001And good afternoon. This public meeting of the board of education's teaching, learning, and enrollment committee for January 8th, 2026 is called to order. Good afternoon and welcome. Thank you all for being here. Today's agenda includes CTE and career pathways program attendance and attendance. [laughter] We'll begin with introductions. Uh my name is Michelle Chase Miller. I'm the committee chair. I'm Christy Split. I'm not the committee chair and I am the uh zone one uh member of the school board which is Southwest Portland. >> And I'm Jay Buun. I'm the chief of student services. >> I'm Sharon Tonrey, chief legal officer. >> Next we have public comment. Cara, do we have anyone signed up to speak? >> We do. Excellent. Please make sure when you begin your comments that you clearly state your name and spell your
002last name. You will have two minutes to speak. And we ask that once you hear the sound of the alarm go off, please wrap up your comments. We have Rachel Serach. Thank you. Yeah, you're good there. >> Is it already on? I don't have to. Okay. Hi. Um, in 2022, the Oregon Department of Education gave school districts some guidance around math classes with a new model that they called the 2 plus one model. And in this guidance, they asked that uh schools teach a year of algebra, a year of geometry/statistics, and then the third year of math classes to be more aligned with students after high school goals. Um to the credit of the math team at PPS, the uh geometry class that we currently teach will be completely um renovated for next year and
003it'll be a class called geostats, which aligns with that recommendation. However, the third-year math class is still expected in PPS to be what PPS calls algebra 3 4 or advanced algebra or algebra 2 in other districts. Um, this is typically the college pathway. Um, and students aren't allowed to take another class or a different pathway until they've already attempted the algebra 34 class. um even though some of our students um have interests outside of going directly to college and that's why I'm here. The algebra 34 is treated as a required class even though it's not. And even at Franklin, we offer other classes that could replace it. Stuff like math and society or data science. Um but according to what's been shared with me, um they can't until they've attempted 34. And algebra 34 is
004the most failed class in our district. So knowing that um our students are kind of being left behind, many students who are going to take this algebra 3 4 class are going to feel demoralized in a math or in a subject that I'm pretty passionate about um when they don't need to be. They could be taking something more interesting to them. Um, I teach uh special education right now at Franklin and last year I taught math and so I just wanted to say how familiar I am with the struggle that students are having in the the math classes we currently offer. Thank you. as someone who uh dragged her way through that algebra 34 class and o uh yeah worst grade I got in high school. I think >> we did have one other person
005signed up who I saw pop into the meeting virtually for a second and then left. So I'm not sure if they're having technical difficulties, but I just wanted to let you know they were here and then gone real quick. We can come back if they show up. I also saw director Lefort pop in and um I'm not sure if she wants to do a quick introduction or if she's able. >> I I'm I'm I'm at a stop sign. [laughter] Uh I apologize for getting uh out of an emergency doctor appointment late. So yes, I am here and listening and hopefully back to my actual computer shortly. >> Glad you're here. >> Thanks. Okay, our first topic is an update on career technical education or CTE and college and career readiness. Jay, would you like to
006introduce our presenters? >> Yes. Um, so we have um our our secondary team here, our college career CTE team led by uh senior director he ste um who I'll ask to introduce the rest of his team. Uh, board directors, uh, committee chair, uh, Chase Miller. Thank you for the opportunity. Um, my name is Phy Priestich. Uh, I'm the proud senior director for secondary academics. Uh, I'm joined here this evening by, uh, our director of college and career readiness, Yang Deolt, and, uh, director of CT, AP, and IB, uh, Chris Brida. Um when we think about high school success, we oftentimes think about our graduation rates and uh we are proud of the success that we've had in ensuring that our students meet the minimum graduation requirements. At the same time, we're also committed to making
007sure that our young people are prepared for the life beyond high school. And what we know from research is that young folks today are most successful after high school when they've had the experience of engaging in college level coursework as well as CTE while still in high school. And so this evening we'll share with you a little bit about some of the work that we're doing and some of the successes uh that we've been having um and I'll hand it over to the team to um guide us through the presentation. So thank you. >> Thanks. We can go to the next slide. >> I'll go to the next slide. Where is it? Thanks. Okay. So, um just an overview of uh some of the programs that we're going to be talking about. So, we have
00880 CTE programs across 11 high schools. So, all nine comprehensive high schools and two alternative high schools all offer uh programs of study and career and technical education. We have 70 uh more than 70 distinct dual credit courses across those 11 high schools. We have more than 70 IB courses in uh the two high schools that we offer at it, Lincoln and Cleveland, and more than 40 uh AP courses in the seven high schools that we offer AP. We also have college and career readiness centers in all uh 11 of our 11 of our high schools. So, that's sort of a numerical uh overview of what we're going to be talking about today. So CTE serves about 10,000 students um give or take across uh those 80 programs. Those 80 programs are representative of about
00920 career clusters. So um broadly speaking in categories of things like the trades um so you have we have classes in construction, manufacturing, electrical, automotive um and uh agriculture uh natural resources um and then we have a number of courses in sort of art focused pathways or design focused pathways uh like journalism, design and applied arts, um theater arts, um culinary and then a number of human- centered or human focused classes like art education prep program, business management and business marketing. Last year, we had 1,930 students from the graduating class earn completer status. And completer status means that they earned three credits consecutively in the same program of study. And why that number is important is because uh there's a lot of national research about the impact of completing a CTE program on graduation. Um
010and that research holds up in PPS as well. So for that group of students uh the graduation rate was uh just over 97%. Um that number has also grown tremendously over time but uh is up 31% from the year prior. We also in the last two years have uh had students earn about a thousand credentials that are recognized by the industry. So those would be things like um Adobe certifications or um certain business certifications that are recognized by by business and industry. uh we are this year uh embarking on uh developing a firstofits-kind national model for literacy instruction in CTE. So trying to re-imagine or reconceptualize what literacy instruction looks like in an agriculture classroom or in an art classroom uh in a way that hasn't been done uh in the country before uh with
011a with TNTP who is a literacy partner of the district. We also are particularly focused um on building sort of a partnership ecosystem where we bring together industry post-secondary community organizations um and cultural partners to sort of intentionally align um their work towards mutually beneficial problems of practice in career and technical education. So we're trying to build sort of a an ecosystem of external partners that support the work that we do in career and technical education. And ultimately what we are trying to build is a coherent city connected CTE program. So our goal really is to be a system that is in service of the city of Portland in a number of capacities whether that's workforce development or economic development or community development. We feel that CT students are well positioned to sort of um
012serve that role. So now I'll turn it over to to Yang. >> Thanks. Um, so our high schools have been able to leverage um what we commonly refer to as measure 98 funds, but high school success funds. Um, so we've been able to offer AP, IB, and dual credit courses for students. And as you can see, I'm going to highlight some of uh what we've uh accomplished in the last few years. Um, so last year alone we had a record 18,000 plus college credits earned by students through PSU, uh, PCC and OIT. And that was a savings of over $3.19 million. >> Did you say 18,000? >> 18,000 plus. Yeah. Um, and then we had 3,83 students who took uh 5,470 AP exams. And 75% of these AP exams had scores of three and above.
013And three and above is the score that you need to get the college credit. Um, and I just want to note that uh scores of three and above increase in all of our race and uh different ethnicity groups. We also had 2,148 IB tests taken by students in 2025. And this is an increase of 13.7% from 2023. And then writing 121, it's a required college course for all college degrees, associates, bachelors, and this course is now offered at nine of our 11 high schools. We've also been able to embed uh dual credit within our AP classes. Um, and this offers students multiple ways to receive that college credit. And then from the class of 2024, you can see we had 69% of our students meeting the this criteria of graduating with at least three credits
014in AP, IB, or dual credit compared um to the to 60% with the class of 2019. And then for our historically underserved students by race, um we've increased from 45 to 50% um of our students meeting this criteria. Um, as our students are going through our high school, we want them to be able to experience um, different career connected learning experiences. So, as you can see, last year we had over 12,500 students participate in what we're calling career connected learning opportunities. And we're distinguishing um these activities by awareness, exploration, preparation, and work-based learning because our expectation is that they are getting the opportunity to uh experience these um careers and apply some of this uh hands-on knowledge with our industry partners. >> So, here are a few examples of some of the events that we
015um have hosted that are connected to career connected learning. So the first one on the left uh in the summer we run a learn and earn program for our ML students, our multilingual learners. Um and that program is uh pays the students. Um it allows them to earn some uh credit. Um and it's a it's a program that's focused on college and career readiness. A few weeks ago, we hosted a um computer science and engineering day uh with Portland State University as our partner. We hosted it at their um their college of engineering and computer science. uh and that it was really an opportunity for us to bring ninth grade students into that space to get them excited and interested in uh STEM careers. And we had a number of partners that participated in um
016in that event as well. And then each year we offer we host u a film festival for uh student filmmakers at the Hollywood Theater. Last year I think we had just over a hundred maybe 120 uh submissions to that film festival. That was narrowed down to I think 13 films. Um but before that film festival uh just immediately sort of preceding it we host a pathways fair. So we invite folks from the from the industry and also from the uh the higher ed programs that uh support film making. Um and students that are the student filmmakers are able to sort of make those connections as part of that uh event. >> So in all of our nine high schools we have college and career centers. Um and we have the college coordinator role and the
017college coordinator role. And these specific roles are helping students to um fulfill their career related learning and graduation requirements and prepare for the workforce. Uh they're researching careers and post-secary options. And they're helping students apply to colleges and for financial aid. Um so studies report that understanding the link between education and career aspirations may be the single largest impact on an individual students likelihood of completing college. In fact, high school graduates who expect who expect they will need a college degree for the career they are interested in are more than six times as likely to earn their bachelor's degrees. And students who understand the relevance of a college education to their career interests are also more likely to be academically prepared for college and career. I wanted to share this um specific metric. Um, we've
018noticed that with our historically underserved students, which is our students who are native, um, Hispanic, um, black and Pacific Islander, that prior to 2021, they're mostly attending two-year colleges. But with the introduction of our college coordinator role, um, this has now flipped. And so, we're seeing more of our students who are historically underserved attending four-year colleges. And this is noteworthy because four-year colleges have persistence rates, which means students are returning the following year at over 90% rates compared to about a 70 or so% rate at a two-year college. >> We also included a number of uh data points in our appendices that you all are free to look at. And that's what we got. >> This is really amazing work. I'm so impressed. >> Thank you. >> I agree. I do have some questions if
019that's okay. >> Yeah. >> Um, so just watch me with my glasses. It's like the new comedy. I can't see anymore. Um, so let's see. Uh, you talked a little bit about there was a slide you could go back to maybe that has the like AP IB breakdown. Um, you mentioned nine of 11 high schools offer the writing class that is really import or very useful on a transcript. Which two high schools don't offer it? >> Uh, Benson is going to start offering it next year. So, they're already um on the books for getting that started where we're going to start training uh their teacher this spring. >> Great. >> Um, and then we will work with uh what's the other school? I >> Oh, it's okay. I don't want to cut you off. >>
020No, actually. Yes. Alliance. So, we'll work with Alliance. >> Okay. Okay. >> Got it. >> All right. Thanks. And then, um, I noticed, and I'm sure it's just a matter of making the slide, but the IB the general vibes on IB results aren't here. So, I'm guess I'm asking, what are the general vibes on the IB results? >> Uh, it's still it's that last bullet point there. Um, but, uh, yeah, so there's sort of two paths. uh within the IB there are I I mean the last uh sort of like inset bullet point just in terms of numbers but >> right right but like how's the performance because like we get the AP scores are three or above I don't know enough about IB tests to know how they're scored or anything but is just
021taking it the accomplishment or is there like >> no same thing so they have a threshold score it's a four out of seven so it's a different scoring scale >> um and and there's also sort of two uh uh mechanisms of IB there is open access anyone can take any class. And then there are also students who choose to pursue a full diploma, which is six IB classes plus a theory of knowledge class uh that teaches students about epistemology and uh they do a 4,000word essay. There's a whole bunch of things, >> right? Do they have to do a score a certain way on the test to get the diploma? >> They have to score a certain composite score across all of those tests. And um and by and large, usually of each graduating class
022at Lincoln and Cleveland, it's about a quarter of the graduating class that pursues that. So somewhere around 100 kids. Um, and usually it's 98 or 99% of the students earn the diploma by the end. >> Okay. But we we can get that data. >> Yeah. I was just sort of generally curious how like >> we perform on >> if it's a similar roughly similar comparison. Um, I also just wanted to ask because we've spent a lot of time looking at disparities um within our system when it comes to racial and ethnic groups that aren't doing as well on our tests. And I'm curious with the AP scores. I realize that the the scores of three or above have increased increased across all race and ethnicity groups, but I'm curious generally if that um inconsistency in
023scores reflects the same sort of dynamics we're seeing on like the MAP testing um where or if it's different because I I'm just curious. I don't know. Still, I I would say that outcomes on AP exams are still predictable by um whether you're historically underserved or not. So that I think it's consistent. >> Okay. I was just looking for that. >> Yeah. >> Shining star somewhere. I don't know. >> Well, maybe the shining star is the growth. Yeah. >> The fact that we are seeing the growth across racial groups >> which includes AP tests and tests now. Yeah. Which is great. Great news. Let's keep at it. Um, the other thing I wanted to ask about, uh, is the I know that on the the career and college coordinator positions were a hot topic during
024our budget cuts conversation. Um, and I'm just curious how that ended up. I don't honestly remember. I feel like it was like half an FTE for each or something at each school or something like that. but how that did end up and um if there are thoughts on how that might affect this work going forward with fewer resources. >> Yeah, all of our comprehensive high schools have managed to retain their um career coordinators. Um um the and the reason why we're mentioning our college and career coordinators today is because we want to honor the incredible work that they um are doing and are contributing to these outcomes. I mean what we're seeing today in these numbers is a reflection of a number of people leaning in. Our teachers, our counselors, our college and career coordinators
025and we wanted to call out our college and career coordinators in particular. And we are facing some really tough decisions and our building leaders will be facing tough decisions as well. And there's no there's no um there's no easy way out of that. But uh as we look at these numbers um we wanted to be um explicit about the the the role that our college and career uh our college and career coordinators have have played in moving the needle. >> So despite the conversation that was had in the end those positions were retained. And does that include also each school still having a college what is it? College coordinator. >> Yes. >> So each comprehensive high school has both a career and a >> correct. >> Yes. >> Okay. Yeah. Because we heard pretty compelling
026testimony. I still remember uh student representative K talking about the important role of those positions at his school specifically. So, thanks for um giving an update that we were able to retain those positions and I agree that we may not be able to going forward, but I hope that we can. >> Thanks so much for the presentation. >> Of course, >> I'm I've come around I've heard seen this presentation before. >> Yes. >> So, I've officially been here a year, I guess. >> I love it. >> So, >> thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Oh, I'm sorry. I have >> Oh, yes. Ask a and director for may have questions on that. >> Sure. Um, I was curious about the uh the 31% year-over-year increase in uh completer status
027and what we attribute that to. >> Um, lots of things. I think some of it is just the changing positionality and purpose of career in technical education. And I think for a long time it's largely been viewed as an elective sort of on the side of the student's core academic experience but I think especially as more uh research has come out about it and um you know like I think our system largely has stabilized around what's being offered at schools. Um that's a big reason why one um second of course just naturally there's been a lot of growth in CT since 2017 when measure 98 passed. I think we grew from about 30 programs then to 80 programs now. Um but still it's a big jump in the last uh year and and some of
028it is like I can't say that it's it's my team's focus because the this before my time right like the the work that was done to get kids to be completers happened three years prior to the beginning of them becoming completers because it takes three years for that to happen. Um but our intentional focus now is really on closing the gap between the demographics of the um sort of high school landscape and the number of completers that we have that are historically underserved. So the difference now is about 13% uh 13 percentage points about 23 give or take percent of our students who are completers are historically underserved but 35% uh of our high school system is historically underserved. And so um we have been focused on I think our theory of action this year
029is really on trying to close that gap also knowing that that's like a lagging variable. We won't see the impact of that for three years. Um and some of that some of really what our focus is is on ensuring that students have the right um upfront information about choosing the correct pathway from the beginning. And when I say correct, I don't mean correct in the sense that what we're asking our 15-year-old students to do is choose their career. I'm incorrect in like what do you love doing while you're in high school and let that be the CTE pathway that you that you pursue? Um, and then you know if the employability skills like communication and teamwork and adaptability sort of like underpin all of that then by the time they get to graduation should they
030choose to persist into that into that career pathway amazing. Should they choose to pivot also great because they have all the skills to do it. I never thought I would say this, but um between your work and uh hanging out with Principal Shelton at Jefferson a little bit, sometimes I wish I could go back to high school just a little bit. [laughter and gasps] >> Um I I don't have a question around this, so I'm just going to tell you like about my interest in it and maybe we can hear more about it at another time. Um but I'm really interested in the literacy in real context >> uh bit. Um, so I don't know if there's any like additional that you can tell us about that or if it's a >> different can speak
031to that. But just to follow up on your comment, that is part of what um I think is so exciting is to illustrate just how many opportunities there are in PPS high schools to pursue any number of interests and potential career paths. Um, this is not what I experienced as a high school student many years ago. It's maybe not the frame that many of our families have. Um so we're we're really excited that uh we we're able to offer this breath of opportunity. But uh >> yeah so um this literacy project was uh it's a joint effort between myself uh and Morgan Hallebran. She's the assistant director of English language arts and social studies and also by uh experience is an expert in secondary literacy specifically literacy at the high school level. And so as
032we started to think about um the opportunity for uh literacy improvement, I think in many ways like the advantage that we have in career and technical education is that students are engaged in those classes. If I walk into a construction class, prior to the cell phone ban, I wasn't going to see a cell phone. Students were because they're participating in hands-on work. And so for us the opportunity really um was in the chance to think very differently about what we call literacy and can we apply the same principles of science of reading one at the high school level but two kind of in the most extreme context that you can imagine like literacy in an automotive class. And so the way that we have been thinking about it and working with our TNTP partners on
033it, one has to do with sort of knowledge acquisition. So the purposes of writing as a component of the knowledge acquisition process and in a technical class some of the knowledge acquisition is incredibly important because knowing uh industry specific vocabulary for example is a requirement that a lot of students will have to to you know sort of experience. And what we know about the Lexile scores of even most entry- level jobs is that they're higher than even say like a college uh literature course because there's so much sort of technical context that's needed. And so our approach to doing this work was this year is really focused on a pilot uh group of teachers from Benson and McDaniel and working with them over the course of three um professional development sessions and four sort of
034in-class coaching sessions supported by our partners um to really try and bring some literacy strategies into those classrooms. again as a way of increasing knowledge acquisition so that students can much easier recall vocabulary and retain information over time. Um but then two to prepare them for the kind of technical writing that they'll need to do in many of these careers. And so yeah, we're really excited about about this yeah this sort of first of its kind um program. >> That's very cool. Um like I said, like I'm just so impressed by this work. This is really really amazing. >> Thank you. Uh, Director Lefort, do you have any questions? >> She might be driving. >> Not at a stop sign. >> Oh, let's give her some time in case she do does want I I
035um I have a a new 8-year-old and she hates when I quote her, but I'm going to make your day on this one. My entire walk to school today was me telling her to keep her options open about college and her being like, "I'm not going to college and you're trying to dash my dreams by telling me I have to." I was like, "I'm not telling you you have to. You have lots of choices and you can decide later on what your interests are." And she's like, "I'm going to be an artist. I'm going to work at a dog walking place to make money and this is my career path." And I'm convinced and I don't think that you should try to tell me that that's not what I'm going to do just because I'm
036eight. >> So, I just wanted to make the point that this like hit home to [laughter] me today for this very specific reason. She was so upset with me that she was crying that I would have the audacity to suggest that she might want to keep the door up on go open on going to college. And I think it also tells you that like maybe as a society, you know, our doors are opening up that college isn't the beall end all. Um I kind of focused on the AP and IB stuff and then I was regretting it when you were talking back to this slide. I think it's so important that our schools serve every kid, whether it's my kid who wants to be an artist and walk dogs for a living, like to have
037a CT pathway where she can learn about graphic design, um, and have a field that she could go into that's art and she doesn't have to go to college to be successful. Um, and I just think the more that we, um, continue to like keep that door open, um, I think that's great. I also just want to point out that this literacy program, what's really exciting to me too about that is we know we have kids who arrive at high school and don't have those literacy skills and giving them those skills in a place where they feel welcome and where they feel comfortable, which we know CTE programs can often be for our kids that aren't academic allstars. Um, I think that's just so important. So like keep going on that pathway and that way
038later when cuz I feel like we've asked this question about like what happens around literacy for kids that aren't at grade level in high school. And I remember the answer being a little bit like we have work to do in that category. Um and this isn't the exact kind of thing that we can point to um about how we're trying to move the needle and meet kids where they are. So I just want to say thanks for that. >> Yeah. And the other the other >> and all of that just kicked off Director Lefort. She just left. So >> I was going to say one [laughter] more thing one more thing about that too. >> Yeah. Please. >> What's what's unique about career in technical education in many ways is that a lot of our
039teachers come directly from industry. So they don't have the pedagogical framework to talk about literacy instruction in the same way that a teacher that sort of like been through that experience has. And yet like they're incredible at teaching vocabulary, but they don't know why they're incredible at teaching vocabulary. And so some of this is just being able to to sort of name the the you know like the language for them so they have it. Um, and it's a it's a way that we're sort of like trying to reimagine some some pedagogical professional development for them that isn't just about the technical skill that they bring to the table, but about the the sort of the rest of it. >> That actually, I'm sorry, opens up another question uh for me. Um, I'm curious about um
040how we hire CTE teachers. Sounds like like they come from the trades, [snorts] which >> makes sense. Um but and do we ever like experience challenges in terms of finding people >> all the time? >> Okay. >> Yeah. And I would say like there are obviously certain um career pathways that are more challenging when the ask of someone from industry is to leave a profession that pays them a lot more than uh the one that they're going to get here. Um so there there are essentially two paths for teachers to become uh certified in career and technical education. One is they bring 2,000 hours of industry experience. Um, and then we develop a professional development plan for them that takes place over the course of three years while they're sort of on a restricted license.
041Um, and as part of that process, they take uh usually five uh sometimes four classes at like the community college level that is a intro to CTE class, often a literacy class, a classroom management class, you know, sort of like the if we can give them these foundational skills to to be an effective teacher, that's what we'll do. Um and then on the other side um of the experience, some teachers move from the classroom like a traditional uh general ed classroom into a CT classroom and they have kind of the opposite professional development plan. What are the ask of them is to go get hours in industry and so they volunteer usually in the field somewhere um as a way to sort of better understand what the ask is going to be of our students
042when they inherit those jobs. Um, it is difficult to hire. Uh, certainly in some in some of our CTE programs that maybe lean a little bit more traditionally academic like a computer science or a business or a journalism maybe less hard just because that's sort of like an established CTE program that's been around for a long time. But certainly in like the technical classes like an automotive or a construction or manufacturing more difficult. >> Thank you. >> And now I have something else I want to say. Dang. I mean, we have kind of like a lot of time today, so might as well have some fun with it. Um, so I sometimes join the Oregon Clean Energy Workforce Coalition for my day job. I work for the state department of energy, >> and I believe
043I we ran into each other when I was doing work um not too long ago. Um, and the chair of the education subcommittee is actually a former legislator, Jeff Reirden, who left his day job to become a career technical educator and then after he retired became a legislator and his main focus was on kind of that bridge between education and workforce. Um, and he's still even in retirement working on that. So, I just think it's pretty cool that there is actually somebody who came through that pathway and became a teacher like in his 60s for several years. um teaching CTE I believe in North Clakamus School District. Um and also just a reminder that that new coalition is working on trying to make um an energy career pathway as one of the new statewide >>
044pieces. So throwing that out there. Is it happening? >> I am the co-chair of that committee. So at the state level, myself and Mattie Shik um >> the the one that's putting together the new CT the new CT pathway. I love that. Yay. It's happening. Yeah. So we what's unique about the the opportunity with the with the Oregon Clean Energy Workforce Coalition is that it is uh career and technical education being built at the coalition level first as opposed to the way that CT has often been built which is at the school level up. In this case um landing a a pathway in clean energy is being seen largely by the industry as an upstream solution to the workforce development challenges that they're facing. And so obviously as you know someone who works in the
045industry like the challenge also with defining clean energy is very broad right because folks that work in masonry are part of the clean energy economy because they're building the infrastructure in the same way that folks that work on solar or wind are exactly >> so important. >> Yep. And so our approach to that work has really been on trying to think as broadly as possible so that when we land a CTE program even let's say it was in PPS it is tied directly to the to the economy that exists around the clean energy sort of sector in our space but also give the flexibility for folks in Klatsup County or Malhir County to also adopt a clean energy pathway so that it's it is like seen as a network across the state of it's all
046in service of the of the industry which is a unique opportunity. I'm so glad I brought that up. I'm really glad to hear that there's forward momentum on that. Um, and I will also just um share that I totally agree on the broad definition of energy. And I also think that um one of the coolest things I think about like the market on energy efficiency, which I think is kind of what's coming first, is these are the kinds of jobs where someone could be trained and straight out of high school walk into like a well-paying, high demand job doing like insulation work. heat pump installation. Um, so I think it's kind of nice to see. Um, it's great to see that happening and um, I'm really glad that you're part of it. Thanks for that
047service. >> Appreciate that. >> Above and beyond. >> Okay, I think I'm done. [laughter] >> Thank you. That was wonderful. >> All right. Next is a presentation on attendance. >> Yes. And so we have uh senior director Cooper and her team here to present. Um and I'll let her introduce. >> Good evening. I two have to have glasses. Uh good evening. My name is Shandra Cooper and I am the senior director for our core enrichment programs as well as our multi-tered systems of support department known as MTSS. Um I am here with my colleague Naomi Oram who is the assistant director for MTSS and she is also the lead on our attendance work. So we are here to provide a brief overview and update for the attendance goal and strategies that have been uplifted in
048our district continuous improvement plan. We are going to start with an overview of the chronic absenteeism project um which informed much of the work including our strategies that we have chosen. We will share some of the national and current PPS data overview of the strategies and actions that are being implemented at the school level and you will also have an opportunity to hear about some of the highlights and promising practices within our schools. And then finally we will review some more of the technical pieces of attendance including attendance definitions and some of the procedures at the school level. Thank you. So last winter we engaged in a chronic absenteeism project which included over 30 school-based staff. We had building leaders, attendance coaches, counselors, school climate specialists, and school uh social workers were represented. Our purpose
049for these engagement sessions was really twofold. One, we wanted to be able to better understand what the potential root causes to chronic absenteeism for our students here in PPS. The second uh reason we wanted to engage is to hear from our administrators and educators on the interventions that they were implementing that they had found to make a positive impact. In addition, we've also partnered with Panorama, and Panorama oversees our successful school survey, which you will hear a little bit uh more about in just a minute. Panorama recently completed a comprehensive national study on chronic absenteeism. So, from these engagement sessions, we have identified the three evidence-based strategies that have the most impact on attendance. I do want to preface that the number one strategy that surfaced in both the national study and our own school-based
050staff is engaging and rigorous instruction in the classroom. We heard from student voices, especially secondary. They reported that they made a priority to attend the classes where the instruction was engaging and they couldn't necessarily get the instruction online. So since this strategy is also being covered in our math and our literacy goals, we have chosen the next three highest leverage strategies. So we will be reviewing these strategies in more detail, but you can see that strategy one is strengthening the climate and the culture. We call this tier one because this is for all students and this is what we are hoping all of our students will be experiencing. The second strategy is implementation of data teams that review attendance data on a regular basis and help identify students who may be struggling with attendance. And
051then the third strategy is messaging and communication plan to bring awareness of the importance of attendance. All three of these strategies have been uploaded to the school improvement plans for every school. And strategy one and strategy two are actually required by our school teams. And while strategy 3 is highly recommended, it is optional for our schools. So, I just want to briefly highlight the data and impact of attendance, which is why Superintendent Armstrong has made it one of the priorities, one of the four in our district continuous improvement plan. Um, two data points to point out. Um, 17% of students who were chronically absent in kindergarten and first grade read at the third grade, read at grade level in third grade. Studies have shown that by sixth grade, chronic absenteeism is a strong predictor for
052students dropping out of high school. So in addition to the academic impact, chronic absenteeism can also cause social isolation and negative self-perception. So I'm going to turn this over to Naomi and she's going to go over strategy one and strategy 2 in a little more detail. >> Hi, I'm Naomi, assistant director in MTSS. And so we're going to start with strategy one where um this strategy one is all around that tier one schoolwide climate and culture and it's focused on the adult actions that will improve the five indicators that are shown to highly impact attendance. So sense of belonging, engagement, climate, teacher student relationships, and safety. And on the next few slides you'll hear me reference five indicators or attendance indicators. This is what I'm talking about. The core school actions for strategy one include
053school climate teams who receive training and then provide monthly climate and culture professional learning to their school staff, administrators and coaches providing school-based coaching on the evidence-based tier one strategies and practices that support each of these five indicators. And then educators who self assess and reflect on the implementation of these strategies and practices. I'm hitting a button. [laughter] >> Is it working? Oh, there we go. Okay. So, back to that c the core action for strategy one around professional learning. Um, each to develop their school-based climate and cultural professional learning. It's differentiated across the schools. Each school uses their school level climate data from the successful school survey to determine which indicator or indicators to focus on of those five main indicators. So they look at their own schools data to choose their focus area.
054And then there are centrally developed professional learning modules for each of those five indicators and then the school teams take those and personalize them with their own circumstances, their own school data for their schools. And then woven into this tier one action is the strengthening of schoolwide transformative social emotional learning or T- cell and through their T- cell curriculum implementation and then embedding T- cell practices throughout the day. So a couple data points regarding strategy one. The successful school survey looks uh is one of the tools used to monitor tier one climate and culture. And so what does our preliminary data looking like? The survey just closed in early December for this school year. Uh on the positive side, the overall response rate was the highest since we've started using that survey with student responses
055up by 9% from the previous year. The attendance indicator with the highest gain was school safety and that was up for both elementary and secondary students. On the teacher survey portion of the successful school survey, there's a question there are questions about explicit social emotional learning instruction. And the teacher responses show a 2% increase up to 77% across the district. And that means either during specific social emotional learning curriculum time or integrated throughout the school day. And to add on to that, the district is on target to have all of our schools adopting district supported SEAL curriculum by fall of next year with just seven comprehensive high schools yet to adopt and they're on target for next year to adopt. I haven't done this one yet. >> Oh, okay. >> Yeah, sorry. I double clicked.
056>> Yeah, sorry. It's a It has a delayed response, so I clicked twice. Uh, okay. So, now looking at the tier one climate attendance action in action, moving from the district level. So, what would this data look like on the ground for a school that is experiencing success with high attendance growth? We're going to use Roseway Heights as an example. they have seen a point in time increase in attendance of 8.7%. And when we're talking about point in time, in this case, we're talking specifically December 19th of last year to December 19th of this year. We see attendance fluctuate throughout the school year. So looking at end of year attendance data would not be apples to apples. And so we look at point in time attendance data. So Roseway Heights is up 8.7%. on the
057successful school survey, their student responses indicate on average 10% overall increase on all of the survey attendance topics over the past two years. And that includes for one of their focal groups for African-American students whose rates increased by 10% specifically in sense of belonging, engagement, and school climate. And so that directly correlates to what impacts attendance. They have an established climate team and provide monthly professional learning. They have implemented that. And on the successful school survey for teachers, the teachers there responded regarding explicit implementation, they were up 11% from the previous year, up to 75%. Okay. Strategy two. The second strategy now focuses on um supports and interventions for students who are chronically absent through a data-driven attendance team process. The attendance data team is a representative team in each school and they're responsible for
058regularly reviewing attendance data, identifying supports and interventions for students who are chronically absent, and then progress monitoring those supports. The core actions for this strategy include establishing or strengthening the attendance teaming structure schools developing and implementing a menu of tiered supports that can be matched to root causes of absenteeism and involving all educators in the building. So while there is an attendance team that oversees the attendance support process, all educators participate in providing support. To date, some implementation data. During this school year, we've had 31 schools have participated in attendance team training. 23 schools have participated in on-site coaching to strengthen their attendance team practices. We have attendance data dashboard that has been vastly improved and is available to all schools and teams as they monitor and review data. And there's a robust attendance resource
059website for teams and that's up and running. Okay, I'll pass this back to Shandra for strategy three. Thank you. So the third strategy is communication that focuses on proactive positive messaging sharing the importance of attendance to all of our communities. This would start at the district level with communitywide messaging right to the building level and down into our classrooms. So our actions include both the administrator and educator engaging to in the impact of attendance creating schoolwide goals and through the site councils sharing these goals and updates with the community. So in addition to our building principles communicating attendance through their weekly newsletter and their family newsletters, we as the central office um team have also been in collaboration with our communications department and we have been implementing monthly messaging and communication districtwide. Some examples, our
060social media team has highlighted our goals as well as a couple of schools sharing promising practices. Peninsula and Woodlon are examples. Uh big thanks to Terry Proctctor and Ryan Spencer. We now have a YouTube playlist that um is dedicated to attendance where much of this is shared. And then our media team has also elevated the Roosevelt and Jefferson team for their practices. And then lastly, um we had an extensive progress report by Dr. Armstrong that went out and it featured attendance research, the data, and some promising practices from our PBS schools. So I'm going to turn it back to Naomi. She's going to close us out with some overall PPS attendance data and some technical pieces. So we have some usually some frequently asked questions as we do these presentations. So a couple of technical
061components to review. Our absenteeism definitions are determined by the Oregon Department of Education. They consider regular attenders to be students who students with attendance rates at 90% or above. Chronic absenteeism is more than 10% absent for any reason which is equal to about 2 days per month for a student. There are additional categories for severely absent and acutely absent. And again, as I review, our 2526 attendance goal in our district continuous improvement plan is to increase overall attendance by 5% with an increase for focal group attendance by 8% because that needs to be accelerated accelerated to close that gap. So, where are we to date? As of December 19th, the point in time increase is 2.3% overall up to 74.24% 24% for students. Um, overall we have 59 schools that have increased or maintained overall
062attendance and 100% of our PPS subgroups have increased attendance rates. And when we talk about subgroups, here's a chart that shows you the rate, the percentage increase for each of the subgroups. You can see overall is the bar in the middle and then all of the subgroups. And then finally, just a quick, we get questions about the daily attendance procedures. One final piece of information, staff have guidelines for when attendance needs to be recorded and this is followed by automated notifications through parent square to families. This you can see on here the notification times are staggered based on the beginning of the school day. Um this is also in alignment with requirements for the from the state around safety and notification for absences. Okay, that's it for us for presenting and we're here for questions.
063I have a few questions. Um, [clears throat] first of all, thank you. This is exciting to see the work is happening and that you have data to point at to show positive momentum, which I think is great news, right? That's got to feel good. >> Um, and um, I know it's just going to get better as the initiative rolls out and um, the I don't know like indicators can lag. So, we know that I have faith it'll get better from there. Um I just have a couple of questions um based on what I heard. Um and then a couple of I guess sort of comments or just like things on attendance that I've heard about. Um, so first of all, when you talk about focal groups at the very end, is that just talking about
064like multilingual learners, groups like that, or is there some or is that like a subgroup of schools you're particularly focused on or >> the focal groups of students that and that also comes from a department of education specific focal groups? We showed you a chart that had subgroups that was much broader, but we're talking about the specific focal groups of um >> there's five. So, multilingual learners, black and native students, special education students, students from poverty. >> That's it. Okay, great. Great. Thank you for sharing that. Um I um I guess more I'm guess I guess I have less questions right now than just comments for now. But um my first of all I got some contacts from a school in my district about the attendance messages going out on religious holidays and having some
065maybe some schools have chosen to have like language that's a little bit more like alarming around kids. missing school and I just wanted to share that we might want to consider how to handle communication about absences on days where there's religious holidays um where there's a large num or you know a number of students missing school because of a religious observation and even though I get it that it still counts towards our chronic absentee numbers I think that given sort of the if you look back in different areas of our work we've talked a lot about our school calendar being more respectful about this sort of thing. It might be too that we might want to give some direction that maybe we change up that message on that day that it's a religious observation. Particularly,
066I think it was um Jewish high holidays where something went out and I actually heard from I think three or four parents from a school in my district or my zone about that and I never said anything to anyone about it because I read all the emails and I can't figure out how to reply to them. Um, so I'll just like put it out there that it might be something we might want to think about going forward on um, since we do have people trying to be more like assertive in their communication and probably have like an auto email that goes out or whatever. Um, so just might be something to think about. [snorts] >> Thank you for and I I do want to say thank you for that feedback and we'll follow up on
067that. Um, the automated message that comes out is a district-wide one and so we'd want to look at it from the district level and if any schools have individualized one, we'd want to know about that. and no messages show out when an uh absence is excused. But it is good to note that if someone has just not gotten around to calling in that we want to check on those messages. We're trying to make thing as all of our communication as >> inviting in as possible. So we'll review. >> Yeah. I can offline talk to you about which school to thank you. >> And then um I also owe you all an apology. My kids are chronically absent from school. Um, and I think it's every single year. Um, and that's just because they it's I
068think it happens to a lot of kids, but for us, my dad lives in Florida. It's super expensive to fly there on breaks. We usually take a few days off school for that every year, and that's 5 days that gets knocked off for them. So, I'm saying that only to point out that we know we have a difference between chronically absent kids and severe and acutely absent kids. And while I know the state is looking for us to look at the chronically ab chronic absenteeism period, I'm just curious if we do anything to differentiate between my kids who are at school 89.9% of the time um and kids that are there in those other groups because I think it's probably the kids that are severe and acutely that really have those academic impacts. So, I'm
069just curious if we treat them differently, do anything differently, or if it's all kids that are chronically absent get kind of treated the same. >> No, it's definitely differentiated. Um, this is the role of the attendance team in every building. They will review the data. Notification will stay the same to raise that awareness. >> Um, even students who are chronically absent in some cases are the ones that are impacted enough as the years progress academically. So we want to continue to raise that awareness that if things are accumulating but what the response is to that will be differentiated and so we can talk about triangulating data. If we see a student is chronically absent and we also look at their academic data and we look at their behavior data that's where we'll start uh implementing
070supports and interventions for students. If we have a student who has all excused absences, they're maintaining their grades, things are going fine for them, then notification to the parent that we're monitoring attendance, make sure they're aware. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> They would be differentiated. >> I would just add to at the state level, they don't differentiate between excused or unexcused absences. they're reported to um the state alto together. >> But excused and unexcused helps inform our school teams. That's strategy number two, the data teams on if we have a student that we know has been sick, they have excused absences, that's not a student that we're going to necessarily staff and provide interventions for because we know what the root of the problem or the cause was. So that's what she's saying is it helps
071our school teams to know. >> Great. And then finally, it's just always fun for me to remind everybody that the successful school survey is the data that I care the most about. Um, and so I'm excited to see some of that come forward. Look forward to a more complete briefing down the road. Um, because to me, that's where it all happens. If we can make school feel like the place to be, then our kids will be more successful there. So, thank you for the work you're doing toward that. And I will turn be done for now. Last time we did three rounds, so we'll see how it goes. Um, that was really great. Thank you. Um, I'm curious whether um are all of the same strategies used to the same degree across age groups or
072like do we find that like in some like in elementary school we're leaning more on on one than another? I can only speak generally to it a different it is different from school to school based on staffing and expertise and student need and then across grade levels. Broadly speaking, a student at elementary school has much less control over their attendance um than a student possibly who is a junior or senior in high school. And so your response and your wraparound would be different in that case. and it really is tied to the root cause of the absenteeism. If it's related to uh needs in the home and it's more of a social service response, that would be across the board, but it is differentiated by grade level and age of student. >> Thank you. Do
073we have I can't remember if I've seen this before or not. Do we have data on the root causes of absenteeism? We um an only anecdotal during the chronic absenteeism project from last year. That was one of the pieces that we collected and we came down with a list and what we were hearing most often. It was not scientific. It correlated directly with what attendance works which is a national group. They have the list of most common root causes. It correlated directly with that. We don't have when you enter attendance in the system, it really is excused, unexcused doctor's appointment. So, it doesn't have that level of root cause information. Can >> I just follow up on that? Is transport for high school students especially? Is transportation one of those barriers? >> That was listed
074as one of the it was listed in our project last year that transportation came up in a variety of >> c situations where it could be a barrier. >> Yeah. the trimeat cuts strike me as being a big deal for for our kids and families um for our high school kids particularly since that's how a lot of them get to school. So, >> and in the elementary what um continue to come up too is if we have um uh families attending schools outside of their um boundaries, then that also caused some attendance issues, transportation issues, and that's coming up quite a bit in the elementary. Um, this isn't a question, but I'm going to say it out loud so everyone in this room is aware of it as a problem. Um, I have a kid
075who uh takes special education transportation and it is inconsistent and I have the flexibility to drive him to school when it is not on time. But, um, I imagine there are so many families, probably most families that don't have that flexibility. Um, so I'm curious whether you have seen that specifically show up and I'm also just flagging it. Um, >> yeah, >> because it's a big deal. >> Yeah, thank you. >> We didn't hear I don't recall hearing specifically around special education transportation last year. We did hear some very specific examples of one particular bus stop that was consistently late being picked up and so that whole bus load of students would be tardy. So there was a variety of examples that we need to address with specific situations. So hopefully you're in communication with
076your >> investors. Yeah. >> Yeah. With your school that Yeah. >> Okay. If that's it for me. Uh >> I guess I'll just flag one other thing that I noticed just just as like a for the people in the room generally I guess. um the multilingual learners are showing up for us as one the kids that are having the least improvement on their attendance and two are having the hardest time um on other tests right now. So I just want to draw attention to our multilingual learners and us needing to figure out how to better support those kids and their families. And we are trying to just on an addition small additional note we are trying to get a grasp of the impact of ICE activity in our district on uh multilingual learners, Hispanic students
077and all of our other focal groups because also anecdotally sometimes trying to gather that data but we are we have seen some directly correlated dips in attendance around activity that's happened in proximity to schools. >> Thank you for that. Um Christy, your question triggered that question in my mind, but you spoke to it and I'm really glad that we're paying attention to that. >> Yeah, I guess that's what I was thinking about, too. And I think especially I mean for those who haven't seen the news today, we had some people in Portland shot at a health center um by ICE. So I think that's going to be even more of an issue. So we really need to lean in on that, I think. Yeah, >> absolutely. >> And maybe think about like I don't know,
078get creative. Can I ask a a quick question? That was Oh, yeah. Hey, I I couldn't figure out Sorry on my phone. I can't figure out how to raise my hand. So, I was just looking for looking for a good segue because that's exactly the sort of thing I was going to ask about. I was wondering does PPS, you know, I was reading um an article in the Oregonian recently. You probably all read it about the attendance dashboard that um the Beaverton School District has created for staff and principles that basically monitors. It has an interface where you can monitor attendance in real time so that they can see issues, you know, as they're arising versus, you know, a look back, you know, after a month or, you know, even weeks. Do we have anything
079like that or any plans to implement something like that? Seemed like a pretty great idea. >> We have a Sorry. >> Did you want to speak to her? >> Yeah, we were getting ready. We were excited about this. [laughter] >> [gasps] >> It's been >> Hi, good evening directors. Good evening uh director Lefor. Thank you for that question. Our uh attendance data dashboard updates on a daily basis. So there's only a 24-hour lag. Um and in some cases, you can actually see it by the end of the day what's going on. Um especially like at high school with period attendance. But um while it gives schools the ability to look at point in time, it also gives us the ability to look at as of today, what's happening this week, what's happened in the last
080month, etc. with particular students. >> That is great. >> Yeah, thank you. I will just add as a as a MTSS team that's um leading the DESP the district continuous improvement plan around the attendance goal it has been extremely helpful because we're able to go in my team meets on a monthly basis to look at the data we identify schools who are um you know having increase attendance and we celebrate and then we're also able to identify schools that may be decreasing at that time and then we can help re uh uh support reach out and support them so we're not waiting till the end of the year for that to happen or even quarterly. >> Oh, I have another question. I'm so sorry. Do we see any differences between our community schools and other
081schools? >> So, um yeah. Do you want to talk to uh >> just thinks it's funny? >> Dr. Carmen Williams just sent us a email that we were all celebrating and um looking at our dashboard um 19 of the 20 community schools are ones of showing increase in attendance. So, and I should add too that I think all of our schools have a five at least a 5% or more um goal to increase by the end of this year. So, that's what we're using to track if they're at least on that target. >> That's really good to hear. is a huge advocate for community schools and what those can do for belonging. And I guess related, do we partner with I mean in my dream world, we're always partnering with social services to help our
082kids that are needing the most support. Um are do we bring in social services, social workers, DHS, anything like that, people that are already working with families to help with attendance issues suffer? >> Yes. in the ideal guidance for what an attendance team looks like at the school. The social workers, school psychologist, counselors are primary members of that team and they're the ones who access those services for students. And we also um I would be remiss if I didn't mention that our SUN partnerships and our partnerships with our um culturally specific community- based organizations also provide support to students and families around topics such as engagement, belonging, and things that we know increase attendance and making increase um also the ability for students to feel more welcome and safe in school. Um, is there anything
083that we are working on specifically oriented towards kids from immigrant communities to help them get to school safely during this time when families may not feel safe leaving their homes? >> Are you referring specifically to safe safely given the current environment? Is that >> Yeah. Yeah. Given given the political climate, >> I can't speak to everything that's happening around that. There are teams meeting and I don't know if anybody here is part of that work meeting collecting the data and talking about what those responses are. There is a specific district level response or school-based response when we know that there's a concern in the community and do you lead that work? I I don't lead that work, but my director of racial equity and social justice is a member of that work team. And what
084I can say is we have um as uh Naomi mentioned we have school specific protocols that are put in place and we also work with our culturally specific organizations like um Latino Network and others who host know your right evening e evenings where things are focused on knowing your rights your responsibilities um making sure you have a safety plan and things like that. So we have even though we aren't always at the forefront we are working with people who have a lot of reach into the community to provide those supports and communicate communicate those outwardly. >> I can also say we have trained our our transportation units the bus drivers are all know what to do if there's any kind of ICE action. We've also many of the schools have um worked really closely with
085their PTAs to have like walking buses or assisting like that. So those schools are um to continue what Dr. Adams was saying, they're continuing to work with community, whether it's our contracted community partners or just PTAs and other uh community members who are helping with kids getting kids to school. >> Thank you. You have anything else? >> I'll say it and we can turn. Um, I have this random idea that I was thinking about before and I forgot to say because of like my own family situation where like of course I feel this profound sense of guilt but also like I'm not visiting my dad in July in Florida. So, um, I am, you know, 47y old woman. Um, and so, um, [clears throat] so I wonder if it might be interesting to like have
086like a packet of like I don't know when I was absent in school, we used to get like packets. I don't want my teachers to have to do them, but I just thought it might be interesting. I'll just throw it out there to like think about things we could do when we know kids are going on trips or kids have been absent a lot where it's like cool here's like a activity packet and we just like have one that's for second grade and one that's for third grade um where it might help them with you know doing some practice of general skills ail affiliated associated with that grade level that would just be like something that could be handed out to kids that feel guilty for being gone like my kids. So anyway, just kind
087of random, but like literally because attendance is such a focus, my second graders worry that it's going to be because of her that her class has like a lower rating on whose classes have the most best attendance. So anyway, [laughter] >> might help her feel better. The same one who doesn't want to go to college. She's if she heard this, she'd be like, "Stop talking about me." Anyway, [laughter] >> thank you. Um, Director Lefort, did you have anything else? gonna take that as >> Sorry, it took me a second. No, I'm all good. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you all so much. [clears throat] >> Thank you. >> All right. Our next meeting of the teaching, learning and enrollment committee is scheduled for February 12th. At that meeting, we will have a deep dive into
088math and literacy curriculum and technology use in schools. And this meeting is adjourned.