2022-06-01 PPS School Board Policy Committee Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2022-06-01
Time 16:00:00
Venue BESC Windows Room
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: 6/01/22 Board of Education’s Policy Committee

00h 00m 00s
so um we're going to go ahead and get started i think um director green is performing since um is going to be joining us virtually but um why don't we go ahead and get started and start with introductions and i'm just going to say just the table um with the exception of when if anybody's here for public comment when you come up you can introduce yourself you tell them paralegal arazio cease the chief staff cap davis advisor for climate justice uh jonathan garcia chief of state senior legal counsel liz large contractor general counsel julia from edwards board member and chairman haley larry board member great and just before we start um cara we have public comment on which topics today um comment on the weapons policy okay so if it's okay with um the committee i'm just going to take public comments um great okay um so first we have a lot on the committee agenda primarily because we had some board meetings where we didn't move agenda items so they carried over um so it's actually my sister doesn't slide do you have it because i was just getting ready to call on uh on jonathan um so uh the committee spent a fair amount of time last year working on the climate policy and we have an application now out with the june 15th deadline um soliciting applications and i'm going to ask jonathan who um it's on point who has somebody to introduce yesterday and also to share some initial feedback on the application process uh well first of all thank you again for just the opportunity to provide a quick update on the committee uh before i do that i do want to introduce and you've heard uh or introduced her name but i want her to share a little bit more today is the first day of our new monday colleague our new colleague kat davis who is uh coming in as the climate justice advisor will work directly in my office and then also the superintendent uh really making sure that we are moving forward in an accelerated fashion around uh our commitment to the crisis of the climate crisis response uh and obviously in addition to what is happening in our classrooms and what our students are learning one of the first items that she will tackle is standing up this climate crisis uh climate crisis response committee uh and so so we met today and began to talk about that so uh i'll share a little bit of what we've seen thus far come in since uh communication has gone out about the committee just to give you a real time uh of what what we're seeing but before i do that uh ken do you want to introduce yourself share a little bit more about her um hi everyone uh nice to meet you all i'm kat davis i am coming here from boise idaho where i was the sustainability director of boise state university for the last five or so years um i have a background with a lot of experience in climate anxiety and student-led initiatives and workshops and kind of working across between like operations and leadership and academics and research and things like that so let's meet um so i'm just excited to be here and get to help um you know create a bridge and a pathway for being able to utilize that amazing energy that the students and the teachers of this district have to move this policy forward so thank you for having me if you have any other questions that's a good summary of me right there i don't know how do you feel about bluegrass bluegrass you know i think it's real fun live that's her i don't know random specific questions you could tell who's had some time at idaho yeah yeah it was funny so the um just weird fun fact a lot of the high schools played football on the blue turf and so growing up like the first time i'd seen a football game in person on like green grass was when i went to college i was like what is this this is so boring
00h 05m 00s
yeah i'm curious um did boise state have a like institutional climate uh policy and um like a goal a target date for net zero yeah so that is in progress uh so it is um we developed the sustainability governance council which is a campus-wide decision-making body around sustainability that includes students faculty and staff that would provide recommendations to leadership so i coordinated the creation of a climate action plan and that is like in the hands of leadership at this moment so to be determined but yeah ideally that will be um set here soon and then they'll have their own targets to move towards which is really exciting so yeah lots of good work i feel like our rules are reversed if i asked a sports related question [Laughter] a lot more um and obviously we'll uh here in the next few weeks as we uh narrow down the list of uh narrow down the slate of the inaugural uh committee so uh we can move on to the next slide so again just a quick update the the application is now open uh we set out a communication last friday to all staff all teach all families and then yesterday a communication went out to all pps high school students uh or middle school and high school students sorry uh as of today as of 10 a.m this morning we've received 34 applications when when did it open uh friday i mean folks started seeing it on friday okay so that's 34 like over the weekend over the weekend that's awesome uh 34. um the deadline obviously is june 15. we'll continue to promote it on a number of channels we'll probably send out another reminder closer to the deadline uh again folks are encouraged to visit pps.net for slash ccrc uh and uh we're still uh on target to have the school board consider a slate on the 28th uh next slide so of the 34 applications you just kind of want to give you a sense of what we're seeing as you can see we have a really uh diverse representation by age here about a third of the students are of the uh applicants are under 18 which means that there are pps students uh next slide is the wait a second i have questions yes can we go back so that 26.5 is that over 75 or 35 to 44. that's 45 to 54 wait 20 the green the dark green 26.5 dark green is 35 to 44. okay i was just suddenly i didn't i just suddenly thought like our seniors are super involved like yeah okay great thank you next slide i've got some people over 75 at my church who are super into climate justice so i'll send them your way so obviously as we know one of the conditions or one of the criterias in this is that five of the nine committee members will be people of color uh so as of now uh this is what our racial and ethnic identity makeup uh of the candidates are of the applicants are um so we'll uh obviously need to and we'll we'll continue to seek out and target communities of color um particularly i know that there's uh a large group of pacific islander community members uh that are passionate about this work as an example next slide then i just want to say that this slide reflects um how culturally different cultural communities sign up so we've had this robust response you know 34 applicants that read their new you know the read email and act on it right away and then we've got everyone else which includes the large larger numbers of communities of color i would guess that are slower to respond or have more responsibilities at home whatever the reasons are have to think about it um so i'm i'm happy to hear that we're going to keep this open for a little bit longer and also do a little bit of a targeted approach to uh recruitment absolutely next slide just uh another look at my gender next slide i think this is a particular interest uh i think for board members by zone um so we as you can see we have large uh representation from southwest well not large but uh southwest south east northeast uh northwest it would be great to get some folks from the outer east i'm just wondering about outer east because there's not much of our school district that's beyond two o'clock i mean i know there's a little bit but i'm wondering if
00h 10m 00s
we just slid that a little bit to 82nd yeah i think well so apono and the j district you know has schools within it and i think that maybe connecting with apono and erko in particular uh for families that are you know people of color that attend our schools kids students um if we reached out to those too i'm happy to do it myself as well really encourage folks to visit that website post it on your social i know a director from edwards did i know that you have as well so uh okay no i have not i have not i'm nodding that yes i should but i have not done it but so anyway i guess that's pretty much one thank you great super helpful to get that as just a checkpoint and i guess um also a call to action from all of us to um community leaders who are interested sending myself a reminder to post it there we go and all the application is in all languages on the website as well so we encourage folks to uh the next agenda item um this is just a very brief update as uh committee members will recall we had the adoption of next year's school calendar with a commitment that we would work with a group of students around an overlay of um cultural and religious observances for next year um not not to change the calendar um as it exists but to inform um the larger school community on days in which we would try um to for this coming year um avoid significant religious and cultural observances and um i'll let liz give um the update of where we we are so it's in process yes and it's a very brief update we had a meeting with some of the students who were involved in this project but um just a logistical hurdle that we didn't realize sort of being started so we heard from some students but we're going to hear from um i think it's tomorrow no it's not tomorrow well it's scheduled for tomorrow i just uh got a call from freeman and she's requesting if the if we could wait talking to the students so there's four students and three two are graduating um and tomorrow is like a senior um um but they they are reconvening as their agreements i mean i think that makes an issue for us because we wanted to get the calendar out to schools to help their planning right with which they does did by principal premium have a perspective on whether that would work at the school level when she asked well i did see though that there was communication in general but reminding to get meaningful engagement um so i said so um i think august is too late for next next year because just a planning and um everything it seems like because there were two sets there were kind of two general tasks one it was a more shorter term for this next year and then there was the longer term informing the 23-24 calendar potentially potentially um and it seems like maybe that's the august group but it seems like now we should i don't i don't know how in august you catch up with the calendar and the planning that's happened and yeah are you asking are we setting the expectations that this would be something that would be in effect for 23 24. my understanding was this would be an effect what we're doing now with the nfx for 2223 and what i understood is we were going to have like a note on the calendar like the calendar that goes out to schools and have it say like this stays eve this
00h 15m 00s
day is this this day is that and to remind people not to schedule on those days because i think it's great to say here's a general reminder not to schedule on religious holidays but i think if it's like said you have to go find that information so if we can get out to staff a calendar that has that embedded then that's one one last step staff have to take when they're planning their grading or their lesson plans and i think doing that now was the idea so that it that we we're setting up staff to be successful in the fall to take that into consideration as best as they could that's a very eloquent um summary of what i was expecting so rosh hashanah is on x date there's not going to be any like school pta meeting or you know all school uh grandparents day or whatever on on that day or that's not back to school night or yeah right versus but it was not going to be there's not going to be any school on this day because we've decided it's a major interest and i've already gotten emailed like when cleveland's accessible night is for september so schools are already during their during their fall planning so i think our hope was to get this out as schools are doing that to help make sure we're respecting um all of our cultures and uh folks that are part of our community so the work that still has to happen any of those fears what's the criteria for selecting the religious holidays and what is the scope of activity that would be impacted by any restrictions i want to first start by saying i don't think we should have the meeting tomorrow but i also don't think it should wait till august um and it would be ideal to have the that that group be part of the discussion but i think they could also be part of the august discussion i think we should go with the um the group that is available yeah sooner rather than later um and those who want to participate in august that's like a that's a a bigger longer longer conversation that they could be part of maybe there would be some students who would be willing to do it afterwards and i'm wondering too what to do about the communication that went out and connect yesterday about these are the list of holidays and other things we'd love to not do there are not even supposed to be is that something went out there was a note reminding principals not to schedule things like outdoor school school nights all those things on a list of major religious holidays maybe would you talk about that after the meeting was there yeah can we talk about that after that i'd love to see that we could get a copy so we can i think that's a great place to start um because my my understanding is we were going to have a community facing calendar which is the like simplified calendar and then we were going to have a staff facing calendar that had these holidays on it to encourage folks to consider that i mean i very much believe it needs to be on something that everybody can see because so many people schedule different things site council practices school boys back to school nights you know coaches i want to say i'm i'm in favor also of having something that everyone can have access to so there's not this like tiered you know who knows what um so we have more community members with eyes on it so we can all it's also bringing awareness of the importance of everybody else's holidays to everyone not just staff i i i remember the conversation we had about the calendar was that we had tried to simplify it because families had a hard time reading it because there were so like it's the heart and the star and what does that all mean so yeah i mean i think that was the idea of how do we bridge like because these aren't official days off they're reminders so so maybe we do have a single calendar for everybody with this list of holidays on it as well um but that that balance between how do we make it user friendly and and navigable for people and also include all the relevant information it's that tension absolutely and i think that that might be able to be solved through formatting um and again there's probably other languages that need to be you know expressed in the calendar but i just shared a link to the planned parenthood it's a comprehensive dei slash religious holidays calendar and it's published by the month but there's an annual master calendar that has like literally every every holiday you've ever never heard of um and i use it in my own daily practice so it's importable into google calendar
00h 20m 00s
and it's very comprehensive there also are things that i t and tech can do i know in my professional life there would be things that just appeared on my calendar that yeah you just know like it's um right exactly maybe we can have um opt-in to um google gives you the option of opting in to getting all the holidays and maybe there's a way to do um that community members and or staff could opt into having a full calendar i mean there might not be room for their own events on their calendars but at least they'd be aware of um you know multicultural events happening in our community okay well that wasn't quite the update that i thought we were going to get we needed it i'm glad we got that information because we would okay great um so the next agenda item is we in continuing on with our um rescissions of our policy manual um we have uh five candidates for precision and [Music] yeah yeah the committee has become accustomed to a quick review the first policy on the list is 6.10.090 relates to private schools requests for funding we really um are not aware that we should get many of these or that it needs to be a board level policy in the event it was last amended in 2002 um and so staff has recommended that some decision the next one is 5.30.030 education student training program i actually don't know when it was enacted because it doesn't say but it doesn't actually provide much policy guidance it's more a statement of values and declares that the superintendent shall oversee the operation decisions related to the operation again not necessarily a policy that is helpful or provides meaningful guidance the next one is 5.20.010 district employment practices um last amended in 1995 it is covered by several other policies it has outdated language we have we have several other policies that articulate the importance of um anti-discrimination practices in our hiring and this is largely redundant and outdated in terms of its language given the other policies exist the next one is point zero six zero leaves of absence voluntary um it was last amended in 1978 when well back to the past century um yeah it's may have been a graduation year for some of our members or a birth year [Laughter] these are many of these uh i mean most uh absolutely try again collective bargaining agreements cover leaves of assets available to uh members of those um to the extent that this would apply to non-representative employees it really doesn't um it's not in the scope of this policy it's actually not very clearly written but it it's not consistent with the current practice we have a lot of guidance on leads available to employees particularly in the employee handbook and again it just is not it doesn't match with the current administration again largely because department agreements govern government the last policy recommended for rescission is 5.60.070 administrative salaries the content of this policy it's a curious collection to have administrative salaries and administrative assistants who are represented uh in large part um by the union and so their the terms of their employment are contained in the collective bargaining agreements the other pieces of this policy um we think are contained in other other places and other areas of board approval it is kind of an odd very specific and it's but it's not very um comprehensive it was last amended in 1979.
00h 25m 00s
this meeting's not released in any um committee discussion or questions let's resize them recent we're send there we go we are resizing them to zero resend um michelle any questions or concerns about recently nope nope i'm in favor of rescinding those um for the reasons that were already you know articulated okay so um i'm also in favor of rescinding those based on what was based on what was already stated above awesome i'm so glad you could join us [Laughter] it's not the right thing to do it's because you're so outstanding in my own field yes you are charter committee ngo here people um so i think i hear um a support for a recommendation to movies to the full board for our first reading to rescind them sounds great i'm serious thumbs up and okay and i apologize um for those people who are expecting the parent group since school fundraising to um be the second agenda item despite bailey pointing it out to me i thought she was pointing at something else i just skipped over it by accident i got to work on my english speaking and my pointing skills that's what i'm learning this meeting um but you're on topic with your sports questions um especially idaho's first questions that's my entire depth of knowledge but hey when you have a piece of information you might as well run with it run with it yes oh you're another somewhere um okay so parent groups and school fundraising every visions uh we do have a public comment but i think first jonathan do you want do you want to give the update or do you want me to give an update on where we we are yes um okay you can you can add color commentary um so uh we based on a number of suggestions from board members um thank you director lowry for providing progress we got some board members sent some suggestions but not every not everyone and we've given that to the community engagement team and jonathan's team um some questions that we had from the super provocative of ailey to like let's end all fundraising um to maybe the boring which might be some of my suggestions it's boring within there too you did you you had just about the kitchen sink yeah so taking those suggestions um jonathan's team um has scheduled a series of round tables the first uh was yesterday with the district student council and just a framing of the discussion i would say a fairly high level but i guess that would say because the students have some had some interaction with the policy um it was probably more detailed than it may be with community members but they asked a lot of good questions um not sure we are going to we're going to end the process with answers to everything but i think we'll have certainly um a better sense of um maybe community direction um and then there's two more uh round tables being set up uh one in the roosevelt cluster and the other in in mcdaniels and um director green i think somewhere in your inbox there's a request that we'd love to have you recommend that the roundtables have been scheduled but we'd love to have you recommend any community members who you think would be good additions to these round tables we're looking for like parents um or community leaders in and roster and again to participate in a roundtable discussion around the policy questions we've asked i can definitely help to put that together and get a few people there great so jonathan anything else jonathan you want you covered it pretty well those were my those were my talking exact talking
00h 30m 00s
points given to me so um and we have um any other committee member questions or comments about the topic before we take public comments no um cara who do we have you want to just come up to the table introduce yourself and you have two minutes thanks john thank you for being here yes thanks for having me my name is beth cavanaugh c-a-v-a-n-a-u-g-h achiever pronouns um i have handed out some packets and i'll pull you a little bit of what's in there um the fact that after 25 years of foundation fundraising policy that was intended as a stopgap to mitigate the acknowledged inequities and allowing parents to fund staff in individual schools is finally going to be addressed something to celebrate however fundraising is a challenging and complex topic and sometimes the conversation gears toward fear and frustration rather than excitement and joy about the potential for one lasting progress towards equity and community for that reason it's all the more important that these discussions are well informed i've spent the last three years studying the impacts of this fundraising policy for my dissertation research to just complete it the results of which are summarized in the packet that i shared with you today and i did just send that via email to members who aren't here so directory passing directory you have those in your inboxes too this includes financial impacts of the policy as well as parent surveys and interviews investigating how parents perceive the policy and i think the quotations at the end of the packet are particularly powerful if you're looking for a place to start um additionally i worked with the reform pps funding team and so that's this executive summary is just a little overview of what's in the packet with page numbers this is the summary of my research here so that's a survey of almost 250 parents in-depth interviews with 17 parents for a range of schools and a range of positions on the policy coming out the door you also have this packet um that's uh we worked with advocates from fundraising reform in states all over the nation to compile information on the variety of ways that fundraising is being regulated or not in other districts and created this visual spectrum of shirts that are being tried on so to see in other places this document also includes questions and ideas that have been put forth by committed community members that's on my back page and i um and i'll link to the equity manifesto created by angela blackwell at policy and then finally there's an attitude data sheet giving some quick comparisons between foundation dollars and pps parent fund grants that have been allocated across the district uh over the last several years so some of these are more broad some of them are a one-to-one so so there's just a variety of ways to look at um some of those comparisons one thing that stood out in when i interviewed parents was that many of them were surprised to see how far apart the actual allocations were to the different schools many expected to see that the grants were providing similar levels of support that other schools could fund using while many of them were familiar with the nuts and bolts of the policy the data showing where the funds have been concentrated are not easily accessible to the general public so my research on the work that the reform pps funding group has been doing has been with the goal of providing tools to understand not just the intent of the current fundraising policy but the impact with access to that full scope of information communities can be informed as they consider what it is that they want to see in the way parent fundraising is managed in this district i've been really excited to hear about the desire to co-create this policy with the students and families who are intended to benefit from this redistribution of funds i think you might i think i heard the two minutes sorry it's two but go ahead and finish your final paragraph sorry two um so we know that communities who don't participate in foundation fundraising have less information about what's happening in the current system so we ask that these kinds of comparisons and outcomes we've been highlighting are shared publicly as part of this community outreach so that people who volunteer their time to co-create new solutions have access to the full scope of what we're being asked to address and then i'll just skip to the end here we should be asked as dr ebronx candy said we should be asking are these policies and practices leading to equity or all that is relevant is the outcome of the policies in determining whether we should change them all along we've been trying to change people when we really need to change policies so if there's anything else that can provide access to the survey that i created through peer review and um you know they've been pilot tested they've been uh irb approved i've got interview protocols things like if there's anything like that that would be helpful in addition to additional data literature reviews on
00h 35m 00s
what kinds of things are happening in other parts of the country i'm happy to help support this work in any way i can our goal is to have an informed community who's able to participate in uh creating solutions thank you great thank you for sharing all the information we appreciate it um we'll make sure it gets into the committee into the committee record um i'd suggest if you want to send it to the other board members you can as well congratulations on finishing your work yes dr cavanaugh and thank you um beth i really appreciate your um your analysis here and can't wait to look um through the materials you sent uh so more to come at um future policy committee meetings we'll have the um summary of um i think what we heard from the round tables of the next committee meetings great um so the next um agenda item is some revised policies and i'm going to just skip the order really quick because um the second item citizen involvement process revisions we got so engaged in our discussion um that we forgot to i forgot to ask committee members to move into the board for the for the first reading so i was wondering why it was still hadn't been first read but it's because we had a great conversation we did and i think we were all in agreement we should move it on but then we um i didn't ask the committee so um i think i'll just start with that one if the committee based on our conversation last time this this was um you're modernizing the language of the policy and also um really uh focusing in on the on-site councils versus um and removing some of the other committees that have um community engagement or community members engaged that have their own charters so it wasn't really necessary to happen to policy um are there in is there any um discussion or um can i ask committee members where you do you support uh recommending this to a first reading to the board at the next board meeting yes i do recommend oh go ahead director green i was just saying that that i'm gonna go for recommending it i don't have any suggestions great okay so we have a majority um and i had a question about the um thank you for taking the word citizen out by the way whoever did that um and changing it to i think community member or anyway um the purpose of these site councils is to increase student achievement and do we have any way how is that being measured and do we know who's measuring and how we know what success looks like that's a great question um because you've been on the site councils before and that that wasn't the topic of our yeah no it's uh different from that and so i'm wondering if indeed the site councils are if their purpose is to increase student achievement i wonder how they're doing that especially considering the makeup of you know it's parents and administrators and how are they doing that how is success defined um well it's a it's a great question sir you know we know already kind of have an idea who which parents step up to do that their parents have time to meet at nine o'clock in the morning um and then how the results are measured and reported and are they audited or you know are are the agendas public you know like just some of those process questions yeah so um thanks for asking those questions michelle what i what i would suggest is um so this is a they're created by statute um so in many ways the policy um is aligned with the statute and um i think we can update the policy and a parallel question for the board or many of the things that you raise starting with um all schools are supposed to have a site council which may or may not be the case um so i think there's a bigger there's a bigger question in addition to the ones you raise about whether we even have functioning site councils at any of our many of our schools and the school improvement plan as well right mm-hmm school improvements because i thought i thought that was interesting because is that improvement in terms of like we're going to paint the building or you know improve hvac systems or is it we're actually you know student outcomes so roseanne
00h 40m 00s
maybe we can get uh chair to pass a meeting with with uh dr proctor uh so that we can so the there has been intentional work this year of working with school principals to uh to update obviously on a yearly basis these site plans and they are looking at student academic achievement uh and so uh it's it's a it's a group of folks of teachers staff students that come together to develop those plans of course as you as you clearly point out there is a what we're trying to do uh moving forward is bring some coherence and clarity between site plans and the board goals for example so there's a through line there so so i know that is working on on this i don't know i don't know the latest but i'd love to get dr proctor uh in front of in front of you and any other uh member i actually think it would be good to get everybody have an update i know like when i was so i've been on two schools site council and at one actually pat came in and did training along at central office staff person on uh effective like what is even like the appropriate topics for site council how do you run them um which was super helpful and i i think i've been on a site council that was very high functioning that was all about the school improvement plan and student achievement um i know that's not it it's varied um so i think it would be good for everybody to get maybe yeah i wonder you know we we were talking a lot about middle school with our budget stuff and i know one of the things we've heard is like that you're working with that the district is working with principals and communities to decide what interventions support each community needs and so i'm wondering if that's like a place of connection with the site council and the school improvement plan that we want to be responsive to what communities are feeling their middle school needs is that is that am i making a good connection there that that's part of their work yeah so let me circle back i think that's right let me let me work with roseanne to bring back something jonathan you know i'm thinking about this in the context of my own work this might be i mean if there is some kind of focused work in this area with the site councils themselves perhaps it's a good time to socialize kind of where we're going and you know with our strategic plan or or with the board goals as you mentioned earlier to kind of get everybody level set and get get everyone on the same page at my day job i'm trying to connect with 174 uh vendors that do business with our bureau for instance just to let them know we're focused on racial equity and improving racial equity outcomes so we just want everyone that touches us to know that this is where we're going dealing with climate change and race and land use planning and maybe this is a time that that maybe we could use this time i'd love to talk with dr proctor and learn more about the interventions but also i'm wondering if there's some level setting because school communities change as kids move through and different parents show up and different administrators so i think of it as an opportunity to level set especially around the strategic plan um an issue that is somewhat parallel but it's not a policy issue um to michelle's point about i was the one who raised about citizen title i noticed in our budget document that there was the bond accountability it's more just i'm sure the charter doesn't yeah use that so we just need to make sure that we have a look and that's the same with cbrc it used to be citizens and we changed it to community again so few bless racist search find and replace right so we microsoft word makes that very easy so the next item we're just like gonna go really down into the nitty-gritty of the district operations um are we moving into christianity yeah we are we i i had a i had a nods and a yes that yes we're recommending moving out so i just i'm sorry yes um so the next agenda item is potential revisions to eight point six zero point zero two one this relates to liability claims the draft we have is not red line correct there is a well i think it's it's what happened to them right now i know what the there's not a red line in the board book for example it's a draft in the board book but it's not red line but if you explain the changes then maybe it doesn't
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great walk through should be fine yeah so um i just like color coding yeah the red line is helpful i know as you can imagine you don't have like feeling missing paper so what we're looking at doing is hey um for this policy this is really a modernization and a updating of the dollar amounts to reflect the passenger time um that so we're taking out language that no longer belongs and then take moving the threshold um of this and for i think the layman's description for people looking at this policy like what does this mean it's when um we talked about this last time right yeah we might have settlements um that currently settlements of 25 000 or more go to the board for approval and this would increase the amount to 75 000. and um i'm just going to keep talking to you i'm sending a version to everyone so again modernizing the language and then moving from the the threshold which was 25 25 000 um [Music] in 2000 to um 75 000. the other thing it includes is just an annual summary of like all sediment claims to the board and um this is a um provides the board the ability to like notice any sort of like any sort of trends that we um might have missed because we didn't um approve things that you have a like a flurry of um of claims around a particular issue um that don't rise to the threshold of the board level but collectively they add up so it just allows supporters to look at that again sort of our previous year and we would still get some of that information when we do legal briefings with the origami um okay well i just i just did all this work to do it now i've hidden it somewhere on that computer i totally it's fine i remember us talking about this this all makes sense i'm good yeah um yeah so i will send it but i want to add anything liz and then i'll ask uh michelle and herman if they have any questions no i don't have anything to add i think you've covered it thank you sorry for that that's okay michelle and herman do you have any questions about this change i think the major change for the board would be um the threshold changing um and again it's not that we couldn't see the settlement if we wanted to see it or that we wouldn't have an opportunity at like year in to look through the trends but it just would um increase the dollar amount from 2000. yeah i'm okay with that i'm okay with that as well okay do we have support to move it to um the full board for a first reading yes yes you have my support all right thank you there we go then um the complaint policy um earlier this this year we had a discussion about a number of changes to the complaint policy um and also probably the most they're in a they're in a red line and this is the formal complaint policy we still um desire to when students and parents and community members have issues with pps try and resolve them um in an informal process closest to where the issue is and in some cases that doesn't occur so we have a formal complaint process that is actually guided by um statute and we spent a significant amount of time on this four years ago um also made some changes last year and this is enough changes probably the most significant change that we have before the committee is um in this version is the removal of one of the three steps
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so by um by statute um we our current policy is compliant with statute but we actually added we have a step beyond um we're allowed to but we have an additional step that we're not required actually to have so this would be um instead of having the three steps so right now from again from a community member or a board member standpoint the complaint comes in um it is responded to oftentimes and i think we have some data here um oftentimes majority of time that is the the resolution um more than fifty percent thank you i've just got like my crack statistician here and just fill in and then um if that the complaint is not satisfied with response they can appeal essentially it's a second level staff appeal and um again the board doesn't necessarily see that either because many of those many times that also that additional engagement or review often adds additional information or resolves the issue for the parent or community member in other cases um in very few cases it appears this recently that those appeals make it then the next step would be to the board and so what this policy change is suggesting is right now there is a very significant amount of staff time spent responding thoughtfully to gather the information and try and respond to the issue that has been that has been raised as essentially there would be one staff response versus the second versus two staff responses and so this would essentially remove that second step um and then on a host of issues the complaint even if they bring it to the board and they disagree the board have the right to um then appeal it to the ode so currently there is four potential venues and this is just saying we're gonna and two of those are staff and we're saying there's gonna be one staff one board and does this does this policy affect um discipline appeals or would that still be the three-step process um and so we have also um information that was provided and so i believe is posted with the board of materials um that shows the number of complaints that we received in uh 1920 and 2021 and how many of those came to the came to the board um so just some additional information um alex or jonathan do you want to add anything to the recommendation or the conversation or discussion just the numbers are just through this the school year is not i also want to just call out that it looks like between step one as frustrating as i know the process can be between step one and step two there was a dramatic drop meaning you know there was a significant number of complaints that resolved at that first step and then you know also resulted the second step but most most dramatically from step one to step two many many of the complaints it looks like more than half and about a you know two-thirds in one case um were salt were resolved and i do think this will mean maybe a doubling in the amount of complaint hearing support goes in here if i'm looking at like you know 16 to 39 16 and 5 to 11 it would it would double what we're doing but i think i think you know the goal here is to try to make things easier on families in our community also recognize you know staff time and what's the most effective way to really i think resolve problems for people so that that everyone can be successful and i think that's the what i'm understanding is your intention behind i mean this is a conversation
00h 55m 00s
we've had as a board that we want to make the complaint process i don't know easier it's not the right word but no we want it to be trauma-informed and restorative and you know and not just kind of like a check-the-box exercise that you know families we we want families to feel heard and we want it to be you know restorative to the extent that it can be and trauma informed yeah and so i think reducing one step also shortens the timeline right yeah so it won't be i mean having talked to um some points post you know after they're bored um they went through the board i think the the amount of time it takes so we may view it like it takes a lot of staff time it also it's known a lot of family time family time yeah um and it also takes a fair amount of time just because we need to respond i do think that there will be it's not going to be a direct well we're just going to get all the number twos because i i do think there will be um a little bit different dynamic yeah without a second staff pass that you might get the that additional set of eyes in one combined step possibly um and so um yeah i don't make sense i don't necessarily think well c16 i would say that but if we we should be open to like um we might need to make further modifications because 16 would be a lot yeah um and i think that's one of the things that this is a linkedin policy right the purpose of this policy is to help our families navigate the system and that like much also the trauma-informed way that's productive and i think that this will be one of the qualities we continue to adjust as we live into it and learn from um how how we engage with it is there um any uh herman do you have any questions or thoughts about the change well right now i guess my only thought and concern is i i get that we're trying to make this you know one less step for the for families and you know one less time that they have to come out um but are we taking away opportunity for for them to have their issue resolved or does it get resolved quicker by coming to us i mean i guess i haven't done enough enough complaint hearings to really to really weigh out the the total impact of this and i'm looking at it from the perspective of the of the family member only so i'm not really thinking about um staff time i'm thinking about the family that's trying to resolve an issue doesn't want to go to ode and really hoping that they can get it done within districts are we taking away an opportunity for that to happen and maybe we're not but that's that's what i'm thinking about and contemplating right now let me share maybe um a perspective herman i i would say is that and just from again talking to a lot of people who have filed formal complaints is that if we were suggesting removing the board step um i think people would feel very differently because i feel at the end of the day people like you know we you're the elected board you're supposed to represent us um you know taking that away what i what i often hear about the second the decision in the second step is like well of course they like supported the other staff person so in some ways i'm not even sure it provides um the um i think i feel like families that i've talked to that their perception is that it's not very objective because you're not going to have one staff person saying the other staff person made the wrong decision so almost always we get a upholding of it and so um and again i think we can make that we can make the change and we should be open to you know if we get different feedback um or even feedback during the public comment period to take that into consideration um but i i think i think we're removing a step that will be is sort of the least the most important and the one that has the least value to our our family members i mean i i did talk to somebody who had gone all the way through the board the board from the superintendent's decision and they were like i'm still i feel it's unresolved but i don't have the time to go to ode so you know i i do think there's value of not crushing families with process um well i think i think that's always the fine line of like what is going to be the most restorative is it having another set of eyes is that having someone else who can help resolve the problem and i think that's the fundamental question is the board's rule to try to help resolve the problem or not and that's i think that's always my question when we get complaints when we
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have our hearings is are we are we trying to solve the problem or are we holding on the decision before us and i think that's one of my that would be my only concern is that step two is more of a problem-solving place than step three has been um not to say that we haven't solved problems with step three like there's been a couple of times where we were able to come up with a compromise or an amendment that then satisfied the appointment um and sometimes we've come to step three and we haven't been able to satisfy them but there was not gonna be a change um so that's why i hope the problem solving moves into step one because then i think step one already tries to do problem solving if we look at the number of complaints that are resolved at step one i think it's it's like sixty percent of plans are resolved at step one so i mean that's a substantial amount of support that's done there i mean i i'm i'm good with it if i i just you know i'm always thinking about the the families and i think that's what we're all thinking about i don't want to slight or i don't want any family to feel slighted and if um if we're comfortable that that we're not doing that again like i said i haven't done enough um you know hearings and i honestly i haven't spoken to enough families about this particular issue and so i would have i at this um venture i would trust what um uh julia i trust what you're saying and you know what you guys have experienced um and i would be i would be comfortable as long as we all are yeah um well i think we can um have an introduction i say that we always should be this has been a policy that might the last five years has been much discussed because it wasn't in compliance um in 2017 when i joined the board and i think it's getting closer and closer to being a tool that is helpful to our families the other thing is i think it's good and helpful to the district too because i think i think the district wants to resolve concerns and issues so i think it's about the tool for our families to say hey there's something up and the district to say okay let's work together to come up with a collaborative solution also um but division 22 i believe allows families to go straight to ode and file a complaint yeah but i don't think for division 22 or um just not as a way to change the policy but also um because all avenues don't have to go through this process anyways okay so we will we will answer the question you want to answer is whether division 22 complaints have to go can go directly yeah or what complaints go directly to od it sounds like special ed for sure yeah i i i worry about the universe of complaint we will build our best to identify all the complaints that we need specific ones in mind for division two special ed yeah i guess division one two because that covers most of the ones that actually not um and for me that's not a not moving forward it's a point of information um and sort of the director green's uh standpoint uh question about family perspective um so do i have support are there any other outstanding questions or maybe we should take this to the board to talk about okay good um yeah i should be like i mean something different no i mean first reading other board members can look at it and weigh in and make suggestions as well so that's what i'm saying is i think it's ready to go forward to the rest of the board okay agreed i'm good with that okay and everybody's fine with the other the other changes yes yes yes yes okay um thank you everybody we will send that to um thank you alex for your work um as the do you have a new title besides complaint coordinator cea complaint coordinator thank you thank you uh
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okay so then we have um next we have actually julie i can answer give you a quick update on your question we're looking at the rgb website for some types of complaints a parent or student might fail applied directly with the department these complaints include religious entanglement and special education for other types of complaints a parent or student was first filed to complete the school district and complete the school district's complaint process accepts these complaints on appeal these complaints include division of two standards discrimination restraints inclusion and retaliation okay does that help it does it may have been instructional hours went straight because actually the ode found that the district didn't have a functioning complaint policy so that i have no idea but anyway yes it does answer my question okay um can you send that to me yes okay great appreciate that so the next item is resistance policy recommended for first reading um were these already first read no these are they haven't been first read yet yes but you okay they've been approved we've approved them but we didn't first read them because okay so they're going to be first read at the next along with the other stuff we just sent to be first read okay great so the next um agenda item is policies and public comment we have a number of these and um i am going to ask for efficiencies um if we receive public comment on any of them except for weapons i'm going to just ask um is there diploma requirements we've had this before the committee many times and there's been no additional public comments any additional afford um word action okay then the next is pest management so uh this came um this was part of the sustainable business practices that we rescinded um because we didn't need half of the policy anymore because it's now um in the climate the new climate justice policy and so this is a freestanding pesticide management i noticed at the esc today there was some pesticides management and posting um so people are following the policy um i don't think we've had any public comment on that again it's not a new policy it's just in a different format we haven't heard from the pests i'm still here [Laughter] uh okay then i'm just gonna take out of order because i think i i don't think we've had any um i'm going to take the administering medicines to students i think the public comment we've received today has all been supportive we haven't received a lot but it's been supportive so i'm wondering if any board members have any issues related to the administering medicine to students i have none none okay um i just asked a question about something before we go to weapons um the rescissions that are in number eight there's no number so they would have really been there the correct time the title would be rescissions in public comment is that right yes and i think they got this for two different weeks so there were there was one first read on april 5th and i think
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and i'm sorry to do this but i just want to make sure that we know what we're doing here because rose festival appointment teachers and summer schools are the new ones not today we didn't do those today no but they are going to be the first three the recipients we first read the recipients we didn't first read the revisions that's right so we have already first yes these have all been first read yeah okay two different so the only agenda item that these all number the number eight are decisions and public comment that have already been first for us we're gonna have a giant flushing these all get separated i know it's gonna be awesome it's gonna help our translation cost so much that's what i keep thinking about um i do have a comment on one of these that um let me get to it i want to call out and it is i think the terms of administrative is that the one about the interim it was the one we discussed for the first time here administrative salary so we need to go back for that okay i just have so i have one last item before um we adjourn um after after we get to the weapons policy um [Laughter] you're doing your best with your pest management today um so the last uh class agenda item is uh we have um a policy 3.40.1 uh it was titled weapons explosives and fire bombs and um we have had several committee meetings to to discuss this and um we have significantly changed uh we had sort of our own draft our own version of our policy osb had a recommended policy we i think now i would describe it as we have had a first reading of what i would describe as a customized osb a customization of the osba policy um and we've discussed it at several committee meetings um and i i'd like to have a discussion about the topic but first i want to ask if the person signed up for public comment would like to provide public comments yes we have four people sign up and they are virtual they're virtual okay um now we did have one person who wasn't able to we had like a waiting list as well has joe been let in here has joe been led into the meeting with this topic thank you uh let's go ahead with the public comments um and then following the public comments uh we have some uh some discussion we also for the record have a fair amount of written public comments uh thanks to staff for compiling it for us board members you should have received that our committee members to receive that in your inbox and um we'll follow the practice that if people individuals have approved um and so thank you thank you in advance sir thank you to all the community universities who sent written comments and we'll now take the first individual um sign up for public comment and you'll have two minutes and cara can you um let us know who will be speaking first yes hi there amy wechsler w-e-x-l-e-r my pronouns are she her thank you to the portland public school board members for taking my testimony today again i'm amy wexler and i am the oregon
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state legislative lead as a volunteer for mom's demand action for gun sense in america i am also a parent of a junior at grant high school and i'm an attorney i'm here today to testify in favor of kgb which is senate bill 554 which will ban all guns from portland public school campuses including by concealed carry permit holders in 2021 i was the portland legislative lead when the oregon legislature passed sb 554 and i testified in favor of its passage i was proud that our state was taking proactive measures to protect oregonians and specifically children from gun violence the law requires that school boards take affirmative steps to ensure their campuses are free from firearms uh when i wrote this i was going to give you a list of the school boards that had passed it and i found out today that's actually many more so what i knew before today was that ben lapine hillsborough lake oswego david douglas tiger 12th and corvallis and lane community college have all passed policy kgb i found out today from the article that was in opb and i and i reached out to dirk vanderheart that's actually a lot more including pendleton philomonth umatilla woodburn um and many more klamath so all around the state and i'm happy to provide you a full list in written testimony so are other school districts that are in process right now which is eugene and westland wilsonville um portland is the state's largest school district as you well know and if you pass kgb you have the opportunity to protect tens of thousands of children from potential harm from a concealed carry permit holder bringing a gun on campus according to the associated press in 2018 alone there were 30 mishaps on school grounds from someone bringing a weapon these may have been unintentional but they were traumatic and dangerous for all who are there we know that guns and children do not mix we need to do everything in our power to ensure that there are no gun gun mishaps on portland public school grounds we are only eight days away from the horrific mass shooting at rob elementary school in new valley texas i know that each of you is as horrified by this tragedy as i am and i know that you want to take action in the wake of that shooting this is one step that can be done right now to make our children safer i do hope that you get passed kgb out of committee this evening and i want to thank you again for hearing my testimony and i appreciate your service to our community i'm happy to answer questions as i've been the point person for this for moms to man action um across the state thank you thank you for testifying today really appreciate it i'm gonna um before you start i'm gonna ask um stuff it would be helpful to understand whether all those other school districts passed um the osba version of it and i don't know if there's a way to find that would they pass the osba version the modifications um i don't need to answer right now but um right is that i think that'll take a little bit of work you were looking like you were getting ready today like no no no no no i'd like to say i think it would be helpful to know because i say we've kind of modified our um our we didn't use osba as a use it as a broad template but customized so i'd be interested in what other districts have done as well um i'm sorry kara who's next jennifer barth thank you so much to the pps school board uh for taking our testimony today my name is jennifer barth spell b-a-r-t-h and my pronouns are she her um i'm here today as a grant high school parent a long time pps volunteer and a member of mom's demand action i believe deeply and i know i'm not alone that guns have no place on our school grounds and i'm here to ask you to pass policy kgb senate bill 554 to prohibit all firearms on school property when i started volunteering for mom's demand action it was shortly after sandy hook and my daughters were just starting elementary school they are now high schoolers i truly never thought back then that we'd still be here today working on such common sense practices and policies to keep our kids and their beloved teachers safe but here we are one of the most powerful pps volunteer roles i've held over the years was serving on beaumont schools climate team when my daughters were middle school an experience that gave me a much deeper understanding and respect for the many considerations faced by school leadership as you work to create a positive environment for student learning academic achievement and growth
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now this was pre-coveted and challenges have grown considerably since then and i continue to wonder how can we possibly expect our kids to stay focused on classroom achievement when they are also fearing for their basic safety each day as school board members i have great admiration for the work you do and i'm sure many of the decisions you face in this role are not easy but as leaders of our largest school district i believe one of the most critical steps you can take is also a simple one please consider the kids and families who are counting on us to keep them safe at school and passed kgb senate bill 554. between oregon's record-breaking gun sales in 2020 startling increases in gun violence across our city and witnessing yet another mass school shooting last week the time to act is now no pps student parent or staff member should have to also worry about whether they might be walking alongside a concealed carry permit holder on school grounds on top of everything else they are facing please protect pps school campuses from acts of gun violence before any more time goes by and before any more lives are lost it's time to pass kgb senate bill 554 i truly appreciate the opportunity to share my testimony today and then grateful for your service to our community thank you for your consideration for um coming and sharing your perspective today thank you for having me is it me hello we can hear you go ahead oh you can hear me okay sorry um hi my name is jean mcgowan and uh thank you for taking my testimony today i am a parent of a student at lincoln high school and another student at alliance high school at meek and a volunteer for moms demand action and i am also here to ask that you pass policy kgb senate bill 554 which will ban guns from school grounds as many of you know from the recent events that the cdc reported that gun violence and firearm firearm-related accidents are now the leading cause of death for youth in america for the first time ever ahead of automobile accidents here in portland the oregonian reported that in 2021 we recorded over 90 homicides shattering the city's previous high of 66 set three decades ago the number of homicides in portland surpassed those from cities like san francisco and boston and more than double the number of deaths in seattle this horrifying reality became a little more real to me on my son's first day of his senior year at alliance high school at meek the entire school was locked down as active shooters roamed the school's neighborhood on the morning of my son's first day of his last year at school he spent the morning with the lights shut off his phone turned off on the floor as he waited out an active shooter outside the windows how are students supposed to feel safe to learn in an environment where you don't know if someone's coming in to shoot up your school when i picked him up later that day he didn't seem worried or shocked frankly he has become numb to the normalcy of a school shooter but i have not i am also the development director at lines for life which includes the youth line a peer-to-peer crisis line that answers prices crawl calls texts and chats from youth across our city and state and i see on a daily basis the despair that our teens face which has frankly increased significantly during coven the other part of senate bill 554 is the mandate that all gun owners securely store their guns or face a civil penalty portland public schools can share this information about this requirement to all pps families and this would undoubtedly save lives lost to teen suicide which continues to be a crisis in our state the absolute worst part of my job is sitting across the table from a parent or and parents whose child has died by suicide and to listen to them as they attempt to understand what happened we know that removing access to firearms is the easiest and quickest intervention to reduce this death please pass kgb today and make sure that when kids return to school in the fall it's fully implemented thank you so much for hearing me today thank you for your i was comments to ask but i guess um i think i was at alliance that day um i appreciate all of our good work for our staff in the building that day um the next
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comment sicily thrashers yes hi um thank you to the school board of portland public schools for taking my testimony my name is sicily thrasher t-h-r-a-s-h-e-r and my pronouns are she her and i am a parent of three boys grade third and fifth at alameda elementary school i was born and raised in portland and graduated from david douglas high school i am a volunteer with mom's demand action for gun sense in oregon and i am here before you today asking asking for your support for kgbb the policy to ban all guns from school grounds in 2021 i supported the efforts to pass senate bill 554 in the oregon legislature i was hopeful after its passage that portland public schools would take action to ensure that concealed carry permit holders would not be allowed to bring guns on school grounds now is the time for you to take action to keep our students safe we know there are many threats to our children i would feel safer knowing that when parents come to pick up students they are not carrying a weapon research shows that guns do not make us safer there are rising rates of gun violence in our state the pandemic has brought more despair more desperation more anger i don't want that gun violence to appear on the steps of our city's elementary middle and high schools students deserve to feel safe in school parents deserve to know their children are safe while they're while they are there please pass this policy today and the names of all those students who we've lost to gun violence thank you again thank you so much uh for your testimony and for joining us today for all the individuals who joined us today thank you jared is that a big conclusion um so just a clarification the committee had already has already sent this to the had already sent this to the board of the recommendation uh for a first reading and it has had it has had a first reading um so we're currently in the public comment period so it's a good time for us to hear from community members i really appreciate um everybody who spoke today and people sending comments um with their perspective about this particular policy um i think at this time i'd like to ask staff whether there's additional information you would like to have um shared with the committee um we have had additional comments from um our director of risk management and i don't know now it's time to ask joe or should we go um i have one one question before um what major changes um would be needed for us to be in compliance with the policy that parents uh before have spoke about and i'm first of all i'm sorry um i danny i didn't know that you were on the phone or i would have like asked you earlier comments sorry um but i'm glad i don't know if you just joined us but i'm glad you're here um yeah i just joined i was in uh oregon green schools uh panel okay so i'm not that far behind so welcome um so for everybody um danny page pages one of the two students on um proposing so my my understanding here question danny is that the apparent correctness i'm wrong julia the parents who spoke were all advocating for us to pass the policy as it's written so we read we did the first reading of the policy it's in public comment and all of those were in support of the policy i think does that answer your question yeah i just keep hearing uh s is the senate bill that created the opening for schools to eliminate the concealed set carry and i don't know what the other thing means i tried to google it and i just got a tv show it's an ospa um mobile policy model policy and it's senate bill 554 and it actually just um it's broader background it covers a lot of other issues other than just schools and it's not just schools it's all public institutions including like the airport and the legislature or the state capital um and so this is this is one piece of it that applies to schools and and you'll hear danny sometimes we'll talk about hb that's when it's a house bill that got passed and sp is when it's the senate bill that got passed so
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thanks for asking about the kb kg so right now we would be we would be we would be passing what parents um are asking correct and it's already passed an amended version of it we haven't adopted anything right we haven't we've introduced for consideration right um and we're in the public comment period right and um it should be clear that pbs has a but to his point the policy that the the demanding actions are referencing is the osva model what we have done is taken that model and modified it so that it as we often do so that it's it's alive it the language is a little more appropriate we wanted yeah an approachable read so you know but i think their main points of what they were asking for this policy is what is in our policy in addition and this is why i was interested in like what other districts passed because there is an exemption um that is in the model policy for the superintendent and based on some discussions um with the staff team um we have significantly narrowed that that exemption um so it's not the exact model but it's actually tighter than um the the osba association model policy which is what the kkgp is referencing awesome thank you um so the the place where we are with this let me i just want to make sure i'm understanding so we this is right now in public comments correct and if we as a committee want to take public comment and make changes we can do that and then bring it back for a second first reading if we decide not to make any changes it would then go to the board for a second reading and a vote or a second reading and as because we have uh not all the board members on the committee uh maybe there could also be they could send it back to us we could send it back um to committee which would be the ideal or um we could all the committee could also ask for um some additional information from the staff and with that i think i want to ask um go ahead and you can share with us the staff we have two of our um subject matter experts molly romay and joe crowley are here to provide some additional input i think is you'll find they don't necessarily have identical opinions on this which reflects the complexity of this topic and the diversity of opinions but given their roles as watch your title director of security services yes and uh joe is the director for samantha we got this uh and they thought that their horses joe if you want to briefly share your perspective i can't hear you uh yet nope we see you moving your lips so we can't hear you i'm sorry why don't maybe molly can talk about the current draft of the policy and then maybe there's a button you can push [Laughter] joe i feel your pain i know so sorry hey thank you for your time again molly romain senior director of security and emergency services for the district um and i've had an opportunity to work alongside mary and liz and joe and other staff members when thinking about how we make changes and what the changes are going to reflect on this policy and i uh i support uh having the um the concealed handgun license holders be prohibited from district property um i think i look at it from at risk versus probability lens and i think that the risk and the probability is much higher that we will have an unintentional discharge
01h 35m 00s
of a firearm or intentional discharge of a firearm from a concealed handgun holder um versus the probability that we'll have an active shooter a situation on one of our campuses and that that situation will be deterred by a consulting gun holder um so i um i appreciate the complexity of this issue um and um i think you know being student centered um firearms are only effective when they're in the hands of highly trained uh law enforcement personnel that are responding to a situation to essentially disengage that situation um i'll also share that currently we have very uh we have many iterations of signage on our campuses that prohibit weapons prohibit firearms um and so if this uh policy is passed we will do some we need to do some work internally about updating that signage to make sure that we're informing all of the community um here pbs and a lot over the last um two months um it does seem like there's um not a consistent but but there definitely yeah is you know what there's definitely no weather signage does senate bill 554 specify specific language and if so what what is that we have to we are required to give notice to anyone coming on campus that the affirmative defense supported in the statute of uh the affirmative defense holding a concealed carry license does not apply when you come on campus so it's just another way of saying you can't bring it on here um you cannot bring it uh onto campus even if you haven't so the notice says something like no weapons on campus and then there's like the paragraph underneath it that yes describes that yes and then or a lay person um describe what an affirmative defense is so and so an affirmative defense is um before you get to prosecution you know you're you can say my defenses i have a license it's almost like you're driving apart you have your license so you know well together it makes sense thank you um and questions on is signage is that physical through a paper or something or would that be something that we'd verbally tell people um or just physical like all of our buildings they're usually like right on the main entrance doors or like doors where the community would access typically all access points and there's very again there's have been many iterations of signage throughout the years here at pps um and they're posted at all entrances on all of our um fields uh grounds playgrounds just notifying um notifying the community of our our rules of use of the fields and campuses so all entrances have like no weapons okay and some of them do now like if you go back i think sometimes you get so used to just walking the door you don't even see what's on the door um but if you look for it you can see it i thought the ones i've seen are pretty you know it's pretty clear which we've had that for a long long time any other questions for molly or i'd like to have joe go ahead and share your perspective we still can't hear you joe maybe um he could call kara maybe yeah give him the phone number for the meeting and see if that works joker is going to send you a phone number and see if you can call into the zoom and if that will work
01h 40m 00s
rita sometimes had to do that when she was on the board call in for her audio while we're reading i have a question um is there a difference between in the law between concealed weapons holders um between for example staff or like just like somebody taking their kid on a field but trip think it's uh prohibited by employment contract for like staff to carry so that's just like an additional layer um she's talking about what does this does this actually differentiate no i think it's just talking about places where you can right where they are so it's looking at the location so yeah so if a parent attends uh meets their student at the zoo for a field trip right is that what you're asking yeah and this is um i don't want anybody to read anything into my question other than curiosity that's a great question um is for example we had an individual who had a gun go off in a gym in their purse like a no it's a lunch room actually okay a lunch room um it was a i believe a parent yes yes so that um who was her what go on with her yes that that was my sister's school i'm pretty sure that you're referring to okay so that's that's one so that that would be like a community member who had you know i don't know if they had a considerable permit but like brought a gun into a school and there was an incident if say it said like yeah we don't know anything about all the different people who are in our school but we do know people and again don't i don't want anybody to take this as i'm heading in some direction i'm just curious what constitutionally or statutorily with the law allows our staff we know more about is there um does the law allow them to be treated differently or is it anybody the whole class has to be treated the same the whole class of people who hold this because thinking they may be staff people they could be community members but again so the foreign doesn't but could we differentiate if we wanted to i don't know the answers and again i'm not suggesting anything i'm just wanting to understand what the parameters are yeah so that would be that would be a question i have i'm just understanding the plan the landscape okay hey we can hear you okay go ahead joe um once you introduce yourself and then if you can provide um overview of your perspective yes thank you good afternoon chair brent edwards and members of the committee uh joe crawler director of risk management for portland public schools um i do bring a differing a different differing opinion and i submitted the letter to the committee i bring two suggestions and one is to strike the language prohibiting the chl carriers the concealed handgun license carriers and also to consider delaying the second vote in order to do more research possibly on what is deterrence and how we can define that my biggest problem is you know i agree with molly and probably more than 99 of everything we've ever worked on together including the fact that there's a risk of mishaps and and a lot of people have expressed that what i feel is being not addressed is the element of deterrence and everyone is we we're all striving for the safety of our children uh and there's there's a in my opinion a blur of of guns the the good and the bad and in this case if we forbid concealed handgun licenses carriers that
01h 45m 00s
further exaggerates or amplifies the position that there's no defense and there's no deterrent there's no defense at the school the chl holders themselves i don't think would provide anything that be the most extreme rare circumstances they could have a positive outcome simply because the odds of being in the right place at the right time the fact that we don't have sros anymore is problematic for me and then now that we had uh a prohibition of chl carriers there is like what is the deterrence and and everyone who has put so much thought into this i would urge you to complement your own work by thinking about what is the deterrence right um many of the active shooters you know we can just casually read and find out that they're actively suicidal um a classic crime and punishment deterrent probably is not applicable um the deterrence by denial having a deterrent that they can't accomplish their mission like that might be a deterrent and that could be something we could all study together and possibly agree on the sources we're using to draw conclusions but um without any perception of armed defense what is stopping someone who is evil out of their mind and we want to phrase it from coming off campus um and then if you if you find yourself relying on the response time of local law enforcement that's fine but i don't think we've measured that and i don't think we have a gauge on um how is that currently in portland when the headlines might tell us that we're lacking police officers um uh i don't know how many drills we're doing that include the police department if we're going to rely on them for response but the actively suicidal school shooter if there's no deterrent to even accomplish what they think they can accomplish and then also if we're increasing the number of minutes that they can uh you know re wreak pain and suffering while we're waiting for a police response which could be one minute or ten minutes um that's where i'm really narrowly focusing on my uh suggestions for the proposed policy i'm sure that if we sat down and went through all the points that everyone's making we'd find tons of common ground i just don't see anyone talking about deterrence and the and and by saying there's no concealed weapons here you're you're admit i think admitting there's no deterrence so um you know if we did additional studies or work sessions you know um on the topic um you know we could explore what other states are doing not to say we like it or not but like do they like it or not is it favorable or disfavorable successful is it funded or unfunded really increase our perspective of all the controls so molly and many of my peers are correct in the fact that the likelihood is extremely low but the potential for severe outcome as we've all seen is there and i wouldn't want us to deny or neglect to look at any control we can put uh over the matter of protecting our children so i'll i'll leave it there and stand for questions thank you thanks joe appreciate that comments and so i would direct um committee members who haven't taken a look at um or reviewed the written comments uh to do so and so i'm i have a couple questions but i'm going to ask if uh board members or commissary committee members have any questions for joe or molly i don't i believe joe just echoed every concern that i was thinking about as much as um as much as i i don't want people um you know just willy-nilly um carrying guns into our schools um but i am concerned i am concerned when we start thinking about the the shooters even if they've got a carry permit they're they're not concerned about our rules at all they don't care anything about our rules and yet they're coming to our schools and then like he the i i
01h 50m 00s
also want to point out that we don't have sros in our schools like we used to have and when we had sros there if something like that were to happen at least we had one gun in the building now we have absolutely nothing so what are we going to be what is our plan to ensure that the the staff feels safe and they don't i mean i know they don't want to be the ones feeling like they got to carry a gun to the school to protect their students because they're supposed to be focusing on educating but what are we doing to to ensure that our kids are safe and that if a problem does arise that we can minimize the damage and the least amount of time is possible and simply saying that we've got a rule in place that says no guns are allowed first of all it's a concealed weapon and you don't you don't just pull it out and the person that when you need it you need to know that it is there you need to know that somebody is there and so i i i would like us to really think about think about that part when we think about a straight prohibition of firearms i mean i to me a straight prohibition it it makes us an open target we're an easy if we're not even if we're not open we're an easy target and today if you look at the crime people are people are doing things because it's easy they go for what's easy they don't go after what's hard and so i feel like we need to make it hard for them and so yeah that's i agree with joe 100 on that on that in that regard but i also don't think that we should just let any and everybody carry a gun neither like i got to conceal weapons on permit but i don't feel like i should be walking around school with a pistol and all that kind of carrying on you know i mean so it's there has to be some levers but it shouldn't just be all out nobody thank you uh herman um i'm gonna see if michelle and then danny um have any comments or questions is michelle gone okay danny do you have questions or yeah um i'm really interested in the ask um i also write what we've seen with the last school shooting we had sros there we've also seen with parkland there are sros um but the one that just happened uh the police officers um from the information we know actually didn't do anything um we've also seen multiple times um of police office of sros on campus fleeing incidents when shootings actually happen so right is it police don't exactly prevent crime they respond to it um we know that statistically to be true so um is that is sros the best use of our conversation our time i would probably disagree with it i do think that having communication with law enforcement makes perfect sense um we've also had you know incidents like roseway heights breaking out to a fights example where we've had law enforcement not respond when they were called and they're being discommunication from district staff and law enforcement so i think that those are important things to keep in mind when we're having conversation about um sros uh in schools and just around law enforcement in general so um thanks uh danny for that um your thoughts on that um joe a question for you um when uh the decision was made um okay so when that decision was made um i mean initially we had a recommendation um from the superintendent and a negotiated contract with the city of portland with chief outlaw time um that the board had under consideration um the board approved it um and then on the board for that i was on the board when we removed that were you on it when we printed it no no really it was right before i came on okay um anyway so we um then it appeared that the um
01h 55m 00s
the city was not going to ratify um their side of the contract um they didn't they didn't have the votes nor did they i want to pay for it um we also heard from our students really clearly that they um did not want to have school resource officers in in this in the schools and we listened to um you know really a message from many of our students of color that that was not something that made them actually feel safer um and the board suspended its approval of the contract um and so mike my question joe at the time that we suspended it and subsequent to the or suspending it then the superintendent announced that school resource officers would not be in um in our schools i'm i'm interested in like did you agree with that at the time that um we shouldn't be removing school resource officers or is it a change of you know a new set of circumstances we've certainly had a number of incidents from them but um you know when we removed our service officers it wasn't that we wouldn't have access to the police bureau or be in partnership with them on things that uh wasn't their span but it it also was that we weren't going to be paying for school resource officers nor would they be inside our schools so i'm interested in your thinking about that initial decision has it changed and if we had school resource officers would you think differently about the concealed weapon holders thank you chair bram edwards so thank you for the questions so when i found out that the sros were discontinued um i was never okay with it um i did talk about it informally uh you know it was pretty clear though with the the funding issue of did they do it for free or did we contract it and the fact they were reducing to four hours a week uh and then the state of affairs in portland um having all officers diverted for overtime and then the current officer shortage it just didn't seem likely that an sro contingent would be possible um you could compound that with the fact that many school districts chose to keep them and many school districts chose to not have sros so pps was not necessarily an outlier in doing something possibly extremely high risk and all that input from the community and the students extremely valuable mine is is a slightly different one uh thinking about uh risk management and and also my background i've been a director for a county and worked with a sheriff's department and i have a probably a slightly different perspective on that the other thing too there is a bit of a visionary opportunity for the board and and the leaders of the school district to look at how you can shape the future of policing in portland and and i think that might be an equity uh project as well many k-12 districts offer law enforcement as a career track dual credit or cte uh including our neighbors at north clackamas you know about 15 miles away imagine though you know creating your own law enforcement program that that that fits into the concerns and has the community acceptance here um you know it's a long it's a long-range goal but you could you could actually shape change the shape of what policing looks like and especially what sros look like so um i uh to answer your question i i've never agreed with the absence of sros and and would i feel differently about the ca concealed hair carry i would feel much better if we had sros our student rep is absolutely correct that there's plenty of examples of sros fumbling the job or flat out having an institutional failure like in uvalde texas um and that would play into the discussion on defense it does not play into the discussion on deterrence and so i still circle back to i would love to hear anybody really articulate what the best deterrence is and and how we can [Music] you know communicate uh general deterrence out there
02h 00m 00s
yeah i was gonna touch your question yes thank you um i was a little as i read through your materials and then went to the links um i had two concerns the um got it somewhere uh the one of the links was to a uh the final report of the federal commission on school safety um that was sort of offered as supporting evidence the at the top of the report it says this report is under review as of december 9th 2021 some statements in the report do not reflect the current positions of or policies the department of education homeland security justice or health and human services so for me you know i wanted before i um sort of take this as a foundational background to support um concealed carry in school i'd want to know more about that because it's not often that federal reports have that stamped on the top um the other piece is um and i because i just got it earlier today i didn't have a time to look through all the materials but you know pointing to um some ford florida programs and i'll just say um you know trayvon martin and stand your ground um policies i'm not sure that florida is the state that i want to emulate um so i'd need to see a lot more evidence to um uh that that would uh suggest that um people thinking that people with concealed weapons permit actually are carrying guns in school is a deterrent um i'd need to see and again i didn't have a lot of time to read through at all but my just initial review raised some recent questions about um whether it is a significant deterrent i mean personally i felt like i i'll just say i'm a lay person um i felt like when i saw the signs in the door saying no guns that applied to everybody uh whether you had a concealed carry or not um so i've been operating under the assumption that not that we had some people armed and that we didn't know about who were our secret defense um so for me i would need to see a lot more um data and want to better understand what is causing the department of justice and homeland security to have questions about this report that you were reciting um i also thank you yeah and again i appreciate you sending me material but i i i don't think um there are several things about florida that i wouldn't want to emulate and if one of them would be their um their policy on guns and and i say that as somebody who owns a gun and so it's not specific to um but i also believe that um you know policy can have a big um impact on it's one of many things that can have an impact on um on behavior which is why i think they pass thank you chair senate bill uh 554 to really share that like this is a moving things from a policy violation to potentially a a misdemeanor or potentially a felony um for bringing a gun on our um on our school property also that the other thing some other issues just questions that come up is not specific to to you um joe but other questions that that i have and again looking at this and not to use the term there's no silver bullet um but i think to keep our kids safe there's a whole host of things and it's not just going to be the passage of this one policy um we have the um 2017 bond we made a lot of investments in school security um we also have some money in the 2020 bond for that um the uh we've also made an investment over the years in our campus um safety associates and actually in the last board meeting um made an additional investment so that um we actually have people on the ground who have training um who actually know our families you know oftentimes they know who should be on campus and who shouldn't and um to me that's like also a big like part of the deterrent of like who belongs is their door propped open i also think there's been a lot of work done around our policies and protocols you know frankly when i go visit schools
02h 05m 00s
like i don't just get buzz i don't just walk in like press the button at some point i'm going to remember that's the white button you press um it's not the camera i know yeah yeah um so i do think we've done we've done a lot and i would want to better understand how this how this fits in or if you were to suggest removing it what impact that would have and i'm not prepared to to remove it i do think at least i would benefit from um getting additional insights from a larger um staff group on um you know how do all these the interplay of all these things you know did we revisit the sro um decision um have we made the right facilities investments do we need to accelerate some of them um you know do our campus um security associates need additional training or you know have we deployed them in the right way um to me those are all things and there's this policy um so those those are things that i think through but i'm not ready to just say like i think the best nor do i see the data that that getting rid of um that allowing concealed weapons are like our best strategy that and again i do recall the incident where we had again go off to school and like probably horrifying for the person who's done it was um because i'm sure that wasn't the end wasn't the intent um but yeah that's just my time for my mate so i i would look just like to ask what's that for like a more robust um well i think i mean for me i think we're already in we're starting for the comment the vast majority of public comment we've received has been in support of this policy we have received some like joe that has a different perspective which is really important to hear i think i i think we need to have a bigger conversation about school safety um i was just at a school this last week where there was a door cracked open and staff was talking about that's the practice we've developed that isn't safe and we need to change it right so um i think that's a bigger thing but for me i really think that you know the concealed weapons are something i'd like to see not be in our schools in oregon where you cannot carry concealed weapon federal property banks uh private people can limit you know private businesses can limit uh concealed carry um you can't carry until open on uh native land or on national park lands i think i mean i think there are a lot of other places that have already banned concealed weapons um and i hear what you're saying about top targets and those concerns and i i hear from you joe a definite desire to keep it safe i just come at it from a very different perspective around um i don't think concealed carry any business in schools um and is the concealed carry is it 18 plus so could a student technically conceal carry them i i just headed up and i didn't i think the age is 21. one for concealed carry okay but we do have some students who are 21 at some of our schools we do have other policies that apply just to students okay well then that never mind any of those things i just said about that no but i think it's about the student but that's i would like to see this go forward to the board and i think we can include the memo from joe and the public comment we've received from the public and i think the full board should should consider this policy on the 14th when it's before us that's what i would like to see happen but then this bigger policy about safety so to be clear um it's it's it's moving yeah um so this is an opportunity um for us to have a discussion in committee about um um you know diverse i think we've got some diverse perspectives um which is great and i say for for me though i i guess um i believe there's going to be there will there will be more individuals and they may surprise us who might um have different different points of view and [Music] i to me we already have a prohibition on guns in school so i'm not concerned that like something's gonna happen something's gonna happen tomorrow i do feel like it would be good to get a um since we just got this today um a fuller um recommendation or
02h 10m 00s
like how do we knit all these pieces together um would be a question that i want to make sure when you say knit all these pieces together because we've talked about so many things some of some of these perspectives aren't commutable together so yeah i know what you're talking about i guess i'm looking at like the overall safety and so and this is how i understand this is one lane right this is one piece and again i think we need to do many things and i to me this is probably because we already have a policy this is actually probably our least return on investment um and respecting um you know joey your point of view i also want to i mean i think i you know i need to go look at read the report in depth i i want to want to hear um additional perspectives from staff if there are some and i appreciate joe that you just understood this was to be under consideration that's why we're getting it today um i'm not ready to suggest an amendment amendment of the policy but i and i also think um this is a time when our community really feels a heightened sense of insecurity about the safety of our students for a whole host of reasons and this policy isn't going to be the way that we single-handedly address them we need to do a lot of things and to me it's good this goes beyond the committee's jurisdiction i'll say um but in order for me to either amend amend this or vote for it i would also want to understand or vote against it or anything i would want to understand kind of what our bigger point of view is so for example if the superintendent and staff felt strongly that we need to bring sros back in and we had a conversation with students about it and that was the agreement strategy i don't i i for sure wouldn't say that we want people with concealed weapons um in our buildings um but i don't know that the superintendent hasn't had any change in his point of view or um that we as a community i feel like i'm not giving clear guidance that's what i'm looking for but i i hear i hear how you're defining the broader conversation what i'm trying to understand is how that conversation informs what doesn't inform the specific policy decision for you and the right forum how does staff get you get the board what it needs and i heard a community engagement with school people in school buildings component here so i might my look is is to yeah so here's here's maybe a starting point is so we got um a point of view from ace staff i'm sorry i was gonna say i was gonna get there i wasn't dismissing um with some information behind it and my review is like i don't think that's no we have another set person but a different point of view um and there were going to be other people like i last week i asked um our district's chief operating officer for an update on what we had done in 2017 and 2020 in the bond to make our building safer and i know we've done a lot of things with video cameras and locks and you know all the the best reveals lots of things so to me i'm i'm wanting a sense of like how these pieces all fit together because it seems like if say if we were to follow um joe's recommendation that we actually haven't really made our community safer i don't i don't think if we haven't done some of these other things or maybe there's a different strategy that's a much better strategy that we should be pursuing and i don't feel like i have enough information or do we have all the people at the table so in terms of governance of this policy coming that's already being first read is the are you proposing to the committee to recommend that it not be voted on at the next board meeting and there's a timeline for bringing forward additional information i'm kind of thinking through yeah so i what i would suggest is that um we may not have a majority of the committee uh to be able to make that decision because um unless we had it so it was unanimous um i actually could just make the decision right now since i'm the only person here you gotta have three i'm just kidding um i think we should um here's what i
02h 15m 00s
would say it should be on the agenda at the next board meeting and i think it should come with um i reckon i will come up with a recommendation and i think we should also um ask the non-committee members what their point of view is because they may need additional information this may be one of those cases where we say you always got to trust the comm like trust the committee because everybody can't do all the work um and we have and but this may be one of those issues sometimes they supersede where people have points of view that i think we should um get that before we actually have a vote on the committee at the at the board level i do know that the superintendent has a point of view on this and he could share that on the policy piece so right so that would be helpful as well um are you thinking we wouldn't go down the fortune on this or do you have time to get what we need yeah sorry i really have it's past six and i really had to use the restroom i was trying to wait okay they need for that conversation yeah and i guess i want to put an asterisk is that i don't know that we i don't know that people will be already yeah we may i mean i think that's the thing we as a board can decide not to go we can decide we're not ready we can decide to amend or if we can send it back to policy there's lots of options but that i was just asking because i do want to hear other board members perspective on this because i do think this there are intersections around race there's interest i mean after buffalo there's conversations to be had there's there was just another shooting just now where four people were filled in tulsa uh at a medical center so there are lots of things in this moment to talk about and i'd like to hear my other poor colleagues perspective yeah um and i also don't want it to be in isolation right um because again in and of itself a policies in which a policy that most people think we already have anyway right now not a lot on campus i would have said yeah gun turn a lot on pps overall you know like our our holistic plan around safety yes okay so i think i think we've surfaced a number of issues um i'll follow up with staff meeting and and also um i'm sorry that michelle um had to drop off because and you have one more item you wanted to get to that you wrote yourself a note about yeah and i don't want to delay the meeting anymore um thank you i don't want to delay the meeting anymore i'll just follow up um and get the answer before the board meeting it relates to um staff who are in interim appointments um that are of a higher level and my main question was i want to make sure that like we got papsa's point of view i i i will confirm that principles have been consulted about that and i can't if they were consulted i'd be interested in what their idea was um because i i heard earlier that this was an issue um with that is there any final comments danny joe anybody else is on the line yeah um i'm a little bit confused what decision we've made because i heard like 20 000 things i'm sorry are you confused about where we are danny uh just confused on um where uh where joe's comments fit and are we like is it being used as consideration yes sir so here's where they fit um we've introduced it our policy process is you introduce it you have a public comment and then normally you like the committee takes into consideration any comments and then we adopt it one of the things that's unusual that is somewhat confusing that may make it more confusing is normally all staff input would be before we had our first our first reading um and that would be because then it would be integrated into it like maybe before we first read the policy we might have made adjustments or not but so it what's what's different slightly different about this is
02h 20m 00s
normally we get lots of you know we get public comment during the comment period consider it then we make changes in this case we have like significant new um staff a staff perspective um that's introduced in it so right now we're in the same but but this is the same process is the board as a whole like the committee has just had a discussion i raised some issues daily race of issues i think she uh was concerned you know concerned about her questions she had and then you know at the end of the day it's always the full board this committee just makes recommendations it's the full board that will vote on it so um we haven't made any adjustments to the policy in this committee meeting so the policy that we have before us is still the policy we have before us and that will come before the is that yes okay um and it will be a question of timing and what format and you know the the full board that they could send it back to the committee with like this is this is additionally what we want um they can do that but we're still in the normal process it just um because normally staff it's all up front their comments and it's usually all been hashed out and there's usually a singular point of view by staff before um but not always because people are coming very complex yeah does that answer your question yes okay great thank you for everybody and again i apologize um that the meeting went over


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