2022-10-25 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2022-10-25
Time 18:00:00
Venue PESC Auditorium
Meeting Type regular
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting - 10/25/2022 - Meeting starts at 43:30

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[Music] foreign [Music] thank you time oh yeah again it is just not show up because I've had all the time right now foreign
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thank you foreign
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thank you foreign happy um they tore it down now used to be right next to the hardware store on Broadway okay we good all right good evening we're gonna get going here open um this board meeting of the board of education for October 25th 2022 is called to order for tonight's meeting any item that we voted on has been posted on the PPS website under the board and meetings tab this meeting is being streamed live on PPS TV services website and on Channel 28 it will be replayed throughout the next two weeks and you can check the district website for replay times good evening thank you all for being here tonight uh director green is joining us virtually this evening with a lovely wedding photo um thanks director green um before we get started just a couple of reminders um we just do we do ask that everyone attending the meeting tonight members of the public staff of Portland Public Schools as well as board members treat each other with respect we're excited that you've taken time out of your day to get involved in our school district whether it's to testify or just to observe the proceedings and I think our ability to do this and have this meeting civilly is what makes our community stronger so thank you very much for being here tonight if you wish to display signs and or banners please remain in the auditorium foia behind the seating area so that you don't block any attendees views of the proceedings and for safety reasons we also need to keep all the walkways and aisles clear and in general we would just appreciate if we can all be mindful of others in the room and remember that we are setting an example for our community's children today with that we're going to dive into our agenda tonight we'll start off with the
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consent agenda board members if there are any items you would like to pull for discussion we will set those aside for discussion about at the end of the meeting Miss Bradshaw are there any changes the consent agent I believe there is one yes yes we are withdrawing resolution 6595 adoption of the minutes okay adoption the minutes and we'll roll that over to the next board meeting great thank you very much board members are there any items you would like to pull from the consent agenda for discussion or questions so I don't necessarily want to pull anything but I want to pull everything at the same time um and a reason why is because when and I've been looking at the consent agenda and the contracts that we've been doing probably for the last eight or nine um board meetings and one of the things that is distilled disturbing is that we are not utilizing certified businesses um we have almost 30 some million dollars worth a little over 30 some million dollars worth of contracts on this consent agenda and it is zero certified businesses so I wanted to call that out and I want to make sure I want to make sure everybody understands from each I'm going to be calling this out because I think we need to do better to make sure we're using certified firms and I also want to ask the board at some point if we look at certified businesses from Oregon maybe we need to expand that certified businesses in the United States maybe so that's just really a concern of mine that I've looked at so that's what I say about that part of it um but I do have a appreciation for I think nine six five nine five I believe that's the part of the consent agenda talking about authorization for off-campus activities I learned that um some of these these programs are getting funded from PPS at a substantial rate to make it affordable for our kids to go so I want to make sure that I give a shout out to the district Forest where we uh passed and I hope this is coming out of that money that we passed yeah from the Opera funding um but I want to make sure we highlight that because this is what intentionality looks like when we are able to make decisions and effect change this is what it looks like when I talk to a couple coaches on here they literally was saying the amount of money that they got from him from from us for these trips really helped to make sure all of their kids would be able to go without any Financial burdens so I wanted to appreciate that director Holland oh sorry uh I just wanted to say I send an email to staff but I made it clear that it was not I didn't need the information before this meeting but just asking um for information about how that fund is being administered where it sits how those decisions how those requests are being vetted uh how and by whom those decisions are being made so when I get that of course I'll share it with everybody and I agree with everything you just said I also have a quick comment um I think before you join the board we didn't have that far right column the certified business column and I ask that staff add that column so we could track where we were spending our dollars it's important that we spend our dollars as a publicly funded institution with women and minority businesses in particular um and I have up until now commented whenever there's a check mark in that box and I had dedicated myself to talking about starting at this meeting the fact that there's very rarely a minority-owned business check mark in there so I want to just appreciate you for bringing it up it's really important to me it's important to our economy it's important to model um and I'm particularly concerned about the modernizations especially at Jefferson when we're working in a historically black neighborhood in a historically black high school and I'm wondering because we haven't built the relationships up in the last five years where we're going to find people um so so there's that where are we going to find people and it can be done because Multnomah County uh city of Portland Prosper Portland like other public agencies Metro actually do a better job years ago Portland Public used to have a person that I interfaced with all the time that was in the purchasing department they were dedicated to minority women-owned and emerging small businesses by the way which aren't emerging or small but they're not women-owned or minority owned and there used to be a dedicated person here at PPS that went to those owami meetings and went to Namco meetings that person we were supposed to be hiring a person to do that job and I
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haven't seen anything about it since so I'm hoping that we do invest in a person that can make the surrounds of meetings and build those relationships because we're going to need them we needed them yesterday so thank you for bringing that up and with the bond funded work there it is that is an item on our dashboard that goes to the bond accountability committee and actually our big modernization projects are the ones where we're doing the best in that regard but it's still uh you know it's still a challenge because that can be you know a few large contractors that end up making up a big portion of the work but um you know we need better strategies for our many smaller contracts spreading spreading it around you want uh chair if you want to take a quick comment from our CEO and substantive efforts that have been made to build up certified business uh opportunities do you want to just say a sentence about that absolutely uh good evening everyone Dan young Chief Operating Officer uh just a quick a couple notes well one I do believe that there is the annual update around certified business participation District I think that's coming here fairly shortly uh to the board that comes from the purchasing Contracting Department I've seen the sneak peek and it's it's actually it's it's very good performance for the year um I'm kind of going from memory but I think we exceeded all of our goals for the year we continue to see a high number of contracts for certified businesses where the staff influence on the Contracting method is there's more staff influence so usually these are smaller contracts or contracts we can go directly to a firm versus where we have to take the lowest uh the lowest bid price on a contract so that I think is positive news and and to the question about hiring staff person we've recently just hired in the office of school modernization which is our bond funded projects a person who represents that role and so they're reaching out to awami uh to name acting Latino built and they're they're making those connections they've been on board for about six weeks or so I was just gonna say Dan when will that report be available it sounded like you were saying the report on on use of certified firms yeah I believe it's coming pretty soon I'll need to check with our purchasing Contracting Department though thank you yeah and I appreciate that and too I think it's going to be at the board level that we make sure that we are continuing continuously uh being intentional about the use of funds how we use our funds and and what contractors we use especially when someone contracts that's coming up and so as the owner of these projects you know we have a lot of Leverage The leeway and how we spend those well we know we have some Bond regulations but within those regulations we have a lot of leeway to where we can really be intentional to making sure that and I've said this before you know when you look at some of these big contractors like Hoffman or Turner a lot of their big growth came with Public Funding projects and we can be that as well for our our minority contractor so great thank you director matters yeah director to pass for highlighting because I think what you cannot see you don't act on um and so I'm I'm supportive of this as a as an action to um sort of send a message of um interest in more Diversified suppliers I guess the other thing is um uh another way to think about it also is in addition to you might not have a certified business but the team that is supporting the work um I just for another large public institution did went through a sort of procurement process with extensive interviews and one of the like high criteria items is like don't come with a non-diverse team um and so you know there are multiple ways we can make progress in addition to um the work that's underway as well I think it's a good time to pause and think about what what else we could do okay thank you one clarification that memo is actually in the board packet from October 11th so it's already been provided great the report was provided October thank you it's from purchasing and Contracting okay appreciate it um do I have a motion a second to adopt the consent agenda so moved director to pass moves Vice chair Holland seconds the adoption of the consent agenda is there any board discussion any further board discussion the only thing that's going to call out is if people haven't had a chance to see
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the amazing tribute to Dr profit that occurred over the weekend it's um you can see why we're naming renaming this building after Dr profit it was it was great and there it's on YouTube um but it's really well worth watching and uh hearing from the people that he impacted I mean this is 30 years ago now but all of the leaders in the community speaking to um let's in tribute to Dr profit that it's and our the reason why it's connected with the consent agenda is where the doctor Matt Prophet now or Matthew profit um but just want to note that great thank you um oh sorry is there any public comment there's not public comment but I think that I noted the incorrect resolution number was being withdrawn okay okay down wrong so six five nine four just in case that's not what I said okay 6594 has been withdrawn great so the board will now vote on resolutions 6595 through 6598 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no student representative McMahon are there any abstentions the consent agenda is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative McMahon voting yes uh we're now going to turn in our agenda to student in public comments um before we begin just a couple of quick reviews of our guidelines around public comment um again we thank you for taking your time to attend the meeting tonight and provide in your comment it really does inform and improve our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts and Reflections the board office may follow up on board related issues raised during public testimony we do 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 that you would like to provide to the board or the superintendent you can email them to public comment pps.net that's public comment all one word at pps.net when you begin your comments um please clearly state your name and spell your last name and you'll have three minutes to speak and there will be a sound after three minutes at which point we would appreciate it if you could just wrap up your comments Miss Bradshaw um who do we have signed up for public comment Henry walrond Welcome to our board meeting thank you very much for being here again if you could just state your name and then you can start whenever you're ready and the time will start our third grade class would like you to consider changing the calendar for next school year to show respect to indigenous people President Joe Biden declared indigenous people's Day a federal holiday and bakes government buildings and post offices all closed to honor it 10 22 and we had school as normal but then Friday 10 14 22 was a seemingly random day off we feel that is disrespectful to indigenous people who were here first in conclusion we hope that you will consider reading arranging the calendar to honor indigenous peoples um for our next school year sincerely and I'll see third graders [Applause] young young men are you guys from mlc from mlc thank you thank you very much Carol Johnson Smith hello my name is Carol Johnson Smith j-o-h-n-s-o-n Dash s-m-i-t-h I am a special education teacher that started my career in 1985 and I've been around long enough to see a lot of changes to special education one of the biggest changes is the amount of case management paperwork special education teachers are expected to complete I'm here to tell you why the current job expectations for special ed teachers is unsustainable special education teachers are the case managers of students on IEPs in the early years of my career I hand wrote IEPs on NCR forms and held one IEP meeting per student once per year the rest of the time I created lessons managed para Educators and collected data on its IEP goals when a student needed a three-year re-evaluation a team from the district office conducted the evaluation and facilitated the meeting I did not work every night and every weekend but not anymore fast forward to 2022 and I can tell you that I have never worked so many hours in my entire career the amount of case management work and lesson planning for PPS special education teachers is
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staggering I am currently a Learning Center teacher at the ivy Charter School from 2012 to 2021 I was a full-time teacher Mentor working with special education teachers in their first and second year of teaching across Portland Public Schools I know firsthand what so many special education teachers are going through in this District I am not exaggerating when I say that I and my special ed teacher colleague spent anywhere from three to twenty hours writing just one IEP PP use PPS uses the Synergy system for IEPs which we switch to and uh which we switched to in 2012. the amount of time to complete IEP paperwork requirements has at least tripled due to synergy's cumbersome system here are some of the case management duties that specialized teachers perform they make sure the Gen Ed teachers collecting progress monitoring data scheduling meetings with parents school and special ed staff filling out an official meeting notice and sending home to parents facilitating IEP meetings filling out required forms for each IEP conducting standardized academic testing using the ktea this can take four to six hours or more including Administration scoring and report writing collecting additional academic and social emotional data writing the IEP it can take anywhere from three to fifteen hours to do this because uh there's a lot of redundancy in the forms and dates must be added up to 50 times under a ton of drop down menus and it just takes a long time to go through the system we need to take meeting minutes to IEPs we have to fill out additional form for the records Clerk to review our documents we have to make an IEP at a glance for Gen Ed teachers so they have a record of students accommodations and modifications then we have to schedule students into small groups and provide specially designed instruction we create Data Systems to collect data on their IEP goals we write fbas and Behavior Support plans collect data on Behavior Support plans you can conduct multiple IEP meetings for one student student throughout the year as required and or requested by parents I have a lot more to say but I'll try to wrap it up um just to know that we don't have the appropriate intervention curriculum we need for all of our students we are teaching students from the Pre-K level to grade level um 360 hours per week we're supposed to have for our prep time we're not getting that and we do not have adequate time um our contract only allows for 32 hours for case management per year per year I offer some solutions I will send you more of my thoughts in an email thank you for your time thank you so much Rebecca Hannaford foreign my son is an eighth grader at Roseway Heights Middle School he's one of the many black students in PBS who is gifted but not tag identified because he struggles with dyslexia and other learning challenges my son is a highly sensitive kid I've come to think of him as a canary in the coal mine if he's feeling safe and happy in school it's a healthy place last year the out-of-control violence and bullying at Roseway Heights caused his body and mind to shut down he missed 79 days of school and no one except his fed teachers seemed to notice or care this year Roseway Heights has a strong new principle my son is cautiously eased his way back into school last week he attended five days in a row for the first time since last fall he often does his work in the halls of the office because he finds the classrooms too chaotic we need more sped support Roseway started the year with budget for five para Educators but only one position was staffed the four open roles have finally been filled but they haven't started yet in the meantime sped teachers are working with the high needs kids who require one-on-one support which means students like my son aren't getting Services they are legally due in mid-september the school made a re-entry support plan for my son it's now late October and his sped teacher has not had time to fully implement the plan my son has still not received the makeup IEP hours that he was due from his sixth grade and seventh grade years the district's plan for making up the misfed IEP hours is designed to punish rather than meet the needs of students with IEPs they plan to provide in-person tutoring outside school hours or remote tutoring through a contracted service it's well known that many kids with IEPs do not learn well in the online environment in-person tutoring outside school hours is a punishment it conflicts with after-school obligations
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and requires Transportation plus we know that neurodivergent kids can only handle a limited amount of in-school time the district's plan won't help my son it's not just kids with IEPs who are struggling the Roseway Heights Community was traumatized by last year's chaos teachers need more training and support around student trauma and student discipline part of this must be anti-racism training my son and his friends are constantly called out for behavior that white kids do without any consequences when the black students protest this Injustice they're seen as troublemakers last week a white teacher called security staff to her room after a group of black students including my son pointed out her racial bias when students act out their families are called if this happens often enough kids are suspended there's no administrative bandwidth to build a relationship with families or to explore the reasons students are acting out we need the district to provide immediate administrative Staffing to support equity-centered trauma-informed student discipline we have an open assistant principal position that hasn't been filled we also need an additional position to support disciplinary practices currently administrators are filling in as subs and are unable to consistently do this work we also need proactive support practices outlined in writing for parents and students underlying the and addressing the underlying causes that student behavior is communicating the lack of sped services and administrative support at pps's CSI and TSI middle schools is a lawsuit waiting to happen real Equity requires more than talk it requires resources and accountability and my son and his peers deserve better thank you thank you [Applause] Catherine Khalil welcome my name is Kate Khalil c-a-l-e-a-l um and I am the reading intervention teacher at okley Green Middle School um I'm not a special ed teacher I'm here just because um I'm here for my kids and for all of the future students at okley I've been teaching at okley for five years now we've seen massive teacher and administrative turnover since last year and those numbers are still climbing as we continue to lose staff to other districts mid-year we have two classrooms that are being taught by substitute Educators not even long-term substitute Educators we have five first-year teachers we have one PE class that is being taught in a portable a portable that is old falling apart and can't possibly fit 38 students on yoga mats they've been doing yoga on the basketball court when it's raining what happens then I believe that okley can be great I believe it's our duty to make it great our students deserve highly effective experienced teachers and administrators who are able to engage them they deserve a leadership team who's committed to seeing akeley green transform into a bright curious creative joy-filled building that values learning and growing we need Leaders with a vision who can hold staff and students accountable who will raise the standards and demand cutting-edge teaching and learning and we need District support to do this I have sent two emails regarding this to our district leadership without real tangible results and that's why I'm standing in front of you today this is not me complaining this is me keeping it real and and wondering what it will take to actually be heard it's my hope that we can collectively prioritize the okley Green community we can't roll out a new instructional framework without first stabilizing the buildings that are falling apart and how is their money to roll out a new framework but not money to support our students of color like if we care about racial equity in our district and we're prioritizing our black and brown kids it's imperative that you hear me right now like I invite all of you to come to akeley Green to see firsthand what it looks like in our building the condition of our building our classrooms our class sizes to step in into classrooms and witness what kind of learning is or is not happening to walk the hallways and then to think about what high functioning middle schools can and should actually look like and do in this same district I know we can do better we don't need a long drawn out bureaucratic process either we don't need a copy and paste email saying all the struggles that we have we need tangible results we need incentives to draw and keep experienced
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teachers here we need to fill our vacant positions as soon as possible we need District support here to help us Implement systems that work to create positive celebratory experiences for students who are showing academic success and we need funding to buy the supplies and equipment that all kids should have access to we need funding for field trips like field trips there is no money for field trips and Rich experiences that allow I will wrap it up in like five seconds that allows students to see different parts of the city in the state and we need people committed to our building as a parent myself I know middle school isn't the easiest place but I also know it can be a place of joy of learning of growth we owe it to our kids to make this happen at okley Green and all other middle schools in our district this is how we show Equity work this is how we tell our students they matter if we can't even find a working projector for a classroom how are kids supposed to feel like their learning matters like they matter so please like here hear me come come out thank you [Applause] Bianca Cohen so I I just wanted to make sure I responded to what she was saying and actually me and uh director green have been out there um and met with the principal and looked at the portal uh the Portables and everything and there was a plan action taken like the next day um so I wanted to make sure that you knew we have been out there we have walked the Halls we looked at the some of the issues that they had out there and you're right some of them was I walked in there and looked like I was like what the hell you know I don't believe our kids is in there but the next day or two we closed they closed it down because of that um so we are hearing you and we are looking at you know the equity for our kids now based on the field trip piece um I don't know if you heard me earlier but there is a fund four field trips uh especially for our black and brown kids to be able to access those funds that we um approved earlier this year so they can go on field trips and help with the financial piece from PPS it was a total of almost five hundred thousand dollars worth um so your principals and whoever you need to talk to there uh talk with them so they they have access to those funds as well thank you thank you miss Bradshaw Bianca Cohen welcome I have it on my phone thanks to the members of the board thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of myself and in terms my students I wanted to express my thoughts and frustrations regarding the treatment I've received as an autistic special educator and PPS that has led to my resignation I am walking away from this profession not because I've given up on this these students I'm walking away from an environment that does not support neurodivergent humans let alone any students I'm quitting to the due to the incidences of continuous harassment violation of my ADA accommodations and the failure of the District of keeping my students and fellow team members safe as of now my building is no occupational therapist and my behavior support team has revolved multiple times with no reason or notice students in my class are not getting access to inclusion in any location of my school because I've been short staffed over 20 days this year in my classroom due to the short staffing I've been alone in my classroom with up to 12 of my students for up to two hours and no one in the district has taken accountability to address the children and staff in my room getting severely injured every day I haven't had a contractually obligated lunch break since the beginning of the year for more than more than a day this is evidence to me that neurodivergent voices are not heard within our district and we are viewed as a liability because we don't fit the neurotype building and District administration created an environment where they've not only failed to keep us safe but created a hostile environment for the most marginalized students I want to point out that time and time and again we're asked to Center black and Indigenous students to make sure their voices are heard I'm the only Latina teacher in my building and as of now there are only a handful of black and brown children at Llewellyn since 2005 a Confederate flag tile has been hanging in the hallway of my school next
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to the Learning Center it's it's taken multiple District staff begging for it to be removed my an Administration from top to bottom did not value its removal and have done nothing it's still there today it's covered with duct tape that kind of racial and disability Erasure speaks for itself this is not brave it is a moral obligation to speak on behalf of the neurodivergent voices who don't have the privilege of speaking their truth I am doing this now to say goodbye thank you foreign [Applause] Carrie Harrison welcome hello my name is Carrie and Harrison last name spelled h-a-r-r-i-s-o-n I came to you last year as a para educator that had been hurt on the job I'm here to update you on what has transpired since then I was out for two and a half months I worked in the dungeon with the lovely awesome records people down there I spent half of my summer in physical therapy I came back I took on the role of the site rep for my school for for for the union and within a few weeks of being there I had two workers comp incidents that kept me out of school for about a week um my principal transferred me to the three to the the other class the three to fifth graders um without asking me if I wanted to do that um I don't blame her I would have made the same legal decision having been a paralegal at one point but it is exhausting um I'm still in touch with the K-2 classroom because my loyalties to my students and my fellow Paras when I first started I read six books in my spare time on autism I did many hours of Internet research I talked to many people I did many things I received almost no training from the district my on-the-job training composed of a few weeks with a teacher who had to quit because of the classroom issues my first couple weeks of this year I spent a couple weeks with the new teacher when they finally got a teacher and now I'm in a brand new classroom with another teacher and I am more confused than when I started it additionally I am doing because my strengths lie in park ranger and science I am doing lesson plans for science for the kids to try and make things better in the classroom in my spare time I have stacks of additional books because I've never worked with this age group before to read and I don't have the time to do it and I am burning out and I it's taking away from my personal life and I am watching two very dedicated teachers being ground into the ground day after day with the things that I am seeing for my K to two people the Perez that I'm still in touch with I am going to have to deal with talking to our principal on a very uncomfortable issue that that's come to my knowledge about the Perez being in situations that they feel are personally immoral and being placed in positions by the administration that they do not feel are safe for the children at all in any way these are people that have been there up to 25 years these are not first-year people like me um my request and demand today is that you raise the minimum wage of a para educator by five dollars and that over before we go into contract negotiation to plug up the leaking vote and to keep the people the journeyman level and the the experts in this field that can do everything to evaluate in the next couple of months how much they are really worth to the children that come to school here thank you very much thank you [Applause] coranda Cruz welcome
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all right board chair s superintendent greetings carranja Cruz c-r-e-w-s for the record I have a master's degree in education I'm a doctoral student in literacy leadership and have over 10 years of classroom teaching experience currently I'm a teacher manure that hosts an annual teacher conference that provides professional development for teachers to be better teachers I also created a literacy board game that teaches black history and the importance of literacy I'm here on behalf of the jamals and volandas which are pseudo names of black boys and black girls that have been done a disservice around the country this district and at my current School My Children's School due to the ineffective leadership of instructional leaders the lack of quality teaching many students don't have the reading and the math skills that are at grade level as a result many students are disengaged receiving referrals and receiving unacceptable unacceptable grades I volunteered my time to facilitate the black student union and as I was leaving a session I saw one of the Jamal pseudo name that I've been knowing since kindergarten causing commotion in the hallways because of the Rapport I built over the years I was able to help him out and welcome to class he asked me to come into the class because he said oh I hate this teacher so for moral support I walked into the class and walked into his desk and helped him get started with his work I quickly noticed that he could not do the work so I asked the teacher what grade level is tomorrow's pseudonym operating in however the teacher did not know and we are in October November which according to the visit 22 that is not in compliance I had to go but I'm sure Jamal was again disengaged because now a community organization coordinator was present at the time and we talked out the words he shared his perspective of the student and also shared my perspective of why the student was doing the certain things he was doing I reiterated to him that he's hiding his capabilities and he's actually crying for help he then begins to tell me that instructional specialist came to him and said you have several students that do not know how to read we both looked at each other we both had tears in our eyes because we both come from the streets and we know the trajectory of what that leads to directors you have um and also this is to director green because I know you have connections to the youth and violence prevention for the city of Portland and I know that you see the stats and you deal with the aftermath of violence on a daily I'm here to show you how we can prevent that we can actually save a few can you help me save a few kids from falling within the cracks I have some ideas and I have some ways that we can solve this problem I'm open to sharing these ideas collectively with the Union District staff and even board members because we have to do this collectively can you help me save your future malls in rolandis at our most historical significant School in the district I hear that black students are The Guiding Light of the work we even renamed a building after a black man we now have a sender of black student Excellence however we are not showing excellence in the classroom We are continuing failing kids so The Guiding Light in the center will be in question which leads me to the last point and how the school is governed you were here later on from District staff and how we are in compliance with division 22 but I could show you several examples how we are not in compliance with the teaching and learning component of the stature so let's move from symbolism and checking the box of being compliant to applying best practices so we can actually see real results do you have any questions thank you Mr Cruz appreciate your testimony any questions at this time so you talked about division 22 can you unpack that for me yes sir so division 22 it's a very it's a statue that actually governs our our education so in division 22 there's a teaching and learning component and there's assessment information the assessment information it states that teachers are supposed to have information of knowledge of several assessment uh strategy they're supposed to use within the classroom only one assessment strategy is being used which is the maps the district is paying millions of dollars for maps but Maps does not
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diagnose what actual grade level that you're operating in so what happens is that we're assessing Maps only from like fall and winter which we cannot get a clear picture of where a student is actually operating in from that particular assessment so what the district needs to do is that we need to invest in a diagnostic assessment so we can actually know exactly what grade level a student is operating in so then we can actually fill in the gaps and then scaffold and then they can grow from there but if we're just implementing tests and we're just implementing lessons we continue to pass his own kids fall within the cracks and now Middle School to high school we all know that High School you cannot be moved on So eventually you're going to drop out and we already know what that leads to thank you that's includes general public comment great thank you again for everyone's comments tonight um next up on our agenda um we have President Angela benia from our Portland Association of teachers welcome [Applause] hello hello um board of directors superintendent um as always I want to start with appreciations uh I'd like to appreciate uh Dr Franco and Dr Adams for filling in for Dr Proctor at our instructional um practices Council that allowed us to still have the meeting and have good conversations um I also want to appreciate appreciate Tracy Williams for getting back to me about that FTE count um and where the 320 FTE estimated that was added last year went into if not classroom positions um I haven't gotten the information yet but I got an email letting me know that they're working on it and I'm a data nerd so I'm excited for that um I also want to appreciate our uh racial Equity folks we'll Adnan this and uh Daniel Ledesma um as well as our racial Equity committee co-chairs um Karen Liao Nedra Miller and uh the PA team members Noel Thomas who have been training around racial equity and restorative justice in order to find a way pathwayed forward on that contract language that's supposed to train our Educators on anti-racism implicit bias and culturally responsive practices um the language again it says that the district shall provide each professional educator professional development on those three practices I'm really glad that we got started on that work um and we want to make sure that we're thinking about how to make that meaningful because I don't want this to just look like a couple of slides added to a professional development uh training during a PD you know without training or support because we want Equity not equity so now I want to talk a little bit about special education so last meeting I shared what we heard from Educators working in special education and I'm come back here today to share some concerns about the district push to remove language from article 9 in our contract about the full Continuum of special ed services that language states that the district shall maintain a full Continuum of special education services and sufficient seats in a variety of programs to meet students identified special education needs for context this language was put into place to make sure that no matter what the need each and every student has a placement that is appropriate for them and will help them achieve the goals created by their Special Education team and family so when a student on this autism spectrum goes into a classroom that is over stimulating and the fight or flight response tells them to run they're not in the appropriate placement for their identified special education needs when 12 students do not get their specialized specially designed instruction because one student is struggling that student is not in the appropriate placement for the students identified special education needs when students and staff are bit kicked hit have their hair pulled and are strangled regularly at work those students are not in the appropriate placement for their individual in the identified special education needs but these are the situations that are happening across the district right now when you have a non-verbal student receiving intensive skills Services since they were in kindergarten and they're shoved into a general education classroom without a paraeducator or any support that is not appropriate placement for their identified special education needs and but that is exactly what happened this summer during recovery services so we keep hearing whispers about inclusion coming to our district but neither Pat nor Educators and our
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special Educators have gotten any direct information around the restructuring of special ed so inclusion as a concept and well-executed executed program is awesome right it means that students of all abilities get their needs met at their neighborhood school with their peers it requires more Staffing more training more planning and time to do that planning unfortunately we've seen what PPS does so we we have a hard time believing what PPS says right when we have real concerns that students who are in need of specific services will be shoved into general education classrooms without support we know that they're not going to be given the access to education that they have Federal rights to that is not fair to those students to their fellow classmates or the Educators working overtime to ensure that they follow those students educational plans I used to tell my fourth graders that fair is not the same fair means everyone gets what they need we cannot ensure that every student will get what they need if we remove the language we fought for the district shall maintain a full Continuum special education services and sufficient seats in a variety of programs to meet students identified special education needs and I understand the fear we don't have the staff to keep those classrooms open we have over 50 Pera openings our special educators are transferring from buildings to buildings and out of the district but here's the thing I've talked to so many Educators who want to work for PPS who want to love working for PPS but when we have Educators attempting to leave toxic School administrations and their emails go unanswered that's when they reconsider staying at PPS when you have Educators retaliated against for being loud Union voices advocating for students in special education they reconsider staying at PPS and when Educators who are on the verge of tears because they cannot be successful with their caseload of 50 students are told well let's review your schedule to make sure you're using your time efficiently by HR they reconsider staying at PPS when we have Educators being told to write IEPs for students they've never met because the district cannot staff the vacant positions they reconsider staying at PPS and it's illegal Educators Educators who want to do right by their students are leaving this District because the decisions being made by District leaders and offices make it clear that it's in makes it near impossible to feel and be successful while serving our kids we need our district to trust the professionals they've hired to do this work when a professional specialist says Hey the student needs a different placement I've done the assessment I've I've seen I've seen the impacts of of the lack of learning they shouldn't be vetoed by a special education administrator who's never set foot in their building let alone this this person doesn't know or understand the students needs when you have schools like pioneer become completely unsafe and chaotic for both students and staff daily when IEPs and bsps and specially designed instructional minutes and curriculum and overall learning is rarely taking place you have staff quitting daily you are significantly understaffed and overwhelmed and no matter how many times you reach out for support it goes unheard that's when those folks choose to leave and we know that when special education is ignored and underfunded and understaffed everyone suffers all students who have no place to go where they all students end up not having a place to go where they feel safe where they feel ready to learn the Educators who want to include all the students but are constantly stopping fists from swinging the special Educators who are you know having nightmares over walkie-talkie calls because they're constantly responding to the static of that walkie that's their Norm day after day after day that is harmful to our students that is not serving our students we need an investment in our special education services we need families and community members to know what is happening at our sites even if it ends in a lawsuit we know we need Educators to be treated with the respect and the dignity that they deserve at work they are professionals they don't deserve to feel guilty for not serving their students on their caseloads due to a broken system and that is what I'm hearing from them they feel guilty because they came here to serve their kids and they're unable to do that within our system we work for pay but we chose this line of work for kids so in the end this is still a job and I worry that our classroom what our classrooms will look like in January because our educators are sick and tired of feeling sick and tired I I also want to make sure to address the some of the issues that I heard as well because we have special Educators
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as Bianca shared who are neurodivergent and are not getting their needs met at their site how can we ensure that our students who have individualized education plans who then grow up to be adults with disabilities who want to continue to work in our schools have that option if we can't keep those Educators here and we also know that when we don't have enough Personnel to support the students in elementary that's how you end up with students unable to read in middle school because we can't intervene early we know that if we intervene from kinder to second grade we can close that gap before they leave Elementary but if we don't have the Personnel to support all those students to provide the small groups and the assessments done by Educators to understand where students are we can't serve our kids so we really need to make sure that we're not striking language from our contract that is ensuring every single kid will get the placement they deserve and that they need to learn and it is really disheartening to see that in the proposal from the district when we know and we've heard from multiple Educators that their students are not getting what they deserve so please please please put a spotlight on what's going on in special ed please check in with our special ed administrators because that is where a lot of the issues are starting to kind of that's where they're getting stuck and please check in with our special Educators they feel isolated they feel ignored they feel discounted and they are some of the most talented Educators we have in our schools because they could work anywhere else and they choose to come back to PBS please make sure that we make that choice worth it thank you [Applause] thank you president Bonilla um we do have a Time certain coming up at seven o'clock but um student representative McMahon do you have time to give you a report I don't want to rush you if you or you can take three or four if you if you need it or we can delay until later so I think I'll do it everyone get the first thing I want to say is my um just an acknowledgment of the incident um and the tragedy really that happened at Jefferson in the Jefferson Community um gun violence is so pervasive and it's harmful even for those that aren't directly impacted so my heart goes out to all those individuals who really felt what happened there and I hope that as we move into legislative session we can really work to ensure the safety of our students and I know that that's something that everyone here is really dedicated to doing and I would also like to Shout Out director Holland to ensure that those students were safe and I really appreciate you making the time to ensure that the students affected directly were really taken care of um next for some better news I make a effort of asking our district student council every meeting um what some good things that happened at school were so I've got two things to share for today um McDaniels girls volleyball is ranked third in the state and is going to play off so that's very exciting Daniels yay we actually have a representative right here and it's just super exciting and then Cleveland girls volleyball is ranked second in the state and will also be going or soccer so I will be going to playoffs so it's I think it's super fun I have gotten a ton of opportunities to go and watch our soccer team and I just think that so great that we're seeing a lot of success in sports and I'm super happy and then finally just the last piece of good news is we have almost fulfilled every seat in District student council with representation from almost every High School we're still hoping to catch some more alternative programs as well as well as sorry Roosevelt but not only have we fulfilled the majority of our seats we also this year are a majority Council of students of color um I want to shout out specifically Yan seychiao and our amazing administrators at all of our comprehensive high schools for really putting in the effort to ensure that it was students of color that got us eat at the table and it was definitely something that I really wanted to ensure that we did this year especially since that hasn't been true in past year okay um I just got one last thing sorry um and then after hearing what everybody is talking about with sped I personally tutor um she has an IEP and it's so much emotional labor um I myself have had to dedicate so many hours of my life to helping our teachers and to help and to really helping her self-advocate because ultimately at the end of the day when you have understaffing in the sped departments and you have overworked teachers you end up having to do so much advocating for yours themselves as individuals and for the families and communities that these that care about those people and so what's most important is that as
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we I know that we're working with it as legislative session and I'm going to beat this like as far as I can I'm excited to go to Salem but it's like if we don't have the money and resources to fully funds that and to ensure that every student has what they need then we cannot continue to make the claims that we're making that we're really there for students and what that comes from is not only trying to rearrange the budget that we have now it only comes from asking more of teachers and checking in it comes from ensuring fun ensuring that funding ensuring that we're removing barriers for teachers ensuring that we're getting the funding that we need to fully fund sped and that comes from the state level it comes from forcing our legislators to listen to the needs of our schools because ultimately this is where everything starts every problem intersects with education and that intersection is going to be key in order to solving the problems that we're seeing so my again I just want to say to all the sped Educators out there it is so incredibly difficult and I myself as just someone who has a a personal connection with someone and it was myself had to go to these meetings and forced these overworked teachers to talk to me even when they have so much going on it is emotional labor and I'm sorry you have to go through it and I appreciate that you continue coming back to PBS and you fight for your kids even when it's impossible even when it's hard sorry and even when the odds seem against you [Applause] thank you student representative anything else I would appreciate those comments so um on tonight's agenda we do have a seven o'clock time certain item so we're just gonna um skip over and come back to our board committee and Conference reports and the community budget Review Committee members approval and we're going to go ahead and move to that item which is the southeast enrollment and program balancing phase two around the land English Scholars Program so um just for a little bit of context uh last May the board voted on Boundary and program changes for 19 of our Southeast schools in southeast Portland but deferred a decision on the future location of the lent English scholar program at that time the deputy superintendent of business and operations proposed moving the single strand of non-emergent students to Marysville school so that English scholar students could benefit from a more supportive academic experience by creating opportunities for Teacher collaboration and student socio socio-emotional growth however the board felt more input was needed from the English scholar community members on the proposal and we directed the superintendent to have staff re-engage with the link Community to ensure all voices are heard superintendent Guerrero would you like to introduce this next topic yes thank you chair for uh the summary and the reminder there uh and again thank you to the commitment from Southeast guiding Coalition members for listening to 19 School communities impacted by our most recent enrollment and balancing recommendations there was a remaining question the board wanted to see an additional level of effort in engaging the lent Community specifically the English scholar neighborhood residing students so we have staff here this evening to bring forth a recommendation they'll summarize for you I think the array of Engagement that's taken place that really ramped up starting in August so we have here this evening to answer for you the question should the English scholar program move to Marysville so we have here this evening our chief of schools Dr John Franco Dr astero McBain our assistant superintendent attendant as well as our program manager for Community engagement student voice Jeffrey Weiser so I'm going to turn it over to Dr Franco superintendent chair Scott Vice chair Hollins of course School Board directors student Rhett McMahon in superintendent Guerrero first I would like to just officially thank the lent Community we absolutely understand the difficulty in emotions that a potential change like this incurs uh we also appreciate their willingness to listen and to provide input and feedback I also want to make sure that I think or that we thank the lent staff but then also the engagement staff from the district and you see them here represented here and then also in the back and they'll be available at the end for some q a um and we know that that's very important we do ask that because we have several slides to just review the engagement efforts so we do ask that you hold questions if possible to the very end
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and like I said we do have uh members of the engagement team who are here to be able to answer some of those questions thank you JD next slide I'm very bad at multitasking at some point so I may just do this for JD Mitchell who's a program manager to help with some of the slides so if you see this I'm not going crazy um so just just a little background and just a reminder so the PPS board of directors adopted a scope of work for district-wide enrollment program balancing in February 2020. the rationale for this scope of work included establishing a middle school and Harrison Park and addressing the issue that under enrolled schools often have difficulty providing robust array of programming students and Educators in single strand program pathways are isolated from their peers having programs co-located in a building often leads to isolation and programmatic inequities so the proposal from staff in the spring was to move the single strand program to Marysville school so English college students could benefit from better opportunities for Teacher collaboration and student socio-emotional growth however the board held off on the proposed change due to input from the English scholar community at the time and lack of Engagement the charge from the board was to engage families around the staff recommendation and again I just want to again thank specifically the English Scholars the community for their input and feedback this Summer Staff planned for engagement with the lent English Scholars Community once students returned to school thank you JD and I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Dr o to talk a little bit about the engagement good evening cheers Scott um it is a pleasure to be here to speak about the southeast guiding Coalition process this has been a two-year undertaken and this is a phase two of the work this is what began over a year ago and um at the beginning we did ask every school to nominate oxy for volunteers who would represent them in all the meetings that we had I do have the names of the volunteers from lent at the end we heard that they were not they didn't feel their voices were heard so of course we followed the directive of the board which is to re-engage with the community we met with the staff in June and it was the day before the contract here was officially over there were 25 staff members that lent only 12 of them showed up for the meeting but we met with them nonetheless it was an open meeting and based on what they said we proceeded um in the in the fall in August we picked up again because of course everybody went on vacation and we do have a list of um the different engagement opportunities that we had Jeffrey will be talking to us about the details of each of the events definitely yeah good evening um board chair directors student representative and superintendent um as doctor I was sharing because it was reported that previous engagement processes yielded such little feedback from the lent English scholar community um because it's important to hear directly uh the voices the potentially uh most impacted families we created an Outreach plan aimed to specifically reach the English scholar community at Lent and that included personal calls to every lent English scholar family in their home language as provided by our school information system beginning in late August we left voicemails with anyone who didn't answer the phone um if they answered or did not answer we gave them the dates and times about coming events invitations to call us back some of them did spoke with about 45 percent of families through our phone calling efforts we sent Flyers home in backpacks informational blasts with opportunities to get involved were shared digital reminders about upcoming events were shared through the school messenger system a text messaging campaign with the help of the communication team was executed and postcard mailing happened as well written updates were shared back with the entire lent community on September 23rd October 3rd October 19th to provide transparency about the feedback that was gathered during each planned engagement
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we felt that being clear in closing feedback loops to confirm what had been shared during those engagements was was critical in total we heard from 30 parents and Guardians who represent nearly a third of the Latin English scholar student community we heard from several families more than once and we sincerely appreciate and thank the families that were able to connect with us I will receive feedback from families in home languages of Arabic Chinese Russian Vietnamese in addition to English we would have liked to have connected with more families in the let English scholar cohort considering the reported disconnect that has existed for some time and based upon reports of previous engagement challenges we're extremely grateful to the 30 family members who are able to share their perspectives with us I've worked in family community engagement for nearly a decade and recognize how challenging it could be to make connections especially in places and communities where connections between school and home have not always been strong and that's why we tried to reach families in their reported home language in so many different ways while offering events and opportunities of different types at different times on different days discuss some of the trends that emerged I'll turn it back over to Dr o for the teams that some of the themes that emerged included that we found out that some of the English sub Scala families wanted to remain at Lent the reasons given for this was predominantly around walkability to school it was important for them to for their students to stay in the community part of what they also wanted to know is if they could transition into the Spanish Immersion program just so their students could remain at land there was also conversation about Marysville they were interested in finding out more about Marysville which for each of those events we did invite the Marysville principal who did a presentation on her school the services they offer and how they support students there the um last theme that was of concern to our families is the timing the process the transfers some wanted to know if they could transfer right away others wanted to know if if they decided to transfer either to Marysville or the Spanish Immersion what were their options so we're waiting to see what those decisions would be but we have started to sort of look into those options so we at least have something at the ready when decisions are made so in a nutshell um though we heard from some land families that they wanted to remain in lent it really was not the overriding theme the overriding theme for most of them was um if we need to move right now where do we move and how do we move and how do we get the process started they also did want to know if their kids could transition into Spanish Immersion for the lower Primary students that would not be a challenge for the upper Primary students we're still looking at what those options are um there was concern about Transportation the district has committed to providing Transportation the details are still being worked out I did speak with um the head of the transportation transportation department about those plans and they're underway and then most students were not aware of these considerations so the principle Dr Amor spent time in the third to fifth grade classrooms talking about the students I'm talking to the students about the process I will send over the slide too so thank you so I do think it's important again as you'll see trickled out through this presentation that that we always come back to what the rationale is and that is that um under enrolled schools often have difficulty providing robust array of programming students and Educators in single strand program pathways are isolated from their peers having programs co-located in a building often leads to isolation and programmatic inequities that was a rationale and that currently is the rationale next slide please so I think it's important that and this is a data point and as you can see here so what you see here on the slide is a current lent data from last year and so this is third fourth and fifth grade data in regards to math and English language arts now of course when we're talking about data there's multiple things you look at right this is a data point all right and so it's not you know the basis the sole foundational basis for any level of decision but as with everything it's a data point that we cannot ignore and
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this was a data point that was brought up in the spring and these are data points that we can't course I mean we have board goals around osas data it's important that we keep these at the Forefront and so I think it's important as you go around in in thinking about your decision that you think about the data this next slide here is enrollment by program so you can see here enrollments in the English scholar strand but then also in the Spanish Immersion the DLI strand and so as you can see just by looking at it without even looking at the numbers if you go ahead and just take a look at the colors you can see that there's a distinct enrollment decline in the English scholar sections at lent and starting out from 2011-12 to what is current uh this school year next slide what you find here are the current class sizes with Bridger immersion and I think it's important to note with the Bridger coming over lent to lent in 2324 per the scgc resolution there will be more robust immersion programming at each grade level and we'll move to three sections per grade level of DLI the English Scholars however will still remain at one section per grade level so transition benefits and so just want to make sure I do mention this and we do how have principal Murray here from Marysville and thank her for being here she's been an immense support uh through all this but intentional welcome for Lent English Scholars to join a school with stable pk-5 enrollment I think that's a huge transition piece and a positive three classrooms at each grade level larger peer groups more opportunities for collaboration and focus PD I think that's definitely a reality in every school if you are partnered with somebody you have more opportunities to talk about your practice the reality is like if you ask anybody any teacher it's not me that they're going to say that was the best PD if I'm out front what they're going to say is I had an opportunity to talk to Dr Rowe about the same things that I'm going through and the reality is when you can have a partner like that or Partners that's huge in regards to bettering teacher practice which ultimately obviously correlates to improved student achievement and on-site child care that's something that that Marysville offers so we are recommending as a staff to to you the school board to approve changing the location of the English scholar program for neighborhood students from lent to Marysville beginning in the 23-24 school year it is imperative that we do have closure on this tonight if a delay happens then it pushes back the Staffing timeline for not only segc schools but for the entire District we're also very cognizant of the lack that the lack of closure can do to potentially affected families and so we appreciate you um hearing us tonight and with that oh sorry I have one more slide so one of the things that I think it's important that we mentioned and Dr o talked a little bit about this is that the engagement brought out a number of different things and you know the theme of I want to remain at land was not the only theme but we also heard about a lot of barriers coming up specifically and these are some things that we are going to be doing to to address those barriers that came up first future lent neighborhood kindergartners will be able to enroll in Spanish Immersion without going through a lottery process that is distinct because then that was a barrier we heard from families that said listen I would I would have done DLI however um I didn't get selected through the lottery well we're taking that piece away the language assessment will be waived for current English scholar kindergartners who want to remain at lent and join Spanish Immersion next year uh families will have priority for transfer to other options with space availability that's another piece and also one more thing that isn't on this slide is that you know as an upper grade student if you pass the language assessment you'll be you can also join the dlni program so that that was feedback that we heard and that we are or have made adjustments moving forward or potential adjustments if this is
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approved so with that we'll we conclude our presentation I do want to again just just say thank you to the lent Community thank you to the lent staff thank you to this staff as well and I do want to make sure I mention who's here and what we'll do for the question and answer is that for questions they'll come to me and I will kind of facilitate as best I can so we know who who's charged with answering so we along with obviously Dr o who's one of the assistant superintendents uh and Jeffrey Weiser we also have I believe Ruth Tucker's online who's our our dll I representative we also have Jamal Tibbs who's here sitting in the front row who helps with the community engagement Megan Salazar is also here principal Amor is here I believe I can see her there online uh principal memory is here as I mentioned before we also have ratty Lurie who is one of our as Area Senior directors who participated in the community sessions um Judy Brennan is not here she is enjoying some time away from so we wish Judy the very best and if there are questions about Transportation um Dan young is also here who can assist with some of the transportation questions great thank you Dr Franco thanks for that thorough presentation and staff report I'm going to suggest that we do a quick round of initial questions I know we've got some people signed up to testify so do initial questions from the board then let's move to testimony and then come back for uh additional questions in the sky that's okay with everyone great so with that I'll just open it up anybody based on the presentation anybody have any clarifications questions around the information that was presented thank you I did have questions about transportation and child care specifically um and this is from hearing from community members elected representative state representative Khan and some families about the child care is that a free option for families or is that a paid option so it depends Marysville is a sun school so they do have activities for students after school we are also talking with the iresd Department oversees child care right now to see what other options we can provide they also do have a YMCA but that is parents have to pay for that so we're looking for free child care for them so right now sun and YMC I'm just I'm concerned about the cost because it would be a lot for families particularly in the lent Community 600 to 2 to 674 a month for after before and after school care at Marysville So yeah thank you for the numbers on that so in a community that already has a high amount of absenteeism I just I just wanted to add that that's why we're exploring other options that will be free for them is there a transportation question for Dan I had a transportation question in a community that has a high amount of absenteeism if we have a plan B to get students that might not make it to the bus stop on time because their parents are working two jobs that's a really great question uh I don't think I have answered that at my fingertips I think it's a good one one that we would want to think about um what that plan B would look like yeah because it's I mean the transportation situation uh in that part of East Portland is really scary dangerous and I'd be concerned about someone missing a bus and having to walk so if there could be staggered buses or more than one we can certainly absolutely look into that thank you I have a question about the data slide that you had up I don't know if we can go back to that one um but it showed like 25 of DLI and then like five percent in math can you can you just I like to have con like labels on my slides so is that 25 of the students in DLI are me like what is that what are those numbers telling me yeah so those are percentages proficient okay so we have like 21 of our DLI students are proficient in math and like eight percent of our neighborhood English language Scholars 23 on Ela for DLI and 19 for English language is kind of what the graph is showing me is that correct that's correct and that's the percentage proficient so that's telling us that like 82 92 percent of our English language scholar students are not proficient in math correct great just wanted to make sure I was understanding slides and then um you said that one of the changes was that kindergartners would not have to would not have to do the lottery and then you said that older students who are in the neighborhood who passed the language assessment will they still have to lottery in or does anyone who live in
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the catchment if they meet the language requirements they'll be able to enter the Spanish program correct our goal is to not have any barriers and that was clear with the input that we received and so if you can pass the language assessment you can join the Spanish market and you won't need to Lottery there's no more Lottery and so any like a new family that moves into the lent neighborhood their kindergartner would have ability to join DLI and then they could Lauder their older child if they passed the assessment could potentially join the Spanish okay great thank you very much follow up I have a lot of questions but I'll start with just building off the child care question so in all the materials last spring and even recently in written Communications it said two of the big benefits um would be that there would be Transportation offered and child care and the Sun Sun School is not child care because it's not every day it doesn't start till October um it's a great program but it's not child care so if you work a regular job you can't count on the sun program and besides you have to get your kids into it so I'm really concerned that we've been telling family there's child care because not only is the cost of the child care at Marysville between 602 to 674 dollars a month but it's also full so there's no current spots so I'm just when PPS is saying like hey you're going to have a child care at um Marysville we don't have that and then so there isn't that so I'm concerned that we're being asked to vote on something but the promise that's been made to the community that um and I look at the low income levels um as directed to pass indicated 55 of the neighborhood programs students are low income so 600 bucks a month I mean I know it sometimes when my kids are younger sometimes I paid I felt like I paid to work because I was paying more in child care than I was earning um and so I'm just concerned about that promise that seems to be implied to a lot of the families and then second on Transportation um last spring uh well even last week there was Communications that said Transportation would be provided and then at the community meeting last week it was transportation is going to be invited and then there were some qualifiers that even I didn't quite understand as somebody who's been on the board nine years and then I asked a follow-up question and director Green's committee because we were getting a presentation on this waiver that we're asking for and um the head of PPS Transportation said that actually we wouldn't be guaranteeing transportation for students on east of 92nd only for those east of tool West I'm sorry east of 92nd and east of 205. so what seemed to be like everybody's going to be able to get Transportation there was like a backup and then we got a communication from uh Mr Franco on that like oh yes we will but that was in a public in a private communication to the board um so I'm concerned we're um what it is we're committing and is are we committing that um everybody because what I thought it was is everybody's going to get transportation um and then it was like well only some people might and then the question is is it only after school or will students have transportation say if they go to um Marysville and participate in the in the sun program well they have transportation will there be another another bus back um because and and is this like an in perpetuity that we're granting it so director your question about Transportation specifics well yeah yeah like there there was a real reason so the specific question is around is transportation going to be provided and where and perhaps like after after school thank you and for everybody and I'm going to call uh Dan you might as well just stay up here but um and I don't know what was discussed in the spring I can tell you that after I received an email in regards to that that heads put together with Dan and that we will guarantee Transportation but that is a piece even if we have to fund that because you know we get we get reimbursed from the state uh 70 but there are specific guidelines in reference to that in terms of distance away and that type of thing and so we have to come up with a certain criteria as it pertains to to lent but I think point being an end board you could feel good about this is that we will be providing transportation in terms of the daycare piece this is what I would say
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um yes I think there of course they're a cost attributed to that and I would say this as a building principle former building principle any student who I felt needed some Financial relief for certain things I was very cognizant about that so I guess what I'm saying is without over committing certain things and I have Catherine Murray here to talk a little bit about some of the daycare options that potentially maybe even some relief that is very important like we don't want um if we're saying that we're going to be able to provide daycare we don't want cost again to be a barrier so I can guarantee you that is not something that will be a barrier if if we need to make that happen we'll find a way to do that the program being full I mean I it's just like these are the questions that we're going to vote on tonight it would be good to know what it is that we're committing to it is the YMCA program that is currently full from my understanding what we're exploring is free daycare or child care for our community they are currently at some schools Sun provides after school activities and they support families as much as possible but we're truly exploring the free child care option and and Dan I don't know if there's anything you want to okay sorry but anyway if if there are other and I know there are other questions but Dan can come down and answer some of the transportation questions I just want to be make sure I understand your answer so everybody whether they live on 80s 86th or on 101st we'll get Transportation before and after school and if they're an after school programs they'll get Transportation too and not just like next year but that's correct we currently do not provide I'm Terry Brady I'm the director of student transportation um I'm sitting in for Dan for just the moment we currently don't provide transportation to a sun program unless that is something that they've specifically arranged for and that there's funding because that is not a reimbursable expense at this time from the um from ode but we would be providing transportation to all students in the Marysville boundary uh before school and after school I'm just curious following up on that so even students that live close to the school we'd be providing Transportation well nobody nobody's close to the school so also because it sounds like what I hear you saying is that even students who live within close enough to a school that the state won't reimburse us we are providing them Transportation yes we're committing to do that for all of the lent students what we can't commit to is a lent student that doesn't live in the current boundary I just wanted to give that cup say that again sorry no no no my point what I was trying to say is the reason that we're gonna do that is because of the roadways that are in that area correct that's my understanding 82nd the reason we provide transportation is because students would have to walk across 82nd otherwise is that am I correct in that assumption we hear that as the concern but as of right now Marysville students currently cross 82nd to get to school I guess also part of it was having gone to all the meetings that's what PPS told family so it's I'm trying to reconcile what we told families and then what I heard was brand new information for me in the committee meeting last week that it actually wasn't going to be but it sounds like you've gotten new information tonight yes we are committed because it basically would or any other after school program because it basically means if you know your parents can't pick you up from school you got to get on the bus to go home and that creates inequities of who who can access after school programs additional questions from the board thank you student representative McMahon yeah this is nice and short I'm hoping um I was just wondering so since we are providing Pathways like to for lunch students to become part of the um dual language program I'm wondering how we expect that change to affect like the student population class sizes in the program at that school and if we believe it will become a large percentage because I it's I think we talked about this in our districts and cultivating but it's I mean it's a significant amount of students or not I mean there are a group of students that will be moved to Marysville and that was the point of doing this and so my wondering is if we have the majority of those students then staying at lent how are we going to solve that problem if they're then just joining that program foreign so we don't have too many of them currently asking to see at lent that we know of we have actually a majority of them asking to move to Marysville I want someone to move right away um what we don't know is exactly what those true numbers will be because we
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believe that there are still others who are waiting to see what the decisions will like planning in place that if it's more than we expect we will like create more supports there or like what's the plan if like it does become a larger amount of students if it does right now we have a have about 128 students in the English scholar program in the fall of next year I believe that fifth graders will move on to middle school so it'll even be a smaller number and the current Kinder students who are enrolled are already a lesser number than the numbers of students who are living so there are all these numbers that we have to play with and I do believe that we will have room for everybody okay thank you and I also just want to say I want to recognize the work that the community engagement team put into doing this and I appreciate the lent community and our team for really trying to put in the work in I know that it was a lot of effort so thank you thank you um let's go ahead and take public testimony um oh yeah um so we have a number of students and families who indicated that they'd be interested in perhaps transferring to another school and that's part of our resolution so we have expressed the flexibility to let kids transfer to Marysville this year what about other schools that would also be this year as well we'd we'd be open to that or yes it is dependent on on Space right yeah capacity but yes and that is I believe a common practice regardless uh in the district and if the school is under enrolled correct if there's space Miss Bradshaw how many people do we have signed up we have three people signed up great let's go ahead and go into public testimony Danny cage [Applause] welcome um greetings board members superintendent and representative McMahon um I'm Danny cage and I'm a District student council representative firstly I would just like to say that I stand in solidarity with our teacher and teacher Union here today as a black student I can personally say our students deserve better period today I will be speaking to you all in regards to the staff's proposal to close and or move the lent neighborhood program to Marysville and make it a full DOI program after attending the meeting where District staff gave a presentation on the current proposal I had several concerns that I want to share I also thank director Edwards for coming to that meeting as well when having a conversation with parents and students almost all of them informed me they only knew about the staff's current proposal for a little less than two weeks uh and while staff have done Community engagement this shows there's a lot more work that needs to be done during this meeting PPS provided translators for the event uh which which uh serves a school that has multiple non-english speaking families guess how many families that didn't speak English came zero District staff have shown that they do not fully have the infrastructure for their current proposal and this could have unseen consequences with everything giving given I am asking the board to reconsider to reconsider with state representative Phantom's proposal and having the board delay the vote for three months and do a full and better Community engagement process our students and families deserve Dignity of having their voices heard and being involved in decision-making processes and choices of their school lenten's a strong unified and diverse Community this school has like protest after protest and demonstrated leadership time after time which to remind everyone that student leadership is in our graduate portrait and a goal and yet these students don't just meet the school in many ways and more they exceed it this is the same school that started Portland Public Schools First student-led Sun class let time and time again have showed us they are leaders I joined elected officials community members and students and asking PPS to do a better Community engagement process that serves all of our students thank you we can do better [Applause] thank you estefania Ramirez Velasquez [Applause] welcome hello my name is Stefania Ramirez
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Velazquez I am the fifth grade DLI teacher at lent and I'm here in front of you all to keep the district accountable for the promises that were made last year the decision to hold out and move the voting for today was to ensure two things to happen one the lent Community will be to be heard and about their thoughts and the changes that have been considered in the decision-making process and that too that the plan for what has what will happen to our lent students and their families that are being moved to Mary's will be prepared so that parents are having a Clear Vision on what is happening in the last meeting with parents and the community members on October 18th parents uh asked if the students oh sorry October 18th which uh by the way they were only given a day notice beforehand on a flyer to be given out to the uh to the families parents were asked about uh asked about buses being provided for their students the response was given that the community from there that would there would be transportation and but this meeting was not recorded a board meeting that was recorded had a district officials state that there they did not have a commitment to provide transportation I'm hearing now that there is a commitment and so again this is pointing out the lack of a plan for our students a lack of a plan for a community that's solid enough for our students and also making sure that they're being safe our own land leopard leaders a Grassroots student-led organization or group organized the walk to Showcase how the route really was for the lunch students and how unsafe it would be this has been a concern for parents and families since the beginning and there is still no guarantee that students will have a safe way for a way to school coming back and forth many parents will have questions over what the changes would look like for them and how their students will get to school many families still have a clear understanding of what the impact of the decision that will be made today will affect them students like my class were not given the opportunity to voice their own thoughts on the matter they understand that even though they're in DLI program and are leaving for middle school next year that many of their friends and the younger grades have not been given a clear understanding on what the plan is for them they understand that their voice is their power and they were not given that opportunity to advocate for their Community none of the DLI side was given the opportunity to advocate for their friends more for their community lent is a diverse Community our families are relying on the board and the district to ensure that they're being heard and that the steps being taken are done in its fullest capacity it feels like the decision has already been made before even listening to our community and listening to our families and especially listening to our students please hold off on making this a decision that will drastically affect the community at lent please take more time to ensure a solid plan for a community for our families and for our students that I serve every day get that choice make it to be heard and their voices are not silenced thank you and then virtually we have Khan fam good evening PBS board members my name is Khan Pham and I'm the state representative for Oregon house district 46 in outer Southeast Portland which includes lent Elementary School I'm also a PPS parent of a second grader who will be moving to lent elementary school as part of the Spanish DLI program next year I'm testifying today to urge the school board to delay the vote a few more months to allow for deeper Community engagement and to allow the district to clarify exactly what it can commit to the families who are being forced to move with respect to transportation and child care supports I understand that the move of the English Scholars Program is to improve academic outcomes for neighborhood students and that research has shown the disadvantages of a single-strand program and I take that seriously as you can see in the slides there are serious educational achievement challenges for the students at Lent it is a community that has had and continues to face a lot of challenges from when the 205 was built right through it to now when many of its families are disenfranchised disconnected and struggling with multiple jobs and challenge it's hard for them to engage with their school and there are a lot of reasons for why students struggle single strand in the English program is not the primary reason for these distressing academic results and I worry that in trying to help these students we might be unintentionally creating new obstacles to their academic achievement transportation is a critical component of academic success my colleague Huang Wan who served as a PPS School attendance coach for over seven years and worked at lent shared with me some of the multiple challenges that underline chronic absenteeism among our most vulnerable students and she told me that transportation is one of the leading challenges that prevent many of our students from being able to get to school on time or at all my understanding is that PPS would like
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to guarantee transportation and child care to all lent students being moved to Marysville but that they can't guarantee transportation for all students particularly those who live west of 92nd Avenue and even if they do get school bus service what happens if a student misses the bus they can't now walk or bike to school and while I appreciate that PPS has communicated that they will cover School transportation I think even if costs are not reimbursed by the state I worry that a future Administration might not honor that commitment in addition this is an issue of Transportation safety if anyone has ever tried to cross 82nd Avenue 92nd Avenue or the 205 freeway I think you can understand how dangerous it can be for kids multiple accidents at Cleveland High School on Powell and Jefferson High School underline how important it is that PPS has a clear plan for how these kids can get to school safely on time and in a way that is flexible for families facing challenges that may make it hard for them to for example catch the bus especially when the bus is not always reliable at the one Community Forum that was held on this topic on Tuesday October 18th I heard from several parents that they still did not understand the reasons for the move others said that they had not received Outreach to collect their feedback on this move While others felt like the surveys presupposed that the outcome was already decided and that it was pointless for them to weigh in for all these reasons I urged the district to delay the vote for three months to allow for deeper Community engagement and to take the time to come up with a solid plan for both transportation and child care supports for neighborhood families that are being moved I truly believe that if the community engagement process can be is done right whatever the final decisions may be the whole school Community will feel adequately engaged and can accept the decisions that they were a part of thank you very much [Applause] thank you representative fam just brought you any additional public testimony no okay great so let's go back through do another round of questions and I do want to move towards a vote on this um I will open it back up to any board members with questions I'm just curious if we can find a way to work with our jurisdictional partners pbot in particular on a safe routes to school TriMet um for some for some help with this this is a big problem getting our kids to school and to the point where uh representative Farm you talked about um changing Administration I think it would be important to codify these commitments to getting the kids from this neighborhood to school neighborhoods change all the time and school populations change but this is a it's a it's a low to moderate income census tracts that serve these schools and I'd want to make sure that we back our commitment to Transportation up with something and writing some promise to the community that we don't change our minds when we change our seats it looks like Dr Moore might have a hand up thank you good night everybody I would just like to offer some clarifications for the student that is in the board and for some members that they were talking about some of the things number one we actually at lent we do not have uh uh before or after school care we only have Sun um I don't know if that is an important information that everybody needs to know sorry that I am sick and also for the students um I I have heard for uh from some families that uh currently they are students at Bridger that they would like to remain in Bridger so some of the students not all the students from the DLI program are coming to lent so that will alleviate as well some of the seats that we will have because there's movement from Bridger to lint and from then to Marysville if that is the case and the third thing that I would like to propose uh this is probably I am talking on behalf my my staff and um and you know the process it doesn't matter what way uh the the board will vote but I think it's important to to know what is going to happen people need closure and the teachers are apprehensive to to know what is going to happen to them what is going to happen next year so either way is my personal wish that we could make a decision tonight great thank you Vice chair Hollands yes um so my question is going to really be
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more around the community engagement piece um of course you know I say it over and over again historically PPS has done four jobs that um too many engagement and so all my questions is going to be around the communication at peace um as I look at the report you guys have put together and I look at some of these um statistics where you know some meetings 30 parents come which is only a third of the students um at Lentz when you look at the survey um 25 you 've got 25 back which is 17 of the community do you guys feel that that's enough engagement to make this type of recommendation I think that's I think that's challenging I think getting a third of folks um to weigh in in a place where in the previous effort it's been reported that we didn't hear from any of these families um demonstrates a pretty sizable increase the amount of feedback we got back um I don't need no help I got you thank you um I think that also um there was a lot of consistency in the trends so if we look back at the feedback that we received both through the survey and in the written uh sort of summaries of the notes that were provided after the in-person meeting and I don't want it to be lost that on the 19th of September we had an in-person meeting with nearly 20 family members there now we had a virtual meeting on September 27th and me and a colleague were at the school before school started for drop-off time all day during the day at pickup and after school running up and down the street with you know help from staff to try to flag now families to capture their feedback we try to be as present as possible I think that given that there's a pretty consistent Trend in the feedback that we got I feel pretty confident that we would hear those Trends repeated in the concerns from families who we didn't hear from that said I would prefer that we you know had heard from more folks but I do feel confident given how consistent the feedback was that we would hear these Trends repeated before you go on to the next question but am I writing the presentation we called every family and either talked to them or left a message is that right yes sir okay so when we look at all the different um options that we had um you mentioned doing phone calls you mentioned doing mailers you mentioned doing backpacks do you do you have a kind of a sense of how many families that we could have reached with using all those different Avenues so we did use all those different Avenues um and part of why we chose such a diverse sort of Outreach strand was for one um the personal phone calls are really I know they're labor intensive but they're really the right thing to do um I we had a number of families um Express their appreciation for someone to call them and provide them with information we supported our phone calls with a frequently asked questions document where staff could could reference back and provide some some kind of q a support there for families over the phone we also attended a meet and greet um earlier in the school year and we surveyed the audience of who was at the meet and greet to meet the new Administration it went we found out that the vast majority of families that were in attendance for the meet and greet found out about it from a flyer in the backpack so we leaned into these strategies having understood that a personal phone call in the home language based on Synergy data is appropriate that we have a consistent phone call script that lays out the parameters and the logistics of every event that we stick to that calendar because that's what we told people we were going to do and that we use every modality that we possibly have available to us including you know a text messaging blast that we were able to secure through our comps team so really tried to utilize every medium that we possibly had to reach the English scholar families so when you talk about the phone calls it looked like you guys hit around 45 percent of getting in contact Direct contacts while I think that's around 40 some families right okay so I guess one of the things that um and I'll disobey and what I have to say is that you know when there is inconsistence communication with families and then you know we come to something like this and then we get some great news which is great you know I think one of the things
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that we have to make sure we work on is having clear concise information that we are giving to the communities I think that's important I think it's important to say you know what this is what we're going to do and this is what we're not going to do move on right if we're going to have Transportation before and after school but we will not be providing it after sun then we need to say that so that way the community is getting figure out how they can transportate their kids I am not a strong proponent of us doing everything for families you know when we talk about kids missing buses well so parent responsibility as well so we can't take the responsibility off the parents as well so it's a shared share thing but as we move forward we have to make sure that we're clear we have to make sure that we are giving them the direction hey this is what we're going to do and we can and then as we move it forward we work with everyone to try to make it the best possible solutions we can I'm sorry that's why I really encourage that we do that um last question if we do postpone this Say by a month month and a half what kind of impacts would it have on our students yeah so um sorry there we go so um back to my closing slide [Music] I can't Echo enough that we can't postpone that we can't postpone this there are distinct ramifications from a staffing perspective which in turn will affect um and we we heard today um from some from a lot of our folks in regards to special education and those types of things and being able to hire that is a big piece for what we want to do the quicker we can get this done is to move uh move forward with with our staffing timeline which which is distinct and mind you um with this because when we're talking about say movement of staff and that type of thing it not only affects the segc schools but the Staffing timeline in general for the district and so we do need implore you as as a board to it'd be our recommendation to have some closure tonight yeah I I understand that you guys want us to make a decision today I got that right um but once again if we postpone it to try to do it right for about a month a month and a half what effects would have I understand the effects that have on our staff so I've said this in the conversation sure whether staff has to do extra work or whatever I don't I'm not really empathetic on that part of it but my goal is I mean the question is how would it will it would it affect our kids come September of next year and how would that be yes and I'll have Dr o comment as well but um a lack of closure with this and think of it as you're kind of been waiting not knowing what's going to happen and so when you think about and there's so much that we try to do for the mental health of our students and when you don't have closure to an extent where you potentially could be moving schools that's significant and I think we just have to be very mindful that that would affect absolutely not only our our staff but more importantly our our students from that vantage point because it is a lack of am I staying am I going am I staying am I going what is you know because I think you wouldn't I don't know I would say uh from somebody who whose child has moved as via boundary process that knowing what is going to happen and what school I'm going to go to leads to um increased transition opportunities and getting acclimated to that new environment so fair question director Hollins uh there's a decision here with lent but it has a ripple effect District wide on our staffing processes so I can ask Stacy young who knows more than anyone around how how those timelines are constrained already just to give you a little bit of a sense of what that could mean if we want to give more time for engagement we just have to understand either implementation would be delayed we make a different decision or uh but but we can't hold up District Staffing yeah I think Guadalupe just explained it pretty well the implementation of the lent decision all of this Staffing impacts each each of the segc school Staffing impacts kind of create a trickle effect because of the way the contract language is certain percentage of students move that means staff move and there's different processes for those and so if we think about the lent decision itself delaying that means we have to delay the entire Staffing process as the team has shared if we delay the decision then the staff get to
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figure out when we work through those processes with Pat to figure out where they move to and we're doing that Say by March or April then we're not into our staffing spring Staffing rounds until much later then we're not doing the external hiring rounds until further out so delaying the decision could isolate the Lent as we've isolated the land decision already and then moving that implementation rather than for 23 20 20 rather than implementing in 23-24 implementing 24.25 for the lent changes But continuing with it with the rest of the changes we've already agreed to well I think the other piece there is that we have a number of families who've expressed that they uh want to send their younger children into the DLI program as soon as possible so it delays their ability to integrate into that new school Community um sooner rather than later and that's all that's like third four almost 40 families right 40 children just really quickly yeah um director Holmes I just wanted to follow appreciate your questions you did say at the end though if we delayed it to do it right and I'm just I'm curious from an engagement perspective what what you would suggest we do different I mean I'm asking because honestly the engagement process laid out it was very significant and I I'm hearing from some community members frustration but I've also been in government for 25 years calling people you know having multiple meetings you laid out the timeline [Music] recommended basing knowing the community that PBS do home visits and offered to help the district with that there also was a suggestion that um staff who know the families the best also could be helpful and that didn't happen either um so I I do think you know is it enough I mean I find it interesting that we um wanted their one school community and yet we chose just to focus on one piece of it as if the neighborhood is like actually like it's actually two different communities so the 45 is just 45 of even like a half of the school so it's really only a quarter of the people and I I would just respectfully state that I haven't received maybe one or two but the overwhelming theme has been we're one United Community and we don't want to change and I feel like what happened is there were people in the community who felt like hey at lent we don't have a voice and they say this is going to happen so now tell me what my next steps are and like whether I can get the Spanish Immersion program but that was not their starting point well I'm just going to say whether that's true or not I don't think we should be putting words in their mouth I I will just say I think I think that I think the criticism of staff and their engagement process is really unfair and I think that that we we as a this was a significant engagement process you can always say oh we should have done home visits or we should have done two home visits or we should have you know what you know I mean there's all kinds of things you you can say but I also think what's really happening directory and I was just suggesting one thing that could have happened I'm not finished I think with all due respect I think people are are who are opposed to the decision are criticizing the Outreach process instead of just saying you're opposed to the decision and I think we've heard from some people who are and that's fine and as a board we need to make a decision to make a vote about whether we are I'd like to move towards that vote to make sure we can get there may I offer 15 at the latest so yes I work I work as a public engagement uh professional and I'm I was skeptical also until I read through for a second time the staff memo and except for doing home visits which I've never heard of before that would be incredible I've heard of mailers I've heard of you know public meetings I think the engagement process was robust and I'm curious I don't think that there's anything on the table that we have left to do except to do home visits um I I think the problem here though is but I don't think that doing that will change where we are today and we're here today because we put off this decision until today we off we asked the board asked for an additional three months or four months and and here we are I well I I think the main problem is is that we can't organize that in one month we can't organize that in a month and a half we can't organize that in three months so what we're getting right now is we need to make a decision on it right now and I think that like it's great for us to like talk about the increasing Community engagement and I think that's great but in my mind it sounds like we will harm students if we
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don't do it now and we will not get good Community engagement in three months and that's just a fact so and I offer a comment yes well as uh regarding the question that you know one of the penalties was uh asking how would this affect the students if we delayed the decision as a principal standpoint I would like to offer my point of view and it is that sometimes when you are trying to recruit teachers and especially for for right now in the conditions that we don't have enough teachers other districts are hiring at that time as well so you don't get you know the first pick let's put it that way you don't get you we want to recruit the best and the fact the Fast and the best uh for what for our students so when you delay that decision and you delay all the process that means that's also we don't have the opportunity to bring the best for our students I also just want to add really quickly that this decision also impacts families a lot there are many families who want to know what decisions they need to make because the focus option process will begin very soon I think November 15th and then the other processes come up after that so they're trying to make decisions on if to have their kids go to lent or if they have their kids go to other schools and we keep getting those questions this decision also impacts where the communities Bridger and creative science so it really is a ripple effect and it's a significant one for staff students and families directory Lowry and then director brim Edwards were you finished okay um it's I know it's hard with the zoom so sometimes interruptions happen um I'm gonna be a yes on the staff recommendation tonight and and the reason for me really comes down to our board goals we have set four board goals around closing the gap for students around third grade reading fifth grade math High School Readiness and uh post-secondary Readiness and looking at those numbers with the math the way it was especially I really feel like we need to do something different for our students in the English Scholars Program and so for me this putting them in a more robust Academic Place at Marysville which I know is an excellent school I know lent is an excellent School in a lot of ways too for me that is the decider that that we want to do the best for our students and I know there are there's a lot of emotional stuff around this community and and changing that I know there's a lot of very practical questions around transportation and child care but for me the bottom line is what I think will be the best strategy for us to reach our board goals is to move this community so that those academic opportunities can be strengthened so that's why I'll be a yes on this tonight director brim Edwards one question and then just make a statement um so about the presentation you made on the achievement slides are you attributing the difference to that in the fact this is a single strand because when I look at the demographics between the neighborhood program and the Spanish program they're different and it seems like um I don't know that we can make that determination I don't know did you look at the poverty rates between the neighborhood school and the Spanish DLI and some of the disaggregated groups are very different and that may be why we're seeing different rates of achievement versus you're in a single strand versus a dual strand because we have other dual strands and that I know that we're not closing them we definitely know that teacher collaboration and additional opportunities for students to engage in class work does increase academic achievement if you're in a single strand program it is very difficult to do that if a student does have a personality conflict with teachers which oftentimes happens there is nowhere for the child to go the child just has to stay in the classroom and be miserable and as much as we can we want to provide opportunities for our students to have a very robust very exciting very nurturing experience through PPS add something to that sorry my name is ratty Larry I'm the area senior director supporting lead I've had the privilege this year of supporting Marysville because of a change in some area senior director work what we haven't talked about and what I want to make sure you all know is the quality of Education students would get at Marysville I've had the privilege of working with principal Murray an assistant principal Brent Beltran and I've been to Marysville and I know how much they care and I know what they want for kids and I know they want that for all kids and they want the
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best that kids can possibly be they want the best that their staff can possibly be I'm not saying lent does not I'm also wanting to make sure that we also know the opportunity we're offering students at Marysville the same can be said and is said and I believe the same thing about lent of course but the decision and the discussion is about the opportunity for students and they will also have an excellent opportunity in Marysville thank you go ahead is anybody else have any other questions uh director constant will have I think something to say but please go ahead we need to move towards the boat okay um well first I just want to provide some feedback from that was provided in the um but provided in the community session but um not spoken up here but like the title of the presentation is the English scholar program and throughout this process the district has used different language for what actually the lent neighborhood program is and understand that's something that's language they use within the um School within the school Community but the reality is we're closing the neighborhood program and converting the school to a focused program with a neighborhood boundary that also has criteria for entry and I know that came up in meetings of people who feel like the lent Community deserves a neighborhood program which most other neighborhoods in the in in this City have and that will not be the case for lent because it's now a would be if the board votes to make this conversion based on the staff recommendation it will be a focused program with a neighborhood Geographic preference so if you move there in third grade into a house across the street and you don't have the language skills you will not be able to attend Lynn and I just think we should be open and above board about it because this is also what I mean there was some quite um spirited conversation about the district language and I just think we we need to call it what what it is the neighborhood program will be at Marysville but it will but to say call it the English scholar program and then we're not closing the neighborhood program we are closing so if you live across the street from lent and you don't go to Mary's yes so I just think it's always better just to be direct in what we're what we're doing um so I I guess I want to so that make that point because I know it got mentioned at a meeting and I just want to acknowledge that it was made by a family whose home language is not English or Spanish um so I also want to acknowledge the lent Community because I look at the slides that talk about isolation and no peers and my experience through the southeast guiding Coalition and visiting the school five or six times over the last year going to the two Community meetings that were open is ic1 United lent community and I don't see students who are isolated from other students and so I just want to call out the lens I don't I don't see the neighborhood program or the English scholar program as an isolated or without without peers and that's not speaking to any of or in contrary to any of the issues that were mentioned about by the Educators about why they're recommending this but I just want just want to acknowledge that there's one Community that's diverse and strong I also want to acknowledge the 176 students who signed the petition and the leopard leaders who put together a school March that was both neighborhood and the DLI program to demonstrate their commitment and their concern about students traveling a longer distance and about their Community being separated um and just following on the comments were just made about the lent staff I think they've been incredibly supportive and I think Dr Moore the new principal is working hard to support her staff in the community and Marysville yes they are an amazing diverse Community with strong academic achievement and a strong committed staff and principal and a long 10-year principal and those are all great things so this isn't like Marysville is a bad Community but it doesn't it doesn't make the lent communities loss any different um and I also want to acknowledge and I'm going to use we statements that PPS has positive intentions for our students and the success but there have been events over the last 10 years that have disproportionately impacted the lent neighborhood program students and directly impacted their enrollment of the program and I think we can look at the slides and see it going down and I think
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um there's lots of ownership about why why that is whether it's elimination of the lent neighborhood middle school and shifting all students you know from lent to a K-8 and then it was established in a way that there was low enrollment and therefore students at lent got fewer electives and less advanced coursework um then PPS closed the neighborhood High School Marshall there's been five principles since 2017. there were two years of the southeast guiding Coalition conversation about talking about the lent neighborhood program closing I mean all those things you know parents you know start making plans like if things are going to move I you know I I need to move my child or maybe I should you know go for a focus option um school there were you know very significant I know superintendent Guerrero knows this like environmental issues and there was a rats issue and I mean just facilities issues at lent that were all covered in the news that like left an impression about like hey if you go to lens here's what's happening there was placement of two staff that was you know the media widely covered um that were you know left other schools um for not good reasons um and again that was all stuff that was in the media there's um unfilled staff positions and that impacts uh whether families like well my student gets a support there wasn't a special ed Learning Center teacher a permanent one for the start of this school year so there's one coming um so as you can imagine all those things impact enrollment and I just want to acknowledge that because it's made of like hey nobody wants to go to lent well there's been lots of external factors that have impacted the lent enrollment and when people made the choice of like hey there's this other like really stable you know long-tenured principle out of focus option program nearby like I'm going to try and get my student into that and you know I so I look at um the lent community and I see a neighborhood program that need that needs additional care and support not displacement um I'm concerned there's not a you know like we're we don't have it we promised in the papers that we sent home you know child care and busing and I feel a little bit more relieved about the busing but not completely because I think those are the pieces so I feel um not good about having a plan on a fly um I look at the neighborhood program enrollment as 11 special at 13 black and Indigenous English language Learners 12 and 70 black indigenous people of color 64 and 55 low income and those are communities that need special care um you know there was discussion about um I'll cover that um I guess the thing I would say um is I have a dis disappointment in that I feel like the decision it felt like it was made before it was made and all communities who lose something have to like process their grief and like you know what it means for them I've been through nine school school and program closings whether it was Brooklyn at Winter Haven or the Richmond neighborhood program for JMP all that and there's like process thing that needs to happen with the school Community they need to know their students are going to be taken care of and I need to know like thoughtful plans have been made that are in place and ready to receive and care for their students um so you know that's why last May when the board reviewed the community engagement and decided that more time was needed I was hopeful that like there would be this like robust planning the lent Community would have their opportunity to like share either their grief or like here's what our students need and like there'd be a real dialogue between our staff and um you know I feel like what happened with I mean this is just like my perspective what happened with the southeast guiding Coalition process was like a musical chairs and when the music stopped lens didn't have a chair and it wasn't there was a lot of concern about lent in the South among the southeast guidance Coalition schools the neighborhood program but there wasn't a way but there wasn't really anything to do about it and it's sort of like well that's just that's the brakes um so I'm going to be a no on this because I don't feel like we've put and I may be the only one that I don't think we've done what we need to do to feel for me for a community that hasn't had a voice in the in the the process or traditionally in PPS and had a lot of things happen to it that um we're doing we're doing the right the right thing from my perspective I just can't support it at this point because I don't feel like it we've put together a plan that um I feel great about Marysville I do in my heart I I know that school is great but I don't feel like we have a solid plan for all those families nor have we give give them enough space to really share um
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how they feel about their school community thank you um yeah I just have a couple quick comments one is these decisions are always really hard you know any kind of boundary decision any enrollment balancing certainly program closure school closures they're always hard because we all love our school communities and um but we have made a real commitment as a district and a board to really focus on what we need to do to lift the academic achievement of our students and to make sure that we are creating Equitable opportunities in each of our schools for all of our students and that has not been the norm and so it takes some shuffling so for example you know the board endorsed the the underlying values of the southeast guiding Coalition one of which is that single strand programs are not good for kids and they're not good for educators and they they don't they are not the best set up for accelerating student achievement and another is the co-located programs are are really difficult and and very hard to manage and hard to share resources and they're not the best for kids and they're not the best for educators so those are principles just a couple of principles that we endorsed as a board when we started this process to go out so that being said you know we didn't we don't have we only have one full School DLI so that implies that we're going to have to make some significant changes in order to create those opportunities for our students and in order to really walk or talk around student achievement and Equitable opportunities and so that's that's really hard you know now is not the time to say oh maybe we don't buy that anymore that you know maybe maybe you know academic achievement accelerating academic achievement isn't our Guiding Light or maybe you know we don't buy what the research and what our experience shows around co-located programs or whole school DLI mean we had that conversation and we set out these marching orders which is not not to say that it's not hard I mean we can look to our one school regular and you know already begin to see that it's having a very positive effect I mean in fact Dr Dr Adams could School us on correlation versus causation but seems to be starting to work pretty well at wrigler so um you know I also I also want us to have like a a broad and open and kind of loving concept of school communities because right now we we do have a very tight School community at lent that is both the English side and the DLI side but this notion that like when the the English speaking students are going to just shift a little bit to this other wonderful school that's not very far away I mean granted there's you know there's some Transportation issues that we've made a commitment to address that's not like a that's not a huge disruption moving forward it's a big disruption for the kids that are there now um but it's all a neighborhood you know we we can we we don't have to think about these we don't have to use these divisive terms and think about these like hard and fast divisions between our neighborhoods and how how we align ourselves with our schools and and we got to be ready to have this conversation because we've got some pretty seriously declining enrollment so this board in the next few years May well be faced with decisions around closing whole schools so so we've got to be able to you know walk our talk and so um uh I appreciate the extra steps that have been taken and the extra commitments that have made been made particularly around well on the public engagement side really and also the commitments that have been made particularly around transportation and recognizing that there are some some um you know exceptional circumstances here and um so I hope I'm going to be a yes because I I do think that ultimately it's in the best interests of all of our students and I appreciate appreciate the work thank you director constant um do you have a motion in a second Andrew I'm sorry yeah I was just gonna put the motion on the table I was going to come right back to you okay I promise yeah I just realized we haven't even done that yet so just really quickly motion and second to adopt resolution 6599 lent English College moved to Marysville so moved second great thank you director
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constant moves director Lowry seconds and now we've had a significant board discussion but student representative thank you so I just want to kind of touch on a couple of things so first of all I think that for the time that our community engagement got in order to go through this process I think we did a really good job of trying to use every method that we had available and I think three months of time it's such a short span and it would be impossible to do really the level of community engagement that we need in that Community within this time period that being said I struggle with this plan because I feel like we're making a lot of promises and we don't have a lot of plans which I understand it's like the Chicken and the Egg which can we do first but I still think that it needs to be taken account that we're making promises to our families and we say we can keep them and I think that's great and I think the people here are dedicated but we have to keep bringing up that idea that leadership will change people will move and this is a long-term thing this is not going to be next year this is not going to be the year after that and we have to think about the long-term impact of this community I also want to highlight a bunch of the things that Julia said like there are so many factors that are impacting this community and I recognize the Merit of this plan I recognize the merits behind the one strand and how it will be beneficial I don't like believe that Marysville is a terrible place to be by any means or any stretch of the imagination but I think it's important to take into account the community aspect and the fact that like there are other factors that play into it Beyond just you know this plan and what this plan is highlighting and I think that that has been something that we've kind of overlooked um and also like the thing about moving to Marysville and I recognize the fact that it may not seem like a big move and ultimately for students that aren't being pulled away from their Community right now but for the students that are in that Community now it is a big move it is a huge move and I think that we especially if we do pass this then we need to understand that that is something that needs to be completely supported and something that really needs a lot of effort to ensure that the transition between schools for these students is good I personally like do not necessarily support as we like this motion and how we're doing it just because of a little bit of lack of planning and also just some other personal you know but I I think more than anything that if we do pass this then the important thing will be to ensure that every student is directly like we talk to them directly we make sure that they feel comfortable moving to a different school we make sure to provide every because it's a huge change like it is and especially at that age moving away from and the thing with peers like you might not be in the same class or you might not be doing the same curriculum but you are friends you are baby brother and sister you are family friends you know those people you've gone to school with those people and so there is a community there and in some ways that will be moving because when you leave a school in a way you do functionally leave that Community like the difference like we we look at the thing like I went to Dunaway and I have friends who went to Llewellyn those are completely different communities even if they're in the same proximity even if they're in the same area and I think that if we move forward with this and we vote Yes then we need to take Serious consideration of that and how it's going to affect our students because like I I see it as a big change and I just again want to say like Julia was so right about all of these external factors that are affecting this that we should take into account and the board members who get to vote on this should take into account because like it's a big deal thank you student representative McMahon the board will now vote on resolution 6599 land English Scholars move to Marysville all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no student representative McMahon no no are there any abstentions about it uh move it that's a yes okay resolution 6599 is approved by a vote of five to two with student representative McMahon voting no thank you everybody thank you for that conversation thanks thanks to staff and the superintendent uh okay we have quite a few things still left to go through so I'm going to take us back um two sorry let me go back so we had finished student Representatives report uh we now have a board committee and Conference reports um I will just not go individual but remember by board member Danny board members have a committee update they would like to provide I'm going to just say I was at the cgcs conference and Amy and Michelle were there too and Michelle were you going to say something about it sorry I was going to talk about basic themes around governance social emotional learning anti-racism governance and governance
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I took a couple of really great seminars one on Outdoor Learning and the impact on students achievement which was excellent presented by Albuquerque Dallas and Washington DC districts um also some anti-racist policy by Clark County Nevada that opened with the quote from Nelson Mandela um that no one is born hating another person because of the color of their skin or their religion people must learn to hate if they can learn to hate they can be taught to love um I'd really loved the process that the superintendent convened of text task force made up of community members Advocates and students and three external experts to develop a policy and the one thing that I really liked about that policy is that the first sentence of the policy states that Clark County Schools reject all forms of racism and I thought that was really powerful um and I'll I'll leave it at that it was a great conference thank you as I say our superintendent was one of nine finalists for the green Garner award which is the top superintendent recognized by the Council of great City schools and it was lots of fun to watch them make him go up on the stage and then come back for the official announcement so um uh and then the really exciting thing that happened was we PBS was awarded a prize from Scholastic and so it was really awesome that we'll be getting a library makeover of one of our schools from Scholastic they this is a new award they instituted last year for the former CEO who passed away and Philadelphia got it the first year and I think he maybe he just retired I might have just killed someone but anyway it's in his honor and uh Philadelphia got it last year and the video was so inspiring of these kids getting books and getting to go to their new library and then um to learn surprisingly that PPS had won that award it was really really awesome and wonderful to celebrate that achievement and while we are there we also got to celebrate a little bit that we had is it 12 of our schools come off of our TSI list so it was great to be together and superintendent Guerrero was part of a panel discussion on politics and education with um superintendent of St Louis and we were sitting with some St Louis board members at that time so thinking of them especially after the tragedy that happened in St Louis schools this week but wonderful to see a variety of superintendents and board members talking about how politics influences educations and the kinds of things that school boards and school districts are wrestling with around the country including gun violence so it was a great great conference with lots of learning and lots of inspiration great any additional updates I missed the beginning of what you said but for me I just want to share that the sessions on governance were just so rich and so useful both both the formal sessions but also just conversations with other board members about how can we in our roles really have impact on accelerating student achievement and having more Equitable public school districts and um I think they were better than ever before that that bit of bit of learning through the council has has been being fine-tuned over the last few years so just really useful and then and then uh just to share I mean we share all the same challenges you know uh talking about gun violence talking about our undocumented students and families talking about special education you know hiring challenges um so it's just so much learning um anyway I missed what you said I was also I'm really happy to see AJ crabill there and see the number of districts that have signed up to work with him and you better believe everybody came to those sessions on time remember did you have an update it's just something this Thursday at from that's that's the first Community climate response committee uh we'll have its first meeting also last week we had the first Levy committee meeting and sort of set the the data framework framework for a potential recommendation to the board on a local option Levy so we have another meeting and we'll be if if people are interested on the board on this topic that aren't on the committee about we'll have Carol Samuels there about the size what potentially we can go out for so I'd encourage other members if they're interested to come to that when is that meeting again um okay moving on to the appointment of our oh director Hall Feist your homes yeah so [Music] um facilities and operation committee um met last week um and this is one of the reasons why the community engagement piece was a focus for me today when we looked at
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we had three topics um that Four Tops we talked about [Music] um the main thing that came out of that was the community engagement piece and how it was in my opinion A F at best when we talk about the Tubman Community engagement process it didn't have a structure a plan nor direction we have poor Outreach poor reporting there was a little note-taking on this and there was no Community there was no communication with stakeholders as well as far as this this piece and that was really embarrassing when you got this report from that even on the slide that they showed us Community engagement had zero and they had all these other stuff and so and then when we went into the Jefferson master plan it was an issue because even though Tubman and part of the Jefferson plan the Tubman piece was not even included or they wasn't even given direction to talk about coming on the Jeff site even though it was part of the due diligence from beginning and as they always made it always made the cut and so that was really disheartening that we did not but on the other hand and this is a the good side so it wasn't that good about that part we had to supplemental Transportation update which we heard from today which I think is great that we got some clarity on what's going on and I want to give Marina a great she had a great written update which was awesome she kept it under five pages which that's one of our qualifications now is presentations don't mean more than five pages and it really be concise talking about the inputs output I mean outcomes and outputs um and so you can't really prepare and it's like she anticipated questions I was going to come up so she was really prepared to answer questions um and so that's kind of our thing I wanted to tell some good news but I'm not sure if I should say it right now or not so I'm gonna wait um about that okay well we could tell it now so outside of the um the information we have from Tubman piece we actually was able to work or potentially work with cairos to look at doing a co-locating for Tubman and Kairos which is all um we met with them after me yesterday day four yesterday yeah therefore yesterday and the conversation was great and I'm really looking forward to moving forward and seeing how that works now with that dude what that does for us though because when we was at the Phillies operations committee by us potentially having to maybe postpone the Jefferson Master planning um vote in December which would have cost us going by Marina 10 to 20 million dollars well by having that conversation yesterday we avoid that and which is awesome well no we didn't say we just did we yeah we avoided anything potentially since I have potentially avoided it so that's a good that was a good news um and so I'm really excited um Community um should be on the lookout for more engagement on that process we have a plan um process as far as how they're going to do that engagement so I'm really looking forward to that and hopefully we learn from the lessons that we learned from previous that we'll do better on this next one that's it okay next up on our agenda appointment of community budget Review Committee members so the Board of Education appoints a community budget Review Committee which we refer to as a cbrc to assist in our annual budget process tbrc reviews evaluates and makes recommendations regarding the superintendent's proposed budget and other budgetary issues identified by the board the cbrc also monitors and advises the board on the allocation and expenditure of local option Levy funds the committee is generally composed of between 8 to 12 volunteer members tonight we're voting to approve the new members which are recommended by the selection committee which included current staff current cbrc members and directors Lowry and vice chair Hollins do I have a motion in second to adopt resolution 6600 appointment of cbrc members and student Representatives motion second place your Holland's moves and direct you to pass seconds any board discussion
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yes I just want to say congratulations and appreciation to John John or I was getting here Jordan um and Roberto for having put together a awesome um communication out there I think we had 34 people signed up for this committee which is awesome because last year we was we had four uh and we was hoping we were praying for the people to join us so I wanted to give appreciation to that I think that was a remarkable task that you took on and you knocked it out the park and so I'm excited about the candidates that we have we did some interviews which was also my first time doing interviews for something like that so and I want to say there was some Community engagement staff that also worked with Jordan um to to do this work to engage with folks and encourage them and when we asked one of the interview questions was why did you apply and a lot of people were like well I saw the email or I got this information and it made me interested so um excellent work to you Jordan and those those Community engagement staffers as well great representative McMahon I also just wanted to shout out Oscar Calvert who got um uh appointed or is up for a point appointment I guess for um the student representative Oscar was a past DSC representative so it's very exciting to see our students staying involved very cool very cool Ms Bradshaw is there any public comment no okay the board will now vote on resolution 6600. all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes holopose please indicate by saying no and student representative McMahon yes any abstentions resolution 6600 is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative McMahon voting yes now moving next up on our agenda for tonight is uh division 22 report to the board superintendent Guerrero would you like to introduce this item uh yes thank you chair Scott uh every year we report to the community and to you our board on the district's status with respect to all of the standards for public elementary and secondary schools and as you know we've been busy in those regards in many of those areas including our new instructional framework roll out of new curricula that are rigorous standard space across all our schools all the accompanying professional development for our Educators our school leaders Etc but here this evening to provide our annual division 22 report as our chief of schools and assistant superintendent for secondary schools and I think we also have our CIO joining us remotely Dr Kimberly Armstrong I see her now that that is correct thank you superintendent and we also have uh Dana narenberg thank you Dana nurenberg for joining us as well hello again um so uh directors uh student McMahon and of course superintendent um and and just like with what superintendent Guerrero said Dr Armstrong is here uh as well virtually and then Dana nirenberg is also here and will be available for questions afterwards if there are some so we are here to give the yearly Community report on Division 22. I'll give an overview of the community report division 22 and then I will ask Dr Armstrong to take you through the areas we are not in compliance or weren't in compliance in 2122 and then the steps we took or are taking as a part of our corrective action plan so all all Oregon admin rules or oars set out in chapter 581 division 22 standards for public elementary and secondary schools the standards that the Oregon legislature or the state board has determined must be met in order to be a standard School District so in other words compliance with these rules ensures a baseline level of service across the state and as that um picture depicts it is a baseline it's a floor it's not the ceiling it is the floor go ahead JD thank you so division 22 Oregon administrator rules assurances it does signal our commitment to providing a high quality educational experience and Equitable opportunities for all students division 22 standards articulate the floor of the education to be provided to students not the ceiling as previously mentioned and the assurances process offers an opportunity for districts not in compliance to reflect on areas in need of attention and receive technical
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assistance next slide JD so the what you see here is just an example of the categories the vision 22 rule categories and within the categories they include over 50 rules teaching and learning health and safety District performance accountability and human resources and Staffing within teaching and learning and health and safety there are several subcategories ode recently developed this organizational structure to help people better understand the types of rule that this division encompasses and the role they play in the state's delivery of Educational Services next slide and what this slide depicts is just some examples within those specific categories some of the specific rules that exist within those categories next slide two requirements that were waived for the 2122 school year section 4 of the assessment of essential skills rule has been waived eliminating the essential skills assessment graduation requirements for graduates in 2022 2023 and 2024. section two of the essential skills rule which is the local performance assessment requirement remains in effect and districts must report on compliance within this section the second requirement that was waived is the kindergarten assessment there's one new requirement and it's outlined in Oar 5810220106 and that's state standards for the 2122 school year which requires that districts submit an operational plan to the Department this requirement will carry over to this school year under the recently adopted oar 5810220107 [Music] and this pertains to operational plans for the 22-22-23 school year so this operational plan is in relationship to health and safety and covid protocols so three steps in the division 22 Assurance process are these that school district superintendents report to their local school board the district's compliance with all division 220 standards for the 2021 school year and 2122 school year by November 1st 2022 school districts post a community report on compliance with public school standards to their websites by November 1st of this year and that school districts complete and submit the annual division 22 assurances form to Ode by November 15th of 2022. and so what you see here is the past six years that PPS has become client with the following oars and you could see at the very top left the administration of State assessments the exception of students with disabilities from State assessments rights of parents of tag students teacher training related dyslexia media programs prevention education and drugs and alcohol human sexuality education in 1819 and then the complaint procedure and so I'm going to go ahead and ask Dr Armstrong to come on and talk a little bit more about the corrective action plan and timeline perfect thank you Dr Franco good evening so there's four areas where I'm going to talk about the corrective action plan and timeline the first one is instructional materials adoption and we submitted our our action plan in the fall of 2021 and just to to note that the bond investment has enabled us to create an instructional materials action plan that will keep us on the path to compliance by the 24-25 school year so what the plan does is sequence our adoptions and that plan was included in the materials the action plan will be submitted by November 15th this is Dr Franco referenced and we're anticipating formal approval by ODE by November 30th the next one thank you JD is the talented and gifted correction action corrective action plan and timeline and so during the 2122 school year the district was unable to verify that every tax student in every Portland Public
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Schools classroom have their rate and level of learning address you know in your packet there is a document called the PPS tag conciliation plan and then 1.3 we have an action item that states our goal which is by the end of the 24-25 school year we will have developed instruments to monitor rate and level learning for students identify this tag for traditional creative leadership and visual Performing Arts ability and so there's some other goals that are are listed in that and so I just wanted to acknowledge that and say that that document is is in your your packet as well and then just to note that um every year we or at least specifically this year with our instructional framework with our curriculum adoptions and the teacher professional learning that's happening we are confident that we are getting closer to being able to say that we're compliant in that area and that every year there is professional learning designed for building administrators and I'm talented and gifted facilitators who are leading professional learning sessions on on rate and level the third one is local performance assessment so for the 2122 school year we did not implement the plan to conduct local performance assessment assessments as called for in this Oar so pre-pandemic uh there was a a plan in place and then during the pandemic uh the the plan was waived and it didn't happen last year but but this year we are engaging with teachers and principals to finalize details of Assessments that not only addresses the grade ban and the a Oar but also for our students who are K-12 and of course the office of teaching and learning and the research assessment and accountability office will be spending time in collaboration designing a balanced assessment system and that is just acknowledging the work that happens to make sure that both formative and summative assessments can coexist and benefit and inform those instructional moves and strategies and so with the new Adoption and the new materials and the assessments we have this wonderful opportunity to detail off that plan to help us continue to move instruction forward and support our learners and then the last area is around physical education so the physical education requirement districts are required to provide students with 150 minutes per week in grades K-5 and 180 minutes per week in grades six through eight see that listed on there and so for the 21-22 school year K-5 students were staffed to receive 90 minutes per week in grades six through eight students for staff to receive one quarter of health and one quarter of PE for a total of 180 minutes each week found so in K5 for this school year we have K-5 students who are receiving an additional 15 minutes per week for structured movement and then just the next slide on that is just some more detail moving into the 2324 school year we are having a stakeholder engagement opportunities to discuss how we can be in compliance even further and so we're looking at adding additional time for PE through structured movement and then we'll see what comes out of the stakeholder engagement session and then for grades six through eight by 24 through 25 increasing Staffing by an estimated of 50 FTE that would be needed to have 180 minutes of PE at that level per week and not just the Staffing and the budget implications but also there's a space implication and so making sure that we're doing the planning that's needed um and there's that opportunity during
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our Middle School redesign process to help support getting into compliance and our hope is to plan towards full implementation by 24 25. and with that I will turn it back over to Dr Franco to talk about what to expect for the 22-23 school year yeah thank you Dr Armstrong so before we conclude what you see here is new laws for 2223 that we will report on next year and that's programs and services for tag students and then identification of academically talented and intellectually gifted students and that in particular for that one the person who is responsible for identification must be trained go ahead and go to the next slide JD we do expect to be in compliance with the new ARs with the ARs oars that you see here with of course with the exception of PD or PE which was alluded to by Dr Armstrong um so school just so operational plans for this school year school districts and public charter schools must periodically submit to the department a plan and then agreements entered into with voluntary organizations and so we expect to be in compliance with these new oars this school year so with that I will conclude our our presentation and and would gladly take some uh some questions great let's open it up for more questions and discussion I have one quick question that's not entirely clear to me is around the assessments of essential skills so what actually qualifies for that like does map does do the assessments that are included within our new curriculum adoptions were we out of compliance because of a coveted thing or why were we how will we not and what qualifies are my questions yeah thank you for that so what qualifies are the local assessments so that could be the end of unit assessments and that's one of the things that we're planning for in in through the office of teaching and learning looking at those end-of-unit assessments and um it would be all those things that fit under the formative that I would say assessments that provide data on how students are doing and Performing so that we can intervene um so so anything that gives information timely map testing does report information on how students are performing on through different strands and so that would be able to be used as well I didn't hear the other part of that question and and then just the other knot is that we want to acknowledge the fact that um with the new curriculum adoption we have found ourselves with resources that go along with the curriculum adoption that will allow us to like I said really design a balanced assessment system where we're bringing in both the summative and the formative assessment so that they coexist and so we are now that is under construction right now so that by the end of this year we can formalize an assessment plan and it will be clear to those in the organization and outside of the organization how we assess students and and what those um those tools are that that we use I mean that's what's under construction this year I think the other the other piece just uh briefly um director constant about essential skills right um those as defined are Reading Writing and in mathematics and um those were waived as graduation requirements um and we're talking about local performance assessments which are you know generally in sort of uh colloquially uh would be in classroom type assessments right and so um that's the piece there's the Nuance of those two that the local performance assessments happen at multiple grades and essential skills are at we're a high school graduation requirement I I just have one question a couple questions why what is structured movement and two why can't we get to the PE goals great that's uh that's a great question and I have um Dana who is in the room and um perhaps she would like to share a
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little bit more on that sure good evening everyone Dan and Arenberg senior director of academic programs then health and physical education is part of our team so structured movement is opportunities for students to engage in activities that get their bodies moving and and speak to the intention behind our high number of PE minutes that our state has committed to and so it differs from recess and that recess is total free choice within the parameters and guidance of the school the difference from PE and that PE is intentional skill development within the physical education domains structure movement could include a brain break it can include an activity like Simon says or a balance challenge there's a lot of online resources from GoNoodle and our health and PE team have put together a whole variety I'd be happy to make to share our link with you all that of activities that our elementary teachers can do that take five minutes and just get the Wiggles out get students brains reactivated and ready to go for more continued learning in terms of the second question around why it's hard to meet the minutes it's a lot of time and our school day and ours is not not as long as it could be in terms of thinking of all of the different requirements that we have to meet and so thinking about our adoptions that Dr Armstrong mentioned and the time that we want to make sure our students have for social emotional learning math Reading Writing social studies health and and science as well as the special subjects and the the formal P the formal recess that comes with lunch as well as the second recess that the board instituted a few years ago there's there's a lot to fit in to our instructional day and our teams work really hard to support our principals and building schedules that support it but there's only so much time in the school day okay last question So when you say that these are requirements I'm assuming these are State requirements why is our day not structured whether it's longer days or what have you to meet these requirements it sounds like a simple question that should have a simple answer director Rollins but I can assure you because there isn't a peer superintendent in this state that I've spoken to they're all giving the same annual division 22 report to their boards and every single one of them is going to report out that they're out of compliance too uh it's it's a pretty high water mark to meet those minutes and there's a lot of very real constraints that uh time in the school day length of course Staffing in most cases spaces there isn't a space to deliver the instruction but you know folks have been striving to add time to sort of shoot towards that goal we've done the same there just there just hasn't been the time or the physical facility to be able to meet those visit minutes important to point out this is a new law like last year was the first year we were expected to be in compliance or two years ago anyway it's the law passed in 2007 just noting but as far as compliance when we were expected to be in compliance was just within the last few years so is PE the only subject we have uh time limits on that's another great question the odd thing is that it is the only content area where there's an expected and required amount of instructional minutes interesting it's almost like the jocks are up there making decisions my only question was also about the PE minutes because I know how important movement is just in general so so are you asking a question or can I go or was was there a question it was um can I go so I had sent a couple things in requests in advance but because of illnesses and everything I didn't get answered so I'm just going to ask them now so um I'd like to get the copy of the PE report because one of the thing which is the buy School the amount of PE because before there was a PE um mandate in 2007 what you saw is guess what kids usually weren't getting PE the students who um were generally lower income are students of color and so one of the part of the legislation with adding the minutes which is um like a science-based requirement and the minutes actually that's the minimum not the maximum but there's a report that comes out by each school and I so I'd be interested in seeing the report also in the tag document there was a very very detailed con conciliatory document which talks about how based on the tag
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investigation what PPS is going to do I found so I found the the plan like very detailed I'm moving forward but I'm also would like to see like what that what that was in response to and I don't know if the board ever saw the findings of that investigation of what that's responding to but I felt like I was reading only half of a narrative so I'd like to see that and then um this is a more specific question so it said we're out of compliance because during the 2021-22 school year the district was unable to verify that every tag School in every PPS classroom classroom had their rate and level of learning addressed and I'm curious do we know how many tag students had their rate in learning because it was just like we're out of compliance but it didn't say like Hey we're almost there because I sincerely doubt that there's any school district in the state that has every student in every classroom but but where are we what's the Delta between every student in every classroom and where we are now uh Dana is specifically here to to answer some of those Tag questions Dana can you take this one sure to the question about every student receiving rate and level that that's part of it is the ethicity of that and and the completely I'll kind of I'll back up to the conciliation agreement so we can certainly make sure that we share the findings document that that is a response to it was in response to the complaint that was filed um pre-pandemic and there was a therefore a state investigation that included visits to many schools before the pandemic and during the pandemic and then we received the findings approximately December of last school year and then we entered into a conciliation agreement that was a new vocabulary word for me but that's the process that we had a con a person who helped process through the aspects of the complaint and the findings with the complaintants and with a team from PPS I was a part of that and in that we craft we co-created that consolation agreement and as you can see it includes many many detailed action steps that we are already well underway in terms of taking to address the shortcomings that were found in our tag programming including identification processes and services and so uh last year that was a that was a big piece of work to engage in that strategic plan and like I said we're already implementing many of those practices as Dr Armstrong mentioned one of those processes that we are committing to is by the end of the 2024 school year we will have a strategy for effectively tracking rate and level of and how it's going in our schools there's not currently a clear metric or a clear way to do that and so and we have our new instructional framework our new high quality instructional materials and so much alignment around instructional practices that that will really be a helpful lever in US knowing across the system what instructional opportunities our students are having and then also providing supports so that we can help our teachers differentiate for rating level for the tag identified students in their classrooms in in conjunction with that curricula when we didn't have the same curriculum different teachers were all doing different things and now that teachers are doing things in a more consistent manner we can layer those resources in and offer a more more coherent approach so I'm not able to offer you a specific number but I will say that that is something that we are working to be able to be able to track more effectively and most importantly Implement for our students this year when we get the division sorry I'm not sure where I'm supposed to be looking up you're bigger there so um so next year for the division 22 report we will actually have a tool that will say here's how how many of our students are getting rate and level I will say again so this year's this report is from last school year so we're we're reporting on last school year so this year next year at this time we'll still probably be in progress and we're working closely with other districts across the state the state has some new guidance around tag resources and tag training and tag offerings and so we're really looking to Avail ourselves both of the guidance from the state as it comes out and partnering with our local districts to to identify the best ways because this is one of the many areas that we have challenges that other systems do as well and so rather than working on this in isolation we want to work with other systems to identify the best strategies for doing that okay so you're in luck because years from now I'll still be on the board so I can ask that question thank you for the answer that's helpful and I'm glad we're partnering I had two more Tag questions sorry um but one um I had I just a question from a Community member I've had a couple of questions from community members about PPS not meeting the rate and level and then curious at the same time why we would be um phasing out compacted math or maybe
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that's just a rumor um but they're saying that Beaverton is going to all 8th graders going to Compact and mass or having come back to math so that they can take algebra earlier so I'm I'm just curious is that a rumor or and if it's if it's not is there is that not fit with our overall tag plans or is that something else no I agree oh I appreciate the question and I'm I'm sure um senior director Dana may want to share but I just want to just talk really quickly about the work that we're doing in the office and teaching of teaching and learning regarding math so the Oregon Department of Education has had some uh some language out there the the mass shift where there are multiple Pathways being created and so we know that there's a lot of conversation that's happening around compacted math and so just to be clear that compacted math was developed so that students could reach calculus by the time that they graduate and so with the shift that's happening um with the ode it is about creating the structure that allows for multiple pathsways so now it isn't about just that advanced math student or a student who has an aptitude for math making it to calculus now they have the option of being on a pathway for day data science or a quantitative pathway that brings in a different option for them and so because of these different Pathways that we're exploring we have the opportunity to look at single subject acceleration and compacted math differently I will say that we actually come together next week as an OTL team to start the the conversation for this year on a math plan so that we can begin to make some recommendations and get some feedback and input but I I wanted to to give that nod to our response to Ode but while also making sure that we're setting students up to reach the math that they desire and that we're also creating choice so that uh the different math options are accessible for a variety of students but I want to turn to senior director Dana she has more to say on that yeah I mean I can speak to our model around single subject acceleration so it's one strategy for supporting rate and level it's one of a collection of strategies and again I can't overstate how important the instructional framework and our high quality instructional materials adoptions really support all of our students knowing that we are hitting grade level standards right and then and then when students are needs necessitate a faster rate or a higher level of learning there are resources available that are aligned to those same grade level standards so I want to I want to specify that another strategy within Tag Services it that some students benefit from is what we call single subject acceleration and that is uh when students take a math course at the next grade so a second grader who has demonstrated Readiness through a variety of measures and their parent and teacher are in support of them joining third graders for math and so this is a practice that has been in place in PPS for many many years last spring and it was not always communicated as consistently as it could be it was very much a school-based model and so last spring as part of an effort one of our strategies to be more clear and more inclusive with all of our families about the processes and practices available we put an all school on all PPS blast out to All Families around the single subject acceleration process and so we had a number of families who applied in partnership with their school teams for single subject acceleration about 70 of the kids who applied in the spring qualified and so have started the fall with a single subject acceleration pathway and in order to you know realizing that coming out of the pandemic you know we're still we're still in the process of coming back from that we offered a fall window for single subject acceleration this fall for any families who might have missed that in the spring so we had a smaller number of families who've applied for this fall but we've processed those as well making that opportunity available for students who do require a higher different rate level for mathematics instruction any additional questions discussion there's no vote on this just informational thank you very much appreciate it I have one actually one last thing but it's not for you need your microphone on
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Which is far away Haley's got me well taken care of um so I'm noting in the um thank you Chief Garcia you knew I was going to ask um noting that in 2017-18 PPS had a corrective action plan relating to our formal complaint policy um and that the 2017-18 policy committee spent more than a year Drafting and building a new complaint policy with many parents see parents who actually had filed complaints before so um you know getting feedback from the complainers for the complainants um and then last year the board made another significant change the policy to streamline the process of parents who had formal complaints received information resolution or a decision in a short time period in a way that also reduced duplicate duplicative and time-consuming staff processes so the state guidelines it's one of the division 22s provide a framework for the formal complaint process for both division 22 complaints and complaints and other topics with our new streamlined formal complaint process another potential way to streamline the process and make it more accessible to parents is to provide an alternative path on non-division 22 complaints where there's not already a defined complaint appeal process where the complaints are addressed in a clear and timely way and keeps the decision-making and conflict resolution closest to the place where the conflict or issue arose and to follow the division 22 framework um we would need to set explicit paths and timelines in a revised formal complaint policy and our materials and the PPS communication for division 22 related complaints and for those that are not division 22 complaints can you speak to what the paths and the timelines would look like for us to continue to be in compliance with division 22 and a streamlined process sure and thank you for the question Jonathan Garcia Chief of Staff so as you noted we are uh we're going to work through the policy committee to make some minor revisions to the current complaint policy to clarify what complaints IT addresses uh right now our staff is actively working on updating the conflict resolution and comp complaint page to make to make modifications and make it clear uh how non how non-division 22 complaints are handled uh so the complaint form as it's being worked on right now now would be updated to reflect these different paths understanding that that many of the complaints have specifically defined complaint paths or appeal paths including Title IX and sped so for example Title IX process incorporates trained investigators and individuals and schools uh School interim measures and supports as required by federal law other non-division 22 complaints including complaints about individual students special Design Services those goes go directly to Ode and enrollment in transfer as another example have a process for requesting an appealing transfer requests of course we're in the spirit of continuous Improvement as we Implement these new updates and make these revisions we will want to do additional focus groups to be with parents to provide feedback about these these changes in terms of the timeline director Brynn Edwards we are looking to make these changes uh uh the work is already underway to make to to address many of these issues and we're targeting to have the non-policy issues completed no later than October 31st in other words next Monday we plan to have review at the end again we plan to have a review and at the end of the semester which means January to host focus groups for parents to give us feedback awesome thank you I think I'm always looking at how we do things and a weight Improvement I think last year some of the streamlining is good for staff and also for parents thank you great thank you very much for that um I want to pose a question to the board it is currently 9 20 as we discussed at a retreat and you know for me I don't actually think we should be doing our public business after nine o'clock when I checked on YouTube there were 27 people watching I'm assuming a fair number of them are staff we have one item left on our agenda tonight it is a October enrollment and Staffing update the memo and presentation have been made available to us I want to ask the will of the board and I apologize to Dr Adams if if if because I know you've been here does the board want to hear the presentation or are we comfortable having gotten the information we can provide any questions or ask any questions we want of Staff if there's a desire to have an inboard conversation we can bring it back on our next board meeting or we can talk about it tonight I'm open to the will of the board I would be in favor of talking about at another meeting d i would support that I believe that the information we received in the memo is sufficient and we don't need an additional presentation and I think we can send our questions if
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we have them via email to maybe chair Scott and then if if we have questions about the enrollment then we can get them answered through that pathway I've got College apps to go home to so I'm more than happy to end early about maybe another meeting yeah but not tonight Dr Adams I apologize for keeping you here until now patiently waiting in right field over there yeah but I will say I do appreciate the information and and and reading through it and and we will we will discuss whether uh to put it on another agenda or how to deal with additional questions so thank you any additional uh business or committee items from from the board policy committee meeting tomorrow thank you very much for tonight's


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