2022-06-14 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2022-06-14
Time	18:00:00
Venue	BESC Auditorium
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: 6/14/22 - PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting (starts at 27:25)

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for your patience everybody
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this board meeting of the board of
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education for june 14 2022 is called to
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order
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for tonight for tonight's meeting any
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item that will be voted on has been posted on the pps website under the board and meetings tabs the meeting is being streamed live on pps tv services website and on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times good evening everyone it's nice to see you tonight um tonight we have a full agenda including adoption of the 2022-23 budget and the second reading of several policies including a revision to our weapons prohibited policy we will also begin saying goodbye to our student representative this evening and we'll be introducing our incoming student representative before we get started i want to share a few reminders we ask that all members of the public attending this meeting tonight treat each other staff and the board with respect and do not interfere with the ability of the board to conduct its business those wishing to display play cards signs and banners must remain in the auditorium foyer behind the seating area and may not block any attendees view of the proceedings and also please keep walkways clear and aisles clear and in general we'd appreciate if you can just be mindful of others in the room and the words that you use and be aware of who's watching and including our our our most precious cargo um our community's children superintendent guerrero would you please introduce this next item right resolution recognizing june as pride month yes thank you chair and when i started as directors and our audience here and watching from home um we're joined here virtually actually by two of our staff members we'll be bringing them in now um we absolutely want to recognize uh june as pride month uh so we have here this evening dr jenny withicom who serves as our assistant director for health and adapted physical education as well as uh brit biebrick our lgbtq plus program manager uh to talk about and share how we both aim to affirm and provide support to all of our lgbtq plus students so i'll turn it over to you jenny thank you superintendent guerrero thank you so much everyone for being here britt and i would like to
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lend our support behind this pride resolution and we're very excited to support its entry into portland public schools i am very grateful to get to work alongside brit and support our lgbtq plus students and make sure that they have a safe and welcoming environment in all of our schools and within our central offices and just to talk a little bit about my role this role is new this year so in addition to putting forth our resolution i i would say that this role as the program manager for lgbtq supports for portland public schools is the first of its kind in the state that i'm aware of um and we have been making some great strides this year and providing safe and affirming spaces across the district and i look forward to working with jenny and many others the school board certainly and continuing in this very important very awesome work thank you both for making the time tonight um i'd i've asked student representative weinberg to read out loud the resolution if if you would please resolution 6524 resolution to recognize june as pride month in portland public schools as the portland community comes together to celebrate lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer two-spirit intersex asexual plus pride month portland public schools with the full support of the super superintendent continues to create supports for lgbtq2sia plus students and staff and expand and strengthen partnerships through this month and beyond portland public schools is a district where we value and celebrate diversity and inclusion a 2021-25 strategic outcome of the pbs strategic plan is to help students develop a strong sense of belonging and foster safe healthy and positive learning and working environments portland public schools goal is to help educators cultivate positive and safe school environments that empower youth with the confidence and knowledge needed to succeed every day portland public schools is committed to safety inclusion representation and affirmation for all students the recent community debate focused on the exclusion of lgbtq2sia plus inclusive teaching and widespread national efforts to further institutionalize transphobia biphobia and homophobia has invited us all to reflect on our long-held beliefs and commitments to inclusion knowing that educational environments where students recognize the diversity that makes them special in their interactions and experiences at school helps to create an atmosphere where students feel empowered as scholars to succeed systemic transphobia biphobia and homophobia can push lgbtq-2sia plus students out of school and cause long-lasting negative educational and mental health outcomes we know lgbtq2sia plus youth particularly lgbtq2sa plus youth of color still face significant discrimination and barriers to inclusion as compared to their white and or straight peers including disproportionate rates of school disciplinary actions and are two to four times more likely than their peers to be physically assaulted or threatened at school leading them to be less likely to attend school according to a national study affirming diverse sexual orientations and gender identities and expressions as one of the most effective mental health interventions for supporting ljbtq2sa plus youth we acknowledge that creating lgbtq2sa plus and gender expansive inclusivity in portland public schools is not complete with any one action and it does not happen holistically it does not happen holistically with the change of a policy or the passage of a resolution instead it requires an unwavering commitment to a systemic shift in paradigms to increase the understanding of sexual and gender diversity therefore be it resolved that portland public schools supports all students and staff by affirming their right to be their authentic selves including the right to be open about their sexual orientation and gender identity and to speak about their personal and family lives portland public schools encourages encourages its schools to display in classrooms offices or halls a rainbow pride flag transgender pride flag or other signs of support for lgbtq2sa plus students or staff in accordance with ors 186.110 portland public schools will continue to honor and respect a student's self-reported gender identity and gender expression at school portland public schools and board of education and appropriate stakeholders commit to both the urgency and the need for long-term sustainable and well-informed action around lgbtq2si plus inclusivity and finally portland public schools will be proactive in decreasing anti-lgbtq plus language behaviors and bullying thank you student representative and thank you again dr withicom and brit brick for your attendance here do i have a motion and a second to adopt resolution 6524 the resolution to recognize june as pride month in portland public schools so yes so moved we have two motions and uh any seconds okay you can change mine to a second everybody wants to be on this one if you can't if you haven't already everybody want to be in on this one
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awesome is there any board discussion i i wanted to say that i found it really striking when we reviewed the panorama data around our um the information our students provide us about how they feel about school that um nearly half of our um eighth grade through twelfth graders indicated um that they were queer in some way right that their uh gender identity or their sexual orientation how they saw themselves and i think that that says a lot about the safe environment that pbs is striving to create that students um feel free to claim who they are and i think it also means that we as a school board need to be really thoughtful and proactive about how we best support our students as they identify themselves as who they are and so i'm really thankful for this proclamation and for the work of this board and jackson in particular for your student leadership on this and many many other issues and i want to make sure that we create space for to hear from student representative um weinberg if you have any thoughts on this topic that you'd like to share at this time yeah i'm super happy to see this especially as school districts around the country are banning certain um pride flags or other significant demonstrations of lgbtq2 sa plus representation in schools so i'm happy that as a part of this resolution we're not only allowing but encouraging schools um to put up um pride flags and um if i can you know i actually have to admit i was so focused on the other items for tonight's agenda i saw this and didn't really focus on it um but i want you know i want to talk a little bit about how far we've come and i think that um you know growing up in an lgbtq household and you know and and with with you know a mother who during the 80s and 90s um you know was a schoolteacher and a school counselor um at a time when um there were no protections for you know um um gays and lesbians in the workplace there were active attempts through measure nine and other efforts to you know to actually you know strip rights um from from folks and i remember her telling me at some point you know when i was in high school that you know you know she was not out at her job um and we talked about that and she said well i would be fired right because she was she was working in boring she was working on sandy she was working in other districts around the portland area and particularly you think about a grade school counselor you know at the time you know being a lesbian i mean that it was being talked about openly you know that that shouldn't be allowed so to see this today is so exciting um and to see this resolution but it also reminds me how far we have to go because well i thought foolishly that we had left a lot of those debates behind we are seeing them today and we're seeing them in states you know that are enacting absolutely you know just horrific laws um we're seeing it locally in in communities that are are banning you know sort of the representation and so i'm just again i didn't think about even speaking tonight but i'm i'm really glad to sort of see this and just say it it's a great thing i'm proud of this board i'm proud of this district i think we need to be the ones speaking on this um to push back on some of those other things so so thank you superintendent and thank you board for for supporting this and and we need to keep working on it because there's a lot of work still left to do thank you for sharing your uh lived experience that's really meaningful and i'm just going to say i feel very appreciative of my colleagues in this moment um ms bradshaw is there any public comment on this topic there you are uh yes did you move yes when did that happen okay i feel like i've been gone a long time but okay is there any top any there's no public comment okay um try to pass before we move forward can i confirm who made the motion and seconded i heard lots of voices but was unsure about who that was yes and we i don't think we have any rules about just having a single maybe robert's rules calls for a single um motion in a single second i think it was directed okay director scott moves and director um lowry and just put brim edward seconded because she was the second okay brem edwards thank you thank you for confirming that um i also i love rupaul's drag race and jinx monsoon is on the all-star season right now and jinx is also known as derek hoffer and when they were a student at grant high school they graduated in 2005 and they actually talked about their experiences at grant on the last episode and one of the things they said was that they feel thankful to have grown up in a place in the u.s that was accepting and that their experience at grant and they didn't name the schools but at grant and da vinci in middle school were accepting and
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empowering and that the teachers and people around them saw them for who they were and encouraged them to be themselves so i want to thank our you know that that is um continues to be something we're evolving into um but i just i wanted to just talk about jinx monsoon because what else can you want out of being on a board meeting again more awesomeness from my colleagues and i don't watch tv so i've i've heard of the show but i'm gonna i would really appreciate if you sent me a link to that um episode i would make make an exception sure i also don't watch tv so i don't even know the reference but if i could just tag on here because i want to make sure i i'm unequivocally also clear i mean you saw the support statement in the resolution but beyond that i've worked in three large urban districts and uh i never take for granted the opportunity to lead in a system that's committed to making sure every one of our students feel welcome and a sense of belonging you know in all of my conversations with superintendents across the country recently yes there's the partisan politics invading k-12 but more alarming is this question around who gets to be recognized uh in in in school and so they they've lost their jobs over this issue and it's not just in other states it's flying a flag in oregon uh so i'm just glad that we're in a place and we're not totally there yet but where we've made it a clear priority unequivocally uh that this is this is something that's a core value of ours so thank you everyone for continuing to affirm uh who we want to be and what we want to be about thank you superintendent the board will now vote on resolution 6524 resolution to recognize june as pride month in portland public schools all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6524 is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative weinberg voting yes fantastic in may of 2021 uh the board adopted a new board leadership elections process um which is it is what it is today it may be improved at some point but in order to be considered for leadership position board members must notify the current board chair in writing by june 1st if they're interested in being considered for the leadership position for the july upcoming july election so at the first boarding meeting in june which is today the board chair will publicly confirm board members who are interested in serving in leadership and invite those who are interested to speak at the june meeting at today's meeting i should say at this time i'd like to invite vice chair scott and director hollins to share a few words about their desire to serve in the roles of chair and vice chair respectively beginning in july you're mine you can go first there's we have there's no rule around who can go first so but you can make one you can make one when you're leadership yeah i'll just say well i'll keep it short and sweet somebody has to do it well i i mean i appreciate you stepping up you're here and yeah i look forward to um your leadership okay well i mean maybe i'm just done right now um no i actually appreciate those comments actually some of the things i was going to say are things that i picked up from gary over this last year um i guess what i would i'm i'm interested in in serving as as chair moving forward i think um i really want to make sure that we as a board continue to focus on on our goals around student achievement and i think particularly you know coming out of the pandemic and you know dealing with all the issues that the district has dealt with this year is continuing that that focus um that's a huge multifaceted issue right when we say focusing on student achievement i mean that involves not just the academic support but it involves all the social and emotional support safety in our schools wrap around services and the continued focus of the district on racial equity and social justice and i think continuing to just maintain that and i hear that from from each of you and and i think you know um chair to pass that's that's what you've done and shared lowry before and so i think continuing that and and and making sure that we as a board keep talking about the other issues right because there are going to be lots of those other issues that will come up or may come up you know during the course of the year and and those issues they're not unimportant many of them are vitally important um but they may only be tangentially related to the student center goals and so the question is as we go through the year continuing to have that conversation about um as we spend time working on those issues are we still prioritizing those more goals are we still focused on student achievement um and is that you know is that is that really the the dominant um section of our
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meetings and and then i think the the second thing and this is gary um director hollins i'm you know i've been really inspired by your focus on on the appreciation accountability culture and you know it really sort of highlighted for me um something i've thought about for a long time but haven't been able to put really good words around and it's that idea of you know how do we both hold the district accountable which is our job as a board while also showing appreciation for the work that is going on in the district and and i think how we show up as a board matters um and and if we set a tone an example not just for pbs staff and educators but for our families and for the larger community that's going to have a really positive impact um on the district and i'm just i'm a firm believer that you know talking about the positives and highlighting the positives will encourage more positives and that you create that culture of appreciation as you've talked about um that that i think can can have a really beneficial effect and i don't think that's mutually exclusive from accountability and i think sometimes we get really focused or the press gets really focused or even our community and parents get really focused on what are we doing to hold the district accountable we can do that while also showing appreciation at the same time and so that's something that i'm i'm i'm excited you ran i know you say you're just stepping forward but i think there's more to it than that because i think um i i'm hopeful that that that we can really focus on that next year and with that we got um those were the two that the two uh of my colleagues that expressed interest and i appreciate you again for stepping up we'll have a board vote on this item it doesn't seem to be too contentious um at our first meeting in july which is july 12th i believe so thank you for stepping up it's a great job i want to thank both of you too because it really is and a lot of additional unpaid labor but really critically important and i appreciated what you said director scott about just to focus on governance and how we showed up show up as the governing body i think we've made a ton of progress in that area since really having a concerted focus since 2018 on how we do our work and how much time we spend talking about how our students are doing and what we can do to support our students as opposed to you know a lot of other maybe more operational issues that aren't going to move the needle for our kids so i really appreciate that that's primary focus we've been making progress we have a lot more progress to make in that sense in terms of really um spending our time on what we truly believe are the most important issues thank you uh the board will now thank you for your comments and thank you for stepping up and again you'll you'll hear more from us in july the board will now vote on the consent agenda board members or if there are any items you'd like to pull for discussion we'll set those aside for discussion and vote at the end of the meeting ms bradshaw are there any changes to the consent agenda no board members are there any items you'd like to pull from the consent agenda for discussion or questions i'm looking at director hollins well i i don't want to pull anything but i would like to make a comment about a couple few items okay um yes do you want to go ahead yeah so i was looking at the consent agenda and i wanted to i don't know if uh dan young is in here or not um oh no you don't have to come up i just wanted in the in the spirit of appreciation and accountability piece i want to say i appreciate the effort of hiring minority contractors women and minority contractors in the three bids that we have so i just wanted to make sure that you know you can get recognized for you know being intentional and doing that and now that was exactly my comment as well now the accountability side is when i look at the three contracts they come up to about 500 000 and the one for lincoln is 1.5 and so i just want to see if we can make sure we can kind of equal that out a little bit but besides that i appreciate that there's a special term in business school um that i can't really say but it's it's it's that same kind of its appreciation and accountability my comment was the same as that i really was appreciated seeing um that that column with with a couple of minority women-owned businesses um that i've worked with in the past in in that lineup and would also love to see um see more of that so whether that's you know doing intensive outreach particularly as we think about the center for black excellence and the jefferson high school rebuilds it'd be really great to to spend some of those dollars in the minority contracting community um i appreciate your comments of director hollins is there any other board discussion on the consent agenda i had one quick comment just about the resolution to increase the school meal prices so part of the conversation we've
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had during the budget process is over the past two years we've um been the federal level has been able to allow everyone to have free breakfast and lunch and dinner i believe um so just not so much a hesitation just like in that conversation result we've also talked about how much it would cost for us to subsidize that cost and have no student have to pay for breakfast or lunch and then seeing this to see like a 10 increase for students and a dollar increase for adults for breakfast and a dollar ten for lunches just doesn't seem congruent with our wishes to not um place a larger financial burden on students thank you and and i had a comment um school lunches are a hot topic um just a comment about the city's going to be mandating food food waste scraps in 2023 and 2024 for large producers like our district and so it'd be interesting to audit how much food is going in the trash and also look at who's impacted by um those those increase costs so you know speaking of that um the question i'd have just went forward and it kind of it was raised somewhat in this increase because because it includes um part of the roll-up cost for this the um breakfast and lunch increases is um having trays and the labor to actually wash um not one time um utensils which is very much not not the making them pay for it but it's very aligned with our climate goals and our carbon reduction goals and i can imagine something like the requirements to reduce waste are going to have an impact as well and i do think it's a broader discussion about who bears those costs are those district operating costs or those actually for example in this particular case like nutrition services and the individuals who eat lunch um at the district to pay for that so i think we have are going to have some questions like that that come up um and it's a relatively small increase um but i think in future years it could be larger as we expand the um no no more single-use utensils or dishes right because there will be a labor cost and in sustainability circles there's always that discussion about the trade-offs if you just want to get anybody started down a path you can talk about cloth diapers versus disposables so that's or paper bags versus bags that you can cloth bags there's there's costs and benefits for the planet against the planet on both sides so sheriff it's helpful just to give a little more context we have whitney ellerson here actually our nutrition services fantastic would you would you grace us thank you thank you i did see you earlier and if i didn't it didn't register thank you for being here oh thank you um so happy to entertain any questions and thank you director brim edwards for your questions earlier uh in the last couple days about these um of course this is not ideal um you know as we've talked um in the past we've always wanted to continue the efforts for all free meals unfortunately that is not a priority with with congress at this time since this is a federally issued program and i know we had conversations about the costs for us to sustain that and recognizing that it comes with a high cost one of the things that is shifting besides the sustainability is also the increase in food costs so just to give a perspective that our bakery items that we're currently purchasing will increase by anywhere to 20 to 70 percent on each item going into the next school year so the some of these increases in cost to the meals are attributed by food and supplies the sustainability items we have been working on since probably 2007 2008 and with each year we make more strides and a lot of that is attributed to the labor that we also increase but again that goes back into investing into my team members having more labor and wages attributed to their pay what percentage of our students who um are eating lunch with us or eating any meals with us are receiving free meals so so right now um we are serving about 25 000 meals a day um out of the entire district across the locations that does that's just with breakfast and lunch and then we have the 29 sites with the fresh fruit and vegetable program which is a separate daily occurrence for next year
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[Music] we are trying to elect the established 50 50 5-0 schools and programs with the community eligibility provision cep which will still allow those students in those schools to be served a breakfast and lunch at no charge so we'll be over half of our district that will still have that opportunity we are also trying to add kellogg in the current election for the next school year but we're still waiting for ode's approval of that plan so this price increase would just impact the remaining sites minus those 51 and then we also have the expanded income eligibility guideline that was brought forth by the student success act so expands the eligibility beyond the reduced price category to capture more families that would offer free meals as well to those sites that don't have cep so we're hoping to still capture a lot more of our families than we have in the past just not what we've seen in the last two years okay and that's what my question was around whether there would be an increase in families seeking free and reduced lunch certification how that that increase would impact the numbers going forward yeah we're really hopeful we're trying to work on a creative communication plan and also with a lot of our partners throughout the summer and into the fall on making sure that our families have a broad reach of different methods of communication so whether it's written in person verbal electronic translated materials so that all families have the opportunity to be aware to apply for the meal benefits thank you are there any other questions yes just one for for whitney since we have her here on the stand thank you for the memo and you know it's a significant amount for to contemplate a universal meal program which i think we would all love to see and hopefully our federal government will reinstate uh what with that benefit from govid um since we have you here could you just give them a little preview of the investment that we have proposed to make is half a million dollars to supplement nutrition services can you talk just uh very quickly on on how you're thinking about those funds sure so we have for sustainability efforts um again we have expanded our reusable plates up until this time with this investment we want to push further with the students voices really pushing us in this direction with reusable silverware as a one-time purchase and then again my team to be able to to wash those in our kitchens moving forward and so that will help with those efforts similarly even though we don't have the same type of approval through the usda through this budget we're hoping to expand or sustain some of those great efforts in our with our students in schools where they need further access to either fresh fruit and vegetables as a daily snack re-emphasizing those healthy meal behaviors making sure we sustain or expand our after-school separate programs because our after-school partners are critical for having those enrichment programs for our students to participate in and then also finding alternative options for students to eat throughout the day when it doesn't fit within the box of usda's prescribed breakfast lunch and snack and specifically targeting students who have have higher need and that don't fit into that mold especially our students that are pregnant or lactating breastfeeding those are hiring energy needs that are not factored into our nutrition standards for our students thank you i really appreciate that um are there any further questions or comments thank you so much whitney and thank you dan for being available actually i'd one other thing about the agenda and i also and we're gonna have another item um later on on our formal agenda um but i just wanted to call out um you know uh dr scott you were recognizing uh how things changed and i remember one of um superintendent guro's first weeks here um we were getting lobbied i think by benson um to have like some instruments or just even like what we're left over from other schools and tonight on the um consent agenda we have a contract it's a 10-year contract that is really the contract that will provide all of our newly opened schools with a whole array of instruments so that our music programs that our students have what they need to be musicians um and so it's another outgrowth of the bond and just a really changed environment um because of um our community support for the bond and i'm not a music person but i know we have several people on the on the board who are because everybody has their thing
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and so um i just applaud um this the next step benson and kellogg i think are the next two school they're not benson and there's one other one they're gonna going to get full um compliments of brand new instruments thank you for for recognizing that obviously i'm very pleased to put new musical instruments in as many students hands as is when i explore visual performing arts and since the the culture of appreciation was modeled earlier uh i want to if i could embarrass whitney just a little bit here since she was just up here i want to recognize an award that she's just received i want to get this right this is an award given by the international fresh produce association as the winner of this year's the winner of this year's produce excellence and food service award to our senior director of nutrition services whitney ellersek so congratulations on yeah [Applause] congratulations a real leader in the farm to table movement for schools across the country making that making use of oregon's bounty okay we're going to move on to vote on resolutions six five one five three six five one nine and six five two five um any all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes did we have a motion in a second on this no we did not thank motion and we do have public comment as well and we do okay thank you um so i removed my vote okay all second so her men will move and also okay and then um who do we have for public comment we have chris reiter and he is virtual hello mr reiser hey um i real quick on the meal prices i came here to talk about resolution 65-25 but um didn't we self-select for the measure of title one funds which would lower the number of students eligible for free and reduced meals and would that change pps expenses just a question i want to put out before i begin my testimony um my name is chris reiser last name r-i-s-e-r he him pronouns perhaps you're not finding the people that you need in terms of summer programming because of the way that you treat us you force us back into classrooms when it wasn't safe you left our children without outdoor learning spaces in the spring of 2021 and to sit outside on the asphalt without shelter this fall you email smacked every last pat member in the face in january because a few sites called in sick in large numbers during the most failure virulent surge of the coronavirus up to that point you double down on eurocentric curricula and demands that we train during the summer as if our contract does not speak to summer work and pay you chose to use the language of acceleration now unfinished learning because why not make something sound wonderful when you know the truth is brutal spread ups that don't help kids succeed you chose to ignore the core the care that virtually every other metro district operated from as we collectively manage the pandemic you fatten central office has any one of you petitioned for a name change or are you guys all comfortable with having blanchard the racist as your mascot uh but you flatten central office and slash and burn building staff continuing the practice of devaluing our work even as you pile it on but let me ask about the resolution who gets this bonus for recruiting summer people can the superintendent add to his one percenter salary if he finds someone to work the summer how much of the 15 million dollars is going to be allocated to this bonus how much will the bonus be per person how are high needs positions defined which positions are still vacant how many positions have been filled how many need filling who thought this was a good idea and where is that money actually going if you can't find people to staff it will programs be cut that parents registered their children for this like the center for black excellence is putting the cart before the horse when you design things for other people to implement without the implementers at the table it usually goes badly you should be organizing programs from the bottom up i've been saying this for a long time but it seems everyone in the room is too familiar with hierarchy to think community thank you thank you that concludes on this topic pardon me that concludes public comment on this topic okay thank you so we do have a motion and a second to adopt the consent agenda director uh green moves director lowry seconds the adopt adoption of the consent agenda um is there any further board discussion on the consent agenda and i also want to make sure
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i hear your thoughts we've already heard them um and the public comment the board will now vote on resolution 6515 through 6519 and 6525 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no and are there any abstentions the consent agenda is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative voting yes we now turn to student and public comment uh before we begin i'd like to review our guidelines for public comment first the board thanks you for taking the time to attend this meeting and providing your comments public input informs and improves our work and we look forward to hearing our thought your thoughts reflections and or concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen and to that end i would ask each of us to give our full attention to the people in front of us our board office may follow up on board related issues raised during public testimony we request that complaints about individual employees please be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter and if you have additional materials or items you'd like to provide to the board or the superintendent we ask that you email them please to public comment all one word at pps.net comment at pps.net and make sure when you begin your comment that you clearly state your name and spell your last name for us and you have three minutes uh to speak you'll hear a sound after three minutes which means it's time to conclude your comments ms bradshaw do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment yes avery dorman hi my name is avery dorfman i use she her pronouns i'm a rising junior at ida b wells high school i'm also a student leader with oregon chapter of students demand action for gun sense in america i started the chapter at ida b wells as a sophomore inspired by the activists of march for our lives after the shooting at marjory stoneman douglas high school in parkland florida thank you members for of the portland public school school board for taking my testimony today i'm asking that you adopt the ban on all guns from portland public school campuses when i think about the dangers of concealed carry permit holders carrying a weapon on school grounds i worry about various scenarios that could occur a gun could come loose from a holster hit the ground and go off or even if the gun does not discharge it could cause a panic among students and staff and perhaps a police officer could unnecessarily shoot the parent thinking they came to cause harm i picture a domestic dispute one parent comes to pick up their child while armed causing fear and possible harm to another parent and trauma to all who encountered the armed parent in 2019 in eugene a parent was shot and killed by a eugene police officer after he came to school to get his daughter who he believed was going to be taken by her mother during a custody dispute and he pulled a firearm on officers discharging it twice the students parents and educators in that community are still traumatized by that day this this policy may well have been prevented that tragedy and could prevent something similar at a portland public school i know that portland public schools had the intention to ban concealed carry permit holders from campuses in the past passing this policy now will bring you into alignment with current state law and ensure that no concealed carry permit holder can bring a gun on school grounds and claim that is in within their rights to do so school districts across the state have passed this policy from tillamook to pendleton from david douglas to sue slaw school boards are taking action to make sure concealed carry permit holders don't cause gun accidents thank you for taking my testimony i asked you to pass this policy this evening thank you [Applause] izana and malik
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is this the reap students okay thank you radha wiley food hello i don't know has my times already yet yes you're um you please state your name and spell your last name please thank you for being here my name is radha wiley sued my last name is spelled w-i-l-e-y hyphen s-o-o-d hello board members i am very frustrated to be up here again i know one student's opinion won't change your mind but when community members teachers parents and students all talk about the same issue i would expect change i'm sure everyone is aware that it is summer break i have to keep coming to these meetings when i should be having fun with my friends as we prepare for high school i wonder how we're going to do that when we hardly have an 8th grade education that is because of your decision to put brian chu on leave he was a literal glue keeping this school together harriet tubman and you took him away he wasn't able to attend my eighth grade promotion when he was the one teacher i wanted there i'm not graduating twice so you rob me of saying goodbye to him it's ironic to me that the people making the most impact from students are the ones without six figure paychecks it seems that superintendent guerrero's pay is increasing while his employees suffer horrible school conditions outrageous pay in an unsafe working environment the board continues to make decisions that put the most money in their pocket while students are an afterthought the i5 free freeway expansion is a clear example of this because tumen is a school with predominantly black and brown students he pushes around like pieces in your capitalist game of chess i wish i could go into high school feeling prepared safe and ready but i'm going into high school feeling nervous unsafe and scared for all the white allies on this board you are doing an absolutely terrible job saying you support students of color while harming their education and basic rights is honestly hilarious i implore you to give harry tummin to back and give your workers a living wage thank you thank you [Applause] chris walters hey mr walters good good evening everyone my name is chris walters he him pronouns w-a-l-t-e-r-s i know you all are used to seeing a big row of purple behind me um not tonight though i wanted to start off by saying i was on the bargaining team that reached the tentative agreement that the union is currently voting on um i'm assuming that we're going to vote as a union in the infirmities not all not all of our members were particularly pleased with the outcome but i think enough of us were that we'll eventually say yes once the voting is done um i do want to say that just because we're not all here tonight doesn't mean that we've decided to stop asking for changes since this was only focused on finance hopefully this will be enough to stop the bleeding but there is plenty of other structural issues particularly on the custodial side that uh we're very interested in moving forward on when bargaining begins again in february um there's definitely a lot that needs to be fixed and we're also still going to be pushing um you know this is a good i think first step particularly for nutrition assistance in terms of a pay increase at 19.8 percent uh which does sound like a lot but when it comes down to it it's pretty much going from not being able to afford food and rent to being able to afford food or rent rent prices went up in the portland metro area by 40 last year 20 percent does not equal 40. um so yeah that's still going to be an ongoing issue and i don't see that we're going to go into the bargaining and say yeah we're fine with what we just got there's more that needs to be done so just wanted to put that out there for you all to consider and uh yeah that's i think fair a good place to leave that we'll uh see you all again in the coming months as we prepare for the next round of bargaining
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thank you thank you [Applause] fanta means isabel jonan good evening good evening sorry i have a little hard time here um i am so nervous once again to speak even though this is now i think the fourth time um it's just us i know okay wait i apologize let me let me let me step back your chair to pass you're always so welcoming um isabelle johnson j-o-h-n-s-o-n she her pronouns i am a i think as we know by now a parent of a third grader at glencoe elementary i'm also on the pta board as the advocacy chair and i was the one that authored the collective pta letter and had the um all the schools that that signed on to that and asked for their testimonies and my intention in doing that was not i think director scott you got a little angry with us um last board meeting in which you sort of said there is no money um and it wasn't really just to ask for more money but i think it was really for me to highlight all of our communities and how this budget is impacting everyone because all of us i believe love in general for the most part i'm going to say all of us love our school communities and we want the best for all our communities and sometimes it feels like we're scrabbling against each other when really we all want the same thing for our kids we all want our kids to be in supportive learning environments and what i am hearing from every teacher i speak to is the biggest way that this can happen is to have lower class sizes and i know that in the budget it you know it says in the superintendent's message it says we know that our community values smaller class sizes next year we will continue to use special revenues to lower class sizes with averages at 22 students in first second and third 23 and fourth 24 and fifth and 28 at the middle school level and yes that is happening at some schools but there are so many schools across the board where that is not happening and it is not just our school glencoe but at title 1 and tsi schools their averages are high at boise elliot and when i look at that staffing member boise elliott 27 for third grade and i know that that is within the limits but let's think about this third grade students going into third grade started kindergarten when the pandemic happened so they were cut off from learning in march they never finished kindergarten in school they had one year of distance learning and a little bit of quasi-hybrid and then they had one year which is in second grade in school but obviously we know it's been somewhat interrupted and now they're going into third grade and i think third grade in particular needs so much support and it is not just and chief joseph i just saw a post from a parent on the north northeast rebalancing page and she's like help there are 32 kids in my daughter's second grade class and in the other second grade class and we found out we're not getting an extra third grade teacher and i just again i'm gonna really advocate i know my time is almost up that there is this idea that we have no money and that we're facing this hundred million dollar shortfall next year and if we don't you know that we're gonna have this catastrophic cliff but let's look if it is true that potentially we have this corporate kicker coming in that's 72 million dollars if some of those sr funds you know if the 75 million in esser funds i see 24 addressing unfinished learning and 14 is a coveted response so theoretically they shouldn't repeat i just say please i think there is the money to replace those teachers i'm almost done will be eight to ten million dollars i believe and i really really advocate for doing that thank you very much thank you margaret smith hello members of the board hello i'm margaret smith spelled s-m-i-t-h i'm a resident of portland for about 10 years and oregon over 20. thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on behalf of the public today professionally i'm an organizational change and development consultant serving our local businesses such as providence portland general electric and oregon health and sciences university and i also give my time to a large non-profit as a board member i'm here as your constituent a mother of a boy who will attend lincoln high school in the fall of 2023
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i'm asking you to use your power to keep our school communities safer from gun violence senate bill 554 enables pbs to prohibit firearms on school property regardless of whether someone has a concealed handgun license under current law firearms are prohibited on school property as you know but there's an exception for individuals with concealed weapons now that senate bill 554 is in effect districts can choose to adopt a new policy prohibiting all firearms on school property regardless of who carries them studies have shown that the presence of guns in schools does not make anyone safer to the contra it puts teachers students and staff at greater risk in 2018 according to the associated press more than 30 publicly reported mishaps were reported involving firearms brought into school grounds guns went off by mistake they're filed by they're fired by curious or unruly students or they're left unattended in bathroom stalls locker rooms or elsewhere on school grounds while gun violence is rare it occurs with enough frequency that school districts should address this concern i urge you our school board to use your ability under the new law to enact a policy prohibiting guns on our on school property and i'll close by relaying the sentiment from my son who represents children who are impacted by the decision us adults make and he says why would a gun be necessary at a school sporting event i don't think people should come to a child's game with a gun people would not appreciate it it could affect them in a negative way it can feel scary guns should not be allowed unless they are a professional like a security guard please vote to pass this critical safety policy tonight thank you [Applause] susanna reese greetings everyone my name is susannah reese r-e-e-s-e i am the parent of a rising third grader and an excited rising kindergartner at glanco elementary i am also an educator by profession essentially i am here to beg you to bring back glencoe's cut third and fifth grade teaching positions i know as an educator how much class size matters i taught for a decade at an alternative high school in st john's as a teacher advocate in a program that prioritized small school small classes i next moved to a comprehensive high school in a portland suburb where i taught classes of as many as 45 9th graders in one room i differentiated as best i could but i simply could not give all of my students the attention or connection that they deserved and it broke my heart fast forward a few years my rising third grader his name is frank was in kindergarten when the pandemic hit and his little world turned upside down overnight that spring was a mess and his first grade year was spent staring at a screen or not sitting at a desk by himself or not while i juggled him and his little brother it was extremely hard for frank and he really struggled this year i saw as a parent how much class size matters because this year my son had 21 students in his class he continued to struggle but thankfully his teacher was able to give him the caring support he needed and he did quite well i'll be honest though it's not over for these kids he still struggles he was screaming this morning the budget makes it very clear that small class sizes are a priority but actual class sizes not only at glencoe but in multiple elementary schools across the district do not consistently demonstrate that value the budget states that third grade class averages will be at 22 kids but this morning dr renard adams shared with the glencoe pta that quote when class sizes for glencoe 3rd graders 3rd grade classes exceed the class size maximum of 33 in each homeroom this would be a class of 33 and a class of 34 which averaged to 33.5 rounded up to 34 third graders in one class then we will work with the deputy superintendent and the staffing team to allocate additional fte and when i read this i shook with rage from my baby and it seems relevant to mention here that this year our school has 38.9 combined underserved students nearly 40 percent of our students are those which the district aims to prioritize in this budget so i ask you
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to do that there's a the possibility of adding a third teacher a third class in october should it be deemed necessary i have been that late higher teacher and it is a messy process and in this case i also believe it's a cruel waste of instructional time and connection for a third grade class which has already experienced so much disruption in their first two years of school please do whatever you can to bring our teachers back now our children need them desperately thank you thank you [Applause] denise archer c denise archer a-r-c-h-e-r all right i need this i became a part-time school bus driver to help with the driver shortage this year this was my uniform my assigned route was chapman elementary in west sullivan middle school both of which feed into lincoln i'm also the publisher of a teen zine comprised of lincoln students and i also have a 17 year old who attends lincoln my message the kids are not okay they lack age-appropriate social skills and their emotional needs are erased by a heavy-handed academic curriculum at west sylvan and lincoln on my elementary route the kids constantly dropped f-bombs and other creative put-downs i was even called a damned liar by a ten-year-old on my middle school route when i asked 37 students if they had had a good in person school year only seven thumbs went up the other thirty were thumbed sideways or down one student an incoming high schooler once yelled to me you're effing stupid from the lincoln kids i've listened to stories of anxiety depression suicidal ideation agoraphobia and across the board chronophobia the fear of time passing too quickly and the inability to gauge it yet these lincoln kids are pushed to take a heavy load of college level classes and mandated to take certain ib courses so they sleep far less than their bodies need for ib diploma kids at times that's zero to six hours per night this has led to an underground culture of cheating because these classes are simply not developmentally appropriate more so during this time of stress there is universal data falsification on papers private tutors who complete their work and small paper writing businesses created by students and i still do not 500 for one and i still do not understand your decision to force these children and well i still do not understand your decision to force these children to manage eight online classes despite a global crisis despite the protests of professional school counselors and psychologists and despite the spring-term data you had already collected about the ineffectiveness of an eight-period online schedule it destroyed them the education you that was encouraged favoring ib specifically for the lincoln students was how to deny their own care for a hopeless urgent grind and that hopeless urgent grind continues as i hear students say that they've lost their love of learning these students are sick here are some quotes from the most recent zine um procrastination with my homework and freezing up happens a lot i did not want to sleep anymore i felt unproductive when i slept i didn't eat for a week and lost 10 pounds that's when my suicidal thoughts started i gave my parents all my swords and knives when things got really bad these are from high achieving lincoln students these kids need time to heal from this unprecedented period in history for the time being for lincoln you know ib less rigorous academics and more social emotional supports are needed if you need any other student voices google ib memes it's memes that are created by ib students just look at it i i have the zines can i hand them to you yes you can thank you and thank you for your testimony [Applause]
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that concludes we have signed up for public comment thank you ms bradshaw thank you all again for your comments please feel free to connect with our senior board manager roseanne powell who's in the green if you have something specifically you'd like to follow up with the board office or the board student representative weinberg would you like to provide your final report your final report um i actually wanted to start my report with introducing the next student representative student representative byronie mcmahon [Applause] hello everyone my name is byron mcmahon i am a rising senior at cleveland high school and i'm very privileged to be following up jackson so to begin some of my comments i just want to say thank you to jackson you've been my mentor through this whole year you introduced me to this program and everything that i've learned from you and the things that the amazing things that i've watched you do both at our school and in this role have been essential to why i stepped up to this position and i want to say thank you so much for everything that you've done for me personally for those in the dsc and for all students within pbs you're an essential human being and i appreciate getting to know you and getting to work with you i really i feel very strongly that you are such an amazing human and i know you're going to do amazing things so thank you to [Applause] you so as to following up and taking your role i'm beyond excited and i feel very grateful to have this position i remember filling in for jackson once and feeling this overwhelming sense of passion towards the role that i'll be taking on this is something that only one student gets to hold in a year and i feel beyond privileged to have a voice and to be able to give that voice to the students that i represent i'm really excited to potentially be making visits to all of our schools next year and to be really using this opportunity as we get back into the building to engage with students face to face i think it's really important and a lot of times student voice gets pushed to the wayside as they have to commit all sorts of different journeys to get to this place to speak to you as individuals and i think i'm very excited to be able to bring their voices directly here and also to bring myself to them so it's not such a difficulty for them to come and speak to me this is going to be a really exciting year i'm very grateful for the board members and the staff that i'll work alongside and i am very patiently awaiting my first salary check i heard that the board pays really well so so are we barney thank you so much and i look forward to working with all of you and to the students i look forward to hearing your voices and being part of the message that we bring to this body of individuals and to this district of amazing people so thank you thank you and welcome byronie we're really excited to have you as well [Applause] thank you byronie um and for my last report um i was actually looking at past reports of other student reps um and some of them got a little long um last year's was yeah quite a few minutes um so i did not want to spend that much time um and i also found that a lot of them were not always positive reflecting the district so i wanted to spend this time just extending my gratitude to not only this board but also all of the staff that we have in this district um herman and gary i know this is your first year on the board thank you for all the new energy you bring to this board i feel like it's definitely improved the dynamic on this board your passion for gary athletics is something that we haven't had on the board as strongly in the past so thank you for bringing that and herman your passion for speaking um just speaking um speaking up um and speaking to power um has been really empowering for all of us to see thank you um and to ailey thank you for always calling out the arts um in our schools especially our performing arts and visual arts um it's something that doesn't get enough credit in our district so thank you for that sometimes um and to andrew scott um a lot of us know what we want to do i feel like you are the one who's able to show us how we can do that so we have all these aspirations and i feel like you're the one who's always like okay how do we actually do that and then we're like oh wait yeah how do we actually do that so thank you for being that person that brings our ideas onto paper and michelle thank you for leading us during this challenging year there's been so much that we've had to get through so many conflicts on this board and our community that you've had to shepherd us through so thank you for your leadership um julia thank you um you're probably the longest serving one on here so you know how challenging it is to come every other tuesday and show up for all
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those students but from the mound of papers i know you're always ready to show up for all of our students in our community so thank you and finally for amy thank you for being my seat partner over here and answering my endless questions um whispering into your ear thank you for always being there for my questions and for my or for advice and um also guadalupe thank you for leading our district um i don't know where we would be without you um you came into this role in a challenging time and i think you shepherd us um our board on previous boards and all of our staff to a better place um than where we were when you came here and liz large thank you for keeping us compliant and it's not always easy and thank you for always being there i especially appreciate your presence on the policy committee you always know what's going on and are able to come forward with policy changes and help us know what we need to do thank you to dr adams and dr proctor you came in this year probably very hectic here i've seen you guys both be wonderful examples of how to be successful and amazing for all of our black students in our district and i see dr o thank you i know serving on the southeast guiding coalition has been a challenge but over the past two years i've seen your passion for our community and for our students i believe every single decision you make has our students at their heart and noberto i know we met when you are still in oklahoma and there are a lot of late nights and maybe even early mornings um for you thank you for your commitment to our students thank you for coming into this budget session a little later than we had probably hoped in coming forward with an amazing budget and thank you to all the other staff in this room who have made this year amazing thank you [Applause] and now we're going to sprinkle a little love on jackson weinberg thank you student representative weinberg for your work this year and representing the student perspective for your emboldened advocacy for students in addition to serving as this year's student representative on the board jackson has served for three years student representative weinberg has served for three years on the district student council in addition he's only one of two student advisors to the state board of education which has provided him the opportunity to share his opinions and recommendations to this policy making board whose decisions affect all students in oregon his service to our community ranges from the non-profit shuren which supports the mandarin dual language program at woodstock to restorative justice coalition of oregon to the oregon student voice an organization that promotes the importance of student involvement in making decisions and policies you can obviously tell he's an underachiever and i've really enjoyed serving with you i've appreciated every single time you've corrected me um or you've questioned me or texted me um had coffee with me um asked a question out of the blue um just been there i've i've just really learned from you and inspired by you you're going to do so well you know underachievers do do well in life keep doing what you're doing and and expressing that voice and being bold about it and audacious i'm going to invite my other colleagues to sprinkle love and appreciation on student representative weinberg as well thank you for your service jackson i would say that not only have you done great work here at pbs but you're also making a difference with the council of great city schools and advocating for more student perspective and student voice you're also working across oregon and with other school districts to continue to bring student voice to the center and so i want to just lift that up like again it's not just within pbs that you've made a mark but it's both in the state and nationally and i also just want to say i so appreciate you for many reasons but for being my buddy when the proud boys came and hanging out with me upstairs when we both discerned that that was not a space we wanted to um step into and so um thank you for being brave with me to say no we don't have to you know go with the crowd we can kind of choose our own path this night and so just appreciate you for sticking by my side when we were kind of in the middle of some chaos so thank you so much jackson it's been a pleasure to get to know you and i can't wait to hear what you do next yeah and i'll just say you show up you show up for these meetings and you ask insightful and in many ways piercing questions and the type of questions and i love how you sort of often wait and we've had this long debate and then you just ask this question that kind of encapsulates everything but in any way it's impressive so i think it's it's it's um i have enjoyed watching you i've learned a lot from you um um and and and
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and again how you show up so thank you for everything you've done this this this year to bring the student voice and and yeah just really i think move the district in a positive direction jackson i have enjoyed you i have enjoyed how you call upon our i mean on our stuff um that is refreshing and it is shows your character as far as being able to speak to power you know um in in real sense so i appreciate that and that's going to take you a long way keep up keep it keep going i too would like to put you back on that um to say i i appreciate the fact that you don't really care what everybody else is thinking you have a you have a focus and it's about the it's about the students and it's about their voice and it's about making sure that that voice is heard and you're going to do everything that you possibly can within your role to make sure that their voice what they want to hear what they won't say gets out there and that's what i appreciate because it's focused to that extent that i don't really care if they like it or not but this is what the students need to be said won't say it so this is what i'm going to say these are the questions the student won't ask so this is what i'm going to ask and they just got to deal with it it is what it is i wish we had them black sunglasses right now unless they deal with it but yeah that's what i appreciate so thank you keep that up and like director holland said that will take you a long way staying focused on what's important to you and not what everybody else feels should be important to you because a lot of people want you to go a different way because they're not comfortable with the decisions that they've made so stay focused and stay true to yourself jackson you're so smart sometimes it's really humbling and you bring so much heart to the work which is great um i've had really enjoyed seeing you sort of work your magic both as a contributing like committee member on the policy committee but also like mentoring all the rest of the students i don't think we've ever had as many engaged students i mean you have like 10x the amount of student engagement through your sort of um tapping and mentoring other students and like how you can participate in board and board work and you've actually you've made our work much better i don't think the climate um policy would have like navigated through the the rocky shoals um without you and and danny like lending the sort of student voice and the urgency to what needed to be done um along with an occasional admonishment to the adults to like get the work done so i've so appreciated getting to know you and watching you work and i think you have really built a great foundation for the students who are following you and for the next student rep and for the district student council i think i've never seen um student voice organized student voice stronger within the district decision making so thank you for everything and best wishes okay i'm going to miss you i'm really going to miss you and i appreciate what everyone has said and i will just add that i think that you have there are two really important parts to your legacy for the work that you've done um this year one is just your contributions in all of our meetings you're always just impeccably well prepared you have more sticky notes in your budget than anyone else sitting up here nothing eludes you um when you have questions about anything you ask i mean you went through every noverton knows like every single dedicated fund in the back of the budget book to make sure that you understood each of them um so you know on that level your your contributions and your questions are just have been immensely valuable to me but then also just for your legacy um just the the structure that you um you muscled into and you spent so much time on for the dsc it's taken several years to really build up the district student council but this year especially we almost made it i think you still have to put out a call to ida wells right so hopefully we can get that done so then your legacy is completely complete and untarnished but you have representation from you know all of our our high schools and bringing in our alternative schools and really making sure that we have student voice on all of our board policy all of our board committees um and that just makes it makes our work so so much better so um i'm in awe of you and i hope you'll stay in touch and uh with all of us and just let us know
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you know how you're changing the world out there and on behalf of our board we have a little something for you and a little something for you to take on your travels over the summer i don't know if everyone knows that among his many many achievements jackson is a fluent mandarin speaker so he has an opportunity to travel this summer and continue his studies there so we just wish you all the best [Applause] [Music] jackson i love your kindness i love your authenticity um you know sometimes for people it's much later in life that they find their voice their sense of self-agency and it's just incredibly impressive that you found it so young and and into two languages on top of that um and so every student reps challenges to further the student voice and and empowerment in in this experience and you've you've succeeded in doing that i see how you've organized our student leaders and our representatives across the high schools i see how you've made attempts to do that even connecting with other youth across the country and i just know that you're destined for still so many more greater things you you have modeled for us good healthy positive social emotional learning we talk about it in such this vernacular but you just do it so naturally um so it's been very impressive to to to observe you jackson and i really think you model that graduate portrait that we talked about so congratulations to you thank you thank you we'd like to present you um with a token and actually get a photograph with everybody on the dais yes see um we're going to move now to board can i just say really quickly by ernie we're super excited to work with you and you are fantastically impressive in your own right i'll never forget the first time i met you when you were serving on our long-range facilities plan committee and that is somewhat dry work gary remember and i was like whoa who is this like she was just on it and um we look forward to having you up here with us all right i actually was gonna offer tissue if anybody needed it if it was just me but there's tissue um thanks jackson again thank you so much for your service this year and you can pick up your check from on roseanne's desk at the end of the week we'll move now to we'll move out now to board committee and conference reports um if we have any updates i know it's been graduation season um is there an audit um report from the audit committee uh no we canceled our last meeting because it conflicted with graduation excellent what about charter and alternative programs director greene our last meeting was amazing we had it was more of a celebration we got to come in and we got to hear about all the amazing works that are happening um in all of our um charter and alternative schools and kids gave us um they gave us little cards um with that were with drawings on it that they made i mean it was we had cake we had um you know we it was wonderful we had a wonderful time and instead of um doing business as usual we chose to go out um celebrating all the amazing things that we've done throughout the
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year this year and then made plans to come back and begin working so it was great we should all do end of year celebrations that's awesome intergovernmental any updates uh not at this time we're looking forward to our uh meeting next week um facilities and operations well then at the report we have our meeting tomorrow at four to five o'clock precisely we will not be running over so four to five o'clock it would be brief i have a brief report out from the council of great city schools and superintendent maybe you want to add to this as well but you know we're part of a nationwide advocacy strategy and in recent weeks our network of large riven school districts has been really activated in advocating in washington on on behalf of our school children around common sense gun reform and gun safety issues and keeping our school children safe and the council great city schools has been one of the real leaders on the hill and we haven't been as activated directly because it's really more of our colleagues who are in districts with congressional delegations who have not been voting to per to for those protections on behalf of our students um but i just wanted to mention that that still um it's um an advocacy of an agenda that i've been deeply involved with that group of people and i want you to know that you know we're making a difference and i i did not have the opportunity today to read up on what appears to be you know at least a a bipartisan response and what it includes but i know at least part of what is being discussed potentially includes federal monies for school security systems and perhaps the superintendent has a little more insight on that or we just need to wait um until it comes down the pike but it's definitely that's another part of our advocacy and um i'll let you know what i know when i learn more about that but um it it feels good to be a part of that work on behalf of our our kids thank you and superintendent did you want to add anything i know you had a um meeting executive level meeting this weekend what i appreciate the council is it it doesn't um waiver from taking a stand on these issues we've seen other national organizations try to stay neutral the council doesn't believe that's really possible when it comes to our students and so we are watching carefully uh how that advocacy plays out as well as resources to continue to confront it and then just since we're doing report outs and i was able to be spend the weekend working with a group of superintendents who were trying to design a system of support for another crisis that's happening and that's the large percentage the attrition of superintendents across the country's largest school districts so sharing with director greene it was great to be in the company of 13 brand new african american female superintendents leading city districts and being able to spend a couple of days talking about you know how can we support your success and make sure that you have a network that you can call on as you embark on this new leadership role but also had had the benefit of spending time with a lot of experienced mentor superintendents who who are in their case retiring to make sure that we capture institutional knowledge there and that we develop a program much like the council has done with board members and coaching trying to design a parallel program that's designed for superintendents specifically especially superintendents of color who tend to lead council districts so that's how i spend my weekend thank you um that was that was great to hear um we're gonna hear from the policy committee but did you have a brief update now or would you like to wait until later in the day the last third of the meeting is the policy committee meeting agenda the only thing i would add is um just mention that as part of the review around school-based fundraising the office of community engagement and chief garcia's team has held some round tables they've had one with students uh one last night with roosevelt and an upcoming one with mcdaniel community members and just allowing us to hear from communities that haven't always been at the table and to give them a voice in the conversation so i just want to shout out to the team who have led those thank you
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we'll now move to the um thank you for your report outs and for keeping them brief especially we're a little bit off schedule um adoption of the 2022-23 budget superintendent geretta would you like to introduce this next item i would and we have just a small number of slides just to recap here if we get it our presentation on the screen we're back to the next final step here on board adoption on budget adoption so we're coming back to u.s staff this evening you know as i said earlier with our tssc commissioners you know we've titled this budget season out of challenging times we move forward together because that's really been sort of the guiding principle here in developing this balanced budget and as soon as we can get the slide up having technical difficulties just to recap briefly here the superintendent's budget really has focused on a few key areas second slide you know as i said earlier and i've said previously on these evenings really addressing that unfinished learning that we know our students need that time to stay at grade level creating those learning opportunities including extended learning opportunities you've heard about our summer school menu we still have seats available families out there if you're looking for options for for students this summer a very robust menu we recognize the pandemic has really amplified the need for high quality wrap-around supports so we continue to make deep investments in mental behavioral health and social workers and counselors a whole lot of other staff and adults outside of the classroom that are providing direct service to our students we also know to head down this road around student achievement that our educators need time to gather and collaborate and we have some important priorities and initiatives that we've laid out and so making sure we have the capacity to lead forward on those we've talked about each of these uh on our previous regular uh board meeting uh nights around the budget uh we've talked about those in some level of detail um and then on the next slide you know just as a high level summary you see those priorities there on the left and kind of taking that all funds approach to have described the various revenue streams that we have available to us you know which is concerning because of course we have our general fund which is one of the only sustaining sort of revenue streams which even then isn't always clear until the spring uh we have thankfully uh student investment account monies we've had one-time federal covered relief monies we've spread those across our priority areas to really sort of step on the gas pedal and make those available those supports at an you know a really high level for our students late in the spring we heard about the state dedicating monies to summer school we were able to incorporate those all in all you see the figures there it represents a close to 125 million dollar uh i'm sorry uh total uh of uh monies uh that were were putting into these priority areas uh and to be conscious of the fact that you know some some won't be there in the coming year i've talked to the board about some of the some of the risks uh you know uh involved uh and and the earlier planning that we'll need to do uh because we need to be ready with some tiered budget options and and be clear with uh the board to hear you know what your parameters are because uh it could be a dramatic fiscal cliff but we don't have a crystal ball so we just want to be ready uh what those scenarios might entail so where we last left off uh in our conversation with uh board members uh we after some discussion identified some offsets and there was this million plus identified that perhaps we could dedicate to uh and explore a few areas where maybe maybe that could be expended so i'm going to turn over to dr adams to talk about uh our process and thinking since the last time we met sure good evening board directors and student representative wyberg happy pride by the way um happy to have this month every year um we again had identified 1.2 million dollars in funds and what we heard from this board
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very clearly at our excuse me at our last meeting was that we should direct these resources towards additional middle school supports that was also something we continue to hear from public testimony and so four things uh or four areas were mentioned last meeting those included campus safety and counseling support both of which are already included in the budget that you approved at your last meeting in may and then there were two new ideas that were put forward one was to reduce core content class sizes in our middle schools um in the csi tsi and title one middle schools and the other conversation that was had was about a social emotional and behavioral support for our students around having restorative justice support staff in schools and so we modeled what those two asks might look like in terms of reducing the class sizes in middle schools and ka core content areas that that idea would require between 25 and 30 fte and would cost between 2.87 and 3.45 million dollars we also modeled the restorative justice support staff in all middle schools in k-8s and that would require 27 fte at a cost of 2.4 million dollars and so we know that we only had 1.2 million dollars in additional identified funds and so what we did um what we did was analyze these two models and come to a staff recommendation of consensus what we believe we should do and what we would recommend is that we provide restorative justice support staff in our title 1 csi and tsi middle schools in k-8s this plan would require 12 fte at a cost of 1.06 million dollars so it comes in a little under budget there would be 12 schools that were would receive these additional supports the k-8s would be astor chavez fabian and harrison park the middle schools would include beaumont george tubman kellogg lane mount tabor ockley green and roseway heights many of those schools have come up in board conversations since we've been going through the budget process and as a preliminary step the office of student support services under the leadership of chief martineck and dr proctor have been working on a tentative plan for developing centralized professional learning should these restorative justice staff be approved in the adopted budget we know that we don't simply um that more humans alone don't won't solve the problem that we need highly trained and highly skilled staff members and so we have begun creating a program and a system of support that will come from central office so these will be school these would are proposed to be school-based staff members excuse me here's our list of comprehensive middle school and k-8 supports that will be in effect next year pending board adoption of the proposed budget to date we thought it might be important to sort of bring together the constellation of all the things we've been discussing and what would be in place should the board vote to adopt the budget with this recommended edition we've reduced class size maximums in middle schools and we've also have more middle schools transitioning to a seven period day which gives exposure to more elective classes for students and also can support lower class sizes as we've shared we have increased our arts pathway to include more students and to provide greater exposure to the arts we've addressed student safety and mental health with additional campus safety associates and additional mental health professionals specifically in our title one csi and tsi middle schools in k-8s what's more we've added more educational assistance to our k-8s as a part of an elementary staffing addition and recommendation and finally if this board adopts the budget uh that tonight as proposed we will have added the restorative justice staff to our title one csi and tsi middle schools as well and together we feel these targeted investments will provide a comprehensive set of supports for our students during their middle years experience what we also know and heard was that there was a desire to understand how we would move forward with future budgets and i and how we might best position ourselves to re-uh re-establish fund balance and come up come up with balanced budget solutions moving forward and so i'm turning it over to chief delgadillo to talk about that thank you dr adams um so i i'd like to take a few minutes to just share a high level overview of what the planning might look like for next year and particularly considering that we would need to engage over some important issues and and grapple with what would be challenging yet sustainable solutions
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for the board to consider in fy 24 and fiscal year 24 and potentially beyond just simply because it'll be unrealistic to consider maintaining the same level of services with 114 million dollars less and there not be major shifts or changes so this requires some careful analysis coupled with difficult decisions and so during the data gathering process we will look towards not only understanding the fiscal levers that impact our resource use but also assess how they line up to our strategies and board goals so we talk about classroom sizes but we also talk about professional development and having highly trained teachers we talk about additional counselors but we also talk about additional services for transformative uh practices in our sj lens so there's just examples of of how we would uh approach the process because closing a gap of this magnitude should not be an exercise it's just making straight reductions it's about repurposing reassessing as best as possible because it'll be important to understand the scale and magnitude of the trade-offs not just fiscally but strategically and so throughout this process we plan to engage with the board to build a collective understanding about our our our district whether it's by modeling scenarios refining scenarios because in the december january time frame we need your guidance on the parameters that need to be in place to carry out some tough decisions so when it says board approval that's not the board approving the budget that's being clear as possible on the framework that will influence the formal budget process and the school site planning process so from a timeline perspective directors we can't predict the future but we can do is plan and engage with you and our community with information we have and that is a commitment that this draft proposes so that concludes our presentation i want to just open it up for for questions go ahead it's it's not it's a little bit of a more of an observation than a question i i really appreciate this timeline i think this is helpful um i also want to just stress how challenging the conversations are going to be and this is maybe more for us as a board to think about i appreciate what you're proposing which is to bring forward some of these you know um criteria for the planning cycle right that we can we can have that conversation i also recognize that's before the state legislature will have decided uh if i'm thinking about the 20 yeah before the state legislature will have decided on on school funding levels and so the same challenging dynamic we have every time we come around from biennium will be the same we will be making preliminary not decisions preliminary guidance and framework before we know what the totals are um and and you know and just just recognizing that that's going to change the other thing i i will say that i think will be hard for us and as a board will need to struggle with you know it it means if we sort of make we're going to be making those decisions with imperfect information which is what staff have always done and to be frank there's always a little bit of criticism right it's because you sort of have to make those decisions and then the information on the ground changes and then we're like why'd you make that decision and things are different and now you know we as a board are going to participate in that so i think that's a healthy process and i think it's a good process but i think it's going to be a hard process for us and the community as well right as because i assume what we're talking about there are frameworks like maximum class sizes and you know school resource decisions and so forth and recognizing that that sets a framework and a tone not to say that we can't make adjustments as new information comes in but we do sort of want to stick to that framework once we've once we've made it and and absolutely and i'll add that it's it's part of how do you plan for the unknown and and not knowing what the state may do come spring not knowing what enrollment may look like as the dust settles uh it's being able to propose like a tiered approach so understanding that having feedback from the board to help create our framework our guiding principles will also be uh layered against like okay well if if reductions look like this or if the gap looks like this what does that mean where are we comfortable where's the board comfortable with making the decisions because ultimately staff will present a plan and to your point uh director scott right the board's gonna have to wrestle and and and ultimately make a decision on passing a budget because at the end of the day we'll need to pass a budget and so uh it will be that thoughtful approach to figure out what that what what what are the tiers look like based on the information we're getting on the
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ground but if we can be clear up front on those parameters it'll go a long way with the planning process not just for staff but i mean schools on the ground will want to know what's happening and and and so you know less about alberto sleeping less or more but really what are we doing for school leaders and on our school sites as we work through that process thank you for that i'm wondering if it would be um wise for us to set some like to have a values discussion um going into this because once you kind of you know claim your values then it gives you somewhat of a place to operate from i'm just as a board i'm i'm a note to self note to roseanne to schedule a work session where we can talk about what we value if you know prior to getting any um communication from the state the other thing i had a question about was we approved a contractor to do kind of a i don't know what the work term would be but it's it's a lining it's someone that's it's a contractor that does this work nationally that's aligning our our budget to the outcomes and the strategic plan and i didn't see i don't know what their role is in this um in this process yeah sure i mean is there any way to um add add value or to um to take take the work that they're doing for us and use that in this upcoming you know what may be a really challenging way it's it's a criticism the work they're doing is a critical work stream of this process so they are lending technical expertise and and and just some of the sophistication that they bring to the table as we go through the data gathering process they'll be part of that and as we go through the make meeting process we'll be getting uh insights and and and uh additional considerations not just right how how are we functioning but when we say we want to achieve a specific strategic outcome how does that also stack up against other other districts and what does that mean for us but but do you answer your question yes it's absolutely part of the conversation and i think it's also important to understand that is as they present data and information for us to digest and process ultimately it's us it's the board making those decisions right and so like as much as we rely on a techno expertise in the sophistication they may bring to the table and create those insights we're going to present that we're going to have a lot of conversations about that but it's going to then be so board of directors you know what's your take on this yeah thank you and and then following on that so can you remind me what the name of the contractor is sure thing it's education resource strategies okay yeah ers and do they have um a track record of finding you know finding dollars or finding finding that's not the right word not finding not not picking efficiencies thank you finding efficiencies that equal you know that make it worth our while to actually work with them or are they going to be able to help us i was sharing earlier how we're developing sort of all those topic areas that can be challenging for superintendency and when we talked about fiscal management one resource or technical assistance that a good majority of council districts are using is the same group ers so you know i want to manage everyone's expectations they're not they're not going to solve our dilemma right but i think they're going to help be critical thought partners the challenge to director scott's point is we're going to have to develop a scenario a where revenues are significantly insufficient and it's a little bit more dramatic of the cliff to maybe it's level scenario b or maybe we get surprised with new revenue scenario b c and i think i like your suggestion around well what are some guiding principles and core values as we develop these scenarios and while we go through our own internal scrutiny around continuing to find efficiencies and streamlining those those activities that are student achievement related so yeah we're looking forward to their thought partnership great thank you other questions i just had a quick question so when are when are we expecting that the data from that report or that audit or whatever they're doing yeah so um it's a report right and it's an analysis and so right now from a make meeting pro oh the slide's not up there but uh it we're looking at it in the september to october time frame absolutely so and it's and we're still working through that so we're talking through our hypothesis building we're working through interviews so there are conversations happening as we speak and um with staff and and understanding our our resource use but then it's being able to come back and say okay this is this is what we're finding this is what we're seeing so how are we making meaning of this what does this mean what is this how does this stand up against our values so when we
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think about our guiding principles uh what does that mean and and to be fair roseanne did reach out and say hey we need what's the planning like for next year work sessions and kind of going through that process so so that we can get together and and have some of these conversations so tell them just make sure i'm clear throw you around so you said september october we should have that correct thanks did you have a question or comment add a comment and then i'm going to go back to the middle schools um but just on a comment of how that gets mapped out um because i think i'd ask for what the budget calendar would look like because we always end up in this five five week sprint um that is painful for all of us i think um so i appreciate getting a framework i think what would be really helpful is getting that mapped out and then mapped out also with when we'll have some of the maps data so we'll have some some data points around student achievements because that hopefully will impact um how we're thinking about our investments um the other thing that um i guess just to add on is i think it's going to be really important one of the we're not going to i don't believe get another year of a pass where we don't have a public sort of benchmarking of our sort of central function not central office but central functions um after a year in which we have some pretty significant cuts so how does that get layered in and then the other thing in there that i see is a really critical piece which has been referenced but i'm thinking about it a little bit differently is um the conversation about the staffing model because it's one thing to say like here are the class sizes but another thing to say so i just appreciate the meeting before last dr adams saying that like it was the staffing model that you inherited when you got here is that you know i think we should take a fresh look at it is it aligned with our board goals um you know how and i'm going to talk about this a little bit later you know how does it impact different school communities and different geographies because we have you know single to three strand schools we have you know all these co-located programs and the staffing and the staffing model actually fits best for like the standard three three strand no co-location type of school and so i like somewhere in there is a conversation about the staffing model because i think actually if you have an agreement on the staffing model then it makes this end point versus back mapping to the staffing model after you know people see what yeah like it results in um so that that would be things that i'd want and then i just like super specifically because tonight we're um voting on the board calendar is like where do all these things happen at board meetings we've already agreed to or do we need to set work sessions now so we're not scrambling around trying to find additional times or we miss really critical uh checkpoints um but thank you i think that's a great great start on the work ahead um and you know i think there's also things we can learn from the past because um for as long as i've been involved in school funding for the last 30 years we always have this issue with the legislature not knowing what the legislature is going to do and actually it used to be worse because they met every other year so it was more complicated but i think we could take some lessons from the past about how we how we plan for that and i'm going to go back to the the middle school slide and my question is we have some middle schools right now where there are really significant challenges and i'm wondering if this recommendation um whether the principals and school staff were asked what they thought about the recommendation or what what the um whether they agreed with this whether they would have like hey we think you should go back to the board and you know double down on class size or yes this this is it so [Music] so we didn't um oh margaret's coming up okay maybe margaret did the good thing is we actually talk to our principals on a regular basis right so this recommendation is informed by constant conversations with principals with feedback from community and from this board but i'll let margaret go into a little bit more detail good evening born um superintendent guerrero student representative jackson weinberg for the last time this evening so good
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evening to you as well um so one of the things that we have done is we went back through and i think probably it's two weeks ago three weeks ago now that we had started this conversation and in the in the interim um time we went back and worked with um our administrators and said you know what are some of the areas that you see high leverage investment we also had schools that submitted their school improvement their first drafts of their school improvement plans so what we found was that that there was interest in restorative justice supports um that we it was a confluence of things we heard both from the teacher union and staff and and also from principals so that is reflected here um i think there is also um you know the pieces of um we're uh committed to looking at how we're we're building master schedules right now and how that what those actual class sizes look like um and thinking about some of those pieces but this was a place where we saw um confluence both between principals and the staff that were in the classrooms than we heard from the union so i have a question on that particular point or in a comment because this is with when these materials arrived this was the first that we had heard of the staff's recommendations following our conversations about middle focusing on middle schools with these additional resources and we did receive a letter at the end of may from our building representatives from pat in our middle schools as well as a bunch of middle school teachers and then also the incoming pat president bonillo in her last comments to us really focused them on asking for support for our middle schools so i appreciate that we have narrowed the focus here i'm going to say something that is not my usual tack and not my usual point of view but tonight i will really advocate for finding a way to support these restorative justice specialists in every single one of our middle schools because here with our um just our the ones identified we've got five middle schools that are out there hanging and i think what we've heard from everyone in our buildings is that the social emotional challenges and the sort of um uh collective uh dysfunction and you know just just challenges of of being a community in our middle schools have um they've been they've it's it's been difficult more difficult in some places than others but it's been really really difficult all over and the thing that that is hard for me is that the the schools that are not included in this which would be um hospital jackson sellwood west sylvan and da vinci are almost without exception are schools with the lowest per student funding they fall in the top bottom 10 bottom 11 of all of our 80 margaret three schools 83 schools so they're at the very very bottom in terms of per student funding and that's by design that's because of our differentiated staffing formula but it also means that they have less discretionary resources so we know that some of these schools they're going to value having a restorative justice specialist and they're going to use what very very little discretionary funds they have to to do that some of them already have already are like a half-time specialist but that means that they're not having another half-time social worker or something or or a qualified mental health professional or whatever it is with that really very small amount of discretionary budget that these schools have and you know i think when we look back at the communication that we had from our teachers and from our pat representatives in our middle schools they didn't differentiate for need they said this is what we prioritize for all of our middle schools and so i'm going to ask my colleagues to have a conversation i i i voted for the budget i realized that we have approved the budget we also had some additional resources that we were looking at but i'm gonna i'm gonna ask for a conversation with my colleagues about how we might or ask the superintendent for suggestions free up support to add those restorative justice coordinators to all of our middle schools not not taking away from the k-8s that are identified here the other thing is this is you know absolutely smack dab in the middle of qualified uh eligible expenses for our esser funds this is helping our middle school school students come out
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of the really difficult times social emotional challenges of the pandemic and i think we can find esther funds to maybe make some make some additions there if other people feel the same way we know we're probably going to be spending less on summer school this summer than we anticipated just because we're not likely to be able to hire as many teachers as we originally thought we know that we have a very good bet that we're going to get reimbursed by fema i know we don't budget for that but i'm i'm i'm talking about having a a conversation with a little bit of appetite for risk right now which is not what we ask you to do but we can do um so um i i just it doesn't feel right to me to leave those very few schools out hanging particularly when they already have so many fewer adults in the building than the other middle schools and when we've heard from all of our educators in those buildings that they're really really struggling as well as as our other schools so i appreciate the approach but um i i that's a conversation i want to have with the rest of you if i could have just one last thing um which i was remiss and saying up front so i apologize for that but we did meet with um brenda the team the restorative justice team um at bren and brenda martinex's office to talk about one thing is what is what happens when you hire a position right and then the other piece is actually how do you support the position to do the work that's necessary so we um met over the last couple of weeks and said you know what does that look like do we have the capacity in the central office are there some schools that are already um prior that have already been prioritized to work through some of those restorative justice pieces how close are we what would that look like so that's some of the conversation that we had that it was it was in concert that this wouldn't just be a positions that were in in schools but without there being additional support and then we talked about what would be the commitments that would be necessary from the schools to in order to enact this because this is a change of practice right and so what are those things that we need what does that look like for the commitments for the principals the staff and that um and the students and the families in those schools as well so we try to balance both of that and and looking at at those um resources but just to be clear we don't have any information that says that these fives k five middle schools that are not that you're not recommending for this position don't want it or can't support it or correct yes i'm not saying that so i think that the um what what we were looking at and i believe the letter actually from um that was from pat was specific to specific schools but i i'll go back and look and see um but uh i think that the um ultimately the the the notion was um what are the schools that are currently and i'm and um i think chief martinec is here and i don't remember the exact language that they that uh restorative justice use their focus schools and then there are schools that get a slightly different level of support and there are some middle schools currently that are focused schools and are getting the deeper level of support so it's a combination so it's sorry it sounds to me like we're moving into a pretty substantive conversation so chair to pass is it okay can i make a motion to uh adopt resolution six five two zero and post tax as an adoption of the 2022-23 budget so we can have a board discussion and then vote on it yep that's okay so motion i'll make a motion okay director scott moves what i think we need is moving a lot so we need to put this on the table and then amend it okay i assumed we had to have the motion on the table to adopt the technical amendment to the motion are you saying there's a sect in the tsec thing i was moving this is um this is resolution well the one after that is the yes um so there's resolution 6520 which is the adopted budget resolution with the attachment and then there's 65 21. to to clarify 65 21 does not apply we're not talking about 65 21 so we can put that to the side because they'll be we'll eventually can come back to that
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but 65 21 deals with this current year okay yes yep and so 65 20 is with respect to next year fiscal year 23 and after our tscc hearing we did get a recommendation to make a technical adjustment to our budget uh based on just um from a technical perspective how we uh projected our the delinquency rate in tax calculations so i can definitely go into detail if if you like but after our conversation uh we require an amendment to make a motion to adopt the technical uh amendment before we move forward with the formal uh adoption of the fy 23 budget right and explaining it in a very technical governance way we discovered as the meeting was about to start that 6520 incorporates that technical amendment tscc requires but tsec requires that amendment to happen before 6520 is passed so it's described in here it's a little bit belt and suspenders but given that tscc has said make that technical amendment first then adopt this we are recommending that they're being you know an oral motion and second to make that technical amendment that's described as i understand go back to this area so i'll make a motion to make the technical amendment described by chief digodio um to the adopted budget um to 65 20 out no it's not 65. we're making the technical amendment to the adopted budget it's not on our council agenda so i'm making that motion okay yeah okay okay so director scott moves director lowry seconds the amendment i don't even know how to word it yeah the amendment to the adopted budget the amen the technical amendment the technical to the adopted budget recommended by the to the adopter correct okay so why don't we are we going to vote on it and then have discussion just vote unless there's no i don't think there's a discussion i don't think there's discussion okay all those in favor of the amendment the amendment to the budget the technical amendment to the adopted budget recommended by tscc um all in favor please um indicate by saying yes yes yes all those in favor please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions okay the technical amendment is now my apologies student representative weinberg yes thank you the technical amendment i'm sorry um to the adopted budget the motion passes with a vote of 7-0 student representative weinberg voting yes great thank you thank you thank you for that was a little complicated curvilinear all i know is when liz is moving our heads and you and you're closer so now i'll make a motion i'll make a motion to put resolution 6520 on the table so do i have a i have a motion second or alia already seconded i'm fast on the seconds tonight amy you're um really putting a director green um to task here he's slipping so we have a motion and a second to adopt resolution 6520 impose taxes and adoption of the 2022-23 budget for school district number 1j multnomah county is there any board discussion and i want to make sure yeah what i said before what you said which i i i took a short break are you proposing an amendment i heard i heard you talk about something but i didn't hear an actual amendment i intend to yes if uh and i'm interested in what my colleagues have to say on that point and others um but for me that's kind of an essential uh fix and i miss the gist of your um i think you were speaking when i left and you were speaking when i came back i missed the substantive um to include restorative justice specialists in all of our middle schools and the staff recommendation is all of our middle schools except four or five of them so my question is then okay may i ask a clarifying question director constance would you like to include also the k-8s because they have the middle grades in them that would be this proposal that's on the screen oh i want to keep the k-8s that are already identified but then i want to add the five um middle schools that are excluded from this recommendation so where do we find the 1.2 million dollars to make that
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happen well that's a conversation i want to have and uh i don't think we know it's not 1.3 million dollars for to add five additional i'm just looking at it requires 20 that would have been with the other k-8s as well so i'm just talking about the middle schools so you're not wanting it at all the k-8s you're just wanting it at all the middle schools yes yes given the information we have from our educators in our middle schools um it doesn't feel right to me to just carve out five middle schools who won't have access to that particularly because they're our lowest staffed middle schools already with very little discretionary budget to address those needs the 1.06 was the amount for the staff recommended middle schools in k-8s so alberto actually can i can i can make a i guess so you have not run this by staff so they have not had an opportunity to cost this out director constant okay but i would propose i mean this i i i'm talking about this is an esser eligible um expense we know that our summer school expenses are going to be considerably lower than we thought they were going to be through because of our difficulty in hiring and we also have great horizons for more esser reimbursement so it would be right now we have esser money in the bank for programming next year so that would be my recommendation unless somebody has a better idea may i ask so i missed the substantive uh part of your ask but were did we not choose the schools that would be funded the 1.06 based on need what where there's where there's it's using an equity lens so if there's more needed a particular building then we put more resources there if there's less need then there are there are fewer resources well i think director constance point is that there are schools that are not on this list that also have needs that we could address the difference is roughly based on roberto and i's rough math 500 000 to add those five schools so we'd be under the 1.2 um was it 1.12 so i'm going to encourage the board not to do math at the dyess because i think that is really bad and let staff do that for us um i guess i just from a process standpoint i just want to be clear so budget amendments at this very late stage need to identify where the funding is going to go what it's going to go for and where it's going to come from so i haven't yet heard that um and it sounds like you haven't worked with staff yet so my objection is not so much even substantive as it is process i guess i'm just i'm a little nervous right now sort of when you say the esser funds are available i mean there's still a cost to that right so the esser funds would be used for something else if they were not used but not in this budget zone no i know but they would be used for something else in in next year's budget these are one-time funds so you're adding resources that will only be there in the 2223 budget so all these positions you're hiring will go away in 2324 um and and i guess i just again what what are the other uses for those ester funds and are they higher or lower priority than this so again i don't disagree that this might be a priority but but those will be used for something else because again it's a zero-sum budget that's a question that everyone needs to ask themselves but this identified need that we've heard from our educators about is exactly what the whole national conversation is about in terms of highest and best use for those one-time funds and we know that our middle school students are struggling the problem is we haven't had time in this conversation to determine what that offset is so when you said we have to determine whether it's higher priority we don't because because because we haven't talked about it till tonight we don't know what those other priorities are this might be the highest priority i guess what i would ask is this is also something we can do after we adopt the budget if those are funds are available it's a conversation we can have in july august september and so again i'm just i'm nervous about making a decision right now without any analysis behind it to know what those trade-offs are and i agree with director scott that this is it's such a small amount of money that this is something that we could do um after we've adopted the budget and i'm very uncomfortable with adding this in without sort of staff analysis and knowing that um this really is like a chair to pass i heard you say this is in line with our equity work to focus on these schools and i do know that there are need at those other five middle schools and i know um that we want to support those students and and i think we need to have a very thoughtful analysis of of how we use our sr funds for equity um and so i would not be in support of that change um at this time director konstam i i would say we've spent two months looking at and considering a lot of other needs and a lot of other things that have um not been funded and to me if we're going to go back and find money or use money for something then we need to put those other things in the mix and compare them because
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there's a lot of changes that happened in southeast portland that require additional resources and or you know class sizes in schools with numbers of higher numbers of historically underserved students so i i would want to have it in relation to is this our highest priority for that amount of money what whatever that amount of money is i'm not saying i'm ruling it out but i would also want to have the larger conversation especially if there's more i mean there's more money i mean that's that's great but i think we that money needs to be identified and sort of pressure test against our priorities i just want to say the reason why i'm bringing this up is i mean i agree procedurally that now is not the time for a free-for-all but when last we met we agreed that we were going to focus on um using extra funds to support these priorities in our middle school we agreed as a group that these are our unmet needs this is the highest priority that was lifted up to us from our pat partners and from our middle school educators so i mean i get it if other people don't share this value that i have but i'm saying this is the conversation that we have been having it's not it's not a last-minute like pork fest right and it's like and and because i was surprised when i saw when we said okay we want to see restorative justice specialists in every school and then it came forward and it's it's not every school and i get it you know this was a finite resource and you guys you chose not to um not to make any other adjustments with other sources of revenue other than um just general fund here which totally understandable but there's also another way to approach it so i don't want to go back and forth but i'm just saying it's not coming out of the blue this is the priority that we identified before and that our educators are telling us and in the letters that we've received from our educators they didn't differentiate need among those different schools and i i never you never hear me making an argument that it that isn't um really differentiating and lifting up our our csi and tsi and title schools but here we have heard that the the the trauma and the challenge is fairly equal opportunity at this moment in our middle schools and again they've got the less the least resources i just want to say that you know our school our students are not similarly situated and so i feel like when i'm looking at this um i don't really have a solid like a data understanding of where the need is but i trust that this is a differentiated where there's where there's more need there's resources for those needs and so absolutely that would be my question what was the rationale picking these schools they are some of our most needy schools they're also the schools that this board among them are schools that this board has continued to point out is needing additional support and i would point out and the reason i came up here because director concept i did review the the letter that was shared by uh our ed middle school educators and they do recommend and i quote amend the budget to provide a full-time building-based restorative justice coordinator at each middle school prioritizing the fte for our title tsi and csi middle schools these positions should be staffed by externally trained restorative justice coordinators certified teachers counselors or social workers so just want to point out that they did articulate a specific need for title csi and csi middle schools directory hollis did that satisfy your your question thank you jonathan is there um any public comment ms bradshaw yes on the budget are we done with that conversation sorry do you have something to add no i just was yes i think we're going to move so i have a motion and a second on the table to adopt resolution 6520 this is the budget yes we can do it after i thought there was no public comment oh there is public i'm sorry i misunderstood more discussion thank you so there is public comment thank you yes uh we have diane van landingham and i'm gonna bring here sorry about that i have a disability that i makes it hard for me to get up and down i'm a volunteer at one of the
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elementary schools in southwest portland i'm also a grandmother can you tell us your name oh sorry and spell your last name please van lenningham v is in victor a n l l-a-n-i-n-g-h-a-m i am a graduate from wilson high school ida b wells 50 years ago i've been in the system a long time thank you for joining us tonight i appreciate you being here thank you um i as i said i have a i'm a grandma of two boys in a southwest school and one upcoming in another year i'm a volunteer at one of the schools that's much needed for help and assistance it's my understanding that vice principals assistant principals excuse me have been um that position's no longer around for the ele mostly elementary schools um these children are in crisis we have a monumental teacher special needs student ratio that is just i don't know how these teachers are doing it i don't know how the administration is doing their jobs with the amount of one-on-one they need to perform to help these kids you have children racing out of schools an admin or a teacher is trying to chase them down the street how safe is that you have children cutting themselves with windows breaking off faucets and using them as weapons you need to keep these administrators in their positions and you need to hire more instructional assistants to help with these kids i help in the lunchrooms also i am there all the time keeping kids in seats and try and conversing with them and i get that i have a beautiful cane i hear from them how wonderful i am i only wish there were more grandmas out there doing this and helping out i'm not looking for accolades i'm looking for some help for these kids and these teachers because you're not going to have teachers pretty soon they're going to be gone they're burned out they're done as is the administration so you need to find in the budget money to keep these assistant principals in their positions and hire more ias thank you thank you that includes comment on this topic okay all right so um i know you said you want to make a statement we'll wrap up our comments our concerns and then we'll take a vote uh go ahead director brom edwards okay um and i just want to note with one exception i spared you questions tonight smile please just laugh at that turning on my computer um yeah so i wanted i've really wrestled with his budget and um i'm not in the spirit of my seatmate over here um i am going to it's a little bit of a appreciation but not so much accountability but more just thoughts about the process um so i want to start and i'm sorry it's long but i i have some thoughts i want to share from southeast portland so i want to start with a thank you to the staff in our schools superintendent guerrero and the central functions for a historic effort to reopen our schools to in-person last in-person learning last fall and for the herculean lift to both our students and staff to keep them safe and healthy and the efforts made to start to address the negative impacts the pandemic had on student learning and their social emotional health i want to thank the state's elected leaders in our federal congressional delegation for fighting for and allocating significant increases in one-time covet response funding to assist pbs and other public schools so we could emerge from the pandemic allowing us to accelerate learning for our students and to provide the social emotional supports our student needs
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i have appreciation i wrote this before director scott called that out you're not the only one taking notes i have appreciation for the legislators governor brown then speaker kotec senate president peter courtney oea pat seiu stanford children parents advocates and supportive businesses for passage of the largest investment in school funding in 50 years with the passage of the student success act which is funding a lot of these critical investments that have been put forth and i want to thank our beautiful portland community that willingly provides the cornerstone of community financial support for our schools countless volunteers hours in the classroom and in the community to support students and our schools the financial support pps receives from area taxpayers is unprecedented in oregon portland taxpayers provide the following additions to property taxes and income tax they've paid in the state 100 million 109 annual local option property tax the largest local option tax in the state pps receives another 30 million a year in funding through the gap bond that no other district receives portlanders provide four million dollars in the arts and access there's a new name for it it's no longer the arts tax the art access expenditure there's another new name for it and voters approved a 1.2 billion dollar capital bond the largest in the state that we use to pay for school modernizations and upgrades as well as technology and curriculum adoptions which are items that many other districts have to pay from our operating dollars so i just want to start with the appreciation to our a community from all sides who have like wrapped their arms around our schools and our students and there's many positives in the proposed budget some are academics and enrichment supports learning acceleration and tutoring investments the use of the racial equity lens to prioritize investments improve supports and outcomes for black natives and students of color investments and counselors social workers and other mental health supports more career technical education options and classes in our high schools enhanced culturally specific sports for our students by community-based organizations it goes on and on it's really a budget that provides so many things for our students we continue to monetize our high schools investments in health and safety and accessibility including making this room more accessible and the first step in a more equitable out of classroom experiences for the establishment of the 500 000 field trip and travel equity fund so these that which will provide more opportunities for all students to get outside the school and experience the wonder of experiencing field trips and travel not just those students whose parents can write the check so lots of great things in this budget so why did i vote no on the budget approval which was the first budget vote last month you know the the district-wide teacher cuts following the pandemic with class sizes in k-5 over 30 and middle schools with classes over 35 the lack of what i felt was a critical analysis of any of savings outside the classroom at least that i could see as a community member and i felt like i needed more time when when the 12 million dollars sort of unexpectedly came at a board meeting to be able to process that and understand what that meant and what sort of trade-offs we were going to be to be making and also you know i really felt the need for more targeted investments for some of the middle schools to address the academic and social emotional issues following the pandemic and so now i've had a month to ask answer ask questions i really appreciate all the staff um answering them and providing me with more information but also the community because i think the community is i think better informed of what's in in the budget and how we're supporting students um for for me tonight votes there's really three focus areas that as i review the budget and think about next year's process i talked a little bit about this earlier but as a district i encourage us to take a deeper look at staffing in the future and how the formula impacts different students types of schools and geographies high quality instructions for our students is critical yes i get the class size is one element check and that updated in curriculum is important but so is individualized attention and differentiated instruction the district's maximum class sizes um as part of the staffing were pre-set pre-pandemic and pre-student success um act and i know they that there's nobody in this room who um actively constructed them nor predicted the pandemic but i feel like in some ways they were there's a rigidity to them that doesn't take into consideration the complexities of our school communities so i think our staffing form is a reasonable place to start but i encourage really a deeper look at our staffing model this next year none of the class size research of course takes into account any consideration that we had students you know not who could have thought of a study that we'd have a pandemic
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and have students out of classrooms for so long but i would say that neighborhood programs and those with single or two strands per grade especially their co-liquidated programs and serving students in schools without foundation resources to buy classroom teachers or eas can be the ones who end up with the larger class sizes i mean if you look at the matrix which i've spent a lot of time studying it it impacts three-strand schools very differently than one or two-strand schools and especially in those schools where you get larger classes and then you've got students with a really diverse set of needs um the pat pps contract establishes lower student teacher ratios and class size thresholds and the state's model school prototype does as well and they're significantly lower than the maximums and pps's staffing models so i'm looking forward to next year's conversation and an earlier response to in response to earlier questions about whether pps in the contract there is the provision that if you go we go over the threshold we either pay an overage to the teacher for having additional students or we can provide an ea in some instances and in in the past we've paid the overages and i would really um hope that we going forward we'll examine whether there are instances where we think that adding educational assistance is the better option than just paying the overage so that's another thing for next year and i would note that it appears that class buys projection that we've been supplied that focus programs without a language requirement manage enrollment at a school level to keep their class sizes below the district um below the district maximum so like within within the within their school they can control it whereas um if you're a neighborhood program our our schools thank goodness are open to to everyone that are neighborhood schools and so if 37 kids show up those 37 kids can enroll in the school and that's not this the same and so we just you get lower class sizes lower than the maximum because they can manage it in focus programs and then you add to that in a year teacher cuts the district practice that allows schools foundations to fill the holes by buying teachers and educational assistants and there's been a lot of discussion about this and in the late 90s when this started that was really those resources provided to a bridge to pps securing a lot of additional resources some of the ones that i outlined earlier whether it was the local option which we never used to have or the student success act um but we're in a different place and you know i think that in a year in which there are there are school communities that are saying because class sizes are large we want to we need to buy eas for education assistance or additional teachers to reduce class sizes to provide additional individualized supports that our staffing formula should consider as well that there's going to be similar needs in schools that don't receive any equity funding maybe they just missed the cut off for the title but there are going to be instances in which if we if it's okay for for foundations to do that in some schools i think and and we think that's a good thing then we should also look at whether there are other schools that don't have that opportunities because they don't have foundations they don't meet they don't get equity funding and let's see the enrollment projections i want to just usually talk about that because the tax supervising commission brought it up and the um earlier this year when it was eight percent eight percent number was shared um i was somewhat skeptical because i'm not not skeptical that it happened but like that it wouldn't come back i mean i'm an internal optimist when it comes to pps and um you know i i've seen it come back that's what happened after the early the session recession in the early 2000s like you know people didn't want to have their school kids in schools where there might be clothes for five five weeks and have the short school year of in the nation so i'm optimistic and i would encourage and i noticed in the response that i got yesterday asking about it that there seemed to be a more um promising analysis potentially of what could happen and so i i'm not going to have any suggestions about increasing the birth rate but but i do know that we can create confidence if we create confidence that we have strong neighborhood schools and schools that support our students and we support affordable housing with our you know city and county partners that we can
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restate retain our students and build back that enrollment i firmly believe that um so again wanting to be like forward-looking like what are we what are we doing um on that front um and then i want to take a few minutes to give voice to um to minnie and southeast portland because it's it's been a hard it's been a hard year and a half um and this isn't in any way diminishing any other region of the city um or saying that southeast has greater um needs um but but i want to share sort of like what the confluence of what's happened out in southeast so mid to outer southeast portland is a diverse community and faced its share of stress from the district and the district you know over many times many boards many central office staffs many principals um it's the only region to have its name neighborhood high school close in the last 40 years is the quadrant that had the most under-enrolled k-8s with inequitable middle grades and thousands for independent middle grades experience for a thousand since the last decade it has the most focus option schools and the most co-lake hood programs by far if anywhere in the city and the fewest neighborhood schools unlike other regions the city where the neighborhood model is the only model where most people know again just looking at the staffing and the flexibility and how does that fit for southeast um it also has some neighborhoods with the lowest average income in the city putting additional stresses on our families and again i say this not to diminish any other region to put mid or outer southeast in a different category it's just i want to share some of the complexity and the recent history that school communities and our region have faced it's also a region of incredible assets a beautiful racial and ethnic diversity and a thriving mix of cultures neighborhoods and families with parents and community members committed to public schools and the success of all the students the re-establishment of middle schools at kellogg soon to be harrison park and enhancing enrollment at lane middle school huge huge lift by staff direction for the board resources by the school communities huge huge win but with that came really significant changes to many school communities including enrollment destabilization and it's about like 20 20 different schools with different impacts and some quite significant uncertainty a program placement potential loss of long-term staff due to neighborhood program closures or consolidations the establishment of flip split feeders the reassignment of entire school communities to new feeder patterns more boundary changes than i think any any than any time at the time in the last 30 years judy could correct me schools with enrollment soon to be below the district standards in terms of the number of students they should have a continued rotation of principles in many schools and significant teacher cuts resulting in k-5 classes with k-5s classes over 30 schools all this has taken a really compounded talk in an ad in the pandemic a compounded toll on the community many individual collective school communities that were part of the south indian sky coalition have shared what they need next year and i'm appreciative that there's 10 fte in the in the budget um however school communities have been really explicit about what their needs are whether it was bridger and which is probably the most impacted school other than lent making a request um probably a full-time social worker and um some other additional supports on the neighborhood side um you know 1.35 education assistant request request at um creative science school or glencoe not to be the only k5 in the district with two grades of students and more than 30 students um you know i really ask that i i've school you know school closed communities went home and they haven't heard from the district and i really think it's important that these communities need to be engaged in addition to the principle um because well first of all there's principals who are retiring who are leaving for other positions and some who are just out and so it's got to be engagement with the whole school community and it needs to happen as soon as possible i mean wait until october is i mean these school communities need something now so i'd really hope that there's some urgency so i just want to share what i am hearing from my from others in southeast and certainly everybody has their own experience but you know having sat at the southeast guiding coalition meetings and living and working and grocery shopping in the neighborhood i want to make sure that i let people know that i hear you um and then the final piece on the
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budget is um it's around budget savings and this isn't the accountability piece either so it's more just again that's for next year and that uh when the new enrollment numbers came out the district proposed to cut 18 million staff from schools i mean i think people were pretty pretty shocked and i want to thank the school staff the superintendent the board for um working to get that impact down to 10 million um 10 million dollars and only 80 two give or take um and so that you know appreciation that that happened um but when reduction's been made i think there's an expectation of shared although not necessarily proportionate impact across the district and when i asked originally about the central office savings special ed was included custodians were included and again i want to be clear this isn't i'm not it's not central office it's central functions um because when you look at what the um you know just every individual school community is going to look like hey we lost two teachers or we lost our you know our our favorite ea or we lost five teachers in some case you know the question always having been around governmental entities for a long period of time the question always is like everybody's has a little bit of skepticism that it's um you know that all the cuts are happening at the at the direct service level and nothing's happening centrally and i i feel like we have a real obligation to be able to demonstrate to the community that we've you know just like we're scrubbing school budgets we scrub the central functions budget because especially as we head into next year i mean i think this is what's been partly tough for school communities because they they haven't necessarily they're focused on you know what is coming down and with the impact on their students and not you know where have there been reductions or efficiencies elsewhere and so i really hope that going forward that that is um of equal focus um for the district because i i know talking to legislators and community members that we have to be able to like hey we turned over every rock we tried to squeeze every dollar out of um you know every every contract to get the best value to get the most resources possible in our classroom and i think we need to be able to say that especially if we're going out for a local election next year or the bond the following the following year and um so i'm looking forward to the exercise you've laid out i think we need to just be completely transparent and open and listen to our community about ideas they have and um then prioritize you know our budget and our supports based on that and you know and then we can at when people say like yeah did you cut the central you know did you cut the central office that we were able to have a thoughtful answer about how we prioritized resources against our our goals um and but i don't i don't feel uh personally that that happened um this this last year i mean i'm having i have a hard time articulating that we've done that um and so you know just in this budget i'm um i was no one the approval and i'm going to continue to be a no because i think there are some unfinished pieces and you know i look at just i'm going to come from south southeast portland that i i feel like there's there's places that um we still need to really lean into i mean everybody's exhausted i know that but at places that we still need to lean into and we need to you know get the southeast guiding coalition schools transitioned and feeling good about the supports that are in place for their students and so we can celebrate in the fall the opening of that the opening of harrison park um so i while i'm i know i'm continuing to be optimistic about pps and the promise our public schools hold um and you know i think this last week i had an opportunity and i think of my my fellow board members as well to go to graduations and really see like what what the promise of pps is all about um so it's more of a you know i hope we get can continue to improve and that we provide you know a school community a a portion of the city that's been really impacted by a host of things this last year with the supports it needs thank you for listening to me and allowing me to give voice to someone southeast thank you um very quick remarks pardon me can i have quick remarks yes
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absolutely this is the time uh less than two minutes hopefully um so i am gonna be a yes vote on this not because i think this is an amazing budget or this is the best budget that's we could ever have in pps but because i think it will serve our students well for this coming year and even if there is work to do talking about restorative justice professionals um social emotional health of our students i think this is a good starting point for future budgets to be built off of and as noberto always reminds us like this is a pie not a well we can't continue to ask for stuff without giving something in return so with the amount of money we have from the state at this point i think this is the best allocation we can do and i do also agree with director bram edwards that we should be doing more but it's hard to do that when we don't have the money to do that so i appreciate all the work you've put into this and i'll be a yes vote tonight thank you thank you student representative weinberg um are there any final thoughts i just want to make a quick comment which isn't sort of in contradiction to my pushing for our coverage for restorative justice specialists at all of our schools but generally speaking i don't want us to lose sight of how consistent we are in our prioritization of our high need and our high poverty schools it has become our norm it's something that the superintendent has been sort of honing every year and every single budget process to really double down on our supports for our highest poverty schools and um it's something that i'm really proud of and i think we're just really used to it and we don't talk about it very much and it there are pressure points like when we are from schools that have a few outliers of large class sizes those are generally speaking are high you know much more affluent schools and it's a it's a it's a pressure point because we prioritize our resources for our high poverty schools so um while i do on the social emotional side i do think that especially at middle schools you know all our kids are really in need of those supports and i hope we can get creative and find some other resources so that um all our middle grade students are well served in that respect but i just want to appreciate the superintendent and this whole team for not only um executing that strategy but for just believing it's so fundamentally grounded in our values that part of the reason that we have the kind of student outcomes that we have is because historically this district has not prioritized those kids and we still have you know a long way to go and it's still going to be contentious in some ways with our communities because we're we see a very differentiated level of resources among our schools now if you look at the what we spend per student in our you know our most affluent schools to our high poverty schools it's quite different and that's exactly how it should be and that's uh the probably the most important lever that we have in really changing the game in terms of student achievement so i sort of didn't want to bury the lead there that you know superintendent we've asked you to do some really difficult things and we have some really explicit expectations about wanting to raise achievement for our kids particularly our black and brown kids and yeah you know resource investment doesn't always translate to success there are a whole lot of other ingredients that are important but it's it's a pretty important ingredient so i just want to i just want to notice that this budget is a reflection of those values and a reflection of those strategies and that's it my comments were pretty much about um very similar to yours director con stem in that this budget um it was difficult looking at the trade-offs but also represents a demonstration of our values and what we've said that we as a community value we value the success success of all of our students and that we'd like to direct more in more resources where there's more need and i think this budget is a reflection of that and and i'll wrap it at that is anybody else we're going to promise a two or three minute break after our vote so if that's any um incentive to move this forward the board will now vote on resolution 6520 impose taxes and adoption of the 2022-23 budget for school district number 1j multnomah county oregon all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes all those in favor i'm sorry all those opposed please indicate by saying no no are there any abstentions tonight
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resolution 6520 is approved by a vote of 621 with student representative weinberg voting yes great and i'm going to suggest a three minute stretch break
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uh bring us bring us back to focus here
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um i'm gonna i'm gonna suggest a change
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in um the order um so rather than um hearing resolution six five two three weapons explosives and fire bombs policy 3.40.014 p later in the agenda we're going to move it up and and respect for the people that are here and the people that are virtual still here um appreciate your being here and but and also the people that are um that are joining us virtually um so we can we can we can let you go home um excuse me we're going home you're like you hear that you're like a charlie brown's teacher i'll go home no i just i wanted to change the order on the agenda so out of respect for these people's time but i'm i just lost my uh the board book here so um bear with me for just a moment it's above resolution 6523 exited out accidentally of board book um no that's okay i've got it here it's just it's quite a ways down thank you 6523 okay thank you for bearing with us um we're gonna start with a second reading of the weapons explosives and fire bombs um director broome edwards would you like to introduce this item thank you chair depass this is the second reading adoption of a uh it's a revised policy that's now just titled weapons prohibited this came out of the policy committee with a unanimous recommendation and um for context when this was moving through the committee we had several meetings about it and discussions we narrowed the exemption that was in the draft oregon school boards association policy model policy and we have a i think a policy now that aligns with what most of us um believed was pbs practices and it adds some additional enforcement teeth from senate bill 554 essentially banning weapons from school grounds and um also for people with concealed carry firearm licenses they also will not be allowed to bring them in our buildings or on our school grounds and it's important to note that this is a change in the policy let's say it has some significant enforcement mechanisms beyond being a violation of policy but it really is important to remember this is coupled with a whole host of other measures that the district's staff has implemented whether they're making our buildings more secure with security improvements or the adding of campus security associate associates so this this is just one additional tool for the for the district and
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um we also i should note for the record i'll submit for the record we have a letter from um the multnomah county commissioners that is signed by all of them in support of this policy change that was led that effort was led by commissioner jayapal we also have a a petition for moms to demand action with i think uh over 600 signers now um encouraging us and supporting our passage of it so i just suggest that both of those would be um submitted for the record i also want to share appreciation for the policy committee staff liz large and also the senior director of security for the support that they provided um over you know on some technical issues for the committee so with that um we recommend uh final approval great um so i know this is a important topic that's important to all of us and i just a personal anecdote while i was in france a few weeks ago discussing with another city of portland employee about this shooting in uvalde she said oh no there have been five since we've been in france there have been five mass shootings in this in in the us so i know it's top of uh mind for people and i just um wonder if i do if i have a motion a second to adopt resolution six five two three the resolution to adopt revised pardon me revised weapons prohibited policy three point three zero zero one four dash p i like to make a motion i like to second that motion thank you is there any board discussion you want to make sure we hear from student representative weinberg um your thoughts on this topic yeah i just wanted to piggyback off what you said um about a day ago students demand action posted that over 2 400 people had been shot and killed in america since the uvalde mass shooting that's just an incomprehensible amount of people in the few short weeks since that mass shooting and i personally believe that guns have no place in our schools and do not deter any violence at our schools either so i'm going to be in strong support of this policy change fantastic um i never have to ask what you're really thinking and appreciate your uh forthcoming um any other uh thoughts or concerns on this topic sure i don't have a uh thought i mean uh like i just want to say that i feel like this is in this is a an important step for us to take um i'd also like to at some point figure out who do we talk to um or what do we do um we've got some of the moms here and i'm gonna ask them a question because i don't remember the act the exact date but um the where orange day yeah we yeah we did we did a celebration for it at holy beans coffee where we acknowledged it and we talked about it and we had quite a few people um come out wearing orange and signing up and it was one of the things that um that you do the whole weird orange design to say that i'm a human don't don't shoot me and so we you know on that day as many of us as possible that we're wearing orange so that we can acknowledge that people are human and we're not supposed to shoot each other it's like let it be a warning sign that we're not supposed to shoot each other and so what i um i bring all that up because i don't know the proper um tactics or angles or where i'm supposed to go um when we start doing um you know resolutions and different things that we're writing i believe that we as a school district um one of the things that we ought to do also is commemorate the the where orange day and let's make a resolution about that so that in every um in every school and every year around that on june 5th that we acknowledge that this is a day that we wear orange to commemorate the fact that people are humans and they're not to be shot and so how do we get that on the on the books so that it looks like an actual um you know the same way we acknowledge you know all these other everything else we acknowledge stuff i don't know what the process is and so she see i just knew if i started talking it's in the calendar smarter minds are going to prevail so because i i want us to make a public statement that um not just in addition to we're going to make a policy or support a policy but let's come visibly audibly publicly say that people are humans and not to be shot so let's
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let's wear orange and let's let's do it proudly so thank you it'll be the director green where orange day i just want to um acknowledge in response director greene um the communication that we had from p.a.t on this subject which i i thought was really positive and heartening that they they want to work with us to do what we can exactly what you're talking about so if it's show our solidarity together in that way if it's you know lobby federally you know whatever but um i thought that was that was great we're coming together just a side note we are going to be talking about what else we can do around gun violence at our next intergovernmental committee meeting as well excellent and i appreciate the staff memo um superintendent guerrero that talks about what we're going to be doing with the 2.9 million in terms of making safety improvements at the school with the inner you know the installation of interior locking hardware to 2400 classroom doors updating intrusion alarm systems and adding more security cameras at school campuses and i also want to just remind everyone that we we did have a school shooting interrupted it was interrupted by somebody hugging the the the gunman who needed a hug rather than to be tackled and the media um made it seem like you know this guy came out and tackled him he actually gave him a hug i heard him interviewed on the radio recently keenan lowe thank you thank you for bringing his name forward so um i think we're ready to pass if i may yes because i appreciate our student wrap always being clear about his opinion and on this topic i want to make sure i'm unambiguous about my beliefs on this topic well first of all thanks to thank you to the chair of the policy committee and the school board for even taking up this important issue especially when there's mixed mixed approaches to this across the country but as superintendent of the school system you know the safety and well-being of our students and staff is my top priority um i want to add my voice in support of the revisions of the weapons policy uh you saw my memo which outlines my perspective one that's grounded on what we've learned over time on this topic of mass shootings in schools across the country but in short just so i'm unequivocal i agree that the presence of guns in schools does not make teachers students and staff feel safer instead i believe that we must remain focused on making our schools more safe by continuing to take a more comprehensive approach that focuses on addressing those antecedents supporting the behavioral mental health needs of our students preparing staff and students for all kinds of possible crises making those specific physical safety and security upgrades to our school buildings and frankly continuing to focus on making sure every one of our students feels a strong sense of belonging so thank you for just giving me a moment to to make that clear maybe not everybody saw my memo thank you superintendent and i just want to say i mean i'm in support of this policy i think it makes sense um i think it's a common sense change um and and not to take away from the importance of it i also think it's marginal and for me what's much more important in the conversation i hope we have going forward and particularly over the summer is what are we doing about threat assessment what are we doing about threat reduction what are we doing about the upstream things because those are the things that really have some some some proven track records right of of disrupting cycles of violence and and identifying things before they happen and i think that um and and you know even to the extent that is this is something that you know even after adopting this budget your memo laid out a lot of great things that we're doing do we need to be putting some more in there right is there more that we can do and and looking nationwide what are the models that that really have worked and what can we adopt from those models to move in and i think that for me is is where we're going to make more than just a marginal change i think that's right director scott i know that our own district threat assessment flowchart which is used unfortunately on a regular basis it is modeled off some of those that were developed from other instances where after actions required school systems to really sort of learn from those incidents so we've adopted some of some of those steps but i agree with you you know getting ahead of any potential crises i think is always going to be our preferred sort of form of attention we should provide thank you miss bradshaw do we have any further comment um do we have public comment uh ms brecha we do we have amy wexler is virtual hi there thank you so much amy wexler w-e-x-l-e-r i use she and her pronouns um thank you to the portland public school board members for taking my testimony today and to superintendent guerrero i am a volunteer state legislative lead for mom's demand action for gun sense in
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america's oregon chapter i'm also a parent of a junior at grant high school and an eternity um you know why i'm here today we've all been here a long time so i'm going to scrap most of my prepared remarks but what i do want to say is thank you i hear the support in the room and i'm so grateful for to hear that um i've gotten a chance to speak to a number of you over the course of this and i really hope that over the next school year that i can be more involved and do more um and to that end i'd like to say um after tonight's vote we hope you'll consider the policies and interventions like threat assessment teams and educating parents on the proper storage of firearms which is also a requirement of senate bill 554 that firearms are properly and safely stored so that we don't have child access um so i do i do believe that you guys are going to pass this policy today i'm very grateful for it um and i thank you for your service to our community and for taking my testimony today thank you thank you sicily thrasher also virtual is miss thrasher yeah i'm sorry i'm trying to turn my video on but it's not it's not working so i'll just go ahead off uh with my video off um thank you to the school board for uh portland public schools for taking my testimony my name is cicely thrasher t-h-r-a-s-h-e-r my pronouns are she her i am a parent to three boys a rising fourth grader at alameda elementary and two rising sixth graders who will be at beaumont middle school in the fall i was born and raised in portland and graduated from david douglas high school i am a volunteer with the moms demand action for gun sense in oregon and i am here before you today asking for you just asking for you to support an amended firearm policy that would 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 and 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 are there over the past six months over 25 school districts across the state have amended their firearm policy portland public schools should as well please pass the policy today in the name of all of those students lost to gun violence thank you thank you rob reynolds good evening school board my name is rob reynolds i'm the republican candidate for district 41. that means i have three portland public schools in my district and i have a daycare so i was thinking about this and talking to some of the the people in my district and they had a couple questions that came up that i didn't have answers to and i was hoping to get your help with these answers so someone said they checked your website for an active shooter policy and they couldn't find it so hopefully you will make that more present on your website the other question came up is how many of you have been to a concealed carry permit training and know what it's like and know the requirements according to ors 166291 to receive your concealed carry permit so you have awesome so you know that there's no safety concern with people with concealed carry permits but yet you're still voting for this so my question for my constituents is from them is what safety does this is bringing the school shootings have been with ar-15s not with pistols and that's what concealed carry is so what safety does your resolution bring does that teach the kids that they can't follow the law learn how to handle a firearm safety safely and protect themselves so what safety does your resolution bring
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is what my constituents want to know what are you doing for them you don't have an active shooter policy on your website you don't have a gun safety training available for your students what safety are you bringing excuse me i didn't get your last name but reynolds sorry r-e-y-n-o-l-d-s thank you select reynolds wrap thank you and we're listen here to listen not to interact no i know i understand i'm just thank you i'm just making a statement um so from the constituents in my district have you thought about the real safety to them it doesn't seem like with this resolution you have because you've said that uh peace officers can carry a firearm what is a peace officer no dust no description you say there's no funding that's going to be affected by this but who's paying for the signs that that's involved in this who's who's installing the signs for this what kind of insurance policy are you guys uh putting forward for lawsuits from this so just some questions that have come to me and so i was hoping that you guys would think about this before you pass this resolution and think about the full picture and then maybe put this out to a vote to your your constituents in your district and let them make the decision thank you thank you that concludes public comment on this topic that concludes the public comment okay great um so i'm gonna make some a few statements i this has actually been one of the things that actually kept me up the last few nights um when we first when it first came up you know i thought this was a low-hanging fruit i thought this was going to be something that should be like a no-brainer as i continue to wrestle with um decision of my safety piece like when we were at the diocese and i projected that onto my our kids in the district um as far as how vulnerable they could be um you know it's i was all over the place um i looked at the the rules of i have my concealed uh handgun likes and permit i looked at you know the requirements um i had about eight pages of notes disputing everything the superintendent wrote um about you know his viewpoints and his thoughts on the concealed weapon permits um you know the requirements um and so you know i even reached out to some folks when he mentioned a harvard study that was done i reached out to one of you guys familiar with dr alicia morilla capulia i reached out to her and and and tried to get some insight on her her perspective on this i reached out to dr carmen black so go back dr capuya is associate professor at harvard harvard medical school i reached out to dr carmen black who's assistant professor at yale medical school to look at kind of to dissect the information i had conversations um you know as well with mike and amy and nikki and you know to really to try to figure out all the data that is out there and try to have them help me understand the real safety issue around our kids and that's kind of what i got to i had to take the onus off of my safety or my vulnerability of feeling safe and see okay how is our kids feeling safe or how we keeping them safe and the overwhelmingly overwhelming conclusions from those conversations which kind of rocked my foundation was if there is nothing we can do if someone is going to intentionally do something harmon our kids whether it's them going to the bus stop them going to walmart them going to the grocery store and going to the park you know and as a parent um you know my and as a male parent i'm always want to protect whether it's my kids the kids at the schools you know is about protection and and realizing that i had no real control over the protection that i can give my kids whether they're at home or out outside my home and when i say outside the home where they're in school outside the school um it just it doesn't sit well and so you know for me i'm always wanting i want to be able to control something right whether it's uh the ban on you know having to conceal weapons like some people coming on onto school grounds or whether it's having metal detectors in
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the school ground and dr black she surely shot that down because she was talking about the whole uh cannibalism of resources when it goes into that type of stuff right um but it just really had me look at how vulnerable i was and how not in control that i truly was when it comes to if someone really wants to do something to our kids you know and some of the research that i've gotten from them is whether we have a band or not have a band is not going to keep our kids any safer from someone who really wants to intentionally do something to our kids um whether it's having you know we talked about you know fortifying the schools more right like that well there's doors that gets open and closed all day there's ground level windows that's there so if someone really wanted to do something there's all these different ways um to to do it and you know and i really wrestled with this which was really surprising to me um because my thing is i want to be able to protect right if i in my mind if i'm going into school and somebody said i would be able to do something back right um i would be able to you know fight back i'll be able to do something and realizing that is i'm not gonna be able to be at every school 100 of the time right um you're not batman right a superman right um you know just happened to he might be actually i never seen him in the same place at the same time um but just really just coming to that realization of okay what do we do to protect our students right and it go you know from and talk with them and they're to two african-american women they have kids they have families they uh alicia she went to jefferson high school here um and so just having those conversations with them about what's the real issue and for me it just came down to my vulnerability of not being in control and want to be controlled over uncontrollable situation um and so i went back and forth you know around around this um and of course you know all the other things that we can do as far as the you know the mental health of the students and and how how we're teaching the student and even to when we look at and i know i'm probably going way off the rails but you know when we look at the fabric of the united states it's a violent it was built on violence and rape and murder and all that stuff and we are still gripping with that system you know when you look at tv video games you know i even seen stuff on facebook that just comes up in this and there's all these little little kid games that have guns and they have violence and they have all this other stuff into it and so you know i got to really looking at that stuff and looking at well if we really want to and i want to make sure i'm clear conceal conceal handgun license holders are not the problem let's make sure that's clear they are not the problem but in us needing to do something to control something um and you know for me if it's a zero-sum game where they're not going to be safer with the band or without not the band um you know it just goes to to me that well what are the real things that we can do um and that's the mental in the mental health issues and the teachings and all these other things that they they mentioned um and they're a lot smarter than i am and they had a whole preferred things that we can do which i'm gonna totally get a report on and send out um you know so when i first came in you know thought about this i was going to be a no vote all the way around um because i was like what does it make sense but then talking with them um and talking about my mom you know she was just like you know and and talking with the group that i talked with because i have made a statement about this has been a symbolism piece right and you know when you talk about civil symbolisms you know it's it's more of a something that don't really have a real value or change piece and this is not what that is uh i think this is something that is like sending a statement um that we care about our kids we care about you know the safety of our kids and and the fact that we know we don't have no control over it but we we wanted these to be moving in in a direction you know whether it's a ban or not a ban um and so i just had to get that out there say you know my my truth about this piece because like i said i didn't really think this was going to be a big issue for me and it ended up being a lot bigger issue than i than i than i thought um so that's all i gotta say i mean i had a whole i had like eight pages of stuff you know i had the number of concealed
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weapons we had you know holders we have in portland metro area the statistic of how many people actually bring you know guns to school and all this stuff but at the end of the day i think we all want the same for our kids which is to keep them safe and that's where i kind of relied on just we want to keep themselves safe so whether we do the ban or not to bend our goal is to keep them safe and if you know if that's our goal then i don't think one is wrong and the other one is right i think they both can be right and they both can be you know helpful you know however we move forward that's it thank you i really appreciate you um culture appreciation kind of um sharing your thinking you know providing some daylight into kind of your thought processes and the steps you went through you know the grappling it's kind of like an algebra teacher would say you know show your work and i really appreciate you your vulnerability especially in just sharing your you know your thought processes and i just think you know we talk about being a learning institution and learning and i think you know oftentimes on the board i don't know how i'm going to vote on something and and i love that you've modeled how you do that work of finding the information you need to to learn and grow so we make the best decision for our kids so i really appreciate you modeling to us how we're supposed to show up as board members yeah and so um we're it's time to take a board we'll now vote on resolution 6523 the resolution to adopt revised weapons prohibited policy 3.30.014 p all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no and are there any abstentions six five two three is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative voting yes i really want to thank all of our community who came out to comment on this and to encourage us on this the way everyone's been galvanized moms demand action students demand action every town for gun safety oregon alliance for gun safety all of our religious community who has talked much you know spent so much time lately not just on this issue but more broadly on what are we going to do about this epidemic of gun violence that we have in our community and we have spent time talking and talking about you know how are we going to deploy some of our resources because we we've got to look at the statistics and recognize that you know most of these perpetra perpetrators are young men and these are these are our kids and um you know so we what is our role in really providing opportunity and providing support for you know all of our kids who are struggling so it's all kind of part of the same piece but director greene i really appreciate your leadership in our community on this issue of gun violence and these are our kids the the victims are our kids almost every single week there are graduates there are went to our elementary schools so um we're here we're part of this effort thank you guys for being here so late tonight please thank everybody else who's in your coalition who went home because of our long tedious budget process um but um you know david hogg who was a student at parkland and said this time is going to be different you know we always say oh we're going to do something about this we can't live in a nation where this we just take this for granted and it just keeps happening and i i actually believe that he might be right and we're seeing at least a little bit of action um on capitol hill but that's because of that's because of people like you and all of our students um who've come out too so anyway takes it takes all of us thank you very much okay pardon me okay i'm going to ask um as we move forward i was just looking that up um we're gonna we're gonna move forward um we need to go back in the in the agenda to the supplemental amendment of the 2021 budget we're back to the budget um it should be a short and again i'm i'm going to um i'm going to ask for brevity
04h 05m 00s
from all of us here um on behalf of the staff that has to show up at early tomorrow first meeting at eight so we have a time a time certain first time so this is a 30 a.m wake up call from my son oh okay so in respect for everyone's time we'll ask for i'm sure there's three of us that would like to do we need this one so we do need this one so um superintendent guerrero um would you please introduce this sure we touched on it uh where we last left off uh in in your in your vote but this this is sort of a technical amendment uh it's it's something we we need to do yeah yeah and thank you superintendent guerrero so just throughout the course of the year this amendment applies to this current year uh there's circumstances require us to update our budget just throughout the course of the year the board or at the beginning of the year the board approves certain appropriation levels and as as the year progresses uh in order to keep up with changes we then need to update our budget in accordance with oregon budget law so the proposed amendment for this current year is to adjust our expenses in the special revenue fund and which is fun 200 and fund 600 internal services fund to meet our projected spending requirements so it's still within our budget and there are no impacts to the ending fund balance there's no impact to the fund balance for next year it really is a technical adjustment within the existing funds to help meet our our projected expenditures i'll move the motion thank you i was just going to call for a motion a second director scott moves director broome edwards seconds the adoption of resolution 6521 is there any board discussion i'd like to make sure we hear from student representative weinberg i have nothing ms bridshaw is there any public comment no the board will now vote on resolution 6521 amendment number two to the fiscal year 2021 2022 budget for school district 1j number 1j multnomah county oregon all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6521 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative weinberg voting yes great we'll now move to the 2022-23 regular board meeting calendar board members we will now consider the board meeting calendar for the 2022. thank you chief delgado well we'll consider the board meeting calendar for the 2022-23 school year this proposed calendar takes into account religious holidays school breaks and attempts to provide time for us to do business the business of the school of the school board members we also tried to keep meetings to twice a month and to avoid the tuesday following a school break whenever possible given the competing demands for our time in each of our personal commitments to review deliberate and discuss important matters i hope you'll find the schedule to be appropriate i know there's a desire to have a discussion on this topic so let's get the motion on the table um do i have a motion and a second to adopt resources thank you is there any board discussion anybody i want to make sure student representative weinberg do you even care i won't be affected so easy yes ms bradshaw is there any public comment on the topic no okay the board will now vote on resolution 6500 the calendar of the regular board meetings school year 2022-23 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 6500 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative weinberg voting yes great but i don't have do you have a question yes um on the calendar is is that including us being able to go to other schools i know i mentioned it before but so can is that can we include that in there or do we have that as separate you don't have to you don't know where you're meeting that would be so having a quarterly meeting somewhere besides here yes i think that's a great idea and so you'll work with with roseanne um or the board office to um to schedule those you know um that'll be great that's a great idea we're going to
04h 10m 00s
we're now going to go to the first reading of policies i'm just going to remind everybody to again to be to be brief um director brum edwards um will you walk us through introduce this item these items these items okay this is a package of recommended policy rescissions um they're coming before you they were unanimously recommended for first reading and for a recipe thank you director lowry um they were unanimously recommended by the committee for rescission i'm going to go through them really fast 5.10.080 deferred compensation um it's not a policy and it's just regular district practice um then you have policy 5.70.051 leaves of absence this policy was adopted in 71 and it's not needed because it's actually covered by our collective bargaining agreements 6.10.090 private schools request for funding this is not a board policy it's not a policy written in that format then policy 5.30.030 education student training programs it's just a statement of values and not providing any sort of meeting meaningful policy guidance to the district uh there is policy 5.20.010 district employment practices um it's redundant we have other things that cover this language and then there is 5.50.060 leaves of absence voluntary this it's not aligned with current practice and it's covered by collective bargaining agreements and the employee handbook and then policy 5.60.070 administrative salaries it's not comprehensive and many of the things are covered in our collective bargaining agreements so i would um say these are going to be posted uh and available for public comment and um they'll be i don't i didn't bring the rest of my contact information for public comment will be posted with the policy um and the board will hold a second reading on july 12th okay so it's open for a month four weeks yeah okay so that's the first first reading okay dude just do you want me to just continue rolling through yes please so this will be the second reading diploma requirements policy director from edwards can you read introduce can you introduce this item diploma requirements i wasn't ready for that one but that's okay that would be the second reading um second reading so um this had um has been first read it came out of the committee with a unanimous recommendation and this does a number of things including changing english language arts to language arts it also um adds the civics class requirement and in addition um there was some language that was raised by director greene that we incorporated which relates to students whose have their first language is a language other than english and they're incorporating that into our diploma requirements and to it was a complicated um policy language but just to sum it up it basically looks at a student who speaks another world language as an asset versus they have some sort of deficit um so um i don't believe we had significant public comment on this other than from director greene which was a great addition uh so we the committee recommends um adoption of the new diploma requirements would you like a motion um sorry i'm oh no this was a second reading so do i have a motion in a second to adopt a resolution i'll definitely make a motion 6-502 resolution to adopt the revised diploma uh requirements is there any board discussion no second um do you want to arm wrestle collins the chair can the new chair elect if he keeps acting right okay um student representative weinberg yes um ms bradshaw is there any public comment
04h 15m 00s
no okay so the board will now vote on resolution 6502 the resolution to adopt the revised diploma requirements policy 4.20 0.042 p all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions okay the resolution 6502 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative voting yes yes we're now going to have a second reading of an exciting integrated pest management okay um yes so this isn't this is actually we had another policy that this was part of that was integrated into the climate policy so we just have a freestanding pest management policy which sort of speaks to our environmentally sustainable practices it came out of committee with because it's existing language um it came out committee with a recommendation so um i make a motion that um we adopt a resolution 6503 i'll make a motion that we adopt uh resolution 6503. oh did you ask for the motion that would be my job i was just moving this long sorry okay i need to ask for the motion okay but you s did you okay do i have a motion in a second i'll make a motion [Laughter] hollins hollow hollins uh makes the motion moves green seconds um is there any more discussion the size of the box yeah i want to hear about this pest policy jonathan we have some questions about pests yeah i want to know who you talked to about this job [Laughter] it's actually funnier when the pastor says it um yes okay so the board will now vote on resolution 6503 that's the resolution to adopt the revised integrated pest management policy 3.30.082 p all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes please indicate by saying no and are there any abstentions the wheels have come off representative i'm sorry resolution 6503 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative weinberg voting yes we're now oh we didn't actually vote did we we just oh okay oh we've been up over here we're going to have a second reading of administer administering medications to students director bremer edwards would you introduce this item um it's going in a different order that i had okay yes um yes so this is um this came out of the this came to us as a recommendation from staff to modify um an existing policy and the committee had a couple discussions over a couple meetings about it and we recommend we unanimously recommended that the committee that the board have a first reading and approve this change in the policy we did have some public comment at our committee meetings in support of the changes and um the primary changes is that we miss large if you could we we don't have to have a physician we need a prescriber and we've also removed the word non-injectable it makes the administration of epipens and i'm not going to pronounce it right the overdosed narcan is the narcan thank you brand name the ability to deliver those in schools and have them present and it supports that effort
04h 20m 00s
yeah this this is um well it's a very minor change the policy and it allows us to actually equip our schools with life-saving tools um and so it's really a a trailing policy play to make sure that um we're able to do that and do it in a way in which it um aligns with our current policy we also sorry one last thing we also talked about who we wanted to be trained and we included school safety officers um just because they'll be in the hallways most often they're in the bathrooms they'll be available to hopefully find anyone if they do overdose on opioids and be able to administer it we also talked a bit about students getting trained because we're out in the community it's our friends who are overdosing on opioids so having access and training to narcan is going to be important that's great yeah and like i say this is like a small policy change but there's a much bigger effort underway and i really want to um thank the the district staff um brenda mark nick and her team for bringing all the other work forward that this policy is aligned with because it will help our students we know it uh thank you um do i have a motion in a second to adopt resolution 6522 resolution to adopt revised administering medicines to students policy 4.50.026 p i'd like to make a motion okay great is there any board discussion um ms bradshaw is there any public comment no the board will now vote on resolution 6522 resolution to adopt revised administering medicines to students policy 4.50.026 p all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no and then are there any abstentions resolution 6522 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative voting yes in the absence of other business or uh committee we still have first strategy i'm so sorry sorry um so we have a second reading of the citizen involvement process i let me see if it's i'm sorry liability claims it is not my script okay but it is it is on board work um so the first three the first reading of policy revisions 4.50 0.032 p the complaint policy 7.10.010 p school site councils and 0.021 p liability claims handling would you like to introduce these items yes um so i'm going to start with the policy 7.10.010 it was called the citizens involvement process and we're actually updating the name um to the school science site council policy and as and essentially this was a policy that we not only wanted to modernize the language of community versus citizen but also we removed a lot of language relating to l-sects which were created um a couple decades ago um they're not they're no longer required so we've taken them out of policy also um in the in the policy there were um references to other um community groups that we um they have their own freestanding charter so it really was not necessary so this is a cleanup and a language change and the um the committee recommended unanimously that we have a first reading it's probably important to note that the more important than fixing the language is that our school communities are aware that this is a statutory requirement and they have that they have site councils um so that's that's a bigger issue than just the policy it's more the implementation and awareness so that policy will be um posted for 21 days and if there are any committee any board members who have comments on at the next committee the next policy committee meeting um you could bring amendments or any changes or comments and there would be unless there's major revisions a second reading at the july 12th board meeting
04h 25m 00s
and i'm going to go on to the next one the complaint complaint policy which is this has been amended several times over the last couple years um and there are this is a more significant change to policy but not a complete um not at all complete right rewrite i would call it like a perfecting um the main uh issue that the committee talked about and it was there was maybe some like we'll see whether this is a good idea but currently there's three steps in our policy um and we are and and that tends to mean that people over a long a long period of time have their complaint sitting there um and moving it through the peels and so um we're reducing one of those steps and so after the staff report it somebody could appeal directly to the board and the conversation we had at the committee was whether or not um that might lead to more the board having more complaints or it could be that people have their issues resolved earlier um and it the the stuff that we removed is somewhat could be considered a duplicative step because it goes um it's two staff steps and then the board so this is removing one of the staff steps um it also to make the process more fair and transparent the district will provide a written overview of the structure and format of the hearing to the complainant the ability to submit additional material 24 hours before the hearing as well as whether the session is open or closed to the public again providing more visibility to somebody families who go through the complaint process and also then requiring the complaint and will have the full written record any materials or information provided to board members before the hearing about the complaint unless protected by disclosure so really trying to open up the process making it you know accessible and more open so that the complaint has the same set of information that board members would have so that came out of committee unanimously and it will be posted for public comment again the next committee meeting if people have changes or proposed amendments they can bring them and if there's no major changes it would be um on the july 12th agenda for a second second reading liability claims um eight 8.160.0121 this comes out of the committee with a recommendation uh for a first reading and approval um we removed some unnecessary language from the policy and probably most most important um we increased the um the level of agreements that would come to the board for a vote so the um anything over 25 000 had come to the uh had come to the board for um for a vote and going forward it will be 75 000 it hadn't been changed since 19 2000 okay so it was yeah so um and then the other piece is just um a and we already receive um often uh reports on settlements of claims but just a mechanism by which um if there is patterns that we can with just visibility to it but we're on the board will not be voting on anything less than 75 000 so that again will be on the committee agenda next wednesday and if there aren't any major revisions it will have would have a second reading at the july uh 12th meeting and i think we have some policy rescissions do we have we have two sets is that we do have two sets okay um so we have one set that's the first reading that you just enumerated we then have the second reading of policy rescissions resolution 6501 having to do with resource conservation reimbursement of expenses i i'm sorry i have but i don't have like two versions of um one that starts with resource conservation and then one also that starts with uh the rose festival programs are we doing do you have resolution 6501 it has both of them it has two different sections um and these are first these are first readings these are second readings these are second so this is second reading of policy resistance that's resolution six five zero one it has a num a number of items it's got resource conservation okay i've got it reimbursement expenses sorry they're just it's because we had first readings on two different meetings so this is the second
04h 30m 00s
one okay so um can we just move those all as a group i'm gonna try and i'm gonna try and wrap them up so um we have in our ongoing work to streamline and improve our policy manual to policies that are actually the most important policies uh we're continuing our rescission work so we have five six seven eight nine ten um 10 uh policies that we've um recommend that the committee recommended for approval that we had the first reading we had um no public comment on any of any of these and um so the committee recommends a yes vote to rescind these thank you um so i'm just going back through the notes here to see if i have two resolutions or just one you just you have one that's just one it's the six five zero one do i have a motion and a second i'll make a motion to adopt resolution 6501 that's the resolution sorry adoption oops that's the adoption that's the resending the policies um six five zero one do i have a motion in a second motion h over there hg right here and gh got it um okay is there any board discussion ms bradshaw is there any public comment no great the board will now vote on resolution 651 the resolution to rescind the policies that we uh just listed out um all in all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all those opposed uh please indicate by saying no and are there any abstentions resolution 6501 is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative weinberg voting yes great i believe we're at the end of our agenda um unless we have any other business for the good of the order we're adjourned

Sources

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

2022-06-14 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: 6/14/22 - PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting (starts at 27:25)

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