2023-02-07 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2023-02-07
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 - 2/7/2023

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foreign good evening we're going to get started here tonight so good evening thanks everybody um for being here so this Board of Education meeting for February 7 2023 is called the order uh before we again can you please give a round of applause to the Harriet Tubman Middle School African dance class [Applause] so many of us were enjoying that performance before the meeting and we're going to have an opportunity to enjoy One More Dance piece in just a couple of minutes uh some items to get out of the way for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on has been posted on the PPS website under the board and meetings tab this meeting today is being streamed live on PPS TV services website and on Channel 28 it'll be replayed throughout the next two weeks and you can find uh replay times on the district website so uh good evening thanks everyone for being here um just a few reminders as we get started tonight we do ask that everyone attending the meeting tonight members of the public staff board members that we 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 I strongly believe that our ability to engage with one another civilly is what makes our community strong if you do wish to display signs or banners please remain in the auditorum foyer behind the seating area and just try not to block any other attendees views of the proceedings and for safety reasons we'll also need to keep the walkways and aisles clear I appreciate those on the sides which you already are doing standing against the wall thank you very much for that um and in general we would appreciate if everyone can just be mindful of others in the room and remember that we're setting an example tonight for our community's children with that uh superintendent would you like to introduce our guests for this evening yes thank you good evening directors it's always great to start off the evening with some drumming and dancing we're going to have a chance to hear one more short performance and we'll try to get some chairs out afterwards but we're so excited to have here tonight students from the Harriet Tubman Middle School African dance class they're here with their teacher seiku Walker seku has been teaching West African dance and PPS since 2008 and has studied West African dance since 1998. I'd love to ask him to come up to the mic and tell us just a little bit more about this student Performance Group and what they're performing for us here this evening Seiko all right thank you guys uh thank you guys for having us uh like you said we uh our performers and dancers from Harry Tubman Middle School I also work at Fabian so I have wonderful students uh like all over the city um this piece you're gonna see tonight is called cordejugauga is the cast of the jester or the clown the comedian okay and um this is from Malian and guinea okay countries and the mundane people are the ones who uh do this dance okay and the purpose of the Cordy juga is to show up and interrupt a party or a fun festivity or whatever but yeah it's very calculated they're very brilliant with it they travel with an ensemble the music is amazing they're amazing they're very acrobatic and just quirky and weird but it all like comes together at the same time so uh we've been preparing this piece since uh we started back in August and um this is like what it's turned into it's not finished yet okay we still have some other things to incorporate with there we have a recital coming up uh in March so we're still building on it but the students really love this piece they love that uh the the music timing is interesting it's in like three and six uh they love the whole concept of being able to play around and be playful um if you guys come see us in March you're going to see them with like full-on costumes and face paint and things like that so they're really excited to just kind of adapt that clown character and everything um my you know amazing uh brothers and nephew here drumming with us and everything and um so what we want you guys to take from this is just to see how important the Arts are I always say that when I'm talking about the RS how important it is um and how much the students love it and how hard they work okay so check us out and hope you enjoy it [Applause]
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foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign
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[Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] directors I think as we all just witnessed the Visual and Performing Arts are thriving here at PPS thank you seiku Walker and our Tubman dancers one more last Applause thank you [Applause] yeah thank you wow that was um that was exhausting to watch YouTube I'm so thank you that was incredible it's really incredible so thank you all right that's a hard act to follow we're gonna move into um still important stuff um thank you again so next uh we're going to be voting on a resolution um to honor National School counseling week which happens to be this week superintendent Guerrero well our school counselors we understand they're a critical element in creating and a supportive School Community as well as a positive educational experience our school counselors they act as advocates mediators Consultants supporters observers Navigators they lean on their expertise to help and support our students handle the pressures of school and daily life our counselor's work goes beyond helping students develop the skills to achieve academic and professional success I'd like to ask our chief of student supports Services J
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buno and our program administrator for School counseling Marquita Guzman here to share just a few more details about the very many positive contributions that our counselors play here at Portland Public Schools it was here [Applause] good evening thank you for giving me a few moments to speak with you all um thank you for allowing me to speak to the contributions of our school counselors in help making all of our students develop skills they need to access their education and thrive in school and Beyond National School counseling week is an opportunity for us to shine a light on the significant impact school counselors have an increasing student achievement this theme this year's theme of school counselors helping students dream big really I think encapsulates so much of what our schools counselors do to Foster growth and Exploration with our students we have over 189 school counselors across our school district really working to support the academic social emotional and career and college readiness of all of our students as part of our comprehensive School counseling programming counselors deliver curriculum across three distinct areas outlined by the American school counselor Association academic personal social and career in college readiness PPS counselors also decided to add a fourth domain focused on racial equity and social justice so many of the character traits we'd aim to develop through the PPS portrait such as inclusive collaborative problem solvers transformative racial Equity leaders resilient adaptive Learners and positive confident and connected self connected to self are really skills we are building in our students each and every day through classroom lessons small group work and individual support we provide to students and Families through our core counseling curriculum students gain skills in emotional management healthy relationships bullying prevention conflict resolution and self-awareness and self-esteem in the academic domain counselors are focusing on developing executive functioning skills with students study skills and academic planning we've started to really expand career in college readiness lessons for even at our youngest grades in kindergarten and K5 to focus on Career Cluster education so students start thinking and dreaming about the world of work and careers we also do interests in strength assessments and post-secondary planning of course with all of our students in addition to delivering tier one lessons each year counselors through comprehensive School counseling plans develop data informed goals which are tied to improving student achievement outcomes this year we asked all of our counselors to develop a counseling program goal in support of our board goals I want to thank the school board and District leadership for their wise decision to increase school counselors through the investment of SIA dollars and school counselor FTE that really made a big difference in many of our schools but targeted supports for students I wanted to appreciate the board and District leadership for the continued focus on lowering student student counselor and student ratios multiple research studies directly linked school to student to school counselor ratios to better graduation rates higher attendance rates and lower disciplinary incidents across our schools our high school counselors engage in individual academic planning with each and every student on their caseload and our key contributors to supporting on graduate contract graduation for our students our continued improvements in graduation rates in our district are directly related to the support of our high school counselors in closing thank you for your time attention and continued support as we celebrate all of our school counselors across the district thanks [Applause] for the schools great thank you thank you very much do we have a motion and a second to adopt resolution 6646 say a second director brim Edwards moves director green seconds um any board discussion I just want to say uh so I I went to school with uh by Miss Marquita um we got I think we graduated about five years ago six years ago right right but I mean I when I seen her at the school last year when we was having some issues with our middle schools um you know when I just come to seeing her that you know we could not have a better advocate for our kids than her and so it is great to see you here um and thank you for everything you're doing foreign director Hollins in the thank you to all the counselors in the schools um as a as a parent um you don't truly appreciate the counselors until you need one and then you realize how indispensable they are for our students and our families so um
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thanks to all the counselors and also to um the taxpayers for giving us the resources that we can make sure that we have the counseling support in our schools because without that additional funds we wouldn't be able to do it so thanks everybody and certainly as a senior this year my counselor has been a lot of help in the college process and I think I'm probably the only one at this table right now that can say um my school counselor is really really important to me and Mr Yoder if you're listening thank you for being an advocate for me as a student and just to all the counselors who do so much and especially with the increase in student safety issues and gun violence especially at Cleveland counselors mean more than anything especially right now so thank you to all of you that do it I know it's a lot of hard work and emotional labor so thank you I want to jump in and say thank you also to all of the counselors um particularly Ms Henry who I don't know through my own experience but I bet I might be the only one here that can find my way to the counseling office with my eyes closed at Benson High School and that's because I was in her office quite often um during my son's senior year um really appreciate the work that you do and we know how vital it is particularly now for your presence in our schools thanks I'll just add before we move on my mom was a schoolteacher most of her life but in the last decade or so she got her Master's in counseling became a school counselor in the Sandy and boring school district so um I'm really excited to vote on this resolution and thanks Mom for everything you did she's long retired long retired but uh um but counselors are vital to what we do so since we're giving out kudos to counselors and stuff you know my counselor back at Vince and miss Mr Mckenzie was awesome so I just want to put that out there since we're talking about our counselors no that's great um is Bradshaw is there any public comment no okay so the board will now vote on resolution 6646 to recognize February 6th through 10th 2023 as National School counseling week all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no and are there any abstentions and representative McMahon yes resolution 6646 is approved by a vote of 7-0 with res with student representative McMahon voting yes great thank you all right another important Proclamation for tonight is our Proclamation uh recognizing February's Black History Month um superintendent it's in addition to celebrating our counselors it is also Black History Month which represents an important opportunity for all of us to celebrate Black Americans achievements and recognize their Central role in U.S history which I know is a bit of national debate at the moment but we believe our students deserve to have their Heritage and background celebrated as part of their educational experience we believe it's important for our students to be able to see themselves as well as their history and background and what they learn in school I've asked our Deputy superintendent of instruction in school communities Dr Cheryl Proctor to share with you some of the activities and resources provided to our schools to support their learning during Black History Month and throughout the year and if you didn't catch it she did a great little video clip the other day uh you got to catch it Dr Proctor and it looks like Dr Adams joining yes she asked me to join yes joining um thank you so much superintendent and directors great to be with you this evening so yes we have provided a wealth of resources and information to our schools regarding lessons and information that can be shared during Black History Month in a time when so many things pull us apart Black History Month is a true reminder that there are so many Journeys we all share it's not just black history it's the world's history only through the realization of the contributions of so many people across the African diaspora can we truly appreciate the Journey of the African-American people black history month is a celebration of not only accomplishments but the survival of so many amazing struggles as a matter of fact black history is a true Testament of Love why do I say love it's because of the love of our ancestors coupled with their belief that tomorrow can be better for their children that they persevered many of them knew they would not see the freedoms they fought for in their lifetime but dreamed of a day when their children would be free it is that love which was the foundation of their survival and those children have gone on to accomplish so many amazing things in our history
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from Grammy winning musicians to astrophysicists from Marching for Freedom to president of the United States and so many more Journeys in between and so I'm going to invite my colleague and my friend Dr Renard Adams to share a few words Dr Proctor asked me to spoil my Black History Month video clip that's coming up in a couple weeks Black History Month is personal very personal to me so I'm going to keep it personal local and immediate I was raised by my great grandmother who only had the benefit of a third grade education because she was born in 1914 and the deeply segregated South but she instilled in me the value of education and always talked about the ancestors the beauty the brutality the truth of it the Brilliance the magnificence and I have come to know that this Proclamation at this time and In This Moment is critically important as a superintendent mentioned we have forces at play that would attempt to erase the history of African Americans in our country and there is no America without African-Americans this country was built on their labor and their accomplishments and so I just want to thank the board for once again proclaiming the importance of this month and allowing us to have an Administration that pushes and promotes the history of All Peoples including African-Americans so thank you foreign thank you both for your leadership and your Humanity thank you um do I have a motion in a second to motion second director Greene uh makes the motion director Holland seconds uh our Proclamation and recognition of February's Black History Month uh is there any more discussion so I was thinking about this a while back it went a while back a couple weeks ago so me and my daughter was trying to see how far removed we were from slavery right and we looked at it with like 1965 is when the official um say we talk about ended and in that conversation it was interesting because it was like we're really not that far removed so my dad was born in 1916. um his mother and grandmother who was grandmother was an actual slave you know and we were calling back to you know folks in the family to try to figure out how far back we could find him so when we came to realization we were only literally three generations removed from this and you know the accomplishments that we have made from then to now is remarkable um is it's miraculous you know the type of stuff we've done and we wanted to make sure I want to make we want to make sure that we understand where we're coming from How Far We've came but also understand how far we need to go and that was something that was sobering for me when I was having that conversation um you know it's we walk around um Portland and we had these conversations as well we see you know a lot of people have black lives matter stuff in there in their homes and their windows and all this stuff and we really want to make sure that you know when we talk about black lives matter that's coming from the history and the ancestors that came before us the ones that my great my grandmother who have prayed for Seven Generations well we're only three generations in right and so you know black lives matter is what we live not just something that we display so I just want to thank you guys for that and just put that out there thank you I want to also say I had the benefit last week of attending the um for the second time the African-American museum in Washington DC and um you start in the basement and you start to look at the history of the slave trade and how it um moves through Europe and throughout the Americas and um it was very impactful to say the least if you haven't been I hope you have a chance to go it's a Smithsonian institution so you you can't get through it in one day um I also for the first time had a chance to visit the top floors and that was very uplifting and showing the accomplishments and the greatness and the music and the entertainment and the Athletics and what an uplifting experience it was to experience that with community members and Friends um may we never forget well since we all talking what um whenever we get to Black History Month I always think about my my youngest daughter Taylor um and an interaction that she had when she was a freshman in high school
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and they were came to Black History Month because we always talk about it and they got to talking about well Taylor tell us what what you remember it and what you know and Taylor said and I just happened to be there Philippe was there he was the principal at the time um Harish dick that's my guy Mr H um and they had a the another teacher it was like they were like watching this teacher and they were like so tell us what you think and Taylor said I'm not interested and the teacher was pressing it's like no seriously go to somebody else I'm not Taylor's the baby so she's a hot head to say the least and she's like I'm not interested and then um the teachers will tell me why and Taylor says well and I'm sitting there I had a proud dad moment because she said every year we talk about black people and black history month and we talk about slavery and this but I didn't come from slavery I came from kings and queens and if y'all aren't going to talk about anything beyond slavery then y'all need to talk to somebody else and this is what she said to this little this little teacher and I'm sitting there for a moment and I'm like first I'm thinking come on baby don't be rude but at the same time I'm super proud because I'm like tell them what you know baby tell them what you know and and I always think about that because it's a reminder that I understand our history and our lineage and slavery is a part of it but we didn't come from slaves we were Kings we were Kings we were philosophers we were people that studied the Stars we we were a whole bunch of other things that a European nation made slaves but we weren't slaves so when we start talking about black history month and the history of Black America let's remember it is what it is I didn't come from slavery slavery is a part of my history but I didn't come from slavery I came from Kings and I came from Queens and I came from royalty and I'm the best there is and so I don't wanna I love that we hear but let's talk about the whole history right you know I'm saying so when we start educating our kids about this is Black History Month and do you know that I know that we were sold on the blocks I know that they you know I'm saying they they went with us and touched our genitals and you know I'm saying treated us like livestock yes I know that but do you realize that these were kings that they were doing that to that they were belittling and taking away the name of a people that they were forcing a people to to take somebody else's name that they were it was this was mass genocide on a whole nother level so let's not let's not like play Kane let's not sugar coat it yes slavery is a part of but that's not who I was so stop telling my kids that's who I was if you go tell my kids that's who I was then tell my kids that's what you made us but don't tell my kids that that's what we were you know what I mean and so I love I love black history month and I want us to do a better job of telling the story when we start telling his story you know what I mean so that's my thought on on black history month and I love it [Applause] Miss Bradshaw is there any public comment no so all I'm gonna add is that I'm just really proud to serve on this board with some of my colleagues so thank you very very much for those those comments um the board will now vote on resolution 6647 Proclamation and recognition of February is Black History Month all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions representative McMahon yes resolution 6647 is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative McMahon voting yes uh the board will now vote on the consent agenda uh board members we all had an opportunity to remove items from the consent agenda and at this point I will ask Miss Bradshaw are there any changes to the consent agenda no okay do I have a motion and a second to adopt a consent agenda motion second director green moves director constant seconds uh any board discussion there's two items um I didn't want them to be pulled but I'd like to speak to the off-campus travel and also the MS mesd resolution I'll start with the masd resolution um in the past it was a separate uh agenda item but since it's part of the um consent agenda I want to just continue to raise the issue of health services offered to our students in those schools that don't have those high school students that don't have health centers um that there is
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um essentially no um while we have mesd nurses um in um three of our high schools that's not at all the same as the services that are provided that can be provided by the health centers so Grant Lincoln and Ida B Wells Barnett we essentially don't have any health center on the on the west side and then in a big part of the Northeast for the for Grant um and there are some critical services and having had students on both sides of um in in a school that had a student health center um and really made it a lot of services very accessible to students and then also having a student who was in a school that only had access to the mesd nurse the difference in what was accessible to students so if you're at one of those schools without a health center um you essentially have to get on you know a bus and go get get those services so I would hope that there's some opportunity maybe it's during the budget process or some other time to talk about the other service the services that I really appreciate the answer I got to the question that I asked before the meeting and some possible options relating to whether it's sports physicals contraceptives um and Telehealth options that we at some point that gets explored um for those students who don't have it accessible at the high school because there's nothing like having it in in the school available to students to make it something that they access versus hey hop on a bus in the middle of the school day and go go visit it so I appreciate the options that sounds like the District staff um sort of curated with or talked about with musd and I hopefully will sports physicals and other things that not everybody has access to a private doctor to go get a sports physical so I hope we really think about how we equitably provide services and again this isn't anything with the mesd it's just an nurse it's just they're not a they can't provide all those services and this is like I guess the moment I can raise the issue um just to add a little clarification here director Brian Edwards thank you for the advocacy there just procedurally so uh our community is clear uh the member districts of the Multnomah Educational Service District at this time approve a local service plan which is essentially uh a blessing and menu of options we'll come back to the board with from that menu what uh our recommendation is for services in the coming school year and of course we'll be we look forward to a conversation around how do we supplement those services so that all of our students have access to the kinds of services director brim Edwards was bringing up before you move on I just want to make sure that we are clear with the public who might be watching the reason why we don't have the health clinics in those other high schools I can talk about that or you can talk about that I just want to make sure we understand that's not a district decision it's a Multnomah County decision yeah and well there's um it's the county and there's a whole range of ways in which those health centers are provided um I don't think I intended to say that that was a district response um I just want to make sure to keep keep the focus on the students to make sure that they what in whatever form it is um that is that they have access to really critical services that um and they haven't accessible at their school yeah I just want to make sure the public understands this this board is certainly in favor of providing those and if Multnomah County were willing to continue providing those services high schools I think we even there big they so far have not been willing yeah so I guess then since the County's not willing to do it then having um figuring out ways and I think there's been some options presented about ways to provide those Services um at the schools in which which is probably 5 000 students that don't have access to some of those pretty essential services so then the other issue I wanted just to speak to is the off-campus travel and the um the research residencies that we're going to be voting on we've got had a lot of mail about um and I'm I'm going to be a yes and view them as really life changing learning opportunities and I also want to thank the School leaders and staff at the schools not just for responding to the questions about
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the travel as we sort of recover from covid and sort of get into a rhythm but also there had been a complaint in 2018 not about the the travel specifically but about to make sure that there was continuity of instruction for the students who'd stayed and I really appreciate the care and the thoughtfulness that's gone into thinking about when those concerns were raised thinking about what what about the majority of the students are still at this at the school and so um I say I think there's been a plan presented um I have two outstanding concerns um in 2019 following um the complaint that had been offered there was a board resolution about convening a work group to look at how do we create um another a Capstone experience for all middle school students and I mean as director de pass just mentioned I mean it could come in a whole bunch of different forms it could be to Washington DC to visit the museum or it could be um it could be very many many different things um and so to think about how we create those Equitable experiences and I know that because of um covid um that the I think we're going to have a and I'll let you answer we'll have a presentation on what came out of that but really not alluding losing sight of all of our students needing those formative experiences in middle grade so it's not just some students having that and then the second the second piece and I guess this is just also like a budget forward thought is that last year um I think in response to the um some of the inequities of availability of fundraising and be able to afford travel at some of the high schools that um as part of the budget process created to travel and field trip Equity Fund um and the money was distributed to the high schools and I hope as we head into maybe there'll be a convergence between the word group and thinking about what those middle grade Capstone experiences for all our students so the really cool amazing trips that have been described to us in the hundreds of emails we've had thank you everybody um that all students will have something that's meaningful to to them and they get that opportunity to experience that also in their Middle grades and so um thinking about how we expand that travel and field trip Equity Fund to also hopefully support some of those Middle Middle grades experience too I mean just online we have like a Roseway Heights student group trying to raise money just to go to Seattle and I think about like you know they may not go if they don't raise the money and just the what message we send if only some students get these incredible opportunities so I hope that that we can expand that and I know I know I appreciate that the the um leaders of many of these programs that are here have also offered to be thought Partners about how we can support it across the district and I really appreciate that offer the offer was again it was like right before covid so hopefully and I heard from somebody today um Sean from oyanakai thank you um the offer to continue to be helpful in that how do we structure great experiences for our students great thank you any other board discussion uh Miss pressure is any public comment on the consent agenda do you have public and I sign up in the field trip resolution you may call them during this time yeah that sounds great we'll start with Jamil Manning welcome in a few minutes when we get to the actual public comment I'll do my HBO but just know you'll have about three minutes and um you'll have a green light and then it'll turn red when the three minutes up and at that point if you could just wrap up comments that would be great and thank you very much for being here tonight thank you I um am a parent this is my student Boston um I just had a few things that I wanted to uh say um this is personal to me because I am a alumni of the Japanese immersion program I went to Richmond Elementary and
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went to Mount Tabor I went to Japan in fifth grade and in eighth grade with my class um and now my son is in the program he was selected so he's in seventh grade I believe that I am the person I am today due to the community that I grew up in in this program and the exposure that I was blessed to have not once but twice when the time came to consider schools for my son him attending Richmond and being in the Japanese program was at the top of my list Cove had prevented him from going in fifth grade but I feel like there's no reason that the students going forward should not be able to attend and have a chance to experience the life-changing trip that they'll never forget and utilize everything that they've learned so far I feel like when when I went I used I was able to use the Japanese that I have learned and the skills and use it more than I would have used it here just in class every every day um and we want we want the program to go to grow parents made the commitment as when their students were in kindergarten that they would take these classes and learn Japanese learn the culture and um I just feel like they they deserve to go and use what they've learned that was part of the commit the commitment that was made when we decided to put our children in these programs a lot of families may have went elsewhere went to a different District um have you know their child not been in this program and we wanted to grow we don't want people to turn away from it and decide that it's not you know a good fit for their family um that's about all that I have I thank you for your time thanks for being here [Applause] Lisa Connie welcome good evening my name is Letha Tani t-a-w-n-e-y and I'm the founding president of Gene Wren the parent organization supporting the Albina Mandarin immersion program at Dr Martin Luther King Elementary Harriet Tubman middle school and Jefferson High School and we urge you to support resolution 6642 approving the in particular the Taiwan research residency for our eighth grade students first I'd really like to thank the board for supporting the Harriet Tubman and Dr MLK Jr communities over the last difficult year with the relocation questions and as PPS wavered on continuing our program into Jefferson High School the PPS board is fundamentally an accountability institution so we come to you when PPS is failing the chronically underserved but tonight instead we're lifting up a Visionary dual language immersion Department that's living up to the equity that PPS says it strives for recognizing that the elite DLI programs that were nationally recognized here at PPS were not equitably accessible in 2014 PPS partnered with Ron Herndon at the Albina Head Start which had been and continues to offer Mandarin to its preschoolers to launch the Mandarin immersion at Dr MLK it was envisioned as a pre-k through college program this is PPS at its best with strong links to Albina Head Start and deep wraparound services from Gene Wren and SCI 15 of our Mandarin Scholars identify as black and we continue to build Bridges and remove barriers so more families can imagine their children thriving in Mandarin DLI you'll hear later from Kanye who's one of those Albina Head Start alums and that first kindergarten class from 2014 is ready to undertake their research residency this year even as many come from families with no access to or experience with international travel the research registered residency is directly linked to their core 8th grade academic work remember our students meet their social sciences curriculum requirements in Mandarin and so this is tied to that they'll rep they'll present their results in Mandarin and English when they return and we invite all of you to
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their showcase we support the Vietnamese DLI program at Rose City Park establishing their research residency next year and want to appreciate the established programs that have supported us as we've grown up PPS DLI options have always been Visionary out ahead of the rest of the nation higher quality and more effective Jin Ren has come alongside supported families last week we took families with their applications to go get their passports get those filings done because they're not easy and we've raised enough funds to provide full scholarships for half the class that's going in April we ask you to continue partnering with us to make the best PPS has to offer fully available to those in our community who have so often been left behind thank you thank you [Applause] Kanye Rhodes oh I know thanks for being here hello my name is Kanye Rhodes r h o d e s I am here today on behalf of the 8th grade Harriet Tubman Chinese immersion program in our program our class will be the first with an opportunity to travel to an environment where we can speak Mandarin we want to go because we can we will get to practice and improve our Mandarin we will be doing field studies which are assignments that will that we will have to do while navigating around type A you will also be practicing in a cultural exchange with our pen pals staying at their house with the host family and seeing our sister's School going to Taipei is a big part of our Capstone project which is where we interview Taipei students and their family when we get back we will show our families our projects and the seventh graders so they have an understanding of what they have to do next year this isn't a this is important for many reasons one of the reasons one of those sorry one of those is we have been in Mandarin immersion for nine years starting at MLK's Elementary School and now ending in Tubman or you can continue on at Jefferson High School testing this class is more than just an A or a high school credit it's completing what we have been learning for most of our lives we are we are also trying to break the stereotype that only privileged people can travel internationally but but everyone should get the opportunity to go to other places and new to learn new learn new things sorry this is a once in a lifetime opportunity that most people don't get to experience in the future we hope to pass on our knowledge to the Next Generation and the younger grades below us that will that will hope and inspiration that could Inspire them to do the same next year they will next next year if they go and we don't have any experience teaching them they will go in blindsided if we go we can help all the grades below us by passing what we learned from the trip to them please allow us to fulfill what we have been learning for for the past nine years and complete what we have been working on and learning for help us get this chance to complete the journey and pass it on to the other students thank you [Applause] Alex spanman and Sora postal weight welcome thanks for being here hi I'm Sora pulsaway p-o-s-t-l-e-w-a-i-t I'm Alex banman b-a-n-m-a-n I'm in eighth grade at Mount Tabor Middle School I've been studying in the Japanese dual language immersion program for almost 10 years this immersion program experience has not only given me an opportunity to learn my Japanese Heritage but also share the education and culture with all my classmates our program is growing every year students transfer to our program from all over the world one of the reasons is the education that we receive in school is more just studying for tests it is an actual tool we can use and make us strong to be the next generation of leaders we have an opportunity to use this tool during these travel experiences the Japanese research residency is not just an international trip it's a place we learned about extensively from our classroom we also share a great part of our culture with Japanese students My Brother Sam went on this trip in 2017. he and his classmates still talk about
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what an amazing experience it was he also learned about the awful work experience from survivors in Hiroshima these powerful experiences will not be able to be learned from our textbooks while we are researching our selected topics in Japan we keep up other subjects that are missing from classrooms in Portland these tremendous opportunities have been ongoing for over 20 years please keep us going we're not just emerging program students we are your future thank you for giving me this opportunity today and please accept our request foreign [Applause] and I'm a student in the Japanese dual language immersion program most of the kids in the Japanese program have been working on their Japanese for nine to ten years we have put a lot of effort into learning Japanese so that we can go on these very important educational exchanges to Japan um I am someone who has gone to Japan to visit myobachan and just using Japanese every day has greatly improved my speaking ability um we have been working hard since uh school started so that we can make this academic exchange happen so much planning has already been done and it's so important to experience other cultures and learn about their customs and improve our speaking skills many of us are very excited to see students from our partner schools as well we would get to speak with kids our age that live in another country and share our experiences as well uh please consider approving our request thank you [Applause] Panic Spirit Van Allen thanks for being here my name is hanax foreign Allen uh v-e-r-a-r-v-a-n-a-l-l-e-n um I'm honix and I'm a student at Mount Timber Middle School I'm here today to talk about the Japanese research residency I have first-hand experience with the benefits of visiting another country to learn the language I was born in Mexico and visit my family there every single year even though I know Spanish words without those trips the true meaning would be lost to me nothing makes you feel fluent like being able to tell and understand jokes with your cousins even uh all right yeah you can only learn so much in a classroom my classmates and I have been looking forward to this opportunity because we know this could very well be the best hands-on learning experience we'll get throughout our entire education we will be speaking Japanese 24 7. we will uh we'll be dealing with money and money conversion which is one of the best examples of math in the real world and we'll be learning science and history in our field studies my classmates and I have a long way to go before we can speak read write and understand Japanese like a native this became very apparent to me when I spoke to the mayor of nantoshi I get HPS in my classes but listening to a banter with his colleagues showed me how far I still have to go if the Japanese Mandarin and Vietnamese DLI programs are to continue effectively we need this and all future research residency trips to be approved for all if Equity is an issue then the solution is to provide those other students with similar opportunities not to take this one from us whether that be using like a field trip to another state or even another country that would directly benefit um be of benefit to their learning or if it's simply taking them outside of their classroom for a week and teaching them something that they can learn in the real world I hope we can work together to make these valuable learning opportunities available to everybody May Pence foreign thanks hi my name is May Pence p-e-n-c-e my name is May Pence and I'm an 8th grader at Mount Tabor Middle School this evening I have the privilege of being here tonight to talk about the 8th grade Japan research residency my peers and I hope that you approve this trip tonight and for many years to come it is crucial for the JMP students and
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all other second language schools to have trips such as this one this residency involves going to Japan for two weeks and studying Japanese culture and more more specifically their schools when we were informed that we were not going to do this that we might not do this residency after 20 plus years of JMP students going we were devastated having studied the Japanese language for nine plus years and missing the fifth grade residency due to coven 19. it feels unjust to be denied the privilege of going on this residency moreover the basic idea of this residency is to experience real rich Japanese culture as you know a large part of the Japanese program is learning authentic Japanese culture in my class we have something that is called a fluent fool that means that while you may speak the language with perfect pronunciation and you may be able to write every character and symbol if you do not properly understand and engage in their culture you would look like a fool if you visited the country this is the exact reason why going to Japan and experiencing real Japanese culture is so important it would be an eye-opening experience that would not only help us learn substantially better Japanese and our high school career but would open doors for us later in life we students are applying to colleges universities and jobs it would be absolutely phenomenal to see that not only does that person speak another language but they went to that country and proficiently communicated and got around using the skills that they learned during their eighth grade residency during our residency we will be touring various Japanese schools and shadowing kids in their classes by doing this we will learn what an average Japanese student does in their day we will spend time presenting to these students and in doing so we will be spending time honoring our job honing our Japanese speaking and writing skills once again I compel you to improve this residency the residencies for other language programs and all residencies for years to come thank you [Applause] lease copy welcome hello um um here we go hello my name is Elise Coffey c-o-f-f-e-y thank you for the opportunity to be here today I'm a senior at Grant High School and I'm here to speak on behalf of the Japanese dual language immersion programs research residency trip to Japan I strongly um sorry I strongly urge the board to keep the eighth grade trip as it is currently structured so students can fully benefit from this unique and valuable culture Exchange I have been a part of this program for the past 11 years and I was able to participate in the research residency in eighth grade this trip is the culmination of eight years of intensive Japanese learning starting in elementary school although students invest hours in the classroom studying the language throughout their formative academic years and deeper understanding of the culture and language can be found in the immersive travel experience simply talking with other students here in the US is not enough to develop a high level of proficiency in the language the opportunity to travel to Japanese schools and Converse with students and others is invaluable in developing a student's fluency additionally staying with host families challenges students to Converse in Japanese 24 7. this is why this trip cannot occur during our spring break in March schools in Japan do not start until April so the time frame went on the line for our students to attend Japanese schools which is the most important aspect of this trip the reason Tourette's agency not only develops the students fluency but also develops leadership and time management skills before traveling to Japan students are each responsible for planning a specific part of their trip and sharing this information with their classmates additionally students develop a research topic and conduct surveys and interviews with Japanese citizens while they are there they then compare this with data collected from individuals in the U.S a longer trip to Japan allows students to fully immerse themselves in the culture while also Gathering the necessary information for the research projects they have tirelessly worked on all year when visiting the omiyaga banashi the program were in presentation of jdli students work you can see firsthand the transformative effect this trip has had on JRR participants I'm eternally grateful for the opportunity to participate in the Japanese research residency this trip deepened my love and understanding of Japanese culture not only did I Advance my Japanese fluency but I also became a more confident and determine individual Upon returning I'm currently co-president of the Japanese student council at Grant High School and was drawn to this leadership position after my travels to Japan this trip in the program have also inspired me to continue my Japanese studies Beyond High School
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I strongly urge the board to keep the eighth grade trip as it currently is structured so students can fully benefit from this unique and valuable cultural exchange I invite you to look at the poster board over to my left which is an example of the research students conduct well in Japan thank you for your time [Applause] Ms Bradshaw is that the last public comment on the consent agenda we have one more on this topic Sean agusa thanks for being here okay thank you thank you Julia thank you everybody for uh allowing us to come here tonight and force um I do want to the the this whole evening has been so much surreal because the way you guys opened with the the embracing of the African culture is huge it's I mean to to showcase that in such a positive way and imbue it in our in the kids education that's kind of why we're all here tonight to advocate for and also to litha um and Jun Wren I'm so awesome to see that program start to sprout its wings uh because you know like she alluded to her program is modeled after the Japanese program that you guys all helped get started uh almost 30 years ago and that's why we're here today uh there's so much that I wanted to say things around Groundhog Day which is one of my favorite movies but not really something I wanted to talk about tonight um but I've got a couple I've got to ask and I have a um and then I've got a proposal one of the things that we've heard consistently is around these amazing experiences and how wonderful it would be if these experiences or or any experience was available to all kids allowing schools to be strategic can sometimes be hard and there are times when we just don't know where to start um but I'll get to that in a minute because my first is an invitation Elise just showed you it and other students have mentioned it but we have an onlyage banashi and I encourage you and you know staff to come and witness what these kids have done they're putting boards together and collecting data in two languages and then amassing them together into a formative result uh and to do that and to consider a common um subject you know with two different culture perspectives and then try and find what we have in common think about isn't that what we want our future to be like we want to find what we have in common that we're not what we have you know indifferent um not any different uh not what we have differently but uh June 7th and June 8th um Sean Dottie goosa at onionokai.org please email me extend that to all of your administrative staff we would love to be there help curate and show you and allow you to witness uh this amazing presentation and I know that the shuren and ginran folks have that as well and hopefully we will also be able to see the Vietnamese DLI showcase that next year and then my last one is a proposal I know that we have um I know that not every school has a Capstone but every school has unique qualities uh characteristics in communities and um where what I would like to do is to propose and Julia thanks for bringing this up earlier an initiative to help all PPS middle schools assess and evaluate what they have what they could actually pull together and circle around on on a potential three-year tract which also helps with fundraising if you have three years to plan and also if you're doing this on a consistent basis all of that stuff that seems so hard tactically can become when looked at strategically a little easier to swallow and I know you guys have thoughts on that but I am volunteering offering the resources I know that my colleagues at shuren and possibly General I don't want to speak for you guys would love to offer I also know that I have the support of the teachers and the staff at Mount Tabor and those are all resources that you guys can bring help bring to bear and help rise the tide right thank you thank you [Applause] that concludes the comment on this portion great thank you we'll have more comment in just a couple minutes um the board will now vote on the consent agenda resolution 6641-6645
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um all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no student representative McMahon yes and I just wanted to say that I come to a lot of these as I'm sure you can all imagine um and is it rarely I get the privilege to see so many students who are so passionate about something that they do in their school community and so I really appreciate all the students especially who took the time to share with us your obvious passion for this program um and for this trip so thank you thank you and are there any abstentions uh the consent agenda is approved by a vote of seven to zero a student representative McMahon voting yes director content thanks uh I just wanted to take this moment to ask the superintendent if we can schedule a time for uh monitoring on our board goals specifically around our middle school goals and an update on Middle School redesign because so much of the benefits that you're all talking about and what Mr agusa just referred to here are articulated in our board goals for that eighth grade graduate portrait and it's been a while since we checked back into that process so it it is we have language in there around Capstone program projects around experiential learning so I'd like to learn what's going on with that work a little deeply more deeply yeah thank you director constant we're looking forward actually to coming back to this important topic we have on the calendar March 7th actually for staff to come back and talk about the work around Middle School redesign I said you know we got a little uh pause during covid but the work has been going on in Earnest and I think when we first talked about it uh we were all unanimous in our support of uh building on the learnings of these important research residencies and making sure that all of our students had some kind of an experience or a Capstone at the end of their middle school experience so I think you'll hear the team talk about the overall Middle grades experience becoming more project-based more experiential and giving each Community the opportunity as you just heard and we will count on your support thank you to building these kinds of unique experiences and since I have the mic the National Association of bilingual Educators is is being hosted their annual conference here in Portland in a couple weeks I I was invited to give the opening keynote and my draft remarks talk about the strength of these language programs and these trips and the learning that I've had a chance to to observe and and see some of the classroom learning about and it's something that has made you know PPS uh really much richer as far as the opportunities that it affords we just want to make sure that over time we're expanding those experiences for all of our students [Applause] great thank you uh we're now going to turn to additional student and public comment not related to the consent agenda I'll quickly review guidelines because I know we've heard from a lot of people um uh the board office may follow up on any board related issues that are raised during public testimony we do request that any complaints about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a Personnel matter and if you have additional materials or items that you'd like to provide to the board or the superintendent you can email those to public comment at pps.net that's public comment all one word at pbs.net as all of our speakers have already demonstrated when you start if you could clearly state your name and spell your last name that would be great and as they also have demonstrated if you could limit your comments to three minutes that would also um be great and with that Ms Bradshaw yes um Craig Wilhelm good evening welcome my name is Craig Wilhelm w i l h e l m and I'm here tonight uh happy to be here happy to see wonderful students coming up here and talking um boy if I could have been as articulate as they are that's amazing so I am Oregon civilian aide to the Secretary of the army last January I provided public comments asking you to rescind resolution for number 4503 requiring military counter Recruiters in Portland public high schools the resolution is a biased rule that destroys diversity equity and inclusion
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and as as it singles out the military requiring one for one counter recruiters when visiting school grounds and limiting the access to only three times per year for military members other organizations on the other hand such as institutions of higher education trade schools non-profits they do not have County recruiters having soldiers from the local communities participate regularly in school activities and functions without these limits as these other traditional organizations are afforded could provide much needed mentorship guidance and best-in-class resources for students and parents let's repeal the resolution right now in this room that's named after a lieutenant colonel retired Matthew prophet an army colonel his entire career as an army colonel retired lieutenant colonel let's commit to working together to find ways to help support our students futures I'm here today because the Army wants to help PPS as a community partner our Portland Battalion stands ready to Aid the district especially as it relates to after school and summer programs our Portland Battalion through the Partnerships of Portland State University University of Portland provide Plug and Play courses of instruction on a variety of topics from leadership and professional development anti-bullying sexual harassment and assault prevention resiliency physical education and well-being summer and after school programs like these have had huge success in the state districts that we serve and are designed designed to engage students and give them the opportunity to fill their day with positive influences a recent study released from the University of Chicago showed that youth who participate in a summer program like these ones that are offered structure opportunities are half as likely to be arrested for violent crime we would also like to work with you to establish the first ever Junior ROTC program it is an inexpensive way to provide even more opportunities for in-school mentorship and the cost might be able to be covered by measure 98 Grant funds it is not a recruiting program it is simply a formal curriculum to motivate young people to be better citizens JROTC graduated 92.8 percent of the students compared to the district average of 68.5 percent in many areas of the country in closing I strongly ask you to repeal the unconstitutional and biased resolution of 4503. there is no place for misleading and untruthful propaganda from County recruiters if you continue to allow military recruiters you need to require the countering of all School visitors to include institutions of higher education trades non-profits First Responders Etc instead let us work all together to keep and support positive mentorship programs and show them how to be assets of their Community thank you very much thanks Mr Wilhelm I would ask folks in the audience you don't have to agree with the speakers but if we can just maintain a civil discourse that would be great Catherine Tucker foreign hello I'm Catherine Tucker t-u-c-k-e-r I am currently in my eighth year as media specialist at Marysville school during my first few years at Marysville it was a high functioning School due to its systems and Community we have a great staff who who get along in the teaching Partnerships all work really well together in the last five years or so we've been given two social emotional skills SES classrooms and two Pre-K classrooms even though we are a title one school that serves a houseless shelter and the Nia Generations Community all of these changes with minimal support have completely derailed our high functioning school and we are in crisis every day we are in a shelter-in-place emergency with our doors locked as we teach in the classroom our staff is being kicked Hit Bit cursed at and even groped this year some of our students feel it's necessary to check the halls and see if it's safe to leave the classroom this is due to an increase in unsafe behaviors from some students I am not here to blame these students I am not here to blame our admin team who's been working themselves ragged to keep our school afloat I'm here to say that the system is not working some of these students in the SES classrooms are there due to improper placement thus their needs are not being met we have not had a certified sped teacher in the classroom for almost two years and it has taken a toll on the students we have been told the reason the K2 SCS classrooms aren't working
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this year is because we are not mainstreaming the students mainstream students need to have a para educator with them when they go into the Gen ed class to help with the transition in doing so that would take an adult out of the SES classroom making an unsafe environment we were also told that a solution to the unsafe behaviors exhibited by one of the students was to have two para Educators be with them at all times but weren't given any extra people to do this now because of the lack of Staff the K2 room is disbanding for the year and we are hoping the SCS program will find a different building to be housed in next year we are no longer able to serve these students it's not just the SES class that is struggling our gen Ed classes are too students all over the country have been expected to come back to school without dealing with the trauma of the pandemic or lack of academics from being at home kindergarten students missed a lot of the socialization and preparation for school due to being at home for so long and this can really be seen in their behaviors we've had the rapid response team come out to Marysville multiple times this year but it feels like they are not really helping the plans aren't working and we can't stop our school properly properly to help serve our students the way they need our school psychologist is working at four schools this year and so it is difficult for to have students evaluated for sped or to have IEPs finished in a timely manner and now we are expected to not only add more students to our school but also add more staff some that might even take the jobs of our current teachers I was at the board meeting when the vote happened to merge with lent there was a presentation about how this would benefit lent but nothing was mentioned about the impact on Marysville or what's been happening there this year it feels like we are not being heard and no one cares about us we are happy to welcome new staff for our open positions but it seems very unfair to have some of our staff be unassigned because the teacher from lint wants to transfer as I mentioned before our school is out of balance we aren't in crisis but we still love our school and our community and to think that it will have to change because some people will be replaced as heartbreaking so I'm here to ask today that only the open positions be filled and that the saffron lent being placed in other open positions in the district so we can maintain in our community to stabilize our school I am also here to ask that in the future when these kinds of decisions are being made about the placement of programs in the mergings of school that has done so with humanity and thoughtfulness to the impact of all the schools involved thank you [Applause] will Muffler hello thanks Arena Musser m-u-s-s-e-r pronouns he and him I'm here to speak again about Foundation reform everyone wants to advance equity for all students however there's never been a consensus to operationalize what Equity is which makes it hard to craft board policy while discussing the field trip Equitable funding policy during a recent meeting director brim Edwards said I would be an advocate of better versus perfect and the size of the pie really makes a big difference not just how we divide it couldn't agree more and hope that the board applies this lens to the discussion about lsfs as well especially in light of last Tuesday's email about the Dismal budget Outlook so let's review the size of the pie for the fund for PPS last year 30 lsfs of 84 schools raised at least ten thousand dollars ranging from 17 000 in change to 272 000 and change 2.76 million was raised in total with 1.95 million going to respective schools and roughly 811 000 going to the parent fund which distributed 48 School Grants of over 10K six grants of 5K and 2 grants of 10 000 for other PPS programs this year so 36 percent of our schools were responsible for this and for adding 42 positions across the entire District the reform PPS funding side labels the disparities in fundraising as inequitable and essentially seeks a district-wide fundraising model for equal distributions on a per student basis across all schools negating disparate he's in fundraising won't advance Equity because it'll reduce the size of the pie by a lot they expect the same 36 percent to donate as much as they have in the past when two-thirds of their donations benefited their communities after removing such an incentive the top lsf raised an average of nearly 400k since 2017 but going forward under this model that school would get under a hundred and twenty thousand a year in return for raising the same amount stakeholders how
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do you think this will affect the size of the pie the other side exam cites examples of non-urban school districts like Lake Oswego OR Palo Alto California where this model has been successful they have not publicized what happened at Austin Texas or Santa Monica and Malibu California when similar changes were pursued lastly the board has often raised Equitable outcomes in the lsf discussions and I wanted to offer that maybe the lower reading scores exhibited by some school communities can be better explained by the fact that PPS relied on balance literacy curricula until this year when it's switch to a more empirically supported phonics based approach it's quite likely that a curriculum change will improve reading scores much better than reforming the current lsf system in a time of budgetary Crisis and continued enrollment declines any actions shrinking the size of the fundraising pie for PPS would be ill-timed impractical and yes irresponsible thank you thank you Barbara Smith Warner welcome thanks for being here thank you this is what retirement looks like good evening it's Barbara Smith Warner three words no hyphen uh s-m-i-t-h no hyphen w-a-r-n-e-r uh superintendent Guerrero board members uh thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you tonight um as the Oregon house chair of the 2018-2019 Student Success committee I was a primary author of The Student Success act which established the first dedicated source of funding for pre-k to 12 education in Oregon in almost 30 years I'm here tonight to testify to the legislative intent of that bill and how that intent should impact the district's contracted community-based organization schools referred to as cbo's the cbo's should receive annual Equitable funding through the student investment account so I've been a PPS parent since 2008 I served as a legislator from 2014 to 2022. my belief in a strong Equitable public school system is what motivated me to run and to serve and it drove the work that created the Student Success Act and the student investment account as a way to provide more resources for all students with a particular focus on those who have been historically underserved by our systems the work that the CBO alternative schools do with students who have been unsuccessful at traditional schools or who have been failed by them is critical to providing a path to graduation and success in life for those kids we talk all the time about how people have different paths and how important it is to provide those paths for our students whether it's through Career and Technical education Sports the Arts or something else that gets them and engages them the path that the cbo's provide for their students is one of deep engagement and wraparound support and their belief in those students enough to help them believe in themselves again so this is my first public testimony before this board and I want to thank all the members uh superintendent all the staff and everyone who does this work day in and day out well I have been advocating for more funding for the cbo's for years I want you to know that this time I do have indeed have a conflict of interest uh my daughter is currently enjoying her last and best year of high school at Mount Scott Learning Center which is one of the district's CBO option schools the pandemic struck in the spring of her ninth grade year and made a hard year even more difficult anxiety deaths of some people close to her and other mental health challenges prompted a series of unsuccessful moves from school to school after establishing some stability at pps's online learning academy last year thank you Ola and thank you PPS for providing that she was ready to go back to in person for her senior year but couldn't imagine being successful in a large Traditional School we visited a variety of alternative schools both PPS and cbos her mom may have known a little bit about the wide variety of options that there were and she chose Mount Scott and since this year started I have watched and listened as week by week and month by month she has thrived the staff and the community provide motivation education and inspiration both for my daughter and for every student there so the CBO programs and the PPS students they deserve let me I'm really on my last two lines I know about that the timer um uh the CBO programs and the PPS students they serve deserve as much overall
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funding as the in-district option schools like Alliance High School and the student investment act funding provides the district with very specific means to demonstrate that ongoing commitment to fully serving those students I know that there will be many tough budget decisions as you await the next biennium's funding levels in Salem and I'm sorry that I won't be there to help make it as high as possible I'd say that's about the only reason I'm sorry that I won't be there but today I I'm here to specifically ask that you do support the cbo's proposal to directly pass through 2786 per student in student investment account funding for every PPS student that's being served at those cbos thank you so much so much and thank you again for your service all of you thank you thanks for your comments [Applause] Efrain Rivas Flores good evening my name is efraine Rivas Flores Rivas Rivas hyphen Flores f-l-o-r-e-s I'm the senior director of college access programs at Portland Community College I'm pleased to be here this evening in support of the partnership between Portland Public Schools and the contractor community-based organizations I want to thank superintendent Guerrero and members of the school board for their hard work and dedication to include cbo's within PPS framework for serving all students equitably in the district especially the 20 percent of historically underserved students who do not take who do not make it to graduation in traditional settings on a four-year timeline inclusion in student investment accounts and Equity Fund has been critical support to the cbo's and I commend the school board and District leadership for making this a priority as years come and go however consistency and continuity are crucial to serve PPS students in these programs over time so they can reach graduation and post-secondary success building programs building programs and sustaining them requires more than a one-time input while we know there are many competitive competing budget priorities the small size of these programs make us susceptible to the even flow of funding and we simply can sustain shiftings from year to year the Portland Public Schools previously including cbo's in student investment accounts account funding pcc's Gateway and yes to College Programs have been able to hire two Mental Health Counselors in addition in addition to the direct counseling support they're developing a mentor mentee program for next school year and are collaborating with our College Success coaches to extend our College guidance courses offerings establishing and building programs and services like this depends on stability and continuity consistent Equitable funding from student investment account is necessary so that PPS students attending community-based organizations receive the services they need and deserve the cbo's have long-standing successful partnership with Portland Public Schools and the cbo's continue to serve high percentage of the exact student population the student investment account are meant to serve I respectfully request you support the cbo's proposal to allocate 2786 dollars in student investment account funding per PPS student being served at the community-based organization this will help strengthen the transparency and consistency for this valuable work we have all undertaken thank you thank you [Applause] that concludes public comment great thank you thank you Ms Bradshaw and thanks everyone again for your comments um you can connect feel free to connect with Roseanne Powell our board manager if you have anything specifically you'd like to follow up on with the board or the board office uh next up uh also part of our public comment is I believe President Bonilla from the Portland Association of teachers is here [Applause] welcome president Bonilla nice to see you thanks for being here hello okay um I have Jackie Dixon here um our Pat vice president um good evening board director superintendent student representative as always I will start with Kudos so kudos to both uh the Pat and PBS management
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bargaining teams for spending two whole days going through multiple articles in our proposals it's a lot of hard work and I appreciate everyone taking that time to get that done also kudos to Jonathan Garcia Courtney wesling and Lisa Merrick from the government relations team they have kept in communication and collaboration with Jackie and me about our shared priorities so Pat we have a few trainings planned around legislative lobbying and canvassing for our members and PBS has several future efforts planned to engage families so I'm sure that we're going to be able to strongly advocate for our schools and some of these priorities are around increasing the school state the state school fund budget and increasing funds to attract and retain Educators in special ed and other hard to fill positions so before we begin I'd love to ground us in our community um Jackie and I are going to read in lakesh which is a Mayan inspired poem that many Educators use to set the tone for their classroom community and folks are more than uh you know are invited to follow along if they already know um so I'll read the Spanish and Jackie will read the English if I do harm to you I do harm to myself if I love and respect you I love and respect myself so I bring this um to your attention because after my last testimony at the school board I felt that we had lost sight a little bit of the sentimiento um you know that you are my other me and so last time I thought I was following the rules of this body by not identifying Dr uh director Hollins as the owner of the quote that I shared um and so when director Hollins interrupted my statement to ensure I named him I did and then after that my testimony became a dialogue between myself and this body um I welcome dialogue when that's the expectation and my understanding has always been that we don't engage in a conversation during board testimony so I was surprised that I was interrupted repeatedly and I was surprised it was happening and I was surprised that no one called the meeting back into order I Now understand that there was a concern that I was sharing the quote from the school board work session and bad faith as a way to politicize those comments but the comments I wanted to share but wasn't able to finish when is followed um I'm having a hard time reconciling the harsh language set at that board work session where one of where director Holland said we when we have cancer we have to get we got to get rid of the cancer you don't try to talk to the cancer you don't try to do some professional development around the cancer you get rid of it and I asked are we the cancer during the last board meeting director Holland's clarified that he was discussing Educators who do things like put hands on students or say the n-word towards students and then he asked why the Union contract protects those teachers so I want to make sure to make it clear and state it here without interruption what I looked up last meeting when an educator is accused of wrongdoing the school administration and PPS management conduct an investigation around those claims however um oh excuse me the length of that investigation is up to administrators not the union and if an administrator believes an Educators directly harming students they can remove that educator immediately which they do with any allegations of physical use and when the decision is or which they can do with any allegations of physical abuse when this decision is handed down an educator has 30 days to appeal or accept the consequence I know that the last meeting tensions were high however I respectfully request that IB provided the same respect and dignity that any other person who testifies before this board is entitled to no more and no less I struggled over whether to discuss this tonight but came to the conclusion that I can't ignore what happened I've received an apology from our student rep which happened the same night in both writing in person but I'm not asking for an apology I'm asking for us to work to repair that harm we believe that the way to repair the harm that all parties feel is to model what we practice in schools known as restorative justice with a restorative Circle we'd like to invite you to hold that Circle where all parties can share their experience and answer the restorative Circle questions those questions are what happened what were you thinking at that time what have you thought about since who has been affected by what you've done in what way and what do you think you need to do to make things right we know there's a rule about public meetings for this body I wonder if y'all were to hold an executive session for the circle if this could give us all the space to be honest and human and so when I originally brought up these remarks I brought them up to
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illuminate the reality of the experience of not only our students of color but all of us we put it in our contract and have advocated for over two years for training on anti-racism implicit bias and culturally responsive practices in the past few months PPS has attempted to touch on on on these Concepts during cadres through a slide and a short conversation but we've seen that Educators they've reported that it's been varied that experience and when we were told by a senior director in HR that they'd bring to you all the date of April 11th for an implicit bias training for all Educators we were excited but I was told that it was later not approved by this body it's challenging to hear board members continue to blame Educators for not being culturally competent one time for this professional development has been denied year after year and like it feels like gaslighting my my experience as a black Latina educator tells me that we must teach folks what we expect of them so that we can hold them accountable to this expectation I have to remind you we have not had a district-wide systemic racial Equity training since 2017. that's almost six years a new educator who is White born and raised in a place like Portland Oregon May have never had a conversation about race before teaching or received any training on how to facilitate tough conversations about race or experiences with racism at school with students and that's a failure on many levels but we have a responsibility to make sure that they have the training before and while they serve our students we how can we hold them accountable if we can't meet them where they are and train them and to be sure trust Pat is also doing our work we understand that our Union and the broader labor movement also has a lot of work to do in history to reckon with and in fact Pat has a five-part racial Equity training available to all of our members and we've opened it up to the members of the other locals as well we've trained at least 100 Educators who attended our representative Retreat this fall and we offer session two of five in the next few weeks but we as a union cannot mandate our members to take this training we did fight for the training to be required by PPS in our contract so that's why I quoted director Hollins because I wanted to make sure that we all owned what it is that we need to own for this change to happen we're going to continue to provide the training that we provide to all the parties that are interested and what we need is for y'all to step up and follow our contract language to ensure every educator receives this training not just those who opt in so please help us move this work forward for those who directly work with our students please believe us when we say that we want to serve our black and brown students well we just need to make sure every single person has the training they need to do that work thank you thank you thank you um thanks for being here president Bonilla um and and I I will just say I I really appreciate your comments and I I like the idea of a restorative Circle I I do know state law is somewhat restrictive in terms of what we can do but I'm perfectly happy to ask our general counsel uh whether there's any uh way to do that as a full board and if there's not I do hope we can have smaller conversations um that don't violate public meetings law um and then the other thing I'll just say and I I want to be careful about this because bargaining doesn't happen here it has to happen and it should happen in other places um but I know that that it's it's come up a few times the idea of a professional development day in the April 11th day and I'll only speak just on behalf of myself that I I really do want to see that my concern was not about the day it was about that we would have to remove a student learning day um and and that was my only concern right and so if there's any other way we can do that speaking purely on my own behalf um I would I would love to to see and figure out if there's a way we can do that that doesn't reduce um with that I think we'll move on unless somebody has something they'd like to add so I um I get I would like to add is um I want to apologize that I I didn't say something at the meeting because under the contract um the bat president has the right to make make remarks and um when the conversation just went on and on um I could have said something and I didn't so I'm going to own that I didn't say something that we shouldn't have interrupted um or had had a discussion and it doesn't mean that we don't all didn't all want to engage or respond in some way to the comments that were made um but just like we listened to public comment I think the um if we because it's a contractual
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right if we have a comment or we want to engage that we can do it after the meeting or set up a time to have that engagement um and so I'm just speaking for myself I want to apologize that um your comments were interrupted repeatedly all right any other comments people move on okay um thank you again president Bonilla and thank you to everyone who testified tonight uh student rep student representative McMahon uh it is time for your student report thank you good evening everyone okay where to begin all right uh so following obviously we this is our first official hi everybody this is our first um official board meeting of February and therefore the first four meeting that falls within Black History Month and so I just um I have the opportunity to serve alongside some amazing black students on the District student council and I just wanted to name them um Kendall Bishop who's sitting right here JJ and Danny cage as well as Jamel from our um Metropolitan Learning Center and these as I think we've heard earlier I think a lot of times we forget that there's so much success that is resulted and obviously like that is despite the odds but that just is more of a testament to the strength of the students that overcome it and a strengthen people that overcome it and so um Portland is a very White City we all of the students um who are black within our district go to very white schools unfortunately in which they're not appreciated and many times their experience is overlooked so I just wanted to say it's very hard to succeed in this city and certainly hard to succeed when you see no one like you which unfortunately happens all too often so I wanted to say kudos for all of the amazing students that I get to work alongside as well as the meeting amazing students I have the privilege of representing on this board thank you for all the work you do and I hope that you don't lose the sight of how essential you are to this community and certainly how much for the individuals that I named how much you helped me every day okay so moving past that there's a little poster here which I don't think anyone can see on the video unfortunately but it's about our PBS student Summit oh look look at the fancy camera work that's impressive okay um our PBS District student Summit is going to be happening this month on the 24th there's a QR code down there which you probably won't be able to scan but if you go to our Instagram which is just PBS student council there will be the opportunity for students to sign up we're going to be addressing a lot of really important topics which have gotten a lot of air time both in this boardroom as well as to the many schools that I've had the opportunity to visit this year so if you are a student in high school and you're interested in coming please um find that link there's a form where you can RSVP we really appreciate the student support all too often this boardroom is so inaccessible for students and I mean it's so challenging to come up here and sit there when we're kind of looming over you but I hope that a room full of peers in which you really know that your voice is going to be heard and where me and all of the other students on DSC are really going to make sure that it is that you feel comfortable really sharing the problems that you're seeing because as we hear all the time it is not joyful for anyone and certainly not for students a lot of the time but and we need to make sure that we're really listening to what students needs are and then I think the final thing which I've just been talking a lot about in my student reports is we hear every single meeting from students across the district from teachers across the district from parents that there are so many issues and I talked about this when I went on think out loud but we are looking and going into a budget session in which we might not be able to pay for what we need um let alone what we want and so I think if we are expected and if we want to solve all of these huge issues which are so pervasive in our district then that money needs to come from somewhere and I think Barbara Smith Warner said it great but we need the legislature to step up here and we need the funding that these students and our students and students across this state deserve because we are not we're not anywhere close to getting back to where we were before the pandemic and even I would argue that where we were before the pandemic is not necessarily our goal um and so I think that now is an important time to show that investment and if you say you love the students then show us the money thank you [Applause] I I just want to encourage everybody to
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listen to that think out loud segment that by already mentioned she absolutely rocked it it was a really thoughtful conversation around student safety you were incredible and one of the things I appreciated by about your leadership there was how nuanced you were in being really careful not to represent student voice as being sort of Monolithic and and unified because there are a lot of different perspectives and opinions and I I thought you handled that really well and appreciate you yeah and also there are other students Danny cage who's from Grant and Lana who's from Franklin also got the opportunity to be part of that conversation um and I would encourage um I said this in my tweet but I would encourage state legislatures to also take a listen um such an important conversation a lot of the times it is student voice is seen as this very monolithic let's just throw that out there but ultimately like student safety is a student issue and affects us every day and then beyond that it's a teacher issue and affects teachers inside the building those are the people we should listen to and I can tell you all of us are saying hey we need the resources um yeah so I encourage you to listen to that and thank you Amy I really appreciate that great thank you next up on our agenda board committee and Conference reports and I won't go down the line I'll just ask if there are any committee or conference reports that board members would like to provide yep um so first just as the board liaison to The Climate crisis response committee um there was they meet quarterly they had a meeting of the day they approved their draft work plan for the year and also a presentation at the greenhouse gas inventory and um I'm going to circulate it for the board and post it but it's it's a great start to measuring um how we're going to measure this really bold and aggressive climate policy but really impressive work by staff and coordination with the the committee also they selected a vice chair of the committee it's Danny cage so our student leadership once again on display and then the last thing is they are recommend they adopted a recommendation to the board that the non-student members of the community be renewed for an additional two years to really maximize the service because otherwise you have members that have one year that will only have a one-year term in which they'll only meet four times so I'll be sending that in to board leadership for the agenda setting for a future meeting at the committee's request and then the second piece is the Levy the local option Levy committee um met early on last fall to look at when we might [Music] um refer out a local option renewal the decision was made to wait till after the legislative session because we have some legislation that may impact that in the future but there was an additional request of the committee to see if there was anything that could be done before we have that renewal that would potentially impact the um rev some sort of re uh referral that we could do that would impact the um the amount of Revenue in a positive way for um next this next budget year and I'm appreciative that um Carol Samuels who's an outside consultant and the District staff um really um sort of I think looked at all the the options knowing that this is going to be a tough budget year and um based on that and based on a lot of vetting and um looking at a variety of different options um really there there is not a um anything that could be referred that would impact this next budget cycle um in anything that would in a material way have an impact um so really this will be up so to up to the legislative team to um hopefully get something through and then we'll use that as the foundation for the referral next year but I really appreciate the staff the finance team and the budget team the superintendent uh general counsel and for looking at what what possibly could do and really trying to think of innovative ways to to make it happen um but there there aren't any options this upcoming cycle but I'm optimistic for the future and I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity on Courtney wessling's close to last day I know she's not here she told me she wasn't going to be here but I want to just recognize Courtney because hopefully um
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I want to say it publicly she's been here in sort of I think some of the hardest days of this District and you know one time she had six or seven different jobs and you know in 2019 she did an amazing job of getting through some changes to the local options statute with um representative Barbara Smith Warner who was here earlier which gave us a lot more resources to work with and so I just want to recognize Courtney as she goes on to her next chapter and I know because of where she's going we we won't totally lose sight of her but just wanted I'm giving my committee report I'm gonna I'm gonna miss her this spring when um she's got she got a great teammate that she's um how's moving into her place but we will miss Courtney thanks director green yes uh I had it written down so that I don't mess it up and talk forever and I want to say thank you to Karina for making sure that um I didn't say too much I just said enough um the Le Mans French immersion K-8 um Charter renewal is currently in process we presented the information at our our meeting last week and the public hearing is currently scheduled for next week Wednesday on the 15th um from 5 to 6 p.m for anybody that wants to come out um it should come before the whole board at the March 7th board meeting at which point we'll be able to hear from the school the kids I asked them if they could bring the kids it's always better to hear from the kids than to hear from the adults when they get up here and they do their stuff and they're going to show us that we they know way more French than we do make us feel dumb and all that kind of care you know but I love the baby so um but that's all I've got I joined the Oregon school boards Association um delegate delegation in Washington DC for the national school boards association's Equity uh conference and also their advocacy Institute in which we had an opportunity to speak with our Senators Merkley and widen and my favorite Congressman Earl blumenauer about some of the issues facing the schools in Oregon to just let them know what was happening with social emotional learning learning loss and of course school safety which is on everyone's mind we were there for one reason and that was to ask for funding uh to help us um you know recover from covet and to thank them for the monies that have already come our way um I also learned while I was there that we or Portland Public Schools earned a Magna award from the national school boards Association for climate work so I wanted to commend um director brem Edwards and the students and staff who worked on this policy um to get it where it's um getting National recognition so that's it for me the others not necessary report but we have a facility with an operations meeting tomorrow um and one of the things that's going to be on the agenda is the bond planning and update for Harriet Tubman great all right thank you uh next up superintendent Guerrero would you like to introduce our next agenda item um yes chair uh as you're familiar each year we're required to provide a division what's referred to as a division 22 Community report on the prior Year's compliance with the educational standards that the Oregon legislature and state board determined must be met in order to be considered a standard School District we actually provided that required report at the October 25th board meeting however tonight we are providing a relevant update regarding programs and services for students identified as talented gifted which Deputy superintendent Dr Proctor will explain here hello um so as it's understood again the staff delivered the that report on October 25th at the board meeting um in in that meeting PPS staff declared that the district is under corrective action for oar581 and such zero two two two five zero zero programs and services for tax students while we declared a corrective action for this oh AR um we certified compliance with the ruling rights of parents and tax students and identification of
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academically talented and into intellectually gifted students in the Oregon Department's review they determined that um PPS also needed to declare corrective actions for these other two tag oars because of our tag conciliation agreement so we're just presenting this today just to um you know present again to the board so that there is a full understanding you know again we we declared that we were incorrective action but in compliance and they said because you're in current corrective action you're not in compliance so I think we just needed to clarify the language great thank you any more questions about this item that was that was the corrective action yeah thank you thank you for being here okay next up uh board goals graduation and post-secondary Readiness so um last June the board approved some updated student outcome goals uh these included a goal to achieve accelerated achievement for students of color by eliminating graduation gaps we also call out post-secondary Readiness as an indicator that we want to see regular reports on and superintendent Guerrero I think that's what we have tonight yes thank you chair Scott uh we certainly appreciate the board's continued focus on student outcome and achievement goals this is another regular opportunity to update you all and the community uh we want to keep the academic achievement at the center are of our work of course our goal continues to be to eliminate the opportunity and outcome gaps and one of those key indicators is our graduation rates which were recently uh released uh so Dr Renard Adams is here to talk about where we are in the successful completion or achievement across a number of areas Career Technical education visual Performing Arts Pathways dual credit coursework advanced placement sealed by literacy attainment International Baccalaureate and overall college readiness all indicators that our board indicated so Dr Renard will turn it over to you appreciate that Miss Bradshaw could you make me am I in the right room cue up the PowerPoint here remember the days we would just get a hard copy all right now we're ready good evening again board directors and student representative McMahon pleased to be before you tonight to share our winter day to dive into our graduation rate and our post-secondary Readiness measures for the class of 2022. our guiding questions for this evening are on the screen before you we're of course wondering what the graduation rate for the class of 2022 is and I know you that's already been spoiled by a memo in the news media and how that compares to the state of Oregon what our high school graduation rates and then how did the class of 2022 perform on indicators of post-secondary readiness um we're going to begin with graduation rate but first um we had some high school systemic leaders here with us tonight and I know some of them not all of them have been able to stay but I did want to recognize those that were here we had or do have um if you're here if you could please stand we have Erica stavis from cbo's um Dr Philippe ristick from Ida B Wells Barnett yeah I know some of them had to leave we have um it's Dion Hernandez and Shannon freudenthal from ola and we also have a list we also have or had Elizabeth Ellis from virtual Scholars so I just wanted to recognize them because none of this is possible without our leaders at the secondary level and their staffs they're incredibly dedicated staffs and the families that they serve
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so on this slide you have our four-year cohort graduation rate in red and then you have our five-year completion rate in blue as you can see our current graduation rate and completion rates are the highest in PPS history since uh the four-year cohort graduation rate was implemented in the state of Oregon for I know that's um it's good news I like having a little bit of good news um so that uh director green doesn't always hate me for the class of 2022 our graduation rate is 85.7 which is an increase of 1.3 percentage points over the class of 2021. additionally as you can see our five-year completion rate is now at 90 percent which is a slight improvement over the class of 2021. Statewide graduation rate did increase but we outpaced them and the Statewide five-year completion rate dips so this is good news overall when we think about a rate compared to the state PPS continues to outperform the state of Oregon and four-year grad rate for the class of 2022 again we posted um Oregon posted a grad rate of 81.3 percent while pps's graduate graduation rate was 4.4 percentage points higher at 85.7 also if you're curious Multnomah County they established a graduation rate for the entire County and that rate is 79.1 percent this screen shows our graduation and completion rates by race over the past three years the differential grad and relation graduation and completion rates are often Stark our student groups with the highest rates include our Asian white and multiracial students who are white and Asian there is currently a 10-point gap between our black and white students in terms of graduation give you a minute to look at that so depending on how your brain works it's kind of upside down so the more most recently is at the top yes I was a little alarmed at first question graduation um what which year was it that the essential skills um tests became no longer required I may have this incorrect because I was not here in Oregon but I believe that I thought that happened during covid that's what I'm just wondering I can't remember if it's so that means if it happened during covet it would have been um March of or the spring of 2020. um if you're okay I'll continue here are the one-year differences in graduation rates comparing the classes of between the class of 2021 and 2022. as you can see the African-American grad rate has increased by almost four percentage points which outpaced the increase in The Graduate for white students so we've got a little bit of a narrowing of the Gap there which is more good news while the Native American and Pacific Islander rates have also increased I just want to always offer caution in that interpretation because those are really small groups of students usually maybe somewhere between 15 and 25 students so one or two students graduating or not really can wildly swing those data also notably our Latino Latino latinx graduation rate decreased this year compared to 2021. or 2021. Dr Adams that's a larger group right yes it is a larger group yes it is um roughly about um about twice as large as our African-American group a little maybe a little bit more Asian students also dropped a little bit a little bit um do we have any insight into what's going on there I do not um I was hoping to have doctors Armstrong and Franco here with me but they are both ill and so I'd um prep them to help me with these answers but they were um unable to respond and be with us tonight um what I do know is um as we shared last year increasing graduation rate is really about keeping students engaged providing them with direct supports we did a spring survey we do an annual spring survey on behalf of the secondary office of teaching and learning team of students and what the students have told us is one of the things they want is more information
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into post-secondary Readiness and more individualized time and attention from counselors and teachers and so we know when you know students by name and need you can make a huge difference right and so I think we have we know we still have work to do we're not satisfied with these data they don't say 100 yet which is what we want and anytime there's a dip it can be concerning especially when it's with our larger groups of students and students of color but I don't have an explanation that I can share at this time uh what we're looking at now are the easier differences in our five-year completion rates for students by race and again you can see there were some swings here as well here are our graduation rates for each high school with the exception of two schools all high schools earn graduation rates above 82 percent and for this year in particular Cleveland High School reached a grad rate of over 90 so we're really proud of that work and you're going to help it be even higher next year of irony yeah hi sir yeah I promise you as was the case when as was the case with graduation rate when we look at five year completion rates by school we can see that almost all schools have five-year completion rates of at least 83 percent or higher overall PPS continues to see progress in the percentage of students who graduate within either four or complete within five years this is a testament to the hard work of our principals their Educators and staff our students and their families I do want to also add it is um not highly typical to see graduation rates as large as ours for urban districts um so I think we're doing nice work there again not satisfied knowing we still have some gaps that we need to address so this five-year completion rate is four or five years no it's five years I'm sorry um what my statement was we still continue to have to show increases in our four-year grad rate and our five-year completion rates my apologies if my comment caused you some confusion there director constant this is the five-year completion rate I think on the same question Amy does yeah because it's like 96.8 for Benson so I think that means it's our four-year completers and our five-year completers there all together yeah it's okay it's yeah we're good okay so this is like out of the people that stayed in high school for five years people um got a diploma after the four-year Mark people who completed a GED requirements there's a a couple different categories of completion that go into the five-year rate as opposed to the four-year rate wait now now I think I'm confused now because I thought I was with Amy but that was your answer to um irony was um different so let's just take Alliance because it's probably the easiest one so the four year was 30 something percent that sorry it's 30 something but um so that means that the 30 something um graduated in four years the now we lost it the five year is sixty percent that's not a a 30 plus another 30. it's if you were there the fifth year 61 of those graduated of all the students yes of all the students or just the fifth year um okay so they're two different measurements so is if you if you stayed at Alliance for five years you had a sixty sixty percent 60 graduation rate and those that were there four years or thirty percent not at the fifth year we had 60 percent either graduating at the fourth year or the fifth year right that's not an addition thank you yes and I um I I'm forgive me again if I have confused yet last year's graduation conversation um I believe was director constan was talking about our fifth year completion rate so I wanted to include it this time around I was just about to talk about them again I'm so proud of them yeah leave them out right do for them yeah Dr Adams before you go on to the post-secondary Readiness when we see some of the um differences and this is maybe a question for the superintendent um you know and and I want to say these graduation rates are great right and to see this difference between you know whatever it was when he started in 72 and up to 90 is is incredible district-wide
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um and a lot of our high schools are are very similar but then you see like Roosevelt's a bit of an outlier um how do we how do we address that how do you address that superintendent as sort of moving forward when you see a school like that that it feels like it's it's out of line with where our other high schools are yeah no that's that's a good question I'm gonna let uh Margaret uh Calvert uh weigh in here since uh this is her area of responsibility but uh we do see the very you do observe the variability there uh we think it's it's a multi-pronged approach here obviously engaging and connecting with our students having the adequate supports uh there's been a great deal of work over the years which we attribute for what you see here across all of our high schools uh regarding um our high school Success plan elements uh as well as you know a great job of our reconnection services and our multiple Pathways you know capturing kids who otherwise you know we might not see here on the screen but Margaret do you want to elaborate a little bit about how we think about um uh the the uneven uh outcomes here [Applause] representative McMahon uh so there are a couple things that uh we're looking for as we are building out um plans or a couple things I just want to um to share uh part of the high school Success plan that we've built um so we're in the second iteration of it really addresses some specific strategies that we're trying to employ across the district so what we're seeing um are the Freshman success teams that are looking in and really building on getting students engaged and connected we have student attendance coaches that are working to again help get students connected and into classrooms we're seeing the implementation of new curriculum and the focus on instruction as we're rolling forward when we look across the system we certainly are looking at what are the specific needs of students at each of the schools so our student populations are slightly different at each of the schools well we've know what we're working with Roosevelt on in particular is how to connect all of their students they've seen a growing population over the last number of years so they have seen increasing numbers of students come me to Roosevelt and then also how are they addressing the needs of the students so part of what we're seeing for this particular cohort was through the pandemic and um and we had some real significance and unique challenges in North Portland that I think have been highlighted around connectivity and various other pieces so we're looking at how do we what are the specific needs of the students and then how are we moving them forward but in particular we're we're using some of the strategies that we see at McDaniel and Roosevelt and then we're starting to build out we get that acceleration and and movement we're anticipating that and we look at various credit completion rates and things that we're seeing in in as we go through using summer school and various other things one of the things that we're very excited about this year is that Portland evening Scholars we've been able to actually have a site at Roosevelt so if you can think about how isolated North Portland is it is providing access to students who do credit completion actually in the neighborhood and not having to travel as they have in the past to Benson so there's some strategies that we're looking at and we're using School Improvement plans and reviewing those with uh with our principals and really digging into specific strategies they're doing some very unique work around student attendance right now that we are seeing some fruits both this year and then going into the future thank you all right so let's uh talk about post-secondary readiness um before we oh sure before we transition to a different topic um just a question about sort of um I guess the next click down layers um did you look at in the in the past we've talked about um this issue of like you know the with the state um having temporarily um lifted the essential skills test as a another thing that's in addition to the required credits but we've talked about the fact that the state allows that students um to earn credits for a d Which is less
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than proficient and that count towards graduation I'm wondering if looking under the numbers where we're if we're noticing any trends like that came out of the pandemic like in a particular topic or subject area or overall whether students were um because this this that I think that the next set of data gives us a little bit more of like how they did maybe on more than more rigor some more rigorous classes but you know the there's the big difference between getting an A and A D um and so I'm wondering if there was any sort of analysis done of like what happened during the pandemic or um so I guess that's a great question um I know that um for this presentation we did not do an analysis but what I can tell you is that our high schools is a part of their continuous Improvement planning do examine students grades at different points during the school year and do analyzes on those that's included as a part of our uh principal and teacher dashboard so that a principal he she or they could take a glance across all the different types of courses in their building and look at the Pass rates and the cumulative grade point averages I don't know if Miss Calvert has anything else you'd like to add to that um I think that um coming out of the pandemic one of the things that we there are a number of things we've learned about online learning so um and and how to do learning completion that has been really dramatically different than sort of how we did School prior to the pandemic there are certain areas that we saw and I don't know that they're overly surprising but we saw that students did not complete uh credits often um in certain subject areas right so uh World Language was a challenge during online learning and we're seeing some efforts to recover that as was um again it's near and dear to my heart but it's also heartbreaking to watch that math learning during distance learning is something that we're we're being very focused about how to support kids as they're coming back so those are a couple of the areas that we have seen some targeted and specific efforts to support students that shows up in Virtual Scholars classes for example evening Scholars and then some concerted work um at the school level with um specifically mathematics and the the actually the new textbook adoptions really are providing some opportunities for there to be very specific supports for students it's also notable to recognize that our school communities have been engaging in a dialogue around Equitable grading policies and so it's you know how do we shift the the focus to a Mastery or proficiency of content Concepts uh versus you know uh penalizing kids that result in grades that aren't reflective of what they've learned okay um thank you for those questions always appreciate them always gives me insight into the next time um and what to bring forward and talk about um so one uh secondary measure of success of course is our grad rate another that this board was very much interested in was um how prepared students are for College and Career by measures that we could establish and so just as a reminder to the general public prior to adopting the graduation rate as a board goal in June in June of 2021 the board had a high school goal for students centered on post-secondary Readiness so we're going to talk about that next these are among the indicators there's one that we added because um it is an indicator of post-secondary Readiness even though it is not um had not been explicitly stated um by this board because we thought it would be useful to also look at that and that is the sixth one I'm talking about successful attainment of a post-secondary writing a score on the PSAT the SAT or the ACT but when we talk about the these indicators we're talking about uh being successful see or better in advanced placement courses three or more International Baccalaureate courses dual credit courses or successful completion of a Career and Technical pathway and also we're thinking about the seal achieving the Seal of bi-literacy so let's Jump Right In overall post-secondary Readiness are shown on the screen along with the previous board goal in red for context oh was there a question I'm sorry I'm sorry um the PSA SAT and ACT you remind me what were you require over the years we've well we provide sure well because I know it was like at one point everybody was taking the SAT like everybody had an SAT day and that changed act and I think we changed back so what what is it that is kind of the standard across the district sure give me one second I have this sorry here no
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it's fine um so we provide the PSAT to all sophomores and the SAT to all Juniors at all high schools CTE programming is at all high schools IB programming is at Cleveland and Lincoln and then AP courses are at Benson Roosevelt Grant Wells McDaniel and Franklin yeah and Ace the ACT is just like an optional it is something that students take as an optional assessment typically provided at a national testing site usually on the weekends thank you for the question so here we have again the former board goal at 56 in Red Data are shown for the last four years with the most recent data on the top thank you director constan for reminding me to point that out as you can see Readiness did decrease overall um and for each student group on the next few slides we'll unpack that and this each of the post-secondary indicators I just want to note for the public that this is an updated slide deck that was posted um later to board book because we found a calculation error where the all students group was not summing up all of the different student groups properly so we did correct that and send that to the board and put that is now posted on board book let's start with advanced placement work shown on the screen are the percentages of students who earn a c or better in at least three AP courses you will note that between this year and last year the overall percentage has decreased and the percentages of students meeting the indicator has decreased for the all student for all student groups except for our Pacific Islander students and again that's a small and variable student group so we need to interpret that with caution and this is for students that get a c or above you see you're above in three courses yes ma'am so is this reflective of just the students who are taking three AP classes or is it reflective of that subset of all the students this is I happen to take three classes sure this is of the students who who took AP who took three a b courses this is how many had the SC are better this is the percentage pretty interesting and do we have any idea of like was it very calm concert taking three APS or was it like a lot of the population was taken out so we're looking at so that's a really great question so um I believe of data that was shared with the board was by school one of the things I've raised in the past and thinking about this particular set of indicators is equity of access because all of these indicators aren't available at all of our high schools and so that does play a part in how we should interpret these data because if I'm for example at a high school where there are no AP courses I don't have the opportunity even if I potentially have the ability and the skill to be successful in those courses students do have access to an AP courses IB courses or dual credit so all high schools are providing one of those but they're not providing all of them necessarily I want to make sure I heard what you said Dr Adams the population we're talking about in this slide are only people who have taken three I think it's all students no no it's all students okay I didn't think that 80 of students who took three AP courses had no gotten lower than a c okay all students that makes more sense thank you right and we did provide those numerators and denominators where we could as additional material again thinking forward for next time how to package that so that the slide is still readable and you have the information that you need sorry one more question do you know how that compares to other large Urban school districts so I'm just thinking of this one in particular you know uh roughly one out of every five of our high school students took three of our classes got to see her better is that a good number is that a low number what what I can say is um many of the measures aren't Universal if that makes sense so the idea that act and sat and psct have a cut score is universal and so districts using that um would all be using those same cut scores the idea of Career and Technical Pathways being is is sort of a universal idea and concept um but I would um need to do further analyzes to really think about how we are comparing Across the Nation in districts that use the same indicators as we do and it would be interesting because most a lot of districts don't look at two different High School measures simultaneously and many of them although many districts do
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have College and Career Readiness offices who analyze these data great thank you for sure next we'll take a look at the percentage of students who completed a Career and Technical pathway overall good news here is the percentages have increased year over year for all students except for a slight decrease for students who are multi-racial who are underserved so those are students who select multi-racial and within that selection they identify as one of their um ancestry's being black or Latino or a Native American or Pacific Islander the overall percentage of students completing three or more dual credit courses decrease from 2021 to 2022. um the overall decreases were observed for our black students our native students our latinx students our multiracial and our white students surprised that I was kind of surprised this this is the one where just across the board it was universally the trend was down and I'm just curious um so we need to talk with those schools that offer those possibilities to our students and really understand what differently and differentially is happening with students and improv in preparing this presentation I did not have the opportunity to do that but miss Calvert might have some additional Insight I think one of the things that has impact acted dual credit courses in particular there's something so dual College college credit courses I think or is it IB that was the question was it about IB or jewelry it was about a dual credit because it looks like universally in all categories there was a the trend line is right so there's there's there are two things that I think are represented in here one um there are dual credit classes that are offered on high school campuses right by a PPS instructors there's also college credit courses that are offered at community colleges or with PSU that are on psu's campuses one of the things just to note is that PCC did not come back into person at the same rate we did so there are some schools that have strong Partnerships with PCC that those classes still were online last year that were impacting this senior class so some students chose to stay in once we got back into uh in-person learning wanted to be in person and did not want to take college level courses online so that's some of what we're seeing um now we'll turn our attention to IB Pass rates those course completion successful completion of three or more courses remain low for our native black and Pacific Islander students where fewer than five percent of the students were meeting that post-secondary Readiness standard in this area overall the rate did increase likely credited to increases among our white students our Asian students and our multi-racial students who are not underserved it's a question about a question about that um so at both of the IB Schools Cleveland and Lincoln when we went and did um we had a meeting like for example in Cleveland and I know that Lincoln had to start I think followed in this track that they did IB for all which is all um say Juniors would take IB English and they I thought they were also going to take IB math is my understanding that was what they were doing at Cleveland and then Lincoln the same thing so it wasn't like hey you have this group of kids who are you know heading off into the IB track and everybody else is in the regular track but really everybody everybody's gonna for an IB School everybody's going to take these two classes is that still happening and um and is that having any sort of impact on these numbers because it's because it seems like the numbers would be much higher if everybody's taking it and I mean unless everybody's getting D's or so again this this measure is a measure of three taking three IB classes right so it's not just a singular class or the a success rate in each of the classes so there are there are um Cleveland has done some um concerted efforts to do junior language arts or Ela as uh IB for all their students it is their
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junior English class so that is one class and then there should be two more that would that would be needed in order to get to the this standard for three we're seeing similar things um and uh efforts at um uh um and AP courses so there are a couple schools like McDaniels offering AP Human Geography for all sophomores as an example so we're starting to see that there are entry point classes that schools are trying to make sure it becomes a common experience for all students that then would encourage them to take additional Advance courses in IB AP or dual credit so Jefferson for example has um dual credit uh uh junior English is dual credit for all students at Jefferson for example so we're seeing this as an entry point in a way to provide common experiences at multiple schools and it's in all three areas whether it's AP IB or dual credit graduation rate was the same as the three APS have just had everybody's taking three AP classes this is AP for all in a certain subjects and I think it's similar for the CTE Pathways right so like whether depending on what we're looking at the goal is to is to see this experience being getting closer into matching our graduation rates overall right and CTE is probably the closest yeah foreign okay let me make sure I know where I am sorry new for this reporting cycle and especially for director green to make it a little bit longer um uh we took the end we took a look at students performance on college entrance exams as a measure of post-secondary Readiness each of these exams has a threshold with their subtests in ela and Mathematics and the score indicates post-secondary Readiness and usually successful the likelihood that you'll successfully you know complete your first year of college with certain GPA here has been the trend with most PPS assessment data the performance varies along the lines of race with our black students showing the lowest achievement Gesundheit and levels among all of the students and so if we are to think about this we you know this shows that there is still work to be done around achievement right even when we think about things like IB and AP for all it's critical that when you're implementing something like that that we have all the necessary supports and structures in place to support students who under other circumstances might not have had the opportunity or been counseled into an AP or an IB course and now are giving that opportunity moving forward let's wrap up with the Seal of by literacy and we know this is an asset in today's global economy and we just had a lot of testimony tonight about biliteracy from our students um which was so which was so great I love to see that advocacy I'm nearly 21 of all PPS students in the class of 2022 attain the Seal of bi literacy which is down a little bit um from the prior year you will note that again there's mixed performance among students with large um student groups which large with large swings in attainment for example fewer than five students who are black native or Pacific Islander attain the seal while 46 percent of multiracial students who are not underserved attain the seal and so in conclusion three takeaways um our four-year cohort graduation rate continues to improve and increase over time as does our fifth year completion rate so that's good news in the aggregate there's still some persistent gaps in graduation rate by race with some student groups showing signs of progress very proud and happy to be able to talk about the African-American graduation rate being up almost four percentage points and overall post-secondary Readiness race declined between uh the class of 21 and the class of 22 and we still see those persistent gaps and differences here along the lines of race and with that we'll take any remaining questions that the body may have thank you for the presentation I waited and I'm proud of myself for that and you remembered your question and I did I wrote them down then I didn't do my job I wrote them down this is why I love my guy so you mentioned a couple of things towards the end that really caught my attention and made the questions that I was going to have stand out you mentioned that um you know we want to we want to make sure that they finish the first year
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with like specific gpas which led me to the first question that I have is do we have or can we get data on the um the first year of college completion rates because it's one thing to leave the the high school it's another thing to actually finish the first year so when I think Readiness I'm thinking that you actually finished and so I'm looking if we can look at that there being one thing the next thing that you mentioned is um and again that was in your last line there you mentioned supports um having having available supports which led me to a question of that I was starting to form couldn't get all the way out but can we list or in the schools that we know are doing well when we look at those schools what are the supports that they actually have in place that are actually aiding and abetting the students that are doing well um above the sea right I mean I know we say seeds get degrees but I don't want the person with a c working on me I I don't want that person like on my heart I don't want him in my lungs I don't want him anywhere near me I want the one that got the a really and then if I have to get somebody else give me the person that did the B but the person that got C was playing beer pong the whole time I don't want him near me And so what do we have that shows this uh the supports that are in those schools working really well so that those kids are achieving high high scores and then can we name those supports and if we can name those supports then what can we do to make sure that those specific supports are in every school especially the Roosevelts and the idaby wells and The Jeffersons sure I can start and maybe um Miss Calvert can jump in part of our work with principals and their continuous Improvement plans is bringing them together to analyze data and to have dialogue with each other about practices that they're using in their buildings that are meeting with success or some that may be not meeting with success so we know just as teachers learn really best from other teachers often our principals learn best from dialoguing and spending time with one another and there's opportunity under Dr Franco Dr Proctors and the assistant superintendent's leadership at the monthly principles leadership development there's opportunities each month for just high school principals to be together to talk about the successes and challenges in their building and to share best practices and Lessons Learned in terms in terms of looking at early indicators for success for example starting with ninth grade we do have an emphasis on Ninth Grade success with our high school Success teams that are working with students they're continue to look at on track and off track indicators by quarter by examining student grades so that we can you know provide early intervention and support for the students to improve where there are lagging results in their grades for example so we do have an effort to back to your question of what data do we look at after the first year for example to to see how it is that we are supporting students and I'll ask um Miss Calvert to speak to the specific supports so I have a new favorite phrase which is aiding and abetting Student Success so um this is a good um I'm taking I'm taking that like the guilty is charged right so this is um one of the one of the pieces and I want to highlight and emphasize what uh Dr Adams and Dr Proctor mentioned one is that we're looking on closely at school Improvement planning when people are developing theories of action that are saying if we do this and take these steps we expect student outcomes to be different so the every High School actually every school in the district is doing that process and what we do what we're looking at is where are the spaces and places that we're finding success that as you're describing we can take to scale so one is to look at the data one is for actually before we do that one is to say these are the actions that we're going to take in sort of putting that stake in the ground that this is this is what we're going to do and we're hoping to see this result and we're expecting to see that result and then when we do that we're going to we're going to say how does that carry out across the system so some of the things that we are seeing have been successful and I want to just absolutely share that um tier one instruction really strong tier one instruction is critical to the success of all students and it's critical to the success of students in every school with that said then we go to tier two and tier three interventions but we're really this year the focus has been on really um developing strong tier one
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instruction in every classroom across every High School in the system so that we're doing things like doing instructional rounds where we're walking through with uh colleagues and principals and looking at instruction and thinking about what's the next professional learning that needs to happen to support students we're seeing that we just completed some instructional walks across the system looking uh with some central office folks about how we're seeing and talking about instruction so that's one sort of bucket of work I think the second is once we see what are our indicators of what um when students need additional support and and what is that going to look like so what we're seeing across some schools is that they're doing intentional uh support so like if we're providing to to your point uh AP for all what is this how are we provide adding additional support so it's not just access but we get to success and so were we seeing those Investments and then building those strategies out one of the big keys that we're also seeing uh and we see we saw this coming back from the pandemic is around attendance and sort of the good news is that students figured out how to access curriculum online the bad news is they figured out how to access the curriculum online and so we need to get them back in the school and the classrooms and so that we can provide those real-time supports so I think those are some of the strategies but the mechanisms to kind of share that learning is through our instructional rounds our school Improvement planning processes and the work that is in collaboration where we're seeing it in real time and then trying to build generalizations from the data as we go and to get back to your first question around um how students actually perform in college we can look into having a partnership with the national student Clearinghouse because they typically have those data in in the previous District we had um that information and it was useful so I'll have my team I'll work with Dr Proctor to look into that and what that would take yeah maybe it used to be through act but you could look at for example the Oregon colleges of say freshman students to see how they they did who came out of BPS how they did in their freshman classes is that what you're referring to no there's a um it used to be called the national student loan Clearinghouse um but they they changed the name slightly and so um because students have to fill out that um Federal application for student a they're able to link that typically to where and which high school students went to and then link that to the colleges that they attend so I think this the national student Clearinghouse data would Encompass more schools than just the schools in the state and I think it would be more comprehensive so we'll look into that right because you see what I'm looking at is like who finished and who didn't because you were ready should be able to finish and if you didn't then how do we get you ready and so that's what I'm so thank you for that that's right how close are you yeah student representative McMahon yeah I don't know so looking at this data was there was this like pretty consistent trends like across each school and I don't know necessarily if we had the data from every individual school but was this like yeah students from Cleveland you know what is it like 20 of them graduated or like could completed three IB classes with the Sierra above but then like at another school that was way higher um or was it like these Trends are pretty consistent at every school that's the amount of students that are completing with this year higher well I think our Trends are pretty different at most of our schools right um if they were more similar I would hope they would be at a position where we'd have higher percentages but we know we have differential performance um Miss Calvert talked a lot about supports for Roosevelt and their student body and that changing so we also tried to provide at the request of the board School level data but when you drill down that low the data then have to be suppressed because they're publicly available once we provide them to the board members so it's not really usable but we can certainly work with Dr Franco to think about how can we leverage looking at these data at an individual School level by principles because they can do it via the dashboard quick question um you talked about tier one instruction can you dive in further what that means so tier one instruction is instruction that all students receive by design of the instructional program so at the high school level English one is it is a course that or English one two is what
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we call it here in Portland is the course that at its very core is tier one it's the instruction that is giving to given to all students tier two then looks at the students that may indicate a need for support or intervention than when you when you add an additional layer of instruction or an intervention it moves to a tier two and then further still of those students there will be even a smaller population of students that demonstrate more intensive support a need of more intensive support then in addition to the tier one instruction that they receive they also receive what we call a tier two so if you think about it in terms of an elementary school um you know Miss Proctor teaches third grade I have curriculum resources that I provide for all of my students in the third grade that's the tier one but I have a group of six students that I notice in reviewing their um you know assessments that they're struggling so I'll pull those six students into a small group and do a reteach of of the curriculum that's tier two but of the six students I have just one that really is still not getting it with the closer touch as I like to call it with a teacher in small group so that means I need to do a one-on-one with that student to to so everyone gets tier one some get tier two and a smaller group still usually it's one or two um maybe three students that would demonstrate a requirement for tier three if everyone in my class is struggling then I need to reteach to everyone and go back to tier one and do all that happen it should be I think one of the um Dr Proctor alluded to this one of the critical components of tier one instruction is that it includes rich and robust differentiation for students at different levels of instruction right just because I'm reading a little bit behind Ms Calvert doesn't mean I necessarily need tier two it can get to a point where my reading is so far behind that I need tier two or tier three but I don't want anyone to have the assumption that tier one means that everybody's academically at the exact same place with the skills that they come with right you have to differentiate within the first year and provide supports and scaffolds for all of the students and then you find out who for whom those things don't work and then you move those students into tier two while still making sure they have access to tier one instruction because we know if we pull students away from tier one and only give them tier two or tier three they fall behind right everyone gets to tier one all the time and then yes thank you for adding that layer there is differentiation within tier one just to follow along I just want to say an appreciation for your obvious um experience in the classrooms really showing through what tier that the tutoring is so that's is that three I mean when when you're so adding that on because there's been a lot of discussion about the behave the catching students up after covid for some students that's going to be in addition to tier one and tier two is tier three the tutoring or is that tier one two and three and then there's this separate activity yeah so that's really a good question um when it comes to tier two and three that's when we take students um or we have a we back in the day we called it a collaborative problem solving now it's mtss where Educators come together to have conversations about how students are doing and what supports they need so for example taking that same example and leveling up to a middle school you know a middle school student has has seven or so teachers you know we may realize that Jackie is struggling and I may have an approach that works in my English class but Mr Green is struggling to teach Jackie and get Jackie to really be successful in a math class we have conversation about what interventions and supports can happen we have our learning acceleration yes
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um that happens but those are supplemental programs above and beyond what we do within mtss to identify um where students may need additional intervention above tier one with that differentiation so one of the piece of the piece that is unique about high schools is and and I would say is that we've heard some conversation around Flex time right so with it's within the school day right this is a time where students it's it's within the school day and then you the students and teachers can say okay hey come let's do some of that small group instruction or do the follow-up in pieces so that would be like an example of tier two is that it falls within the school day it's targeted and it's part of why um you know we use flex time at the high schools is to give students they're managing many classes right so here's an opportunity and access to specific teachers at a specific time for additional support okay I want to wrap this up to move forward um I don't want to lose um sight of the good news here and going back to graduation rates and and it's just to see that that jump over the years from 72 to over 90 is is really extraordinary um and so so thank you for that and I also want to just call out the clarity um that that we have when it comes to some of the racial disparities I mean you note on this slide very specifically that there are still persistent gaps in graduation rate by race and you note on this slide that there are still persistent gaps and differences along the lines of race prevalent across our post-secondary Readiness measures um that's not good news that's bad news but we can only solve that problem if we're clear about it and and you know I think one of the things that um has just been really interesting to me being on the board for the last four years is is is the increasing Clarity with which we're saying that and you know I remember it was a year and a half ago that The Oregonian you know sort of ran this these stories about these racial disparities and they sort of pretended like they you know had found them it was investigative reporting and of course they were using data that the superintendent and his team had put out there and you know we've been talking about these since I've been on the board probably before that um you know and The Oregonian could have been writing about racial disparities and systems racism for 100 years so there are some negative downsides but the reality is we only solve the problem if we are clear about what it is say problem and it's there and we're not going to sugarcoat it we're not going to pretend that it's it's better than it is this is how I think we're going to actually address it and solve it so I appreciate that Clarity I think I just want to bring full circle what you're saying that add the context that this presentation is responding to our board goals which are set with that lens to not just look at our overall achievement at high school but look at our disparities it's not just no just two final comments I appreciate it because the observations are are the right ones uh first of all and I know we mentioned this in the recent uh press announcements but just kudos to our hard-working students Educators school and District leaders uh for yet another year of incremental growth we're pleased about that and we do have work to do because you do see the variability across student groups and schools but when you have the building blocks now in place that haven't always been there combined with you know curriculum coming aboard you know the Align training and continued data literacy and continuous Improvement you know we can start to point to those promising practices and we can start to replicate those across schools so you know just a a little bit of commendation there for our Educators and then the second thing I wanted to share because it got me thinking the questions earlier around you know we want a reference point or a comparator and Dr Adams was was right we don't necessarily have Universal indicators you know we'd have to do a little digging but the council great City schools actually does this work so uh their last report came out this past October 2022 you can find it published on the website and it actually takes all the council districts uh but the the indicators vary a little bit you know it'll talk about you know AP exams at three or higher it'll talk about course number of enrollment it also adds in attendance and discipline so you know I would Point directors to to spend a minute uh kind of looking through those you'll notice that Portland's called out in a few areas for overall performance but also in remarkable progress in some areas so I think the council does a good job of a deep dive there director constant is always reminding us to get our homework in each fall because we want to be part of that annual publishing I know Dr Adams just got the request for all of our academic kpis and we're also submitting all of our business kpis too so the next report
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should have a well-rounded viewpoint on how we're doing compared to the other 77 peers across the country it's only going to get better class of 2023 I've got a good feeling all right yeah I'm just excited that my own kid will contribute I hope fingers crossed to the graduation rate this year yes Parker right I know right um great thank you very much for the information and discussion um appreciate it uh okay next up and last up I think on our agenda our board operating protocols you're gonna get hard copy see this was a I was a Prelude when I said hard copy uh you'll get this um electronically as well so I'll take everyone back I'm sure you all remember in the fall um we had a board retreat we discussed some revisions to the board protocols um there's a lot of good discussion around that we have um begun to implement uh soft implementation of pieces of this mostly around the timeline so you've been getting emails from Roseanne we've you know obviously moved to you know once a month board meetings with a work session in between we're moving towards the you know board materials being available 12 days in advance with a time period for questions um that's all captured in here um there was a lot that we talked about at that Retreat and you know as you recall there was consensus on some things and there were different opinions on others um again I'll send this around electronically this was a version control issue that's why you got a hard copy today um but um we'll send this around um this you know what I would encourage uh board members and we'll post this as well the plan is to hopefully vote on this at our next board meeting which is March 7th so we've got about a month um obviously if there's more need for discussion by the board I want to facilitate that so if you have a chance to go through and you feel like ah there's still some stuff you really want to have you know discussion on we do have a work session in two weeks and I think we could add this on if we need to on the other hand if we go through and we say yeah this kind of reflects what we had conversation we think we're good then then I I you know we can do that as well but just as a reminder this this kind of tries to capture everything in terms of roles and responsibilities and you know how we set priorities again and give some of the meeting timelines in here expectation of board members how we communicate how we ask for information um you know etc etc committee protocols and so forth um so with that um obviously if there are any questions today happy to to answer those and and I guess one more thing that I will just ask is is what board members would like in terms of facilitating this I will say that my My Hope was to do a red line of our existing protocols to these the only thing I will tell you is that they are so different a red line becomes kind of meaningless so I mean it's just red lines all over the place I'm happy we can definitely Roseanne can send around the existing protocols right so the folks have that um and this new version but is there anything else that that board members would facilitate this conversation over the next few weeks and and hopefully moving towards the vote this relatively soon remembrance yeah um I just I have a couple thoughts obviously I just got the revised version and we had that discussion what four was it four months ago or I mean is a while ago so I'm gonna go back and look at mine notes one thing I um think I want to just given where we are in the year and knowing that um you know every two years we have essentially a new board um is that um we put some sort of end date um on it so that there's a um so they went you know one of the things that happens you get a new group of board members come in and every you know um some board members are drinking from a fire hose others are taking taking a break during the summer um but it then you get into the start of school and you're off and running is that to put some sort of like end date on it so that there's a requirement that the board actually deliberately and intentionally looks looks at it and has a discussion about it versus just rolling into the the following year that would be sort of one comment and I guess I'll just um I've just this is just larger overarching comment is that it's super detailed and um I think one of the things to think about and prescriptive is um you know where where's their flex and Grace because um there there's going to be instances where staff or board members because this is really an agreement in some ways between staff and and board members um like where where is the where's the flex and the grace um and where's the um sort of consistency of how it gets applied um so that that's like one thing that I I want to think about as I look back through here because um we as soon as you get super detailed
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then it's like okay is everybody going to be held to every word or in likewise staff and board members or is it you know more a set of a set of guidelines and um you know how that works and I think that's a good conversation to have so it's not when you when you have that and they're super detailed and the first time that something happens and we say we're not going to do X or we're going to do y about it and if we let other things slide it then becomes like uh puts a perception that is unevenly applied and so like how do we how do we Infuse some Grace into the document I mean I've just been around long enough to know that like that just happens um and you know how then also do we start um talking to board members who um as I say say if we have we have new board members in July um you know sort of bringing them into the into the ways of working and and making it um you know and and I also think you know it's always good with a new board or to look back like what's working what's not um and how do we adjust so those would just be some high level thoughts I had that again without looking at any of the details sure thanks one of the questions just before Terry uh by irony um on the end date because I see your point right you do have a new board is there also an argument though again when we talk about consistency the board at any time a majority of the board can change the protocols um whether there's an end date or not I wonder if there's is there the alternate side of that is there value in having again just a regular standard practice for the PPS board that doesn't change just because you add one or two members but only changes if there really is a majority that says you know we we want something to change I was struck tonight um you know these are these are protocols we're putting on ourselves and so we can always take them off as I was going through the script around the consent agenda you know we've sort of moved towards this you know you have a period of time any member can object to something a consent agenda to have it pulled if you that window you know AJ's protocols that he gave us are very like if you miss that window it you know it does not it does not come off unless the board votes a majority and then it cannot be heard of that meeting has to be heard of the next meeting and I thought to myself well unless the majority of the board decides to suspend the protocols for that meeting in which case then they can hear it and it just got me thinking about governance generally four members of this board can do almost anything when it comes to our own governance um and so I just I I guess I think your point is a really good one about you know do we want to make sure we're bringing new board members in is there also an alternate side of that coin that that consistency is important unless foreign it's part of our board evaluation yeah just and just say what what works what doesn't where do we want to have more Flex like I you know in general this whole process of having one board meeting get the materials away in advance I think you know like I feel a sense of relief is like I don't have to you know spend you know the Thursday night because if I want to get something in by Friday there's more time period hopefully staff is more time period so I think there's a lot of value I also think it's a totally different way of the things have been done for six or seven years and so it's just good to have um I think a conversation about like on a regular basis versus just you know letting it letting things slide because it's sort of like hey somebody you know they're supposed to have personally get everything by 12 o'clock and I think AJ's original um proposal of like if it's an identify it's just not in if we get something like 11 days in advance you know you know I'm still like we should um you know like some Flex it's like seems seems reasonable as long as we get well and I really liked your your view at The Retreat that you know doing this as a pilot and let's see how it works and reevaluate and go from there so it was a good screen um yeah I remember when both like at the actual retreat but also when we saw these four protocols for the first time and I don't necessarily think it's something that needs to be addressed in terms of this because they're 70 you and one of me but the issue is is that this is made for you guys and both in terms of like our general role since I have symbolic vote as well as like our actual legal roles and I was in communication with the Oregon government like Ethics Committee and talking to them about well if I'm not a publicly elected official but I sit on the board in many ways um I'm like like have a similar role what does that look like and so I guess um if not to change these protocols obviously it would require you know having to decide like okay what do we functionally see the student rep doing
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what what should apply to them and what shouldn't but I guess if someone if after we pass these maybe that could be explained because I also think obviously the student reps don't since we change every year we also don't necessarily have the stability to kind of go through the process see what works for us and what doesn't or to even understand these protocols and so I think that either making space to as a board change some of these protocols so that the role of the student representative is more clear as to what applies to them or if sorry if just taking the time to establish that as a group um maybe not changing the protocol specifically but changing like the board policy or just creating some sort of way that students can understand certainly I'm thinking about as I move into electing the next student representative what rules does that person have to follow and how can we make that transition easiest for them thank you and I did go back through your comments at that Retreat um and I think it's a it's a good conversation to keep having I mean this is on the one hand you're as much of an equal on this board as we can be but you're right there are certain things here that don't I mean it's also very tricky because I mean there this should apply it obviously there's more of you than there is in me and also the role changes differently certainly depending on the person too like I am a very different student rep than Jackson was and Jackson was different than the student rep before um them so it just is a difficult thing to balance and I appreciate you going back and looking at those things but just to bring it up again as we consider it appreciate it other thoughts or comments tonight okay I appreciate your point about um the importance of endorsing these protocols and them not seeming like a very moment in time expression from a certain constellation of a board it's really an expression of best practices and what we believe and certainly any different group of people can you know have a conversation about going back and modifying it but I wouldn't support having an end date I think what we want to communicate is that this is what we aspire to these are best practices we're making this agreement and not that it's sort of transient okay so I would encourage you take a look through um shoot any questions that you have uh towards me or Roseanne we'll try and answer them and again if as you go through this um and we'll try and loop back to the board to ask again you know probably in a week or so um you feel like there's a need for a board discussion we'll try and make sure that happens um before the March 7th meeting with that is our you know I have one more thing that's not on on the agenda it's just it's a it's a it's not even really a board issue I mean it's a board issue but not a board meeting but um uh general counsel large there's a new requirement on board members as of January and I believe we we might have gotten an email about this right and we need to be following up I just want to make sure the board just could you remind us what we need to be doing because I'm realizing I saw that email and then it got lost in the hundreds of other emails I already got this all right so it's a it's a requirement um passed by Statute that extends the SEI statement of economic interest um to school board members it's been applicable to a lot of other uh elected and and public servants other public servants um you need to register as I recall by March 15 to set up your account with the ogec and that's instructions in the email you received and you have to file the actual economic statement by April 15. there are several osba tutorial sessions on how to do that mesd has a key role in supporting and obviously we will help uh support and Roseanne has been on the front lines of this already so let me speak on your behalf Rosanne um of helping to get information and and set up the account you're individually responsible for filing the economic statements but we want to support you getting it set up and having all the information you need to accurately do that okay that would be helpful just to yeah the deadlines are helpful we're reminding people that we got an email because again it's the Huns of we've got over the last month it's hard to find those I think there aren't uh there aren't uh instructions in the email that we have received before it says we will receive an email directly from them that will prompt us to the for the forms that we need to respond to maybe we can recirculate that Roseanne oh you just did okay thank you thank you any other business for tonight all right so the next regular meeting of the board will be held on March 7th at McDaniel high school and again we have a work session and two weeks on Safety and Security as well and committee meetings in the meantime this meeting is


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