2022-08-23 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2022-08-23
Time	18:00:00
Venue	BESC Auditorium
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: 8/23/22 PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting

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um so this board meeting of the board of education for august 23rd 2022 is called to order uh for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on has been posted on the pbs website under the board of meetings tab uh the meeting is being streamed live uh on our website and then we are also recording it um and it will be posted and replayed over the next couple weeks so you can check the district um in order to district website in order to watch that uh and as i mentioned before good evening thank you all for being here and director to pass is joining virtually this evening i believe although our technical difficulties may making that challenging so um she was not feeling well and is modeling good behavior by uh um joining us remotely before we get started i want to share a few reminders we ask that all members of the public attending tonight's meeting treat each other staff and the board with respect and please do not interfere with the ability of the board to conduct its business those wishing to display placard signs or banners must remain in the auditorium foyer behind the seating area and may not block any attendees view of the proceedings also please try to keep the walkways and the aisles clear and in general we would appreciate it if you could just be mindful of others in the room and the words you use and be aware of who's watching including our community's children so we're going to move on to the consent agenda uh we're now going to vote on the consent agenda board members are there any items you would like to pull for discussion we'll set those aside for discussion and vote at the end of the meeting and miss bradshaw are there changes i believe there is one change to the consent agenda and so i believe that his resolution 6566 which was on the consent agenda is now going to be its own item after that so the consent agenda now in includes resolution six five six four six five six five six five six seven uh any thing any board member anything in addition board members want to pull off okay do i have i had had a question um around the um i don't know for the field trip for lincoln i actually received an answer to a question about that that i just saw and i didn't have an opportunity to share it with people and um i don't think margaret calvert is here right now so i can probably answer it let's let's do this let's get uh if i can just have a motion in a second on the consent agenda and then let's have a brief conversation we'll make a motion second great direct degree moves director holland seconds the motion so any board discussion um director hollands the what what's the question around the field trips yeah i just asked i was when the question was are we paying for this field trip and if we're not why are we voting on it uh it's a contract that is being um entered into between the school district and the provider but it's going to be those funds are going to be reimbursed by lincoln from largely parent funds and then to the extent that individual participants can't pay the full amount there will be fundraising activities um so that was the answer that i got from staff isn't this the field trip just approval or is it a contract well it's a it's a contract with the provider music celebrations or whatever yeah so this is yeah 91930 ps music celebrations international i i can add just a little technical piece the when the monies come in through families fundraising etc they go into the student body funds at lincoln and then become district funds and so that's why there's a technical need for board approval for a contract over 150 000 we're actually looking at that role to make sure that it makes sense but we've actually talked about this technical issue quite a bit okay so we are we finding this money up front and then getting reimbursed or it just as it comes in it's as it comes in is my understanding i don't know if margaret's made it down here when i looked on it looked like it had a timeline for payments and so if the trip ain't until march how's those payments getting done prior to and there's a timeline by which each participant or the fundraise monies have to be paid or there's a forfeit provision and the percentage of forfeit increases the closer you get to the trip there's quite a bit of money i understand it again i'm a little out over my lane but my i understand that there's quite a bit of money in there that they because this trip started the fundraising in 2020 this was originally supposed to happen there's margaret twenty she could know mardi gras okay but the governance piece i can help thank you okay
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no runny [Laughter] were you able to hear the specific questions i didn't answer the specific questions so if so i think it's around it sounds well i'll let director holland sure yeah so my question kind of two questions one um are we paying for this and i guess i was told we're not um but then i was asking why are we voting on this if we're not paying for it and then how are the funds getting dispersed could it look like it's a timeline for money students if we're going into a contract with this organization are we going to be paying this money out since we're in contract with them and then get reimbursed from the fundraising i just want to know how all that stuff works this is music celebrations interviews thank you good evening everyone good evening um there are a couple pieces about the trip the contract as it is is um it's with uh it's through lincoln's it's through a student body funds account is what it is so it's not a it's not a pbs general fund account it's through lincoln um it is a in 2019 the in the summer of 2019 uh this trip was was proposed it was uh it came before the board it was approved fundraising had started the funds um part of the funds had been fundraised at that point we got to um march 13th of 2020 and the trip was canceled so here we are two years later um as a as an opportunity for the um for the trip to happen and part of what needs that the order of the things that need to happen in order for the field trip to be approved there are a number of steps one is that we have to approve the planning for the field trip then we have to approve the contract and then we can go back and actually approve the field trip the order is that's the order that we go through when i spoke with um the team at lincoln the there uh there's fundraising that is happening there's also family contributions there's a plan to support families that cannot make the total contribution and that's part of the fundraising so it's kind it's in concert um with that it is based ultimately what we have to do in this particular situation is that we have to agree to the maximum that so this is the maximum that the contract would be but it's actually based on the number of students that will go and then there's these timelines for um sorry my mic just cut out but they'll fix it i should just not worry about it thank you i'm not going to run it i'm not going to worry about it so um so the well what will end up happening is that they'll they'll start to as you're seeing in the contract that there are some payments that start to get made they need to be able to plan the trip to even figure out the total cost and airfare and that sort of thing so that's what uh this this part of the process does is allow them to start planning and to and to say that they're committed to making it the trip with some people some number of students and some with the chaperones and then that gets worked out over time if for some reason it's a you know like a i'm sure that it was a i'm going to say this wrong that forced azure or if there is a if there's a catastrophe again like there was with the kova then we'd go back and look at the contract but this is this is um through um this is a process that they've done on a trip that they have taken before and similar what is um you know that's the it's a similar process to what they've done in previous years right thanks and i think answer your second question board policies that we approve is it all field trips or field trips over a certain amount over a certain distance over a certain distance which is definitely definitely i mean and i will just say i think that's a board policy worth revisiting but we can talk about that another time did you get your questions answered yeah well one follow-up um so with by the district you're signing a max contract and when i looked at some of the provisions if it doesn't get done is the district all to me responsible if they some of these families or some don't make it in are we financially responsible at any point it ends up being that there are certain dates and that are outlined in the contract and and and i believe that that that there's dates about how much can get how much funds would be refunded in the in the past and and in this trip what ends up happening is that the total number of students get determined and then they work to get that number of students that it may not be this total amount because there may be fewer students they'll navigate those things but it is not we're not committed to the total amount it's it's committed to we're committed to the pieces that ultimately when we determine the number of students or the it's the trap the size of the travel party and that will include chaperones so i think my bottom line question just uh if they can't if they can't pay for
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whatever the reason i don't care what happens earthquake whatever does the board have to come back and fund out money because of a breach of contract is the board responsible or not the board because is pps responsible in any way shape form or fashion to have to pay out because someone else failed to meet their fiduciary responsibility i mean honestly i think that's a good and looking at the contract i'm not the the ultimate arbiter of that so i i don't know if emily cornaj is or someone can speak to that what i would say is that the liability it rests with with the um with the uh well that's i don't even know that liability is the right word but i think the responsibility and the in the interaction is with is with the uh that is with lincoln and with the groups at lincoln so i think that that is not it is not the board the board is saying that we're approving the the um agreement to have it happen with lincoln but the bottom line is the contract is with the district that's right so we are on the hook with the contractor but lincoln is on the hook to the district and i i think it's a hard it's a hard question to answer with precision because it depends on the date you would cancel but i think the intended structure is so you have enough on deposit that if you back out you get a portion of that back which would leave no deficit to the district it would leave a deficit to the individual participating family from private funds or fundraising i don't know that we've run through every scenario so i don't want to give you an ironclad answer but that it's designed that the money's on deposit enough to cover a withdrawal later with a penalty and so cleveland was supposed to go to disneyland for spring break in march of 20 and like we had a planning meeting the week before school got closed um and so what happened with that trip is families who'd paid in got a small got a percentage back so i like to tease my daughter about her 400 t-shirt because we didn't get all the funds back from the agency but because you know it was extenuating circumstances we did get a portion back the district didn't have to pay that i think if lincoln were to say we don't want to do this trip we don't have enough kids there'd be an amount that that lincoln would have to pay and then the rest per the contract would close but i think if it's something disastrous what we experienced with covet in cleveland was that the company refunded a big chunk of our money yeah i guess and this is not the specific contract but it raises the general question about sort of like who gets credit um or who's creditworthy and like do we have like some transparent standard uh for schools that um if the district say you don't have all the funds in hand and the district is going to somehow have some sort of obligation like what what is the criteria versus hey we know you guys are good for it um just so it's a universal principle not like we know the school community can like you know turn up the fundraising and cover it and so therefore we'll approve it but it seems like it would be useful for us to have a more transparent set of criteria or how we extend credit yeah i'm not i i guess i would characterize it slightly differently so i don't know that it's it's pps extending credit it is it is back to um um liz lars it is it is a um there are incremental payments right like that's what this part it says is there's there's incremental payments and um once once those deposits are made then the refunds come back you know to exactly what director lowry said was that you know there's some get withheld from the company and potentially or not and that's that is the piece that would happen um it is not saying that um per se that we're we're that we are doing anything upfront and that people are you know in that realm right so often what the piece about field trips and when we do field trips and people plan them you you have to get a sense of the cost of what the trip is and so you have to do that you have to improve the planning of the trip and then it it supports um what that looks like for the what is the level of fundraising that's going to be necessary for the trip and then and then what are those markers as we go through so part of what um the initial piece that we've done with often with when teams or schools or um choirs or bands or planning trips is that you get you approve the original um the initial planning and then there are um you know some check-in points along the way about
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and this is usually done at the building level right so are people on progress to have sufficient funds and to make the trip um viable and um and as we go but the what is slightly different about this is that the the the planning and the con the contract piece kind of happens at the same time with the with the with the company so this is really a contract to start the planning with the company um and the approval to do that thanks dr cover are there still concerns with this contract from the board okay um let's move forward then um cara is there any public comment sorry ms bradshaw is there any public comment okay the board will now vote on resolution six five six four six five six five and six five six seven all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no student representative mcmahon yes uh are there any abstentions the consent agenda is approved by a vote of six to zero with student representative mcmahon voting yes great next up uh next item is the memorandum of understanding with the portland association of teachers to approve substitute incentives at low fill rate schools super nintendo would you like to introduce this item yes good evening directors thank you chair scott in an effort to recruit retain and build a substitute workforce the offices of school performance teaching and learning and human resources have collaborated to develop a series of strategies aimed at creating a stronger substitute teacher workforce helping to reduce many of the challenges that have been experienced particularly during this pandemic i'm going to ask our chief of human resources sarah and reese to come up and share why it is we're recommending that the board approve this financial incentive that we believe will encourage higher substitute fill rates at particular schools at which we've had lower fill rates than in prior years chief reese good evening i'll actually be very brief we are looking to stabilize staffing at schools that had very low fill rates uh for uh absences for last year and it's not the only thing we're doing as superintendent guerrero identified we have a number of mitigation strategies and follow-ups that we are layering in this one is an immediate operational uh shift to encourage um higher fill rates where we have historically and particularly last year incurred very low fill rates i'm happy to answer your questions thank you um let's go ahead and uh get a motion to put it on the table and then we will have board discussion so do i have a motion second i'll make a motion great director green uh makes a motion director brim edwards seconds to adopt resolution 6566 uh and now we'll open it up for any board discussion yes so um i actually the one who actually well i think one of the ones who actually had this pool so i know this came up last year as well um when we talked about this piece and you know when we talk about low field rate schools a lot of times we're talking about underserved schools schools that have a high number of african-american or latino kids in them um and i guess it's just once again it goes back to for me um that we're incentivizing teachers to go to these underrepresented schools which is kind of just puts a bad taste in my mouth when we're talking about incentivizing them um on our especially off the backs of our most vulnerable kids um you know if we having a substitute shortage or issue it seemed like that remedy would be systematic wide it would be doing something for all of our um substitutes not just the ones that go into you know ones that deal with black and brown students and this is a practice that's been going on for a while i've talked to other past teachers that they've given these incentives and they've been at different names at different times to incentivize them to go into these underrepresented schools um so i guess my opinion is if we are going to think about changing the system well when we should start now and not provide these incentives just to go into these you know underserved schools it seems like there'd be a better option or better emotion or something else that we need to do in order to get the support that we need for our underserved schools and not by distance and advising i don't disagree director holland what you're seeing here is our short-term strategy uh and we we need short midterm and long-term strategies uh working together
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to shift uh this outcome uh ultimately we need stable staffing in each one of our schools there's a lot of work we need to do to get there and this is something we hope has an immediate impact to create a strong start of school and i did appreciate in the staff memo you know the couple of items that were mentioned that are working to stabilize and and beef up the substitute workforce in ways other than just the pay incentive but if you're talking about systemic change i mean this could be something on the table in our next round of negotiations on the substitute contract because there certainly are districts who um when you put in to be a substitute there are districts that have the ability to assign people i mean that's something to my understanding we could consider in our next round of negotiations around the substitute contract but at this time our substitutes have the ability to accept or reject a specific placement and that's why we end up with these imbalances yeah and i guess that's going to your point that's what i guess for me not approving this now to focus on that particular process that you just mentioned would be a kind of a point for the board as i said hey you know what we need to change it we need to change it now because the same comment you said last year this is a temporary thing well now we're saying it again this year and i'm sure we'll probably say it again next year if if we just keep doing the same thing um like i said i've talked with a lot of other past teachers and substitutes there's always been some kind of incent of whether there's been other different names and different administrations to to do this to do what we're doing now um and i just like i said it just it just does something to me that it seems like we are once again profiting off of the backs of our underserved black and brown kids once again and if we're going to do that i don't have a problem incentivizing but the civilization i feel should maybe come from how the kids are performing not not just because a substitute or some don't want to go to a school or not go to school and i've talked to like i've talked to certain teachers a lot of teachers around and that's the case they need to pick and choose what school they want to go to or not want to go to a lot of the black schools or pedome black or brown schools a lot of teachers don't want to go to so they choose not to go there if we want to change the system if we want to have change we have to start now we have to start at some point and not to keep going down the same because of the needs that we have we have one of the um one of the elements that we have layered in here is additional professional development doubling down on our professional development for our substitute educators um addressing the sorts of things that we know are successful in classrooms um and having more prepared substitutes um i am i i want to make sure that there isn't confusion just because of some of the framing and that you just provided when you say profit off of black and brown students i just want to make sure that the public understands that there isn't a greater cost to those schools this is a this is central office resources uh being placed in those schools i just don't want there to be confusion about that it it doesn't come out of a particular school's budget it comes out of the central office well yeah but ultimately that's still the district where there is absolutely yeah yeah yeah and i think i think directors holland's point is that is that the substitute teachers are getting paid more to go into these schools i mean that's the whole goal of the incentive i i actually i think this is a really powerful point and and i think it is one that you made last year and um director constant i really like your point about you know what are the changes that we need um in order to avoid this in the future i i think what i'm what i'm struggling with i mean because honestly it's it's i think you're right and i think that that the idea it is just it is distasteful right that we have to to pay people to go teach our black and brown children more than someone else and i am interested in changes that would essentially allow us to assign so if you want to substitute teach for us we're going to we're going to tell you where you get to go on that particular day what i'm concerned about though is if we don't if we don't do this in the short term some of the statistics that i think director medwords you would ask for show that some of these schools have replacement rates of 50 or 60 percent which means that in 40 or 50 percent of the time am i correct that those students do not have a teacher when we cannot get a substitute into that classroom so to this point chair scott i think our new chief of schools who's no stranger to staffing schools and the immediate impact that the instability does have i think he'll want to share a little bit about what our school leaders are expressing as well yeah and i apologize for coming up late i wanted to make sure i felt protocol so i
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didn't wasn't called up specifically but i but i saw super chat she showed initiatives come on i was like i got to go up and kind of say a few things first of all i just really appreciate this conversation and i think what what sharon said is is accurate and that this is a short term mitigating piece looking at data from last year and the reality is is that when you don't have teachers in front of our kids our kids suffer that means you're collapsing classes that means it really just becomes a supervision piece uh and and just know that that we experienced that immensely in in my former district as well and so it's no longer than about instruction it's about supervision we need to give our kids opportunities we need to give them chances and we need to put people who can teach in front of them and it is i agree with you director hollins i agree we need to think more of the why but to me this is a this this is a short-term piece the big picture stuff absolutely like we are engaged in that dialogue we are committed to it but after looking at the data it was astounding and this was an opportunity to put uh staff in front of our kids i think that's the most important thing and and and it not only affects our kids but it affects just the culture in the community within that within that building our staff our administration it's significant and so um i look at it that way and i totally get what you're saying and and i i chose we choose to look at this as a short-term deal we understand it but we couldn't ignore the data and we we had to act and present this to you so two questions when you say short term what is that timeline looking like because like i said we heard this last year and we're short term and once again when i talk with teachers who've been in the district for 30 25 30 years this is not nothing new so when you say this is a uh like it's like it's recent this is not a recent phenomenon this is from my understanding this is something that has been historically that we have done so this is not a short term this has already been a long-term issue and we just could keep putting a band-aid on the band-aid on whether you call it this incentivire i can't remember what the other names that they told me that it used to be called to get teachers to go into those schools so i just wanted when you when you say it's temporary or short term it hasn't been short-term this has been a long-term problem in this district um for a lot of decades so once again when we talk about i want to get rid of short-term because it's not a short-term issue well i think my thing is what are we going to do now to be able to get the teachers where they need to be ourselves to where they need to be and where we want them to be at and outside of this incentive-based piece i just want to add to that kind of bring up the elephant in the room which is the underlying problem of the high astonishingly high levels of absences that are causing this problem and they're disproportionate across our schools but they're high in all of our schools so if we're talking about addressing root causes we need to be talking about how do we address the issue of teacher absenteeism overall what can we do to support culture what can we do to support our teachers how much do we understand about you know why people why we have such high absences i mean obviously last year was a different set of circumstances with covet it was you're saying this has been a problem for a long time it has but it was was and is significantly worse but that's one of the root causes we have to address did you reckon did you yeah i so in i've been wrestling with this and as much as i i intend to uh because of the short term i do intend to to sort of move forward with it but i'm also um going to hold fast and strong that we're in the bartering session um contractually and with the with the teachers and there's going to be some non-negotiables for me and that um as we start looking at i feel like we need to have incentives because this is an incentive we're talking about giving them incentive right to you know so that we can get them in the schools that we wanted to be in and so we're we're saying with gas prices and all this other stuff let's give them this extra incentive to to get to this school another incentive could also very well be we're only going to call you three times to go to a school that we want you to go to and if you choose not to go to these schools after three times then we're gonna take you off of our list and we'll move on to somewhere else that's an incentive because we're no longer going to employ you we're no longer going to give you a shot it's not enough because i do hear you saying that we want people in the room that can that can teach our kids because that's true we do but we also want to make sure that they're teaching our kids simply having a pulse in the room is not significant simply having a warm body in the room
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is not significant but we do need to do something for right now so like the house is on fire so the when the house is on fire we're not going to talk about what caused the fire and all these other pieces the immediate thing is to put the fire out but after the end fire after the fire is put out we do an investigation to say what caused the fire and then we go back and we dial it down and if we got a bunch of teachers that are calling out on fridays and you know this number i'd love to see a data pool on that i'd love to see dr adams go back and pull the data and say what is the what is the uh the ratio of teachers being absent on a certain date as to where we're needing so many substitutes i mean i can't tell nobody not to be sick that's not what i'm doing that's rude don't be sick that's dumb but are you sick every friday i mean now now i see a pattern you know i see i see patterns of behavior so i may not be able to tell you to be sick but i can tell you be sick on wednesday because friday is out for you because you've been sick on friday too much you've used up your friday limits but we have to be able to figure out something and as a board this is where we're going to have to i feel like this is just me personally now speaking to the rest of my colleagues to say this is going to be the the the thing where a lot of people are going to be in our face talking about oh you don't support teachers and you don't do this and you don't love us and you don't care when really what i'm thinking about is i'm thinking about the students and i'm thinking about we have to hold the line if we don't hold the line and if we start wavering and we start being wishy-washy then they know they got access so we have to have a non-negotiable when we start having this contract negotiation and say i don't care what you say i want this in it and if you can't have this in it then we don't have a contract do something different deal with it and if we can't do that then we need to stop talking about what we want this is the season where we need to be we need to be hard and we need to be intentional and focused on what we want for our kids and that's by any means necessary you don't like it i'm rolling with the willing i'm not dealing i'm not trying to get a hundred percent i'm not trying to get a hundred percent i'm gonna roll with the actually i'ma roll with the 60 because the 60 working hard enough will pull in the other 20 and then the 20 will get us to the 80 that we need and the 80 will motivate the other 20 to either get with the program or get out of the program so i don't care about a hundred percent everybody ain't gotta like me i'm not here because i want you to like me you don't pay me for that so but we do like student representative mcmahon yeah i just wanted to say that i would really like to recognize the mirror of this like solution i think that it's very important that we do get teachers and substitutes back into classrooms i actually kind of disagree with the idea of the warm body because i think there is an element of the mental health of the student to have a person who is showing up in your classroom and i think that that's actually really important because students need to feel supported in their environment and i think that it's really important to make sure that we're maintaining this idea that in order to solve this problem in the long term we also need to be building the culture for substitutes and that comes from both students and comes from this district and comes from teachers and so i like the idea and i like the impact that we're pushing here to get to get students the teachers that they need and i really think that on the subject of like how do we rein in those teachers like how do we look at the problem of like teacher absenteeists and like how do we solve this and i think it's really going to come from an active communication partnership both of the recognition of the work that these teachers do as well as trying to solve these issues i think moving into it with the concept that like oh we need to like create a hard line and we need to really push them i think it's the care and the stick that we need to be working on we need to obviously have these teachers come in and we need to create boundaries but at the same time i really discourage the idea that we need to force them to do it because ultimately we need to support our teachers in any way that we can and i definitely recognize as a student that teachers on the front line like that is the most important element of our schools and i i don't know i just i guess that i think there is merit to this idea that we need to support teachers we need to work on the culture more than anything else and that a warm body actually means something for a lot of kids so i'm gonna add on to what uh dr green has said when he said the house is on fire the house has been on fire it's been on fire we have to at some point start putting out the fire bottom line we have to start putting out the fire when i went into certain schools this last year they had substitutes that it was at one of these schools there were no learning happening there was nothing going on they was literally sitting there watching tv i did this more than one occasion you know so once again i don't know if the incentive base i believe it went from 35 to 50
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i believe if that's the right number uh full day rate in the contract in the substitute contract right now is 15 and the half day rate is ten dollars it went from 15 to 50. that this is what so once again i just go back to the house is on fire and and just having someone there i get it there's a lot of good subs out there and i'm not trying to discredit any of the the good ones that's out there i've seen some bad ones um and it does it does not does any service to the kids that was in those classrooms um at all but once again this incentive of this this policy of incentivizing um it just it just rubs me the wrong way like i said the house is on fire either we're going to keep fanning the flames to try to figure it out or we're going to just start putting water on it we're hopeful that the absence rate goes down this year yesterday yesterday it felt like yesterday last year we are hoping is an outlier and we are preparing for um circumstances that we hope do not repeat this uh this upcoming year uh for example we had um quarantine absences in the thousands like 3 500 over 3 500 absences due to quarantine that didn't exist before last year and so there are there were unique circumstances in covid that we hope don't repeat but we absolutely want to be prepared for this this upcoming school year so do you think there's a distinction between what was last year's experience and what has been an ongoing concern to your point director holland some of this is ongoing but i do want to point out that last year was a significant outlier yeah and i think with the with the pandemic i think that exacerbated a lot of stuff it really shined a light on a lot of stuff you know so when you when we talk about last year versus the year before i get it you know a lot of things got the light shined on it um but once again when we look at historically the how this house has been on fire and so you know and i and i really appreciate the the method you guys are trying to do to um you know to get to help mitigate that i appreciate that um to the fullest i just think we need to look at a different way to do that and that's why i probably won't support this one um today thank you so what i think you're hearing from the board is a pretty strong desire um therefore some changes to look at what what the systemic changes would need to be in order to avoid this moving forward um and so i guess i would ask superintendent that um as as we go through this year and of course we haven't taken a vote on this yet um i i i will support this tonight but but but i think the um the arguments that that viceroy hollands are making are really powerful and and lead me to to want to see what what those systemic changes are so that we don't have to do this in the future and so i would ask that will you report back in the future of the board on what those things i appreciate the express comments and questions from directors and student rep mcmahon's uh remarks as well i think what you see here is staff's uh recommendation to implement uh some levers that that are within our sphere of influence right let we're not going to exacerbate absence rates by scheduling wholesale professional development activities we know that that for example we'll we'll be watching the calendar but but i guess what i want to say out there is you know we value our substitute educators i know that we all do uh we look forward to continued collaboration with our labor partner around making sure no matter which qualified adult is in front of students that they have a meaningful instructional day i know that we all want that and so you know we'll continue to look at how do we support their growth and frankly we need that candidate pool we we hope that many folks who attempt the substitute uh that they'll consider uh serving in k-12 uh the the longer term you know issues that have you know just like critical shortage need areas have existed for decades in certain programmatic areas special needs uh you know serving multilingual students etc you know we do i appreciate the desire to want to be creative and more innovative about it and not look at this from a sort of a punitive lens but how do we support uh making sure that we have stability uh in school communities that most need that uh would be a conversation certainly we should all look forward to and when it comes down to collective bargaining of course uh you know we'll stand at the boards direction and we should have a meaningful conversation about that our concern right now is school starts in a week and we want to make sure that we have a plan in place and that we're able to communicate with the substitute pool we really do want
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them to consider you know accepting those uh jobs when they come available and of course we're going to work at the school community level to make sure we have a culture where you know teachers unless really necessary or being conscious of the disruption that it can cause uh in any of our schools so uh with with all of that uh we hope you'll you will give it your best consideration thank you superintendent did your final comment director madrid so i really want to appreciate uh the issues that were raised because it is a several decade long issue but i also want to acknowledge the numbers for coming out of the pandemic um really have exacerbated so that issue um and i'm going to support it um primarily as a bridge um because of the pandemic and what's happened um because i've seen i guess just a little bit of a um i guess to add some to the it's not just a warm body because there's trade-offs um when we don't have substitutes so last year i saw a social worker a social work a school social worker teaching a kindergarten class or a principal teaching a math class or a central office administrator um you know not doing their job here but in a in a school because there was there was an opening so i'm going to support it for that um but when i look at this we have essentially almost a third of our schools um on the list for the incentive pay and i would expect that that should go down as we enter and have a normal school year with lots of supports and to your point director scott i would say i i would like to see the data i don't know november or december of what that looks what that looks like because i think if it isn't just it isn't just pandemic related um and we have to keep our eye on that issue which when the substitute contract um comes up that's that's the issue but in in the short term um you know is this what will make the difference or is it something else and if this doesn't move the dial and we continue to have shortages i mean i would expect that we're just not going to continue to pay incentive pay and still have a really significant i felt right but i i do want the social worker the principal and the central office administrator to be doing their jobs because they need to be doing their jobs and hopefully we've got a well-qualified associate teacher um pool that can um fill in for our teachers when they're absent so i'm gonna i'm gonna support it but i really think this is a a a good longer-term conversation for us to have ms bradshaw is there any public comment on this item no okay i'd like to move us towards a vote um the board will now vote on resolution 6566 um all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no no student representative mcmahon yes uh are there any abstentions so resolution 6566 is approved by a vote of five to one with student representative mcmahon officially vote unofficially voting yes um chief reese i are the provisions that were put in place during the pandemic to suspend the credentialing requirements for substitutes certain credentialing requirements are those still in place or they are in place for this whole school year that's correct okay yes thank you for that conversation i think it was actually really important one last question how did it go last year with the incentive based piece did we see an increase it take up more jobs and they were [Music] implemented i believe in december so it wasn't full year um so the incentives included pick up additional jobs and you'll get like an extra day of pay so uh if they were different than before the incentives for last year were straight from the contract the five and the ten dollars which is not that much no i just wanted to see any improvement in that with doing that we did see well we there were again there were layered strategies right so we were increasing the number of subs available as we were also providing financial incentives um and we did see an uptick in substitutes taking drops and the number of subs available yes thank you yes thank you okay we're going to now turn to student and public comment thank you for your patience those who are here to comment um before we begin let me quickly review guidelines for public comment um first we thank you for taking the time to attend the meeting providing your comments input from the public import
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improves and informs our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections or concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen our board office may follow up on board related issues raised during public testimony we request that complaints about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter and if you have any additional materials or items you'd like to provide to the border superintendent we ask you to email them to public comment all one word at pps.net again that's public comment at pps.net please make sure when you begin your comment you clearly state your name and spell your last name you'll have three minutes to speak and you'll hear a little chime after three minutes and at that point we'd appreciate it if you would wrap up your comments um ms bradshaw um do we have folks signed up for public comment we do mackenzie windstorm um yeah i just wanted to note that the normal if you've done public comment before the timer's not there you're going to hear it from over here on my phone thank you and welcome hello good evening um my name is mackenzie weintraub w-e-i-n-t-r-a-u-b and i am the parent of an incoming kindergartner and a second grader at glencoe elementary where i also serve as the pta president i first want to thank you all for prioritizing an equity funding model in the budget this year i think that was the right move for children and families across the district and i hope that that continues to be a priority i also recognize that the budget has been set for this year as we're about to start school but that being said as families are getting ready for next week there are still families who are frustrated they're upset they're confused and they're wondering why are they sending their children back to school with 30 plus class sizes especially as we're recovering from a global pandemic this is true for all third and fifth grade students at glencoe this year glencoe's not alone there's other schools across the district that are facing these large class sizes especially in southeast i think this frustration is compounded when we learned that focused option schools were able to set their class limits they were told to follow the pat thresholds of class sizes um which at glencoe we would really welcome um that is a an in my mind a very inequitable way of setting class sizes across the district um that brings me to another piece of inequity in funding for schools which is the foundation system that i believe needs to be addressed as well some of the schools that have these 30 plus class sizes have robust foundations they will be able to buy back teachers and lower their class sizes it's not true for glenn cohen it's not true for several of the other schools that are seeing these high class sizes ultimately i think it's the district's responsibility to adequately fund our schools when we have these high class sizes understandably families have to think about what's best for their child or children and sometimes that means that or more privileged families look at private school options and they leave the district or they look at other options within the district like focused option programs where they're going to see lower class sizes this pulls enrollment numbers from our neighborhood schools and exasperates the problem ultimately i would love for us to all acknowledge that class sizes of 30 or more are just too large and my hope is that the district and the board will do whatever they can to help decrease those class sizes across the district and ensure that no child has to go to school with 30 or more peers in one classroom thank you so much oren bernstein welcome hi everybody thanks for letting me speak um so my name is warren bernstein b-e-r-n-s-t-e-i-n i have two kids at vernon elliott and davis and i'm a mechanical engineer a couple months ago i gave a small presentation to the facilities and operations committee about using a thing called the corsi rosenthal style filter box i think several of you saw that um the response was quite enthusiastic and i'm here to give an update with some further developments for everyone that wasn't there and just do a quick review um i felt that pps did a great job measuring the air cleaning and exchange across all the schools in the school system but the report found that there's probably some work needed to improve the quality of the air in the school system so and what i would like to talk about is these simple devices that consist basically of a high grade furnace filter
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and a box fan and counter-intuitively they're as you would you wouldn't suspect it they outperform all available commercial hepa filters and um on a air clean per dollar and even more surprisingly on an air clean per decibel basis so they're both more effective and more quiet and this includes for smoke and small particles like the droplets that carry the coveted virus this has been shown in testing by the university of california davis and the 3m corporation and a couple other sources so based on the enthusiasm from the meeting with the facilities and operations committee i've been working with a team of motivated volunteers including some very experienced engineers who lead or have led r d teams for several local well-known companies at the facilities meeting i was asked whether there were kits to build these filters available thank you amy um and they there are kits where you can buy the materials but they're sort of onerous to put together and so since that time at the the last meeting where i attended my group has been working on making something a little bit easier to deploy and so um this i'm gonna showcase one of those here that's been running the whole time um just so that everyone knows this um unit right here is probably cleaning as twice as or as much air as two more than two of the full the current existing filters if they're running at full blast which is obviously very loud and this is at its lowest setting so all it is is a box fan and in this version it's a it's a series of filters that are taped together but they can be folded so they can be laid flat which will help kind of ship them around move them around and also help deploy them very quickly and just a cardboard top and bottom folder and we've found sources for all the materials from local companies here that can produce them if cardboard feels like it's too not robust enough of a material we've also designed a plastic version this is a corner piece for a plastic version that would be more robust but obviously a little bit more expensive and so my my request is that if it feels like this is something that if the enthusiasm still holds and this feels like something that pps is interested in it would probably be we're sort of ready to provide some and i certainly don't mean to push you to get them from our team or whatever but like if we can help facilitate it in any way possible so great but now would be a good time to like have me meet with someone and talk about it in more detail thank you for the presentation yeah and um i'm going to say i built four for my church um and uh former director rita moore helped me build them because she's very passionate about air quality as well and they work incredibly well and we've had them in our sanctuary for about eight months oh great yeah excellent so and and i'm going to just on the fly put you in touch with dan young who's our chief operating officer and sitting quietly taking notes on his computer uh about this so um thank you very much for your presentation and and for what you're doing to put these together for the community thank you appreciate it that concludes who signed up for public comment today great thank you ms bradshaw thank you everybody uh for the public comment that is actually i think that's my first show and tell so i really appreciate it the box fan um next up uh we have um comments from our portland association of teachers president angela bonilla thank you for being here this evening and welcome as always hello thanks for having me um gonna get settled um hello everyone thank you again for having me here it's always great uh to be able to address this body um so as i hope to make a a habit i want to start off with kudos so a kudos to uh
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lisa blount who has been coordinating the new educator orientation um it was amazing i also want to appreciate genevieve and lagina who co-presented with me and jackie on our contract to our new educators we had over 200 educators participating in new educator orientation and it's just always great to see more folks joining the profession and coming and choosing our district um i want to also thank you all for passing the substitute incentive pay um [Laughter] no worries um so you know as always if i'm here please feel free to call me up if you have any questions no big deal um but i also want to make sure that i gave a little bit of perspective on that proposal so oregon is one of the few states that really values having highly educated and certified educators in front of students as substitutes we have our substitute educators as part of our bargaining unit so they must be certified substitutes to be part of our unit and to substitute in oregon until the credentials were changed for emergency licensure last year so we want to continue that tradition of having highly trained substitutes in our schools and we are very supportive of this initiative because we want to make sure that we have those folks in the building especially buildings that need them so the concern around the disproportionate the disproportionality around which schools are not being supported so i want to give a little bit of context around that right so when you have a school that has a lot of folks with high needs and educators who may not have been meeting those needs yet because they don't have the skills or the training yet right um part of our responsibility as a district is to ensure that we have educators who are trained to support our kids right um i know we've talked about this in the past that we have trainings mandated by our contract around anti-racism implicit bias and culturally responsive practices those trainings have not yet been put in place by pps we bargained that in 2020 and so when we talk about making sure our educators are prepared to serve all of our students including our black and brown students those are the kinds of trainings that help folks feel like they will be they won't be harming kids when they get to the school because they know how to actually serve them and respond to them in a culturally relevant and responsive way right on top of that for our substitutes one thing that um folks may or may not know about substitutes is that depending on their performance in that day a school can decide whether or not they want them to come back to that building and being told you know we it didn't quite work out there was an incident you didn't know how to deal with it we didn't like that you can't come back now that educator has to you know disclose that they were not asked back to a building right so any application you're doing after that to become an educator to be part of an education system you're marking i have been told that i was not appropriately you know or sufficient for that position so that in and of itself is the deterrent not specifically the kids that they're serving right so when we think about how do we get these folks into buildings we want to make sure that they're supported so that they don't have these incidents where they might not be welcomed back because they don't know how to serve these kids and so folks aren't saying i don't want to go to that school because that's the school with all the brown kids what they're saying is i don't want to go to a school where i have a life higher likelihood of not being able to serve these kids because i don't know how to do so and how to support them again as a black woman as the first black teacher of most of my students when they get to me in fourth grade what i always tell folks is i wasn't born knowing how to serve kids of color i had to learn that it was training right so what are we doing to train all of our educators to ensure that they know how to best serve our kids of color because it's not something that's innate it's learned and what we know about kids is that kids do well if they can and if they are not doing well there is a barrier or there's a lagging skill and so i try to expand that to the rest of my world whenever i get frustrated in traffic i'm like people do well if they can people do well if they can maybe they're having a hard time maybe they're running to the bathroom that's why they cut me off it's fine um and so when i'm thinking about adults too right like they will do well if they can so what are the barriers stopping them from best serving our kids because the reality is i would rather have an uh substitute come to a building that they feel comfortable in serving and supporting our kids because they've been well trained then have substitutes
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coming into buildings saying the wrong thing and causing harm to our kids right so i think this incentive is going to help our substitutes you know really try to weigh that but i think it is i agree it's not an emergency if we know it's going to keep happening right like we've always had substitute shortages kovit exacerbated that but we've always had substitute shortages so what can we do to support bringing in more substitutes i think one piece with this emergency licensure is having kind of a grow our own process right if you had a year of substituting under this emergency license which is great because it brought in folks who maybe didn't have a typical pathway into education into our buildings folks who reflected the students lived experiences were finally coming in and being given the opportunity to teach right if you had a great year then maybe the district is sponsoring you to get that emergency license on the contingency that you join a certification program so you can be a substitute for several years as you're getting that that degree and then we have we're eliminating some of that need right so i think there are ways that we can support our substitutes in making sure that they're supporting our students with appropriate training with incentives to become professional educators so that our kids get the most um qualified folks in front of them whether their typical teacher is there or not um i think also uh i just want to appreciate uh byronie for your comments uh i think you know educators we want to come to work right like i i told our new educators i do this i i work because i want to get paid but i chose this work because of the kids right so we want to be here we want to support our students and when we're not there's again people do well if there can there's a barrier right and folks want to go to work someplace where they feel like it's they can be successful where the work is sustainable where they're able to leave at the end of the day and say i did something good i served these kids as opposed to leaving every day and going oh i forgot to do this oh and i don't have enough time to do that oh and i didn't call this kid's parents and i still have to do this other thing right um even as an elementary school educator even though my hours were um 7 45 to 3 30 i was regularly in the building by 6 30 in the morning because i had to make sure that whether or not there was an evening custodian my classroom was clean and i was prepared for the day and i was usually there two hours after students were dismissed because i wanted to make sure that i was able to contact all those family members make sure that i connected with special ed for the students who had accommodations with the eld teacher to make sure that all of my lessons for that week are actually using the correct scaffolds and this is me getting into the like uh you know teacher lingo but the reality is is that we have more work to do to best serve our kids than we have hours we get paid for and so it's really really hard to to hear like well these teachers may not just are just not showing up when we know that we show up every day and we show up every day before we're paid and after we're paid and sometimes you just there isn't anything left and so you get sick and so you're not able to come into work because you're sick right um so i just i really want to appreciate y'all for passing that and i want to make sure that we are really thinking about what is the longer term solution how can we start to develop the leadership and the um excitement we saw with our emergency substitutes and and develop them into long-term educators who want to stay at the district because substituting is also kind of a lifestyle choice right not everyone wants to work full-time there are people who want to be substitutes for their whole career and they should have the training they need to to be able to do that and we can definitely support them in moving forward [Music] the next piece i wanted to talk about was the ventilation i know that there's going to be a presentation this afternoon or this evening talking about some of the upgrades and i know that we had that article in the oregonian about the schools not meeting the minimum of three air exchanges per hour so i really appreciate the demonstration i know some educators have made some of their own and i and i love hearing our community coming together to try to find ways to support our schools so you know our coalition as i spoke last time of unions is asking that we provide employees five days for coveted related absences before they expend their sick leave because we all know that life happens and sick leave doesn't stay there for very long especially if you have kids and so if there is an incidence of covid we want to make sure especially our custodians our nutrition workers have the opportunity to stay home when they're sick and still have pay um so you know we want to make sure that we're being pre-emptive and dealing with that and caught and getting to an agreement
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before the year starts before flu season before the all the kindergartners are finally all together it's not in all over the place and then we're all getting sick um the last thing i wanted to touch on uh is around the fte i know we already heard um from our pta president at glencoe about the equity around class sizes and i know the budget has already been passed and i also know that the district really values equity and providing positive outcomes for all of our kids regardless of their zip code regardless of their lived experience i received an email from an educator at alameda where they have three second grade classes of 30 students just as a reminder second graders are kids who went to kindergarten during the pandemic online they were the kids who came back to school for the first time in a physical building and everyone was wearing masks and they were all distancing and so school hasn't been typical for them yet they are coming back now this year in a school where they don't have lots of influx in their numbers it's very typically whoever's enrolled in alameda comes to alameda right they're going to have 30 kids in each class um they have asked for the fte and you know the boundary is 32. so they have to wait until they have two more students to be able to break up their classes into students into classes of 23 or 22 or 23. and i i have a hard time believing that there is anyone who says you're going to get just as good of an education in a class of 30 as second graders as you are in a class of 22 right so i would love to know um how we are just dispersing those fte to schools that are starting to see these influxes because luckily kids are coming back right um i know there is another instance at robert gray where they're having kids joining sections there are sections that are above the um the you know the number the soft cap for those classes but they haven't passed the average and so they're not getting those ftes yet either um the district typically waits until the 10-day drop after the first two weeks of school to to reassign that fte and what that means is for these second graders they will have spent two weeks of developing community with their educator um connecting with each other and if two more kids show up and a teacher is assigned that community is going to be splintered and redistributed and then they're gonna start that process again right so when we're thinking about how do we keep consistent learning happening in the classroom that's a pretty big disruption because they're kind of restarting especially for our little ones who didn't have the experience of school in person their first year of school and had kind of a disjointed not so typical year last year um i think it's just also really important that we were told multiple times last spring that we had to cut those 87 positions from classrooms because we didn't have the student population right but on in the budget books on the on page 278 of the digital version of volume one it says that the district has has a net gain of 254 fte so when we have that plus the 87 positions that were removed from the classroom that's a total of 341 fte that were netted last year despite being told that 87 classroom positions had to be taken away um and i just want to make it also very very clear like there are places in central office where i am sure we need staff right like we had educators this summer working with alongside our pfsp partners our paras who were promised bonuses for working over the summer so we can support our highest needs students they have yet to receive that pay right so i imagine that's a department where we could probably use some more fte to support those folks right but when we have 341 fte added and we're still seeing those cuts in schools i'm really worried that there's a disproportionality between the student-facing supports and the supports that we're having in central office they're very very important to have all those things because all of these systems work together to support our students but what what is happening you know when our budgets are a moral document and we're seeing this disparity i'm really worried about what we're saying and what we're actually doing to support our schools um [Music] and i don't know where those fte are right because it's in in the budget it's a compliance document it's not necessarily cut out for the layperson to understand i know that they're supposed to be a version three that's coming out that we that will be clearer for the community but it doesn't clearly explain where those fte are right and when we talk about licensed staff it includes both classroom teachers but also counselors and also tosas and also posas
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which are principles on special assignment so there's lots of folks who will be in buildings which is important and are also not in the classroom which is also really important because when we have larger class sizes we have higher need because they're not getting the individualized attention they need and so we need more support from those folks outside of the classroom and then those supports are taking away from other kids right so it kind of dominoes into this bigger issue um so i just want to make sure that we are really pushing towards figuring out how to best serve our students and how to do that from the top down right and one way to alleviate that issue and concern around transparency is making sure that we're starting that budget conversation as early as possible and i know that there is a calendar there was like a draft calendar about starting as soon as possible which i'm very excited about and i think having that public input is going to be very very important i did see the email go out around the community budget review committee which is great and um families in this like for the public families if you don't know like you can get become part of that that committee if you were willing to come up here and testify please apply and join so that we can get all as many voices as possible sharing their perspective around the budget say that one more time for everyone so there is a community budget review committee and you can apply the application i believe is due september 10th so please please apply if you're willing to come up and do public testimony the review doesn't have to be public so you can come on by and give your opinion and share what you think is is should be a priority for our district i think one way to really rebuild the trust with our community is ensuring that we have as many ways as possible for them to give their input and provide what they think should be the priorities for their schools as always our educators our families our communities our staff are the ones who stick around and and love and live by these schools because this is this is our hometown these are our schools and we want to be here to support them um so again i just i always appreciate the opportunity to be here and and speak with y'all and um please don't hesitate to reach out and ask any questions i would love to answer any questions and um thank you for the work you do uh and i mean good luck to us all starting this school year right happy first day of school yeah we're coming up on it thank you president panini i appreciate your comments um next we're gonna move on to student representative mcmahon student students report good evening everyone so as this is the last board meeting of the summer and i'm about to move into my term during the school year as well as my senior year i wanted to provide some comments on sort of what i would like to do so a student representative and as the new leader of the dsc jackson my predecessor told me that summer was a great time to figure out what the hell i wanted to do luckily for me as someone who is starting college applications i conveniently decided that i was going to walk alongside the dsc rather than in front of them so i am very excitingly awaiting to hear what their ideas are for moving forward but don't think i wasn't doing anything because i decided instead to focus on the little things director constand during this meeting brought up earlier how do we improve the culture in our schools so i have no complex or strategic plan to share which i know is very on pbs but i have no surprising idea that sorry um so i have no necessarily inspiring ideal that can promise you equitable outcomes but i have in my observe in observing education both as a student and in this new role that seemingly the only thing that public education seems to have in abundance is passion education has attracted the most engaged group of individuals the one who put their passion for people over their money and their economic situation who are personally invested in who we work to educate and protect teachers parents community members and students alike pour their energy into solving problems and solving the inequalities and disputes that they see before them our communities sit in drafty boardrooms on their night off awaiting their three-minute allotment to solve those problems teachers spend long unpaid hours grading papers that their students potentially invested very little little into all to fulfill their why yet parents go home from these meetings to continue to worry about their children teachers return to classrooms full of kids who have no idea how lucky they are and students return to their mountain of homework i think that the most important thing that we can do is in order to implement street strategies and plans we must have a group of people that know what we are
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entering into we must have a group who are ready and prepared to implement these strategies and we must acknowledge the hard work and effort that every single person contributes to making our district a better place so what i'm going to try to do this year is to focus on recognition pbs is full of people of parents of students of alumni who care about who we serve and so i want to recognize those people and make sure that as we move forward into this year that we are prioritizing thanking recognizing celebrating and sharing the work and passion that each person involved in this district has for our students so i look forward to working alongside you all in doing that and i cannot wait to get started and so my first recognition i would actually like to say is we have a representative from mcdaniels here jj who has willingly decided to come and watch a board meeting during their summer so thank you so much i look forward to working with everyone i am i want to jump on that a little bit uh student representative man and um give a huge thank you to cara tonight who has dealt with some technical issues with grace and um has made it happen even though it's not what we're used to and you talk about passion and i know we have passion in the classrooms passion our community we have passion in our staff and i know cara uh was the school secretary and now um helps be the board secretary but just her work and dedication makes it possible so that we can communicate with everyone so thank you cara [Applause] i love that thank you student representative mcmahon it's actually one of the things that i stole from director hollins is the whole idea of of of um appreciation and accountability and and one of the things that i'm also hoping to do and we didn't even plan this beforehand is is make sure that we are spending some time uh appreciating what is happening in the district because there is a tremendous amount of good that's happening in the district so you've you've led it off tonight and i really appreciate it and it's something that i a theme we want to continue because we're going to spend a lot of time holding folks accountable but we need to spend a lot of time appreciating the work that's happening as well so thanks for that um and with that great segue uh superintendent guerrero i think you have an update on the preparations for our students coming back to school next week which my own children are so excited about yes thank you chair scott and i appreciate that balanced approach that you describe uh good evening directors i'm gonna take my monthly uh superintendent's report and actually take the occasion to provide you with the back to school update and the students are coming back in a week so we're excited about the new school year so tonight we're going to provide everyone with a high level overview of our state of readiness as we welcome our students back so you'll hear some operational you'll hear some health and safety but what we're really enthusiastic about is our renewed focus uh on teaching and learning after all that that's our core mission uh so to our students families and staff uh we're we're anxious to see you we're excited to have you back um here at pps you know we're continuing to be guided by our community's ambitious vision ambitious vision uh that talks about a graduate who's prepared to enter the world more confident optimistic prepared for the future it also describes how we as educators and a system as a whole our duty is to nurture their brilliance each and every day uh and that director's is our focus this school year so uh more on teaching our teaching and learning agenda in in just a moment uh but first we want to let you know who or how many students exactly uh we're expecting at this point for us to have the privilege of serving here at the start of the school year so first i'm going to turn it over to dr renard adams to share with you some specific numbers regarding our enrollment and registration numbers at this point thank you superintendent good evening and happy new school year everyone um we wanted to provide an enrollment update based on current registrations as of august 16th on the slide you can see our actual enrollments for the 2020 2021 and the 2021 2022 school years also shown on the slide are is our projected enrollment for this year and the um which is the 2022-2023 school year and our current registration numbers as of august 16th we've registered over 2 700 kindergarten students historically we've seen about 20 percent of kindergarten students enroll during the two weeks prior to the first day of school and if this pattern continues we expect to see another 500 or so kindergarten students this will get us to right around our actual projected enrollment numbers for kindergarten for this school year which is reflected again in the third column on the chart that you have before you
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as you may also notice and can see in some great bands we're seeing slightly larger numbers of regis registered students than what we projected for enrollment but i want to be really clear registered students does not mean the same or equal enrolled students enrollment numbers will be clarified beginning on the first day of school with regular attendance and by october 1 when we finalize our count what you have here is a reflection of the families who have indicated that they are planning to enroll students at pps next year or they have students who were previously enrolled but might not be attending this year which we may not know about until after the school year starts i also just want to note here our schools our school principals jonathan garcia chief of staff our school principals who just returned from summer break are working with central office leaders to understand make adjustments and prepare to welcome our students back to school of course our numbers will be firmed up as students come back to school and the registration numbers that are in front of you will continue to sh to shift can we ask questions during the presentation or do you want us to wait to the quick questions during the presentation would be great um so just quickly on the enrollment so um i i think we engage a lot of students through the summer school programming which is great so it wasn't a huge break but i'm curious if we have in place or have had any place any sort of district-wide um enrollment of like what students left pbs and so doing the sort of um we'd love to have you back so i'm curious about whether that's happened in addition to the kindergarten roundups which i know are happening all over the place or kindergarten meetups i cannot say that that has happened now i had a quick question did since the um ad ad backs that we were aware of in the budget process have we had any more um ad backs based on current registration over the summer no we're closely monitoring enrollment and once we do the 10-day count then we'll have a better sense there may be some earlier decisions made about kindergarten because as they come in and start attending we can quickly maneuver and adjust but most of that will come after the 10-day drop so just when you say add back director constantly talking about teachers being added back so i'm curious like the there was two ad backs this summer at lower hurst was that um because of foundation funding or was that um they crossed over a threshold i'll have to be back in touch with you on that i don't have that information off the top of my head okay okay well i'll proceed chair thank you dr adams for the enrollment update uh so we are indeed excited to welcome back the 47 000 students nearly here at pps and if you're a kindergarten family as we were just sharing we can't wait to welcome you to our school community as well this summer our school district has you know really renewed its focus uh to ensuring high quality teaching and learning uh experience for our students every in every classroom every day also this past june the school board refreshed its four goals for accelerating achievement for our students of color in particular by eliminating those persistent generational and i think the word was unacceptable opportunity and outcome gaps we've laid those out in third grade reading fifth grade math eighth grade readiness and high school graduation uh ultimately we've agreed these goals are strong indicators of our success uh particularly graduating students students who are prepared to change and improve the world so let me say a little bit more about the teaching and learning agenda we're embarking on we remain committed to our district's theory of action it clearly articulates our commitment to ensuring our black and native students in particular experience opportunity and success we don't have any interest in just admiring the problem instead we're doubling down our efforts to disrupt and eliminate disparities and improve students learning experiences and their academic achievement outcomes that means we got to focus on providing every student a consistent access to grade level content and standards-based aligned learning materials it also means supporting our educators providing essential professional learning coaching and supports for teachers and school leaders and evidence of this renewed focus has been in full effect this summer i want to share a little bit of what i mean by that
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a photo can speak a thousand words what's the phrase is worth a thousand words because hundreds and hundreds of teachers and every one of our school leaders have invested significant time this summer learning about our district's new curriculum adoptions and instructional framework teachers have participated in two summer institutes and other professional cadre trainings school administrators have invested in their learning and opening of school preparation during our week-long leadership institute our goal this summer has been to support our educators and school leaders get familiar with new content our collective goal is to ensure every student is becoming proficient in grade level content and standards and of course it isn't it hasn't just been our adults at pps who've been busy engaging in their learning our students our students have also been very busy this summer as you know uh directors will be hearing a more detailed wrap-up and summary of all of our summer programming at our next regular meeting of the board but i know many directors had a chance to visit some of our summer programs i did too and frankly it was uh quite incredible the the broad array of activity i'm proud that our district invent invested its state summer programming uh monies which we supplemented with additional federal one-time monies to provide one of the largest summer programs in pps history at the next school board meeting you're going to hear a comprehensive review and update but just to preview uh of some of some of the summary here high school students attempted over 2 000 credits and next week i look forward to joining directors and celebrating our 2022 summer graduates overall more than 3 700 students kindergarten to 8th grade participated in summer learning acceleration opportunities across 25 schools students also participated in an array of enrichment activities led by an impressive array of more than 50 community-based summer partners and we welcomed new kindergarteners to school early across 19 classrooms as directors know our early kindergarten transition program ekt is a successful three-week summer program that slowly welcomes new kindergarteners and their families early ensuring a smoother positive entrance into the school system all of this activity could not be possible without the dedication of our educators staff administrators and community partners thank you thank you for making this summer enrichment and learning possible for our students our central office teams such as hr business and finance they've also been busy this summer uh they've been hard at work uh both our school modernization and our it teams have also been productive they've maintained a steady and ambitious set of summer projects among accomplishments this includes 90 gym floors have been completely refinished five new roofs have been installed and two seismic retrofit projects have also been completed added to the list a new softball field for grant high school a new track and field at roosevelt high school side note a track of the same quality high quality as the one you'll find at the hayward complex at the u of o and after years of being separated at two campuses we're excited to bring the access academy school community all back together in a dedicated and remodel new home next week as well and in a week the new lincoln high school will open its doors making it the next comprehensive high school in pps to be rebuilt into a world-class learning campus for our students and staff we hope everybody can join the september 17th grand opening celebration and as always i want to take the opportunity to thank the voters of the city of portland for their overwhelming support and to understanding how important investing in our public schools truly is thank you for that staffing i'm i'm excited to share with you that we are staffed and prepared to provide home to school transportation service to every eligible student here at pps last year was challenging for most school dis systems i recognize that that's why we've made a concerted effort to begin this school year diversifying our transportation partners we have two instead of one helping us to operate 264 routes at the start of this school year operating these routes will ensure every student gets to and from school over the next few months we expect to grow the number of routes to 300 that'll improve efficiency service and create less ride time for students each and every day and on continued positive news also pleased to share with you that our school principals and central office teams have been hard at work interviewing and onboarding new educators and school-based staff as of today more than 97 percent of elementary and k-5 classroom positions and k-8s are
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filled with an identified homeroom teacher 97 when it comes to core content classrooms at the secondary level that means the subjects of math science language arts and social studies we're looking there we're looking good there as well so overall we are just over 200 school-based instructional vacancies we're paying close attention to special education and are encouraging anyone who's in the portland area who's interested or interested in moving to the pacific northwest come join team pbs our numbers are iterative they're continuing to change i can tell you that of the school-based vacancies over 30 percent of them already have a candidate identified who is in progress of being welcomed into pps just can we take a pause for quick questions on this um you said 200 classroom based positions and i'm just trying to figure out how that relates to the numbers right so i was referring to homerooms uh when i mentioned the elementary number uh there are other employee groups that where we get to that 200 number so uh there could be there's counseling positions there's qualified mental health providers social workers pe uh elective classes uh world languages so there's some non and some non-licensed school-based vacancies as well in totality thank you so i'm curious um where would the um education assistants and the para educators um fall in these broader categories are they included in this or is this i'm just referring to licensed educators here yeah they're they're not included on on the screen but i have that information for you that'd be great how are you doing because of course uh so uh a pair of educators 93 uh we are we have 93 vacancies uh in para educators and 40 of those have already been identified in stage over the hiring process and what about the eas is that broken out as well that's paraeducators i don't have eas but i will make sure to get that information and then my other question in this little bit follows on the substitute are we seeing any sort of trends of where the vacancies are they district-wide are in clusters of schools or um in particular geographic areas or that that's certainly of interest is you know or do we see a pattern of you know impact at particular schools or not all i can say is our hr team our school principals they're super uh active and busy uh in identifying folks i couldn't tell you at the moment here without looking at the list if those are affecting a particular cluster or not and i just wanted to put this in the larger context and i mean you know i think it was the washington post ran an article last week about the school-wide nationwide school staffing shortages and so you know i i just seconding what you said i mean there are still positions to fill in the context of what we're seeing nationwide i think as a district we're doing really well and i think that speaks to the aggressive recruiting we've been doing all summer long um and and really all year long and so anything we can do as a board to continue to help please let us know um and and again i think the information the director of edwards is is asking for us once things settle down and you know it will be good good to know that retro retro it'll be good to know that once we have everyone in place i think right now what i'm hearing is we're just in this sprint to like one week to go and let's get those absolutely and uh not interested in distracting folks the the numbers are changing on a daily basis lots of interviewing happening i can assure you across every one of our buildings including here two other employee groups i want to mention on the custodial and nutrition services front happy to share that all 100 of our part-time custodial positions are filled and we're getting close to filling remaining full-time positions as well uh more than 60 of the vacancies have been filled by candidates or are in the process of being onboarded so you know we're in pretty good shape there relative to to previous years question does that go ahead i'm just wondering how we're doing with our recruitment of educator educators of color especially our child facing educators of color sure um i don't have the demographic data in front of me so yeah we can get that information from you at the next board meeting so just so folks have a uh uh understanding we will continue to update you uh regularly over the course of the next few weeks or a few mon a few board meetings on back to school so make sure we'll bring that information forward great because i think that's almost our strongest suit for um attracting families is like they arrived that first day of school and there's a teacher in the classroom a permanent principal um the question i was going to ask on the custodians um have we i know last year in the budget process um there were a number cut and
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i'm wondering does that include the rover pool or how how are we doing on that um you can also another good detailed question i don't want to put our ceo on the spot with it um i i think it's taken into account all the positions yeah yeah so we'll have a rover pool will there be a roving pool which is not this year okay i'm gonna proceed uh i'm gonna actually turn it over to our chief of staff jonathan garcia uh to talk uh through a few slides of information here related to health and safety protocols for for the year thank you superintendent and as we were talking uh earlier about substitutes i just want to also give that that number we have 400 and about 450 teacher subs cleared to take jobs today with an additional 350 finishing mandatory training and or renewal requirements so again kudos to our hr team for the aggressive push there here at pps we're committed to promoting safe and healthy learning environments so that high quality and joyful learning uh teaching and learning can happen in our schools we've learned a lot in the last two years about covet 19 and respiratory illnesses from the beginning of the global pandemic we've been guided by advice from the public health from public health experts made adjustments based on new data and updated science and applied what we've learned to guide our response as a result we're in a better place today as a community with more ways to protect ourselves and each other from kova 19 and other communicable diseases including vaccinations boosters access to testing availability of high quality masks and improved ventilation this year pps plans to use layered health and safety measures and strategies like testing availability required covet 19 vaccination for staff and volunteers and continuing to be a communication vessel for public health recommendations for individuals and their families so what does that mean in your board packet you have a memo from dr john franco and i which outlines the steps we're taking the protocols we have in place and the recommendations we will share with our community related to cova 19 and other respiratory and communicable diseases in short here at pps we're building a culture and a community of care one where every individual whether a student staff or family must do their individual part to protect themselves and others from respiratory illnesses like the flu or kobe 19. that means staying home when you're sick wearing a mask based on your personal risk assessment each school will have ready access to high quality masks for anyone who requests one it means getting tested for kobe 19 if you're feeling sick we will continue to collaborate with the oregon health authority who will continue to offer free covet 19 testing options for for staff and students of course we've stated here many times before we all institutions and individuals must follow and closely monitor public health guidance and recommendations we of course will follow all local and state rules for health services and communicable disease control and implement best practices to mitigate the impact on school communities and it means getting vaccinated and boosted against communicable diseases like cova 19 and the flu here at pps we will continue to partner with health organizations to provide these free of charge to families students and staff pps understands that airflow and circulation are critical components that support everyday health that is why here at pps we've taken numerous steps to improve air quality across our buildings and we are confident that our systems are safe and meet all regular regulatory standards for air quality in fact here at pps we've spent more than 5.8 million dollars to improve ventilation our schools including making sure every classroom and learning space is equipped with the portable hepa filter upgrading and regular maintaining building filters which are now meeting verb 13 standards regular inspection and review of air quality in every building and in 2020 portland voters approved 75 million dollars to upgrade hvac systems across the district i am confident and proud of the tremendous effort we've done to provide healthier and safer learning environments for our students and i think these sets of strategies and learning updates regular updates from public health and national experts will help us prepare for the year ahead so what can we do what can every single one of us do immediately make sure you're fully vaccinated or boosted we plan on making vaccine clinics
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available here at the besc next monday for anyone in our community who is interested and if you can't make it on monday know that our multnomah county student health centers at five schools are open monday through friday and will have vaccines and boosters readily available for any youth in our community mr superintendent thank you jonathan for the health and safety update while we're talking about the start of the school year next tuesday the reality is that many opening of school activities in some cases are already in motion so while classes haven't officially started many of our students are already participating and reconnecting in a variety of school activities this includes quite an array of community building gatherings leadership retreats there's been schools hosting organized kindergarten play dates at the local parks and of course fall athletics and sports are underway soccer football cross country for example and you'll appreciate this director lowry high school bands have started coming together too they're busy practicing their pep band tracks for not just athletic events but for welcoming back students for building community as the school year starts the other friday we had a chance to run into the lincoln band already at work in their new state-of-the-art band room and i know that they're ready for that as well so directors this is just a quick overview of our preparations and efforts aimed at ensuring a positive start of the new school year i want to thank all the educators and staff for all of the hard work that they're putting in and in for their role in making sure we're ready we're ready to welcome back our students and for the many of our students who are transitioning to either a new middle or high school experience that also includes getting a jump start to become familiar with get oriented to their new school campuses and the same is true for our new kindergarten and preschool head start students who will be starting their educational careers here at pps i know that this is an exciting time for both families and our youngest scholars thank you directors thank you superintendent yeah um so are there any questions from the board a couple of different ones thank you for that great presentation i think there's just general excitement it seems like it's going to be a great start of the school year one question around sort of health and safety issues just looking at the 10-day forecast that it's still going to be really hot so there was a question around covid and everything else about the windows opening but if you're in a building that there's no air conditioning i'm wondering um i know there had been some review of whether windows could be open and just like where do parents go or school staff go if they have questions and is that something that um pps is prepared to it's a great questions about her like how are people gonna know i can just tell people are gonna we're gonna start hearing the my kids on the second floor and there's no windows chief operator officer dan young good evening uh yeah when there are particularly hot days we typically look at a temperature of about 90 or 95. we'll stand up a group our emergency operations committee to look to see if we have spaces that are particularly hot and look to deploy specific to those schools what we might need to do and so sometimes that is deploying fans if if we need out at certain schools uh sometimes it's potentially moving students to spaces that are cooler usually those temperatures don't last for an extended period of time at least not so much right now but those are our immediate uh reactions that we take to when we have particularly hot days like with covete is there a place on the website where parents could go um just like i say i know there's at the start school starting my school is an old school where do they look to get that information or they just call the school it it's handled and managed at the school level and so it would be a place to go to the individual schools if there are specific questions if there was something where district-wide we would take an action or make a decision we would communicate that to the district or those individual schools later this week we will also be publishing our standard operating procedures for the school year uh and sharing those broadly uh with our families and staff in that will outline you know standard operating procedures for uh everything related to health and safety safety so we have about 10 10 or so protocols in place related to communicable diseases for the year following on that i think it's great because i think the more communication and staff did a great job through the pandemic of providing lots of information over and over again because sometimes you have to tell people multiple ways um in the standard operating procedures is there anything related to air exchange that has changed from last year or that um providing guidance like don't turn you know don't turn down turn it down or here's what to put in the room so it's not so loud or
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that seemed to be an issue last last year our procedures for our ventilation are pretty similar to last year we're continuing to maximize airflow uh with the standing up printing procedure we have so all of our building mechanical systems have been augmented to open the dampers so they bring in the maximum amount of fresh air that come into the systems we run the systems longer throughout the day every one of our living spaces has a portable hepa filter in those space spaces and we are continuing with our quarterly inspections of all of our buildings uh ventilation systems and then we have a separate contract if there's any deficiencies that are found they go and respond to those uh it was over a year ago in 2021 we had our industrial hygienist we have on contract go out and do indoor air quality testing sampling at all of our schools and came back and said that the air quality in every one of the schools you know looked good and they were occupiable schools so we're continuing with a lot of those similar practices that we put in place two years ago yeah and then we just to add here um as part of the communication that we'll be going now for example i here have a one pager that's still in draft you know but outlines for example that building ventilation especially in our classrooms for example is a combination of many elements right outside air supply air flow measured by cfm or cubic feet per minute the temperature humidity building filtration so there are a number of aspects connected to air building ventilation that we want to share and be transparent you know with our community so there's a clear a clear understanding of ventilation in our schools additional questions i just wanted to comment that how inspiring it was to be able to be a part of some of the leadership the activities at leadership week this is with our principals and assistant principals i didn't have a chance to join in with the educators the next week but um it was so clear that the focus for building leaders was so tight on student academic achievement and in individualized supports and in high expectations for the the the brilliance and the potential of every single one of our students and for me i'm a lay person but it felt very different because it not only felt like there was a much higher degree of accountability for our educators and for our building leaders but it also felt like there was a much greater degree of support and um that i felt that really deeply but it was also really great to talk to our principals and everyone in the room people were pumped up they felt like you know let's do this let's just watch our kids soar let's help our kids soar and it was a kind of enthusiasm and positivity that frankly i haven't seen or felt in a long time and i think you know it has to do with the fact that we've this work takes time and we've had a good team in place now for several years and we continue to attract just absolutely top-notch leadership looking at you dr proctor and all of you everyone but it was really palpable in that room and really exciting to be there yeah no thank you so much for um for sharing those comments good evening board directors and student representative um brani right brian byrony so definitely an exciting time in the school year when we get with our educators and our school leaders and we set the vision and set the expectation that we have for what we want to see our students experience and yes thank you so much for coming to our leadership institute and it was grounded not only in those high expectations about what we want our students to experience in teaching and learning and the role that school leaders play specifically in driving those efforts in each and every one of their buildings as principles and assistant principles but the theme of the week was also grounded deeply in equity and ensuring that we provide uh equitable experiences for every single child in the building and we used data we used anecdotal observations we used our strong focus on our instructional framework that we're extremely excited about and our strong focus on the implementation of newly adopted curriculum which is really exciting
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and pairing that with um our updates in our scope and sequence through our gvc um really helps to ensure that we have now a truly um guaranteed viable curriculum because now we have the piece of curriculum added to it so everyone was excited in the space um uh with the leadership and the charge um that was given by superintendent guerrero i don't know if if you were able to come back on the last day but the room was electric with our student performances and i encourage us collectively just to continue to keep our students in the center it's really important you know we talk about um our accolades and our our appreciations and no better way than to start a board meeting right with celebrating students and you know so we look forward to continuing to update the board on our progress towards these efforts thank you any additional questions or comments hopefully you all heard we're taking we're putting great energy into making sure we're very ready and prepared we are uh all the nuts and bolts our operation center will be up on the first day of school our principals have a hotline to report out these issues i know you have some questions there but rest assured we're going to do everything we can to make sure we have a positive start to the school year and again just to reiterate what we're most excited about is squarely putting our time and effort into the teaching and learning that's why we we're here and that's our why and so we're excited about that thank you thank you superintendent and and continuing the theme of appreciation i think just seeing the summer school successes that you've outlined are amazing we talked about the hiring a little bit as well and just this overall preparation to get back to school um is pretty phenomenal and and coming off i don't think anyone would disagree it was a very tough year um and i think you know i don't think central office got a rest to relax much but but getting ready for this new school year and getting people like you said excited it was exciting it was nice to be there at the leadership team and i'm excited for the school year so thank you for that update um is there any other business at this time before we adjourn yes so vice chair thank you so uh this is outside of i guess pps i guess but it's included them so i was at a green transportation summit up in tacoma and one of the things that i ended up looking at was the electric school buses and so we was had a tour we got the ride in them and all that stuff and one of the things actually came up was our stance on our climate uh climate policy which was i think was really good you know when you're in a a forum with um and i wasn't going up there for the school bus portion but um just being able to hear the appreciation that they had for what we were doing down here uh was was awesome um and so there's a lot of great thing that's going on around the whole school bus stuff um but i don't know who's in charge of that um but that was that was great i would want to make sure i talked to someone because when what i hear there's like billions of dollars coming and for priority school yes billions yeah that are coming down for green technology especially for uh school buses uh procurements so propane hydrogen electric it was all that yeah we approved two at the last board meeting two electric buses yeah but without here we could get up to like 23. right with the rebate from the fed for priority schools or something like that so we'll talk we're talking about you're already previewing and we're on it on the team we avail ourselves of every opportunity and when that first electric bus comes off the supply chain issues we will give you all a ride yeah yeah but it was great it was great to hear you know about us and about what we're doing down here thanks for that thank you vice chair all right the next regular meeting of the board will be held on september 6th no i'm just saying i think i want to buy a bus at 23 between my family this meeting is 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)

2022-08-23 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: 8/23/22 PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting

Sources