i think it's time that you all invest in people invest in the people who teach the kids invest in the people who feed the kids invest in the people who keep the schools clean and safe and healthy for the kids thank you thank you greg myers all right you guys couldn't pick somebody else that's a tough act to follow i can't tell you right now good evening my name is greg myers m-e-y-e-r-s and i am a head custodian for the portland public schools i've been a head custodian for 16 years um i'm here tonight to talk to you about the ongoing staffing crisis that we are having in our custodial and nutrition service department there are several factors contributing to the crisis but the overriding issue is the substandard wages that the custodial nutrition service departments have been experienced for many years now this isn't a this isn't a thing that just popped up with a pandemic this i've been here 16 years it's been a fight every contract to get three percent uh i'd like to present a couple of
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examples to you how non-living wages are directly affecting our ability to hire custodians and to properly staff the schools with our existing custodians we started actively recruiting custodians at the start of the pandemic once we knew that we were going to need to bolster our staffs to meet all of the sanitation regulations by the state at that time we had anywhere from 10 to 15 applicants each week three weeks ago we had three applicants scheduled to be interviewed none of them showed up in addition to the numbers of people applying for custodial positions dwindling the quality level of the applicants has also diminished we need to have the ability to attract quality people who want to make this job a career it's a career for me i'm not leaving i'm staying as the job market has gotten more competitive over the last year it has become obvious that our attempt to keep up with the private sector is still lagging behind these people are going to take jobs that are paying more than what we're offering in the private sector and believe me somebody would much rather get paid 20 an hour to flip burgers then get paid 16.70 to clean up toilets vomit i mean that's our job that's what we do we have no problem with it but we you've got to compensate us for this another example of how our wages have affected the existing custodial staff an offer was given to the custodians who work on the east side of town to transfer to west side schools which the west side schools are always desperately short on staff i believe maybe one or two people actually transferred over there the simple reason that more custodians did not transfer is because the majority of our staff live and work on the slightly more affordable east side of town and with no compensation you would in effect be giving yourself a pay cut due to the cost of having to drive the extra miles if you're not being paid a wage that you can live on why would you volunteer to take a pay cut anybody want to answer feel free i'm not i'm not taking a pay cut i'm fighting to get every penny i can another example oh okay well i will i won't give you another example i will say though uh please amend the budget to fund competitive wages so we can hire enough staff to ensure safe and healthy schools for our students thank you for your time thank you very much i also um i'm sorry i didn't get your last name i didn't get your last name but if you'd like to submit uh your comments in writing we will we will take that to consideration i i have a question i have a question i have a question no no come on i got you because you're talking about a living wage what would that living wage look like for you guys well that's interesting you asked that because uh we did have a conversation with one of our board members uh that gave us some actual numbers for that were provided by the city of portland the the the wage this was from i believe two years ago now to live in the city of portland it was basically you had to make twenty dollars an hour that's just bare minimum and we are currently starting at sixteen seventy an hour um and the reason for that is is because over the last fifteen years our wages have been kept at a minimum including us having our wages frozen for three years so every year that we have lagged behind at three percent three percent we keep falling further behind and now with the inflation rate climbing we're going to just keep sliding down the hill so 20 dollars is just to keep a roof on your head and feed your kids and that's what we're here to do thank you we appreciate you next is beyond you [Applause] i wanted to apologize for my impact if comparing the three-fifths compromise the eld policy offended any board members the way we counter students for the budget and the three-fifths compromise are not on the same scale i want to recognize any potential harm created from that comparison beyond you why you speaking on eld policy in hopes the board will amend its inequity from our budget
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it is true that all pps students are counted at least 1.0 which largely goes to funding classroom teachers and building wide supports however eld teachers are funded by a separate body of federal and state money the majority of which is eod state dollars that state allocation is thousand three hundred dollars per student if we multiply that by our three thousand seven hundred and thirty seven students the state budget for eld should be around sixteen million dollars but the budget reports around twelve so where is that 4 million dollars when i say eld students are being counted as less than 1 for their eld educators it's because we determine how many eld educators are available in this district by an annual alpha test we give each year we then use that eld money to staff our eld educators after the test we used to count all students as one in the new policy if a student scores higher than an emerging score they can be counted as less than one in staffing eld educators for them eighty-five percent of our pps students score higher than an emerging score counting students who need support as less than other students based on an annual standardized test is the racist policy i'm trying to point out [Applause] we have not received full elpa test scores in almost three years this model's impacts will likely be felt when the district readjusts for test scores in future days to come last week this district reported that eld staffing increased by 10 but the budget shows it only went up by 1.3 teachers and 2.3 educational assistants the district stopped counting kinder dli students for eld staff in 2019 the recounting of those students is being used to praise this model when it has nothing to do with the actual weighted formula itself we would see an increase from our 16 dli elementary schools and their kinder students if they were counted with the old model or the new one my hope is that this board understands that if we give more to a group of 500 emerging students at the expense of giving 3 000 potentially less that it cannot be called equity we want to counter newcomers as more than one and increase eod services for them we just don't want that to come at the expense of providing less educators for the majority of our eod students what district leadership shared with you last week is nowhere close to the conversations they had in private with educator groups so our frustration is coming from the lack of transparent communication with this district under this board's management how do we trust the system when educators are told one thing and the board has told another thank you thank you isabel johnson hi my name is isabelle johnson sorry once again it's a little nervous here um this is some tough acts to follow so i'm gonna do my best um i think i feel i'm at the risk of sounding like a broken record but i just feel that we can do better for the students and the teachers i am the parent of a glencoe elementary student and i'm also on the pta board and i have i'm at working on a joint letter from other ptas and i've contacted other schools and there is not one school i've contacted that's excited about the budget understandably so but every school is being affected even schools that aren't experiencing large cuts it's all of this it's very destabilizing and so i've gone through and i've talked with different schools and to back i had i had the opportunity a couple weeks ago to sit in on a listening session with rob nose our oregon state representative and one of our educators at glencoe also teaches that groud had invited some other educators and he kind of wanted to find out you know what was going on in schools and she said this is the hardest year of any educator's tenure and he was really surprised he actually thought that the pandemic would have been the harder year and she said no she said i'm in two schools every week and every week there was an educator crying in the hallways and i just again feel that we really need to support teachers and what i heard the student from tubman saying is they have subs every day and they're not being supported so but why do we have so many subs i don't feel it can just be because teachers are out sick
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teachers are burning out and the students are the ones that are then suffering and it just feels like we need to support all everybody we need to support the students and the teachers because at the core level if we don't have students and we don't have teachers we don't have a school like they're i understand you know we have the district and we need the board and all of that but we wouldn't need them if there were no students and there were no teachers so and also i don't want to leave them out the custodians and the nutritional services people who are working so hard at all of the schools and i just i don't want to say that it has to be an e is it only smaller class sizes or do we just do the targeted interventions but can we have it all i spoke to my friend at woodmere and she works with an ea who's been in the district for 40 years and she said back in the day we used to have an ea in every single class and i just wish and hope that we can get to that point again to where we're supporting fully supporting all of the students and all of the teachers thank you thank you grace groom hello grace groom here thank you for hearing me tonight um i had hoped to speak with you during the work session so i feel kind of badly taking up a slot here during the um board meeting but um you ran out of time you had a long night ahead of you and unfortunately during teacher appreciation week you couldn't hear from a teacher for two minutes that was kind of a bummer but i'm here tonight and i would like to share with you um first of all elevating my own students voices some letters from my students and what they are thinking about and caring about these days we were studying opinion writing so they took their pencils and took some action in my opinion the school district should spend money on teachers the reason why is because teachers are fun and exciting one of our teachers is being cut our technology teacher it is fun and exciting to go to technology for example kindergarten through fifth grade won't be able to learn typing the right way also you learn from computers and technology is part of our school third of all we're working on transition words typing helps exercise your fingers in conclusion that's why we should keep technology sincerely romeo dear school district i think you should not close technology the reason i think this is because if you close it down how will kids learn typing they won't learn graphs they won't learn coding this is why i think you should not close down technology that was from everett dear school board i know you're probably going to shut down technology at our school but please don't in my opinion i think you should keep technology at our school i think this because i love technology for example technology closes if it closes down at our school how will we learn typing also if we have also if it closes how will we learn to understand things on the internet then we can't understand important information in life it's also a lot of people's favorite and if you close it down next year they will be devastated this is why i think you should not close down technology from our school from harper and the last letter to share dear school school board do you like technology well i do i think that we should keep technology next year in my opinion technology helps us learn for example typing helps our muscles and our brains too a lot of kids love all capitals tech just because the bigger people are bigger and have more power doesn't mean they get to make the little people suffer please don't cut teaching positions please love presley i heard um director comston you mentioned earlier how great it was that our summer program is investing in people because that's best practice with spending these one-time funds it's best practice in spending funds period in schools investing in people and i i would ask all of you to bookmark your board book volume 1 page 278 fte by major function and employee type the areas that as far as i can decipher are closest to the students since we are all about centering students have grown actually nutrition services has gone down three percent and this great pandemic miss green
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i'm sorry to interrupt you the buzzer went off um about 20 seconds ago and so i just um what we might would ask you to to wrap up your comments please we have a long meeting ahead of us and we i really appreciate you sharing your students and also for the invitation to visit your classroom which was the highlight of that week several weeks ago thank you so uh bookmark page 278 and you will see if you do the percentages that all of the categories that as far as i can tell are closest to students and serving students custodians teachers special education nutrition staff they have either gone down in spending from pre-pandemic to now or only increased minimally according to your numbers um at most seven percent whereas uh the things that are furthest away from students have increased close to 30 percent such as support services in central office um support services community services activities it actually says this activities that are not directly related to educating students has gone up 35 percent invest in people and best in your students thank you miss groom [Applause] and last is natalie spears natalie spears okay um if natalie spears is not in the house um is miss uh cruz in the house and if not we'll com we'll conclude i did learn that she had canceled okay can we get one more comment from the waiting list who's the first one on the waiting list jamie ackerman harvey yes jamie ackerman harvey i don't know if she has a link though uh jennifer stackhouse lucia mello ingrid fish steven segal [Music] [Applause] thank you you'll be our final commenter mr siegel hi i'm steven siegel s-i-e-g-e-l i am a parent of two students who have gone through portland public including a freshman currently at mcdaniel high school i'm also a special education teacher at a neighboring school district and a proud member of my union and a union leader i'm here today in solidarity supporting mr brian ii and the students and community of harriet tubman middle school i truly believe that an injury to one is an injury to all and i'm modeling a culture of appreciation for the harriet tubman community i'm here to talk with you about two things i care deeply about academic freedom and restorative justice firstly academic freedom is crucial for good teachers to be able to move beyond the constraints of a limited curriculum and engage students authentically in real world problem solving for those of you who have not yet read it or have forgotten what the contract for pat educators says it includes the following in article 10.1.1 professional educators may introduce controversial materials provided such presentations discussions and materials are appropriate and relevant to course content in grade level subject to accepted standards of professional responsibility that is exactly what mr two did with his students informing them of the plan to expand the freeway and close their school building and helping them to find ways to express their feelings and concerns about that prospect perhaps if you had been genuinely engaging the students and parents of harriet tubman middle school in the decision-making process the response would have been different but when i hear that you locked the doors to this building when the students walk out and show up here i'm concerned that demonstrates how interested you really are in their feelings and concerns pps portland public schools has a long history of ignoring students and
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community here's an opportunity to do better secondly the data clearly shows there is no more effective way to address harm to others than through restorative justice mr chu has allegedly caused harm he has also been harmed rather than taking the familiar route of punitive action turn instead to restorative practices i thought this was a district seeking to move away from exclusionary policies and toward embracing robust restorative practices now it's time to put your money where your mouth is and do it restorative justice works please wrap up this investigation in a timely manner facilitate a restorative process for all those harmed and allow the students of harriet tubman middle school to get their teacher back before the end of this school year thank you thank you thank you all for your comments um and your concerns uh feel free to follow up with our board manager should you have something specifically you'd like to follow up with and we'll we're going to move forward thank you for showing up and thank you for your testimony tonight can we take just a two minute pause just a little a little breather stretch break oh
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uh so good evening chair de pass vice
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chair scott student rep weinberg members of the board and superintendent guerrero yeah it's good to see you and first of all this is off script but um i want to say and i know our sei friends i think have mostly gone home but i want to make sure my my 16 year old is going to be working this summer for the city which is wonderful and a lot of our youth are going to be working for pps my my 16 year old will be making 15 an hour which is a fair wage for 15 year old i really hope that our nutrition workers are making more than our student workers this summer thank you um and then back to my scripted uh and that's you know for a 15 year old or 16 with the job um is like that's amazing that's i'm going to go buy my own clothes it's a thrill to her and i'm glad she's doing it and that's good for everybody in the whole time professional school workers yeah yeah thank you thank
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you um so first of all uh thank you for engaging in the work of overseeing our district and your commitment to making sure that next year is a better year for our students it has to be the work of setting the budget creates the parameters in which our district can endeavor to meet the needs of each one of our students i want to thank you for listening today as i speak on behalf of all 4 000 of our professional educators who i have the privilege to represent and for listening to all the community members who have written and testified about how this budget these numbers and spreadsheets impact our students in our schools and classrooms every day bridging that difference making sure that our high level plans are in service to our daily reality that is our task so um i want to start with a little history of where we've been this year with the budget and staffing about two months ago uh pps informed labor leaders of a plan to cut 18 million dollars from our classrooms and the rationale was a belief that we would lose eight percent of our state funding due to a loss in enrollment that was in february since then the financial picture has gotten much rosier we are not losing funding in fact you announced last month 118 million dollars in new spending much of this from additional one-time sources however a majority of those 120 teaching positions that were cut in february when pps thought that we had an 18 million dollar shortfall remain and we are and are currently written into the draft budget so i'm here again today because we still have the opportunity to make sure that next year is a better year for our students the question before us is how to best use our funding to accomplish that goal the budget is huge and complicated i have it here and all my dog marks i appreciate all that work went into it i've really enjoyed it um but i want to bring this back to what is simple our students needs are greater than ever our educators are more overworked and more demoralized than ever and we have a stable general fund for next year in a windfall and one-time funding it is your charge in passing a budget to direct these resources where they'll make the biggest difference to our students and that is in the classroom and while the budget is complicated there are simple answers to some of the questions that keep coming up and i want to get some of these facts on the record excuse me and we got slides thanks for helping yes okay so first of all and this one came up even last week did pps cut teaching positions so i want this to be really clear yes this is from last week's materials from may 4th pps has cut 54 elementary school classroom positions 5 k-5 classroom teacher positions and 24 middle school school classroom teacher positions in addition we learned through an information request that special education staff is being reduced by 26 licensed student-facing positions and about six fte for para paraeducators so yes we are cutting teacher positions here's what these cuts look like in many schools it means combining what had been three sections of a grade into two sections so for example if there are sixty 4th graders this year in three classes of 20 pretty nice number next year they'll be in two classes of 30 each that's what that's one cut right um in some schools it means combining two grade levels into one classroom fourth and fifth grade together with a teacher splitting their time trying to do both for students staffing cuts mean that each student gets less attention and support every day of the school year so the next question is do we have to cut teachers so our general fund is stable funding from the state is slightly up per student for next year and it is slightly up overall plus unlike any other district in our community we have the teacher levy which maintains 900 teacher positions that this fund is based on property tax and won't decline even if enrollment does that's a third of our teachers and the student success act was passed to reduce class size and support student mental health and behavior needs these funds are stable so funding is not the reason to cut teachers we have the funding the rationale i've heard recently for cutting teachers is because of the pps staffing guide so the pps staffing guide is is behind you from the budget materials
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when we entered the staffing process this spring pps used the staffing guide from before the pandemic to determine where we had too many teachers and then those positions were cut so where did this guide come from and does it represent what students need it's important to know that our our staffing guide did not come from the state it is not based on best practices if it were we'd probably be using the quality education model it is not an agreement between pat and pps actually we do have an agreement about class size from pps when superintendent guerrero first came on and and director brim edwards was there as well one of the first acts of collaboration was to agree on class size thresholds the idea was that these numbers weren't hard caps but they weren't lofty or aspirational either we agreed that class size should be below these numbers whenever possible and that this was an achievable goal but that's not the guide that pps used in deciding to cut teachers back to the pps staffing guide it's simply a tool created by people within pps to distribute teachers across all of our schools given the constraints of a budget at a certain time the chart the numbers in the chart were created and are easy to change and in fact it's been changed this year all the numbers in bold are bolded because they were adjusted down during this staffing cycle using these pre-pandemic ratios and enrollment projections for next year pps determined how many teachers each school should have and the rest were unassigned so this is that moment where i'm going to ask you to think about your role bridging the difference between spreadsheets and high-level thinking in the reality on the ground in our schools and the question is are our schools overstaffed this year according to this staffing ratio guide the answer is yes and that's the reason for the 120 teacher cuts which is now down to 88 thank you and the 26 special education cuts that are now written into this draft budget but according to the lived experience on the ground our schools are desperately in need of more adults in the building so this weekend i asked the people who know best the teachers the educators at our csi tsi and title 1 schools whether their schools have sufficient staff to meet the needs of their students i received 37 responses from the building reps at 29 of our csi tsi and title 1 schools and the first question i asked them was if their school has the resources it needs this year to meet the needs of their students 75 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed that their schools have the resources that they need this year to meet the needs of students yet seventy percent of their schools said they're losing staff and in fact only five of those csi tsi or title one schools reported that their schools are gaining staff i'm looking at next year only one of our csi tsi or title one schools reported agreeing that their school has been given enough staff to meet student needs and that's the next one so the idea that our schools are overstaffed this year does not ring true to the people in those schools i want to take a closer look at our k5 schools so again i applaud you on making the making 24 the maximum class size for our csi kindergartens this is a great first step and along with having eas in each class would make sure that our youngest learners in csi schools get a level of attention similar to what is mandated for students one year earlier in preschool but our tsi and title 1 school still have kindergarten classes as large as 28. our csi schools still have fourth and fifth grade classes with as many as 32 kids this includes saban a tsi school where kindergartners and first graders will be in classes of 29 and 4th graders will be packed into classes of 31. this includes chief joseph a tsi school where kindergartners will be in classes of 27 and third graders in classes of 28. and remember if all goes well those classes will be even larger because we want our community to come back to our public schools not to leave and our class size projections are based on the
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assumption that more families will leave pps staff has already improved our elementary school class sizes since those projections were first shared in february thank you it's noticed it makes a big difference with a little more investment we can ensure a better year for more students including those at chief joseph and sabin as well as grout and glenn coe and louis and bridal mile who all currently have classes staffed to have near or above 30 students now i want to talk about middle school i'm going to take a drink water for this as you know it has been a uniquely difficult year for our middle schools and you've heard about it tonight and you've been hearing about it all year several of our middle schools are in full on crisis as has been reported throughout the year our middle schools are struggling to keep our students safe let alone learning yet according to the class size document from may 4th you are cutting 24 middle school teacher positions according to the budget draft and i don't know how to understand what the difference is here you're cutting 38 licensed positions from middle school that's on page 134 of the printed edition we have eight middle schools that are identified as tsi or title one you probably won't be surprised to hear that reps from every single one of these schools disagreed or strongly disagreed that their school has enough staff and resources this year to give students the academic social emotional and behavioral support that they need yet six of the out of eight of those tsi and title one middle schools are losing staff under the current budget george tubman beaumont kellogg mount tabor and lane are all losing staff every one of these schools will have class sizes in the 30s in their neighborhood programs losing staff from what we have now to next year there'll be fewer adults in those schools educators at these schools are pleading for more staff without me making any suggestions the asks from these eight schools were nearly identical educators asked for lower class sizes and full-time building-based restorative justice coordinators additional counselors and wraparound supports fully resourced special education teams and more support with behavior including student management specialists and behavior interventional specialists of course you have all said that if we need to make cuts the classroom is the last place we should look so if you believe it is necessary to cut from classrooms to cut from our middle schools and from special education i am sure you expect to see cuts from the central office as well and so the question is has pps made cuts from central office um when some of you asked this question last month um the answer was quickly given yes we have um and then you asked for the details thank you for asking for the details this is a good example of why the details matter the deeper dive you requested reveals that the majority of the 6.7 million dollars reported as savings from central office for this year was simply unfilled positions the majority of which are positioned in our schools that were never filled this year for next year the majority of the 7.3 million dollars in central office savings shockingly is a reduction in 19 special education positions and 13 custodial positions from our schools this is from a document shared last last week in answer to board questions so no it does not appear that pps has looked for cuts outside of our classrooms and no no reasonable person would consider cutting special education professionals and not hiring custodians to keep our classrooms clean constitute a cut from the central office on the contrary pps has grown its central office staff substantially over the last five years and the budget proposal adds central office staff growth again the number of central office academic administrators has grown from 34 to 57 over the past five years and that's from information from an information request and there are currently at least 155 central office employees making over a hundred and ten thousand dollars a year so i want to be clear that's not building administrators that is central office employees who work here in this building an analysis of the budget from 200 2017 to now shows a 44 increase in the amount we are
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spending from the general fund to support the central office while only a 23 increase in what we are spending on student-facing staff while a strong functional central office is certainly important the clear trend of shifting resources out of classrooms and into the central office is not student focused we can do better hello for the record my name is angela bonilla i'm the president-elect of pat i started my career here at pps as an instruction an educational assistant at wrigler a csi school i was part of the first group of bilingual and bicultural dli residents and then returned to wrigler to teach fourth grade spanish immersion i was the first black teacher most of my students had had their entire academic career i later taught at cesar chavez k8 as a sixth grade self-contained teacher then fourth grade spanish immersion again at scott elementary just in time for the start of the pandemic i'm currently an instructional coach and i support instructional leadersh the instructional leadership team as well as co-facilitate our student intervention team i live breathe and love our title one tsi and csi schools it's all i've ever known as an educator over the past few months i've seen multiple families students educators and workers who are on the ground every day at our title csi and tsi schools come to speak to this body i have seen them voice the immense need of our students during their testimony on the impacts of this budget i've heard about mental health needs the fights and trauma exposure responses in our middle schools and i've seen several on this board imply that only our most privileged families are fighting this budget and this push for equity that narrative must end here many of our community have gotten off of work have found babysitters have pushed back the unpaid planning they do every evening to share their concerns with you we come here because we are fighting to have great public schools for all students regardless of ability zip code race or home language we come here and speak our truth to your power because we live breathe and love our title one tsi and csi schools so i know you all ran to be on this board because you want to help kids in our schools you ran to reverse the shameful racist legacy pps pbs has when it comes to serving our black brown and indigenous kids we are all leaders because we want to be in a position to uplift all students especially those who have been pushed to the margins but that change can only come from leveraging the power given to us by our constituents into action we need to bring that high level assessment down to the ground level reality so now that you have elizabeth slides and data uh before you i want us i want to bring us to the possible solutions i firmly believe that we can and must do better because i know we share the goal of better supporting our students at csi tsi and title 1 schools and i know we can take the next step with our budget amending what you have been presented to put our resources where they will make the biggest difference every day for our students and that's in our schools and in our classrooms so here's what our students need we need you to cost out and prioritize restoring classroom educators to our title tsi and csi elementary schools elementary is really close to having a good ratio a few more fte could be distributed and that would make sure that no class is over 28 in a csi tsi or title one school title one schools like saban should not have 29 student kindergarten classes so let's remedy that we need to cost out and prioritize a serious investment in our middle schools i heard director greene asked months ago what it would cost to have small class sizes across the district i have not yet seen that assessment and i go through that board book religiously so what would it cost to ensure that no students in our t in our title csi and tsi middle schools have classes of more than 30 students a serious investment in our middle schools includes school-based wrap-around support these schools all need a counselor social worker and restorative justice coordinator in the building having one or two folks at besc who are deployed when there are crises is reactive instead of preventative [Applause] we need to restore cuts to special education we need educators on the ground in the schools building relationships with students and already there to help before we hit a point of crisis
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sonia renee taylor states we will not go back to normal normal never was our pre-corona existence was never normal other than we normalized greed inequity exhaustion depletion extraction disconnection confusion rage hoarding hate and lack we should not long to return my friends we are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment one that fits all of humanity in nature we need the district to join us in stitching this new garment please amend the budget to divert resources from the central office to our schools restore special education positions restore classroom educators provide true restorative justice support to our middle schools believe the educators you employ when we tell you what we need to give our kids the schools that they deserve thank you thank you [Applause] thanks sure sure to pass i actually have a couple questions if if you don't mind so thank you for the testimony i really appreciate it and angela i hope you don't mind emailing us the solutions i tried to write them down but it would be great so we can dig in a little bit on what those might look like um i just wanted to ask sort of going back a little bit um because elizabeth you talked about how how um pps is not losing funding and we stable general fund and levy and i i think it's true when we look at the revenue side right we do see that that growth you talked about um we also know projections show the expenditures growing even more than the revenue which is what's resulted in the shortfall and i guess i just want to get from you a sense of do you do you agree with those revenue or those expenditure projections because as we've talked about before i mean it's yeah i mean that's what drives it right so we can the the potential need to make those reductions so yes i believe inflation is real right and prices go up um what i know as well is we were told in february that the reason to cut those teachers was because a budget shortfall of 18 million dollars because of a of a belief that the general fund funding from oregon was going to be reduced but to match our drop in enrollment that didn't happen so i i'm not saying that we have all the money in the world i'm saying the cuts that were made in february were not based on a need to make those cuts and i know you and your colleagues have all said that the classroom is the last place that we should be cutting we made those cuts without even seeing what was coming from the state yeah that's actually what my question is about because my understanding from the presentations we've had is that the state school fund actually did decrease and the only reason that we see an increase is due to the transportation reimbursement and so that it's the the transfer to our transportation costs went up tons and we get a 60 reimbursement from the state and so that's wrapped into that state school fund and without that like the transportation costs went up like 60 percent and so without that bump in the state school fund when you're looking at what we actually have to be able to use for teacher salaries we did have a decrease that was my understanding and i may be incorrect i can share you the financials from the state that i shared um a month or so ago and does that include that 60 transportation reimbursement in them [Music] 70. sorry okay yeah that'd be great if you could share those i think what's was important to me is i want to make sure that we're starting with the same set of of certain facts in terms of the dollars because then we can really move on to the solutions and what i'm worried about is when i because i hear it from you and a lot of your members that write is we don't need to make cuts and and i don't think factually that's true i think when you look at projected expenditures and projected revenues there is a shortfall and we can dig into exactly why and where that's coming from and you know you say inflation it's inflation but it's wages going up i mean it's all it's all those things driving and i've been doing budgets for a long time this is a common it's a common it's very difficult to explain to the public and i get it a lot when i used to be a budget director that they say you used to have a million dollar budget and now it's a 1.5 million dollar budget why are you telling me you have to cut because well because their expenses are 1.6 absolutely and i think what's important to remember is that we're not saying there don't need to be any cuts we're saying they shouldn't be cuts that affect student facing building-based positions okay so that's an important distinction because now we can move on to that question of once we agree on what that shortfall is where does it come from and and i think you know going back to noting that you know 80 of our budget is sort of sort of classroom and 20 is is sort of the other things if i'm getting those those statistics right you know again we often hear that you know you know cut admin cut admin absolutely let's look for it i appreciate the information you brought forward today and i think we should you know dig into some of those things but i also know that you know we could probably get rid of you know huge swaths of the central office and we still wouldn't solve the shortfall given given the size of what it is and so i guess i want to be realistic with the public about that as well when 80 of our costs are coming from teachers and staff there's going to need to be some
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reductions there and and and again it is driven by wrong i mean if we didn't lose 4 000 students we would have higher state funding that would be able to make up some of the shortfall actually i don't believe that's true because our state funding was already set so if we have more students the biennium already happened right the state legislature set the funding for two years before and they did not reduce it because students did not come back during the pandemic so actually the enrollment drop is not impacting our our and our funding much because our enrollment is similar our drop is similar to the drop in the state yeah i'll defer to smarter people on that um who can answer the question because because no i actually meant i meant elizabeth instead of myself she was smarter than you i'm sorry let me rephrase that i don't know the answer i will defer to smarter people such as you claire hurts other people who know this better ooh my apologies for that i got you certainly not yeah i think it's also important to remember that we are not say we specified returning those positions to our title csi and tsi schools so even if there is a divide between what we can cut at central office and and bringing back all 88 of those positions we're pointing out well let's focus on special education let's focus on our middle schools let's focus on our title csi and tsi schools yeah and and then my last question is um you know you talked about the windfall in one time which we do we have a windfall in one time my understanding of the proposed budget we're also spending you know a significant chunk of our of our um reserves about 40 million dollars and i guess my question to you is if we know projecting out that spending that one time now to se and some of that's going to save teaching positions means that we might lose those teaching positions next year if that enrollment doesn't come back and if the state doesn't you know kick in with a qem model are you okay doing that this year given the learning loss keeping those positions even knowing that could mean actual layoffs next year because that is my understanding of the trade-off and i guess i would say the trade-off that we're potentially facing and then if we were to spend even more that trade-off could get even larger let me go back to what i said before because we need to keep this simple what we're doing right now is not working we cannot continue having our middle schools run the way they are now next year they're not working it's not an option we have to invest in our schools to a point where they are meeting the needs of our students as was said by one of the speakers before if we're not doing that what are we doing if we can't keep educators in schools because they are leaving because the workload is untenable and they're taking leaves and then not coming back we're not running a school district yeah and i guess i would just say if we take ourselves to a fiscal cliff and then drive off of it that also has really significant consequences for our students and our teachers and our families and i appreciate the fiduciary responsibility yeah um and i think we have some options right now yeah thank you for bringing those and you're way smarter than i am so thank you thank you so much for your comments um i think there's more to come and it's a great conversation i would love to see those solutions that you mentioned um i'd love to see those and would take them you know in under advisement absolutely i'll go ahead and get those sent to you yeah thank you and i just i've got um i can see families waiting that wanna are here to speak and we're running about 90 minutes late so i'm feeling up bad for them i appreciate your comments appreciate your solutions and your insights thank you [Applause] so much okay sorry for that little side comment there the side conversation we're moving to the student representatives report the student representative who will be graduating in last day of school is 13 school days how many days i knew it was going to be in days he's counting he's counting the days school days there's also weekends there's also weekends and prom which i won't be here and a holiday holiday a prom yes um before i start my public comment or my comment i just wanted to ask if after my comment we could move up the charter pass through just because i know that's who we have um parents waiting to comment on do i think do we have guiding we actually have two you know both groups are important we have two groups with families with children that want to speak and they have to go one one after the other yeah charter pastors just there's stuff in between that and the southeast guiding coalition so if we could move it up as much as possible for those families after scgc and just since scgc is going to take a while just it will yep yes thank you for that i appreciate it and on to my comments so um director brim edwards already
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extended her gratitude but i wanted to extend my gratitude as well for the dsc bylaws which was headed by oscar calvert um thank you that was half a year actual work probably two years conversation wise in the making thank you for finally getting it before the board and i also wanted to just talk about my general thoughts about the budget and some things that i'm hoping to see um maybe altered slightly or just have a conversation about first is the social emotional education and supports for students we're keeping it the same from last year and just with the recommendation from the american school counselor association the current ratios we have are under what their recommendation was and actually they have several studies which i can share with you all that point that a lower ratio of counselors to students increases gpa increases graduation rates increases attendance increases post-secondary readiness and decreases discipline disciplinary infractions so all of these things seem like something the board has obviously been focusing on for years um and i'd like to see some conversation about what it would look like to decrease those ratios i believe in elementary schools it's 400 to 1 which is astronomically high for some schools secondly living wages for nutritional workers and custodial staff is probably if we don't increase that it's probably going to warrant a no vote from me on the budget i don't believe we can pass a budget that has um our custodial staff or nutritional workers at 30 of the median income in por in portland it's just not possible for them to live in portland at all also just as we get into some meteor topics later in this agenda i just wanted to mention to the board that we should really center students and their experiences in this process um especially in the southeast guiding coalition we hear a lot from parents but we should really be focusing on the student experience of these proposed changes and unfortunately that is a little difficult and i understand the engagement department is very busy but in the entire engagement document i didn't see one mention of any student engagement done and i've been advocating that for probably two years since the southeast guiding coalition started so it's hard for me to really understand the student impact when we're not seeing student engagement in this process thank you uh thank you i appreciate your candor and i always do appreciate you um i think in in light of where we are in the evening we would skip over overboard committee and conference reports until next time i know everybody's disappointed especially director lowry she really wants to talk about her committee but we have a lot of committee things so we're going to move now to the southeast enrollment and program balancing conversation um sorry superintendent guerrero would you please introduce this item yes thank you chair to pass just to recap where we are as you know the phase one of southeast enrollment and program balancing began in fall 2020 and resulted in the conversion of the five k-8 schools uh a new boundary and program assignments for kellogg middle school which as you know opened this fall subsequently in may the board adopted a phase two charge centering on converting harrison park from a k-8 to a comprehensive middle school and increasing enrollment at lane middle school was was another objective tonight we're going to hear a recommendation from deputy superintendent claire hertz who's joining us remotely but we have other senior staff here this evening who have been deeply involved in this process to develop a plan for enrollment balancing program placement and school boundaries for the southeast uh the board is scheduled to vote on a final recommendation at the april 24th meeting uh so with that i'm going to turn it over to the team that's may 24th it's been a long day thank you chair thank you it's been a long week and i think it's just tuesday um thank you um people i'm sorry it's been a long day and um good evening chad pass members of the board and um super tender and guerrero and jackson weinberg student rep thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to present our findings to
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the board regarding the southeast enrollment and program balancing process for phase two um with me tonight our team members who have worked on this process i have to my right margaret calvert i also have judy brennan who is the director of enrollment and transfer and i do have um beth kavanaugh one of our coaches in the process so welcome again tonight we're going to be talking about how our process and how we went about addressing the charge that the board had given to us um next slide please the board charge for phase two was to convert harrison park middle uh harrison park k8 school into a middle school which meant that we would have to move the k5 portion of the k-8 to a different building we listened to the community they wanted their students to continue to stay in that community in close proximity to their siblings and to their families so they could be within walking distance of their homes we were able to grant that because we were able to um then move the k5 building into the clock building right next to harrison park however that does mean that we're going to have to move um the css school into another location the other part of the process was that we increased the enrollment at lane middle school so those are the two things that we looked at um to accommodate for that we um looked at some of our drivers the things that we need to have in place to be able to execute the board's requests so we um also considered the pps reimagined document and the strategic plan and our goals for developing and producing graduates that would send the test of time and also that would be the tenants that have been identified in our portland public school graduates so what we did was we looked at those and based on that we determined that in order to provide very robust programs for our students in middle school we have to at least have nine uh 500 students per middle school the other thing is that we looked at the elementary schools around and in order for us to provide the programs and the supports that our students need at young ages then ideal number would be about 270 students the third thing that we considered was um our streets the major streets that crossed through our neighborhoods we wanted to make sure that our locations weren't such that would cause students to cross these major streets and put them in danger we considered the safe routes to schools approach and in doing all of this of course and looking at the programs we also considered looking at our dli programs and our student academic performance in relation to the dli programs the supports our teachers have and the professional development experiences that are intended to create and enhance teacher efficacy so looking at all these drivers we decided that if we were to accomplish these um the board charge what we would need to then do is consolidate programs and do some shifts um to increase numbers at um lane to convert harrison park to middle school and to find a home for the k5 portion of harrison park next slide please i got a little ahead of you all right um in looking at student academic achievement which is really what we're trying to which is really what we're trying to do we looked at the performance of our students in our single strand programs english scholars in our single strand programs do not perform as well as our english scholars in other non-co-located programs so that was a concern the other thing that was a concern also was our ability to provide an immersive experience for our students who are learning um say spanish or the chinese language and research has shown that the best way to enhance dli opportunities is to make sure that students are situated in areas where they have the best or closest proximity to native speakers so they can embrace the bicultural and the bilingual aspects of the language so i just have a question about the single strand so at the at the bridger meeting there was a statement that said single-strand programs are too unstable to be successful over time particularly in schools with lower socio-economic status does that mean the district
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is as a policy a small p okay with single strands and higher in higher income [Music] neighborhoods um and if so what's what's the dip why was that differentiation made at bridger so single strands are actually not as effective regardless of what the socio-economic status is the question came from somebody in the audience and i think that they specified around bridger just because we happened to be a bridger that night but overall research has shown that we don't have as much success with single-strand programs regardless of the socio-economic status yeah it was on the the pbs slide at the bridger meeting that said that that so this is just a concern in the the neighborhood the differentiating treatment and whether the treatment's based on socioeconomic status no it is not and if i could just add that uh the emphasis here is on single strands of the english scholar program the program that is not the dual language portion and the impact on those kids looking at data that came from our research accountability and assessment and seeing the potential impact on those students so it is something that we're looking at across the district not just in southeast um and that again the emphasis is on um specifically we're looking at the impact for the neighborhood or english scholar program we'll be talking more about that in a minute i just also do want to add that deputy superintendent um claire hurst is joining us specially she's listening in i don't know that she'll be able to speak though right in this process we centered black and native students and now indigenous students as well in doing this one of the things that um the map revealed is that most of them live on the outer edges of the southeast area as you can see on the map we also provided a table that shows how the numbers fall regarding the schools and harrison park for example in the neighborhood program we do have black or indigenous student count of 190 and which represents 42 of the population and then it's on a sliding scale after that so they have the highest number so how do we center their needs how do we create our programs to support them and how do we make sure that they continue to reside in the communities that they're most familiar with while at the same time maintaining the academic experiences and opportunities that we have provided for that next slide please so some of the issues that were that we discovered are impacting um our communities of color is that most of them reside in areas where they have fewer students and because they have period students it's harder to create comprehensive schools in those areas without moving students around without moving student bodies around um the other thing that we um realize is of course if we do not have the basic or the minimum numbers then it is harder for us to provide programs that are supportive of the academic experiences and the enrichment they need to be able to advance and compete in the years ahead so we looked at um the strand k5 neighborhood programs as well and those limit opportunities by a huge margin for all students regardless of what the social economic status is the difference might be that parents who a little bit more affluent might be able to ex to access a lot of other supports outside of what the school is able to provide but overall it is a challenge to have just a single strand in either the neighborhood side or the dli side the collaboration is really important the opportunity to practice in the target language is really important as well and the immersive experience is important to language learning experiences doctor i had a quick question about this slide sure sorry um this is just a very analytical approach to like the success of a student was there any information on like sense of belonging um sense of community at these schools in this process absolutely and that's why we moved to the k5 for harrison park into the clock building and not out of the neighborhood um it's also another reason that we were looking at relocating the whole dli school into the lent neighborhood
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because that's where we have the greatest concentration of our native speakers of the spanish language so yes we did give consideration but the sense of belonging for the lent students the neighborhood students the sense of belonging for the neighborhood students what was the question so i'm just building on jackson's question about the sensible longing because it seemed like what i heard at the lent meeting was their sense of belonging was as part of the lint community so i will let judy speak to that and the reason is because there was a lot of community engagement around that and if i recall when we you and i had spoken about that i had said that most of what we heard from the community prior to now was very different from what was shared that even and i went back and i did speak with um the leaders to try to at least glean why we sort of didn't have the same information that we were working from before so yes of course there are some people who have a preference but ultimately when we do center our students we're looking for the academic achievement and experiences of our students around language acquisition and language development and professional supports for our teachers in our buildings would you like that and i'll just add that i i think what what we would hope to do is frame uh the work that's been done over the last year and then um really we're here to listen to your range of questions comments and what else you need and um i i keep looking at the clock behind you and it says 705 and i think but we have plenty of time and yet that's not that's not true so um let's see if we can go ahead and get through a few more minutes in the presentation and then we'd love to come back to your questions is that all right and we'll provide time for for questions wonderful thank you okay did we get this presentation um it this this deck is is emergent it is not um i apologize uh we've we've have been a lean bench this week and we appreciate your patience but this will definitely be available um so a lot of data that actually drove this work was obtained from the research accountability and assessment department and that's part of the information that drove the decisions that drove the decisions that were arrived at here so in this lengthy process and it has been just about exactly a year since you approved the resolution for this phase of work our partners along the way an amazing and committed group of parents guardians principals teachers community partners from across the southeast region we we can't imagine trying to engage without such a smart committed body of folks um it was probably more than folks bargained for because we really didn't believe that we'd have to complete the entire process virtually but we did it was 19 meetings they dug through 15 really intense proposals developed by flow analytics a number of them are here tonight um because they're so committed to making sure this process supports kids and their community in schools you're going to hear from co-chairs beth cavanaugh as well as adriel pearson who's with us virtually but also without voice um and what they'll be sharing with you is a little about their process what deputy superintendent hertz's recommendation um that we're speaking on behalf of tonight is um based on that their final proposal which did have the most votes but did not achieve consensus across that body there were some significant concerns that the scope of the work was not significant enough to address more of the enrollment challenges that exist in southeast including omitting some of the schools that are a little bit further west there are also strong concerns that we did not wind up with a set of middle school assignments that best balances the middle school capacity and that leaves um issues undone that's just a very short summary we did offer extra time one of the reasons we're with you now in may instead of earlier when we hoped was to
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give the committee more time um to see if they could get farther and get better and the effort was thorough honest and they gave out they gave all and um it is disappointing that we didn't come to a full consensus but what i believe is before you is um a report from them that shows where the trade-offs occurred along the way and hopefully um gives you a good opportunity to see if there's any other paths to take um and with that i'd like to turn it over to miss kavanagh for some con dr kavanaugh congratulations just graduated on sunday hello i'm beth cavanaugh and actually i'll take this off an adreel person my co-co-chair is joining us virtually as judy mentioned she's unable to speak so she and i worked furiously over google docs and text to make sure we had our ducks in a row um so adriel was also a part of the writing team who created the final scgc report that informed deputy superintendent hertz's recommendation first i just want to clarify our role as scgc co-chairs primarily was creating a line of communication between the scgc membership and district staff so while some scgc members did share feedback with their from their communities with us generally we have not been like myself and adriel have not been in a position to represent the broader community and their feedback so so i'm going to talk to you about the report that a team of volunteers from the segc created to summarize the work of the coalition which includes as shown on the slide behind you an overview of the scgc scope and process a clear explanation of what was included in the proposal that received the most votes a description of the decision points in their relation to each other recommendations for implementation in both the long and short term and also a supplemental document signed by a majority of the community coalition members expressing dissent for the decision to limit the scope of scgc's work to just the outer southeast schools adriel and i really want to encourage you to review this 11-page document the writing team worked really hard to keep it brief clear and focused on areas that coalition members thought were essential for board members to understand the section on key decision points includes a table that illustrates the interplay of the elements of the proposal including where the scgc did reach consensus and where there were notable objections to the proposal while this document aligns with deputy superintendent's recommendation in a lot of ways there are there's a different perspective provided here by the scgc membership that we think it's really important for you to as members of the board to be familiar with um and i also want to draw your attention to that two-page supplement that was included um as i said it was signed by a majority of the members expressing frustration with the decision to exclude inner southeast schools from the segc process many members felt this was a barrier to successful process both in terms of equity since the inner southeast schools who were not impacted are more affluent overall with fewer students of color and in terms of the math because those are the schools with robust to overcrowded enrollment and because we were not able to shift enrollment east starting from the river outer southeast elementaries are hovering right at or below 270 students meaning this whole rebalancing may need to be revisited sooner rather than later um so we wanted to talk a little bit about the community engagement challenges that we observed we saw barriers to community understanding of what was proposed and this may speak a little bit to what um to that disconnect we're hearing about between the feedback that was collected early on as compared to feedback that's coming in once there's a concrete proposal in front of people and they can see how they're directly impacted there was barriers to understanding of what was proposed and potential impacts there was both too much information to process and also a lack of specific information about impacts to particular communities um and these also tie into concerns reflected by over half of the community scgc members who asked for a second scenario which was eventually developed and extended our timeline for both the segc and community members without the ability to directly compare flushed out scenarios side by side to do a real cost benefit analysis to see the benefits and challenges presented both systemically and for specific communities it was difficult to understand what those trade-offs were in order to provide more constructive feedback and see what are the things that feel doable feel that we can live with and what are the things where we don't they don't feel great necessarily but we understand how they fit into the bigger picture or the things that that we embrace fully we heard that language or school specific meetings sometimes occurred at
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times that made it hard for community members to participate or that they're in within those meetings there weren't necessarily opportunities to ask questions or respond to information it was more an information giving sort of situation in some of those not all the the meetings were structured differently and also limited opportunities for community members to address the board directly with concerns or feedback so our question for you is how will you as board members engage with and hear from community on this proposal now that it is concrete before finalizing your vote how will you ensure that this is done equitably so that you hear from communities who have less support or organization and what do you still need from staff to ensure that this happens next i wanted to talk a little about the implemented implementation feedback that's provided in the scgc report um deputy superintendent hertz's recommendation was responsive to many of the implementation suggestions that came up in this report but there were a few we wanted to highlight um the recommendation touches on a few key issues the segc members continued to grapple with and identified as essential areas for support through the transition first there was clear opposition from many lent families about the transition to all dli school the ongoing engagement with this community will be extremely important and was noted in in superintendent hertz's recommendation also many coalition members remain concerned about enrollment stability at harrison park and thus the long-term ability to provide equitable opportunities when compared to larger middle schools in the region many of the proposed changes require families to travel further or across more difficult routes than they currently do to get to school we've heard from families a lack of faith in the district's ability to ensure safe and reliable transportation especially after struggling through this year's transportation challenges my kids don't ride the bus but i kept on the information i kept on the message mail information just so that i had a sense of how often buses were being canceled to the to hospital where my kids go and it was multiple times a week every week and i'm just thinking to myself i don't know how how kids get to school when if their parents aren't able to get them or they don't live close enough to walk so that trust is a real concern it's very visceral for parents this year the scgc recommended looking at some targeted boundary changes specifically along cesar chavez boulevard that would not only provide a larger buffer to some of those elementary schools enrolled at or below 270 students in the proposal but also creating some safer routes for school for students who currently have to cross that busy road but because these changes would impact schools outside the current scope they were not included in the recommendation that's coming to you from um from claire hertz's recommendation we wanted to wrap up with a reflection on the recommendation itself there were some strengths in that we saw strengths in that there's access created to middle schools and increased opportunities for students in outer southeast some who've been in under-enrolled schools for years and years that it maintains and grows the spanish dli program at kellogg middle school and builds on the robust supports that were implemented when that building was opened it reduces single strand neighborhood elementary programs that have been shown not to serve students as well and consolidating the dli programs at the middle school level um remaining challenges are the imbalanced middle school enrollment across the region with kellogg over the district's recommended utilization level and significantly lower enrollment at other middle schools um the lack of enrol the uh that it locks in enrollment at or below the floor of 270 for several outer southeast elementary schools um and that there's increased reliance on district provided transportation in some cases and lack of support for some of the proposed changes from impacted communities however we also see a lot of opportunities in the implementation engaging impacted communities in transition planning is huge facilitating community building among programs that are blending such as creative science and bridger lent in marysville learn from the positive experience staffing kellogg middle school has proven to be from we've heard a lot of really positive feedback from kellogg middle school teachers and students and families and build on that when staffing harrison park and the power of a staff that reflects and represents the student body harrison park is one of our most of our school communities and they need to see teachers that look like them and supports that that support their community minimizing the impact of future enrollment balancing on those who are moving as a result of this process this was one of our major concerns with leaving inner southeast out of the process is that if that's where our overcrowded schools are how are we going to balance those without then re-impacting again all of these kids that are currently moving around in this process so be cognizant of that transition and those um and those shifts and finally um
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oh sorry not quite finally two bullet points um engage in a transparent process to review the role and impact of k-8 focus option schools in the district um we have we're translate we're transitioning to a k5 middle school model and yet we've got various k-8s some of which are still neighborhood schools only some of which have a lottery component some are lottery only how are those intended to and how are they actually functioning in the district and how do they impact our ability to fully robustly enroll our middle schools and then include scgc members in reflecting on ways that we can learn from this process to strengthen the future enrollment balancing work and community engagement that's coming up you have a lot of as was mentioned incredibly dedicated passionate people about this process who had a lot of frustration to be honest and a lot of feedback that feels like it could be useful in having more productive processes in the future thank you thank you good evening sunset working there we go good evening uh chair to pass directors superintendent guerrero student representative weinberg um i'm speaking here this evening as part of the team that has been working with our community and the southeast guiding coalition to bring forth this proposal i also want to share that i'm speaking in part tonight um because uh chinese clark our director of engagement could not be with us so i'll be sharing some of the steps and the creative um mechanisms she used to work with the community and then also speak to some of the recommendations that we're hearing from chair kavanaugh and that has come through the uh the process as we go so there are a couple pieces um they're on there have been a series of uh community engagement that started in the summer of 2021. uh we'll speak uh some to how this has shifted over time and some of the efforts that have uh there have certainly been lessons learned and lessons learned about um engaging in the mitzvah pandemic as well the the various details of the community engagement process are available on the pip on the public side of the district website so i just want to make sure you see some of the links here but there there's a significant body of uh that that is up on the website and then i want to just uh reflect um with student reply student representative weinberg about um where there were places and opportunities for their uh to hear from students and there was student listening sessions that were held in december and then we'll kind of come back to some of those other places but we certainly can elevate and highlight where those opportunities were and uh where they will continue to be as we move through uh next phases so as you will see uh on on this slide there are a number of places um that uh our community engagement started in the last summer and um by winter and uh the coalition went back and said and asked that our staff to look specifically at impacted communities at lent and then also to go back and really think about how are we engaging our communities of color our diverse communities also that have you know our language diverse communities as well so in the past a piece that once the draft proposal was completed in april um there some surveys went out there were some other mechanisms where we went out uh the staff went out and worked with talk with parents teachers at london and elementary in particular there were some open houses there were some pieces where we looked specifically at the impacted schools and also at bridger we received input from many lunch students with strong advocacy for the remaining for for this for their cohort to remain part of the kellogg middle school and to keep lent as it is now uh with both english scholars and spanish dual language um at the site after um as i said earlier that part of what um uh part way through this process there was a request for from the coalition to go back out and to really listen to specific communities and we're hearing that there will probably be a request for a similar um outreach again go ahead yeah some of the highlights and themes that emerged as we went through some of the work that happened with our black ninjas indigenous families in particular they pointed to some very specific um
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themes and values one of the pieces that came forward was they really voiced that they wanted the district to provide adequately resourced schools that didn't um demand their content what they proceed what they stated was continuous advocacy on their part they want strong interpersonal connections and that they wanted the the connections um both with the staff and the building to recognize and be connected to their students and the community to be connected to the school and finally they didn't want to have to choose between programs and proximity they wanted to they didn't they didn't want to have to think about what that tradeoff was that they wanted the robust programs to be close to where they lived uh i think the other pieces that surfaced um was how the students were being engaged and so that there was this piece around wanting both academic uh passions to be present in in the robust programming but then also that the students uh were being taught in ways that were engaging to their their and affirming to theirs to their kids and that they were looking both at um this notion of uh supports as well as thinking about that as you see that on the bottom some of the what it means especially in middle schools to have robust programming and that was a pretty significant discussion throughout what did it mean to have robust middle school programming you can see and and chair kavanaugh has mentioned that you know this one of the other things that that surfaced is how do we process the vast amount of information that is uh was part of the discussions the pace with which some of the um the the scenarios and the details of in the complexity of it um thinking about where those spaces um some of the um ways that that happened often was with you know principals engaging with families as they were coming into or out of buildings um at the beginning of the day or the end of the day along with the formal meetings but i think that we will continue to look at how do we present share and work with information so families can make informed decisions and finally just to echo one of the sentiments that uh chair kavanaugh just said was you know we heard loud and clearly and we've heard this loud and clearly from across communities across the district but in particular for the families here in southeast that they want uh teachers educators folks in the building that reflect the community and reflect their students whether it's by language culture or race and that this is a very high value um and that that's something that they uh we're hearing again and again how can we do and really think about the diversity of the workforce so that students are seeing themselves not only in the materials but in the adults that they're working with in a school so as it was stated up front we've said it a couple times now one of the big and really critical pieces was around harrison park and this conversion from a k-8 into a middle school experience harrison park is has the highest black and native student population in the southeast region and it became the central uh sort of pivot point for the decision-making process once there was a that process was um is anchored at harrison park many of the the choices and changes radiated out from that that spot and so we it is a place that was held really central to the decision making and this particular situation what what uh we heard was we wanted um the harrison park community to be close right so they the the middle school and elementary to be close to each other uh that there was uh interest in uh having the chinese immersion program close to where their uh the j district and where we were seeing um native speakers and then um as a result some of the things that cascaded from there one of the critical pieces was was around the relocation of the of creatus the creative science school and uh to bridger as the recommended new site so once those decisions sort of became the at least the initial anchor points um the the the impacts radiated out kind of across the the city so this is fairly common when we do enrollment balancing is that there'll be a a point where uh there's a where the all decisions sort of cascade from that that initial framing and this particular situation we're really focused on supporting the harrison park community
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yes and with that every student in southeast will have access to a comprehensive middle school and a larger middle schools because the smallest middle school in the region which is lane will grow by virtue of boundary changes altogether there's about 14 schools affected by boundary change in this proposal we are not going to walk you through each and every one of those tonight on our website there is a site where people can type in their address and see whether they're affected by a specific change so we've got lane growing that also means that some of their smaller feeder schools particularly whitman and woodmere are growing as well and getting closer to that minimal 270 number other big elements in the proposal and a place where the committee probably spent more time than they anticipated if you think where we were a year ago probably didn't anticipate spending quite as much time in the realm of trying to find the best fit for immersion but a whole school model for spanish dli is proposed and that it be at lent because of the concentration of native spanish speakers and then bringing together all of the middle grade strands of spanish immersion at kellogg and all of the middle grade strands of chinese immersion at hossford just taking another moment on these single strand english scholar programs it is true that in this proposal we would not have single strands anymore and by that i mean what we mean is that for example at lent right now as a k5 first of all they have almost the smallest neighborhood enrollment of any of the southeast schools the second smallest so it's already a small area as you heard we committed to keeping harrison park students all together and going to clark so that limited the number of other nearby schools where we could pull students into lent they operate now with a single strand of english scholars and a single strand of dli at most grade levels there are a couple grade levels where there's two but they're mostly just one each so that's the active configuration now and that is the challenge that we were trying to resolve the resolution converts the whole school to dli but for the older students who are there who wouldn't have the language background to opt in at a higher grade we do need to work on what the best and most successful transition for those students would be i believe that's going to be an important point of of discussion for you so i just wanted to to mention that part now we've identified marysville as a school where children could attend a multi-strand english scholar program and we would provide transportation to that on the bridger side the bridger community also has a single strand of their english scholar program right now but with all of creative science moving to bridger the bridger students will now be a part of a bigger program with the constructivist theme they'll have guaranteed access to that we also know that bridger families were really excited to have the opportunity to go to a comprehensive middle school they had been waiting a long time for that so they will have guaranteed access to harrison park middle school with transportation as well this graphic um is not something that we're going to walk through in detail but it it's an illustration of all the different progression paths in southeast and how they would be affected by these changes and we can come back to it if it's helpful i have a question about lewis because i think that part of lewis is going to lane under f3 correct there's a boundary change and the lewis boundary will shift part of the lewis boundary is shifting to whitman and the students from whitman will also become part of lane so no students who are like a lewis fifth grader after the boundary stage will not go to lane they'll go to sellwood because i was looking at the maps and that's what i was confused about because lane is not louis is not on this slide under lane and that's where my confusion arose yeah louis the part of louis that will that's not being affected by boundary change is still assigned to sellwood the boundary change part will become whitman and then they'll that section of whitman will go to lane and we still do have kids from whitman then going to cleveland correct correct okay yeah there's no high school
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changes in any of these purples i'm noting though that mount tabor has 456 which is below the 500 yes so uh we uh that it that's notable that um does that mean they're going to have a staffing reduction i mean uh so we do note that we have middle schools that are adjacent to northeast schools that are in the k-8 status right now so depending on the timing of when the next round of k-8 conversions happening we have available capacity at middle schools roseway heights mount tabor and even hosford adjacent to k-8 schools that could then grow in enrollment if there are future conversions the question is the timing um we this will not begin implementation until 2023 we don't expect to have another round of northeast decisions before then so um we'll have some implementation discussions but just a couple more slides i know you're anxious to share your input answer your question i mean one of the things is you didn't give us the presentation so it's it's hard for us to like remember what you've showed us if we don't ask when it's up so i'm just that's that's why we're asking questions because we don't have the presentation but this is all uh it's all in our packet this is we want to highlight that this change was there something in the last slide that needed clarification because if so i was wondering if we could just go back one so we could see the total number of middle school students at the lane harrison park kellogg osford and you talked about mount tabor yeah this will be a theme i talked about a little bit later about the just stability because i'm looking at matt you've got if our idea was 500 we have schools less than that and so does that mean that what we found this year is that if you your enrollment drops that means the staff will be taken away from your school so i'm just wondering what the implications for those schools that are less less than the ideal um what the implications are or is there going to be like a hold harmless for schools so that because who knows i mean i haven't heard that there's going to be another what i'd heard is the next round was going to be high school um boundaries well not another it's not enough i know and i'm i'm but i'm just saying that sort of contemplates like sometimes at some point in the future you're going to have that so like what point in time is that because i haven't heard that there's any plan to do that before we commence a conversation on a phase three of potential high school work phase two is going to need to move into a whole planning and preparation year uh to think through a lot of these kinds of details and so yeah 500 is a nice number for a comprehensive middle school we don't necessarily have a programmatic ed spec we should have one uh to to make sure that there's equity and guarantee in the program offerings and i think that's the goal that we share we understand that there's going to be there's going to be some necessary transition supports for each of these schools as they come together as we've experienced and are experiencing you're asking a lot of feeder and reconfigured communities to come together that includes faculty and we want to make sure that those supports are there so these are exactly the kinds of questions that you know the boundary presentation isn't going to necessarily focus on today but they're the right ones for us to parking lot because they're the ones that are going to make the difference do these transitions being successful yeah i'm just i'd like to have more answers though before we actually vote on it next week or two weeks we want to have everything but i do think it's reasonable for people to understand what the implications of that is of just the numbers being below and because um well so is the question what are we what we'll do to the restorative piece yeah i guess that response and we get into it when we get into the transition but there is some pieces that i think it's reasonable for people to want to have a better understanding of what what the implications are so if i made a part of the transition planning is this slide right here so this is that um part of what um uh the transition will be uh to your point is there's always the question about how do you smooth the transition out with staffing right and so this is uh that was raised as a significant question during the uh the process as as we went through and so i'll stop there for a second and and let
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judy kind of talk through this piece but that's part part and parcel of what is in the recommendation is um acknowledgement of how do we transition and make something to help smooth out some of these transitions with fte in particular so i'll just uh finish up here to say that um there's how the students might actually experience the change from a from an um just a path forward and then there are all the supports the community building um and the important planning that needs to happen just wanted to make sure that the the pace of change that's in the recommendation is well understood um the um boundary changes uh would follow the phased-in approach that's in policy that's what our recommendation is while the um timing is beginning fall 2023 um with your vote on may 24th we would still have time to inform all of the current students about the plans and about what their next school would be and a student from the lewis area who might want to opt in early to their new middle school of lane would have the opportunity to do that for next year the program changes by and large need to happen all at once we need harrison park to be a middle school for six eight students in 2324 the k5 students need to all go and that's that cascading series of events that leads to creative science to bridger bridger spanish immersion to lent at lent we have an important question that needs to be addressed and so the recommendation um is a little different and that is that we bring those communities together with school and central leaders to plan that best possible transition we don't want to have such a tiny cohort of english scholars at lent that they are not having a full robust experience and we want to honor that they've been in the community for a long time and are concerned about having to be moved so we don't have it's not an all or nothing at this point it's it's a plan for them to come together and margaret would you like to say a little more about some of the so i think one of the pieces that um i just want to share and i think um you know for many years with director bailey it was i sat on the um the district debrac committee and and some of the student the various committees and i think part of what surfaced when we looked at how we make transitions uh there are a number of transitions that happen in the jefferson cluster from k5 to k8s back to k5's um and we've learned some things in the process and so one of the things that again that we heard from the the committee and from um the coalition excuse me and then also uh that uh chair kavanaugh has surfaced is being intentional about how do we bridge some of the transitions and what does that look like so that's part of what's built into the proposal is that there is a some fte that's set aside to address the shifts and transitions and and being strategic about that and that is called out and committed to upfront in the proposal i we also want to acknowledge the bridger and light communities are heavily impacted and that we will work with the communities in an ongoing basis and that the process needs to be guided by the people that are working closest and are most impacted by the decision so this will rely heavily on the voices of educators and families at these two sites um and we're committed to making sure that we are working with our labor partners and all all the uh stakeholders to make thoughtful transition planning and then to implement those planning that planning in a meaningful way i think the piece that anytime you're looking at this level of shift and change there's a lot of details that are related to how do we work this out so this is going to be a process of really engaging in some um you know rolling up the sleeves like really looking at the details going back and an iterative process looking at the plans one of the things that was that surfaced is um and we've heard this loud and clear that this is not a paper exercise this is not a two-dimensional exercise right this this impacts people families and communities and we're going to have to be very sensitive to how we engage and continue to engage in an ongoing manner with the communities that uh that we are impacting um and that's something that we need to do on an ongoing basis i think that one of the pieces that you see up here is around transportation we heard concerns about transportation
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one of the things that you notice as you move from a k-8 model back out to a middle school model is that that catchment for the middle school is broader than it is for the k-8 so you start to see distance travel times or travel distances shift because of that change um and so there's some of those pieces we also want you know heard people wanted there to be proximity so there are trade-offs that are real that we need to work with families and communities about how are we going to approach that and what are the ways through those trade-offs so that they can have um you know that we can get to the the goal of the of a robust middle school programming in southeast as well as consolidating some of the dli programs and i just want to add that the presentation is not in your email boxes and it is online as well we just got that so okay all right um finally i do want to say that i wasn't here for deep rack but i heard all about it and i'm just thankful that i've only had to deal with the southeast guiding coalition side of it it's been an interest in two years i've grown quickly in portland trying to get to know the communities and the schools and the impacts and the needs and so on and so forth but above all i truly want to thank our southeast guiding coalition members they were dedicated diligent showed up showed up no matter what professional i'm just committed it was great to work with um team that center students the needs of the community and looks to the future for what we want portland public schools to be so on behalf of the leadership team at portland public schools i do want to say thank you very much um we created um we created school community thank you dr oh and you beat me to the punch and if deputy hurts were here i know that she would echo your sentiments to to everyone on the team who's been diligently involved in this process uh particularly the southeast guiding coalition members um uh this has been a a process full of complexity there's there's a lot here to digest i know it's a lot for our directors to think about our communities will learn about uh the more specific details and you know there'll be a lot of questions that you know we'll we'll be prepared to respond to but uh to get to this point tonight and we're not done uh i know has been has been quite the task so thank you for the thoughtfulness everybody that's been involved i also do want to say we have um what questions do um we want to know what clarifying questions you have we also would like to know if there are elements or features that you like about this proposal and what concerns you might have we do recognize that a lot of people are not going to be pleased but we do want to also acknowledge that as long as we continue to center the needs of our students and commit to an experience that will set them up for success in the future i think we can all live with ourselves thank you um and so i'll open the floor here and i just wanted to also start by uh thanking the southeast guiding coalition for your two years of dedication i understand how it is as a community member to show up and think you know i've got a year and a half or so two years ends up being five sometimes and then you run out of money and anyway just the amount of um emotional toll and time away and frozen pizza for dinner and all of those um really human elements i also want to appreciate the staff in um holding um these the space for for the the community conversations to happen um that also is takes emotional toll and just time to to really listen actively i want to also uh under i i want to share that i understand that this was it's a nuance it's a complex complex project and not everybody's happy with the outcome and that the the the voting and you know the the option that got the most votes wasn't a consensus and and how messy that was i also want to hold a mirror up to my own leadership and lack of like really in um asking for my board members to be more engaged and also kind of participating with the board members um especially at our our meeting last week on thursday where um two of us were at the event and i think it would have been really important for the community to see all of us there um but i didn't i didn't put a call out for my colleagues to show up and it was scheduled in a week a week in advance yeah and it was only 50 people showed up so yeah so so at the same time and cbrc was also scheduled at the same time as this meeting so you all should be lucky i showed up here we're we are we're lucky we're lucky that you show up whenever you do um i also want to just thank the bridger
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community for their very thoughtful letter this evening that talks about first acknowledging the discomfort racial equity work is very uncomfortable we're not experienced doing it in portland as evidenced by our outcomes not just in the education area but in housing access education access income quality of life life expectancy are all predictable by race in portland and so when we talk about doing work a little differently and um and just come and leaning into this discomfort this is what it feels like it does feel uncomfortable so thank you bridger community for for bringing that out to express that even in the best of times change is difficult for everyone i also appreciate the bridger community for wanting to encouraging us to take a yes and approach there are some restorative practices i'm hoping that we see particularly around engaging lent community uh who we heard from uh that are concerned about splitting up but also that what we can do um what what inputs we can do in terms of investing time and resources um investing in a stable situation for those kids i hadn't ever been to lent before a couple weeks ago and and they need the stability and the attention that our higher income schools get to get to get the benefit of so i'm hoping that we can really lean into that that restorative practice of of giving them the resources they need and providing our this practice about putting more resources where there's more need and there's a lot of need at that school i'm hoping that we can debrief with this senior leadership team about the community engagement because i um i'm a community engagement professional and um i found i found um i found the process of wanting in some areas i don't want to go into now but in the spirit of you know continuous improvement i would love to an opportunity to to talk about it as a as a board leader and a board member um i know i'm talking more than i usually do but i have a lot of thoughts about this um one of the if you haven't seen it there was a lot of reading this week but attachment c that came in the packets to our home and that's also linked in board book um provides a very compelling case for supporting the proposal that we have in front of us um and that is uh research i'm sorry i don't have a citation but it's it's the it's well it's i actually had my hands on it like two minutes ago it's it's it's attachment c and it provides research about the benefits of this is the analysis of co-located chinese and spanish dli programs which once i read it and looked at the presentation really cemented for me um this idea that we thank you that it's right here it was underneath i've got it but if you haven't read it it's really compelling provides compelling data that support uh the support of this proposal as we see it and i'm going to stop talking now i know people have questions um i'm looking at director hall and said in order to keep him awake do you have any um thoughts initial impressions we can just popcorn style trying to read everybody i'm just gonna say i really appreciate the work again and i um i think you said something dr oh about you know not everyone's gonna like this and i think if we ever had a boundary drawing that everyone liked i think you know we should all buy lottery tickets that day uh because we'd be incredibly lucky um you know there are things i like about it i mean i think again the thoughtfulness the um all the things you said as priorities and those modeling principles and again our our ongoing goal is to take our k-8s which we know have strengths but we also aren't providing our students with the rigorous academic opportunities we want and this is a long and difficult process and andrew always says director scott always says we should be a district that does this regularly and so we don't do the big ones we just do adjustments and so i think uh dr cavanaugh you mentioned so it's fun to get to call you that um you mentioned that we might have to do this again and i think that's going to be you know that's what we're hoping will become the culture of our district is that we do adjustments regularly rather than these big programmatic changes like switching k-8s to middle schools um and that is hard and we know that we want to provide stability for families and we also want to be agile and dynamic so i appreciate the work that went into it there are things i could you know complain about that i didn't get my way or what i wanted um but i trust the the collaborative
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wisdom um and i think if all of us are happy about some things and slightly annoyed about others then maybe that's the sweet spot um so that's that's kind of where i am landing on this at this point but just again want to thank you for the analysis and all the work and i know this the dli program thing continues to be a very intense conversation about what what is the best way for those students to thrive and i do appreciate this analysis here so thank you so um i'm just diving because i do have a fair number of questions but i think they're like can be answered with a relatively short answer and i'm just going to say before everybody gets ready to fire off emails to me in the middle of the meeting i'm going to ask some questions because there really hasn't been i'm going to ask some questions to get something information into the public space because most of the meetings people were just watching on youtube uh so it really wasn't interactive because of the pandemic and this is and this is the first meeting we have the recommendation so i'm not asking um for any bad reason but maybe because i've had a lot of people ask me about it so i just want to tell people like before you start sending me emails um that that's the spirit in which i'm asking them because they're the pandemic has just changed how people interacted and the fact that we just got the recommendation um so i'm going to start with um you know what i l what i like about it and i have some questions under that um because the charge of the board was to create a plan to um bring more equitable middle school experience to students in outer southeast and i look at the two efforts both the opening of kellogg and this as really important work for the district in that over the last five years over a thousand students will have who didn't have an equitable middle school experience will either already have it or will soon have it so i think that's great and i i want to also mention because there's been a lot of conversation about like do you want to go to the you know the brand new school at kellogg or harrison park is i really encourage people to go to harrison park it's a it's it's a huge building um and um there's they've got a really strong stable t leadership team there that knows their stuff about middle school with a greater number of students they'll be able to have robust academic programming and diverse electives with the 10 million dollars in upgrades from the bond and hopefully the community will be part of that i've got a question about that later but that will like create spaces that middle school students will want to be in so i i want to just just acknowledge those two big things because like that was that was the main part of the the charge so great on that and like it's additive to to kellogg and i know this the families that are at kellogg now it's it's a great it's a great school and um we always have more work to do um but i i see the promise of what's coming to south outer southeast um so i'm really happy about that so i'm gonna have um and i'm gonna preface this with uh i attended almost all the 20 um southeast guiding coalition meetings last year too right i did yes so um i don't know what i'm gonna do with my thursday nights now um i also attended the bridger community meeting that was held last week the lent community meeting that was had last week the open house a spanish immersion community meeting hosted by atkinson the lent leopard leaders meeting last week as well and i also went and visited all the schools in my zone that i felt would be impacted with the exception of richmond and creston because there was minimal impact and then also visited whitman and marysville that aren't my district so in in this that's the spirit of which i'm going to approach my questions and and um and i think you should win a prize for attending the most meetings if nothing else well okay i i'm going to be held accountable to my community um they've let me know that um so i don't want to have missed a meeting that i should have been to um and i gotta say every one of those meetings i learned something i learned something new and hopefully i'm gonna and because there hasn't been an opportunity really for the community to engage so a lot of schools had one rep maybe two reps but really school communities didn't engage so hopefully i can bring some of that to the the process um and my issues are really gonna center on three areas implementation excellence support for individual school communities and trust and credibility um and so just from an overarching standpoint i didn't see a fiscal impact statement in here and i would expect to have that
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as part of what we vote on next week so we have a sense of um how is it we're going to resource this because that's part of implementation excellence and by the way there is a fiscal impact statement um but it's it's kind of soft it doesn't have numbers in it yeah well okay i don't know if that counts then um so i had the question for this the superintendent about implementation and i know i asked you this today but maybe just briefly answered that um because there's a leadership change of the executive sponsor just who will be the implementations are or how that's going to be structured because there are once the board finishes its work um the implementation is really going to be key that we do this right no that's absolutely right and as i i'll share what i shared with uh in my response to you director brim edwards earlier this is this is going to be a need to be an all hands on deck approach the planning and preparation as i started to describe earlier involves a range of departments in the school district that yes there's the facilities issues there's transportation issues student assignment issues there's staffing issues there are labor relations issues there the whole reason we're doing this is to create a higher quality middle grades experience uh was one of the charges and so uh you know we're not driven by an economic efficiency that we're trying to to find here we're trying to make sure that grade six seven and eight in the in the southeast is a much improved experience and so um what does that need to include and look like and how do we support it during these transition years or a lot of questions that that need to be fleshed out as you know in 2017 when we came aboard uh there were three new middle schools that were being reconfigured and we saw uh when when there wasn't uh depth um the depth required in the planning uh you know we had to push that off so that so that we could be ready to to open and uh we want to make sure that it's a different experience this time around um so there's going to need to be an internal group of people and a continued representation from all of the impacted school communities that find themselves either in the boundary changes or as new members of harrison park and kellogg so um i as you know uh uh you're listening i know deputy hurts um you know she has stayed on uh to help shepherd uh this process six months beyond her intended uh retirement and uh unfortunately i don't have an announcement about her uh successor uh in the same way that uh we are down a few senior staff positions who are going to be instrumental uh in this planning and preparation um you know gearing up for for implementation so i don't have an immediate response about who specifically uh will be that executive sponsor it it'll be one of these individuals uh who will understand that part of the charge is to continue working with a team of staff who who will need to be involved in in these details and and the important thing is to to keep the board and the community regularly updated about how the preparation and planning details are are starting to to develop okay so um now i'm going to dive into the interest in the meantime it's me okay yeah well that's that's the thought i was holding um appreciate it um and just it will be comforting i think to the community to know somebody's got it at the end of the day i don't know if it's these individuals um so now to the school specifics so um i say i i think we're in a good place with kellogg with harrison park um i'm really concerned about lent because so lent was a k5 then it became a k-8 then spanish immersion was was added um and if you look at the demographics for all the schools um in in the conversation they're the ones with the highest level of poverty and how so i'm thinking like the school has got the biggest impact which essentially the recommendation is to close the neighborhood english program and that is what we could define as a neighborhood in pbs so close the neighborhood program is the school with the highest level of poverty and just listening to the lent community a couple weeks ago it was primarily the spanish dli families that were present there were only three two or three parents from the english of
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the neighborhood side and there was a consensus they didn't want their community to be broken up and so i i'm really i i'm trying to i'm struggling with how we came to a recommendation in which this the biggest impact is on the school with the highest level of poverty and when i look at so i don't know what to do about it when i look at like us prioritizing um harrison park uh k5 being able to walk to their school because of all the issues of either not having a car or parents working and so kids need to be able to to get there the fact that we didn't have that same priority for the neighborhood so i'm curious if that was a priority for the harrison park and the clark community because of the demographics it's also one of the most diverse uh how did we end up in a place where we're closing the neighborhood school at because that that is we can call it something else but like really the neighborhood school so if you move into the neighborhood and you're i mean that's what we that's we call it so it is what it is but i'm wondering how we came to a place that we're closing the one neighborhood school in the highest poverty area if i could say we don't consider this a neighborhood school closure we consider it a conversion of the program opportunity for neighborhood school students and um every lint neighborhood student will have the right to enroll in the dual language immersion program and i completely understand that there are some students who will either not make that choice or will who move into this lower income neighborhood and be too old to make that choice we looked at the model that we've had between wrigler and scott since 2018 to see how that's worked for families the vast majority of regular families do enroll at their neighborhood school in the dual language program both students who are native spanish speakers and students who are english and speakers of other languages there will be people there will be families where this would be their third language so i i just think i mean i think it's i think it's hard i think it's hard to and i think we need to be careful to be like honest about like how we talk about it because it will feel like your neighborhood school closing if you live across the street and you can't access because there for some and i'm speaking from personal experience it does it's it's not a fit for every student and so i think anyway i am concerned that we are taking something away that most every other kid student in pps has has access to from the school that has the least resources so and i i would say we're not taking anything away in terms of educational programming we're changing the environment in which it's being delivered and in some sense for sure that means uh changing the community and changing the sense of belonging because those kids those four four grades of kids um are going to be in a different building kindergarteners will go to marysville and they will not have known what that experience would have been at lent i'm also curious about of all the the quarter of the students in the neighborhood program who are english language learners um are very many of those families native spanish speakers who are not in the dli program at lynn that's something i hadn't talked to anyone about yeah there are some and we've actually um been starting to already hear from some of those families to see if they can move into if they want to join that so out of a i mean you have i'm not i'm not i'm not trying to indicate that i don't think that this is a this is a shift you know when we've looked at one of our primary objectives being to move away from co-location because it's it's better for the language learners but you're looking at an enrollment last year of 151 students in the dli program so minus 20 of that so minus 30. so 120 students um and you know some of whom are are going to be english are going to be spanish speakers who may choose to stay so it's a shift but relative to sort of the challenges that we were looking at um it's not
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i think it's just important to keep it in perspective well i'm gonna just keep it in perspective because there are whole quadrants of the city that every every student has the right to attend their neighborhood school and southeast has all these programs and this the families that live there didn't put those programs there i mean so any anyway i just i i'm troubled by the outcome and the burden being placed on a community that has the least resources um and so that my question i had is there's a recommendation to move the lint neighborhood students to marysville and in the traditional program but then the report says an option to defer moves for lent non-dli students moving to marysville will be considered after bringing together schools communities to prepare the changes and considering the available facilities capacity at lent does that statement mean just the students who are there now versus because when i went to the meeting you were there dr past there wasn't anybody who supported breaking up the community um but if i'm reading this is this this is just the like after you decide to move them it's just the current first second and third graders and fourth graders what does that statement mean sorry it's confusing the statement's meant to indicate that instead of saying all the students have to move like the the proposal is that link convert to an all dli school with guaranteed access for lent neighborhood students and bring o bringing over the two strands from bridger so that's the proposal the plan for implementation for the students who are currently in the english scholars program is something that we want to collaboratively develop between the school communities maybe i'm not asking the question but is it just for a s the small universe of those who are impacted right now or is this we may defer moving um neighborhood students to marysville no it's it's it's not a plan to defer it's a plan to figure out that pace so that that's weird we're not we're not proposing to maintain long-term a co-located structure at lent we don't believe we can actually deliver the quality of program that lent students deserve if we maintain that i'm just trying to figure out what what i did the statement is saying so it's essentially the kids who are in the upper grades right now there's going to be a conversation about when when they move but it's it's not a statement that it may not happen it may not happen that lent students neighborhood students are going to go to marysville i'm seeing one nod and one shaking we're not proposing to keep an english uh program at lent in the long term we're proposing to find um a collaborative way to make the transition and to phase the program out i don't know what the result of that collaborative effort okay despite the the last community meeting where everybody said we don't want to do this okay i'm going to move on to bridger can i can i make a comment though because i think that there's i'm sorry i have a this is our one opportunity after a year so [Music] before we get into a back and forth this is one of those situations where we will have to work very closely with the community the district has a technical fix the district are experts in in in this work the community are experts in their community and what works for them together a solution can be found not one not the other it's a yes and i i really believe then i mean i've worked in a couple of um i've worked on some community-based projects that were very very contentious and took you know twice as long actually more than twice as long and we literally ran out of money to complete the project because the community engagement process was so long and the community are experts in their community and the district are experts in doing the work of balancing and providing programs equitably and centering the kids that need it most so i i'm thinking the the community it's a it's a both end thank you cheer to pass and i'm looking at a um co-create with bridger and lent um i see that i don't have my glasses on sorry yeah i can see that co-create and and that's what i'm suggesting is that
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it's not a approaching this is us versus them is not going to get us to where we need to get to get you know the kids that are experiencing the highest levels of poverty the quality education that they that they deserve okay thank you trader pass so bridger um so the bridger neighborhood community has been through a lot they had family co-op which was a focus program there then it merged with young sun school when youngstown was closed family co-op moves out they transitioned to k-8 spanish immersion opens overcrowded schools so kindergarten has to move off-site classes are taught in the gym until the portable is installed neighborhood strand is under staff and half the community is now being proposed to move to lent and the other half would be part of the new focus school for creative science and um because of all those transitions the bridger neighborhood community had a number of requests at the community meeting last week and i know they gave this to um deputy superintendent hertz but they requested the following a full-time social worker instead of a part-time one bless you as well a half-time attendance and engagement coach and educational assistant for each of the second and third grade neighborhood classrooms or one that could be split in two allowing the neighborhood fifth graders to transition into middle school next year by being granted admissions into kellogg in order to begin middle school in a comprehensive middle school environment rather than a k with another school transition within the building the following year after and i saw in the report there was you know sort of the non-specific 10 fte but i'm wondering about these really specific asks from the bridger community to be supported what whether those will be things that could be integrated into their recommendation we are definitely going to take those into consideration we're also going to look to see how we can accommodate their requests as much as possible so i'm i'm wondering dr ben edwards um i think this is really important work um but i do know that we have members of the public who want to give tests public testimony and so i'm wondering if there's any way if we could ask if we could jump the line and just have our our families who want to give public testimony about this and our families that want to give public testimony about the charter thing do that now and then we can come back to your questions because i talked to some of them at nine o'clock and the kids were tired then and it's now 10. and i i really apologize um i think that's a good that's a works for me sorry uh director green i guess you let's thank him for still being here though i'm good so trying to think with that anything to you i think it's fantastic there's there are there are young people in the audience and yeah if we just switch to both sets of public comment on these two matters i would really appreciate that thank you thank you steph okay thank you so there's no public comment on segc is what roseanne is saying but there is public comment on the charter school vote yeah so i mean just for what it's worth i i had asked whether schools could present tonight because they haven't had a chance to present the board okay or even comment because can we move on to the charter school um yeah comment that'd be great you know me i'm a late night person so well not everybody is i know and some some people have to work at seven in the morning well it's unfortunate that yeah yeah thank you it was a great call thank you um so we have um people in the audience that are that are here to testify not on southeast guiding coalition um because we're not voting okay so the charter school um ms powell do we have speakers ready to to speak we've thrown a wrench in roseanne's system over here she was ready and then we like jumped six things so thank you rosanna and you guys can i did ask her to come back to discuss it when you're driving home happy too our first person well do you want to start the conversation before you make a movie i'm so sorry uh dr proctor we're we've switched um we've switched the order of things so we could hear from families okay our children are we're just doing public comment only okay just the public comments i'm sorry i'm a little delayed in understanding all right first person is sunita sandoz and this does not work [Music] good evening good evening good evening
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chair depasque good evening director student representative superintendent thank you for switching things up um i'll i'll try and be brief i might be referencing things that you may have been having in discussion so so uh you'll have three minutes and if you can say your name and spell your last name and then you can start and it looks like um somebody somebody started your timer for yes is my name last name spelled s-a-n-d-o-z my name is sunita sandoz i'm the administrator of the emerson school currently pps's longest running charter school tonight i implore you to consider amending the resolution presented so that you can address right-sizing the pass-through rate for pps charter schools to 90 percent immediately this must go into effect for the 2022-23 school year or you may see more charter schools close on your watch due to financial constraints charter schools in portland are facing the same dire issues that pps are currently facing which you've heard a lot about this evening after a lengthy and harrowing pandemic we too are staring down lowered enrollment we too are fighting with every resource available to retain our talented and dedicated staff we too are facing running our schools on a deficit budget as we collect collectively pull through one of the most challenging periods in history for public education for years charter schools have appealed to pps board members some of you up there now to acknowledge the broken funding model that we face as we try to keep our lights on we only receive 80 of the state school funds that neighborhood schools receive per pupil and we must lease or purchase our facilities and pay market rate rent with those funds on top of that public charter schools pay the highest pers rate in the state upwards of 26 percent as compared to pps's current pers rate which ranges from 3.5 percent to 7 percent the emerson school pays 17 000 a month in rent and fifteen thousand dollars a month to purrs for our tiny school of 130 students we must do this or we will close i understand that those issues are out of your control but there is a solution within your control eighty percent of the state school fund is the bare minimum you have the power to pass through more state-sponsored charter schools in portland receive a 90 minimum pass-through rate directors a 20 administrative fee is unconscionable the funding analysis provided to you from district staff has shown that only 4 percent is needed to support the charter school program even if you right-size the pass-through amount to 90 portland public schools would still keep 1.3 million dollars above and beyond the cost of administering administering the charter schools program i'm going to say that one more time even with a 90 pass-through rate pps will keep 1.3 million dollars above and beyond the cost of administering the charter schools program public dollars are intended to follow students that is oregon law tonight i urge you to allow for this to happen last year the abrupt closure of the opel school was a startling wake-up call what i will wrap up watching the internationally acclaimed and longest-running pps charter school closed due to financial constraints was a travesty we cannot wait until 2023 for this change two pps charter schools need to sign new leases this year and we cannot do so without the insurance of sustainable funding in the future do not let us close on your watch do net lot do not let that be your legacy increase the pass-through rate for charters to 90 immediately portland public schools charter school students and their families are depending on you thank you thank you sunita excuse me sorry um i just want to correct something channeling claire hertz from our previous conversations the district spurs rates now is 17 it may have gone up from the past but also to clarify for other people that it is um extremely unfortunate the structure through which they need to pay for their um benefits and their purse but there's uh i i went pretty far deep down a rabbit hole to see if there's any way we could assist them with not with that and statutorily there is not thank you um the only question i had was and my kids went to emerson school so it was a great fit for me as a single parent because it was close to where i worked and it was easy to get to and yes sorry
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i just was reminded we're doing public comment i understand there is more anyway thank you for your comments eric maxson good evening thank you for your time it's eric maxson m-a-x-e-n imagine a scenario where pps decided to open a new school so they hired an administrator and told that administrator that their state school funding the vast majority of their revenue would be reduced by 20 percent despite this the administrator would be expected to secure and pay for a building using those reduced funds cover the health insurance costs for all the employees as well as the pers cost for all these employees this as you just heard from sunita is exactly how portland charter schools operate in the city of portland in other words these public schools in portland cover tens of thousands of dollars every year in expenses that other schools do not and they receive tens of thousands of dollars less every year from the state school fund these are portland public schools the same kids that attend emerson and schools like it attend the neighborhood schools charter schools in portland are public schools i am grateful that my two daughters attended the emerson school and i'm on the bo and i'm on the board there i've been the treasurer for the last three years i understand how school funding works and i know how challenging things are for portland public charters it was brought to my attention recently that while pps keeps 20 percent of charter state funding to cover overhead for their charter program it actually only needs as little as four percent to break even let's write this wrong and give charters the stability they deserve the extra ten the extra ten percent being proposed would have a profound impact on charters and the students who attend them meanwhile it would have a minimal impact on the pps budget these funds represent a tiny fraction of the pps budget but a significant portion of the charter schools budgets please do not kick the can down the road i urge you to change the pass-through amount to 90 percent immediately thank you thank you [Applause] and next we have mark williams who is joining us virtually mark you're muted we can't hear you mr williams sorry about that good evening board my name is mark williams um that's w-i-l-l-i-a-m-s i am a proud parent of three beautiful children who all attend lamone french immersion charter school all my children started kindergarten at le mans french immersion charter school and they are currently 13 12 and 10. one of the reasons i wanted to speak to the board today is to share with you my first hand testimony of our family's personal experience at le mans french immersion charter school we chose to send our children to le monde because my wife is french and we really value languages as a life skill it has been a wonderful opportunity for our three children to learn and grow in a immersive french environment and i wanted to point out that our neighborhood public school is a very good one even though it has been overcrowded for many years the local grade school is only two blocks from our home and it would have been very convenient to have our children attend this local neighborhood school however we feel that it has been well worth the daily drive to transport our children to le mans every day for over the past nine years when the board talks about creating and funding educational opportunities for students of color in students with disabilities you're talking about my three children my oldest daughter is in sixth grade and she's latinx she's
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a creative child who sometimes struggles to keep her focus but lemon french immersion charter school has always worked with us to help her thrive my middle daughter is black and hearing impaired she has been on an iep since preschool and with the help of the teachers at le mans immersion and pps special education services she is excelling at lemon french immersion as a child who wears hearing aids and reads lips to to communicate you would think that learning another language would be difficult for her quite the opposite her time at le mans has been only positive she is is an amazing communicator in both languages and the staff at limon immersion has always ensured that she has had all the accommodation in place to make her learning experience equal to her peers my son who is also black and he's in the fifth grade his experience at lemon has been very positive he is on a 504 plan for some health issues and the staff at le mans has always been accommodating and responsive to his needs so i just want to thank you for allowing me to introduce my family to you this increase in pass-through funding needs to happen now not next year please we are concerned we will lose our staff and teachers if they can't afford to stay at the marine charter school this basic funding is what the state provides for students to receive a quality education and i as a taxpayer do pay my share for that funding and i feel that my children deserve to receive a fair share of that funding as well and so i just want to thank you again for taking the time to consider my testimony thank you that's it so we can go back to southeast getting right we can go back to southeast guiding thank you for uh hanging in there with us um those of you who are on the line and those of you here in person um i know it's late and then you guys can probably get home and then tune in to the um youtube and watch the rest of this meeting and our vote on the charter school thing in your pajamas from your bed or you can stay if you want you're totally welcome too but that that allows you some flexibility because i know there's some little ones out there sorry for the long wait and thanks to you all for showing up can i just ask as a point of clarification director medwards how how many more questions you think you have tonight because that clock is wrong it's not seven o'clock six or seven but they're short questions okay i asked just because i know we have this vote we also have the the math curriculum adoption along with the policy i really appreciate that yeah um and i want to have i want to have an statement because i also want to respect the 20 school communities who this is this this will be this me i know okay let's um quickly move through um the rest of your questions okay um with uh the creative science school uh whoever wants to answer a question um and then we got the same question for is creative science school a school or a program and is bridger a school or a program those are mine [Music] they're both schools correct yes and th which school is going to be you can't have two schools in a building as my understanding which one would be closed we're not closing any of the schools we're moving creative science to correct me if i'm wrong but there's a there's a school id number that the state has so you you actually have to close one account you're right you're correct um and since we haven't adopted the changes yet i don't know the exact sequence and it won't be in place until 23 24 but we can come back to you the proposal says it will become a unified school community creative science at bridger well what's important is depending on which school is closed the staffing and so i'm um this was an issue before for bridger when they had family co-op there so um i'm gonna be interested in how the staffing um works because both both the bridger neighborhood school community and the
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creative science community is attached to their staff so this is part of the um you know a transition and making it a successful transition i know just from previous school changes that is challenging um so thanks for the answer on that i'll be interested though in terms of staffing it would remain relatively the same because you're going to have the same student population so you're going to have roughly the same staff staffing formula for both of those schools when they are reunited under the same roof and then there's unless there's some dramatic change to the enrollment because of the change in location that we haven't foreseen but the point is that there's room to accommodate both of those um school communities as a united school community that's our current thinking at this point that's our current thinking at this point so i want to know more about that because that was something that um the bridger community and i'm sure the creative science school both communicated that it's really important to them um so and this is this is a question for that i have gotten asked about we're moving away from the k8 model um all over the city and yet we're as part of this the staff is recommending that we actually keep a k-8 at creative science school and early on it was said it was because of the sped the number of special education students at um creative science school that that was a better to have a smaller learning environment but i'm looking at the demographics for sped and their special ed students across the southeast cluster and there's actually a whole bunch of other schools that have them in the 20s as well so maybe share the the rationale for why we're keeping a k-8 when we're actually going through this whole process to change them because it's not because of they have higher speed numbers special ed student numbers so i think one of the one of the significant discussion points we've had is about a portfolio of a portfolio of options for families to have right and so similar to fabian and north east right that is a is a k-8 and sort of what is that model and what does that look like um provides an opportunity for families that is slightly different so what we would we've heard and and uh we see it similarly at various other levels of you know grade bands of what does that look like what's that portfolio of options some some families will choose an option that looks slightly different than somebody else right and so i think that that's the question for why this particular you know why why are we maintaining a k8 in this part of the city yeah and just to follow on that because i think um [Music] judy you said the last meeting that eventually in order to fit the two communities in there that there there won't be that many lottery slots um because of the two communities together so it it will be an option if you live in the bridger neighborhood or not but not really an option if you live somewhere else in southeast and you wanted one because there won't be that many slots is similar to fabian in that way right yeah well it's similar to the sunny side environmental school that way um i think the other um important piece is that the you know creative science k-8 um uh grew to k-8 about the same time that other southeast neighborhood-based schools grew to k-8 now that we're moving back to comprehensive middle schools it could be that there is less interest in maintaining a small option but we don't know that now and we didn't know that in the middle of this process if you recall a year ago you asked us to have them the um smallest footprint possible to make these changes and yet we still had to bring forward an awful lot of shifts and revisions that is one that we did not um undertake in the midst of this process which is like what is the purpose of focus option and what is the best grade structure for it but i don't think that means it could never be a conversation within that community okay thank you i also would like to add that creative science also does have a special instructional process the constructivist model and they stress the fact that they think it's best when you have it over um the eight years at the kids uh at the school currently so let's see how that works then um
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and i don't need the answer to this now this is maybe a next two weeks from now um just the number of students who would be eligible for busing based on the one and a quarter quarter mile one more or the one on the quarter mile or one and a half depending on which it is isn't it one and one and a quarter mile for elementary and one and a half that's one okay sorry and one and one half one one and a half and then any other um places where there's been a commitment in this recommendation to bus students so i'd like to know just the total number and then i'd like to know who um who it is is getting bust okay so not just by number but by location like right like it's going to be the eastern part of the marysville boundary hunter just for illustration um then um and this can be uh i think i know the answer but i'd just like to get it on the record for next next meeting just what the supports are in place for the spanish dli echelon and the supports that would be in place for the mandarin dli program and then i just have three things just to say um so this process has been and not at all because of staff or the board um but it's just been destabilizing because the uncertainty and you know uh for for families trying to figure out like what's going to be best for the kids what the changes are going to be how they're going to adjust and then you add the pandemic on top of that um that there are a large number of schools in these communities that um don't have foundations so they don't have the ability to if all of a sudden they're short 20 students because like i'm not going to send my student there because they're going to be moved around or you know whatever reasons you know things have happened to change schools so um i'm going to be interested in like the fte to support the transition and really specifically like where that's going to to go because it's been cumulative on top of the st on top of the staffing cuts that are um being proposed you have this and then like are we losing students and we're going to have less so i'll be interested in a potential hold harmless for the southeast schools that are impacted and then um i because there wasn't an opportunity for people to comment tonight and then the next meeting we're going to be voting i had people who sent me um comments that they wanted to have submitted for the record and so i'll send them to all the board members and then just submit them for the record um otherwise i think next week you know we'll just be voting and it won't seem to be respect respectful but they follow along the lines of um you know creative science school also asking for fte in this transition again then this transition year you know questions from mount tabor parents about who are in spanish immersion about just the the question about the spanish immersion students moving from lower poverty schools being moved to higher poverty schools um in this and then um there is a climate question with the busing how many people are rebusing how does that fit within our climate plans anyway i'll send these to board members and then submit it for the records and i thank the people in the community who sent these and gave us questions to consider and um i want to thank um i i'll just say having been on the screen with these ladies and district staff over the last year you know this is one of the hardest this is one of the hardest things that happens to school communities and i feel like you've held the community um and kept us moving towards like i say what was the ultimately the board charge so i want to thank each of you individually thank you jerick if i could just add a footnote to a comment around the staffing which is an important component here but just a footnote the example of bridger creative science it is quite likely that the faculty would remain intact but until we do the analysis it's also important to remember we also have constraints around our collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union and so until we sort of go through the scenarios it's hard to give you an exact so we certainly want to support the transition but have to do the analysis you could end up with duplicative positions you could etc and so we want to ease the transition we have cba agreements
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and there's a lot of questions to dig into here actually i'm glad you just raised it directly because i was kind of talking around it but that that is i think we need to be super transparent with the community that there are this is what happens in every that's why i was asking like which school id number is going away because that does have implications in the collective bargaining agreement and i think we need to be transparent with that's why i'm bringing it up thank you i have just a couple of quick comments questions and before my colleagues kill me i promise they'll be quick first is i just want to address the sort of dissenting opinion from the southeast guiding coalition on a couple of notes one was that a big part of their misgiving was that they didn't agree with the scope that the board laid out in the first place and that's on us and i have some misgivings myself about going through this process without with basically holding all the southeast schools to on the west side of this area holding those schools harmless i think we could have done things differently but i think that that whole equation was complicated by the fact that the district has not done a thorough review of what what is the purpose of our focus option schools and who are they intended to serve and we happen to have this concentration of them in southeast portland that you can't have a conversation about reconfiguring schools particularly on the west side of southeast portland without having a conversation about what are academic goals around these focus programs and who should they serve and how do they align with our equity lens so those are really complicated questions that really should have been addressed in this process but i will be the first to say that i was one of you know all of us who agreed that we had to somehow narrow this scope in order to get it done and that we had made a commitment to the community to open kellogg i mean excuse me to open harrison park by 2023 so it was it was a necessary compromise that we had to make but i just want to recognize that that misgiving that was expressed by so many members of the guiding coalition and there was one other thing in their opinion that i wanted to address oh just take it back a little bit to the creative science unification with bridger you know ideally we'll have that conversation um when we look at our focus option programs and maybe that's sort of like a mini exercise that we can do as we look at maybe northeast reconfiguration as well because i think that conversation is long overdue and i i expressed early on in this process i have never seen a strong pedagogical reason why creative science should remain as a k-8 when we're contorting our entire district to reconfigure to elementary and middle schools and we also have harrison park across the street that is under enrolled as a middle school so you know the balance there would be that you could open up more lottery spaces for students who might want to attend creative science who are not in the bridger neighborhood more lottery spaces for k-5 because they're actually seeking out that particular program um and then um you have this this wonderful rich vibrant middle school right there which is what we say that we're trying to create so that i have a pretty strong opinion about that and then the other thing about the focus option schools as far as an equity issue is that it's always been a huge equity issue are our constraints around transportation for for dli and focus option schools and it remains one and that's part of this conversation um if we're really talking about things with a racial equity and social justice lens we have to look at who has access literally and figuratively to those programs um yeah you know oh just the other the last thing i want to say is that um the other elephant in the room is that we took consolidations off the table and when we look at the numbers of some of these very small schools in outer southeast portland that's not really a logical choice it's a political choice
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and so that's also on us and that needs to be a part of the conversation i don't mean it needs to be a part of the conversation literally right now where we should you know take this proposal and come up with something new but we need to take responsibility for the fact that that that is a reality that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later especially as we see our enrollment only continuing to decline so those are just some of my thoughts and questions and uh way back when when you asked what do we really appreciate about this one of the things i appreciate is that the the recommendations around the dla dli programs are really grounded in what is academically best for student achievement and most important for our english language learners because historically that hasn't really been that much of a factor in our decisions around reconfiguring and and moving boundaries and all that and it should be the factor it should be the most important factor so that's those are super hard decisions to make those separating of co-located programs because nobody wants to be dislocated but it is i'm really glad that we held firm on that because that's really putting students first so thank you thank you do we have any other comments i i want to echo also what director constance said just i'm always curious about who is burdened who's harmed by our decisions um i uh i trust that the i know that this is difficult i also know that i trust the data um that that i've read that says um that that supports the proposal that's on the table um i want to ask just a quick lightning round if anybody has further comments or should we just move on yeah i haven't had any chance to ask questions i'm sorry i'm sorry director scott just uh but one of our guiding principles in this process was students at the center so um i'm sorry um but i'm gonna take some time um so kind of that is my question in our resolution that we passed last year around this time in may um one of those guiding principles was students at the center so i just wanted like a brief explanation of how we like stayed true to that principle by centering students specifically like student voice in this process so in terms of student voice and again i'm i'm sorry that shanice clark isn't with us to be more specific but we did have um student culturally specific student engagement sessions in the fall and in december so those were some ways for students to come in and engage directly on different at different phases of the process and then i would say um it particularly with uh the lent community um and there's probably others that are slipping my mind right now that they um they set the stage for us so i really want to acknowledge where um student communities came forward um to let us know how they felt and um were willing to share that information really broadly these are younger students impacted by the change and especially if you considered the delay until 2023 like we're talking about fourth and fifth graders not that they don't have important input to give but i think it's a different design perhaps than what you would typically see with the high schoolers or even later middle schoolers and um i i believe shanice may have more to offer back to you in response to that when she's available on how we tried to center their voice and not just their voice through their parents but but through them authentically we also asked our school leaders to reach out to their student council and um have conversations with them about their opinion explain the process um the feeling there was that they would be a little bit more open with their principles because they're just a little bit more familiar and comfortable with their leaders yeah i'd love to know how many students we got engagement from okay um my second question um was actually i have email questions i'm good thank you are there any final questions before we wrap up we will be voting on this on may 24th i'll be attending um probably virtually i'll try to make it in person but i think i'll be virtual um where um where do we direct questions and um if we've got further questions it sounds like you've in terms of process um we're voting on it in two weeks yeah one thing i i would just ask is that if there's any sort of presentation like new powerpoint that we make sure it gets
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posted um with all the materials in advance because there's a lot of people who have a lot have invested a lot in this process and i think would like to see that um also like i may potentially have some suggested changes in well i guess i'll wait to get some of the answers that i asked for is um suggested changes in the resolution nothing that would be if anybody's thinking i'm going to move schools around like that's not what i'm thinking about but it's more like this how do you how do we resource or just provide more visibility to what people can expect um one last comment about the student engagement is that um it would be fabulous to do a charette type process with students young students they have all kinds of solutions for everything from what equipment to put in the park to what color it should be how high the building should be and it's a great exercise to get them civically engaged you know at the very early ages well they could also i guess one of the things i'd like to have um about student engagement is like how are they being involved in the 10 million dollar investment because i saw some of the investments and they were like mechanical systems and that's not what i thought when i was thinking of the 10 million dollars i was thinking about like hey we have this beautiful new school and we also have a a good solid school and how do we make it even better and more appealing to middle schoolers so i would like use student you know the future students of like what do they want to see there what's what's missing um and i don't i don't think they're going to say the mechanical systems not that that's not important but all right so we're going to wrap that topic up we're going to vote on on may 24th um if you've got further questions you ask staff dr o uh judy brennan uh deputy superintendent still our strong strong leader she's the very ls she's not in front of us uh so yeah so she's direct to um to claire we're gonna move on now um board members uh to we'll be voting to adopt four contracts for the new 612 math uh thank you steph i know it's late thank you um we're gonna we'll be voting next to adopt four contracts for the new 612 math curriculum i hope you've all had a chance to review the video presentation that was posted in board books with the materials um superintendent garetto would you or staff like to share anything about this adoption i'll just say a quick intro as uh staff comes up here to the to the podium as you know this is the latest in a sequence of um bond funded thank you voters which allows us to leapfrog new curricular materials across content areas and grade levels and we're really pleased to to bring to you at this point the latest as part of our adoption process which i'm sure the team here will i'll let them talk about but i'll let you take it away good evening everyone chair depass directors student representative weinberg we're pleased to bring before the board of recommendation for the new middle grades math curriculum adoption for a bit of background the previous math curriculum adoption uh for grades six to eight was completed in 1999 with the connect math project and with an adoption of connect math project 2 in 2009 in may of 2020 portland our community supported the bond which included for the first time the much needed funding to be able to fund long-term overdue new curriculum materials adoption across all core contents district-wide on this evening we're going to talk about math the decision to fully adopt mid-school math core curriculum for middle school and mcgraw-hill illustrative math for high school is a highly involved process including across district 6 to 12 math adoption of instructional resources committee and a field test of 612 math instructional resources we hope that directors have an opportunity again to review the video that was provided in advance so that you know you could familiarize yourself with what's being presented to you this evening we also have uh susan klovac and kristen moon here today to support any questions that you may have this evening
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as they worked very diligently in the process and engaging across sector of stakeholders in coming to the decision for this evening so based on the our review of the materials as well as pps student and teacher feedback we wanted to share some highlights about the med school math core curriculum so one of the pieces is going to be that this curriculum has strong connections with real world applications through multimedia and text which allows students to make sense of mathematics by working through the story in the video and applying their understanding to new situations to quote a student i actually understood what was going on in math this also has an inclusion of robust lessons that show explicit connections between previous and future units to quote a teacher the sequence of the lessons is extremely well thought out to build one into the next so that students see their knowledge growing from one standard to the next this also provides access to progress monitoring and assessment data in real time for not only the teacher but the principal and at the district level as well in addition there is a the usage of a test trainer pro which is a digital application that provides multiple practice with problems and to quite a student i liked how the test trainer helped you work on specific skills and how you can choose which skill to practice and i'm going to share also some student and teacher input on the mcgraw-hill illustrative mathematics we provided a variety of kind of hard data in our presentation but this data you may not have come across and we really wanted to value that student and teacher voice the curriculum illustrative math is designed to spark discussion perseverance and enjoyment in mathematics a student quote from the field test was it brings many parts that serve as examples and others that are understood without being explained there was explicit support for our special education and emerging bilingual students a teacher quote i don't think we could find a better curriculum to help students develop strong conceptual mathematic understanding i love the emphasis on student collaboration and voice it noticeably helps students build confidence in their abilities i also think the physical materials are very easy to use and the teacher guide provides very detailed guidance on lesson implementation illustrative also has access to progress monitoring and assessment data that's not just for the teacher but also for the principals to look at and finally i think this is a teacher quote i think this would be hugely beneficial there is rigor that centers the students efforts there are various ways to engage with the content warm-ups routines activities practice cooldowns the teacher guide is huge solutions are given keys are provided for students who are struggling with and all of this cuts down on teacher work time the online component is very useful and beneficial for students and would be useful for students who are struggling to come to school for any reason and are able to work online i know that the workbooks are consumable but i'm sure that i actually saved paper from previous years there is ample content for tag and advanced sections which will support those students and also reduce workload for those teachers i highly recommend it so we're wondering if you have any questions about the math adoption or anything that we can clarify we're very excited about these two vendors for mathematic instruction that we're recommending to you they both are very highly rated by ed reports they had the top rating so there has been this external evaluation and our own internal evaluation through extensive field testing which began in september and just ended at the end of march by teachers all over the district for both middle and high school we did survey students we surveyed teachers in multiple ways we looked at student work and artifacts we looked at we observed teachers teaching in the classroom we we tried to build a comprehensive evaluation model and we are actually planning on an implementation evaluation to follow up to see how well student outcomes are going to improve because of this new math curriculum i just want to say i've run into some of
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the teachers doing the field testing in my school visits and it's been universally enthusiastic both about just their their assessment of the efficacy but also just the engagement in the enthusiasm of the students like it seems like a lot more fun yeah we think it is do we and it's built it's built in the curriculum to move away from kind of traditional math instruction which focuses on procedural fluency to really move towards conceptual understanding and students building knowledge by working with each other collaborating and engaging in discourse which we're really excited because it's embedded in the curriculum i'm i'm really excited to learn more i haven't been in schools where i've seen it or observed classrooms where they're using it do we and it's my favorite subject so i really love the idea i i don't know enough about how how it's taught um but i do like the idea that it's interactive and that's collaborative and that it sounds like it's applied math which is really it was great do we do we know how um students of color black students in particular i mean do we have the data during our assessment to know you know is it culturally relevant is it is it you know relatable is it you know how do we have any idea how our black students in particular are taking to this like awesome thing is it is it being effect is it effective from your six months of data collection so from the student survey data one of the part we did ask is about the cultural relevancy do they see themselves reflected in the materials do they see their student voice and feel that's being valued as part of this and we did look at it through um specifically the demographics of black native and emergent bilingual student voice and the students gave it the highest scores of med school math which actually corresponded to what the teachers evaluated it as well one of the difficult parts to determine is the impact we did see that it had a student's black and native emerging bilingual student achievement according to map growth assessment which was the piece that we did have was at the same rate as white peers so it is a shorter amount of time to see how much if that would have a greater growth or not but it did match and was on the same pace as their white peers um so yeah my one question is od we recently adopted new math standards that included data reasoning does this curriculum allow us to kind of follow those new standards that are going to be implemented soon so for middle school a hundred percent and for high school do you want me to kill yeah yeah so for high school um one of the challenges that we have with a new oregon state standards around the data reasoning part that you're speaking of is that those standards are so brand new that there isn't a lot of curriculum that aligns with this and so these materials for high school do not align in that way but we are actually field testing next year some materials that do align with those data reasoning and data science standards that oregon has adopted for high school math it it does cover the statistics and probability as the sophomore course that would be um a 0.5 with geometry so those are covered within the curriculum that we're purchasing the what would be additional would be the junior level plus one full year data science course and we are looking at a resource an open source resource for that and we are beginning to train teachers to pilot that next year the only caveat for that is we're so far ahead of the game that um the universities do not currently accept data science for admissions um to the university so um so we are only able to offer that data science in pilot to students who've already taken advanced algebra because they still are university of oregon and oregon state we've been talking with them still require algebra 3 4 for admission not data science so with that we are working with the state group that has state leaders and the people who decide emission requirements at the colleges and things like that and collaboration to figure out what that looks like and what needs to be done in order for that to happen and so we're really excited that portland has a seat at that table to have that discussion you know they're looking to us to be a leader in that area and they're actually beginning to discuss at the university level teaching a data science course that would be similar to what we would be teaching so they can say it's worthy of college entry
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do we have any other um questions that looks like director broome edwards director hollins director greene um director lowry scott i want to say a quick um thank you to the superintendent for the foresight of including curriculum in our bond we otherwise know that we were on a very very slow road to improving our curriculum resources so shout out to our old friend former chief academic officer luis valentino for having that foresight as well and to our voters for supporting it and um just want to point out to our board members that on the resolution that we're passing tonight you'll see that the actual digital resources are separated in the contracts from the personal services or the professional development support that the vendors provide and in the memo i don't know if in the memo that we originally received the description of the contracts with these vendors included both the the resources and the professional development which raised a red flag for me giving what type of activities are are bond eligible so i kind of worked through that today with um general counsel liz large and so we do have a revised memo that makes it really clear in the memo how those are disaggregated and then in the contracts that we're actually approving it's really clear how those are separated and paid for out of different funds thank you for flagging that that's helpful do i have a motion in a second to adopt the four contracts for the new 612 math curriculum with resolution 6497 so moved second director lowry moves director scott seconds the adoption of resolution 6497 we've already had board discussion and a student representative did you have any final thoughts is there any public comment the board will now vote on resolution 6497 to adopt the new math curriculum for grade 612 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution six four nine seven is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative weinberg voting yes fantastic uh chair we just yeah just thank you to the board for for your unanimous support here uh this is a really important another important step forward we're going to keep these coming to you uh periodically i just want to commend the team here uh for their extensive process for the engagement that they described uh really looking forward to starting to see fidelity of implementation as we jump into the new school year and uh how our educators and students start to experience the material so thank you thank you superintendent director hollins yes i did have a question so with the new adoption piece how's the professional development going to be administered to make sure that the teachers are um appropriately teaching the stuff absolutely so um we have already jumped into to professional learning planning of course there are two summer institutes one in june and one in august that teachers can attend choose to attend both their three days if teachers can't attend those that we do have fall options and we are working to see what the diverse options we can um offer with the challenges around substitutes as well and then um we're going to be offering ongoing professional learning based on the calendar that was adopted by the board just a couple weeks ago to support on those embedded pd days that there will be professional learning as well as we are looking at using some staff meeting time to run some professional learning cadres across the district to support that as well um and then in addition to that we are working to train our tosas to also become instructional coaches and so they've been working with teachers in the classroom on their lessons and their lesson planning through that and then doing the implementation evaluation to inform how well our professional learning is impacting what is happening with uh students and our teachers thank you yeah absolutely thank you um so um thank you thank you steph thank you for that for staying late i'm excited i think i've asked um early on about that growth curve and when we would start seeing some real action i feel like this is a great i feel like we'll start to see results in a year or two for margaret calvert our regional superintendent for secondary schools and all our school leaders i was just gonna say i think we have her thumbs up so we're now going to move to the climate
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i'm just going to hang out are we i don't even know are so climate we're going to go back to the charter we're going to go to charter oh see let's see i told you was fun i mean is that what we're doing i'm here i'm here too i'm coming it's on the clock regardless oh okay so climate crisis jonathan we have two charter sort of two titles in the ch in in our script this is the climate crisis committee charter so not to be confused with the charter school pass through um director brum edwards would you like to introduce this next item yep this should be quick as everybody knows as everybody knows we passed a sweeping climate policy earlier this year as part of that there is a climate crisis um committee that um is composed of not more than nine community members and this is the charter for the committee and it's um been built off of um using the bac and this and cbr well the bond accountability committee and the citizens budget review committee as um sort of committee community thank you um and so this is the charter and i don't i think it's pretty self-explanatory it was recommended by the policy committee and uh the extra piece we have is once we approve the charter then we're going to move into the application process and um i'll turn it over to you to talk about the quickly about the the launching of the committee great thank you uh director brian edwards so what you have on your screen is a general timeline here uh that we were proposing uh to you obviously subject should change uh after today is may 10th uh after you consider today's charter we would move forward with the application deadline a month from today this will give us an opportunity to reach out to our networks our your networks uh really again you're the you're the you're the decision makers here so um however we can support u.s staff in lifting up we have an application that um a few of you have reviewed so our goal is to move forward with launching the ccr committee in july i'm also happy to report that we have a verbal off a verbal offer and a verbal yes from our next climate justice advisor who is scheduled to to begin here in june uh to really help launch this inaugural uh ccr committee so uh we expect that the vote the board would vote on june 28th uh to consider and vote the the committee in its entirety which leaves june 21st when we will narrow and publicly share the inaugural slate of committee members so again this is subject to change um working closely with our with the policy committee to to ensure that that we have a successful launch in july right at the start of the new school year would you like a motion so do i have a motion in a second to adopt resolution 6498 resolution authorizing the climate crisis committee charter did you move from those words director broome edwards moves director holland seconds the adoption of resolution 6498 thank you is there any board discussion my one brief comment is just to call out that there's also two student members that will be appointed at the same time and just really to push it out to kindergarten through eighth graders as well not just to high schools yeah yeah we'll look forward to working with the dsc to identify some students ms powell is there any public discussion public comment the board will now vote on resolution 6498 resolution authorizing the climate crisis committee charter all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no and are there any abstentions resolution 6498 is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative weinberg voting yes appreciate it and i want to thank aaron who stayed here until late i've been um so without
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saying a word so maybe you want to say thank you thank you i'm trying to come up with a really difficult question to ask you so you'll feel like it was good to be here all this time aaron sorry what were you going to say thank you thank you and aaron um i know you're involved with some of the city's um work as i am on our climate response as well so it's nice to meet you in person yeah you do thank you we're now going to move on to the charter school pass-through rate at the april 20th charter and alternative programs committee meeting i understand the committee recommended moving forward a resolution to increase the pass-through rate for all charter schools beginning in the 2023-24 school year director green did you want to introduce this next item well i would love to um in our committee meeting we were discussing the pass-through amount and how much we as a school district retain and how much goes to the actual on charter schools and we were talking about it from a space of um how do we um stabilize help to stabilize some of our our charter schools who are struggling to stay afloat um given the pandemic and the rising nature of all of our costs all the way around and although there's at this point without going to legislation we found that there was nothing that we could do as far as like pers and stuff we asked the staff at that time if they would come back and provide us with um a scenario around what would it look like to change the pass-through rate from 80 to 90 and how would that impact us um as a district at that time the charge that um that we gave them was that we wanted to find out what it would look like but we also wanted to ensure that the funds that we gave um wouldn't surpass the amount of funding that we got to support the charter schools so we wanted to make sure that um in their um in their presentation that they came back to us with that they provided us with a worst case scenario so from including administrative fees legal fees just everything goes to hell in a handy basket and we're going to be doing more work than we've ever done what would that what would those numbers look like and so they brought back um some figures um and with that um it showed that we would be passing through a certain amount and we would still have um a significant amount left over um to pass through to the general fund and so we discussed it um it went on the table there was some back and forth on the table um around whether or not this is something that um we could do now or if we should do later um and so essentially what we what we decided was let's get it to the board for um let's get it to the board for uh a full board discussion um there was you know because it had to leave the committee otherwise it dies in the committee and we didn't want it to die in the committee so we said you know well we can we can live with 23 24 um but that would just get it out of committee and then we'd take it out of the committee and we could talk about it as a full board to decide what it is as a board that we felt would be appropriate and when we felt it would be appropriate and that's how we got to where we are now so i'm hoping that everyone had a chance to read through all the materials that were provided so that we can have a more robust conversation around it thank you director green director i mean i'm sorry uh superintendent guadal um still here i'm very tired um it looks like steph is here to yeah they they are uh i think you have the the staff memo from from our two deputies uh dr proctor can fill in but but we have the others thanks to director greene for that added background and context and we heard some of it earlier also from our community members this is one of those situations where we might have a slight variation uh uh but it's good that we're having this discussion here with what with staff's perhaps more conservative approach and and when to take up the policy decision and and also the fiscal implementation if we were to move in that direction but but i'll let dr proctor take it from here thank you superintendent guerrero you know pps holds equity as sen as a central tenant for the work that we do and for all decisions and actions and work uh to eliminate uh racial disparity so we really want to look at um you know taking things through an equity lens the major goal of the school district's vision is again to eliminate some of those predictable factors
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the purpose for the the proposed change in the charter school funding would transfer and reallocate general fund resources currently being spent to support pps neighborhood schools and programs receiving equity-based resource allocations the charter school funding is within the general fund and is not separate from those funds so staff recommends delaying the policy decision on charter school funding ratios until the 2023 school year to allow for a national benchmarking and strategic resourcing evaluation to be completed by educational resource strategies staff values using the benefits of this work before making an individual long-term financial commitment we believe it would be prudent to look at these financial decisions together as we create our long-term strategic financial plan and with that i think we can see if there's a further discussion but that was what i wanted to introduce and say thank you and i would be interested in hearing from the other committee members um your your thoughts on this and you're you'd recommended you'd recommended that this be put in front of the board um to be considered 4 23 24. yeah i can give just a little bit of background and then um also i want to acknowledge staff's perspective that dr proctor just relayed um first of all uh back in 2019 when we first created the charter and alternative schools committee or reconstituted it we asked for we we talked about this question and we asked for an analysis from the district about that pass-through rate the the pass-through rate is set by the state as a floor the state says that um they have to you have to pass through 80 percent but they don't say they they don't prescribe that whether or not districts can choose to pass through more than 80 but 80 is the minimum set by the state so we asked staff to look at that back at that time and look at it with our racial equity lens and the analysis came back that our charter schools first of all we don't have a large student population in our charter schools and our charter schools do not serve the same demographic generally as our district schools they don't serve as many historically underserved students and so in that conversation in 2019 what we decided to do to move out of that committee to the board which was eventually approved was to create a resolution that would create a 95 pass-through rate for any of our charter schools that served more than 50 percent uh historically underserved students is that right is the terminology historically underserved or is it by race earth race ethnicity yes specifically that's what i thought historically underserved specifically by race and ethnicity and so um i think that was the right thing to do personally and that was approved by the board and at that time and presently we only have one charter school that qualifies for that and that is kairos pdx so we have these four other schools that receive 80 pass-through it is tough sledding i will say as we have heard from them they have a difficult time finding facilities especially now as rents are increasing they have a difficult time retaining excellent educators based on what they're able to pay it is a tough financial model and there are a lot of barriers to operating as a charter school in the state of oregon and that is fairly intentional by the state legislature this is a we have a charter unfriendly political climate i think it's safe to say um so um that was our conversation we did talk about the fact that these four schools do not uh serve a demographic that is similar to our rest of our districts so in that sense a recommendation to draw from the general fund to increase our pass-through rate to our charter schools is not in alignment with our uh racial equity and social justice lens but um i i will just i will just state my point of view and sort of the conversation that we had in that committee uh was that our overarching value is that uh to a great degree our our values are that the dollar
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should follow the students and that these students are being served in a different setting but they're still our kids um and so it was with that sentiment in mind that we decided to bring this before the full board for consideration um and uh i we we the majority of the our committee just wanted to bring it forward for um implementation in the 23 budget in the 23 school year because when this came to us we were in the middle of our budget process so if we were to consider changing this resolution and doing it any sooner it would mean we would have to direct staff to go back to our district budget and find you know one roughly 1.2 million dollars in savings which is not an easy exercise at this moment and for me personally i don't think a responsible exercise that said i will very enthusiastically support this resolution for implementation uh next year i so just my um sort of being on the committee my one hesitation with this is that you know we had a gentleman testify tonight about dollars following students and we know that if we look at the you know what we get from the state school fund that was on the p-a-t slide tonight it was about nine thousand dollars per students that's not how pps allocates the money we do an equity-based budget and so when we look at our budget book we see that students in like i think students at alliance is like twenty thousand dollars a student because there's some that's a small program with really special needs and so the way we've always looked at the charter school dollars has not been about the dollars following the students because that's not how we do things in pps and so when we change the pass-through rate to 95 for historically underserved part of the rationale there was to encourage our charter schools to to really broaden their recruitment charter schools have a lottery they can't use race as one of the weights necessarily there's a lot of laws around how admission can happen to charter schools but we were hoping that they would do a little more recruitment to to change the makeup of some of those schools and i know that some like portland village school have really worked hard especially with the hispanic community to change some of their demographics so that's the place where i struggle a little bit i'm okay with the 90 pass through i i wouldn't be okay with more just because when we look at our charter school numbers they don't match their pbs as far as um historically underserved students so when you pull kairos out and look at the rest of our charters you know there there is an equity issue there so so i support the 90 i support waiting a year because it is another million we'd have to cut from the budget and while when we talk about our entire budget a million doesn't seem like a lot i think we really are trying to put as much as we can in our local classrooms so so this is really interesting question about money following students and how do we do things differently both in supporting our charter schools which serve our different learners and in keeping our equity priorities in pps so i feel like 90 is a good compromise there but i do think we still need to continue to encourage and support our charter schools as they continue to reflect the makeup of pps as a whole did you have comment uh comments or questions well i remember comments um [Music] but also a question but first i'm going to start with the comment because uh director green like i'm older than dirt and i feel like i've seen everything and i can't believe that um this is something that the the rates that you shared is not something that actually has been i think put before the board before and i think it's a really great question because i look at the numbers that once we back out the actual program cost expenses just looking at the five-year averages that we received i mean the district i mean charters are subsidizing the districts in so in some ways and i guess i it's been going on for a long time and i if i look at it or at least i'm looking back the numbers of to 17 18 it's at least 2 million dollars a year that the district has held back even though it um it's already paid the expenses of the cost of administrating or supporting the program um so i'm when i look at that i'm thinking like what what what would i know differently what would i learn from some sort of national benchmarking that would change my mind in a year from now and i i guess i i'm not really sure there's anything that i would find compelling i don't i don't think our the overall and i'd be interested maybe you could share the
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number of historically underserved students in our charters versus our um uh in our our overall population um i'd be interested in that if somebody could speak to that because i know it's like 40 books for the charter meeting i'll look it up for you i think it's like three or four percentage points difference which i don't find different and i also would note just like based on all the conversations i've had over the years with the charters that have closed um is the fact that they have to carry the facilities costs and the you know any sort of there's no transportation so there it's it's not like we just give them slightly less it's like they also unlike all of our other schools they have to actually go get a building and maintain it and pay rent and all those things so i think they have like extra costs on top of it so i i'm trying to think of what what information uh benchmarking survey it's like the next three slides um i'll look at them in just a sec i don't know what a benchmark survey may show to me that would tell me something different than i don't know why we don't pass through more of this because i i do feel that there is a moment of vulnerability for our charters that um they may close and once once you start the unwinding you can't just start them back up again i think that's what we found out with with opal it's like all of a sudden they closed and even though i think universally people felt it was a really important charter in in the mix or an option for our students that like you couldn't once they lost their their place to be um you couldn't sort of help sustain them like we would a school community so i i would be more inclined to support uh moving ahead this this year and the resolution that we have before us is uh does not acknowledge the staff recommendation that we wait a year for benchmarking it's in the staff report but the resolution simply asks us whether we want to vote on implementation of this change in 93. i would also like to add that in my initial introduction of this and i'm waiting to go around the room that i just wanted to simply introduce the introduce the topic for for a greater discussion and i did not want to in the introduction of that input where i what my position is and where i was that because i did not want my position to um change you know i want everybody i want everybody to be talking about this um which is why i shared the information that i did um because i wanted to make sure that everybody was coming from the same page so at some point i do want to come back around and speak to why i feel we should be doing this and why i feel we should be doing this now well it's 11 15 so i i'm i'm all ears [Laughter] i i would you know i'll be right there with you andrew but i'm i'm in a a hotel room and and i'm comfortable so i'll try to make i'll try to make this brief oh boy no so as i um as i as i'm looking at this the funding that that we're talking about using is funding state funding that's allocated to us um for specifically for charter schools and although um it's a it's a general fund this is state funding that has been allocated to us to support um and uphold and to make sure that you know we're doing all that we can to uplift charter schools and of that money the 20 million roughly 20 million dollars that we're going to get um we're going to be using 16 million of that roughly to support support charter schools then we're going to add um another 710 000 um that is going to cost us that we're saying um to administer to admin to do whatever we need to do to um to work with the to work with the charter schools and even if we raise that up to say it's going to cost us a million dollars this year to support the charter schools which is greater by far than any year we have ever had when you especially when you look at the five-year the five year projection that we've done we've never spent um that much money but even if we didn't spend that much money we would still be passing through just over a million dollars into the the general budget the reason that i'm i'm bringing this up is because as we're we're trying to pad the general budget so that we can make up for the 40 million shortfall that that we're going to have we're we're not really seeming to take into consideration that these these two schools may fail
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not because they're not doing great work not because they don't have the funding but because we want to make sure that we pad our 40 million dollar um our 40 million dollar deficit now to me that's unconscionable where someone once someone said to me well what are we going to do if if all of a sudden that we get all the charter schools and they're all um you know like kairos now and where's that money going to come from then well first of all that's not going to happen this year i think that's safe to say i don't care how much they try i don't care what they do whatever it's not even about being optimistic or pessimists that's just that's just not realistic of it's going to happen but if they were to do it on next year then because there's a a weight involved with each one of the students then the amount of money given to us from the state would actually go up and so because that amount would go up then the amount that we had to support the charter schools would go up and therefore we would still be able to do the same work without ever impacting what's going or what would be going into the general the general fund because we're going to get more money so if by chance all the schools are now all of a sudden serving all the black kids then we're gonna get more money anyway so that shouldn't even be um that shouldn't even be a conversation piece because it's sustainable all on its own we're talking about we want to do research and we want to find out and we want to hear what the what the data says when we can look at the last five years and see what the data trends have said and how much we've passed through and how much we've used so i think we have a data trend to go from we have a sustainability option that does not take away from the the current general fund unless unless you pit unless you want to pit now serving black kids above serving charter school kids so if you want to make that the argument if the argument is well if we support these schools then we want to be able we won't be able to support as many other black kids that is an argument that you can make i just don't believe that it's a just one i don't believe it is the one that that we should be making right now because we shouldn't be saying and i get it i i know that we want the the black kids to be you know saying they need to get closer to graduation but when the state gives us funding specifically for um an organization you know we want to make sure that you've got money to support these schools and we want to make sure that it doesn't take away from anything else we're taking away from them to support other stuff while they fail because and we do it in the name of we're going to help all these other black kids i believe we should be helping all the kids and if they've given us money to support these schools then let's use that money to support those schools to the best of our ability one part of me wanted to argue that i don't believe that we should be passing through any of the money i believe that we should be using all of the money to support charter schools and whatever we don't use um for the pass-through amount that we actually use that additional funds to um sponsor events where they're going to be taking kids to and from places maybe we use that money to help them with transportation seeing that uh probably probably it's possible it's plausible that part of the reason that a lot of black kids can't come to charter schools is because they live far away and they need transportation and charter schools don't actually get any transportation funding so maybe if to to quote to quote a friend of mine who spoke tonight she said we have to look at transportation and we have to look at it from our equity links and if we are going to do that then we quote um we have to who has access literally and figuratively to transportation so if we're looking at all of this through the equity lens then part of the reason that black kids can't come to the charter schools is because we don't provide any type of transportation to get them there so if we start looking at access to transportation both literally and figuratively then maybe we can do something to increase the number of kids black kids that are attending charter schools by providing them another transportation option because transportation is real and so i don't believe we can wait i don't believe that we should wait i believe that we should do this now the only reason that i and i said this in the committee so i don't believe i'm speaking out of turn or you know saying something that i've
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never said before i said i'll vote for 2324 if it'll get it out of the committee so that we can talk about it at the um at the board but what i really want is for us to do it now and so i voted 23 24 simply and i said it then and i believe that's public so i can say it again now simply so that we could get it here and we could discuss it because i believe if we truly look at this we recognize that the only right decision the only real decision on the table for us now is to pass this so that those charter schools that are on the verge of closing can have an assurance of some kind especially since we're saying we're we're being kid focused they can have an assurance that those kids will actually have a school to come back to next year and i will vouch for herman that amy and i were saying delay it a year and he was saying do it for this the 22-23 school year and we said well two of us have are voting one way you're voting another the majority will bring it to the committee and then you can give your passionate speech uh to try to change everybody's minds sure that makes a lot of sense so the policy decision before us is do we pass the resolution as is which implements this in 2324 do we amend the resolution to do it in 2223 or do we amend the resolution to go with the staff recommendation which is to benchmark and wait right those are those are the three options i'm curious the folks i'm curious from those who who want to move forward next year though um what's your idea for where to find the 1.2 million dollars because that is roughly 10 to 12 teachers just to put it in in context so i think as a board given where we're on the budget process and and and i'm going to ask board members to do this throughout i'll hold myself to this as well to the extent we start putting ideas on to move funds around and do different things i think we also owe it to at least at least give some direction it doesn't have to be line item but at least give some direction to the superintendent about where we think that funding should come from and so first and if it fails there whoever is talking so whatever the the back and forth is because that was my bad sorry director green yeah and i guess for me i'm i'm in support of moving in this direction and it for me it's just it really is the timing question and for me it's that trade-off question um what what is the trade-off next year if we move more quickly who will that impact who will that who will that harm we know it'll help the charter schools so the question is who who who gets harmed by that i also like sorry julia let me uh i wanted to bring it back to ailey's point around um we don't we don't fund our district schools on a pass-through dollar basis um attached for this agenda item you'll see the heat map of what our investment is per student in all of our schools and it varies widely you know it's a 2x different from how we fund our high poverty schools and you know our our lowest funded schools and when we look at where our charter schools are right now they're they're they're in the mix there and and julia to your point i mean yes they do have some added expenses but right now their allocations are 7 627 so that puts them comparable with a school like say which is one of our lowest funded schools um and this would bump it up to um 85 81 which puts them comparable to forest park this is a really this is a really important point i hadn't thought about it quite like that because i was as i was going through our budget book i was noticing you know jackson middle school in my zone has one of the lowest per student you know um per capita it's also a very successful school um and and so again that's what as you know we've all been talking about like that's the reallocation of resources which i think is the right thing to be doing but but if we use the same frame i mean we are taking two 2 500 for every student that goes to jackson and supporting some someone else in the district i think that's the right decision right i think that's what we should be doing um for those students so that i i appreciate that because that that does put it in perspective we don't just take the nine thousand whatever we get from the district and send it to every school where those kids go we make some policy decisions about where those that funding goes can i make a comment about that too i just want to add into that that looking at the heat map if you look at what the charter schools funding is that 7 000 whatever it is and correct for 20 of their funding goes to a facility so that general fund dollars is paying for their facility whereas on your heat map those school dollars per student don't include your bond fund important
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point it's a very important point and the additional purse which as you pointed out wasn't as dramatic as initially reported but is still pretty pretty dramatic so correcting for that even if you look at the charter school we pass through 95 percent to at 95 percent they're getting 9 000 ish per student and when you compare to district schools with that similar demographic or student population uh those schools would be in our ability to be able to transfer and and create more equitable funding would be getting anywhere from twelve thousand to sixteen thousand dollars per student so even with passing through that ninety five percent we're still uh having charter schools not we're not asking that charter schools would be they wouldn't be similar to what district schools are getting they're actually still getting quite a bit less even with that 90 percent pass through when you correct for the if that makes any sense around it can get that last part exactly but i think we're probably fine to move on um but if you're just talking about the additional what she's saying is looking at the map and comparing it to forest park isn't really a comparative because forest park the students there and and the principal um have a school that's like they have a facility that's paid for and utilities and everything so it's actually that's a lot there's an overhead that is not accounted for in our heat map um operations you know lights building itself rent roughly 20 percent but we also we also need to consider that all of these charter schools uh have active fundraising um endeavors um that help support and uh and lead some of this work as well and many of our school communities do not have that as a comparison they also don't have us as a district going out and finding different um different vendors and different ones to provide dollars that are going to also come back and help the school i mean not to this i know this ain't really the time or the space to count other people's money but the superintendent actually does a great job going out um talking to folks and he's got i mean he's got a lot of folks on the hook right now that are really looking to give pps in our school district millions millions of dollars right now based on some of the work that that he's doing and so i'm not trying to i'm not here to try to pat his back right now or do anything like that i'm here to say the same way you know i'm saying that we're going after even though we have funding coming in we have a superintendent who's out there going out trying to find other monies and other resources to try to help come up with the shortfalls and those charter schools because they're good business people too they're doing the same thing so that's apples to apples right now so let's not i don't think we should be digging into their pockets saying show me your checkbook because they don't get to do that to us as pps so one thing has nothing to do with others so let's focus on this part no i agree director greene and i would say you know as as you pointed out 80 of funding you know is is what the state asks districts to do so i i'm assuming that directors will you know go to the legislature and advocate for the same percentage across the board across the entire state so that mo that means working with our democratic leaders who are probably not in a position to support charters in the state as it's been mentioned before our history here of uh you know let's be led by uh labor groups you know this anti-charter movement we need to you know if we're going to be in this position i think this is an opportunity for pps to lead at the legislative level and increase that that percentage at the state level absolutely thank you i would like to get us back to the conversation about are we gonna pass this i mean our three choices before us are we gonna table this are we going to pass it as amended or are we going to amend it for the 22-23 school year and i think what i heard director scott say is if we're going to amend it for the 22-23 school year where are we going to move the money where are we going to find that 1.2 million i guess here's what i would say is i'm with uh director greene in that i don't think it's sort of a false choice to say if you take it from here i mean the reality is it goes into the general fund and you know staff has made a whole host of decisions throughout the year on contracts that they put before us that you know that's all general fund money as well so i this whole like if you take it from here you're taking it from these schools i i don't i don't buy that trade-off because i mean we have contracts that come to us all the time and i'm wondering if it's gone through the equity lens of you know is
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this the highest value does this impact students and you know i i don't i don't think that's um a valid way to say like if you support this you have to go like take it out of another budget there's a big difference here though which is that this issue did not come to us until we had a proposed budget on the table and um you know we hadn't as a charter committee we hadn't discussed this since 2019 and there and our charters hadn't been advocating for this this year they came to us and they said times are really tough we had a couple that are having to renew leases can we possibly renew this conversation and we said yeah that's a conversation that we want to have i don't think at the onset of that anyone anticipated that we were going to upend the budget process in the middle of it which is why we put forward this resolution to say we want to do the right thing by our charter schools i i hope as a majority we want to do the right thing we want to increase this pass-through rate but it did not come to us until we already had a proposed budget so that's the difference in terms of having to look for puts and takes so i think maybe we should just vote on the underlying resolution and if it doesn't pass then somebody can propose a amended resolution and we'll see okay and i haven't weighed in at all because i've been very patient um listening to everybody um so i i can't get over the slide three that talks about the percentage of historically underserved and that's a reality that you know we've got my kids went to your school they went to emerson school um 20 years ago or whatever and or maybe just 18. um and and the school the charter schools have always had trouble attracting or whatever retaining you know black families families of color and so i i would be you know in favor of the pass-through i think that's the right decision to do and it would be in favor of doing it in 23 24 not not in this year and i'd like to see um with that as as i think director lowry mentioned is when we voted to pass 95 percent through i believe that was in 2020 was that 2020 or 2019 20 it was somewhere in there it was hard to know with the pre-code 2020. thank you okay it's written down um we my hope was that that would you know um encourage these other charter schools to like try to diversify their their their student bodies you know that's that's what the hope was and then and then the the pandemic hit and all that stuff so i'm i would be in favor of of a 90 and i would be in favor of doing that in not this current year in the following year and 23 24. so i'm away in a little bit yes and you're you you're quiet too so i look at when i when i when i was brought brought to my attention i was i looked at what's the purpose of the funds right if the purpose of the funds was for charter schools then as we talk about alignment then all those funds should be geared towards charter schools so whether that is whether it was 80 or 70 or whatever that amount is the remaining of that money is to what it should for me it seems like they still should be geared towards charter schools whether that support whether that's whatever other supportive things that they need to do that should be for them the fact that we use it for other things that's just that's just what we did i don't know why it was because 80 is the floor so why was that why did we come at that number and what was the purpose of us using those other 20 for what funds and i don't know if that was this administration or last year or whatever but that's kind of where i was i look at this when i when i when this was brought up is what was those other 20 for if it wasn't geared towards charter schools um when that's from my understanding was the purpose of the funds anyway so i kind of look at it as was almost as restricted funds right if this comes into that restricted funds then we would have to use all of this that was to support charter schools however we see fit now if it was told to us that you know we're going to do 80 here but the other 20 is to go to support charter schools that would make sense to me um but in if they're not used for charter schools then i just i that just don't really make that much sense to me of where those other funds is going towards when it's coming for charter schools that's just my take so i will support i mean i support that we're going up to with 90 um i think we should do it this year um the fact that we have spent it on other stuff even though that the purpose is it for charter schools that's just something that we have to deal with and i'm gonna push
06h 05m 00s
back a little bit on uh director scott saying well that's ten ten or twelve teachers well we can make that's an error for administration that's maybe like five or six administration so i mean so i just don't want us to be using that well this is gonna be it could be for this or this could be for that as opposed to saying you know what what is the best going to help our kids in those those decisions and the and that the extra money that we use it for sure but i'm going to come back and i'm going to push back a little on on directory permit words i i think it's a cop-out if we as a board say you know we're going to spend this additional 1.2 million dollars but we're not going to give you any direction in terms of where we wanted to come from and i think it's incumbent on us as a board to give that direction doesn't mean we have to go down the line item but it means we need to and maybe we shouldn't be voting on this tonight without without the the superintendent his team coming back and saying this is our recommendation about where that 1.2 million would come from otherwise we're really i mean we we're just we're at we're only doing half i mean if if if mike if my kids say i you know i want to go out to eat two more times a week then and i say sure i mean it's like that's an easy decision but when i say well where's that money going to come from is where it gets hard right and so it's easy for me i mean everett yeah go to 90 that's fine it's easy the question is where it comes from and that question is not on the table before us today so i guess what i just want to make sure when they come back and say it's five administrators it's 10 teachers it's you know supports for students in summer school are we going to what are what are we going to say as a board and would that change anyone's mind in terms of of going to 90 and and i just it's not a complete question to me without knowing knowing that that answer i'm i'm wondering um so that since there is that 20 gap left on the table um could that be used and part of that would be admin um i don't know what the rate ratio is at seven percent or or eight percent or ten percent but um is there some way to use that twenty percent or what's left of the 20 after admin to support the schools in their overhead costs that's what we're talking about is that would just be people yeah so we give them so we give them we give them 80 and then the other 20 about 10 goes to admin on our side the legal things we have to do as a district and then the other 10 the 1.2 million currently goes to like our equity fund to fund other schools so what we're asking is do we take that 1.2 million out of our budget and give it to charters this year or do we wait next year and build that into the budget for that for i guess i'm confused alien maybe it wasn't clear to me and and that could be because everybody knows i'm i'm a little slow at things but where where i'm confused is that we're asking where is it going to come from when the question is when the well in my mind they've already given us the 19 million at some change of that 19 million that they've given us for charter schools we can somebody pull that up and put it on the screen i think tara had it tara tara and karina made a sheet that we went over in the the committee that showed exactly what the money is and so and it had one number in red and the other one in black that was in our materials from the meeting yeah okay so let's maybe we can get that pulled up sorry i can just read it off but it was sorry go ahead it was what we were looking at was when you say where is it going to come from is going to come from the 19 million that they've already given us to support charter schools they've given us 19 million to search pass through we're going to of that we're going to use 16 million and some change to support charter schools we're going to use 710 000 has some change to support the administrative and then we're going to pass through almost three million dollars left over to pad the general fund 40 million deficits so yeah so so director green those those resources are already allocated in the proposed budget so so i i'm not disagreeing with you that they they came for charter schools and i want to be clear i'm in support of moving to 90 but you we can't pretend like we're starting in a place where we're not we are where we are this district i don't know how long has been spending this money on other things so the impact of this policy change is real it's not it's not it's not mythical right we're not sort of like oh you know whatever they can just reallocate the money it's real and i just i mean you're right and that's why that's why i tell people all the time um andrew i like you because you're frugal you're you're the one that's going to remind us where the money is at and i i think i'm really struggling uh director green because i think there's the fundamental like the way we're thinking about it is pbs gets we get you know we have 50 000 students and our charter students are counted in that they you know they're counted in our students and so you know the state says you have 50 000 students you get 9 700 per student we as a district have a policy that the money does not follow the students so the money
06h 10m 00s
um we do an equity lends in our money allocation so students at lincoln get six thousand dollars students at roosevelt get 11. those are not accurate numbers those are just guesses so the lincoln students are subsidizing the roosevelt students if you want to think about it so the money we are given doesn't necessarily have to follow the charter students it's not their money it doesn't it but if depending on how we look at the the money per student it's a philosophical decision now we can say we are going to do this with our charter schools and we're going to have that tax tax money follow those kids and i'm not opposed to the 90 but this language around we're taking money from the students this is our fundamental policy as a board that we do equity funding and so we don't have the money go to each student now if we want to change the way we fund right and have the money for each student we can do that so if so if it was no charter schools would we get that money yes because they would need tps students so they so they would get that money regardless if they if they're pps students they came to the school yeah i mean it'd be the same but then they would maybe go to a school where the per people funding was six thousand instead of nine examples so when you talk about the budget is right we talk about 1.8 bills that you talk about almost 0.00 of our budget so i understand you make it seem like a million dollars there's a whole lot which i i understand is a lot it's a significant amount but it's also 0.006 percent of our budget and of course you can you can make it dramatic and say oh it's ten teachers it's such and such but it is ten years and that's three administrators three we don't our administrators don't get that much so yes they do we got the budget that's in there that's what i don't understand what i'm saying is i don't want to make it i don't want to make it dramatic it's hard about our teachers or whatever make it about administrators don't pretend like it's not i don't want to use point zero zero one i mean that's that's that's that's artificially long it's it's a one point something i understand that but what i'm saying is that if there's money is allocated for them it should be for them so let me let me put it this way what if i introduced a resolution that said i want jackson middle school students to get the state allocation because they get about two thousand dollars less right now so i said you know what i want them to get the state allocation would we just say well that money came for them right they're students they got that state allocation it's not coming from we would all say no no no that's going to come from somewhere else because we've made a conscious decision the district made a conscious decision i don't know when to to reallocate some of this money we get from charter school students students going to charter schools to other to other places i'm in favor of increasing that to 90 percent but i i i'm troubled by the fact that we're sort of papering over the impact that's going to happen i don't forget paper and over for me i want to know where that's going to come from because it it's it's going to be a real reduction and maybe it's a contract maybe it's a you know but you know it's going to come from something i want to just say so what we have in front of us the resolution is two parts right one is to prove a proven increase in the pass-through rate from 80 to 90 and the second part of that is um and so it's a pass-through rate of state school funds from 80 to 90 for k-8 charter schools serving populations of less than 50 percent historically underserved by race ethnicity beginning in the 2023 so there's that time period that timepiece are we ready to put a motion on the table to pass that resolution as it is i think we should and see what happens i think what was what did we introduce an amendment that says we do 85 that is the resolution that is the resolution that we have okay i'm going to call for a motion in a second i mean we're kind of i think that what we're hearing is that everybody here i believe most people um are in favor of increasing the pass through from 80 to 90 i just want to say like this is a valuable conversation but i i feel like we're really missing this moment of innovation and progressive policy that we're trying to make here because there is no other school district large school district in this state that passes through more than 80 percent and we took a look at this and we said you know what we want to do better for our charter school students they are our kids and we're getting hung up on this implementation question which i mean i agree with director hollins that as a as a as a percentage of our overall budget it's not a lot of money and in the building of a budget next year it will be easy to figure out you know how are we going to absorb that loss of you know a million dollars or so not easy but you know but but i'll just reiterate i don't think it's responsible in the middle of a budget process when we already had a
06h 15m 00s
proposal on the table and quite frankly i don't think that was the expectation when we just began this conversation with our charter schools three weeks ago which is not to say that they can't use it of course they can but that was not where this conversation was being directed to when we started to talk about it and they were delighted to find that all the board members on the subcommittee said we support this we think this is a great idea so i don't want to lose sight of like how progressive this is how there's no other large district there's no other district other than a few like practically single school districts in the state of oregon um that pass through more than 80 and so we can be an example um i'm going to be just a little bit more middle of the road than than that i i i will vote to support the resolution if you know if if as written if that's what we want to do i could get to a place of implementing it next year but not before seeing what the trade-offs are so like i'm not i can be convinced to do it next year but not tonight not without knowing of those trade-offs tonight i could vote for the 23-24 implementation and if we wanted to delay uh for a couple weeks till then you know board meeting and direct staff to come back with where those offsets would because i want to be clear there will be other amendments to the budget so i mean they're you know of this scale or larger so there will be changes there will be things that happen so it's not that it's inappropriate to do that i just don't want to make a one-sided decision without knowing both sides so i could get there i just need some time i i'm with you i could use i i would be happy to um to vote in support of the resolution as it's written and if we want to make amendments and i would i would want a little bit more information as well and that could happen theoretically in the budget process in the finals i think it would happen tonight um because we need to allow time well we only have tonight there's only 45 minutes or so left for tonight but we're also 15. um we also don't want to be doing this tomorrow morning so as in seven days is there a space where instead of doing 80 to 90 this year we do 80 to 85 and then do 85 to 90 next year i think we should vote on the resolution that we have before us and if it's not supported then we can yes horse trade yes okay so what are we voting on we're voting on the resolution that's in front of us uh which is to make the implementation in 2324. it's to approve the increase of the pass-through rate of the state school funds from 80 to 90 with implementation um starting in the 2023-24 so starting not in this budget year in next year that's the resolution as it's written and that's what's in front of us and what assurances do we have that the staff won't bury it later because you're going to be on the board still what was the resolution we passed but i actually i would a little bit of roberts rules of orders to amy's point i i actually think though if there's a desire by some board members to amend this that that should actually happen before the vote on the final election the final it has been yeah i heard haley seconded did you second it i did that's what i thought oh i didn't hear that i'm so sorry okay so i have a question for director green now that we have the motion on the table do you want to offer an amendment to change it i would like to do the amendment to or do you want to just pass vote on it as it is see i want to pass it but i i'd like to do if i can't if we can't do 90 can we do 85 can we horse trade well you you could offer an amendment to change it to 85 and change the year and then step up actually can i make a suggestion if if you offer an amendment to make it implementable next year we vote on that if it passes it passes if it fails then you could offer a second amendment to go to 85 same thing if it passes it passes if it fails then we're back to the original motion or we could vote on the motion that's on the table now but yeah all right so it's up to you if you want to the only reason once you vote on the mission and if it if it were to pass then the discussion's done so that's why i want to give an opportunity that's what i was concerned about i wanted to give like director green just as as the committee chair like the if you were gonna offer an amendment i mean and then chips for fall what they may yeah that's what i said right oh i thought you said vote on the motion nope i was saying don't vote [Laughter] all right i'm gonna go with andrew's suggestion on this one okay so you're you're moving to amend it
06h 20m 00s
to change it to um the year to 22 well 23. it would be the board of education for portland public schools approves an increase of the pass-through rate of the state school funds from eighty percent to eighty-five percent for k eight no the implementation he's just changing it's 80 to 90 oh it's just the just the year we're just changing for years number one okay so now i just want to make sure i'm clear because y'all know this is my first board so i'm gonna make sure i spell everything out so what we're going to be doing what we're going to do is we're going to try to implement try to see if we can get it to go through for um 80 to 90 this year versus next year that's the first run at it if that's that if that fails then we can do 85 this year 90 next year if that fails then we come back and we could go for 20 um 80 80 from 80 to 90 during the 23-24 year yes okay and i start i missed that i'm gonna i'm gonna move that we amend the resolution to change the years to 2022 23. you can second that directory green i know i was second now i'm a little bit confused right now because it's close to 12 o'clock and andrew was talking real fast okay so we have an amendment on the table to change the language and the resolution to say the portland the board of education for portland public schools approves an increase of the pass-through rate of the state school funds from eighty percent to ninety percent uh for k-8 charter schools serving populations less than fifty percent historically underserved by race ethnicity beginning in the 2022 23 school year and i have a motion and a second on the table we've got um director brem edwards moved and i can't remember who seconded director green second that so that's what we have on the table now um we've already had our board discussion um so the board will now vote on the amendment of resolution 6499 approving the increase of charter school pass-through rate to 90 beginning in the 2022-23 school year um for charter schools serving populations of less than 50 percent historically underserved by race and ethnicity all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes no all opposed please indicate by saying no no no no no and are there any abstentions i think what i heard was that it and although no sorry it failed um it failed three to four thank you i'm i'm not tracking very well so i guess we're going to move on and i'd like to offer another amendment um to change the um rate to 85 and the year to 20 22 23. with a increase to 90 percent in 23 24. herman you can second that i like i i didn't know when it was gonna be go time second okay so we have a motion um on the table to amend the resolution 6499 to increase the pass-through rate of 85 percent um of state school funds this year i'm sorry i'm going back and forth 80 85 percent beginning in the 2022-23 school year and increase the pass-through rate to 90 percent in 23 24. all those in favor please we haven't really had a board discussion about this one so haven't i just i just want to be clear so the idea here director green and director of edwards is that it lowers the budget impact so i'm going to say roughly right roughly six hundred thousand dollars in year one and then ramps up to 90 90 percent that's correct because if we do it if we do it this way what the end game here is unlike the other schools that um that aren't um you know get impacted they're not in in jeopardy of possibly closing a school so that's the end game the end game is to do as much as we possibly can to keep those school those kids who are learning best at those charter schools in those
06h 25m 00s
schools where they learn best at and not do any further displacement and so if we can minimize that as much as possible and if we can't get the whole thing then let's get a portion of it that minimizes the um the amount that we're going to be um uh you know that we're going to be keeping it increases the amount that we would be passing through so now instead of getting the 1.3 million they would probably get like 1.6 million and so it would only be like a 600 or seven hundred thousand dollar deficit or something and we just we just approved the contract for for more than that so um can i ask a question about the fiscal condition of the schools i know you all have referenced that a few times but i since i haven't watched those committee meetings like how how dire is the situation for these schools i was just going to speak to that if i may because it is part of our review process and charter renewals we look at you know academic achievement and financial stability and um you know they're never flush but uh we don't have any indication that any of our schools are um in in uh um in the red zone right now now that said um the market conditions have changed and we've got schools that are looking for new leases and that is really a burden but we don't we don't have any um we have no reason for alarm as far as the viability of our schools it's tough i'm the first person to say you know i'm you're a huge you're a huge advocate um but no we don't have any reason for alarm there and then the other thing the other thing i was going to say just about this budget process here is that this is actually a coincidence that this issue emerged at this time when the budget happens to be on the table there was not an intention to like shoehorn into this budget that's already been proposed so for myself you know if we're to change this allocation and send staff searching for a million dollars or half a million dollars or whatever it is you know to me i think that's irresponsible as the decision makers now if we don't do that i think it's entirely reasonable for director greene or anyone else to bring this up in the budget process and say hey we're talking about puts and takes i want to reintroduce this question about whether or not we should increase our pass-through rate this year for our charter schools and let's have that conversation at the same time that we talk about increasing you know our budget for what we pay our custodians and deciding how many elevators we're going to put in to make our schools accessible and all those other questions that are can end up on the cutting room floor in the budget process and maybe it will emerge as our highest and best use but for me i think this process is irresponsible to consider it on a budget that's already been proposed even even understanding how difficult the situation is and i will feel extremely proud when we make this change for implementation next year but if we're going to do it this year i think we need to do it at the same time that we have a conversation about all of those other things that are not currently in our budget that we wish we saw there and that are really important for our students and i i just have to chime in though and and uh and um is tara still at the table or is karina still on the phone she's on her uh and karina is okay so barely and i'm airline because i don't want to speak out of turn um as as i understand it both um portland village and um west juanita school both of those schools have to have have to sign new leases this year and it's going to be um somewhat impossible to do without having um without having additional funds coming in and to be fair to be fair to the to the charter schools they actually brought this up in our committee meeting in february that um part of their issue was the pass-through amount and so it's although it came up for us and if so if there's a delay the delay was on our end to say to send staff out to find out about what would it look like but it definitely was not on the end of the charter schools who in february were were screaming that hey we we if you're gonna look at anything the two things that they brought up when i went to every school was if you can increase our pass-through amount and if there's some way that you can help us in legislation where we're talking about the purse and so as as much as me and me and amy we we do a lot of stuff together and so
06h 30m 00s
this is not uh to speak against any of that but i do want to make sure that we're explicitly clear that although it may seem as though um you know maybe nobody is there the schools have told us that they they have to sign these leases and without some assurances that they're going to have additional funding come in um coming in that they they're not certain for certain that they're going to be able to to find a space and so there is an urgency if you ask any of the charter school directors um there's an urgency a sense of urgency that we need to do that now and seeming that i am the newest person on the on this committee and tara and karina have been working with the charter schools for um in a significant amount of time maybe they maybe they can weigh in on how long the conversation around the 80 the pass-through amount has been happening and so i i just want to throw that out there um again it is a lesser it's the much lesser amount substantially lesser um so we still got to find it but we don't have to look that hard all right and then and then i actually have a question for the superintendent but getting back uh amy to your point in some ways though what you're saying by coincidence i mean had this come up two or three months earlier it would have been included in this year's budget so that could go the other way as well right in terms of why wait a year just because of a of a few weeks i want to ask the superintendent um how he feels about making change at this point to like six or seven hundred thousand dollars again there will be other changes we discuss over the next few weeks so i i'd like to get a sense of how much of a burden that will be and and maybe even where you think it's going to come from but then you may need to wait on that i serve at the will of the board so uh whatever that majority uh opinion is so obviously it's helpful to know all the variables and assumptions you know as we commence our budget development time which happens every year you know right after winter break uh you know as i've mentioned in presenting my proposal there's an understanding it will be a bit iterative as we get into the details as the board has its discussions uh it's better to sort of be hearing considering this conversation the second week in may versus the second week of june um um and certainly you know it would require staff to to sort of go through again with a fine-tooth comb uh to see where we find some some cost savings or we dip deeper into our fund balance and so i just we would be making a conscious decision that that's that's what we're doing and so uh and and how we incorporate it into our ongoing general funding uh expenses moving forward and so i i think everybody understands it's next spring that will be the difficult uh time so uh it's not an impossible task um but if that's the direction we want to go then we'll have to come back to the board with here are some places where you know we could make that happen okay well i appreciate that i'll just let people i think i may be a yes on this compromise unless someone wants to talk me out of it so let's get this vote going wait for the chair to come back i think i don't know if there's any other board discussion but i'm happy just to answer uh director greene if you want me to with regard to the to this but any specifics on what we understand about the conversations uh the two schools are having with landlords but if you if you would like that or not i would like you to just briefly um discuss the extent of the threat to their viability and the conversations that they're having around their leases so very quickly and i might be off um with some months and sarah can certainly help with that um but we it came to our attention several months ago that um emerson school which is located in um uh temple israel temple thank you temple best israel it is a little late um they are located in their school building um and so not the temple itself but they have a separate school building and so the emerson k5 is located there uh monday through friday and um so the that congregation has asked for their building back so initially they were emerson school was asked to vacate before july 1st this year and then that was they were unable to do so and so they are in negotiations my most current understanding is that they have negotiated through the end of 2022 so they still may need to move and find a site and be out by january 1 in the middle of the year and so so that's emerson and i and that portland village school that their landlord has asked them to be out by july 1 of 2023 so they are also looking for a site and they will need to they believe that they will need to sign a
06h 35m 00s
lease before the end of this school year and make plans for their transition both school communities have been looking and has been referenced tonight are taking in information about what current market rate is and working with their prospective school boards around um you know their financial solvency and and what decisions they would be willing or able to make given where the market is at right now so that's that's my current understanding they're both that both schools have those are the schools that have landlords asking for their buildings back so thank you karina i'm gonna be a no on this i think with amy there about the what you said was really um i thought compelling about this doing this 500 000 or 600 however much it is as part of our fuller budget conversations i think is very appealing for me because there are lots of things that we are passionate about that we do want to include in the budget and this is important and is one of those things so i i like that process better than voting on this tonight so i'm going to be a no on this at this point but you may have gotten andrew so you might get four so what we have on the table is an amendment uh the second amendment uh to approve an increase of the pass-through rate of the state school funds from 80 to 85 percent for k-8 charter schools beginning in the 2023-20 i'm sorry 2022-23 school year um do i have a i can't even remember if we have a motion okay so i'm going to put it to a vote um sorry all those uh the board will now vote on the amended amendment to resolution 649 approving the increase of the charter school pass-through rate from 80 to 90 85 beginning in the 2022-23 school year for charter schools serving populations of less than 50 percent historically underserved by race and ethnicity all those in favor indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no no no no and are there any abstentions it looks like the amended resolution 6499 uh passes by a vote of four to three is actually the amendment to the resolution passes yeah we have to go the amendment to the resolution okay which is good because this would have been extremely unsatisfying for me to not get to vote on that resolution as like the champion of charter schools in our district and then to be the big crouch point of personal privilege okay you could have that could i yeah and jackson um i'm sorry student representative weinberg i am voting now okay do you have any comments um my only comment would be if i had an actual vote it wouldn't have passed but that's like i said [Laughter] say that again you're if my vote actually counted the resolution that amendment wouldn't pass just so people know okay thank you so now are we um process wise i'm so tired i'm not trying to okay resolution which is basically a repeat of what you just did because it it has the emotion on the table was eighty-five percent passed through three increasing to ninety percent pass through beginning in 2324 going forward that was the motion okay so we're going back to the original you can just just call it okay so we don't need a motion a second for this one it's already been done okay so we'll now vote to on the resolution 6499 [Music] as amended as amended thank you makes it easier i've read it 15 times thank you all those in favor yes yes yes yes yes any opposed and any abstentions and i didn't hear director green i'm gonna guess your yes yes so the resolution 6499 as amended is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative weinberg voting grudgingly yes and one comment i'm gonna actually leave i have an ib test in 12 hours so goodbye good luck tomorrow jackson good luck it's a four-hour ib bio test oh i'll be praying is true
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i'm seeing that we still have policy revisions i would vote yes for the rest of it if people would like to know my question is is anything on this time sensitive or is this something we can bring back at our next meeting the revision of the calendar and the policy revisions and rescissions liz can we suspend or do you want to get the clock ticking for first reading can't we just say first reading we don't vote i was going to say um we could do the first reading and then the second readings just do all just have a big the second reading would be on in our june meetings okay so the first readings um we have some rescissions that are in in the board packet um they come recommended by staff and they were unanimously recommended by the committee for rescissions the proposed policy rescissions will be posted on the borg website the public comment is a minimum of 21 days contact information for public comment will be posted with palsy the board will hold a second reading of those policies on june 14 2022 and um there is also a first reading on the [Music] um is it the it's the gun the weapons we also have a first reading on the um sorry just let me just get in the packet here so i'm sorry i'm not seeing it the number liz could you it's 3.40.014 p and is it just the weapons policy yes so very briefly um this is the state legislature allows us i misunderstood your question that is the weapons policy and there is one other the injectable okay let me just do the weapons policy so the weapons policy were allowed by state as state law passed that allows um school boards to also prohibit individuals who have concealed weapons permit from bringing those concealed weapons onto school property and so we are amending our policy to take advantage of our ability to say that people shouldn't be able to bring concealed weapons on our school property so that's that's the first reading so that will be and that was unanimously recommended by that's really important and there's a statewide movement to encourage school districts to bring these type of resolutions forward because this is how it has to be done by individual boards so this is a really really critical measure determined um that does it just give us part of that we had a long discussion on the committee about there's a very narrow exception to no guns other than uniformed law enforcement and so it came out of the committee with a unanimous recommendation for the first reading it'll be posted and there'll be 21 days for comment uh the board will have a second reading on that policy on june 14th and then um general counsel large what's the other one sorry 4.5 0.026 administering medicines to students okay this is also an important um another important um measure that our policy revision that was brought to the committee by staff we had several discussions about it i don't know if you want to give i think we should give at least a two sentence description if you could do that because i can't find in my packet right now yeah it it updates the policy to be more accurate about epipens and narcan so it allows schools to administer those um critical pieces that don't require specific prescriptions by individual students but can be used in an emergency setting and i believe there's a training component yeah so there's a this is just a revision of an existing policy um but very important uh so again that policy will be posted on the board website public period is a minimum of 21 days contact information for public comment will be posted with the policy and the board will have a second reading on that revi those two revised policies on june 14th and just in the interest of being interested being complete there are some other cleanup edits along with it but those were the substantive edits that drove the amendment i say it's posted so if people are interested in what what it is and there's also i believe staff reports and thank you to the staff for bringing
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those forward and then next we'll consider the second reading of several policy rescissions and revisions um director brian edwards will you introduce do you want to do that now or should we if it's we can yeah we can we can hold it over let's hold it over then if it's not urgent yeah um and we'll just do one big policy adoption all right superintendent you look pretty excited about that i was excited about going home there was just one other item that the board meeting calendar we're finding holding that over yes yes and also the resolution to adopt revised diploma requirements oh that's a policy that's sorry so on the board calendar um i'd actually like because we wanted to have a public discussion about some of the items related the board discussion so we could have that at the next meeting um versus just adopting it well so we have to do it when the public is awake sorry i'm not i'm not following we were supposed to vote today but we're just gonna hold it over for two weeks right i don't know if you remember but there was a discussion when it got sent out that people were interested in in talking about the county people being the board not yet i was going to say sorry it was cryptic yeah sorry we were trying not to have a public um a public meeting on an email stream and so so we're going to talk about it at the next part yes yeah that's why we're carrying over if there was no conversation i'd say adopted okay yes and you're ready to go home director broome edwards can i just clarify a discussion next week and a vote on june 14th or a discussion next about week it's actually important so that we don't have meetings like this yeah well we got two more we got two more weeks to talk about all right michelle are you ready to call us we are adjourned thank you

Sources

PPS Board of Education, BoardBook Public View, https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Organization/915 (accessed: 2023-01-25T21:27:49.720701Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)
PPS Communications, "PPS Board of Education Meetings" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbZtlBHJZmkdC_tt72iEiQXsgBxAQRwtM (accessed: 2023-10-14T01:02:33.351363Z)
PPS Board of Education, PPS Board of Education - Full Board Meetings (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk0IYRijyKDW0GVGkV4xIiOAc-j4KVdFh (accessed: 2023-10-11T05:43:28.081119Z)

2022-05-10 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: 5/10/2022 PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting

Event 2: 5/10/22 - Board of Education Regular Meeting (meeting begins at 49:50)

Sources