2023-09-05 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2023-09-05
Time 18:00:00
Venue PESC Auditorium
Meeting Type regular
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: 2023-09-05 PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting

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good morning good morning good afternoon good evening it's one of them um this public meeting of the board of education for September 5th 2023 is called to order all items being considered this evening are posted on the PPS website under the board and meetings tab this meeting is being streamed live on PBS TV service website and on Channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times all right good evening again I'm director Scott and director Wong will be joining us virtually today we are going to be celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month we're going to be bringing a resolution to recognize the spirit Hispanic here it is much important Portland public schools superintendent would you please introduce the first item yes good evening chair and directors it is actually a unique time here at the start of the school year we have a couple of our team members that are going to come up and introduce this Proclamation and I think our board manager Roseanne Powell is going to kick us off thank you yes good evening director student representative and superintendent Guerrero I've been asked to speak tonight about why it is important that we take time to recognize Hispanic Heritage Month early in my career here at Portland Public Schools I had the privilege of working in a Spanish dual language immersion school there is so much joy to experience working in schools but especially in a school that was filled with abundance of cultural and linguistic affirmation school that celebrated students whose first language was Spanish seeing their emerging bilingualism as a gift my own dad immigrated to this country as a young boy and unfortunately did not see his first language as an asset or a gift despite his early struggles to learn English he left school and his love for it was contagious fortunately I attended a school pardon me it's okay we're with you we're here we got you that valued my Heritage and modeled curiosity and respect for other cultures this is something all students deserve all students deserve to have their Heritage and backgrounds celebrated as part of their educational experience all students deserve to be inspired to pursue their dreams after learning about artists like Frida Kahlo or scientists like Elena choa it is our community's racial cultural and linguistic diversity that enriches all of us and fosters empathy to help others help make schools more inclusive environments thank you for acknowledging September 15th through October 15th as Hispanic Heritage Month in Portland Public Schools which is classiest thank you thank you [Applause] and I will read the be it resolved in Spanish Latinos in Portland is thank you [Applause] motion a second second all right director Green motion director of the past second all in favor yes yes yes yes yes all right oh my God we have a past seven to zero with oh with the student director sorry yes enthusiastically awesome awesome it passed this 7-0 with the student director voting yes thank you all right so now we have Max is the superintendent's report we do and Terry if you're back there if you can get uh our slide deck up just a few slides for you this evening but uh it seemed appropriate to do a quick Roundup of our back to school uh here at
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PPS so uh directors um let me go to the first slide here I'm thrilled to be presenting my sixth back to school report for you this time of year is always exciting our schools are filled with joy anticipation potential we see our students charging into the new school year sometimes with a passing goodbye to their families hugging friends shaking hands exploring new learning spaces our principals our teachers bus drivers nutrition staff custodians and counselors they've all been providing a positive welcoming experience as our students return to school or start school I know that they all remain collectively focused on Student Success everywhere I went last week and hopefully everywhere you went to I saw our teams laying the groundwork for a productive and supportive school year for our students I personally visited several schools on day one I started my day at sitton elementary alongside chair Hollins and other special guests like state senator Lou Frederick and representative Travis Nelson directors you've heard me say again again how important it is that we let our students know we believe in their Brilliance and potential and at sitting they literally rolled out the red carpet to welcome students back I'm going to show you a short video clip here it's just a minute I'm going to warn you there's at least one very very enthusiastic person highlighted here Terry if we could play that remember is here it's important that we keep reading all right here we go here we go here we go they're rolling out the red carpet the festivities are getting underway that first day of school is here it's important that we keep reading over this summer because we need a practice and I I don't want a bunch of people not reading why did we go back to school why do you have to come to school and I want to wish everybody a fabulous first day of school we are ready for you we're here at Sinton Elementary this morning one of our wonderful School communities every year the first day of school is really a celebration about being together in a community and so we're really hoping this year to start the first day by planting the seeds for a really exciting joyful and focused new school year I'm excited for all the new math we're going to be doing we're anticipating some tremendous academic gains and growth here at Sinton Elementary and we just want to put a spotlight on them because we know so many of our schools are working hard to really make sure that we're focused on Student Success we had a very enthusiastic uh first day there thank you chair Hollins [Music] well uh after that experience of Sinton our group moved over to meet with families at Cesar Chavez we had a chance to welcome and introduce our new principal there Jose Mesa I was also excited to meet up with director Wong at Kellogg and Shadow one of our new principals there as well Mr Tai Nguyen directors I know you've learned a little bit about Mr noon as a former Kellogg middle school student he had a short detour in Arizona but he's back he's here with us in his old neighborhood of southeast Portland as our new principal at Kellogg and Tuesday when the sixth graders had the building to themselves staff provided a wonderful orientation our principal and his team made sure that they had a strong start to their middle years experience there so these are just a couple snapshots across our district each of you I know was out and about in our schools all of our central office team were out in the schools as well I've heard many stories full of a lot of the joy and excitement I know you felt it too I'm sure each of you has additional observations from your own visits during this first week but I think the bottom line is we're off to a good start we're off to a great start in fact uh since the slide is titled new leaders I also want to introduce because it's tradition here and we haven't had a regular meeting yet in public I want to introduce our newly appointed Deputy superintendent for business and operations myong Li if I could ask him to just come up for a moment it's customary to invite him to just say a
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couple words so you all know who he is myeong thank you thank you superintendent and good evening directors it's great to be with you and and student director as well for the first public meeting that I've attended although I've seen several board meetings in committee and in executive session it's this is feels like a dramatic moment for me so uh pardon my uh being a little Stage Struck if I am so I can introduce myself uh superintendent I don't know asked me to just say a little bit about my background so first of all I will share that I am a Korean American immigrant who attended Public Schools myself from kindergarten through high school graduation I grew up in Wilmington Delaware a small state far away but uh good uh public education was had by myself and and all my classmates growing up I am also a member of the lgbtq community my pronouns are him he him his it's great to be here I have long come to Portland to enjoy the wonderful City the wonderful offerings the the incredible uh Beauty Natural Beauty and Civic beauty that the city has to offer I'm here now for a different kind of fun I've never worked in Portland but I'm having a really wonderful experience I've just finished finishing up my first month so as a superintendent said I am here to help for a time and I'm trying my best to uh try to fill in for Claire Hertz who who left a while ago a great big pair of shoes and I'm trying I have very small feet so I'm trying to fill in uh fill in the shoes as well as I can um I've been so thankful to the many colleagues that I've had a chance to meet all of you directors as well there are so many interesting fascinating issues I have the the benefit of newness so I'm looking at these issues with fresh eyes and sort of some innocence in my in my background and hopefully I'm able to ask good questions and seek the benefit of patience and and a welcoming nature which I found everywhere that I've turned here in the school district so look forward to being with you for the next several months and thank you so much for your hospitality and superintendent for letting me introduce myself tonight thank you welcome welcome great to have you come on well today also our kindergartners started today at PPS I had a chance to start my morning at Chapman Elementary it was great to speak with family members we stayed for an hour to talk over coffee uh who were dropping off their kindergartners for the first day parents had great questions as they started their educational careers with us uh principal and I were able to share a little bit of advice to some of their questions things like you know enjoy these moments your child will show tremendous growth as time goes by get to know the other families because you're likely going to hear stories about fellow classmates and you will become an important support for one another and remember to ask your child about the small moments that may have happened in class or at school each day uh what did you play at recess what did you work on in art class what book did the teacher read aloud today so we were welcoming kindergartners at school schools all over town today you can also find a great little video clip on our social media channels of the Clapping Ceremony this morning at Rose City Park they had a wonderful welcome for the young scholars there it's a wonderful tradition where the entire School helps to welcome new kindergartners and then directors I have a few of our Chiefs who are going to join us up here they each have an allowance of one slide and a few things that they're going to share from their areas just to round out our back to school kicking it off here is to share his observations of our school communities as well of all of our senior directors of schools as our chief of schools Dr Franco all right thank you superintendent directors pleasure to be here I I thought superintendent's opening comments were absolutely accurate it's been a great week and is one principal texted me the other day on the first day
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she said that it was a great first day of school the kids are so excited to be back so I think in summary that is absolutely the truth so I just wanted to highlight a few kind of big big ticket things that we are excited about moving forward this year uh first I would want to shout out Harrison Park and Clark right we got via you know scgc we got two new schools on and so Harrison Park the new middle school and Clark Elementary so we're very excited about that also this year especially at the middle school level we are rolling out advisory consistent advisory in all of our schools three times a week for 25 minutes also the Advent of CSA support that's campus safety Associates and also RJ coordinators and I'm also happy to report that all Middle School admin teams are intact that we are a full go with all our Middle School admin teams so we're very excited about that also kudos to not only my team but HR and comms you know each summer technically we have July which is supposed to be a down time the reality is it's also the peak of hiring season and so we're excited that beginning this year every school has a principal uh we started out when I first came in we had 32 principal vacancies and we were still hiring when we started in the fall this year we we trimmed that by half you know principal retention is extremely important and it's you know it's because we also uh uh promoted some folks but we're very excited for the new leaders that we have I think superintendent had a few pitchers with uh with Ty Nguyen the new principal at Kellogg who's outstanding uh just uh because you know we are in a sense finishing out our enrollment and program balancing and so this really is the year and so we're excited uh for all of the uh not only new schools but programs uh to be fully in place uh We've currently allotted out of the 10 allocated FTE 6.6 of that FTE to um to help bridge the gap and of course we still have some left over which principles are currently kind of looking over and what they need and they're providing um access or feedback in regards to that on Thursday I believe you're all invited and are going to be attending summer graduation and so we had looking forward to celebrating seniors who have completed their High School graduation requirements and be looking forward to celebrating them on Thursday September 7th uh you know this this year we had a great Leadership Institute coupled with some outstanding um teacher professional learning in our Mantra this year is one team one goal and together we are brilliant uh those of you know of research John Hattie talks a lot about this notion of of collective efficacy in this belief that if you believe the same thing I believe that we can achieve together and that's the single biggest indicator of student achievement and so we're very um excited to move together to make this feeling of Portland this District feels small and we have collectively grabbed on to that approach and I could say that collectively via the building leaders and so we're really excited those move about those moves moving forward so I was given one slide you know one minute and I think I've surpassed that but those are there's so much there's so much I can talk about but just wanted to highlight a few of the big ticket pieces so thank you thank you Dr Franco and here with the Staffing update our chief of HR uh Sharon Reese school as Dr Franco had alluded to our school principal central office teams have been hard at work and have can been continuing to make progress in hiring and onboarding of new Educators in our school-based staff you see an update here of the information we provided about a month ago regarding Staffing and overall we have 119 instructional vacancies that represents about 57 now in core content areas and of these positions there we are at six Elementary classroom so homeroom positions vacant and of these are those when you say instructional vacancies are kind of just teachers or is that also EAS and para Educators those are teachers do we have the other information somewhere else we have so para Educators up there I'm about to get there to 54 vacancies with para Educators um and about 28 of those have a
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candidate in the in a phase of hiring and also uh there you should have in front of you a report you asked for a school by school based report of where we are with hiring so that's what it is in front of you right now and going back to the slide uh a third about the third almost a third of those open positions are in some phase of hiring so a candidate has been identified for those um uh CSI TSI vacancies this is you know some of the areas that we uh provide additional support in is our TSI CSI schools and also schools with new principals those are the ones that tend to have a harder time catching up with regard to Staffing vacant positions especially as new principals come on board late in the process and so what we are seeing in our TSI CSI schools which is consistent with what I reported a month ago is that those instructional vacancies are roughly proportional to the overall representation of those positions so um we also have a new position this year across all schools the instructional Coach position we are down to one vacancy for our instructional coach positions and that vacancies at art so that is my Staffing update I believe I'm turning it over to Chief Young good evening operationally we had a very successful first week from a transportation perspective our high school students used their free TriMet passes that we provided before the start of the school year uh and we do have a handful of Transportation vacancies on our contractor side but we ran all 300 plus bus routes last week without any issue we're able to cover any absences that we had with only some minor hiccups I would say our project management teams wrapped up dozens of projects many dozens of projects both big and small I highlighted a number of those a few weeks back but playgrounds lighting upgrades and everything in between most of those I wrapped up we do have some larger projects that continue in the fall which is pretty customary some of our big projects like our large roof Replacements and some other work like that our nutrition services staff after serving almost 100 000 meals over the summer served almost 77 000 meals just last week so they are off and running and doing great Ling Lincoln High School held their first lap around their first lap around the track last Thursday on their new track and as Dr Franco noted our middle schools welcome to New campus security agents and rounding it out Dr Renard Adams with a quick Snapshot from our attendance and enrollment sure thank you superintendent good evening directors and student director I wanted to provide another brief enrollment update as of September 1st which was last Friday we've registered just under 3 000 kindergarten students as you all aware because the superintendent just mentioned it kindergarten started today and we expect to register and roll additional kindergarten students over the next few weeks we do anticipate meeting our projected enrollment numbers for kindergarten at all levels of school so elementary middle and high we are seeing enrollment numbers that are slightly higher than our projections at this time but I just want to remind the board and the public that these enrollment numbers are preliminary and will continue to firm up as we reach that 10-day drop Mark for students in all grades as students either regularly attend PPS schools or they do not show up in here at PPS and we need to remove them from our roles that 10-day mark this year begins on October 2nd because October 1st is a Sunday we know that our principals and school teams are working hard to welcome students and families into this new school year and we are grateful for their efforts in this regard as is typically the case this time of year uh Dr Franco leads a team of myself and other staff and monitoring Schools Enrollment to ascertain the need and extent for any fall rebalancing and those decisions are ongoing so all right uh board if you have any questions all right [Music] yes typically so not all of those are classroom based positions that would be eligible for assault and we have increased a number of roles social workers aren't eligible for counselors only eligible for sub if it's
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the absence is going to be longer than a week so our school teams identify resources as well as substitutes to bring together yeah this follow-up as well are they all in currently in recruitment yes okay some of those positions also are ads from set aside funds just for example edition of social workers happened just a few weeks ago so we're late in the process to recruit those positions when we add them in August the lower than the number of vacancies we've had in the past several school years and so we're actually seeing some improved conditions as well as a greater pool of Subs that we have had before thank you so just to follow on the Staffing um I'd be interested of these like how many are classroom teachers to understand how many which which schools and have classrooms in which we don't have a non-substitute teacher we have a regular teacher in in the classroom um like I'm concerned a little bit about a little bit like for example Lane is a TSI school that still got has five vacancies if they're not student facing maybe that's slightly different but if they're all student facing um so I'd be interested in more detail on that and also the issue of EAS because I know those are vital supports in a lot of classrooms especially when you have some of the classrooms at the sort of top end of the class size thresholds and that historically that it in the TSI and CSI schools they have had more openings of EA so I'm curious um if we if we have that data we can get that information yeah yeah and then just in terms of the classroom teachers um do you anticipate going Beyond like October 1st with any classrooms not with all those the classroom positions we always have some level of turnover right that is happening or people going on leaves and that kind of thing so we never have zero vacancies um and yeah but yes what we typically see is that our hiring cycle is completed by October that also accounts for the timeline for additional FTE that are added because of additional budget allocations or grants or set aside allocations yeah I was thinking more of like the instance for example at Roseway Heights where we had a couple of I guess last year or two years ago where there was like no Spanish teacher the whole year so I'm thinking that there would be you know there's obviously turnover but just that we start the school year and don't actually don't have a teacher that then we continue into the school year with that right um and in those are extremely rare cases uh they do happen and that's when we pull on temp Educators or substitute Educators to address those vacancies Staffing question is going to go ahead and ask them um great well I had a good start to the school year as well um agreed on that um question about Harrison Park is super excited to go there to see it open as a middle school um I was surprised that it was still under construction so I'm curious um do we understand there was um firewalls that we didn't know that had to be constructed but um it's at very industrial looking school right now with open exposed and it sounds like it's all safe but um it just disappointed that we started the school year without it fully done what what's the timeline for completion yes good question I don't have all the details my fingertips but the the Harrison Park is a face project so construction will continue through the school year uh and through next summer we knew what that scope of work it couldn't be completed in a series of Summers because of the amount of work that needed to be completed with new roofs an entirely new mechanical system uh firelife Safety Systems as well so uh when you have that amount of work a couple work that has to happen and either has to be in a series of Summers or the school has to be vacated or you have to have parts during the completed during the year and sometimes when you have to keep your systems online like mechanical systems and firelife CC systems they need to be active during the school year so so we phase around the students and the staff and so we we keep everyone safe and we work in certain areas and we we move around the
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building so fall of 25 24 24 I believe exactly but let me double check that and I know that the promise of air conditioning is like a huge thing that's going to be installed but okay so follow um and then my last question is a transportation related question and I'm curious because of the uptick in um violence uh occurring on Max and on some of the TriMet buses whether and knowing that that's what we depend on for high school and many of our middle school students what conversations we're having with TriMet about just Security on our buses and Max's that we're counting on students to get to school well I think we'd all agree we're always concerned for student safety that includes back and forth from school there's as you're probably aware another unfortunate incident this past weekend and Southeast uh we are Safety and Security Services have remained in contact with ppb this weekend on that particular incident and will remain in contact with them because we are concerned about making sure that we're monitoring and the precautions are taken and that we're making sure our students have situational awareness when they're coming to and fro school as well any other questions from the board awesome thank you guys thank you team all right student director Silverstein would you like to present yes yes just letting can you hear me good um okay just letting everyone know this is a long one there's a lot to get through um so first of all a well student brought something to me they wanted me to mention that they have already had a threat of violence against their school everything turned out to be fine but as a student at Franklin I'm all too familiar with this last year we were plagued with bomb threats which while false definitely made students fearful and these are things that we carry with us I want to acknowledge all the well students and say we see you I also want to remind you that while we do have efforts being made to increase school safety I have my ID that we're all wearing now this is a very real issue and one that needs to continue to have dialogue about it as always we need Student voices in these discussions um yeah so thank you for sharing that to the welp student and then sorry I see people from DSD in the audience so shout out to them um thanks man so on a more positive note we've headed back to school um I know this is not everyone's favorite time of year but I hope everyone has something they're looking forward to Sports and academics are all gearing up homecoming will be happening soon for many schools JJ McDaniels representative on the GSC informed me McDaniels is next week okay um yeah so also I think it was briefly mentioned that we have the summer graduation this Thursday which honors our graduates who finish their requirements this summer so congratulations and thank you to the summer and evening Scholars programs which help our students recover credits and get credits early I participated the previous summer I'm a summer scholar and then we had our first District student council meeting today which was amazing we have representatives from pretty much every school except for mlc Alliance and Roosevelt who are working to get representatives from and we talked just really mainly about like what are the issues we're seeing in our district and at our schools we heard breakdown and communication which is contributing to frayed relationships between students in both school and District leadership a lack of school and District Pride safety within schools and on the way to schools including on the max um funding disparities and then needing more transparency around funding needing more student involvement and easier access to opportunities to get involved and I have one of those opportunities where students can get involved the community budget Review Committee which makes recommendations on how the district spends its money they're looking for new student members you can apply at pbs.net cbrc and the application is due September 22nd so get on that we would love to have you [Applause] thank you so much student director Silverstein um Miss Bradshaw do we have any students signed up for a public comment we do we do we do not okay all right let's see I get to step in this is my first time
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doing this at a board meeting and I'm super excited about this I'm feeling loved in this room I'm sorry okay it's the uh no we go into nope we do the student comment and then we looks like we're going um into the resolution um to replace the grant Bowl in the Buckman Field okay if y'all couldn't tell I was politically stalling as pastors normally do to give us all time to gather ourselves and get the leaders back where they need to be thank you directory um so next we'll be voting on the resolution to replace the grant bowl and the Buckman Field track which is being brought forward by director Scott and director brim Edwards so I want to know if director Scott would love to introduce this resolution um just because I'm virtual and my internet connection is a little um uh iffy I director from better words did you want to say a few words um happy to do that and uh thank you director Scott for um co-authoring and as well as the assist from and you'll never go guess what part from chair chair Holland's um just saying it's kind of obvious um so in 2002 and 2003 Lincoln was replacing their track and field which was really a mud pit like as many other tracks and Fields were in in PBS and they were going to have a state of the art uh competition level artificial turf field paid for with private funds the Grant Community um I think I went to my first grant funded raising and Community raising meeting in 2001. and the Cleveland Community was also raising um money privately from student groups alumni and student athletes for for new so that every one of our those schools would have artificial turf fields and tracks that would be of high quality and could be used year-round it was clear at the time that they were um there was going to be a group of halves and have-nots with some schools having those fields and other school communities that didn't have the resources would continue to have just grass fields which were not playable most of the year so a project was started the 10 Fields project it was places for sport at the very beginning it included um PBS Community groups alumni Nike lots of local businesses lots of parents and student athletes with the goal that as a community that all of our kids deserved a place to play in their neighborhood with the high quality track and field Nike paid for a fundraiser and and Community Building consultant to help raise money and for 10 years the project went on PPS put in about two to three million dollars and also a lot of technical expertise Nike execs and Nike put in about eight to ten million alumni and Community fundraisers from across the districts brought in about six to seven million dollars and together we made that a reality the biggest challenges of the project though were the two track and Fields that were not actually owned by PBS that were owned by the city of Portland and managed by Parks although they have been used both by Benson for 100 years yes a hundred years and same thing with Grant and that um we've had PPS has had a long relationship with Portland parks and we have many Mutual interests we have many of the same families and students and youth using our facilities and and so we've had a mutually beneficial relationship over the years and in this particular case um it was important for PPS to work with parks to in order to make sure that the Grant and the Benson Community also received the same sort of home turf that the other schools had so there was an agreement and work and into in 20 2012.
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um the grant field which was paid for by with significant contributions from PPS nadama ensues his family Foundation Parks the city of the city of Portland and PBS and that was replaced and then at um Benson there was a similar fundraising combination but also with St Mary's and a just a soccer club PCU and the agreement at the time was that the um fields and the track would be maintained by the district for their use and also in cooperation with parks on the two parks properties PPS has done that and when the the fields it reached the end of the useful life which they do and I think it's worth noting that the useful life actually allows a lot more use than if you have a grass field which once it gets muddy you really can't play on As oftentimes not safe but when it reached the use in the its useful life PPS has replaced it by building it into its facilities plan and I should note that what happened with Buckman even though the agreement was that the track and field the fields will be done along the track the track was never done I know that chair Hollins would want me to point that out which was quite disappointing um because again the goal was that every student no matter where they what neighborhood they lived in or what school they attended would have like a home field that offered them a high quality and safe EX experience and so as as these fields have reached their use into the useful life as I say PBS has replaced them it's disappointing that when the Grant field that planning wasn't done which is why in order to replace it so that there's no interruption to the the student athlete experience and so this resolution tonight does a couple things it actually from the board's perspective says that there's an urgent need to ensure the grant bowl and the Buckman tracks are safe and usable for our students and with as little delay and disruption to students and family as possible it also directs the superintendent to identify financial and other resources to replace the tracks and Fields and work the parks to engage in a process to get them replaced it also calls in the city of Portland to provide PPS with a long-term lease of the grant Bull and the Buckman track to avoid future disruptions and quickly replace them and then finally calls on the city of Portland to expedite all permittings of the field and tracks can be replaced and I think for me the most important thing here is the long-term picture as somebody who is a pil us student athlete and who's all three kids played on fields all over the city I know how important that experience especially having the experience and playing on your own home field is to our is to our students so I'm hopeful that we can move with do speed and I'm also um I say the one of the most important things is that we look for the long term that the grant and Benson Community have some certainty that they will have a that they're part of the district planning and they have access to the fields and that they have a home turf and I know that both Benson already has lights but Grant doesn't have either lights or a stadium and it's hard to plan if you just are basing that on the short on a short term planning cycle so having a long-term lease from Parks so that we can um at provide these adequate facilities not just adequate good facilities for our student athletes is really important and that's the spirit of this it's just not just the replacement of this um that the replacement of the grant field but also putting in place the Benson track but also establishing a long-term um a different long-term relationship with the city so that we have some certainty for our student athletes and Equity across the district all right thank you director room Edwards all right let's get to it so do I have a motion to adopt resolution 6755 all right okay we got a motion from uh
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oh the past okay who's the second I'll second that oh all right so yes okay we got it all right oh Lord um do we have any board discussion yeah at your homes if I if I may first of all um I'm really glad I handed the Baton to director of medward she has such a long and Rich history uh with this issue so that was that was great um to sort of give that um in terms of of why we're here and what we want to do the only thing I will just add I'll Echo everything she said and agree with it and just say that for me um the important thing is is thinking about you know when when assets fail um we need to treat that issue with some urgency and people have heard me use this example but if we had a if we had a roof collapse at a school or or fail we would move students out and then we would really work as quickly as we can to get those students back in the school and we would pull out all the stops and we wouldn't let any bureaucratic hurdles get in the way and I think for me that was really the issue with this it's the same thing this is an asset that's failing that's impacting our students and our families and I don't want the bureaucratic issues to get in the way of solving those problems and I say that as a bureaucrat I think some people may know I work for the city of Portland 15 years I work at Metro now I'm obviously on the school board it's not that these issues between governments are unimportant but they should never take priority over the issue of actually fixing um the problem and so that's what I really wanted to see here I do have one question about timing and I'm going to ask the superintendent and he may want to bring up staff but some information that just came to light for me in terms of the impact um that this field uh has on Sports moving forward one of the things this resolution does is it asks the district to move forward with this fix in the fall of 2023 so that we could get it done as quickly as we can so that it doesn't impact spring sports or beyond my under standing is that spring Sports may not be impacted even with the current state of the field and so I'd love to hear a little bit from either the superintendent or staff about that issue thank you director Scott and brim Edwards and team shares the urgency in moving this expeditiously of course as we explore who can do the installation for us and how much time they would need to do that either before spring season or immediately afterwards to try to not uh interfere with the use of it in the spring which it's still able to do but you want to add a little bit more to that Chief Operating Officer young sure thank you uh yeah we are working with uh Portland Public strike right now on an agreement that would be a replacement of the the turf as well as the track and our goal is to have the operational as soon as possible one one thing I think there's been some confusion is uh with the current status of the field it is not available for use for football and soccer but it but it is available for use for spring Sports so it is safe for use for track and field for softball and other activities that happen down there on Spring and of course during the school day for physical education and other needs so we do want to get it replaced as quickly as possible that said we do know that there are tasks and phases and Milestones that must be met to replace the turf field including getting a contractor underway actually building the turf out itself and then installing it and including all the subgrade the installation the painting and all that work what we want to be very careful is the timing of this is that we don't try to move so fast that we end up actually impacting the track and field for spring Sports we see that as a as a something that we very much want to avoid so right now we're looking at moving forward with this process and with construction and installing the new track and field after the spring season so we are certain not to impact those those students and that needs that said if there is an opportunity to do it sooner we will explore that as well it's just it looks like a high risk proposition at this point in time thank you I just want to clarify also that the resolution does say um directs the superintendent to identify financial and other resources to replace the field and tracks and to work with parks to engage in an emergency procurement process in other words not to hold it up to secure a contractor in the fall of 2023 so even that's an expedited timeline so we secure a contractor um hopefully that's possible correct yeah that is something that we are moving on right now is identifying that contractor and procuring that and negotiating that contract as well as having those discussions with Parks we actually have Parks Representatives here tonight who are who are here because this is important uh and they are involved you said we have Park represent Representatives here yes we do oh would you guys like to come down if Todd Lufkin comes the deputy director
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of Portland parks and recs like to come down awesome no no good evening am I on yes hi Todd Lofgren I'm the deputy director of Portland parks and recreation thanks for having me this evening uh just to confirm what Dan has said it's a priority for us to do this as soon as possible we've been working with the PPS leadership team to identify the appropriate funding arrangements so all the necessary resources are able to go forward uh we're confident with the PPS project team to lead the project and we'll have our proportional share for Portland parks and recreation to pay for awesome awesome I just have a question I know I don't know if you can answer this or some higher ups sure so when we talk about permitting and stuff we're going to make sure this is a high priority for the city as far as needing permits and things as well right I'm happy to bring that back for sure all right okay I'm also curious um has uh the parks commissioner or the council authorized um parks to negotiate or the City attorney to negotiate a legally binding agreement or a lease with the district right so we have a partnership agreement already between Portland Public Schools and Portland parks and recreation for shared use of facilities so so if you're sports teams as you know use our golf courses or pools or tracks Sports Fields parks for cross-country tennis courts lots of different facilities and Parks likewise we as your facilities for things like Golden Ball youth basketball programs volleyball programs it's really important lack of indoor gym space is important here in the city so we have a legally binding agreement where we could memorialize this arrangement in that or the parks director also has authority to enter into real estate arrangements as well yeah just speaking for myself the current the current agreement landed us where we are so it seems and also just knowing um having visibility to the grant communities um interest in making more um investments in the facilities again lights potentially Stadium it would be better to have there to be some certainty versus um having it exist in the agreement and and potentially having something similar happen or not be able to move ahead with their longer term plans and not being able to have a a home field right right and I think I would say this also for the um the Benson community that when they move back on site that they would also want this uncertainty because they've actually in some ways had it worse than um then Grant in that they have two other entities that have a significant amount of time blocked off on what would be considered like literally their field in their backyard and it seems like a longer term reset is the right thing to do and that the current agreement really is not the right place I'm just speaking for myself the right place uh to do that because it is doesn't provide the school Community with the with the certainty that they will actually either get a track built in the case of Benson or that if they made the improvements they'd have the ability to um to utilize them or even move it move it through the approval process we're open to any ideas that maximize use for student athletes and the community we're really looking for the relationships where we have shared use of facilities where they commute broader Community can benefit from them from important Parks and Recreation kind of service perspective but then it meets all of pil's needs as well so if there's some other Arrangement that kind of meets that need of the one plus one equals three type of arrangement we're open to those ideas oh great they're coming all right great all right that's what everyone wants to hear yeah especially for the kids back here yeah and I think the complicating thing is that when our Fields our high schools were first built 100 years ago um you only had half the um you didn't have um women or young women or girls playing sports so you have twice as many and so just the usage and if you if you know this from my daughter being at Cleveland like trying to squeeze in all the sports girls and boys all the levels one field isn't enough and this is where it becomes like there's really during the school year not a lot of extra time and so in any sort of arrangement then it's more of you know
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whether it be weekends or this this part of the summer but there's not a lot left over when you get through with the school community's use of that they just have one decent field or track great thank you director Verma Edwards Miss Bradshaw is there any public comments and before you do that I do one thank you uh Todd and Dan um is there before we do the public comments I do want to make sure we recognize the grant principal James McGee and I want to invite him if he wants to come down and say anything as well foreign I've been purposely putting people on the spot today absolutely um first of all I just want to thank everyone with the swiftness that you've taken on um this issue I know that we're appreciative that the field will be rebuilt in the track that being said I have to say and still not enough until we have lights in stadium our students [Applause] our students are our student athletes and we have to remember that student part are at a disadvantage today I had a brief conversation with some of the girls on our soccer team just before they got on the bus to go across town and play a home game they missed their last period and even with the new field and the new track that would not change and so some of those young ladies I mean they missed their math class they miss English their favorite elective and so you know we have the space and we have committed School community and this and this doesn't just you know work for the Grant Community it works for all PPS because you know I've been to Franklin uh for track meets um you know I've been to Wells events and so you know this is something that would benefit the entire uh District but we need to bring our kids back home we're celebrating our 100th school year at Grant High School and over the past summer I um I gave tours to some of our alums who had not seen the modernized grant and back in July we had our I was given a tour to some of the um members of the class of 88 and it was the 35th class reunion and one of their fathers came as well because he wanted to see the modernized building and I give a full tour including the ball and I talk about my dream you know I've seen you know bleachers out there in life so we can keep our kids you know on campus and you know and the father came to me afterwards of that Alum and said you know Mr McGee you know I made varsity when I was a sophomore and I never played one home game here at Grant keep fighting and so I'm here representing that individual that father but I'm also here representing the generations of grantonians that have traveled to Lincoln what was then Madison Marshall even the Civic Stadium to play home games you know I'm here representing these students that sit behind me that missed class you know their last period class to play a home game and I'm representing that fourth and fifth grader out there who are future grantonians you know so if they too will be able one day to be able to play home game you know in the bowl so again I thank you for your attention to this matter thank you thank you [Applause] Miss Bradshaw do we have any puppet comics we do we have Kim mcgair and Virginia Jones laforte [Applause] hi uh thank you uh I'm the parent of a senior at Grant who plays on the soccer team and a member of the grant bull Community Coalition which was formed by Grant parents less than a month ago after the shocking closure of the grant bull one day before fall Sports began I urge you to pass this resolution after amending it to make clear that the long-term improvements to the grant Bowl must include lights and stands the grant master plan that was developed in 2020.
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Grants a student body has long been neglected by the parks department it has had inadequate Athletics facilities for decades largely due to Parks incompetence and intransigence if PPS had control of the grant Bowl our teams would be playing there right now I trust that PPS has proven itself to be a good Steward of its turf fields Park's ownership has been untenable for decades but this latest failure and the complete lack of urgency or even care from Parks at the loss of Grant's home turf must be the final straw PPS must take control of Grant's home field this suggestion by Parks tonight this is the first time they've even mentioned that they have a dollar to put towards this field that this status quo Arrangement continue is utterly unacceptable it is the definition of insanity to keep doing the same thing and expect different results we must have the lease the loss of the grant bull is harming our students every single day the soccer teams are now forced to play all of their games at Delta Park they must leave school at 2 15. the men's and women's teams will collectively I've done the mass Math Miss 463 hours of instructional time just this month to play their home games not to mention when they have to go on the road it will be well over a thousand hours of lost instructional time for the season and the women's teams must also practice at Delta which means one hour every day in traffic just in September this is 11 hours per player 480 hours collectively that those players could be doing homework or something unproductive the Versa City football team has to play their games at Marshall High School far from our campus and yes this has been happening for years that doesn't make it right they will also the JV was at least able to play in the bowl until it was closed they now have to go to Marshall as well they will miss school to go to play in a home game and that total is 150 hours we are talking thousands of hours of missed instructional time for our students my daughter is a senior on the soccer team she will have played most of her games over her four years at Delta Park same for these the men's teams they're here they've been they came here today from Delta Park from their home game to tell you that there is no working scoreboard Parks has one but it isn't set up and our request to be able to use it have fallen on deaf ears students can't come to watch unless they have a car and they can barely make the game times anyway from Grant with traffic I want to also say that I fully support the addition of the Buckman track to the resolution my daughters my kids played at PCU early on I've run on that track it's a disgrace and Buckman has been treated just as badly as parks by Parks as Grant thank you for that thank you that buzzer scared me I'm glad you went first now I know to expect it um my name is Virginia leforte it's l a space f-o-r-t-e and I hope that doesn't count against my time um I'm a co-founder of the grandpa Community Coalition our organization has two goals to fix Grant's field immediately and to work towards the implementation of the grant bull master plan I'm also the proud parent of a Grant High School senior and another child that will be a general next year we've lived a half a mile from Grant for 13 years on behalf of the Coalition and the over 1 000 neighbors parents and students that responded to our survey in less than 72 hours when the grant bull was closed just over three weeks ago we unequivocally support pps's goal to secure a long-term lease specific to the grant bowl from Portland parks we also support the implementation of the grandpa master plan which includes the installation of lights and seating to align with every other PPS High School the Coalition received a copy of Mark Cotton's written public statement he is here tonight with his wife he's the young man behind me at the end of the third row Mark cotton may sound familiar because if you look at the Portland parks website the grant bowl is actually the mark cotton field Mark was hired as a classroom teacher and head coach at Grant in 1962. it was over 60 years ago he served in that capacity until 1990 28 years he was there mark writes from the very first day I found an improvement of the substandard field was a problem if I asked the parks department for a minor Improvement they would reply that was a forest School activity if I then asked the school district for an addition they would reply that it was on Park Department property neither would object if I asked can it be done privately as a result such things as a concrete discus throwing ring were installed by myself and several athletes Mark went on to initiate the fundraising
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for the first regulation size track at Grant so they could hold its first home track meet in May of 1976. it's our 100 year anniversary this year so anyway um in 2013 the turf was installed after 13 years of fundraising Mark so Mark raised sorry I messed up I'm just going to start over that paragraph because it's such a good story so Mark went on to initiate the fundraising for the first regulation size track at Grant so we could hold our first home track meet in May of 1976. who chipped in the least parks in 2013 the turf was installed after 13 private years of fundraising who chipped in the least Parks who gets to collect the permitting fees for the property parks who gets to shut down these properties that are gifts from the community because they can't maintain them Parks as Mark writes we've been spoon feeding this baby for 100 years it's time to adopt it the grant bull Community Coalition respectfully asks that the board amends the resolution to call out the grandpa master plan specifically in the agreement literally can I go over a little bit longer we have you got 10 seconds okay 99 of parents students and community members responded to our survey they support it we have 2200 students in our school building they want it we're the only six a high school in the state of Oregon without lights we're the only PPS high school without lights and seating and now thanks to Parks we don't have a field this we we support you we want to fix the field we want to build the bowl one team one dream thank you thank you thank you foreign all right so here's here's a Moment of Truth here we go sure um can I just uh reflect on something that came up and make a suggestion um there's a suggestion that we amend the resolution um since board members haven't had a chance to see the master plan or become familiar with it I'm wondering if as an alternative path that it could be brought to the finance and operations committee and the finance and operations committee make a facilities and operations committee make a recommendation on that after people have had a chance to review it yes we can do that all right I want to acknowledge uh the request but I also think that um there's another pathway there and I don't think it'll be delayed all right all right so when the board will now vote on resolution six seven five five resolution to replace the grant bowl and Buckman Field track for the use of Grant and Benson High School students all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes yes all right all opposed all right student director Silverman Silverstein first of all I just want to say thank you to all the students that came out this means a lot like that is amazing that you did this I'm assuming [Applause] okay I'm a student athlete as well so definitely the missing class resonates with me um and that is crazy that additional amount of time that is a lot of class work you all are making up so thank you um yes thank you thank you oh Gary if possible I mean I know we didn't add to our resolution about the grant Bowl master plan is that something we can do later or what's yeah so that's what director matters was alluding to that we bring it to the ethanol committee and then we can bring it back up here that way everybody that was seeing what that is okay thank you yes yes all right any abstentions all right the resolution passed the voter 7-0 with student director saying yes it is passed thank you [Applause] all right next we turn to public comment please make sure when you begin your comments that you clearly state your name and spell your last name you will have three minutes and 30 seconds to speak you were here a sound after three minutes and 30 seconds which means it's time to end your comments and okay
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yeah if you have any additional material or items you would like to provide to the board or or superintendent we ask that you email them to public comments all one word at pps.net public comments at pps.net please make sure when you begin your comments that you uh clearly state your name um and spell your last name care do you have any public comments today Lenny wet and Alyssa I'm so sorry can all of those people come to the dice all right all right everybody come on down come on down all right whoever wanted to start go ahead and start with your name and state your last name and the time will start you will have three minutes and 30 seconds hi um I'll thank you for everything you're doing for Grant what an amazing statement of community that that whole night this whole night has been um okay I'm Rand um last name caller k-a-l-l-e-r um and I'm a member of the Scott Elementary School Community good evening um happy back to school season this season um in elementary schools has a lot of magic to it with first days of school remembered with fondness and fright for years to come but just a reminder that this performance is not unlike opening night of a Broadway show only a fraction of the work is visible and the hours backstage and beforehand are countless and unsung last week I spent several afternoons volunteering in a classroom that was 82 degrees reassured that it was the good classroom as the one across the hall was 87. when I arrived I was joining a host of teachers who consistently had already been there for eight hours and we worked side by side to set up for the first day until the Building closed at eight while this is a heartwarming sign of devotion teachers have to their students it is also a heartbreaking story of neglect for the well-being of those who serve our children depending on the survey you refer to nationally teachers average anything from 54 to 60 hours a week the extra mostly unpaid when working before the school year starts I would go so far as to say the majority is unpaid time eaten Away by meetings trainings prepping curriculums without time to devote to readying their own room by contract only one and a half days of classroom preparation are paid but note is made that teachers must have access to classrooms quote at minimum one week prior to the first work day implicit in this wording is a known unspoken agreement the classroom setup takes much longer than the allotted time and that teachers are expected to do this on their own time throughout all this I would be remiss if I didn't mention that teachers are currently working without a contract I'm here to implore you to approach the bargaining table in good faith the requests are not grandiose things like full janitorial Team Staffing to deal with mice in classrooms spaces for de-escalation of students in crisis appropriate caseloads in special education reasonable class sizes and raises that keep Pace with inflation Portland is now the second least affordable city in America for a teacher to live in second only to San Francisco the numbers are in over a hundred vacancies for years on end at the beginning of the school year you cannot staff schools where teachers cannot afford to work these are not once the their needs these teachers go so far above and beyond already they need more than the minimum from you I leave you with this three minutes is not a lot of time to give you for to paint a true picture of the life of a teacher but when was the last time you were on your feet for 12 hours in 80 degrees for days in a row for something just because you believed in it when no one paid you or lauded you or noticed you because you thought students deserved great classrooms one of the many truisms I hear around Scott Elementary is quote students do well when they can I would argue teachers do well when they can too thank you for your time thank you thank you hello my name is Stacy ozer o z e r and I'm a member of the community Harrison Park Community I came before the board in June asking for the school board to intervene to explore the option of keeping the Harrison Park Community Garden open during the construction and I proposed a very viable option to fence off the east end of the existing garden and have the construction company use the West End of
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the area to Stage equipment the Garden area runs from Southeast 84th Street to 87th that's three blocks long plenty of space for both the existing half of the garden with raised beds to remain and the additional flat grash area to be used for construction equipment however I have a digressed into a simple solution that is a win-win for all and I'm repeating what I proposed in June I might remind you that when the Grant High School was remodeled not only did the community garden remain open it was actually expanded now I'm back to express absolute frustration and dismay at the fact that I and the community were lied to by PPS real estate department she told the woman I spoke with told me and erected a professionally made signs at the Garden that the garden needed to close by June 13 2023 due to the remodel of Harrison Park School Miss White told me the construction company would need to use the garden space this summer and it therefore would need to be closed off however the locks I put on the garden Gates and I went there again today are the locks that remain there that I put on there was and continues to be absolutely no reason to have closed the garden the construction that occurred throughout the summer has had absolutely no impact on the community garden area and anyone with a lock to the key to the lock can freely access it the Garden area is now an overgrown mess of weeds that is quite the fire hazard well over 25 families were forbidden from growing thousands of pounds of food this summer because PPS decided they didn't want people gardening there that was it the community and these families were betrayed and I feel like I greatly failed these families and then I told them that we couldn't Garden there because the construction companies were going to use the space that didn't happen and it was a lie when I reached out to PPS in August to further inquire I was told that there was the woman in charge had no intention of ever allowing gardening there again by anyone it will be a field of grass and of Portland parks and rec and aparno want another Garden it will have to be on an existing PPR land somewhere else in Harrison Park school property what I want to know from you the Portland Public School Board is who has the authority to decide what PPS property can be used for is it within Dana White's authority to ban gardening at Harrison Park School if it is not can we begin revitalizing the garden space to begin gardening again it's not too late for families to grow fall and overwintering crops thank you for your care and concern about the residents of the Harrison Park School and community [Applause] hello my name is Elisa kajikawa k-a-j-i-k-a-w-a I'm also here to talk about the community garden at Harrison Park I am the community development manager for the Jade District at opano I am here both as an employee of opano and as a concerned Community member to talk about this closure as many of you know we have been advocating for the Harrison Park Community Garden since April and today is just a reminder that we have not forgotten it and we have not given up unfortunately the community garden is now closed dry and overgrown and seemingly will never reopen to the community I recently had a conversation with Dana White director of planning and real estate and Dan young Chief Operating Officer from this conversation it is clear that the business and operations arm of PPS does not want any Community Gardens on any PPS properties now or ever the Harrison Park Community Garden was one of the Jade District's First Community projects back in 2013. Oregon Community Foundation and the Collins Foundation were major contributors to the fundraising effort for this garden with so much Community buy-in including PPS 10 years ago it is incredibly disappointing to see the closure of an important resource without any Community involvement input or without any solution Harrison Park School is the home school for two of the most diverse census tracts in Oregon according to the 2021 American Community survey out of the almost 19 percent of residents who live below the poverty line in the Harrison Park area 22 and a half percent are children under 18. and 34 and a half percent are seniors 65 or over in Harrison Park schools area 59 of residents are foreign born and 43 and a half percent are renters many of the gardeners at the Harrison Park Community Garden were from immigrant backgrounds growing culturally specific and relevant produce many of the gardeners were renters without their own outside space Community Gardens can help fill a gap
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for many families who are living with food insecurity especially now that most if not all of the extra pandemic benefits have stopped Community Gardens on PBS properties can also be a great community building and educational opportunity think about the cross-cultural and intergenerational learning experiences that can come out of Community Gardens sharing space with PPS schools PBS's mission is to quote disrupt racial inequities to create vibrant environments for every student to demonstrate Excellence here is a great real world situation where PPS can step up and show the community that they are committed to disrupting racial inequities inside and outside the classroom that PPS understands that what happens outside school affects what happens inside here's a golden opportunity for PPS to demonstrate Community Care and that they also want to help with the overall well-being of the communities they are part of no matter what happens with the current site we plan to continue to advocate for the Camellia Garden space in Harrison Park Schools home area I urge the board and all of PBS to take responsibility and accountability for the repercussions of ending a community program without working with Community First and help past and future gardeners sow seeds of their cultures to nourish their families and communities thank you thank you thank you thank you next we will have a first reading of revisions to 3.10.031 slash P class size guidelines and School staff allocation policy and for the decision of 3.60.040-p nutrition service Mills pricing and purchasing policy hold on one second that would you mind sir I think we've all read this I'm just asking the the sign you have I would appreciate if you could took it down if you like it's not your choice I'm just I'm just I'm not saying you have to Sir hello hear me clearly I'm just asking you to I think everyone's seen the sign I agree with that I'm just asking it's my right to ask too okay I hear you I hear you just just ask you can say no okay you can say no that's all I was asked all right thank you all right it's on you uh thank you chair Hollins so uh the policy committee um is forwarding two uh proposed items to the full board for first reading the first is a rescission of the nutrition services meal pricing and purchasing policy and I mean at first glance you read the policy and it um you might ask why why are we recommending that we rescind this and the reality is this policy was written in a time period in which there were a different set of state and federal laws and um since that time and at the time the board felt very strongly that um their students should um always be given a meal regardless of whether they could afford to or not that we wouldn't have lunch shaming occurring and so we put in into policy it also this policy also has the board being the entity that sets the prices for for meals and the reason why we don't need this policy anymore is state and federal law has caught up with PPS and so this is just a duplication of state and federal law now again at the time PPS felt really strongly that some of the practices that happened in the lunchrooms across the country and in some cases across our district that we want to have that reflect our values that all students should have access to school lunches but fortunately we don't need any more so we're recommending that we rescind it just because it's unnecessary it just restates federal and state law the second policy before you is a change to a very short policy relating to class sizes and essentially the initial policy originally said the board directs the superintendent to determine School staff allocations and class size guidelines for the district and communicate that information to all district administrators and we've added a sentence that recognizes that in some cases in the past class sizes and guidelines and Staffing allocation was done differently for neighborhood schools as it was for Pocus programs and dual immersion programs and that this is adding a
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um a clause to the the current policy that indicates that as much as possible we should have alignment across neighborhood schools and these other programs um in both of these cases these policies were recommended for first reading or also known as introduction unanimously and so with that we can get them started in the process for the first reading and then the public comment period uh thank you director from Edwards the policy proposed to be revised or rescinded will be posted on the board website and the public comment period is a minimum of 21 days contact information for a public comment will be posted with the policy the board expects to hold a second reading of the revised policies to which a vote to approve them on October 10th 2023. shareholders I'm sorry I'm looking for you on the diocese quick question and I may have turned off my video because again my internet's a little bit wonky um director brim Edwards on the class size policy I I was a little confused in terms of what exactly um it's asking the superintendent district to do it and I guess the reason why is you know it's said to align them with neighborhood classrooms but of course as we know our neighborhood class sizes are are are a pretty wide range and we have some some very very small class sizes and we have some neighborhoods that are you know close to Max or even at Max and then of course we have an average which is just the mathematical um thing and so just when I read through the policy I didn't have a chance to watch the committee meeting when I read through the policy it wasn't clear to me are we asking them to align with the averages are we asking them to have Focus option programs at the max or or something else director Scott it's a great question um and I will say there's a little bit of Art and Science to to this and we tried not to be overly prescriptive as you may recall the case was that neighborhood schools uh their Staffing occurred based on a staffing allocation that was set by the district and depending on how many students showed up in the school those class size thresholds and the Staffing allocations worked on the other hand at Focus programs and dual immersion programs the principles were setting the class size thresholds and so really what this without being too prescriptive or directive because there are some nuances that need to be um there are play here but generally to it's a policy and a value statement that are we should generally ask that whether your focus or a dual immersion program or neighborhood school that we have the superintendent setting those class sizes and Staffing allocations versus an individual School deciding what there's there's were and again there was a brief discussion about the language programs and some of the complications relating to Staffing because they usually start out at lower numbers because we have lower thresholds for um our younger grades but what happens in immersion is usually students you get fewer students as they get in higher grades and how do you balance that out and instead of being really prescriptive more it's a we want the super we want the superintendent and staff to be setting Direction versus an individual principal making decisions on how many staff people staff they should get great thank you that is that's a really helpful explanation thank you any other questions from the board awesome okay we're going to next move to on the agenda it's time to provide board committees and Conference reports our committee work is underway in this past month policy Student Success facilities and operations committees have met um so I'll start with director brim Edwards Dan director Wang and then I'll wrap up with to pass all right you want to go first are we alphabetized you're up okay I just wanted to give a brief uh report so we have not had our first meeting yet it was tentatively scheduled for the 20th of September I have one board member that needs to respond back whether they're available on the 27th at 5. I wanted to share out that the auditor's performance evaluation is finally complete and it's been signed by myself and the senior auditor and turned in the next steps will it's been sent to HR the next steps are I will share that out in
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the audit committee and if anyone on the board is interested in seeing it reviewing it um I'm happy to share that as well um and I would also love to have a student on the audit committee I don't have a formal process to to um to lay out but it would be great to have student representation and you don't need auditing experience but you need to be curious and interested in the workings of the organization um I think to be successful and able to meet we're having four meetings this year and that's it thank you thank you so it looks like our first meeting will hopefully be on the 27th of September if all of the members can make it okay thank you uh director wall Student Success committee oh I'm up huh okay um yeah uh so we've had a couple uh one meeting already and um just basically just identifying the big issues we want to tackle throughout the year um uh uh so I guess part of the role the the Student Success committee is just kind of two things one is just kind of oversee uh the programs and and policies that are in place uh and evaluate their effectiveness um but also number two if it ever comes to it recommend a policy to the policy committee um so right now I guess I mean there's a hundred things we want to do but we only had time for you know it's only a year so uh only a time for like maybe three or four things and the things I really came up with are the three things we wanted to tackle seems like we want to tackle our um number one is graduation requirements and also part of that is also expanding different types of options for graduation like for example one thing that was brought up was um possibly implementing JROTC programming and also other types of um certificates for different programs you know that's something we're looking at and also our current graduation requirement uh another thing that came up was also just uh one thing we really want to oversee is Middle School programming and making sure it's Equitable across our district one of the goals of of Staff this year is trying to get all the the middle schools to a 507 format you know that's classes you know we're seven periods teachers teach five um that way it has more flexibility in terms of like advisory as well as well as PE which we feel is very important both of them um and uh the last two things you know I said three what came out to four I can't count tonight it's been a long day um what was the uh looking at you know the hot topic of the day Equitable grading practices which also includes assessments and um we're getting a report on that in our next meeting especially and also the last thing is also looking at our special education programming as well and and and uh we're getting a report on that as well and also to to uh mirror what director to pass asks for we want to um also would like to have some students on our committee because it this is about them and and and their voices of the most important so um yeah shout out to anybody who who is interested you know please reach out thank you thank you director Wong and I'm sure student director Silverstein is taking notes I've seen over there writing writing down so you guys should be expecting some shortly uh we have director of the Pat I mean I'm looking at you thinking about her [Music] [Laughter] all right director brim Edwards thank you chair Hollins um so we're starting to build out our committee agenda and policies brought forward for consideration uh we'll be bringing forward policies changes required by law we're still waiting for um so the dust to settle in the legislative session and what those are policy suggested by staff rescissions policies that are no longer needed for example like the nutrition services one tonight working on ones from previous years like the class size one tonight another example would be the one related to private fundraising for staff and I want to just clarify for those who ask about that the policy that was posted at the last meeting which was just a informational post it was a draft policy relating to Foundation funding for PPS staff the discussion on this
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foreign testing we're doing a test to make sure our mics work we want to First say thank you all to everybody that's sticking it out with us um this is my continued talking actually gives them time in the back to make sure that what I'm doing is actually working and at the same time it appreciates you for being here so that we all know that we're in this together and the strain is is getting to us and Dr wongard can you hear me as well because he couldn't hear me before either Dr Wong can hear me yes can the people in the back hear me hey now if you're with me say hey [Music] [Laughter] okay we're back in order right all right all right we go see we're gonna give it another shot all right so on the board will now again try to vote on a consent agenda board members if there's any items well you guys heard that already um Miss Bradshaw is there any changes to the consent agenda no
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board members are there any items no we already said that again do I have a motion and second to adopt a consent agenda motion is there any board discussion on the consider agenda all right I do want to make a note and I want to thank the staff for putting the numbers on the bottom of the consent agenda I know me and uh director Sullivan uh appreciate that so we can kind of really get a sense of uh where our money is going and how it's going uh the board will now vote on resolution six seven five three through six seven five four all in favor of indicate by saying yes yes yes all the polls beginning to indicate by saying no student director Silverstein yes all right by a vote of any abstentions all right because it is a probe our vote of six to zero with student director Silverstein unofficial voting yes and it has passed 6-0 all right we're done with that all right now we're going to have comments from our Union partners the come on down yep everybody just come on down since we got we trying to get out here by eight so we ain't gonna make that we're gonna make that deadline so come on in that's that all the way okay all right we're going to start with a letter uh directed to the superintendent and you all dear Guadalupe Guerrero and the member of the Portland Public Schools Board of Education we believe the purpose of Education should be to Foster growth Enlightenment and empowerment therefore it is deeply disturbing to observe widespread sexual harassment coupled with racial discrimination in our schools instead of embracing and acting upon pps's stated core values of honesty and integrity the district has responded to complaints of sexual harassment by dismissing the lived reality of victims often retaliating against the people who speak openly about the harm they experienced although PPS claims to Foster safe positive workspaces it's inaction not only perpetuates a cycle of fear and oppression but also undermines the very Foundation of care and Trust upon which education should be built at the July 11th board meeting on behalf of PPS workers and students SCI union members made the following demands to address the problem of systemic sexual harassment these were the district's responses first SEIU demanded that the district follow its own current sexual harassment policy to protect workers on July 13th in an internal email to SEIU leadership senior director of employee Labor Relations Genevieve Rove responded quote you care more about publicity and sewing division between SEIU members in the district than you care about the safety and well-being of Staff who have made complaints the next day on July 14th Chief human resource officer Sharon Reese sent a district-wide email claiming quote we work with any staff member reporting sexual harassment to ensure their immediate and ongoing safety we'll investigate thoroughly and take disciplinary action to redress misconduct larisa's statement purports to protect workers when paired with rows it sends a clear message that HR is unwilling to acknowledge the problem and protect the safety of workers facing daily violence this is deeply hurtful to victims and it's dismissive of those who bravely come forward with sexual harassment claims two SEIU demanded that the district provide thorough and meaningful in-person sexual harassment prevention training as soon as possible PPS management has not communicated any such plans thus far to provide this training third sciu demanded that PPS conduct an independent district-wide audit and share the information gathered with all PPS unions instead the district hired management side lawyer a lawyer whose job it is to protect school districts Rebecca Jacobson to investigate only new claims to date none of the many complaints which spurred sciu to speak out at the school board meeting have been thoroughly investigated despite oh that's a criminal despite workers repeatedly coming forward publicly with personal testimonies of sexual harassment at PPS no one in management
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has acknowledged the systemic nature of the sexual violence at PPS let alone sought to address the issue this further traumatizes victims and creates a culture where silence feels safer than coming forward and risking retaliation there are documented cases of the district firing workers after coming forward with complaints and Communications from human resources that deny the lived experiences or realities of victims this has a chilling effect on others coming forward following the July 11th board meeting sciu met with Genevieve Rowe in order to follow up on the Union's initial demands although Roe claimed that it is that quote this is not the culture we want end quote she failed to take accountability for the prevalence of sexual harassment at PBS she claimed that she was quote surprised to hear about these cases end quote only a few weeks after this meeting sciu became aware of another female custodian who was terminated a few days after reporting harassment by her manager due to the district's failure to provide the basic rights and safety of its staff and students we call upon superintendent Guerrero and the board of directors to immediately take the following actions first investigate and hold accountable the PPS human resources employee and Labor Relations Department for failing to follow board policy and federal law to ensure the safety of workers who report sexual harassment second immediately Implement meaningful in-person sexual harassment prevention training for All District employees including contractors and administrators third hire an independent auditor who was pre-approved by the union Coalition this auditor should be charged to review all cases of sexual harassment that are on record since Guadalupe Guerrero became the superintendent and any new cases that arise while the audit is being performed the audit should include an analysis of the response from the human resources department to each case in order to determine where PPS is in violation of its own policy and or local state and federal laws the final report should be delivered to PPS and the coalitions at the same time attended career fails to follow these steps and hold his subordinates accountable it is the responsibility of the school board of directors to hold the superintendent accountable PPS is failing at students and staff By ignoring its own policies and instead dismissing investigating and or punishing those who speak out this completely unacceptable and must be addressed immediately as unions representing custodians para Educators nutrition services workers maintenance staff administrative assistants Security Services Personnel Educators counselors and many other workers of PPS we stand in solidarity with the students and staff who endure sexual harassment in our schools we have a right to schools and workplaces that are free of all forms of harassment and discrimination and we will continue to raise our voices until PPS takes responsibility for the harm that it has caused and can guarantee the safety of all of its workers and students please take the above actions to make this happen and this is signed by the members of our coalition excuse me I want to ask a question do we get a copy of that letter coming right up pfsp stands in support of the SEIU request for Change and accountability in addressing and resolving workplace sexual harassment employees and students must be provided serious comprehensive in-person training and schooling to change the culture we need to provide supports to those coming forward give them positive safe working environments we need to identify those areas and situations where sexual harassment is being repeatedly reported these people need to know they can expect rapid response to their complaints and be assured they are not expected to return to dangerous work sites pfsp has reached out to our Affiliates at aft Oregon and the Oregon School Employees Association for further collaboration to see if we can come up with some suggestions and work with legislators to come up with some reforms thank you okay [Laughter] um so I just wanted to also I wanted to also point out I know for the Portland Association of teachers we had we brought this letter to our executive board and it was voted we voted unanimously to sign this and put our the full support of our Union behind those who have been victimized
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um I also wanted to make sure to give y'all some uh other remarks um if that's cool um good evening as you all know my name is Angela Bonilla I'm the president of the Portland Association of teachers I'm representing uh about 3 200 Educators here in PPS some Kudos thanks for bringing back Claire Hertz to support with bargaining budget questions um we were saddened to hear that Chief Delgado has moved on we wish him the best but we appreciate PBS Management's team um bringing in someone who has previous experience with our district so we can continue negotiations uh kudos to the facilities and the staff Folks at Ida B Wells Barnett High School Pat Educators have been advocating at meetings with administrators through grievances complaints to OSHA and organizing their members for heat mitigation there are 22 classrooms at Wells that are extremely hot for example one educator shared that when the sun shines and it reaches about 70 degrees outside her classroom reaches upwards of 80 to 98 degrees Fahrenheit inside and that's what the shades drawn multiple fans blowing facilities has been assessing the electrical and they should be delivering 10 air conditioning units to the high school so even though it's less than half of the classrooms that have the concern we really really appreciate the action by the facilities department and the district and our Educators at Ida B Wells Barnett high school for pushing that forward and not letting it fall to the Wayside and so I do want to bring up a quote that I think about a lot in my governance at Pat so it's from Toni Morrison when you get these jobs you've been so brilliantly trained for just remember that your real job is that if you are free you need to free somebody else if you have some power then your job is to empower somebody else so I wanted to lift up some concerns that we're hearing in our building so I'm going to take a little time to do that first we're getting a lot of reports from schools uh with very large class sizes so Lewis Elementary has class sizes higher than 30 students each fifth grade class has 32 students in one of those sections nearly 46 of those students have identified as having some sort of individualized learning plan whether that is talented and gifted or special education or a temporary 504 plan and that and there are several you know when it's a small neighborhood School lots of complex interpersonal situations that need to be navigated and so it's really hard to do the work we are here to do in in class sizes of that size without the support and last year one of those Educators had 31 students in the fifth grade class with a similar spread of need Whitman Elementary whose student body is 14 Asian eight percent black and thirty percent Hispanic has first second and third grade classrooms of 28 and 29 students and fourth and fifth grade classes of 30 students kudos to the principal today is working in the kitchen because they didn't have coverage or they were working in the kitchen because they didn't have coverage and this is really concerning um Pat has maintained that the wait and see approach to adding additional staff is harmful to students who spend the end of August and most of September building relationships and Community only to be redistributed between other classrooms once another educator is finally hired we've argued that a maximum class size of 28 or 31 in first grade is too many and so we are asking that y'all rebalance our classrooms with additional staff Whenever Wherever we can in schools that have no other support staff outside of their administrators um I also am very glad that the district acted so quickly to support the grant Bull and the Buckman track and I think I would be remiss if I didn't mention the issues with McDaniels field and that it took two years and two seasons of students wasting as the speaker said over a thousand hours of of instruction time lost just to get to a home field that field is almost done I think that it should be ready by by the season this year but it's a real bummer that the school that serves most of our schools on the 82nd Corridor had to wait so long and as soon as we heard about the problem at Grant there was a solution and it was voted upon by the board so I just want to make sure that we're being cognizant of that um Jefferson also we have been hearing a lot from Educators and families at Jefferson I have a lot of questions about construction and Contracting especially after what happened with McDaniel I remember director Constant saying you know we're going to talk to the contractors we're going to find out what happened and we want to make sure that we're holding those folks accountable and that we have real answers because when it's public money and then our students have to lose
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instructional time just to participate as athletes it's unacceptable it's not okay for Grant not okay for McDaniel it's not okay for any school and so at Jefferson that Community was promised the availability of their site during Reconstruction and the questions I've heard from folks are why did that change when did that change and why are Educators finding out about this from the news you know Jefferson shares a catchment uh with Roosevelt McDaniel and Grant right so why would ninth grade students commute 11 miles to Marshall when they could go to the other high schools most of which have been remodeled already I'm really really concerned that this will lead to lowered enrollment at Jeff over the lifetime of this project and I worry that we will harm this school that has a really strong and Rich history in Portland in our black community here in Portland and so we wonder what other options there are besides busing students again right it's not enough to remove Blanchard's name from the building we to repair the harm that was done when all those schools were closed in that community and students were bussed across town under that tenure we have to do things differently so how are we going to keep this promise to students and communities and be able to keep them in their neighborhood during Reconstruction so there aren't Ripple effects on their enrollment moving forward and then I just want to clear something up because you know we've been in the news uh so despite the reporting in the news around a possible strike here in Portland Public Schools by Pat we've been saying you know if it didn't come from Pat don't believe that right uh We Are I Am by our bylaws the only spokesperson for the union so if you're reading something that some educator said somewhere on the news if it's not my name it's not what you need to believe you need to hear it from us because there's no surprise when it comes to strikes it comes after hours and days and weeks of bargaining of mediation of substitutes for our bargaining team as part of the and and it's part of the bargaining process we want a settlement um as a union of Educators we see that what Educators need is linked with what our students need and we have to push Portland Public Schools to invest to our Educators and students need it most I've shared our bargaining platform already with y'all uh and you can always find it online line we have a bitly slash PA p-a-t support or it's on our website under our bargaining Vision we need small class sizes and caseloads classrooms free of mold and rodents in between temperatures of 60 and 90 degrees and mental health teams housed at each site just to name a few of our urgent needs because we believe that now is the time to invest in our schools you know in the most recent slideshow on the 8th uh it talked about we have a projected 51 million dollars in our uh ending fund balance and that was just we added more once we got the additional funding from the state uh the money needs to be invested now in our schools in staff and in services to support students as Educators and union members we're going to fight for our schools we're going to work with Portland families with Portland unions Community allies and we're going to rally and we're going to organize and we're going to do what it takes to get this investment because our schools and our students can't wait for great Public Schools so that is what I want to make sure y'all understand despite what the news says we're going to do what it takes to get that investment so thank you for your time thank you thank you hi I'm Chris Walters I am the head chef at McDaniel high school I'm also one of their sports announcers and my team and I served 727 meals in 33 minutes last Thursday we've we now own the record for the most lunches served in the last decade in a single day so it's been a year and we're only four days in on Friday September 1st we held our ninth bargaining session PPS rejected all four of the Union's proposals related to safety non-discrimination and the grievance procedure in Personnel files management continues to push back against any meaningful improvements in our contracts such as rejecting the Union's proposals to include anti-discrimination anti-racism and anti-harassment protections we are told that if employees disagree with Management's handling of discrimination cases then the only recourse workers have is to file a charge against PPS at bully after six months of bargaining no progress has been made on any of the Union's priorities such as safety health care we're still waiting two months for a response on that I believe wages inclement weather or job assignments and our bargaining period ends in November 9th we've got eight more sessions
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between now and then scheduled we've talked a lot about safe schools clean schools healthy sustainable schools schools that are part of the community Management's been in the room when we've talked about this but we don't feel that we've been heard these aren't just slogans for us we do believe in this we want to see it happen and there's eight more sessions to get that sorted out and if you all can help push that'd be great thank you thank you thank you all right any other business any comments from board members all right well we will be adjourned

Event 2: 2023-09-05 PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting

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good morning good morning good afternoon good evening it's one of them um this public meeting of the board of education for September 5th 2023 is called to order all items being considered this evening are posted on the PPS website under the board and meetings tab this meeting is being streamed live on PBS TV service website and on Channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times all right good evening again I'm director Scott and director Wong will be joining us virtually today we are going to be celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month we're going to be bringing a resolution to recognize the spirit Hispanic here it is much important Portland public schools superintendent would you please introduce the first item yes good evening chair and directors it is actually a unique time here at the start of the school year we have a couple of our team members that are going to come up and introduce this Proclamation and I think our board manager Roseanne Powell is going to kick us off thank you yes good evening director student representative and superintendent Guerrero I've been asked to speak tonight about why it is important that we take time to recognize Hispanic Heritage Month early in my career here at Portland Public Schools I had the privilege of working in a Spanish dual language immersion school there is so much joy to experience working in schools but especially in a school that was filled with abundance of cultural and linguistic affirmation school that celebrated students whose first language was Spanish seeing their emerging bilingualism as a gift my own dad immigrated to this country as a young boy and unfortunately did not see his first language as an asset or a gift despite his early struggles to learn English he left school and his love for it was contagious fortunately I attended a school pardon me it's okay we're with you we're here we got you that valued my Heritage and modeled curiosity and respect for other cultures this is something all students deserve all students deserve to have their Heritage and backgrounds celebrated as part of their educational experience all students deserve to be inspired to pursue their dreams after learning about artists like Frida Kahlo or scientists like Elena choa it is our community's racial cultural and linguistic diversity that enriches all of us and fosters empathy to help others help make schools more inclusive environments thank you for acknowledging September 15th through October 15th as Hispanic Heritage Month in Portland Public Schools which is classiest thank you thank you [Applause] and I will read the be it resolved in Spanish Latinos in Portland is thank you [Applause] motion a second second all right director Green motion director of the past second all in favor yes yes yes yes yes all right oh my God we have a past seven to zero with oh with the student director sorry yes enthusiastically awesome awesome it passed this 7-0 with the student director voting yes thank you all right so now we have Max is the superintendent's report we do and Terry if you're back there if you can get uh our slide deck up just a few slides for you this evening but uh it seemed appropriate to do a quick Roundup of our back to school uh here at
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PPS so uh directors um let me go to the first slide here I'm thrilled to be presenting my sixth back to school report for you this time of year is always exciting our schools are filled with joy anticipation potential we see our students charging into the new school year sometimes with a passing goodbye to their families hugging friends shaking hands exploring new learning spaces our principals our teachers bus drivers nutrition staff custodians and counselors they've all been providing a positive welcoming experience as our students return to school or start school I know that they all remain collectively focused on Student Success everywhere I went last week and hopefully everywhere you went to I saw our teams laying the groundwork for a productive and supportive school year for our students I personally visited several schools on day one I started my day at sitton elementary alongside chair Hollins and other special guests like state senator Lou Frederick and representative Travis Nelson directors you've heard me say again again how important it is that we let our students know we believe in their Brilliance and potential and at sitting they literally rolled out the red carpet to welcome students back I'm going to show you a short video clip here it's just a minute I'm going to warn you there's at least one very very enthusiastic person highlighted here Terry if we could play that remember is here it's important that we keep reading all right here we go here we go here we go they're rolling out the red carpet the festivities are getting underway that first day of school is here it's important that we keep reading over this summer because we need a practice and I I don't want a bunch of people not reading why did we go back to school why do you have to come to school and I want to wish everybody a fabulous first day of school we are ready for you we're here at Sinton Elementary this morning one of our wonderful School communities every year the first day of school is really a celebration about being together in a community and so we're really hoping this year to start the first day by planting the seeds for a really exciting joyful and focused new school year I'm excited for all the new math we're going to be doing we're anticipating some tremendous academic gains and growth here at Sinton Elementary and we just want to put a spotlight on them because we know so many of our schools are working hard to really make sure that we're focused on Student Success we had a very enthusiastic uh first day there thank you chair Hollins [Music] well uh after that experience of Sinton our group moved over to meet with families at Cesar Chavez we had a chance to welcome and introduce our new principal there Jose Mesa I was also excited to meet up with director Wong at Kellogg and Shadow one of our new principals there as well Mr Tai Nguyen directors I know you've learned a little bit about Mr noon as a former Kellogg middle school student he had a short detour in Arizona but he's back he's here with us in his old neighborhood of southeast Portland as our new principal at Kellogg and Tuesday when the sixth graders had the building to themselves staff provided a wonderful orientation our principal and his team made sure that they had a strong start to their middle years experience there so these are just a couple snapshots across our district each of you I know was out and about in our schools all of our central office team were out in the schools as well I've heard many stories full of a lot of the joy and excitement I know you felt it too I'm sure each of you has additional observations from your own visits during this first week but I think the bottom line is we're off to a good start we're off to a great start in fact uh since the slide is titled new leaders I also want to introduce because it's tradition here and we haven't had a regular meeting yet in public I want to introduce our newly appointed Deputy superintendent for business and operations myong Li if I could ask him to just come up for a moment it's customary to invite him to just say a
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couple words so you all know who he is myeong thank you thank you superintendent and good evening directors it's great to be with you and and student director as well for the first public meeting that I've attended although I've seen several board meetings in committee and in executive session it's this is feels like a dramatic moment for me so uh pardon my uh being a little Stage Struck if I am so I can introduce myself uh superintendent I don't know asked me to just say a little bit about my background so first of all I will share that I am a Korean American immigrant who attended Public Schools myself from kindergarten through high school graduation I grew up in Wilmington Delaware a small state far away but uh good uh public education was had by myself and and all my classmates growing up I am also a member of the lgbtq community my pronouns are him he him his it's great to be here I have long come to Portland to enjoy the wonderful City the wonderful offerings the the incredible uh Beauty Natural Beauty and Civic beauty that the city has to offer I'm here now for a different kind of fun I've never worked in Portland but I'm having a really wonderful experience of just finish finishing up my first month so as a superintendent said I am here to help for a time and I'm trying my best to uh try to fill in for Claire Hertz who who left a while ago a great big pair of shoes and I'm trying I have very small feet so I'm trying to fill in uh fill in the shoes as well as I can um I've been so thankful to the many colleagues that I've had a chance to meet all of you directors as well there are so many interesting fascinating issues I have the the benefit of newness so I'm looking at these issues with fresh eyes and sort of some innocence in my in my background and hopefully I'm able to ask good questions and seek the benefit of patience and and a welcoming nature which I found everywhere that I've turned here in the school district so look forward to being with you for the next several months and thank you so much for your hospitality and superintendent for letting me introduce myself tonight thank you welcome welcome great to have you come on well today also our kindergartners started today at PPS I had a chance to start my morning at Chapman Elementary it was great to speak with family members we stayed for an hour to talk over coffee uh who were dropping off their kindergartners for the first day parents had great questions as they started their educational careers with us uh principal and I were able to share a little bit of advice to some of their questions things like you know enjoy these moments your child will show tremendous growth as time goes by get to know the other families because you're likely going to hear stories about fellow classmates and you will become an important support for one another and remember to ask your child about the small moments that may have happened in class or at school each day uh what did you play at recess what did you work on in art class what book did the teacher read aloud today so we were welcoming kindergartners at school schools all over town today you can also find a great little video clip on our social media channels of the Clapping Ceremony this morning at Rose City Park they had a wonderful welcome for the young scholars there it's a wonderful tradition where the entire School helps to welcome new kindergartners and then directors I have a few of our Chiefs who are going to join us up here they each have an allowance of one slide and a few things that they're going to share from their areas just to round out our back to school kicking it off here is to share his observations of our school communities as well of all of our senior directors of schools as our chief of schools Dr Franco all right thank you superintendent directors pleasure to be here I I thought superintendent's opening comments were absolutely accurate it's been a great week and is one principal texted me the other day on the first day
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she said that it was a great first day of school the kids are so excited to be back so I think in summary that is absolutely the truth so I just wanted to highlight a few kind of big big ticket things that we are excited about moving forward this year uh first I would want to shout out Harrison Park and Clark right we got via you know scgc we got two new schools on and so Harrison Park the new middle school and Clark Elementary so we're very excited about that also this year especially at the middle school level we are rolling out advisory consistent advisory in all of our schools three times a week for 25 minutes also the Advent of CSA support that's campus safety Associates and also RJ coordinators and I'm also happy to report that all Middle School admin teams are intact that we are a full go with all our Middle School admin teams so we're very excited about that also kudos to not only my team but HR and comms you know each summer technically we have July which is supposed to be a down time the reality is it's also the peak of hiring season and so we're excited that beginning this year every school has a principal uh we started out when I first came in we had 32 principal vacancies and we were still hiring when we started in the fall this year we we trimmed that by half you know principal retention is extremely important and it's you know it's because we also uh uh promoted some folks but we're very excited for the new leaders that we have I think superintendent had a few pitchers with uh with Ty Nguyen the new principal at Kellogg who's outstanding uh just uh because you know we are in a sense finishing out our enrollment and program balancing and so this really is the year and so we're excited uh for all of the uh not only new schools but programs uh to be fully in place uh We've currently allotted out of the 10 allocated FTE 6.6 of that FTE to um to help bridge the gap and of course we still have some left over which principles are currently kind of looking over and what they need and they're providing um access or feedback in regards to that on Thursday I believe you're all invited and are going to be attending summer graduation and so we had looking forward to celebrating seniors who have completed their High School graduation requirements and be looking forward to celebrating them on Thursday September 7th uh you know this this year we had a great Leadership Institute coupled with some outstanding um teacher professional learning in our Mantra this year is one team one goal and together we are brilliant uh those of you know of research John Hattie talks a lot about this notion of of collective efficacy in this belief that if you believe the same thing I believe that we can achieve together and that's the single biggest indicator of student achievement and so we're very um excited to move together to make this feeling of Portland this District feels small and we have collectively grabbed on to that approach and I could say that collectively via the building leaders and so we're really excited those move about those moves moving forward so I was given one slide you know one minute and I think I've surpassed that but those are there's so much there's so much I can talk about but just wanted to highlight a few of the big ticket pieces so thank you thank you Dr Franco and here with the Staffing update our chief of HR uh Sharon Reese school as Dr Franco had alluded to our school principal central office teams have been hard at work and have can been continuing to make progress in hiring and onboarding of new Educators in our school-based staff you see an update here of the information we provided about a month ago regarding Staffing and overall we have 119 instructional vacancies that represents about 57 now in core content areas and of these positions there we are at six Elementary classroom so homeroom positions vacant and of these are those when you say instructional vacancies are kind of just teachers or is that also EAS and para Educators those are teachers do we have the other information somewhere else we have so para Educators up there I'm about to get there to 54 vacancies with para Educators um and about 28 of those have a
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candidate in the in a phase of hiring and also uh there you should have in front of you a report you asked for a school by school based report of where we are with hiring so that's what it is in front of you right now and going back to the slide uh a third about the third almost a third of those open positions are in some phase of hiring so a candidate has been identified for those um uh CSI TSI vacancies this is you know some of the areas that we uh provide additional support in is our TSI CSI schools and also schools with new principals those are the ones that tend to have a harder time catching up with regard to Staffing vacant positions especially as new principals come on board late in the process and so what we are seeing in our TSI CSI schools which is consistent with what I reported a month ago is that those instructional vacancies are roughly proportional to the overall representation of those positions so um we also have a new position this year across all schools the instructional Coach position we are down to one vacancy for our instructional coach positions and that vacancies at art so that is my Staffing update I believe I'm turning it over to Chief Young good evening operationally we had a very successful first week from a transportation perspective our high school students used their free TriMet passes that we provided before the start of the school year uh and we do have a handful of Transportation vacancies on our contractor side but we ran all 300 plus bus routes last week without any issue we're able to cover any absences that we had with only some minor hiccups I would say our project management teams wrapped up dozens of projects many dozens of projects both big and small I highlighted a number of those a few weeks back but playgrounds lighting upgrades and everything in between most of those I wrapped up we do have some larger projects that continue in the fall which is pretty customary some of our big projects like our large roof Replacements and some other work like that our nutrition services staff after serving almost 100 000 meals over the summer served almost 77 000 meals just last week so they are off and running and doing great Ling Lincoln High School held their first lap around their first lap around the track last Thursday on their new track and as Dr Franco noted our middle schools welcome to New campus security agents and rounding it out Dr Renard Adams with a quick Snapshot from our attendance and enrollment sure thank you superintendent good evening directors and student director I wanted to provide another brief enrollment update as of September 1st which was last Friday we've registered just under 3 000 kindergarten students as you all aware because the superintendent just mentioned it kindergarten started today and we expect to register and roll additional kindergarten students over the next few weeks we do anticipate meeting our projected enrollment numbers for kindergarten at all levels of school so elementary middle and high we are seeing enrollment numbers that are slightly higher than our projections at this time but I just want to remind the board and the public that these enrollment numbers are preliminary and will continue to firm up as we reach that 10-day drop Mark for students in all grades as students either regularly attend PPS schools or they do not show up in here at PPS and we need to remove them from our roles that 10-day mark this year begins on October 2nd because October 1st is a Sunday we know that our principals and school teams are working hard to welcome students and families into this new school year and we are grateful for their efforts in this regard as is typically the case this time of year uh Dr Franco leads a team of myself and other staff and monitoring Schools Enrollment to ascertain the need and extent for any fall rebalancing and those decisions are ongoing so all right uh board if you have any questions all right [Music] yes typically so not all of those are classroom based positions that would be eligible for assault and we have increased a number of roles social workers aren't eligible for counselors only eligible for sub if it's
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the absence is going to be longer than a week so our school teams identify resources as well as substitutes to bring together yeah this follow-up as well are they all in currently in recruitment yes okay some of those positions also are ads from set aside funds just for example edition of social workers happened just a few weeks ago so we're late in the process to recruit those positions when we add them in August the lower than the number of vacancies we've had in the past several school years and so we're actually seeing some improved conditions as well as a greater pool of Subs that we have had before thank you so just to follow on the Staffing um I'd be interested of these like how many are classroom teachers to understand how many which which schools and have classrooms in which we don't have a non-substitute teacher we have a regular teacher in in the classroom um like I'm concerned a little bit about a little bit like for example Lane is a TSI school that still got has five vacancies if they're not student facing maybe that's slightly different but if they're all student facing um so I'd be interested in more detail on that and also the issue of EAS because I know those are vital supports in a lot of classrooms especially when you have some of the classrooms at the sort of top end of the class size thresholds and that historically that it in the TSI and CSI schools they have had more openings of EA so I'm curious um if we if we have that data we can get that information yeah yeah and then just in terms of the classroom teachers um do you anticipate going Beyond like October 1st with any classrooms not with all those the classroom positions we always have some level of turnover right that is happening or people going on leaves and that kind of thing so we never have zero vacancies um and yeah but yes what we typically see is that our hiring cycle is completed by October that also accounts for the timeline for additional FTE that are added because of additional budget allocations or grants or set aside allocations yeah I was thinking more of like the instance for example at Roseway Heights where we had a couple of I guess last year or two years ago where there was like no Spanish teacher the whole year so I'm thinking that there would be you know there's obviously turnover but just that we start the school year and don't actually don't have a teacher that then we continue into the school year with that right um and in those are extremely rare cases uh they do happen and that's when we pull on temp Educators or substitute Educators to address those vacancies Staffing question is going to go ahead and ask them um great well I had a good start to the school year as well um agreed on that um question about Harrison Park is super excited to go there to see it open as a middle school um I was surprised that it was still under construction so I'm curious um do we understand there was um firewalls that we didn't know that had to be constructed but um it's at very industrial looking school right now with open exposed and it sounds like it's all safe but um it just disappointed that we started the school year without it fully done what what's the timeline for completion yes good question I don't have all the details my fingertips but the the Harrison Park is a face project so construction will continue through the school year uh and through next summer we knew what that scope of work it couldn't be completed in a series of Summers because of the amount of work that needed to be completed with new roofs an entirely new mechanical system uh firelife Safety Systems as well so uh when you have that amount of work a couple work that has to happen and either has to be in a series of Summers or the school has to be vacated or you have to have parts during the completed during the year and sometimes when you have to keep your systems online like mechanical systems and firelife CC systems they need to be active during the school year so so we phase around the students and the staff and so we we keep everyone safe and we work in certain areas and we we move around the
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building so fall of 25 24 24 I believe exactly but let me double check that and I know that the promise of air conditioning is like a huge thing that's going to be installed but okay so follow um and then my last question is a transportation related question and I'm curious because of the uptick in um violence uh occurring on Max and on some of the TriMet buses whether and knowing that that's what we depend on for high school and many of our middle school students what conversations we're having with TriMet about just Security on our buses and Max's that we're counting on students to get to school well I think we'd all agree we're always concerned for student safety that includes back and forth from school there's as you're probably aware another unfortunate incident this past weekend and Southeast uh we are Safety and Security Services have remained in contact with ppb this weekend on that particular incident and will remain in contact with them because we are concerned about making sure that we're monitoring and the precautions are taken and that we're making sure our students have situational awareness when they're coming to and fro school as well any other questions from the board awesome thank you guys thank you team all right student director Silverstein would you like to present yes yes just letting can you hear me good um okay just letting everyone know this is a long one there's a lot to get through um so first of all a well student brought something to me they wanted me to mention that they have already had a threat of violence against their school everything turned out to be fine but as a student at Franklin I'm all too familiar with this last year we were plagued with bomb threats which while false definitely made students fearful and these are things that we carry with us I want to acknowledge all the well students and say we see you I also want to remind you that while we do have efforts being made to increase school safety I have my ID that we're all wearing now this is a very real issue and one that needs to continue to have dialogue about it as always we need Student voices in these discussions um yeah so thank you for sharing that to the welp student and then sorry I see people from DSD in the audience so shout out to them um thanks man so on a more positive note we've headed back to school um I know this is not everyone's favorite time of year but I hope everyone has something they're looking forward to Sports and academics are all gearing up homecoming will be happening soon for many schools JJ McDaniels representative on the GSC informed me McDaniels is next week okay um yeah so also I think it was briefly mentioned that we have the summer graduation this Thursday which honors our graduates who finish their requirements this summer so congratulations and thank you to the summer and evening Scholars programs which help our students recover credits and get credits early I participated the previous summer I'm a summer scholar and then we had our first District student council meeting today which was amazing we have representatives from pretty much every school except for mlc Alliance and Roosevelt who are working to get representatives from and we talked just really mainly about like what are the issues we're seeing in our district and at our schools we heard breakdown and communication which is contributing to frayed relationships between students in both school and District leadership a lack of school and District Pride safety within schools and on the way to schools including on the max um funding disparities and then needing more transparency around funding needing more student involvement and easier access to opportunities to get involved and I have one of those opportunities where students can get involved the community budget Review Committee which makes recommendations on how the district spends its money they're looking for new student members you can apply at pbs.net cbrc and the application is due September 22nd so get on that we would love to have you [Applause] thank you so much student director Silverstein um Miss Bradshaw do we have any students signed up for a public comment we do we do we do not okay all right let's see I get to step in this is my first time
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doing this at a board meeting and I'm super excited about this I'm feeling loved in this room I'm sorry okay it's the uh no we go into nope we do the student comment and then we looks like we're going um into the resolution um to replace the grant Bowl in the Buckman Field okay if y'all couldn't tell I was politically stalling as pastors normally do to give us all time to gather ourselves and get the leaders back where they need to be thank you directory um so next we'll be voting on the resolution to replace the grant bowl and the Buckman Field track which is being brought forward by director Scott and director brim Edwards so I want to know if director Scott would love to introduce this resolution um just because I'm virtual and my internet connection is a little um uh iffy I director from better words did you want to say a few words um happy to do that and uh thank you director Scott for um co-authoring and as well as the assist from and you'll never go guess what part from chair chair Holland's um just saying it's kind of obvious um so in 2002 and 2003 Lincoln was replacing their track and field which was really a mud pit like as many other tracks and Fields were in in PBS and they were going to have a state of the art uh competition level artificial turf field paid for with private funds the Grant Community um I think I went to my first grant funded raising and Community raising meeting in 2001. and the Cleveland Community was also raising um money privately from student groups alumni and student athletes for for new so that every one of our those schools would have artificial turf fields and tracks that would be of high quality and could be used year-round it was clear at the time that they were um there was going to be a group of halves and have-nots with some schools having those fields and other school communities that didn't have the resources would continue to have just grass fields which were not playable most of the year so a project was started the 10 Fields project it was places for sport at the very beginning it included um PBS Community groups alumni Nike lots of local businesses lots of parents and student athletes with the goal that as a community that all of our kids deserved a place to play in their neighborhood with the high quality track and field Nike paid for a fundraiser and and Community Building consultant to help raise money and for 10 years the project went on PPS put in about two to three million dollars and also a lot of technical expertise Nike execs and Nike put in about eight to ten million alumni and Community fundraisers from across the districts brought in about six to seven million dollars and together we made that a reality the biggest challenges of the project though were the two track and Fields that were not actually owned by PBS that were owned by the city of Portland and managed by Parks although they have been used both by Benson for 100 years yes a hundred years and same thing with Grant and that um we've had PPS has had a long relationship with Portland parks and we have many Mutual interests we have many of the same families and students and youth using our facilities and and so we've had a mutually beneficial relationship over the years and in this particular case um it was important for PPS to work with parks to in order to make sure that the Grant and the Benson Community also received the same sort of home turf that the other schools had so there was an agreement and work and into in 20 2012.
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um the grant field which was paid for by with significant contributions from PPS uh nadama ensues his family Foundation Parks the city of the city of Portland and PBS and that was replaced and then at um Benson there was a similar fundraising combination but also with St Mary's and a just a soccer club PCU and the agreement at the time was that the um fields and the track would be maintained by the district for their use and also in cooperation with parks on the two parks properties PPS has done that and when the the fields it reached the end of the useful life which they do and I think it's worth noting that the useful life actually allows a lot more use than if you have a grass field which once it gets muddy you really can't play on As oftentimes not safe but when it reached the use in the its useful life PPS has replaced it by building it into its facilities plan and I should note that what happened with Buckman even though the agreement was that the track and field the fields will be done along the track the track was never done I know that chair Hollins would want me to point that out which was quite disappointing um because again the goal was that every student no matter where they what neighborhood they lived in or what school they attended would have like a home field that offered them a high quality and safe EX experience and so as as these fields have reached their use into the useful life as I say PBS has replaced them it's disappointing that when the Grant field that planning wasn't done which is why in order to replace it so that there's no interruption to the the student athlete experience and so this resolution tonight does a couple things it actually from the board's perspective says that there's an urgent need to ensure the grant bowl and the Buckman tracks are safe and usable for our students and with as little delay and disruption to students and family as possible it also directs the superintendent to identify financial and other resources to replace the tracks and Fields and work the parks to engage in a process to get them replaced it also calls in the city of Portland to provide PPS with a long-term lease of the grant Bull and the Buckman track to avoid future disruptions and quickly replace them and then finally calls on the city of Portland to expedite all permittings of the field and tracks can be replaced and I think for me the most important thing here is the long-term picture as somebody who is a pil us student athlete and who's all three kids played on fields all over the city I know how important that experience especially having the experience and playing on your own home field is to ours is to our students so I'm hopeful that we can move with do speed and I'm also I say the one of the most important things is that we look for the long term that the grant and Benson Community have some certainty that they will have a that they're part of the district planning and they have access to the fields and that they have a home turf and I know that both Benson already has lights but Grant doesn't have either lights or a stadium and it's hard to plan if you just are basing that on the short on a short term planning cycle so having a long-term lease from Parks so that we can um at provide these adequate facilities not just adequate good facilities for our student athletes is really important and that's the spirit of this it's just not just the replacement of this um that the replacement of the grant field but also putting in place the Benson track but also establishing a long-term um a different long-term relationship with the city so that we have some certainty for our student athletes and Equity across the district all right thank you director room Edwards all right let's get to it so do I have a motion to adopt resolution 6755 all right okay we got a motion from uh
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oh the past okay who's the second I'll second that oh all right so yes okay we got it all right oh Lord um do we have any board discussion yeah at your homes if I if I may first of all um I'm really glad I handed the Baton to director of medward she has such a long and Rich history uh with this issue so that was that was great um to sort of give that um in terms of of why we're here and what we want to do the only thing I will just add I'll Echo everything she said and agree with it and just say that for me um the important thing is is thinking about you know when when assets fail um we need to treat that issue with some urgency and people have heard me use this example but if we had a if we had a roof collapse at a school or or fail we would move students out and then we would really work as quickly as we can to get those students back in the school and we would pull out all the stops and we wouldn't let any bureaucratic hurdles get in the way and I think for me that was really the issue with this it's the same thing this is an asset that's failing that's impacting our students and our families and I don't want the bureaucratic issues to get in the way of solving those problems and I say that as a bureaucrat I think some people may know I work for the city of Portland 15 years I work at Metro now I'm obviously on the school board it's not that these issues between governments are unimportant but they should never take priority over the issue of actually fixing um the problem and so that's what I really wanted to see here I do have one question about timing and I'm going to ask the superintendent and he may want to bring up staff but some information that just came to light for me in terms of the impact um that this field uh has on Sports moving forward one of the things this resolution does is it asks the district to move forward with this fix in the fall of 2023 so that we could get it done as quickly as we can so that it doesn't impact spring sports or beyond my under standing is that spring Sports may not be impacted even with the current state of the field and so I'd love to hear a little bit from either the superintendent or staff about that issue thank you director Scott and brim Edwards and team shares the urgency in moving this expeditiously of course as we explore who can do the installation for us and how much time they would need to do that either before spring season or immediately afterwards to try to not uh interfere with the use of it in the spring which it's still able to do but you want to add a little bit more to that Chief Operating Officer young sure thank you uh yeah we are working with uh Portland Public strike right now on an agreement that would be a replacement of the the turf as well as the track and our goal is to have the operational as soon as possible one one thing I think there's been some confusion is uh with the current status of the field it is not available for use for football and soccer but it but it is available for use for spring Sports so it is safe for use for track and field for softball and other activities that happen down there on Spring and of course during the school day for physical education and other needs so we do want to get it replaced as quickly as possible that said we do know that there are tasks and phases and Milestones that must be met to replace the turf field including getting a contractor underway actually building the turf out itself and then installing it and including all the subgrade the installation the painting and all that work what we want to be very careful is the timing of this is that we don't try to move so fast that we end up actually impacting the track and field for spring Sports we see that as a as a something that we very much want to avoid so right now we're looking at moving forward with this process and with construction and installing the new track and field after the spring season so we are certain not to impact those those students and that needs that said if there is an opportunity to do it sooner we will explore that as well it's just it looks like a high risk proposition at this point in time thank you I just want to clarify also that the resolution does say um directs the superintendent to identify financial and other resources to replace the field and tracks and to work with parks to engage in an emergency procurement process in other words not to hold it up to secure a contractor in the fall of 2023 so even that's an expedited timeline so we secure a contractor um hopefully that's possible correct yeah that is something that we are moving on right now is identifying that contractor and procuring that and negotiating that contract as well as having those discussions with Parks we actually have Parks Representatives here tonight who are who are here because this is important uh and they are involved you said we have Park represent Representatives here yes we do oh would you guys like to come down if Todd Lufkin comes the deputy director
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of Portland parks and recs like to come down awesome no no good evening am I on yes hi Todd Lofgren I'm the deputy director of Portland parks and recreation thanks for having me this evening uh just to confirm what Dan has said it's a priority for us to do this as soon as possible we've been working with the PPS leadership team to identify the appropriate funding arrangements so all the necessary resources are able to go forward uh we're confident with the PPS project team to lead the project and we'll have our proportional share for Portland parks and recreation to pay for awesome awesome I just have a question I know I don't know if you can answer this or some higher ups sure so when we talk about permitting and stuff we're going to make sure this is a high priority for the city as far as needing permits and things as well right I'm happy to bring that back for sure all right okay I'm also curious um has uh the parks commissioner or the council authorized um parks to negotiate or the City attorney to negotiate a legally binding agreement or a lease with the district right so we have a partnership agreement already between Portland Public Schools and Portland parks and recreation for shared use of facilities so so if you're sports teams as you know use our golf courses or pools or tracks Sports Fields parks for cross-country tennis courts lots of different facilities and Parks likewise we as your facilities for things like Golden Ball youth basketball programs volleyball programs it's really important lack of indoor gym space is important here in the city so we have a legally binding agreement where we could memorialize this arrangement in that or the parks director also has authority to enter into real estate arrangements as well yeah just speaking for myself the current the current agreement landed us where we are so it seems and also just knowing um having visibility to the grant communities um interest in making more um investments in the facilities again lights potentially Stadium it would be better to have there to be some certainty versus um having it exist in the agreement and and potentially having something similar happen or not be able to move ahead with their longer term plans and not being able to have a a home field right right and I think I would say this also for the um the Benson community that when they move back on site that they would also want this uncertainty because they've actually in some ways had it worse than um then Grant in that they have two other entities that have a significant amount of time blocked off on what would be considered like literally their field in their backyard and it seems like a longer term reset is the right thing to do and that the current agreement really is not the right place I'm just speaking for myself the right place uh to do that because it is doesn't provide the school Community with the with the certainty that they will actually either get a track built in the case of Benson or that if they made the improvements they'd have the ability to um to utilize them or even move it move it through the approval process we're open to any ideas that maximize use for student athletes and the community we're really looking for the relationships where we have shared use of facilities where they commute broader Community can benefit from them from important Parks and Recreation kind of service perspective but then it meets all of pil's needs as well so if there's some other Arrangement that kind of meets that need of the one plus one equals three type of arrangement we're open to those ideas oh great they're coming all right great all right that's what everyone wants to hear yeah especially for the kids back here yeah and I think the complicating thing is that when our Fields our high schools were first built 100 years ago um you only had half the um you didn't have um women or young women or girls playing sports so you have twice as many and so just the usage and if you if you know this from my daughter being at Cleveland like trying to squeeze in all the sports girls and boys all the levels one field isn't enough and this is where it becomes like there's really during the school year not a lot of extra time and so in any sort of arrangement then it's more of you know
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whether it be weekends or this this part of the summer but there's not a lot left over when you get through with the school community's use of that they just have one decent field or track great thank you director Verma Edwards Miss Bradshaw is there any public comments and before you do that I do one thank you uh Todd and Dan um is there before we do the public comments I do want to make sure we recognize the grant principal James McGee and I want to invite him if he wants to come down and say anything as well foreign I've been purposely putting people on the spot today absolutely um first of all I just want to thank everyone with the swiftness that you've taken on um this issue I know that we're appreciative that the field will be rebuilt in the track that being said I have to say and still not enough until we have lights in stadium our students [Applause] our students are our student athletes and we have to remember that student part are at a disadvantage today I had a brief conversation with some of the girls on our soccer team just before they got on the bus to go across town and play a home game they missed their last period and even with the new field and the new track that would not change and so some of those young ladies I mean they missed their math class they miss English their favorite elective and so you know we have the space and we have committed School community and this and this doesn't just you know work for the Grant Community it works for all PPS because you know I've been to Franklin uh for track meets um you know I've been to Wells events and so you know this is something that would benefit the entire uh District but we need to bring our kids back home we're celebrating our 100th school year at Grant High School and over the past summer I um I gave tours to some of our alums who had not seen the modernized grant and back in July we had our I was given a tour to some of the um members of the class of 88 and it was the 35th class reunion and one of their fathers came as well because he wanted to see the modernized building and I give a full tour including the ball and I talk about my dream you know I've seen you know bleachers out there in life so we can keep our kids you know on campus and you know and the father came to me afterwards of that Alum and said you know Mr McGee you know I made varsity when I was a sophomore and I never played one home game here at Grant keep fighting and so I'm here representing that individual that father but I'm also here representing the generations of grantonians that have traveled to Lincoln what was then Madison Marshall even the Civic Stadium to play home games you know I'm here representing these students that sit behind me that missed class you know their last period class to play a home game and I'm representing that fourth and fifth grader out there who are future grantonians you know so if they too will be able one day to be able to play home game you know in the bowl so again I thank you for your attention to this matter thank you thank you [Applause] Miss Bradshaw do we have any puppet comics we do we have Kim mcgair and Virginia Jones laforte [Applause] hi uh thank you uh I'm the parent of a senior at Grant who plays on the soccer team and a member of the grant bull Community Coalition which was formed by Grant parents less than a month ago after the shocking closure of the grant bull one day before fall Sports began I urge you to pass this resolution after amending it to make clear that the long-term improvements to the grant Bowl must include lights and stands the grant master plan that was developed in 2020.
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Grants a student body has long been neglected by the parks department it has had inadequate Athletics facilities for decades largely due to Parks incompetence and intransigence if PPS had control of the grant Bowl our teams would be playing there right now I trust that PPS has proven itself to be a good Steward of its turf fields Park's ownership has been untenable for decades but this latest failure and the complete lack of urgency or even care from Parks at the loss of Grant's home turf must be the final straw PPS must take control of Grant's home field this suggestion by Parks tonight this is the first time they've even mentioned that they have a dollar to put towards this field that this status quo Arrangement continue is utterly unacceptable it is the definition of insanity to keep doing the same thing and expect different results we must have the lease the loss of the grant bull is harming our students every single day the soccer teams are now forced to play all of their games at Delta Park they must leave school at 2 15. the men's and women's teams will collectively I've done the mass Math Miss 463 hours of instructional time just this month to play their home games not to mention when they have to go on the road it will be well over a thousand hours of lost instructional time for the season and the women's teams must also practice at Delta which means one hour every day in traffic just in September this is 11 hours per player 480 hours collectively that those players could be doing homework or something unproductive the Versa City football team has to play their games at Marshall High School far from our campus and yes this has been happening for years that doesn't make it right they will also the JV was at least able to play in the bowl until it was closed they now have to go to Marshall as well they will miss school to go to play in a home game and that total is 150 hours we are talking thousands of hours of missed instructional time for our students my daughter is a senior on the soccer team she will have played most of her games over her four years at Delta Park same for these the men's teams they're here they've been they came here today from Delta Park from their home game to tell you that there is no working scoreboard Parks has one but it isn't set up and our request to be able to use it have fallen on deaf ears students can't come to watch unless they have a car and they can barely make the game times anyway from Grant with traffic I want to also say that I fully support the addition of the Buckman track to the resolution my daughters my kids played at PCU early on I've run on that track it's a disgrace and Buckman has been treated just as badly as parks by Parks as Grant thank you for that thank you that buzzer scared me I'm glad you went first now I know to expect it um my name is Virginia leforte it's l a space f-o-r-t-e and I hope that doesn't count against my time um I'm a co-founder of the grandpa Community Coalition our organization has two goals to fix Grant's field immediately and to work towards the implementation of the grant bull master plan I'm also the proud parent of a Grant High School senior and another child that will be a general next year we've lived a half a mile from Grant for 13 years on behalf of the Coalition and the over 1 000 neighbors parents and students that responded to our survey in less than 72 hours when the grant bull was closed just over three weeks ago we unequivocally support pps's goal to secure a long-term lease specific to the grant bowl from Portland parks we also support the implementation of the grandpa master plan which includes the installation of lights and seating to align with every other PPS High School the Coalition received a copy of Mark Cotton's written public statement he is here tonight with his wife he's the young man behind me at the end of the third row Mark cotton may sound familiar because if you look at the Portland parks website the grant bowl is actually the mark cotton field Mark was hired as a classroom teacher and head coach at Grant in 1962. it was over 60 years ago he served in that capacity until 1990 28 years he was there mark writes from the very first day I found an improvement of the substandard field was a problem if I asked the parks department for a minor Improvement they would reply that was a forest School activity if I then asked the school district for an addition they would reply that it was on Park Department property neither would object if I asked can it be done privately as a result such things as a concrete discus throwing ring were installed by myself and several athletes Mark went on to initiate the fundraising
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for the first regulation size track at Grant so they could hold its first home track meet in May of 1976. it's our 100 year anniversary this year so anyway um in 2013 the turf was installed after 13 years of fundraising Mark so Mark raised sorry I messed up I'm just going to start over that paragraph because it's such a good story so Mark went on to initiate the fundraising for the first regulation size track at Grant so we could hold our first home track meet in May of 1976. who chipped in the least parks in 2013 the turf was installed after 13 private years of fundraising who chipped in the least Parks who gets to collect the permitting fees for the property parks who gets to shut down these properties that are gifts from the community because they can't maintain them Parks as Mark writes we've been spoon feeding this baby for 100 years it's time to adopt it the grant bull Community Coalition respectfully asks that the board amends the resolution to call out the grandpa master plan specifically in the agreement literally can I go over a little bit longer we have you got 10 seconds okay 99 of parents students and community members responded to our survey they support it we have 2 200 students in our school building they want it we're the only 6A High School in the state of Oregon without lights we're the only PPS high school without lights and seating and now thanks to Parks we don't have a field this we we support you we want to fix the field we want to build the bowl one team one dream thank you thank you thank you foreign all right so here's here's a Moment of Truth here we go sure um can I just uh reflect on something that came up and make a suggestion um there's a suggestion that we amend the resolution um since board members haven't had a chance to see the master plan or become familiar with it I'm wondering if as an alternative path that it could be brought to the finance and operations committee and the finance and operations committee make a facilities and operations committee make a recommendation on that after people have had a chance to review it yes we can do that all right I want to acknowledge uh the request but I also think that um there's another pathway there and I don't think it'll be delayed all right all right so when the board will now vote on resolution six seven five five resolution to replace the grant bowl and Buckman Field track for the use of Grant and Benson High School students all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes yes all right all opposed all right student director Silverman Silverstein first of all I just want to say thank you to all the students that came out this means a lot like that is amazing that you did this I'm assuming [Applause] okay I'm a student athlete as well so definitely the missing class resonates with me um and that is crazy that additional amount of time that is a lot of class work you all are making up so thank you um yes thank you thank you oh Gary if possible I mean I know we didn't add to our resolution about the grant Bowl master plan is that something we can do later or what's yeah so that's what director matters was alluding to that we bring it to the ethanol committee and then we can bring it back up here that way everybody that was seeing what that is okay thank you yes yes all right any abstentions all right the resolution passed the voter 7-0 with student director saying yes it is passed thank you [Applause] all right next we turn to public comment please make sure when you begin your comments that you clearly state your name and spell your last name you will have three minutes and 30 seconds to speak you were here a sound after three minutes and 30 seconds which means it's time to end your comments and okay
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yeah if you have any additional material or items you would like to provide to the board or or superintendent we ask that you email them to public comments all one word at pps.net public comments at pps.net please make sure when you begin your comments that you uh clearly state your name um and spell your last name care do you have any public comments today Lenny wet and Alyssa I'm so sorry can all of those people come to the dice all right all right everybody come on down come on down all right whoever wanted to start go ahead and start with your name and state your last name and the time will start you will have three minutes and 30 seconds hi um I'll thank you for everything you're doing for Grant what an amazing statement of community that that whole night this whole night has been um okay I'm Rand um last name caller k-a-l-l-e-r um and I'm a member of the Scott Elementary School Community good evening um happy back to school season this season um in elementary schools has a lot of magic to it with first days of school remembered with fondness and fright for years to come but just a reminder that this performance is not unlike opening night of a Broadway show only a fraction of the work is visible and the hours backstage and beforehand are countless and unsung last week I spent several afternoons volunteering in a classroom that was 82 degrees reassured that it was the good classroom as the one across the hall was 87. when I arrived I was joining a host of teachers who consistently had already been there for eight hours and we worked side by side to set up for the first day until the Building closed at eight while this is a heartwarming sign of devotion teachers have to their students it is also a heartbreaking story of neglect for the well-being of those who serve our children depending on the survey you refer to nationally teachers average anything from 54 to 60 hours a week the extra mostly unpaid when working before the school year starts I would go so far as to say the majority is unpaid time eaten Away by meetings trainings prepping curriculums without time to devote to readying their own room by contract only one and a half days of classroom preparation are paid but note is made that teachers must have access to classrooms quote at minimum one week prior to the first work day implicit in this wording is a known unspoken agreement the classroom setup takes much longer than the allotted time and that teachers are expected to do this on their own time throughout all this I would be remiss if I didn't mention that teachers are currently working without a contract I'm here to implore you to approach the bargaining table in good faith the requests are not grandiose things like full janitorial Team Staffing to deal with mice in classrooms spaces for de-escalation of students in crisis appropriate caseloads in special education reasonable class sizes and raises that keep Pace with inflation Portland is now the second least affordable city in America for a teacher to live in second only to San Francisco the numbers are in over a hundred vacancies for years on end at the beginning of the school year you cannot staff schools where teachers cannot afford to work these are not once the their needs these teachers go so far above and beyond already they need more than the minimum from you I leave you with this three minutes is not a lot of time to give you for to paint a true picture of the life of a teacher but when was the last time you were on your feet for 12 hours in 80 degrees for days in a row for something just because you believed in it when no one paid you or lauded you or noticed you because you thought students deserved great classrooms one of the many truisms I hear around Scott Elementary is quote students do well when they can I would argue teachers do well when they can too thank you for your time thank you thank you hello my name is Stacy ozer o z e r and I'm a member of the community Harrison Park Community I came before the board in June asking for the school board to intervene to explore the option of keeping the Harrison Park Community Garden open during the construction and I proposed a very viable option to fence off the east end of the existing garden and have the construction company use the West End of
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the area to Stage equipment the Garden area runs from Southeast 84th Street to 87th that's three blocks long plenty of space for both the existing half of the garden with raised beds to remain and the additional flat grash area to be used for construction equipment however I have a digressed into a simple solution that is a win-win for all and I'm repeating what I proposed in June I might remind you that when the Grant High School was remodeled not only did the community garden remain open it was actually expanded now I'm back to express absolute frustration and dismay at the fact that I and the community were lied to by PPS real estate department she told the woman I spoke with told me and erected a professionally made signs at the Garden that the garden needed to close by June 13 2023 due to the remodel of Harrison Park School Miss White told me the construction company would need to use the garden space this summer and it therefore would need to be closed off however the locks I put on the garden Gates and I went there again today are the locks that remain there that I put on there was and continues to be absolutely no reason to have closed the garden the construction that occurred throughout the summer has had absolutely no impact on the community garden area and anyone with a lock to the key to the lock can freely access it the Garden area is now an overgrown mess of weeds that is quite the fire hazard well over 25 families were forbidden from growing thousands of pounds of food this summer because PPS decided they didn't want people gardening there that was it the community and these families were betrayed and I feel like I greatly failed these families and then I told them that we couldn't Garden there because the construction companies were going to use the space that didn't happen and it was a lie when I reached out to PPS in August to further inquire I was told that there was the woman in charge had no intention of ever allowing gardening there again by anyone it will be a field of grass and of Portland parks and rec and aparno want another Garden it will have to be on an existing PPR land somewhere else in Harrison Park school property what I want to know from you the Portland Public School Board is who has the authority to decide what PPS property can be used for is it within Dana White's authority to ban gardening at Harrison Park School if it is not can we begin revitalizing the garden space to begin gardening again it's not too late for families to grow fall and overwintering crops thank you for your care and concern about the residents of the Harrison Park School and community [Applause] hello my name is Elisa kajikawa k-a-j-i-k-a-w-a I'm also here to talk about the community garden at Harrison Park I am the community development manager for the Jade District at opano I am here both as an employee of opano and as a concerned Community member to talk about this closure as many of you know we have been advocating for the Harrison Park Community Garden since April and today is just a reminder that we have not forgotten it and we have not given up unfortunately the community garden is now closed dry and overgrown and seemingly will never reopen to the community I recently had a conversation with Dana White director of planning and real estate and Dan young Chief Operating Officer from this conversation it is clear that the business and operations arm of PPS does not want any Community Gardens on any PPS properties now or ever the Harrison Park Community Garden was one of the Jade District's First Community projects back in 2013. Oregon Community Foundation and the Collins Foundation were major contributors to the fundraising effort for this garden with so much Community buy-in including PPS 10 years ago it is incredibly disappointing to see the closure of an important resource without any Community involvement input or without any solution Harrison Park School is the home school for two of the most diverse census tracts in Oregon according to the 2021 American Community survey out of the almost 19 percent of residents who live below the poverty line in the Harrison Park area 22 and a half percent are children under 18. and 34 and a half percent are seniors 65 or over in Harrison Park schools area 59 of residents are foreign born and 43 and a half percent are renters many of the gardeners at the Harrison Park Community Garden were from immigrant backgrounds growing culturally specific and relevant produce many of the gardeners were renters without their own outside space Community Gardens can help fill a gap
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for many families who are living with food insecurity especially now that most if not all of the extra pandemic benefits have stopped Community Gardens on PBS properties can also be a great community building and educational opportunity think about the cross-cultural and intergenerational learning experiences that can come out of Community Gardens sharing space with PPS schools PBS's mission is to quote disrupt racial inequities to create vibrant environments for every student to demonstrate Excellence here is a great real world situation where PPS can step up and show the community that they are committed to disrupting racial inequities inside and outside the classroom that PPS understands that what happens outside school affects what happens inside here's a golden opportunity for PPS to demonstrate Community Care and that they also want to help with the overall well-being of the communities they are part of no matter what happens with the current site we plan to continue to advocate for the Camellia Garden space in Harrison Park Schools home area I urge the board and all of PBS to take responsibility and accountability for the repercussions of ending a community program without working with Community First and help past and future gardeners sow seeds of their cultures to nourish their families and communities thank you thank you thank you thank you next we will have a first reading of revisions to 3.10.031 slash P class size guidelines and School staff allocation policy and for the decision of 3.60.040-p nutrition service Mills pricing and purchasing policy hold on one second that would you mind sir I think we've all read this I'm just asking the the sign you have I would appreciate if you could took it down if you like it's not your choice I'm just I'm just I'm not saying you have to Sir hello hear me clearly I'm just asking you to I think everyone's seen the sign I agree with that I'm just asking it's my right to ask too okay I hear you I hear you just just ask you can say no okay you can say no that's all I was asked all right thank you all right it's on you uh thank you chair Hollins so uh the policy committee um is forwarding two uh proposed items to the full board for first reading the first is a rescission of the nutrition services meal pricing and purchasing policy and I mean at first glance you read the policy and it um you might ask why why are we recommending that we rescind this and the reality is this policy was written in a time period in which there were a different set of state and federal laws and um since that time and at the time the board felt very strongly that um their students should um always be given a meal regardless of whether they could afford to or not that we wouldn't have lunch shaming occurring and so we put in into policy it also this policy also has the board being the entity that sets the prices for for meals and the reason why we don't need this policy anymore is state and federal law has caught up with PPS and so this is just a duplication of state and federal law now again at the time PPS felt really strongly that some of the practices that happened in the lunchrooms across the country and in some cases across our district that we want to have that reflect our values that all students should have access to school lunches but fortunately we don't need any more so we're recommending that we rescind it just because it's unnecessary it just restates federal and state law the second policy before you is a change to a very short policy relating to class sizes and essentially the initial policy originally said the board directs the superintendent to determine School staff allocations and class size guidelines for the district and communicate that information to all district administrators and we've added a sentence that recognizes that in some cases in the past class sizes and guidelines and Staffing allocation was done differently for neighborhood schools as it was for Pocus programs and dual immersion programs and that this is adding a
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um a clause to the the current policy that indicates that as much as possible we should have alignment across neighborhood schools and these other programs um in both of these cases these policies were recommended for first reading or also known as introduction unanimously and so with that we can get them started in the process for the first reading and then the public comment period uh thank you director from Edwards the policy proposed to be revised or rescinded will be posted on the board website and the public comment period is a minimum of 21 days contact information for a public comment will be posted with the policy the board expects to hold a second reading of the revised policies to which a vote to approve them on October 10th 2023. shareholders I'm sorry I'm looking for you on the diocese quick question and I may have turned off my video because again my internet's a little bit wonky um director brim Edwards on the class size policy I I was a little confused in terms of what exactly um it's asking the superintendent district to do it and I guess the reason why is you know it's said to align them with neighborhood classrooms but of course as we know our neighborhood class sizes are are are a pretty wide range and we have some some very very small class sizes and we have some neighborhoods that are you know close to Max or even at Max and then of course we have an average which is just the mathematical um thing and so just when I read through the policy I didn't have a chance to watch the committee meeting when I read through the policy it wasn't clear to me are we asking them to align with the averages are we asking them to have Focus option programs at the max or or something else director Scott it's a great question um and I will say there's a little bit of Art and Science to to this and we tried not to be overly prescriptive as you may recall the case was that neighborhood schools uh their Staffing occurred based on a staffing allocation that was set by the district and depending on how many students showed up in the school those class size thresholds and the Staffing allocations worked on the other hand at Focus programs and dual immersion programs the principles were setting the class size thresholds and so really what this without being too prescriptive or directive because there are some nuances that need to be um there are play here but generally to it's a policy and a value statement that are we should generally ask that whether your focus or a dual immersion program or neighborhood school that we have the superintendent setting those class sizes and Staffing allocations versus an individual School deciding what there's there's were and again there was a brief discussion about the language programs and some of the complications relating to Staffing because they usually start out at lower numbers because we have lower thresholds for um our younger grades but what happens in immersion is usually students you get fewer students as they get in higher grades and how do you balance that out and instead of being really prescriptive more it's a we want the super we want the superintendent and staff to be setting Direction versus an individual principal making decisions on how many staff people staff they should get great thank you that is that's a really helpful explanation thank you any other questions from the board awesome okay we're going to next move to on the agenda it's time to provide board committees and Conference reports our committee work is underway in this past month policy Student Success facilities and operations committees have met um so I'll start with director brim Edwards Dan director Wang and then I'll wrap up with to pass all right you want to go first are we alphabetized you're up okay I just wanted to give a brief uh report so we have not had our first meeting yet it was tentatively scheduled for the 20th of September I have one board member that needs to respond back whether they're available on the 27th at 5. I wanted to share out that the auditor's performance evaluation is finally complete and it's been signed by myself and the senior auditor and turned in the next steps will it's been sent to HR the next steps are I will share that out in
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the audit committee and if anyone on the board is interested in seeing it reviewing it um I'm happy to share that as well um and I would also love to have a student on the audit committee I don't have a formal process to to um to lay out but it would be great to have student representation and you don't need auditing experience but you need to be curious and interested in the workings of the organization um I think to be successful and able to meet we're having four meetings this year and that's it thank you thank you so it looks like our first meeting will hopefully be on the 27th of September if all of the members can make it okay thank you uh director wall Student Success committee oh I'm up huh okay um yeah uh so we've had a couple uh one meeting already and um just basically just identifying the big issues we want to tackle throughout the year um uh uh so I guess part of the role the the Student Success committee is just kind of two things one is just kind of oversee uh the programs and and policies that are in place uh and evaluate their effectiveness um but also number two if it ever comes to it recommend a policy to the policy committee um so right now I guess I mean there's a hundred things we want to do but we only had time for you know it's only a year so uh only a time for like maybe three or four things and the things I really came up with are the three things we wanted to tackle seems like we want to tackle our um number one is graduation requirements and also part of that is also expanding different types of options for graduation like for example one thing that was brought up was um possibly implementing JROTC programming and also other types of um certificates for different programs you know that's something we're looking at and also our current graduation requirement uh another thing that came up was also just uh one thing we really want to oversee is Middle School programming and making sure it's Equitable across our district one of the goals of of Staff this year is trying to get all the the middle schools to a 507 format you know that's classes you know we're seven periods teachers teach five um that way it has more flexibility in terms of like advisory as well as well as PE which we feel is very important both of them um and uh the last two things you know I said three what came out to four I can't count tonight it's been a long day um what was the uh looking at you know the hot topic of the day Equitable grading practices which also includes assessments and um we're getting a report on that in our next meeting especially and also the last thing is also looking at our special education programming as well and and and uh we're getting a report on that as well and also to to uh mirror what director to pass asks for we want to um also would like to have some students on our committee because it this is about them and and and their voices of the most important so um yeah shout out to anybody who who is interested you know please reach out thank you thank you director Wong and I'm sure student director Silverstein is taking notes I've seen over there writing writing down so you guys should be expecting some shortly uh we have director of the Pat I mean I'm looking at you thinking about her [Music] [Laughter] all right director brim Edwards thank you chair Hollins um so we're starting to build out our committee agenda and policies brought forward for consideration uh we'll be bringing forward policies changes required by law we're still waiting for um so the dust to settle in the legislative session and what those are policy suggested by staff rescissions policies that are no longer needed for example like the nutrition services one tonight working on ones from previous years like the class size one tonight another example would be the one related to private fundraising for staff and I want to just clarify for those who ask about that the policy that was posted at the last meeting which was just a informational post it was a draft policy relating to Foundation funding for PPS staff the discussion on this foreign
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testing testing we're doing a test to make sure our mics work we want to First say thank you all to everybody that's sticking it out with us um this is my continued talking actually gives them time in the back to make sure that what I'm doing is actually working and at the same time it appreciates you for being here so that we all know that we're in this together and the strain is is getting to us and Dr wongard can you hear me as well because he couldn't hear me before either Dr Wong can hear me yes can the people in the back hear me hey now if you with me say hey [Music] [Laughter] okay we're back in order right all right all right we go see we're gonna give it another shot all right so on the board will now again try to vote on a consent agenda board members if there is any items well you guys heard that already um Miss Bradshaw is there any changes to the consent agenda no board members are there any items no we already said that again do I have a motion in second to adopt a consent agenda motion second uh is there any more discussion on the consent agenda all right I do want to make a note and I want to thank the staff for putting the numbers on the bottom of the consent agenda I know me and uh director Sullivan uh appreciate that so we can kind of really get a sense of uh where our money is going and how it's going uh the board will now vote on resolution six seven five three through six seven five four all in favor of indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed beginning to indicate by saying no student director Silverstein yes all right by a vote any abstentions all right because it is a approval vote of six to zero with student director Silverstein unofficial voting yes and it has passed 6-0 all right we're done with that all right now we're going to have comments from our Union partners they come on down yep everybody just come on down since we got we trying to get out here by eight so we ain't gonna make that I think I'll make that deadline so come on in downtown all the way okay all right all right we're gonna start with a letter uh directed to the superintendent and you all a dear Guadalupe Guerrero and the member of the Portland Public Schools Board of Education we believe the purpose of Education should be to Foster growth Enlightenment and empowerment therefore it is deeply disturbing to observe widespread sexual harassment coupled with racial discrimination in our schools instead of embracing and acting upon pps's stated core values of honesty and integrity the district has responded to complaints of sexual harassment by dismissing the lived reality of victims often retaliating against the people who speak openly about the harm they experienced although PPS claims to Foster safe positive workspaces it's inaction not only perpetuates a cycle of fear and oppression but also undermines the very Foundation of care and Trust upon which education should be built at the July 11th board meeting on behalf of PPS workers and students SCI union members made the following demands to address the problem of systemic sexual harassment these were the district's responses first SEIU demanded that the district follow its own current sexual harassment policy to protect workers on July 13th in an internal email to SEIU leadership senior director of employee Labor Relations Genevieve Rove responded quote you care more about publicity and sewing division between SEIU members in the district than you care about the safety and well-being of Staff who have made complaints the next day on July 14th Chief human resource officer Sharon Reese sent a district-wide email claiming quote we work with any staff member reporting
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sexual harassment to ensure their immediate and ongoing safety we'll investigate thoroughly and take disciplinary action to redress misconduct larisa's statement purports to protect workers when paired with rows it sends a clear message that HR is unwilling to acknowledge the problem and protect the safety of workers facing daily violence this is deeply hurtful to victims and it's dismissive of those who bravely come forward with sexual harassment claims two SEIU demanded that the district provide thorough and meaningful in-person sexual harassment prevention training as soon as possible PBS management has not communicated any such plans thus far to provide this training third SEIU demanded that PPS conduct an independent district-wide audit and share the information gathered with all PPS unions instead the district hired management side lawyer a lawyer whose job it is to protect school districts Rebecca Jacobson to investigate only new claims to date none of the many complaints which spurred sciu to speak out at the school board meeting have been thoroughly investigated despite oh let's push that back a little despite workers repeatedly coming forward publicly with personal testimonies of sexual harassment at PPS no one in management has acknowledged the systemic nature of the sexual violence at PPS let alone sought to address the issue this further traumatizes victims and creates a culture where silence feels safer than coming forward and risking retaliation there are documented cases of the district firing workers after coming forward with complaints and Communications from human resources that deny the lived experiences or realities of victims this has a chilling effect on others coming forward following the July 11th board meeting sciu met with Genevieve Rowe in order to follow up on the Union's initial demands although Roe claimed that it is that quote this is not the culture we want end quote she failed to take accountability for the prevalence of sexual harassment at PBS she claimed that she was quote surprised to hear about these cases end quote only a few weeks after this meeting sciu became aware of another female custodian who was terminated a few days after reporting harassment by her manager due to the district's failure to provide the basic rights and safety of its staff and students we call upon superintendent Guerrero and the board of directors to immediately take the following actions first investigate and hold accountable the PPS human resources employee and Labor Relations Department for failing to follow board policy and federal law to ensure the safety of workers who report sexual harassment second immediately Implement meaningful in-person sexual harassment prevention training for All District employees including contractors and administrators third hire an independent auditor who is pre-approved by the union Coalition this auditor should be charged to review all cases of sexual harassment that are on record since Guadalupe Guerrero became the superintendent and any new cases that arise while the audit is being performed the audit should include an analysis of the response from the human resources department to each case in order to determine where PPS is in violation of its own policy and or local state and federal laws the final report should be delivered to PPS and the coalitions at the same time if superintendent Guerrera fails to follow these steps and hold his subordinates accountable it is the responsibility of the school board of directors to hold the superintendent accountable PPS is failing at students and staff By ignoring its own policies and instead dismissing investigating and are punishing those who speak out this completely unacceptable and must be addressed immediately as its unions representing custodians para Educators nutrition services workers maintenance staff Administrative Assistant Security Services Personnel Educators counselors and many other workers of PPS we stand in solid area with the students and staff who endure sexual harassment in our schools we have a right to schools and workplaces that are free of all forms of harassment and discrimination and we will continue to raise our voices until PPS takes responsibility for the harm that it has caused and can guarantee the safety of all of its workers and students please take the above actions to make this happen and this is signed by the members of our coalition excuse me I want to ask a question do we get a copy of that letter okay coming right up uh pfsp stands in support of the SEIU request for Change and accountability in addressing and resolving workplace sexual harassment employees and students
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must be provided serious comprehensive in-person training and schooling to change the culture we need to provide supports to those coming forward give them positive safe working environments we need to identify those areas and situations where sexual harassment is being repeatedly reported these people need to know they can expect rapid response to their complaints and be assured they are not expected to return to dangerous work sites pfsp has reached out to our Affiliates at aft Oregon and the Oregon School Employees Association for further collaboration to see if we can come up with some suggestions and work with legislators to come up with summary forms thank you okay [Laughter] um so I just wanted to also oh surround sound I wanted to also point out I know for the Portland Association of teachers we had we brought this letter to our executive board and it was voted um we voted unanimously to sign this and put our the full support of our Union behind those who have been victimized um I also wanted to make sure to give y'all some uh other remarks um if that's cool um good evening as you all know my name is Angela Bonilla I'm the president of the Portland Association of teachers I'm representing uh about 3 200 Educators here in PPS some Kudos thanks for bringing back Claire Hertz to support with bargaining budget questions um we were saddened to hear that Chief Delgado has moved on we wish him the best but we appreciate PPS Management's team um bringing in someone who has previous experience with our district so we can continue negotiations uh kudos to the facilities and the staff Folks at Ida B Wells Barnett High School Pat Educators have been advocating at meetings with administrators through grievances complaints to OSHA and organizing their members for heat mitigation there are 22 classrooms at Wells that are extremely hot for example one educator shared that when the sun shines and it reaches about 70 degrees outside her classroom reaches upwards of 80 to 98 degrees Fahrenheit inside and that's what the shades drawn multiple plans blowing facilities has been assessing the electrical and they should be delivering 10 air conditioning units to the high school so even though it's less than half of the classrooms that have the uh concern we really really appreciate the action by the facilities department and the district and our Educators at Ida B Wells Barnett high school for pushing that forward and not letting it fall to the Wayside um and so I do want to bring up a quote that I think about a lot in my governance at Pat um so it's from Toni Morrison when you get these jobs you've been so brilliantly trained for just remember that your real job is that if you are free you need to free somebody else if you have some power then your job is to empower somebody else so I wanted to lift up some concerns that we're hearing in our building so I'm going to take a little time to do that first we're getting a lot of reports from schools with very large class sizes so Lewis Elementary has class sizes higher than 30 students each fifth grade class has 32 students in one of those sections nearly 46 of those students have identified as having some sort of individualized learning plan whether that is talented and gifted or special education or a temporary 504 plan and that and there are several you know when it's a small neighborhood School lots of complex interpersonal situations that need to be navigated and so it's really hard to do the work we are here to do in in class sizes of that size without the support and last year one of those Educators had 31 students in the fifth grade class with a similar spread of need Whitman Elementary whose student body is 14 Asian eight percent black and thirty percent Hispanic has first second and third grade classrooms of 28 and 29 students and fourth and fifth grade classes of 30 students kudos to the principal today is working in the kitchen because they didn't have coverage or they were working in the kitchen because they didn't have coverage and this is really concerning um Pat has maintained that the wait and see approach to adding additional staff is harmful to students who spend the end of August and most of September building relationships and Community only to be redistributed between other classrooms once another educator is finally hired we've argued that a maximum class size of 28 or 31 in first grade is too many and so we are asking that y'all rebalance our classrooms with additional staff Whenever Wherever we can in
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schools that have no other support staff outside of their administrators um I also am very glad that the district acted so quickly um to support the grant Bull and the Buckman track and I think I would be remiss if I didn't mention the issues with McDaniels field and that it took two years and two seasons of students wasting as the speaker said over a thousand hours of of instruction time lost um just to get to a home field that field is almost done I think that it should be ready by by the season this year but it's a real bummer that the school that serves most of our schools on the 82nd Corridor had to wait so long and as soon as we heard about the problem at Grant there was a solution and it was voted upon by the board so I just want to make sure that we're being cognizant of that um Jefferson also we have been hearing a lot from Educators and families at Jefferson I have a lot of questions about construction and Contracting especially after what happened with McDaniel I remember director constam saying you know we're going to talk to the contractors we're going to find out what happened and we want to make sure that we're holding those folks accountable and that we have real answers because when it's public money and then our students have to lose instructional time just to participate as athletes it's unacceptable it's not okay for Grant not okay for McDaniel it's not okay for any school and so at Jefferson that Community was promised the availability of their site during Reconstruction and the questions I've heard from folks are why did that change when did that change and why are Educators finding out about this from the news um you know Jefferson shares a catchment uh with Roosevelt McDaniel and Grant right so why would ninth grade students commute 11 miles to Marshall when they could go to the other high schools most of which have been remodeled already I'm really really concerned that this will lead to lowered enrollment at Jeff over the lifetime of this project and I worry that we will harm this school that has a really strong and Rich history in Portland in our black community here in Portland and so we wonder what other options there are besides busing students again right it's not enough to remove Blanchard's name from the building we to repair the harm that was done when all those schools were closed in that community and students were bussed across town under that tenure we have to do things differently so how are we going to keep this promise to students and communities and be able to keep them in their neighborhood during Reconstruction so there aren't Ripple effects on their enrollment moving forward and then I just want to clear something up because you know we've been in the news uh so despite the reporting in the news around a possible strike here in Portland Public Schools by Pat we've been saying you know if it didn't come from Pat don't believe that right uh We Are I Am by our bylaws the only spokesperson for the union so if you're reading something that some educator said somewhere on the news if it's not my name it's not what you need to believe you need to hear it from us because there's no surprise when it comes to strikes it comes after hours and days and weeks of bargaining of mediation of substitutes for our bargaining team as part of the and and it's part of the bargaining process we want a settlement um as a union of Educators we see that what Educators need is linked with what our students need and we have to push Portland Public Schools to invest to our Educators and students need it most I've shared our bargaining platform already with y'all uh and you can always find it online line we have a bitly slash Pat support or it's on our website under our bargaining Vision we need small class sizes and caseloads classrooms free of mold and rodents in between temperatures of 60 and 90 degrees and mental health teams housed at each site just to name a few of our urgent needs because we believe that now is the time to invest in our schools you know in the most recent slideshow on the 8th uh it talked about we have a projected 51 million dollars in our uh ending fund balance and that was just we added more once we got the additional funding from the state uh the money needs to be invested now in our schools in staff and in services to support students as Educators and union members we're going to fight for our schools we're going to work with Portland families with Portland unions Community allies and we're going to rally and we're going to organize and we're going to do what it takes to get this investment because our schools and our students can't wait for great Public Schools so that is what I want to make sure y'all understand despite what the news says we're going to do what it takes to get that investment so thank you for your time thank you thank you hi I'm Chris Walters I am the head chef at McDaniel high school I'm also one of their sports announcers and my team and
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I served 727 meals in 33 minutes last Thursday we've we now own the record for the most lunches served in the last decade in a single day so it's been a year and we're only four days in on Friday September 1st we held our ninth bargaining session PPS rejected all four of the Union's proposals related to safety non-discrimination and the grievance procedure in Personnel files management continues to push back against any meaningful improvements in our contracts such as rejecting the Union's proposals to include anti-discrimination anti-racism and anti-harassment protections we are told that if employees disagree with Management's handling of discrimination cases then the only recourse workers have is to file a charge against PPS at bully after six months of bargaining no progress has been made on any of the Union's priorities such as safety health care we're still waiting two months for a response on that I believe wages inclement weather or job assignments and our bargaining period ends in November 9th we've got eight more sessions between now and then scheduled we've talked a lot about safe schools clean schools healthy sustainable schools schools that are part of the community Management's been in the room when we've talked about this but we don't feel that we've been heard these aren't just slogans for us we do believe in this we want to see it happen and there's eight more sessions to get that sorted out if you all can help push that'd be great thank you thank you thank you all right any other business any comments from board members all right well we will be adjourned


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