2025-11-18 Board of Education Work Session with Vote on Consent Agenda

001All right, let's get start. Oh, wait. Cara, are we ready? >> Okay. >> Ready to go. >> All right, let's get started today. Thank you all for being here. Uh this public work session of the board of education for November 18, 2025 is called to order. All items being considered this evening are posted on PPS website under the board and meetings tab. This meeting is being streamed live on PPS TV services website and on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks. Please check the district website time for replay times. Uh good evening and welcome again. Thank you for being here uh and taking your time out of your day to care about public education. Uh before we get started, some housekeeping reminders. Uh we're excited that we have so many community

002members out here as well today. Uh just a reminder, if you brought signs or whatever, please keep that below chin level so the people behind you don't get obstructed views. Uh for safety reasons, please keep walkways and aisles clear. There are stairs over there. Don't trip. Uh also, just in general, let's be respectful for to each other. Uh we have a pretty full agenda tonight. Uh we have a vote on consent agenda. will be receiving an update on a due diligence for the future site of the center for black student excellence. We'll also be getting an update on enterprise re resource planning project and hear an update on property taxes in the Portland public schools local option levy from the economist for Multma County, Jeff Renfro. Uh but before we begin, we have a few

003words from director Sullivan. Oh, I'm >> um yeah, I just wanted to share that [clears throat] I went to the Da Vinci performance of Prom school edition uh Saturday before last and it was just so amazing. They had [clears throat] so many people. I thought maybe the whole school was involved. Um but and there was so much energy. Anyway, I I wrote to the principal or emailed the principal to see if it was the whole school and he said no, there were 90 students involved and that's about a quarter of the population and he said that um he wanted to I asked him to share something about it and he said that they had roughly 90 students participate and the entire school is allowed to audition for the performance. It sounds like what you were

004saying too about Roosevelt, but the number of students who actually participate varies largely on the production and that the principal always tries to choose things where lots of people can be involved. But I was just so impressed with the work besides the performers. The all the kids did the teching of it and they even had a program where students had made the program. And I just wanted to call out here. We've got all that wonderful art back there, but we've got all sorts of different art. Art in many forms coming from PPS. I just wanted to appreciate it. And I know that um Christy was able to see it, too. And I don't know if you had more to say. >> Well, I'll just do a shout out because it doesn't always happen that like

005you know a kid from when they are a baby and they are like a remarkably talented teenager, but the one who played the sort of like main actress diva Mhm. >> That that's I mean I've known that girl since she was a year and a half old and she's so amazing. So it's just really cool when you get to see >> just the potential of people. Yeah. It was very great show. Good. Very good show. And >> I went with um my two little girls and got to have some awkward conversations with the second grader afterwards because it gets it's pretty PG-13. [laughter] >> Yeah, it it does. And he had also said that choosing the performance was very thoughtful and that at first some of the parents thought >> might be a problem with

006the administration that way it is. not our administration, but [laughter] the administration of the United States, but they chose to go with it and really was an example of inclusion and care and it was very, very well done. >> I wept at the end. >> What? >> I wept. I like cried at the end. Yeah. >> Thank you, Director Siver. >> I wish we had some visuals to go with that. Well, we should put that on the make us on. Um, all right. Let's start off with the consent agenda. All right. Um, board members, if there's any items you would like to pull for a separate consideration, please indicate that. Now, Miss Bradshaw, are there any changes to the consent agenda? >> No. >> All right. Do I have a motion and a second to

007adopt the consent agenda? >> Feel like this is really loud. >> So moved. >> Thank you. >> Second. >> Thank you. We have R. Director Chase Miller moves and director Sullivan seconds the adoption of the consent agenda. Is there any board discussion? >> Miss Brasher, do we have public comment? >> We do. We call them. >> Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Call them. Aaron Frasier. [clears throat] >> Thank you, Ann. one. Aaron, >> I assume you know all the the rules so I don't have to go over them. So, thank you. >> Yes, Aaron Frasier. I'm the executive director of the Center for Black Excellence. Uh, and thank you all for having me tonight. Um, I did not get the confirmation email for this. So once again, we're in a similar position, but I will

008say that we've really got pretty clear things um and pretty consistent things that we'd like to communicate to the board and to anybody who's watching or listening in. Um the first is that One North is a property that is in the heart of Albina, the historic, current, and future home of black children and families in Portland. And though decades of systemic disruption and displacement have made it such that there really is no one place throughout the district that is going to be proximate to nearly all black students. Uh one north itself as the home for the center for black student excellence makes perfect sense. Nearly 40% of PPS's approximately 3600 black students go to school within three and a half miles. And of those 3,600, 900 of those students are within a five-minute walk to

00910-minute bike ride. In addition, we have to remember that the CBSC is a the district's part in a much larger project to restore and revitalize inner northeast Portland and in combination with the city's preference policy with housing projects spearheaded not only by Albina Vision Trust, but also Williams and Russell CDC, Self-Enhancement, Inc., the Urban League uh and several others that will introduce hundreds of new units in the next two years, yet alone in the next 5 to 10 um and for generations to come. This is a place that is not only where black students are today, where black families have legacies, but it's where they will build futures. Second, 75% of Portland voters approved $60 million for the Center for Black Student Excellence in 2020. Housing the Center for Black Student Excellence at One North

010will only be a fraction of that cost. A fraction. And to be clear, right, 37 to $41 million significantly less than 60. We have to remember that while it would be great and we will be able to invest in other schools in other school properties and other school projects that are also aligned with the mission for the Center for Black Student Excellence. We have to do that only after we have made sure that this property itself is everything that community envisioned it to be. And despite the narrative that folks are trying to push, students, families, educators, elders, and leaders of community- based organizations have been planning and dreaming alongside other experts, including staff in this district since 2020 to get to where we are right now. Portland public schools itself hosted more than a 100

011community engagement sessions of varying sizes to develop the student for the center for black student excellence vision 194page document published in the spring of 2023 that outlines community hopes and dreams for the center. The district has also spent year many years exploring properties and configurations for the CBSC. That some people who are commenting now, tuning in now, weren't there for that does not erase the work of all those people over all those years. [applause] Thank you. And because we've taken so long to get here, I'm going to take just another minute. First and foremost, right, the CBSC's operational expenditures at One North are a drop in the bucket for the state's largest and wealthiest school district. And while we're talking about what would be a gap in operational funding, that is just a little over

012$271,000. That is after tenant rents are expected to raise more than 430 around $436,000 a year to assist with those operational costs. Moreover, sitting PPS school board members said in this very room just weeks ago in relation to varsity boys volleyball that $238,000 needed annually in perpetuity to sustain that team is quote really not that much money and indicated they thought they could fund raise for it by the spring. Why is this any different? Finally, the CBSC will transform PPS from a school district that says it values community partnerships and family engagement into one that lives it. In May of 2025, more than 35 black student and family serving organizations came together to sign onto a letter demanding the district finally make good on its promise of the CBSC. Together, we committed to working with

013the district and each other to put on programming to activate the space, to collaboratively fund raise to support the success of the center, and in doing so to further this district's very own board goals and our broad community's hopes for black students, families, educators, and community. Altogether, I would like to urge this board to continue with the progress that it has finally begun to make and make sure that it moves to a vote on the Center for Black Student Excellence on December 2nd. Thank you very much for your time. >> Thank you. [cheering] [applause] Thank you. Uh we are still on the consent agenda. So um is the >> or yes there's no discussion on the consent agenda. We'll be now voting on resolution 7212 through 7214. All in favor please indicate by saying yes.

014>> Yes. All opposed. Abstensions. Student director Rardo. >> Yes. >> Thank you. The consent agenda as amended is approved by a vote of 6 to zero with student representative RTO rto voting yes. All right. Next on we have the first real item tonight is the update on the due diligence report for the one north building that we have identified for to purchase as a center for black student excellence. Dr. Armstrong, could you please take it away? >> Yeah, thank you chair Wong and I know that the team will come forward that's presenting. So, we're looking forward to the discussion tonight. So, you all will receive an important update on our due diligence process for the One North building, the proposed home for what will be the epicenter for activity, learning, and upward mobility for our

015students and those who support them. The center is a component of our commitment to improve outcomes for students across Portland. As part of honoring that commitment, we have been working to identify a permanent highquality home for the center that reflects the importance of the work. Identifying the right long-term home for the work is essential and the one north property remains our top candidate. Over the past several weeks, our real estate and facilities team along with our external partners have been conducting a comprehensive due diligence review of the property. Now, I want to pause to acknowledge two important points. First, we do have programs planned, and you will hear more about that this evening. And second, Portland Public Schools maintains tenants in several locations across the city, and our real estate team actively manages that portfolio.

016The revenue generated from these leases provide meaningful support to our district. I wanted to pause and say that because it sounds if from some of the conversation that the idea of having tenants in the building is new to Portland and it is years and years old. So I just wanted to emphasize that. So tonight staff will walk you through the findings from the analysis. And so with that I'll call up our senior director of family and community engagement, Nicole Watson. We have Dana who is our senior director of real estate in construction. And I'll turn it over to you two. >> We I think you have the flipper. >> Uh I can >> Good evening, board of directors, Chair Eddie Wong and Vice Chair Michelle Deass and our student representative Ian RTOR. Thank you, Superintendent

017Armstrong. Um tonight we are excited to share a little bit more about what we are um not envisioning but what we are dreaming and building in our new center for black student excellence. I'm going to start us tonight with a quote by the late representative John Lewis. >> Okay, >> there we go. >> Oh shoot. Sorry. >> Where you going, girl? >> Okay, there we go. >> We're doing great. >> Technical difficulties. All right. So, I want to start with um grounding us in what we mean when we say beloved community. The beloved community is not some random utopia. I'm paraphrasing now. It is in uh it is the real world when we uh can build uh let me pause. The beloved community is not some utopia. It is the real world we can build

018when we live by love and by justice. And I know we don't talk a lot about love in educative spaces, but tonight we are going to the living expression of beloved community. One of the things that we are developing uh alongside our center for black student excellence in the family office of family and community engagement is uh we're leaning into what we are calling our dual capacity and we're building capacity within our office, within our district, within our school leaders, within our students, and within our families. Within that developing framework, we are naming the birth to brilliance. Uh is where our center for black student uh excellence is anchored among what we are calling a pillar or a principle we're naming as beloved community. Uh this center, as you all know, embodies one of the

019core principles of what we are calling thrivability. And we talk about thrivability often, but we need to see that demonstrated not just in practice, not just in theory, but also in our posture as we move as a system with love as our infrastructure. And so as we think about the vision 194 page document, which we are calling our yellow brick road, which leads us to how we are supposed to not just think about the system, but this systems level redesign that we keep talking so fervently about. The due diligence piece that we are going to name tonight will also talk about the feasibility study that translates uh the aspirations that we have for spatial design and what it looks like in functional possibility. And so each program uh that area that we talk about will

020place value into the space and then each hub really becomes a manifestation of that beloved community in real time and in progress. This side you've seen before, but what we really wanted to do is just make sure uh that we really anchor in this is the heart of Albina. And that's critical because that is the number one selling point. Um and as to Aaron's point, uh the executive director of the Center for Black Excellence, uh it is everything that we envisioned and commissioned it to be. And not only is it where black families currently live, but it is where we will build our future. I just wanted to directly quote that after tonight's remarks. And so these are some of the statistics that I know Dana will go over a little bit more in detail.

021I want to spend some time naming what we are calling Chappie East, our Michael Chappie [cheering] Bryce [applause] Center. And it's important that we split this out as we're talking about beloved community. So we think about this programming and spatial design for Chappie East. It is envisioned as our programming space for connection, culture, and community education. This is where we will be including and launching our 8,000 hours of tutoring and academic support to extend the learning day, which is deeply important, where family and community education can thrive. I'm thinking of our friends in the house tonight from Black Parent Initiative and our workshops that we can co-partner and lead together. I'm thinking of our teaching, learning, and [applause] I'm thinking of our teaching and learning space led over by our senior chief um of academics,

022Christina Howard, and thinking about professional learning for our educators that is centered on culturally responsive practice that we've gotten as out of the outcomes of our culture in the classroom. The Chappie Center will also not only hold those pieces, but our arts and storytelling, which is so deeply important uh to black community, our intergenerational programs, cuz our elders and our pillars need and deserve a space to also be within community. We know from research and our own data that students who feel connected to their identity, to their community, and to their school culture show higher attendance, stronger academic growth, and increased persistent in the areas that it deserves the most. Cultivating belonging and connection is one of the core principles of family and community engagement. The programming in Chappie East builds that connection through culture

023as curriculum, turning heritage, storytelling, and collective care into conditions for achievement. But let me go a little bit deeper and let me name four specific programming areas that I believe you can expect in the Center for Black Student Excellence. Academic tutoring and extended learning. That's me doubling down on that 8,000 hours of tutoring and academic support coordinated with school-based teams and mentorship and all of those pieces. Family and community education, regular parent and family academics hosted in partnership with family and community engagement focusing on supporting learning at home, which is work we are seeing across our district. continuous improvement plan. We call that stitching, meaning what we're doing on one side of the house, we're doing on another. We'll also see professional learning for our educators, on-site culturally responsive teaching labs, and equity centered leadership

024series for our beloved educators. This might be in our space that we are calling our Joyce Harris Legacy Hall. [applause] >> Not yet, baby. Not yet. Not yet. >> Taking my thunder. This is the space where you can expect professional development, symposiums, and convenings translating black educational excellence into practice. And finally, you can expect community cultural programming, ongoing art residencies for our beloved artists that are in the space, cultural festivals, oral history projects that celebrate Portland's black educational legacy. The Center for Arts and Culture, a living museum, if you will, can host rotating student and community exhibitions, linking culture to curriculum, strengthens our identity, our sense of belonging, and our baby's motivation around core predictors of academic engagement. Why this matters? The Chappie East brings together the academic, the cultural, and relational ecosystems that students

025deserve in order to not only live, but to thrive. Every tutoring hour is paired with mentorship. Every family workshop deepens partners and partnerships with our schools. And every cultural gathering becomes a literacy, wellness, or leadership learning opportunity. By grounding student achievement in community connection, the Chappie East delivers outcomes that go beyond our test scores. It cultivates thriving learners, engaged families, and inspired educators. This is what beloved community looks like, not in theory, but in practice. Learning surrounded by belonging, achievement wrapped in care. Let me talk a little bit about the Dr. Harriet Adair Center. What we're calling Adair West. >> Listen, [applause] I can go. Miss Cara, do you mind dancing the slide for us cuz it wants to be stubborn? >> Yeah, it's on. >> That's too far. >> We're doing the best we

026can. >> Yeah, we're doing >> Let me tell you about the Dr. Harriet Adair Center that we are affectionately knowing as the Adair West Center. The West building is dedicated to the pursuit of academic brilliance, imagination, and innovation. And if you know anything about the Dr. Harriet Adair. This is a namesake. The programming will focus on academic brilliance, innovation, and instructional design. This includes STEM based learning labs. I'm thinking of our friends in the space from building blocks to success and I urban teen helping us build out our STEM space. We're thinking of dual credit and internship partnerships, digital media and design studios, student innovation residencies that connect education to enterprise. Our babies deserve enterprise. A Dare West will serve as the district's incubator for extended learning, career centered or connected programming, and educator development,

027where ideas become instructional models for our district and beyond. Together, these programs will move our district from talking about equity to building an infrastructure that delivers it in hours, in opportunities, and more important in outcomes. We are not just building a center. We are building capacity, community, and a future pipeline for black excellence in Portland. A Dare West is where the district's commitment to academic excellence, innovation, and access gets to come to life. It transforms the traditional idea of school by offering students extended, applied, and accelerated learning opportunities that link directly to your very board goals for literacy, for math, and for post-secary readiness. But let me talk a little bit about four areas of programming you can expect in a deer west. We're thinking of extended learning and academic acceleration. So when we talked

028about what we're seeing in Chappie East for our launching of our 8,000 hours on our community side, then we're thinking about what that looks like academically and innovatively when we think about that for our babies. Targeted tutoring and academic support, extending that school day for middle and high school students. tutoring that is coordinated with our academic teams, programming that is designed across our board goals, and our STEM innovation is absolutely paramount and critical. We've had a lot of conversations about AI. But unless our our children and our families have a chance to access, then we'll only just be talking about it and not living and shaping and cultivating it. If a dare west is where students can learn how to shape the world, Chappie East is where they learn that they belong in it. >>

029[applause] >> I want to talk a little bit about the brass tax, our conceptual fit. And for this, I'm going to pull directly off of our uh slides. So, we uh have received our feasibility study, which the feasibility study did exactly what we had intended for it to do, which was tell us that it is a conceptual fit. the vision that community left us, the the yellow brick road, our breadcrumbs, then that tells us that what our community has envisioned indeed fits in the one north property as our uh Chappie East and our Adair West. Their conceptual test fit confirms this. So, in this space, what we can expect is our center for arts and for culture. This living museum of cultural studio where black culture, art and history are preserved and cultivated. We are

030talking about our events center which is our Joyce Harris Legacy Hall. The soul of our community gatherings which is deeply important. A space where education meets celebration design for shared meals uh cultural performances and professional learning. Our leadership hub supports the people and partnerships who steward this work. We've talked a lot about where do we get the FTE. We have it in our house already. we just now get to use it in more creative and innovative ways which is I think the idea of the center. Next I want to talk a little bit about our resource hub. We've need our connections our connection between public realm and the innovative or innovative work that will happen throughout our building. our innovation studio, which is deeply important because we have launched at one point an innovation studio

031within Portland public schools and we think it deserves a sunrise again and what that could look like in an innovative space bringing together students, educators and partners to explore STEM, explore digital design and media content and problems in our world that our babies deserve access at solving and then most importantly wellness. We talk a lot about social emotional learning having a movement and balance and collective space where we get to care and think through the whole child, whole adult, whole family, whole community. And so in this part, we think about our uh our wellness um center. I'm going to pause because I do believe that I want to hand it over now to Dana to talk to us a little bit about our building assessment and she can go a little bit deeper. >> Sure.

032Hey, just before Dana goes, I just want to pause to acknowledge the work that Nicole Watson has done in lifting up programming and [applause] all of the hard work. >> Thank you. Thank you so much, Nicole. And um now I look forward to hearing from Dana. >> It's so much less interesting. Nobody ever applauds building assessments, but okay, [laughter] talk about HBAC. It's so exciting. Um so the buildings are currently used as commercial office space. Um changing them to education means we will change the occupancy from a B occupancy to an E occupancy. And that's going to ne necessitate some additional life safety measures. Um seismic fire suppression, things like that. Um it's it's probably 10% of the overall budget. It's not huge numbers, but um there are things depending on where we place things

033in the building. We're going to need to probably do some uh modifications to the building for the e occupancy. Uh we've identified that there's is the worst case scenario would be about 15,000 square feet on the upper floors that we would not utilize for classroom type space or but that doesn't mean we can't have kids in there. It just means we're not having kids all day and in the space that kind of thing. So, uh, until we really look, sit down and go through, um, the program and figure out where all the pieces are going to go, we'll that will determine where we need to do some work. Um, but we know we're absolutely certain we can fit the program very well into these buildings and with space uh left over for community partners or

034rent paying tenants. We like that idea. Um, so that's that's the basic the overall building assessment. These are good buildings. They're 10 years old. Um, they're in good shape. They've been wellmaintained. So, um, that's actually what I said in the beginning there. The HVAC system, we are recommending replacing this. It's a system that we have in some other locations. The refrigerant that's being used is being phased out. [music] Um, so it's in when we go in to do improvements and we start doing construction in the building, that's the time to to replace an HVAC system because it's an invasive process. So, you really don't want to do that later because it's very disruptive. Um, the building are currently professionally managed. We um review those operating expenses. They're consistent with what we see in the marketplace

035and what our experience has been as property owners. So, I don't have a lot of concerns there. Um and we will continue to work with that property management company for a while as we transition and kind of figure out who's who's on first. Um in terms of uh tenants that we may be moving around or reshaping. So, and then we will take over the management. As Dr. Armstrong mentioned previously, we do own um a fair amount of real estate here and we have leases in other buildings that we manage. So that's not that's not new to us. Um and just making a point about the property taxes because we've heard this has come up that the the commercial tenants pay their prora share of um the operating expenses and the common area maintenance charges and

036and their prora share of property taxes. PPS does not pay property taxes on vacant land or land that um we use for our own our own educational services. Uh parking is limited at the site. I know people have talked about that a lot as well. Um we the there is an LLC actually that owns the middle portion between the two buildings and which we would be a 70% owner in that or manager in that. So um we do lease they do lease from the church that's adjacent to the property there about 24 spaces that goes through um June of 27. And we've already reached out to them to let them know we'll be talking to them post closing because we would like to extend that of course. uh to provide some additional parking for the

037site. In going through the real property due diligence uh as well as the physical aspects of the building, we've also looked at the title report. Um our council has looked at that. We have no significant issues there. We've done an ALTA survey so that we know what what the easements are and encroachments on the site. No issues there. Uh we did a level one environmental study which is a non-invasive but it did not indicate any need for to move on to avasive level two study. And again, because it's 10 years old, I we weren't surprised by that. Um, I know we've seen questions in the media about bond compliance, and if there's questions about the bond, I know um our contracted uh legal council will be happy to answer those, but um we are we

038feel absolutely confident that this is this is usable bond funds. So the the timing and the cost um come down to how we actually move into this and where what starts first one building or the other building or both buildings at once depending on uh what makes the most economic uh sense and is most feasible for the program. So, uh, the price that we're estimating 37 to 41 million all-in that's with the HVAC, the construction, uh, to change, you know, the building to to suit our educational needs. And we're thinking that's probably 24 to 30 months from board approval. As you know, typically design takes upwards close to a year because we really got to get down into the nitty-gritty of what do we need in each room, who's accessing it, who's using it, what

039are they using it for, all that kind of stuff. It's it's very detailed work and there'll be a lot of work with the city as well as we work through that. So that was a very quick overview, not nearly as exciting as yours. Um but at the December board meeting that we'll be coming back uh on December 10th, I think is when we would like to wave contingencies related to the building assessment and the due diligence. And we believe we're ready to do that. And so we'll be recommending moving forward with that and closing on the property. >> [applause] >> So, so before we open for discussion and questions, I also want to thank >> Thank you. I was Yes. Thank you. I want to thank uh Dana White for um all of her work

040as well. So, I appreciate you. Thank you. >> Thank you. [applause] >> It's been a long time. It's been a long time. >> It's been [laughter] Oh my god. >> Great. Thank you both for the presentation. Um, just really quick, I just have a couple things I want to say. I think it's more for the public to so that people understand and we have it on the record. Um, I just want to be very clear. Uh, the 2020 bond allocates $60 million for the Center for Black Student Excellence. And we've been getting a lot of like news reports about or or emails from people asking like, "Why don't we spend this elsewhere?" We cannot. That is illegal. The $60 million have to be spent on the Center for Black. [laughter] It's illegal to spend this

041on not the Center for Black Student Excellence. >> Thank you. >> All the way in the back. We cannot We have to spend this $60 million on the Center for Black Student Excellence. This money cannot be spent on staff. [applause] It cannot be spent on facilities uh that is not related to Center for Black Student Excellence. It can't be spent on sports field that's not related. uh it so therefore you know this discussion about why are we spending this money on center for black student excellence when we have for example budget crisis and and staff shortages that's out of the question we can't this is an obligation that the voters trusted uh PPS and the board to carry out in 2020 um the other thing I want to also clarify is this number 8000 I

042just want to uh be very clear that we all know what this means 8000 is a reference to a correlation between when we look at our students are are our are our are our high achie highest achieving students and our students that are struggling. And when we look at their K through 12 career, what eventually uh adds up is about what we call 8,000 hours of enrichment time debt. And what that means, enrichment time are things as little as like me reading to my kid every night to bed to things like summer camp or or uh summer soccer camp to like ballet classes. they begged you to take take them out or like we do math problems or math puzzles in the car trip, you know, little things like that or uh after school tutoring.

043These all things count as enrichment hours and and when we look at uh the students that are struggling, they have an enrichment debt. And the the purpose of the center for black students excellence, this is a vision that didn't start in 2020. it started decades before was uh aimed at the the the the purpose you one of the biggest goals of the center for black students excellence is to start making up for that gap to bring that gap down to zero. Um and so therefore this is I just want to be very clear because I I know that we're the the number 8,000 has been thrown around quite a bit and I think there was some confusion about what that meant. Um and and that's all I have to say about it. I just want

044to clarify those points. >> Can I just >> Thank you. [applause] >> Yeah. No, I appreciate that. Thank you. Wonderful words. And if you could repeat it 10 times, that would be great, but I know we don't have time for that. And I I just want to maybe um just say one thing about that, uh which I appreciate and I think it's the idea around the bond. And I just want to be clear that we know that it was up to 60 million. And if we had found allin a place for five million, then we could spend 5 million and have 55 million left for other things, whether it's 5, 10, 15, 40, or 50. We know that we can go up to 60. So, I just want to be clear that any funds that

045aren't used for whatever we deem um appropriate for the CBSC are funds that we're able to do um other things with. And so that leaves us almost $20 million to impact other spaces in um in the area. So I just wanted to make sure that I just go on record for that. But yes. Okay. >> Yeah. Thank you for that clarification. I just want to also add one more historical perspective. Um you know I've been in this position for 3 years. Uh this the search for property has been going on since 2020. And just to kind of give some perspective, the leading candidate before we found the one north property was the Salvation Army site. And I remember it was not only a dump, uh it was it required a ton of work. It was

046very gross. It was in a location in a not an ideal location. And it also would have required things like seismic upgrades, um, e-code upgrades, HVAC upgrades, all these things that and I think if I remember correctly, actually I don't remember correctly because I don't remember the number, but it was pushing very close to about $60 million. Um, and so I just want to kind of give a reference that there has been ongoing searches. This one north building is unique. Um, and uh, it it presents an interest a very um, big opportunity. So, thank you. That's all I want to say about that. Um I'm going to hand it off to um Vice Chair Depass. >> Yeah. Um I thought everybody played math games in the car. You know, Priuses are two. Um Teslas are

0477.5 um with the kids. And so I I appreciate the uh framing around that 8,000 hours because I wasn't I've talked about it, but I haven't been um able to articulate what that actually means. But it is those out of you know it's just going to the airport with your kids or taking a a trip or going to the library or um I had one question and and by the way I appreciate this um due diligence report. I have a background in facilities and so when I thought oh we're buying this building I knew that no matter what we bought whether it was a commercial building whether it was a residential building whatever we were going to buy that wasn't purposebuilt for the center would need some rehabilitation. Um it was just the extent to

048which that rehabilitation is needed, the tenant improvements and just you haven't mentioned it, but there's also egress. Egress meaning can large numbers of people exit a building quickly, but also the security. That's going to be a huge conversation about which doors open and who can get in and that I don't envy the people doing that exercise. Um so I'm I'm really happy to hear um about the work that's needed. It it's not scary to me. Um I read through the engineers report etc. I had one question about the property management because as we're talking about this delta in the revenues versus operating um expenses. Do you do we know what we're paying the property management firm? >> I don't I don't know. No >> I was just curious because if we >> typically it's a

049percentage of the rents they collect. >> Okay. So that was my my question was if would we would there be a savings if we >> if we brought the property management inhouse? >> Yes. I don't know the exact number of what that savings would be, but yes. And but we and we'll need to, like I said, we'll transition that as we work through the construction and things like that. >> And I see the value of having them. They have relationships with the current tenants. You want to keep that going. >> Yeah. So, that's great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And >> um look forward to our uh engagement on the second. >> Okay. Thank you, >> Director Sullivan. >> Yeah, I'll call you. I remember um last year there was talk about

050as far as programming and paying for programming that once we had a place you felt there were lots of places people that would want to help support programming. >> It's an investment. >> Do you still see that as a possibility? One of the things that I deeply appreciate about my partnership with Aaron Frasier, our director of CBE, Center for Black Excellence, is one of the things that she says so poignantly is that people have a hard time investing in what they cannot see. But now that we have a north star, now that we have something we can point to, yes, I deeply believe we can fundra, we can get folks behind a vision, and we can build this out in a way that folks will want to get behind it uh and will be in

051line to do it first. because I know we don't as the district don't have the money to really support the programming. So I'm hoping that's the case. >> I think what we see in the 194 page document is investment not just from the educators educative side of the house but the communal side of our house. And so I think what beloved community is saying to you is we're not alone and that they'll not only envision it with us but help us build it for our children, for ourselves, for each other that we're not uh working in concert by ourselves but in concert with community. So, I don't have a a doubt in my mind that not only will we be able to fund it and be able to sustain it, it will thrive. >> And

052just a couple things, thank you for that. Um, Nicole, I also want to point out that we already make a multi-million dollar investment in organizations that we believe wrap around properly our students to advance learning and the work that we're doing. And so, I know sometimes there's like this belief that like once this center is in place, then we'll staff appropriately. We're already staffing and have support organizations that's helping us move the work. And the the other thing that's exciting to announce is that the Center for Black Excellence, the organization now has their 501c3 tax exempt status and I'm sure that that will expedite in um their fundraising and ability to um be a significant partner in raising funds. >> Yes. >> Yeah. And another thing you already mentioned in the report, yes, that there

053were maybe some security concerns with the wellness center and there would be more security concerns with all the different um renders and so I'm just imagining that would be taken care of. >> Yes, we will make sure that the babies are safe, Director Sullivan. [laughter] >> Yes, we will. But what I loved about our tour that we got to have, I was uh for those in the space was gracious enough to be able to walk many of our board directors through a tour of the space. One of the things that we got to see in this space is that it is already fitted for some of those security systems. But to Dana's point, we would need to work with our design team to figure out what's going where and then how should we access it.

054But that's the fun part is figuring out the so what, now what. now that we have this northstar that we can kind of point to, but we've already got the system ready for keys and badges and different things on one side than we've got on the other different floors and different access. So, I do believe that we'll be able to really uh get a little bit more granular with those details once we've closed and we've kind of gotten a design team in and we can now start thinking floor by floor, room by room. >> And all this due diligence is being paid for by bond funds, right? >> I believe so. Yes, that's correct. >> Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. >> Chair rto. >> Yes. >> Student representative RTOR. >> Yes. I'm not the chair of

055this different. Um, so I had a so I had a a quick a semi-quick question. So about the financials. So the the cost of the building is only about 16 million. But then and you guys separate out the HVAC, you know, from the from the overall like maintenance. But I'm just interested what else is in there in terms of like the that 2530 million in terms of upgrades. >> That's the construction for the actual building the actual use. So depending on like we said what goes where in the building that we will need to do some construction so that they are classrooms or it's a steam room or it's a movement lab or whatever it might be. Um that's the cost of doing that construction. And then additionally, there's probably about 10% of that we

056will need to do some probably seismic and fire code upgrades because it's an educational occupancy. >> So, >> thank you so much. >> Sure. You bet. >> Uh I have more comments than questions, but I do have a question or two. Um, but as I was uh doing my prep over the last few days and reflecting on the decision that we're tasked with making about this Center for Black Student Excellence, um, the image that keeps coming to my mind is that of planting seeds. And in the CBSE, we are planting seeds in Albina. going to try to not get emotional, but um [sighs] we have the very real opportunity to grow something really beautiful and past do here. And this is atonement work. This is restoring something that we have lost. Um, and in combination

057with the work of Albina Vision Trust and SEI and some of our other partners and all of the partners that are coming together to contribute to the Center for Black Student Excellence, we have an opportunity for an albino renaissance. And >> it it is it's it's it's the the manifestation of our dreams for our kids. um for for generations. Um I was at the listening session for Jefferson at SEI a couple of weeks ago and what I heard again and again was our kids will be the generation and it gives me shivers. My babies are in this generation and I am excited for them to have this opportunity near home, near where they go to school to be poured into by beloved community and I'm excited for all of our babies to have that. So

058with that, um, my questions, you really answered my first question in your presentation. Um, and I'm I'm just going to surface some of what I've heard um some of the questions that I've heard from the broader community. Um, there have been questions about uh how the CBSC will specifically um address the gaps in educational outcomes we've seen for black kids uh for too many years and how the CBSSE will directly impact board goals. But I think you spoke to that. So, if you have more to say, you can, but I I think you got that covered. Um, my other question, um, and again, this is in response to some of the, uh, questions coming out of the broader community. Um, can you please speak to the difference in types of tenants and the difference between

059um, commercial tenants and our community partners that will be occupying space at the CBSE and how we are considering those relationships. um what the purpose and function of those different types of relationships is and uh if there's anything fishy going on. [laughter] >> There's no fish. >> Before before Dana answers that, let's tackle the academic one. And I I just want to emphasize and I know the team has heard me say this. our tier one, our first our primary goal is making sure that all of our students, particularly our back black students, are receiving a high quality education in the classroom that they sit in every day. So that's first, right? And then I think when we think about the 8,000 hours and all the activities that wrap around not only our students and our

060families is where we imagine this work accelerating and really bringing power to what we're looking to do as Portland public schools. I know that I shared this a couple of weeks ago with you all, but uh this year after the testing results from the spring was the first year that we stopped a 9-year decline in ELA for black students in Portland public schools. [applause] So, I only say that to say that what's happening in the classrooms matter. our curriculum, our instruction, our professional learning that continues and this enhances that work that we're doing in the classroom. >> You kind of stole my thunder. >> Oh, I'm sorry. [laughter] >> That's impossible, Nicole. >> Give it back. >> So, what uh Superintendent Armstrong just shared is that right. So, what we know is happening in our

061classrooms are absolutely critical and paramount. As a former building leader and principal, I can tell you it's not enough sometimes. And for babies that live in our margins, we must wrap around them, which is why we call them wraparound support. And so, we're already seeing this model. All the Center for Black Student Excellence gets to do is double down on what we believe culture and belonging and connectedness uh thrives and and how it provides centering for our babies. So, I think the classroom component is absolutely critical, but the wraparound support is just as critical because what happens when they leave our school doors and they go into community, what we want is coherence and reinforcement. What we're seeing at our district level is that coherence. What we're about to watch and do with Center for

062Black Student Excellence is duplicate that coherence into community so that we're stitching all across our system so that everything points back to our board goals. So while I could specifically lay out absolutely floor by floor and I was prepared for that floor by floor, it would still be just a vision at this moment but it is all so that we can wrap around our district's continuous improvement plan which is at the center of our academic uh point. And what that work tells us is that not only does what we what are we doing in the classroom matters, what we do in community equally matters so that our babies are feeling the both and not the eitheror effect. >> Yeah. And then I just want to underscore that I I just want to be personal here

063for a little bit. So I have a sister who lives in another state that's in critical care. And so I am caring for my 11-year-old nephew and my 14-year-old niece. They attend school at Fabian and Jefferson. And even as superintendent, sending them to school during the school day is not enough. I find myself asking those schools what else? And cuz I got to tell you, it can be traumatizing as a black woman sending black school kids to school every day. Like that's that's a reality and that's a truth. [applause] >> Knowing that what is there may not be enough. >> Correct. >> And so when I think of the Center for Black Excellence and all that it promises that will be enough. >> That's right. >> Yeah. Thanks, Director Sullivan. Um >> the question I

064think did we answer your question about commercial versus [laughter] that are you okay? Okay good call you next [clears throat] >> oh so commercial well all we mean by commercial tenants are tenants that pay rent in an office building that aren't necessarily our community partners. They're just they happen to rent space from us. So that's that's the difference of what that is. But a community partner may also rent space from us but they're part of our whole ecosystem. So that that's the distinction between those two if that helps. >> And I think we're going to have to spend some time in our design team determining what ourus look like, what our agreements look like for tenency. And so those are some of the spaces that we get to bring community back in and then work

065on our operation side of the house to ensure that there's that word again, coherence. >> Can I I just want to follow up really tagalong question that has to do with that. In the assess in the feasibility study report, it mentioned um uh the upkeep is about 700,000 a year, right? And then and it mentioned that it's expected that um the commercial tenants would cover about 400 something,000 and and the because we PBS doesn't have to pay property taxes for the part that PPS uses, but we do have to pay property taxes for those commercial portions, right? And so that that 400 some thousand covers the property tax as well is included in that estimate. >> Yes. So so the property tax that we get charged are that's a just a pass through basically because

066the tenants that are commercial tenants that are for-profit organizations uh have to give their prorat a share. So they're build for that. So they pay they pay that portion of it just like the common area maintenance charges. community partners typically 501c3 they don't have property taxes either. >> Awesome. Thank you. Uh Director Sullivan and then student represent RTO. >> Um it would probably happen that some of the students who most need the care and the love won't be able to get there. So will have you have outreach as well and outreach into the schools as well? >> That will need to build. We're not building it until we get a Yes. But yes, that would be the partnerships that we'll be building with our community based orgs. And then there'll be an opportunity for us

067to expand our reach with once we get our center up and operationalize figuring out what those connective tissues are to the other sites. But that's the spiderweb effect. That's the ecosystem that we're referring to and talking about. Uh but yes, that would be a definite part of our uh overall goal would be ensuring what do we do with the scale. How do we ensure whether it's shuttles, uh walking school buses, the buses that are parked adjacent. So then we can then walk to the center the parking spaces we will get our children there. That is absolutely doable and feasible with this site. >> Okay. Thank you. Welcome >> chair student represent. [snorts] >> This is just another another quick financial question. So for the parts of the building which we will only be uh you

068know leasing out commercially. Do we still have to upgrade those up to e-code? >> No we're not. >> Well no but it depends on what if if that's like one you're getting into the real specifics. there's maybe on one floor there's one commercial tenant and then the rest of it is, you know, we use it for the e for educational purposes, then we probably would have to do it then. Um, so it it really depends on where they're at in the building and what else we would be doing. It's it's our use that drives the change. So, um, whether we can separate them out from that or not, we'll have to just see where things land. and student representative RTO, that does sound like something we could potentially pitch to our district student council around

069design systems thinking so that we have student voice elevated at that discussion. >> Yes, thank you. >> Okay, >> Director Split, >> I have a couple questions and a comment. Um, so, uh, I wanted to clarify a couple of things. Um, one is I saw on your slide something about the city may restrict our use of the top floors due to the height of the buildings and the fact that they're >> mass timber. Mass timber. >> Yes. >> Um, >> is that something that we'll be working with them to figure out? Because I'm real attached to that kitchen. >> Yes. So, as we as we go through the design process, which again was very detailed and and takes quite a long time to go through, we'll begin to work with the city on what what

070would you be requiring us if we want to keep this and have what are we doing with the kitchen? Is it just is it random classes? Is it all day every day there's students there? H what is the use like what are the age of the students? Things like that. So, we'll be working with the city around how do we can we mitigate an issue if we need to, which we may have to do that, which could be stairwells, um doing increased fire prevention in stairwells or floors and ceilings. So, yes, that we that's a beautiful kitchen. I agree with you, director. I just like to use it. >> I'll like hold forth for a second um to loop everyone in who hasn't seen the space. Um the fifth floor of Chappie East has just

071an epic commercial kitchen and it is like the exact type of kitchen that will take a kid who's like I don't want to cook and will turn them into like >> James >> I will be cooking meals for my children in 30 years. >> And to me like I think cooking is a skill that's pretty darn important, right? [laughter] So I just feel like it would be a I really hope we can figure that out. So, I'm just going to just going to put a finger on the scale of like let's figure out how to teach kids to cook in such a magical space. >> One of the things Chair Split, thank you for that. Um, one of the things that I think is important to note, um, Dana, do we work with the city

072often or are they unknown partner for us? >> They're [laughter] an unknown partner. >> So, they know where you're coming. >> All right. They're trusted and they're usually really good to work with on things like this. >> Maybe bring them to see the kitchen. Anyway, just a thought to like open their eyes. [laughter] Um, great. So, I wanted to ask about that and then I also wanted to ask about so there's been a fair amount of chatter about the commercial tenants and people having concerns about that and my understanding in reading some materials I think but also from chatting at the tour is that most of those spaces are just leased through 2028 and it's almost 2026 which I know is weird but it's true and so that's pretty that's pretty soon, frankly, where we

073could have turnover and change it and have it those commercial. So, if people really do feel like having commercial tenants in this space is not a fit, it's it's a pretty near-term problem. Do you agree with that? >> Yes, I do agree with that. And I think as again, as the plans are developed, and we look at those lease spaces and say we're going to need that, you know, we've got two years probably of planning and construction anyway. So, then we're not going to renew that lease. We would let them know that um up up front. So great that. Yes. So I I think that as we plan through this and work out what goes where and when and how we stagger that. So that they may or may not it may or may not

074be workable to keep commercial tenants. That's certainly that's not the primary reason to own the building. We're not real estate developers. Um but but so if we need that space then we need it. But yeah, building partners renting the space could still provide income that would be helpful for covering operational costs. >> Absolutely. >> Great. But doesn't necessarily need to be just like I don't know who's there. the random dentist floor, whatever. [laughter] Okay. Um I'm sure [clears throat] they're lovely, but um I don't think there's actually a dentist on the third floor. I picked a floor that doesn't have a dentist [laughter] on it. >> Um so I did I'm going to try maybe [clears throat] be too cute by half, but um I wanted to put say two things. One is that I

075feel like when we have this conversation about this space, I want us to always try to get ourselves back to 2020 and what we were feeling at the time as a community, as voters, as people who decided to put $60 million for a center for black student excellence on a ballot. And in that moment in time, I I think back to what director Chase Miller said that this was about atonement. This was about investing in a black community that has historically been so discriminated against over and over and over again in Portland. And so to me, I want to just always remind us of that moment in time. And even though for some people that moment in time has faded, it hasn't faded for me and I don't think it's faded for any of you.

076And so I just want us to remember that because to me I'm hearing like like sort of an ascribing of details about what was in that bond and the bond didn't get into those details about raising academic achievement or insert thing that you think we should be doing with the money instead. And I think we should be increasing academic achievement. I'm trying not trying to say we shouldn't. But I also just want to be clear that what I feel like we invested in was a black le effort to decide for yourselves what you wanted to do [applause] >> in Albina. And so to me, this is the cute two cute by halves. Everybody ready? [laughter] There's an organization and an effort called Albina Vision Trust. This is Albina. You have a vision and I trust

077you to [laughter] figure out what you want to do in that space. >> [applause] >> And I will say one other thing, like anything that's under $60 million to me doesn't strike me as fiscally irresponsible. In 2020, voters in Portland who were really concerned with Black Lives Matter >> decided to trust you all to make a decision about your community and investment in that community. And so I just want to put that out there that that's my motivation and why I'm just supportive of this effort. if the if it had come back and the building was in poor shape, something like that, I think we'd be having a different conversation. Um, I think maybe it was surprising that the building requires as much as much investment, um, but it's still under that $60 million price

078tag and it seems like a dream to me. So, thank you very much for all of the work and for everybody who's worked so hard to to bring this forward. >> Thank you. >> I think a bar a barbecue invitation is forthcoming. [laughter] >> Um, Director Englesman, >> thank you for saying that. Hi, thank you. Can everybody hear me? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. Sometimes my headphones don't work. First of all, I want to apologize to everybody for my not being there. Uh two months ago on September 15th, I realized that I had a family engagement. Uh i.e. my twin's birthday, which I've known was happening for 12 years, was happening today. And I asked that we could reset this. And we were just unable to find another time. There's a lot of us

079with busy schedules. And so we we kept it on today. and I thought I was just going to miss it, frankly, because I I thought this was happening last week at the FIO because of our conversation in September. So, I'm calling in. I'm only going to be here for this conversation because it is so important. Um, and then I'm going to go down and blow some candles out with my kids who I'm excited to celebrate with. Uh, I want to say first to to um Nicole, thank you so much for this programming layout. It was very impressive. It was very inspirational. Um, I was really moved by it and I'm really excited by it. Um, when I sat and had coffee with Aaron a few months ago, it was the same same ideas, not laid

080out like this of course, but just the same vision and the same excitement and it was palpable and I felt it and I feel it today. So, I'm really grateful for that. Um, I think our community listening, I know some of you think only 12 of us are listening, but I know that more pay attention. So, this is exciting stuff that is being put forth. That said, and I will mince no words, um we know the federal government is watching Oregon, so we have to get this right. We have to make sure it's right. Um I'm asking the questions that I'm asking in September and I'm asking tonight for a couple of reasons. The first being I'm I'm a lawyer. I can't help it. I look at this kind of stuff and I look at

081it with a different lens than others look at things. Um, and two, because I want to make sure that any decisions we make don't set us back as a state, as a community, as a as a school district as a whole, because I am I am worried about that about the the the federal government. Um, so my questions I start with, I understand there's some conversation about parking. I I have heard a little bit of answers, but I will frankly say I have not heard and I would hope by December, maybe you have answers today, the transportation um needs for the kids to get here. The deck to me suggests that maybe yellow school buses will be used, which I said in September, we don't have any money for that. We had to cut school

082buses to well, we the board at the time had to cut school buses um significantly. So, our elementary schools are finishing and frankly starting and finishing at times that are just not good for our kids or for our working families. Um, and so I would I would love to hear if not today, then by December a a concrete plan for how to get our kindergarteners from Far East or West Side on their own because they have working parents um to this regularly. Um, I don't know if you have an answer for that today or if that's something that can just be worked on and brought back. I I'll just pause for see if there's an answer. >> I can go ahead. >> I think this is Can you hear me, Director Englesman? >> I can.

083Oh, yeah. Thank you. >> Okay. Um, we talked about this a little bit um and we've been talking about it a lot. It is a puzzle piece that we'll have to figure out. No different than we would have in any other of our buildings um and any of our programmings. We thought a little bit about uh some of our programs like our MPG which has it's a citywide so babies have students need to get themselves there from all different um avenues and times and accesses. So I think it would will require some creativity and it will require for us to think about a systems level redesign and what that looks like and how we are creative with thinking through solutions to get our children there. But I do think we can and I do think

084that we're in the process. And of course, it's going to require a little bit of nuance with that design team to be able to figure out what that looks like, what the city will allow, what we can build, what we can do, what we can create, and then how we can kind of work around some of our our challenges and our barriers for the programming side of that. I know our ops team always has a different lens in which they look at some of these solutions. And I think that does depend on how many kids from what areas and things like that. I'm I don't run transportation. uh that's way above my pay grade. Uh but I know we do have space there to pull in small buses, things like that. There's other ways that

085we transport kids. So that it's definitely something that needs to be considered, but we're confident we can make it work here. >> Can I can I share something anecdotally as an answer to this? So, cuz I asked about this the meeting I had co when we last talked about this >> and I had the executive director of black excellence follow up with me about it and she runs a bunch of programs for black kids in southwest Portland and I asked about some other schools that had a high black population. Um, and she's in the house. >> She [laughter] um Yes. >> [applause] >> and she told me anecdotally you I mean hopefully I'll get this right that they had really fredded a lot about transportation for getting kids to events that were outside of um

086like Southwest Portland specifically and spent money and got you like had plans and then in the end it turned out that the families were getting themselves to anything that they felt drawn to and that was important for them to get to and it really helped me feel more comfortable um being that I represent Southwest Portland and represent plenty of black kids who would really love to be part of this. >> And also we I'm not sure who I also talked to about trying to also align programming like there be like some special occasions where it's like a week in the summer where we're bringing kids from further along um in other parts of Portland since they can't be as much every day. But it's kind of like when you have family that live far away,

087you don't see them every day, but when you see them, you really get that intense experience. So we can also use that. So, I somebody else said that to me along the way on this trying to help me feel more comfortable um with that issue. Hopefully, that's helpful. >> And then I also I know um our superintendent might pop in, but I'm going to pop in before she does. What I will also say is, and I want to recquote Aaron Frasier again, that 40% of our babies live within three and a half miles from our space, which is a 10-minute bus ride, a five minute walk. >> And then we building our when we talk about Albina Vision Trust, if we trust them, the rede investment in our um of our development of building affordable

088homes within our area ensures that over a hundred or so children would be on their way into our community. uh forth with >> may I add historic a little historic context? >> Sure. >> Um so way back in the way back time um black students were bust out of this neighborhood. >> Come on. >> And you know what? Our moms got us to wherever we needed to go. >> Yes, they did. >> And some of the siblings took the buses like literally from this neighborhood to IDB Wells. >> Um our our students are driven all over town every day. They get we get the kids where they need to go and and we do have a a good bus service. um it's fallen out of favor with today's kids, but a lot of kids take

089the triat. >> One of the things that we uh >> you know, and and by the way, a friend of mine, a neighbor's nine-year-old rides her bike all over Alba >> by herself. >> She's nine. >> Some of the conversations that we have been having with our community partners around the the building of our Chappie East and Adair West um have been the the resurfacing of trauma around our bus project. So, we've been in communication with Kimberly Morland um around our Oregon Black Pioneers and our busing. And what I did not realize was my own father who went to Franklin High School but grew up in Northeast Portland was busted to Franklin High School um all the way but he was a um a student. It wasn't Franklin. It might have been a different elementary

090school but he was supposed to be at Boisee and was busted all the way uh near Franklin which is where he ultimately ended up went to high school. So what we see this as is also when we talk about atonement uh we talk about repair. And so what the center for black student excellence does with Chappie East and Adair West gives us is reconciliation a place for us a living room of sorts for us to return to. Not just for the babies that currently live there but also for those that had been displaced to return. >> I would like to add something anecdotal also. Um, as I've been reflecting on this and the question of transportation and location and historical significance, um, this project has made me think about the Jewish Community Center, which is

091located in Southwest Portland, um, in the neighborhood that, uh, is the historical home base of the Jewish community in Portland. And um while Jewish folks who still live in that neighborhood use that center regularly, so do people so do Jewish people from all over the city. Um because you go to where your people are. And um I see my friends from Chyros in the house tonight and they can tell you that families come from all over Portland and Vancouver and Gresham to bring their babies to school at Chyros in the Humbult school building. Um just like my mom drove me all around town to go learn from Joyce Harris at Asky back in the day. Um we make it work. we we get to where our community is. Um and there is precedent for this.

092We're not trying to reinvent the wheel here. >> Thank you for all of that. That was really helpful for me. Um I do want to clarify something. At three and a half miles, I I don't think you meant as a five-minute walk. I I don't even think it's a 10-minute bus ride. Um but it so it is quite a distance for kids to go and I appreciate that people will make it work but um three and a half miles um is basically from downtown out until about probably Mount Scott and that's about a 45 minute to an hour bus ride um out in the Foster Pal neighborhood just just for some kind of um thoughts. Uh certainly I appreciate that nine-year-olds can ride their bikes, but I I don't know that any nine-year-olds will be

093able to ride from the west side or from Bridger or um even Fabian down to there. So, I'm I'm glad that it is um on people's minds because I do think that and I know from my um lengthy experience of working with kids who don't have anybody who can just drive them around or get them where they need to be and are doing this on their own. Uh it sounds like there are going to be lifts to get them not not the lift Uber but [laughter] Lifs to get them where they need to be. But we cannot pretend that every child out there who needs this center has someone who can get them there because they just they don't. And whether they're in kindergarten or 9th grade, there going to be a lot of kids

094who are half a mile away or 5 miles away who are going to need more than the idea of a yellow school bus and a lot of help to get there because those kids need to to be there. Um so my next thought uh I have a few and I appreciate the time. Um, so today I was at a stand for children event with a number of other PPS people and directors and it was great and the conversation of chronic absenteeism came up there and it's come up at our board meetings a few times and it is a a problem that the state that the nation that the district grapple with and so I guess my question is um and someone I wish I was there in the room it's easier to see faces talking

095somebody raised this question of for kids who aren't going to school I think it was director um director um Sullivan. So there are a lot of kids who either aren't going to school at really at all or aren't going to school regularly. Um and so how do how do we get them there? And you know, do we have the wraparound services going to find them? Because those are the kids that they need to be in school. So these wraparound services hopefully can get them into school and help them that way. Um and then also how do we get them to the the CBSE? Um because if they're not maybe if they're not going to school, they'll come to the CBSC. I don't know. But maybe they're just not going anywhere. And those are the kids

096we need to find. So, how do we do that? >> May May I just I just wanted to jump in. Thank you for that that question. I just wanted to jump in and state that our attendance percentage is the highest that it's been. Um and so we're really excited about the intentional focus that our building leaders have had on attendance. it's paying off due to their hard work. And so we do believe that right students need to be in class to learn um just like they would need to be present to access resources. But that's one of the reasons why you heard earlier senior director Watson talk about the birth to brilliance. Um because when we think of like the epicenter or the ecosystem of a family, this work isn't just about the students that

097we educate every day. It's about their support network and how we grow and strengthen that. So, you know, I know from experience that students, you know, may opt out of school because of anxiousness, not feeling like they belong, not feeling like they're in a safe space, not feeling like they can access the learning. The purpose of this center is to get at that. >> Yes. >> Thunder gone again. [applause] So, really quickly, Director Englesman, I think you bring up two uh two great points about the about the physical location of the building um with with regards to his distance. However, personally, I don't see this being different at any other building that we would choose. And as Chair Wong said at the beginning of this meeting, a center of black student excellence does have to

098exist legally, and we have to spend $60 million on this. And so I, you know, personally I love this location and I don't I don't see there being a better location, you know, for the center of black student excellence as you said, you know, 40% within 3.5 miles, you know, it's like sure, you know, you know, there might be there might be a few kids, you know, um, who it's was a little bit farther, but it's like I just don't see that being different in any other building. Um, and I think that that we have to be careful here, you know, and of course, you know, we need to be diligent and we need to make sure that we're spending our money wisely, but I think that we need to be careful here and and

099not let perfect be the enemy of good in this situation. >> You better you better. >> Thank you, uh, student representative RTO. I I appreciate that. I, you know, to Dr. Chase, director Chase Miller's conversation about what it's made her think about. All of this conversation has made me think about our trip down to Compton and down there we were in two schools and the in schools were where things were happening. We walked away thinking, "Oh my gosh, that was happening right inside the school. The kids were going from one classroom to their STEM to their um computer room to their electronics room to their whatever they were doing. I mean, there was we saw dozens of rooms right inside of the schools. And so, I'm thinking about that and thinking, yes, we have 60

100million to spend. We don't legally have to spend all 60 to to Dr. Armstrong's conversation about if we were to spend five, that would have 55 left over. We can put that elsewhere and it could go directly into George, into Tubman, into Feben, into Jefferson, like directly in the classrooms there or to build new classrooms. So that's what I'm I'm thinking about when what we walked away from seeing in Compton where the kids were just in the very buildings that they go to school in and then moving right over into something else that was extraordinary and was right there and available to them without all of these other concerns. So I hear what you're saying, but I also push back a little and say we have so many buildings. I was just touring Harrison Park

101and there are it's a new building and there are probably a dozen classrooms right in that middle school that are not being used um and would be readily available to move in ready instead of this 2 and a half year delay. Um I oh I also I have one question like and I think it's really important to recognize that a lot of the kids that are going to be going there are going to be little and this space has no outdoor space and we all know everyone in this room agrees I hope I'm seeing nodding that kids being outside is important and kids having playgrounds and places to move their bodies and places to bond with each other without actually having to sit in a circle and talk because that's how they play nearby each

102other. Um, and so I wonder is there a design conversation happening about making this building something that is little kid-friendly? Um, so I that's my next question. I have a few more, but that's my next one. >> Um, yeah, I just before I hand it over to you, I just want to reply really quick. One of the one of the things that we saw in Compton, I just want to make sure we clear the air. Um, a lot of the programs that we saw when we went to visit Compton High School came from community partnerships. In fact, all those programs that we saw in that one wing were all community partnerships. Yeah. >> And which is Yeah. Which is the vision of the CVS as well in terms of like how do we get these

103wraparound services? How do we provide more opportunity for our kids? And I also just want to make sure we don't lose the script a little bit because the goal of CBSC was not to help every kid in PPS. It was to help, you know, just just because we can't help all kids doesn't mean we shouldn't help some or many kids, right? I just I just want to be very clear that we we keep the script. And last thing I want to point out is that um the vision for the CBSC didn't start yesterday, right? This was a conversation that's been happening for you. You could actually trace it back for decades. But since since 2020 and 2022, there was multiple hundreds, thousands of hours of actually community engagement, uh staff work with with community um

104interest groups. um our we have a lot of black communities leaders also show up and also and and it was a direction that was a cooperative um I don't know I that's the right I can't think of the right word cooperative agreement collaborative thank you thank you collaboration to come up with this vision and one of the things that they specifically point out is that the people who were involved in this did not want this to be satellites in multiple schools because it was very difficult well there's many reasons but one of it was that it's very difficult to pride in something which something that is so inside other things, right? So, it's it's hard to access schools. It's hard to get in. You have to have a pass. It's hard to access during during

105the school day and then to to be there after school is also another ordeal. And and so, you know, we humans are physical beings. We um we need places to be proud of. That's why we have temples and churches and things like that and and to invest. And so the the I understand that we've been getting a lot of and there's been a lot of press about this too about like hey why don't we build the center for black student excellence and satellite parts of multiple school that idea has been um brought up and it has been thoroughly debated for the last 10 years and it didn't go anywhere and I just want to kind of add some historical perspective because the I'm not you know like like I'm saying like these aren't bad ideas

106that are being brought up but they're not the ideas that people wanted and that's a very important thing that we need to really make sure that we um understand yeah center and also understand that historical perspective. So I just want to share that so that we can >> hopefully move forward the conversation but I sorry I want I want you to answer the question >> killing it. >> Thank you. I have like to add real quick director Englesman. I think it's important to remember that Portland is not Compton and Compton did not have a freeway and a hospital and a coliseum land on top of its black community dispersing the entire community across a city. Um, I think if we want to talk about the really inspiring things we saw in Compton, a really great

107point of comparison would be the work that we're doing modernizing our high schools, which should all have that level of resourcing and materials and support. But Compton is a city where the student body is predominantly black and Latina. That's not the case in Portland. We have to do things differently. And in this moment, the community has told us what they want. And it's not on it's not the role of this board to second guess that. I'd like to really quickly offer I think an interesting perspective here because, you know, as stated in this presentation, you know, if everything goes to plan, we're still under budget. And so I see no reason why the Center for Black Student Excellence can't also have a few satellite programs going on. You know, I don't I just I think

108that there that that we probably have the money for for both in some capacity. >> Well, can I jump in there? Speak. That would be a really really good segue for for some questions I have. So, um >> Nicole, yes. To your point, you said um people have a hard time investing in what they can't see. And to your point, um I've received calls from multiple leaders uh in the black community who work within our schools who have expressed frustration because they're not seeing um the connection to academics and closing the achievement gap. So, but what I heard you discuss today, you discussed this with some specificity that isn't in the documents that we have. So, for um it's that I hadn't heard before until tonight. Um, is that academic programming plan something that could

109be fleshed out and prepared and shared with the board in a way that connects with our board goals? >> Um, I love our >> No, I I love that, but um I think that's already embedded in our district improvement plan and I don't know if that would be um ready in time for the vote if that was the question. And I will say, I don't know uh who the staff members are, and I'm not asking to publicly disclose them, but I will say for the first time this year with our success with black students in both math and ELA, we have shown for the first time in nine years that the gap is um closer to closing than it was in the last nine years. So, I just want to refute the statement that we're

110not doing gap closing um things in classrooms because we actually have data from the last testing cycle that proves that that's untrue. >> They didn't say that's not what I said. I said that they they weren't seeing the connection >> to closing the achievement gap academically in the in the plan that we have. I think it's kind of in there, but the way you described it was really clear tonight. >> So, I think director Leaffort, why I really appreciate your question and and I I want to pause for a moment and remind us um that what we do when we um level our really um beautiful expectations right up front means there's no room to grow. We got to build it first. And in order to build it, we got to be able to see

111it. That's deeply important. But at no time would this not ever be stitched through our district continuous improvement plan. The presentation you all had last month, the world's cafe, walked you through each of our content areas. Those content areas don't get to just exist in our classroom. What we were demonstrating through that presentation was that they live also at the central office, not only in our classrooms, but also in our buildings and now in our community. And that's what you're seeing a part of this system. It's year one in the district, the roll out of our district continuous improvement plan. So, one of the things that I think is critical is that if we can fast forward to 2030, perhaps when we've got modernized schools and a center for black student excellence, then we can

112start getting to see that coherence and what the seed grew into. But right now, we're putting it in the ground and maybe we're watering it if community already put it in the ground decades ago. Now, we're actually adding the cultivation to it. And I think that's why there gets to be a bit more specificity once that feasibility study came back. We and we realized it was a conceptual fit. Now that is the job of programming is to get our director in space so that we can start building out what does that look like? But we could not put our cart before our horse because that wouldn't be academically responsible. First, we got to figure out what can go in it. Now that we know, then this is now our time to kind of fill out

113what does that look like across our system. But it has to absolutely work in concert with our district continuous improvement plan. and my office will see to that that coherence gets to be built and that it's thriving within the center and however it looks in our classrooms and in our community. Does that kind of make a bit of sense that of why you might not have seen it as laid out before? But it is also really articulate about it tonight and it's what I've heard from others as well. So I just said it was more clear tonight. >> Well, I haven't heard anything back about that, but I can tell you just based on the feedback I've received and how even I felt like you um made me feel a lot better about it the

114way you spoke about it tonight. And I hope each time I get to be before you, I get to be more clear. But it's almost like we're kind of waiting for the picture to come into clarity so that then like true educators, we get to build the teachable moment around it. >> If I go into it already with that, well then I'm not building with the center in mind. And it's important that in design systems thinking, we keep the problem in the center of our of our discussion and our collaboration. So I hope with each time I'm before you, things do get a bit more clear. Um, but I also hope that it is implied that any center that we have, whether it be in a classroom, whether it be coll-located in a site, or

115whether it be our building that we're going to build, that it's implied that a part of our academic is the connection and belonging that is bringing about student outcomes. Our street data is a bit different than what we see in our test scores, but this improves academic performance when our babies feel better. Right now, you all know that we're engaged in our successful school survey. It's open until December 8th. I hope everyone in this space takes an opportunity to take care of our s but why we do that survey so that we know how climate is impacting our babies and their experience and what we've learned from that data is that that's some room we have to grow and what part of our center helps us stitch that part of our work together by giving

116us space where cultural and belonging can thrive so students get to see themselves be in affinity be connected to the space that they might have been displaced from or a space in which they currently live so that I think I I really appreciate what um Nicole Watson has said and I think what she's emphasizing is that as we advance in time and we know more we're able to share with greater detail and clarity. I think that's even the whole intent around the due diligence process. We understand how much some folks value the written word and we will make sure that we publish documents that speak directly to the things that we said tonight. >> Yes. >> But it's just that that's going to advance as we go. >> Yes. Thank you. It's not it's not

117a bad thing to to have in writing just in terms of you know institutional knowledge and um >> and materials that we can reference. But I also so I wanted to talk about um actually this is we've talked about this in a couple different ways up here tonight um but the board resolution uh 6150 which was a resolution for the CBSSE um calls out investments uh specifically in Boise Elliott MLK Tubman and Jefferson and we've made some investments in Tubman. We have the 120 million coming from the state. Jefferson's being rebuilt. My question is, um, can we consider committing to using the remainder of the 60 million for CBS designed learning spaces in those elementaryaries. Um, Director Chase Miller, you discussed the MJCC and it does work really well because it is attached to the

118school. Um, so I guess I'm wondering if there's a way to have both. I hate to see um you know I'm all for using all of the money for what it was intended for and I would be really excited to see what the remainder is committed to our elementary schools because I feel like that's a that's a way to have you know you know hubs and kind of an entryway for younger students to see what could be possible at the center for black student excellence and And it could be, you know, it's something that's there every day and be activated by CB CBSC every day. Do you see kind of what I'm saying here? >> Well, so all of the people that were on the steering committee for four years are all in the audience

119and so I think anything that comes needs to come from them um needs to come from the community and I think that's how it was it's always been envisioned. But I did hear the superintendent tonight mention that of the surplus funds, if anything remains, that that would be a great opportunity for us to talk about ways that we can allocate those funds differently post um renovation and construction. So, I don't think that it's off the table. Um but I definitely think right now my ultimate focus is making sure that what we are building uh is the conceptual and programmatic fit for our babies and families. So, I had some questions about the actual due diligence report. They're a little more, you know, nuts and bolts if we can ask. So, um let's see. So, in

120the report, it says that the change of use to eo occupancy includes seismic upgrades, which we know. Um but it also talks about um additional life safety measures. Can we talk about what those are? That's typically fire code is is additional life safety and seismic as well. Those are also life safety codes and >> Egress, right? >> Egress. >> And can you talk about like what what impact those changes would make potentially on the space and how it might affect the atrium or access to upper floors? >> How those might affect that? Well, it depends on what we're trying to do again, but typically what we'd be looking at is the egress. We'd be looking at the stairwells. We need to do more fire rated walls, doors, things like that. Um, it can be ceilings,

121it can be floors. It we really want to preserve the atrium. It's a great space. It's it's really it feels so good in there. And I think for the community, that's going to be a really central location. So, how we would program around that is likely not going to be classrooms right next to that, but would be um it could be office space for community partners. It could be administrative space. It could be lots of different things. It doesn't mean kids can't go up there. It just means that that's more difficult with the u the fire code for having classrooms in that space, especially if they're young kids. >> So, kids could be in the space, but classes can't be in the space. Well, I think you can't, right? You can't say, "Well, we're going

122to have five year olds all day every day here." >> Um, because I'd heard something that that at no point could children even be in the atrium. And now I'm hearing something a little bit different. >> No, that's I there's I've never seen a code that said children couldn't be in a space for a period of time. >> And then so the solution to the atrium is to make sure that I'm understanding it. The solution solution to preserving the atrium, which is, you know, an incredible space, >> is to either wall it off and put classrooms off to the sides. I mean, I've been in the space, so I can envision it. >> Um, or to get rid of it and put in floors, but I don't think there's a lot of appetite for, >>

123right? That's not what we think anybody wants to do. >> Hello, Sarah. How lovely to see you. Sarah [laughter] Norman, interim senior director of office of school modernizations. I want to weigh in here because this is kind of a heavy construction question. >> Go for it. >> Um there are mult there's a multitude of ways to treat the atrium from a fire safety perspective. There are um there is fire exhaust systems. There are water curtains. There are there are all kind of things we can do to that space that is not a physical barrier. And then of course through design and understanding what the city would need, that is how we will decide how that programming happens. So, there's a lot to still discover, but I just wanted to clarify that it's not walling something

124off. That's not the only way to treat that space. >> And we h we have a considerable amount of space here that we can manipulate. >> Yeah. Just stay here. >> Just stay put for a minute. [laughter] >> Yeah. Before we before we move on, can I just ask a question about the atrium? That was something that I didn't realize that we could put possibly keep it. So, this is the first time I'm hearing that we could possibly keep it. Can we keep it and also have classrooms there or if we keep it, we can have children coming and going once in a while, but it would have to be office space. Is that what I'm understanding? >> Yeah. >> I don't think we know the answer to that yet. >> Um Okay. I think

125we still have to go through our due diligence of and through design. Yes. >> To understand what this what the requirements will be for that space. But that is something that this team will definitely take a look at and be able to to get back to you on. >> Thank you. Well, I guess I guess I would say that I don't know that it is a design question as much as a a code question. Um, >> yeah. Yeah. >> So, I guess can we figure out ideally before December um can we keep the atrium? And I'm not talking about kids coming in with their parents to, >> you know, pick something up and leaving, but from my my understanding was that kids couldn't be there in a classroom type setting if we kept the atrium.

126And so, that's that's an answer I think that needs to come codewise, not design-wise, but codewise because frankly that atrium, and I have also been in it, it is spectacular. and the idea of losing it and building floors and building walls. >> We're not intending to lose that. >> We're not we're not intending to lose lose director. >> Then I guess my my follow-up question, if we're not intending to lose it, then I would need to know that kids. So So if we're not intending to lose it, we can't have classrooms then on two and three because that's when the atrium is and we may not be able to have students in classrooms on four because of the top level, >> then we can't have students at all in that building. And so we're moving

127over to the other building. >> I don't think that's what >> I don't think. >> Well, that's what I'm that's what I'm asking you to get the answer to me. Can we have >> classes and students in there if we keep the atrium? >> I think we have to work through the code issue first. I think we have to understand what is required from a code perspective within the atrium. But we have no intention of losing the atrium within this building. I we cannot sit here and say that it will be classroom space because we're just not sure yet. Right. But I think but yeah but I and that's what I am referencing when I say we still have to work through that from a design perspective. >> Yeah. Thank you for that because my

128worry is that we end up buying two buildings where we can only at this point today have students on floor four of west because if we can't have students on two and three because of the atrium and we can't have students on four east because of the top level fire thing and one is obviously entrance coming and going and on the other side we have tenants in two and three and we can't have students in five then that leaves us out of two buildings that leaves us potentially with one floor. So this is a really important thing for me to understand in order if you know if we can only have students on four west that's not that's that's not a lot of student space >> heard that that that we could only have students

129on four west neither neither have I I don't I >> well that's what I'm right that's what I'm asking you to tell me that if we keep the atrium can we have students on two and three because my understanding is that the fire issues and director split mentioned it talking to the city about maybe or maybe not can we have students up on four east and five west because of them being the top floors. >> We were talking about those as classroom spaces. We were not saying just that students couldn't we weren't saying students can't go up there. So understanding what we want to put on those floors and what we want to put where in the building which is something we'll work through on the design. >> Ask a question. So as we think

130about designing because this would be a question I would bring to the op side of the house. My first question would be I want it all. I want the atrium. I want us in that kitchen upstairs. >> What are the code spec? This is not a question I expect you to be able to answer, but it would be one I would ask is what are the specifications in order for us to have all of our dreams met. >> Correct. >> Based on that code response, then we would build our programming or design our program within our design team around the code specifications. But it would be upfront that we want all of it. We want all of it. We want that atrium, that beautiful space. We definitely want our babies upstairs. So, the questions I

131would be asking to senior director Norman would be, "What kind of firewall do I need to put up? What kind of meshing do I need? There's a balcony outside. You all got to see me look at it. I want our babies outside." Well, but there might need to be a mesh and a net. I asked, "Could we just build the wall a little bit higher?" They were like, "No, you can't do that. It's glass, Nicole. We might need to put [laughter] Fair. Totally fair." But I think this is where uh ops and programming get to really do our dance together. And it is going to be an immaculate dance of fitting within specification with also adhering to the coherence of our vision. But it will require a bit of delicacy to ensure what what are

132my parameters first and then as we sit in front of our design team both adult and both student then we can think through what's possible with keeping it intact and building some type of specification around it to ensure that our babies get to have access. That will be how we will approach design >> which is different. I want to say something also. There's a thing called a conditional use permit. >> Go ahead. >> We have them all over the district. >> Conditional use. Okay. >> We know that there's not supposed to be a bookstore here on this busy intersection, but can we make a conditional use permit for it? And this is I work for the city. I work for this department. We see it all the time. >> All the time. >> And you

133make an ask. You build you make an ask and then they will tell you what the code requirements are. They'll give you updated building energy code, seismic code, >> mechanical code. Okay, I'll structure. And this is truly no different than any of the other huge modernization and construction programs that the district has done. We get our designers and our engineers on board. We work side by side with the city and we work through the programming dream that is on the table and we execute. And so that is I mean that's ultimately where we are. That's what we do all day. >> That's what we do all day. So >> yeah. And the city will work. It sometimes is a back and forth, but they will work with you to make the building safe for the

134public. >> And this is these are 10-year-old buildings that are sprinkled. And this is these are not difficult dilapidated old, >> you know, tax system, >> right? >> Well, yeah. >> Thank you. I have one last question. Sorry, one more. Um, >> so the operating expenses, um, that that's different than property taxes. I just want to be clear about that. That's not I don't think operating expenses include property taxes. I think it includes electricity, keeping the lights on, maintenance, all of that stuff. So my question is my question is twofold. Um as it is today, the building is the the owner is responsible for a fair amount 300,000 or so of operating expenses. Um we are facing a $50 million shortcut next year as well as OD budget cuts. I mean, it it's looking very

135grim. So, my first question is, even if we kept all of the tenants right now that we have, and we we know that some are leaving. Um, my first question is, if we're up and running, where's that 300,000ish coming from? And I guess my my my sub question to that is if we're thinking about it, how many EAS could that be in classrooms that are helping in title one CSI schools? So, that's my first question. And then during this rebuild, which is 2 to 2 and 1/2 years, we're still going to have operating expenses. And so we're not going to have some tenants during that time because we're going to have to move them in and move them out. And I've heard conversation about rent abatement and things like that. I need to know and

136I hope that by December there will be a specific answer of where that fun where that cost covering is coming from because there's only so many buckets and if it's coming out of another bucket then that means that something else isn't happening. So, that's my last question. >> Thank you, Doc. Uh, Director Englesen, I think I'm a little bit frustrated, I'll be honest, by the question because we don't ask that question of any of our other schools. >> I mean, we don't we didn't say we're going to build MPG building at Benson. How are we going to pay for that? Are they going to pay rent? That kind of stuff. This is the that this question does not come up in any other place. I appreciate that we have a tremendous budget problem. I get

137that. Believe me, I saw the budget book. I was meetings all day about it. Um, we have to make that balance. That's the superintendent's ultimate job, right? So, obviously the money has to come from somewhere and we're looking at where we can make cuts for next year and and beyond. But to hold this building to a different standard or this program to a different standard than we hold any of our other programs or buildings doesn't feel very fair to me as the person who runs our real estate. >> Let's go. >> I I appreciate that. But I'm going to push back and say this is literally [applause] my first time having a conversation about any of these buildings. And so I said this in September, I'll say it again today. I expect to ask these

138questions of how are we going to cover operating expenses every single time that we are looking at or buying buildings or building buildings. So, um, I appreciate that others may not have asked these questions about other buildings and that was their oversight or lack thereof, but I believe that my responsibility is to ask how is the district going to pay for this without taking away from student facing or other we heard a skeletal um crew uh for maintenance. um we don't where are we going to cut from in order to cover these costs and so I appreciate that maybe this board um or at least the board before July hasn't asked these questions before but I am asking it because I intend on asking it every single time because of the budget crisis coming our

139way and that it's not $5,000 or even $30,000 that it's a significant amount of money and I do think that it is our responsibility fiscally to ask these questions >> I have Wait, wait, wait, wait. Like all of us are trying to talk. I'm going to go I'm just going to take initiative. Um I'm going to let other people answer that question. But along the way, what is the average operating cost for like a school? Like I don't like how much does it cost to operate a school? Cuz like if it's in line with how much it takes to operate a school, then I think that that that's helpful to know, I guess. So I'll just who Dr. I'm sorry. I don't know who wants to answer the the general question here or the panel,

140but um maybe along the way if we had that as a frame of reference that could be helpful to like making people understand this is indeed just normal and we're figuring out how to pay for it for >> you know Swood Middle School and IDW Wells High School >> and and and there's not >> the the the numbers >> I just tried to name two really random schools. I'm sorry. [laughter] I want you to understand >> the the the numbers that they're that Pingres that the I'm sorry the property management company is showing us are consistent with what we see in the commercial world and what we see um in in other buildings that we have. We have quite honestly most of our buildings are so much older and in such poor condition they're far

141more expensive to maintain than something that's new relatively speaking and and is that been through a construction project. So I expect our operating expenses to be lower here just like they are right now at Lincoln and they are at McDaniel and some of those places because they're new. So the carbon footprint is right the car that's true the car Yes. That's a big difference like I'm sorry for a while. >> So so yeah I would just like to first of all thank you all for for being here and answering our many questions. I think that I would like to, you know, briefly provide, you know, a momentary defense of Stephanie here because I think that that it is, you know, that it is our job, you know, as the board to ask to ask these

142hard questions because we want to make sure that we're being fiscally responsible so that we, you know, we're not just, as I said, you know, the last time we brought this up, that we're not just serving our black students, you know, and all our students, you know, today and tomorrow and next year, but that we can continue serving them for as long as this board exists, you know. you know, and so I think that those those questions about, you know, about about feasibility fiscally are are super important, you know, are super important um to for every program that we have. But I think that that being said, I think that you guys have given great answers, you know, uh and I think that I that I myself, you know, am assured that that this is

143something that we are able to pay for. I think that on the point about classrooms, I you know, I was just thinking this from a while ago, but I was thinking I was like, I feel like there's a lot of other programming that can exist in those spaces that aren't necessarily classroom um classroom like and so I just think that that again it's like when we're looking when we're looking at this through the lens of this building, you know, cuz cuz what we're considering here is do we go forward with with one north? And I just see, you know, and well, there are other other things. I just don't see any of them uh like any of these uh uh criticisms like I don't see any of these criticisms going away at any other building,

144you know, and I think that this is that again because of this being a new building in fact that it is going to have lower operating expenses than other buildings we might look at. >> Thank you Chase Miller. >> I'm not sure. Sorry, go ahead. I just need to point out that this board, the current board that exists right now, um earlier this year was looking for $150,000 to say what save one day of outdoor school and has also floated how we can fund raise $300,000 to support volleyball. >> So I feel like we can figure out operating costs for the CBSC. >> Director Leford. >> Yeah. So I just and I just wanted to you know um student director to we you're right we do have a legal responsibility to ask these questions. They're

145not personal. They're questions that we have to ask because it's literally our job and at the end of the day the board is responsible for this not staff. >> So just want to make that clear. Um I had a couple questions about what and Sarah these may be more for you. I'm not sure. um when improvements happen um and the tenants like did the tenants have to are is the idea that we'll move them to other parts of the building? Do they have to move out? Like that's that impacts the operating cost. I'm just wondering like how does that even work? >> It depends on what the >> Well, it depends on what the improvement is, right? It depends on if that improvement is going to impact their ability to utilize the space as it's

146meant to be used, right? And there's probably provisions within the lease. I would I would depend on Dana on that, but there's probably provisions within the lease to where if the landlord had to make those type of type of improvements, there would be a set schedule as to how we could do that with our existing tenants. And I would think that it's possible that if it's related to improvements that it could potentially even fall within bond funds >> and not come out of correct. Yes. Correct. >> The one thing I >> also we could there I'm sorry. >> The other thing is is depending on the tenant it could all the tenant may have to kick in for some of the improvements as well and depending on what's depending on what it is. So I

147just kind of want to again depends on the lease depends on the tenant depends on what the improvement is but there is a possibility of that as well. And from the programming side of things, one of the questions I would ask the ops side of the house would be, I heard director Split mention something about leases being up in a certain year. How can we potentially make sure that there is a thoughtful process with how we think of design that coincides with the expiration of certain leases and not renewing certain spaces so that we aren't necessarily having a a cause and effect of having to challenge folks to do different things in our site whether or not they're tenants or not. So, I think there might be a timing piece with that that I would

148ask our design um our op side of the house as we're building out design. Is there a way that Nicole and Face and our director can be a bit more tentious around how we build that so that the timing dovetailes really nicely because we have some runway and I think if we use that runway wisely, we can maybe avoid some of the questions around what we do with the tenant if but that's just a timeline piece. >> Yeah, it Oh, I'm sorry. It's also sequencing. And the good news is you won't get a permit anytime soon [laughter] in the city. That's the good news. It'll be a while. >> That's a fact. >> It'll be a while. And so that does give you that's your runway. That's why we have longer than you want it

149to be. >> Two to three years, which is actually my next is there. So knowing that it would take an estimated two to three years in probably large part due to the permitting, which does take forever. Um um what do you envision CBSC over the next you know couple of years I mean is that obviously it's not an issue but how can we move the work of the CBSC forward during those years so we're not waiting >> I think that is part of where like we have been kind of figuring out like right now our northstar has been one north and getting this due diligence process kind of taken care of and so part of what I think we'll be able to do going forward we'll think through the schools that are located in our

150Abina, our Chyros, our Boyisey, our King. What what what would um some of the anchor spaces look like? We also have partners that are currently already in those spaces. So, how can we work with those partners to think through whatus might look like, do some needs assessment, figure out what anchor partners and activated partners, working with our CBE counterpart, what would that all potentially look like? We're going to have to build it while we're flying it, right? But because we've got some runway with our design team space, that does give us ample time to figure out what could programming uh look like through as a seated kind of conversation as we kind of get started. Does that answer your question a little bit without >> I think I think so. Do you have like a

151like a working list of potential partners that are you know actively interested that you might be able to share with us? >> I do not have that right this doesn't share it with us. Very interested seeing it. Yes, we do have a list of partners who that is extensive for folks. We we are going to have to develop a really robust RFP process andou process to be able to determine this the the who and what gets access to this space and for how long and for during what time. But that's part of what we'll be taking back to community to ensure that the folks that um have been at the table get an opportunity to be vocal about who gets to be in our in the space. >> And then what I'm hearing about and

152I'll and I'll stop after this. what I'm hearing about the atrium and you know that particular space is different than what we've heard as a board before. So I just want to also be clear that there was you know the information has changed for those in the room lately >> and that's [clears throat] the difference of time. This is why we wanted to have this conversation on the 18th. >> Well I just want to be clear like that >> so we could explore those questions weren't coming out of nowhere. >> Right. But I'm just saying [laughter] is these are the questions that we wanted to be able to answer on the 18th and it was going to take time for us to be able to answer. And then the other thing that I want to

153say is and I appreciate the patience of the team and the board as we navigate some of these questions. Really what will be before us December 2nd and the purpose of this time is to be able to answer questions so that the board can make the decision and vote to remove the contingency so that we can move forward with the purchase. A lot of the things that are coming up now, I find myself wondering, is this the to answer the question of whether or not to purchase or is this to answer the question on how we move forward months from now? And I think a lot of this conversation is months from now. And I really want to get to what do you need to know or ask so that we know if we're moving

154forward on December 2nd or not or we'll give you information so that right I don't want you to vote now. give you the information so that you will be informed to make a decision in two weeks. I think that's why I was trying to get a little more tactical getting back to the actual due diligence report and what has changed in terms of our knowledge about the atrium because the atrium is the building >> and so in what I'm hearing today is different than what which is good different than what we heard before and that it's possible that students may be able you know may be able to access all of the building and it's the classrooms that would need to be separated like that sounds reasonable to me >> and I appreciate that I

155just want to say though and I know that I've been reading and hearing about the atrium and the importance and it is beautiful but I don't think at any point we've ever said that CBSC is all about the atrium. So I think that those two it's just important to emphasize that while the atrium is beautiful and we want to preserve it and protect it at all costs. That's not one of the things that we believe will deliver what we want this building to deliver. So [applause] I think from some just from my perspective it was you know the building would look like something totally different and we didn't know as board members who are not you know we're not talking about this all the time offline because we're not allowed to it does that turn

156it into a property that isn't as attractive and what I'm hearing because we're in a public meeting talking about it is that it doesn't matter. So, we just need the opportunity to have the conversation. So, you know, >> I think >> Yeah. And then I just just really quickly I just want to say sorry I don't mean to interrupt but I just want to say if the building was painted blue with red horns coming from the top of it, we're talking about location and the ability to put programming in. And I think we know that we'll have a robust uh redesign and construction process that we'll be able to create what we need. And I think still going back to like the intent of this discussion to prepare for December 2nd, whether it looks the

157way we want it to look or the atrium is there or not. I think the the question is can it be activated for the use that that we've deemed appropriate and does that meet the expectations of the board and uh what else do you need to hear from us to move forward because I just I don't want to get caught up on you know the looks of it because certainly we didn't choose to um pursue this after it was brought to us just solely by the look of it. Yeah. But I do know you love that atrium. So I will ensure that it is in the design team thinking I think it is charming. >> I think the children will love the but it just means that it makes it a little bit more beautiful.

158It's what is attractive about it. But what we really want is our babies reading. We want them building community. We want them in spaces where they feel innovative and inspired. And if this building gives them that and if it comes with an atrium, great. And if not, we'll just dream one in our own. >> You you answered the the the big questions I had tonight, and that was about, you know, the um the uh the academic piece, which you spoke to very eloquently, and I it was wonderful. Um what would happen in the building with the atrium because it's such a significant space and um I understand the importance of the location. I have lived in the area for 20 years in North Portland and Northeast and done a lot of work on Tableau Middle

159School. I completely understand why that location is the location. >> Okay. >> Thank you, director. >> It's it's uh it's fabulous. I drive by it every day and understand the significance. So, um I appreciate um everyone >> allowing us and understanding that we we have to have this conversation and questions are not personal. Sometimes they're just tactical. We need to get from point A to point B and um and uh make sure that we're bringing up all the questions that the public's asking us to in our inmail. You know, >> did we answer them all for you tonight? I think so. We were prepared. >> Yeah, you were. [laughter] >> Did a great job >> as we knew. And that I deeply appreciate the opportunity to present um especially having had a moment to walk

160with you through the space. And so just know that as we go back towards designs thinking that it will be in mind to be able to preserve as much of the beauty that we love about the space, but where our goal is in mind is our babies and making sure that it ensures their thrivability. >> Okay. [applause] >> Thank you. As we close this out, I just have a quick suggestion or question while we can all talk together because as you all might have heard, the board doesn't really get a chance to talk about moving forward. Um, we're aiming for a vote on December 2nd. Um, many of us think that when we have these wonderful conversations at work sessions, it can hopefully mean that when we get to the time for the board meeting,

161we've already asked our questions and had a lot of the conversation. So, I just wanted to sort of just urge us to bring any new questions based on new materials, but also try not to have everyone feel like they have to come and listen to the same conversation open over again. So, I will just tip a scale if possible on that. I think the only thing that I would say I appreciate that and I think we as as a staff team know that this is and to the point uh that uh director Lefort was raising this is your business meeting to be able to have discussion about these ask the tough questions ask unpopular questions we want to be able to answer. So, on December 2nd, because it is an action item, there will be

162public comment. Um, but aside from that, I don't know if we have anything else to to um present. So, I think if there's questions that may come up or some things that maybe you all have heard that still leaves you unsettled, if you send those in, the way in which we send questions in, we can get those answered. Um, but I think that's what we're anticipating. And then the just the public comment piece before the actual action item. So >> just to clarify, I'm not saying like not to have discussion, but just to be mindful of like not having the same discussion again. Yeah. >> And so is due diligence complete? >> Yes. Diligence complete. This completes our report on due diligence. Every other piece that the team has talked about like operating costs and

163programming and going back out and finding would be in consultation with the design team should the board um decide to wave the contingencies and move forward with the purchase. So that's the work that happens um long after the uh building is uh purchased. So yeah, >> any other questions? I I think we're all set. So, thank you very much for that wonderful presentation answering all the questions. Just a reminder to everyone this if everything goes as planned, the decision to whether to purchase one North property will be coming before the board on December 2nd during our regular board meeting. So, thank you. >> Great. Next up, we have our favorite topic, property taxes. >> Who doesn't like taxes? >> Uh, we are uh getting an update on our property taxes and the PPS local option

164levy. >> Thank you. I'll just talk loud as I know we're going to have some background noise. >> So, tonight we have an Do we need to pause for a transition or where we at team? Cuz >> Keep going. Okay. So, tonight we have an important update to provide broader financial and economic context related to the PPS lo local option levy. We'll have an opportunity to understand more about property values and our tax system and the impact to us as we plan for the future. I'd like to invite our chief financial officer, Michelle Morrison, to introduce our special guest. And she is on her way. Special guest. >> [applause and cheering] >> Oh, >> good evening, uh, Chair Wang, uh, and directors. Uh, thank you so much for this opportunity. Tonight we have with us

165um Multma County economist Jeff Renfro to talk to you more about uh just the recent uh activity with the property taxes in Portland and how that may impact us and uh the rest of the community. Um he uh does some work. I don't have the words in front of me. So please explain what you do at the county. That would be wonderful. Uh thank you. Uh, thank you, Michelle. Uh, so I'm I'm Jeff Renfro. As Michelle said, I'm the county economist. Um, in short, I I help our board plan, but that includes, um, presenting our general fund revenue forecast. I work really closely with the library district, our preschool for all program, and just kind of do analysis around the county. Um, so, uh, Michelle and, uh, Deborah, uh, invited me to come talk to

166you about kind of what we're seeing in, uh, with property taxes and kind of explain some of the changes you're seeing in your, um, local option levy. So, I'm just going to keep going. Um, [clears throat] and so, most of the presentation is going to be explaining this slide. Um, so this is the, uh, imposed tax for the PPS local option levy going back for several years. Um the imposed tax means the amount that you would expect to collect based on what property values are. And you can see on the right side uh the amount of revenue has actually declined in the last 3 years. So we're going to go into what's happening behind that. Um so I'm going to start with the really the only piece of good news I have in the presentation.

167um which is uh property tax value or the value that the property taxes come from is really dominated by residential property. So I'm going to talk about mostly some of the kind of weaknesses and the changes we've seen in commercial property specifically office buildings but because most of it comes from residential uh and this is just a chart showing year-over-year changes in residential value uh in Portland uh residential uh value isn't going up a ton but it's it's doing fine. So when we're thinking about what produces the value that is taxed, uh the biggest portion of it is okay. Um if this was changing or if this started to decline significantly, this would be a different conversation and we'd see really significant declines, but it's doing fine for now. So uh to start with, because

168the property tax system in Oregon is is notoriously complicated and uh really complex, I have to introduce a couple of concepts that then we're going to riff off of as we go through. So the first one and and this is the kind of most difficult part to explain. Um so in our property tax system there's actual several different values that you have to be aware of. Right? So the first value is represented by the green line on top there. That's real market value. So real market value is the thing that a normal person cares about. It is the an approximation of the value that you could sell the property for. Unfortunately, in the Oregon property tax system, that's the least important one. Right? So, the other value is maximum assessed value. That's in the blue

169line that's down on the bottom. And maximum assessed value is basically a madeup value that was created by measure 50. Um, and so the maximum assessed value for a property is the 1996 1997 value of the property minus 10% and then it's allowed to go up by 3% per year. So imagine just a line going up very slowly forever. So then the assessed value which is the value that the tax rate is actually applied to is the lower of real market value or maximum assessed value. Okay. So before the pandemic when I would talk about property taxes I wouldn't even bring up maximum assessed value because for the vast majority of properties in Multma County maximum assessed value and assessed value were the same. It was not even worth bringing up that concept. What we're

170seeing now is because um real market values for some properties have fallen so quickly, they've actually fallen and they've punched through that maximum assessed value line. And it means that real market value becomes the assessed value. And the implication of that is that as it goes below that line, we stop getting that like really steady predictable growth and assessed value will change with real market value changes as we go forward. Okay. So I'm going to talk about one other concept and then we're going to talk about what we're actually seeing in the data related to this. The other thing we have to talk about is compression and and I'll say typically I try not to talk about both these things in the same presentation because I think it's just too it's too much but uh

171unfortunately we have to do both today. So um as I talked about assessed value is what we care about. It's what the tax rate is applied to. You take the assessed value, you multiply it by the tax rate, and that gets what's called the extended tax. So before we take the extended tax, and then actually push that through to property owners, there's another piece, and this is where the concept of compression comes in. So compression is based on it's a percentage of the total real market value, right? So I'll give you a practical example in a second, but um I'm kind of overshooting the mic. Sorry. So um you calculate the amount of tax that a property should owe assessed value times the rate and then you calculate a cap that that uh property tax

172bill cannot go above. Right? So um on the left side of this graph that would be the extended tax. Then on the right side we imagine that the cap that is created is below that amount of uh extended tax. So in this case the you only pay what is below that cap, right? And everything above the cap is represented by this black line here. The property owner doesn't pay. So the language that we use is that the bill is compressed down to that cap and then you just lose. You don't collect what is above that cap. So specifically for a local option levy because the rules for how um you compress down that tax bill say that local option levies get compressed first. So uh if an individual property owner if their tax bill should

173be above the cap then they go through they reduce the local option levies until they hit that cap and then only then do they go to the permanent rate levies like Multma County, city of Portland, all of the other ones. So it means that as real market values change then local the collection from local option levies can change really quickly as compression pushes down the bill. Okay. Um I won't expect you to remember every portion of that but I'll refer back to it. Okay. So this this graph on the top shows total real market value in Multma County. That kind of turquoise line in the middle shows total assessed value for Multma County. And then that orange line that goes up and then comes back down is the percent of compression. So the amount of

174the the tax bills or the tax revenue we should be collecting that we are not collecting is represented by that percentage. So you can see overall for Multim County the um real market value uh has gone up much faster than assessed value over time. It's actually declined uh in the kind of post-pandemic period. And then you see assessed value. It continues to grow really steadily, but if you look closely, there's like a little change in the slope of that line as we get to the right side. Okay. So, what's happening there? So when we look at changes in real market values uh from the most recent tax role relative to the pre- pandemic period relative to 2019 um and we look at property types the blue dot is the total real market value for each

175one of those property types uh from 2019. The orange dot is where we are in the most recent tax role. So you can see basically all of the change in real market value comes from commercial properties. So when we dig into commercial properties, which is what's happening on the right side, we look specifically at office buildings where a lot of that loss in value has been. You can see that right in the middle there's that huge gap between the 2019 value and then the 2025 value in orange. That is high-rise office. So high-rise office in uh Multma County has lost about $4 billion in value during that period. And then other uh types of office space have also lost a pretty significant amount of value. So, um, as I talked about before, when we think

176about residential or multif family, which really dominates the total amount of value, we're not seeing this happen. It's really concentrated in a a specific part of our properties. So, we're going to dive even deeper. So, um, I'm going to show you uh, for um, 19 really high value office properties, what's happened to them pre- pandemic versus where we are now. Um the properties we're going to talk about are represented in red on this map. So uh just about all the properties we're talking about are really concentrated in like the center of downtown. Um so this is really a a downtown core issue that is holding back the property tax system as a whole. So this graph um used to have our 20 highest value office properties. The reason there's only 19 now is one of

177them and the most recent year split into three lots. So we took it out. So, um, this looks at in blue their, uh, real market value in 2019 compared to their real market value in 2025. You can see without exception, they've all fallen below half their value. In some cases, they're, you know, 80% below their real market value from pre- pandemic, sometimes even more. So then when we think about that first graph I showed you where real market value can fall below maximum assessed value and start to pull assessed value down. This looks at the real market value in orange and then the assessed value in gray for those same buildings. So any chart where the orange line and the gray bar are equal to each other that means real market value has fallen below

178maximum assessed value and it's pulling assessed value down with it. So, for those properties, there's an actual decline in the amount of taxable value and a decline in their tax bill that they're paying. Um, two years ago, there were only three of these buildings that were in that situation. Last year, there were eight. Now, basically, all of them are. And then the ones that aren't are kind of even the more interesting case now. So, if you look on the left side, it's property number four, that kind of stubby one over there. So, that building uh before the pandemic sold for about $300 million. its real market value on the books now is below $30 million. Um, so real market value has fallen really significantly, right? But then assessed value is still below real market value.

179And what's happening there is property owners are starting to do something that they never would have done before the pandemic, which because of uh our system, you know, typically your real market value is so high above your assessed value. If you're a property owner, you're doing everything you can to avoid changing your assessed value. So doing anything to trigger a reassessment, what's happening now is they're intentionally doing it, right? They're they're changing the historical status of their building. They're figuring out some kind of major investment to make in the building. It's triggering reassessment and it's permanently locking in those lower assessed values. So even if we get a recovery in real market value, those lower assessed values are locked in forever. Um, so, oh, here before I move on, so, so what's happening to kind

180of put it all together, what's happening with the collections for the local option levy is that declines in value in downtown, they're not creating, they're not falling by enough to create an overall decline in assessed value for your taxing district as a whole. But that drop in value is enough to create like a really significant drag on that growth. So typically we would consider 3% to be kind of the floor of growth um for assessed value and for um PPS it's been below 2% the last couple of years which is extremely low. It's it rivals the level that we saw kind of right after the financial crisis. Um the other piece because it's a local option levy uh and all these graphs where we show room market value falling, it's taking that compression cap and

181it's pushing it down, right? And it's creating a significant uh increase in compression. So if you look at what's on the tax roll for your collections, it's a combination of very slow assessed value growth and then compression spiking the last couple of years. I think the good news is that the increase in compression in this most recent year was was quite a bit less than it was the last two. So just because you you just can't have this significant fall in values year after year after year at some point you just reach a mathematical limit. So um hopefully the compression has kind of settled in where it is. Um and then we're just dealing with uh kind of a prolonged period of low assessed value growth. But even that our expectation at the county is

182that fiscal year 2027 will be the last year of kind of that sub 3% assessed value growth. and then we don't expect it to recover to a a great level of growth, but we'll be kind of at 3% or above going forward. Um the last two slides that I have, um I was also asked to just include some information on um the expense side. So um this uh reflects Multma County data and it's from our general fund. So at the county and I know it's very similar for PPS really the driver of our expenses are personnel costs. Um so in the general fund at the county about 62% of our total expenses are personnel. Personnel is just us paying our employees to do work for us. Also when you look at contractual services which is

183our second biggest category about half of that is we're passing money through to community organizations and they're paying people to do that work. And then for us even internal services is us paying people who do our facilities and our IT to do work. So it's really all driven by personnel costs. So on the left side is a breakdown of our expectation for personnel cost growth for next year. Um similar to PPS um our cost of living adjustment is dictated by our collective bargaining agreements. Um so right now we expect that to be 3.3%. Which is higher than it is historically and also for us based on our reliance on property taxes it is at a level that is not sustainable for us. So if our expenses are growing at that rate our revenue is just

184not going to keep up with it. Um we also factor in changes to our medical dental plan. What's going on with PERS and then flow some of that higher inflation through through to our um expectations around materials and supplies and contractual services. So a lot of this is driven by what's going on with inflation. So we use a measure of inflation called the consumer price index. Um we use the CPIW west size A. This is looking at year-over-year changes. So what is concerning is even though we've dropped from that uh those pandemic level or pandemic era highs, it looks like it's starting to pick up again right at the end. Um, and if you read kind of what companies are saying in their quarterly earnings reports, a lot of them are saying, "We've done everything

185we can to avoid passing prices through to our customers, we have reached our limit and our ability to do that." So, it seems like some of the tariff stuff and some of the economic uncertainty is starting to show up in the price data, which is going to start pushing up inflation. Um, so with that, I'm going to stop. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Um, yeah, thank you for having me. I wonder if just um and I'm sure that they're going to have questions, but Michelle, are you able to just connect on when we think of that uh levy and the amount the difference in the amount from um last year to this year and how that's contributing to our deficit? >> Yeah, thank you, Superintendent Armstrong. Um we budgeted at that uh continued

186growth trend, the historical trend for growth for the local option levy. And when we got our tax rules this year, um we are about just under $5 million short in terms of collections. And that does go straight to licensed FTE. It pays directly for teaching positions. And so that's um part of the fragility that I've been trying to describe around our current year budget. But that also impacts Bless you. also impacts the, you know, our assumptions for next year too. We're we're going to have to include that in our assumptions and we have and that's contributing to that gap. >> Is it part of the 50 million or is this another five on top of the 50 million >> that's included? Okay. >> Having a hard time with the mic. >> Um, I just wanted

187to thank you for coming. Um, I've worked in state government and heard a lot of presentations on revenue and that was one of the most like understandable ones I've seen. So, I just really want to thank you for that. Um, as a bunch of people who care about education, it's nice when we get education and feel like it's done well. So, thank you. Um, so, um, I guess I was really cur I was really glad that you talked about sort of Multma Countyy's experience with the revenue issues and then on top of it the cost of doing business, right? Um, have you thought about the impact that state cuts, which are a result of federal cuts, um, uh, will have on the county budget? just so we can kind of have an idea of how

188you're thinking about it as we think about it. Michelle, you're welcome to answer too if you've thought about it already as well. >> Uh yes, we we're thinking about it a lot. Or sorry, director, uh thanks for the question. Uh uh yes, so we tend to spend a bunch of time talking about our general fund because it's the the um discretionary money our board has has a lot of control over. Um and then but it's only about a quarter of our total budget. uh a lot of the other things that we do are passed through to us and there's some you know flexibility in how we go about providing a program but it's like usually specifically for some purpose. Um so we've already incorporated some um changes in our budget due to reductions in uh

189pass through from the state um either from the state general fund or reductions in federal funding passed through to the state. Um at this point, you know, our expectation is that the state revenue forecast um is maybe going to get a little bit worse. Yeah. Um so we're we're planning to uh I mean the messaging at the county is that the we called it the state rebalance. So trueing up our our state funded budget. Um it's going to be the first in a kind of a whole series of adjustments that we'll go through as we continue to get new information from the state and the feds. I have a question and I appreciate this too. My dad's an economist so this would he would love this um presentation. It's on slide 11 and you were

190talking about compression and um how what we're looking at is the assessed value and the real market value and it's following kind of a downward curve. Is there if we look out five or 10 years are we able to are we able to understand what will happen over time >> is this slide 11 I can't the close captioning is covering the number yeah um >> now now it'll be moved but anyway yes that's slide 11 >> uh vice vice chair pass >> property tax >> um yeah so so our assumption is um so I um uh try to collaborate closely with the city's permitting office So, [laughter] so typically what what our expectation for assessed value growth is kind of minus any development would be somewhere between like three and three and a quarter. Um,

191>> okay. So, um, can you say that again? So, you're looking at housing starts or are >> any sort of development >> case Schiller and then what's the permitting? I don't understand how the permitting is coming in. >> Yeah. So it's it's because um so if if there was no development and we just had the same properties and no one was changing them, we just like kind of locked in our physical stock forever, then each one of those properties, their assessed value would grow by 3% per year. So the thing that that can trigger a change in that is if a property is redeveloped or there's kind of there's like some sort of significant investment in it >> then what happens is the county assessor will go out they will reassess the property and they

192will incorporate higher values based on that change. >> Yes. >> So during the pre- pandemic period we went through several years where our assessed value growth was actually like four and a quarter four and a half. Um so it's really >> nobody was doing improvements at that time. Exactly. People were >> taking older buildings. They were um you know tearing them down, building a hotel, building an apartment building. So, it's really development um that's going to get us above that 3% floor. >> Okay. >> So, >> new new development, not rehabilitations or >> it could be a rehabilitation if it was significant enough would would trigger that reassessment. Um so so um right now uh permitting is is at a very low level for a combination of you know the things that you talked about

193high interest rates high construction costs we probably overbuilt some types of buildings reputation is part of that as well. >> Um so the property tax role is kind of the end of this really long process that starts with a land use review at city permitting. >> So we can look at what's going on with permitting. we can anticipate how those changes will sort of flow through the system and get a sense of what's going to show up on our property tax roles in the future. >> Um so so right now our expectation is that we don't get property tax growth much above 3% for the foreseeable future. Um and what we need to change that is um an increase in development that could be helped by lower interest rates in the future. >> Um it

194could be helped by yeah reputational improvement. Um but as of right now >> Yeah, exactly. Um as of right now, even if there was an increase in permitting activity tomorrow, it would take a it would take years for that to show up in our our property tax revenue. >> Okay. And the the other question I have is about tax increment financing where all these districts now are held kind of uh they're held steady from what I understand, but at some point then we start collecting taxes on any developments in those areas. Are those um also part of the forecast that you know of? >> Yes. And I'll >> renewal districts, tax increment finance. >> I I know that school districts are treated differently than counties. So I I'm not an expert on the rules as

195it um pertains to school districts, but for the county um so what happens is, you know, you take uh all of the value in a geographic area and you say, okay, exactly that amount of money will continue to go to the government taxing jurisdictions. >> Yes. >> And then we're going to assume that any assessed value growth above that is because of the the new district, right? And so that increment that is created there that goes to pay the debt service on any of the investments that are made in that district. So from the county's perspective, we are um assuming that within those districts, we just won't have any property tax growth as a result of of the tiff districts. >> Thank you. our um local option levy um for it expires in two 2028.

196Is that correct? >> Yes. >> Okay. Well, I don't want to miss the opportunity to just really lift up how important it is that um we have a community that supports our teachers through the levy. And uh just for reference, the amount of um FTE teacher FTE that the levy covers is about how much? >> Uh it brings in about $104 million. So at $150 uh,000 per teacher FTE, then you will get your number. >> Okay. So that's a on the spot question, but do the math. And the campaign I remember it was well it used to be back in 2020 it used to pay around for about 800 FTE and then as of last year it paid for 650ish. >> Yeah. And so as the rising costs go up right then it's fewer teachers

197and we continue to fund um those teachers. And so some questions that I get is on class size and I get that there's some rooms where we're at um the programming guide book um guidelines right within the guidelines but there's many classrooms across Portland where we're in the low 20s is in fact that's our average class sizes. I think about 22 23 last I checked and it's thanks to the levy. So um it will be coming forward again and we just appreciate the support that we get on that. Can I ask a question about the levy when it comes back up? So, the dynamics that Mr. Renfro, whatever, whatever your title is, um that you brought here that you brought up. Sorry, I don't know what it is. >> Jeff, Jeff is fine. >> Okay,

198Jeff. Thank you. Gosh. Um so, uh we call everybody doctor here. So, I don't know if you have a doctor or not, but we can also do Okay. Well, we can call you doctor anyway. But um what I wanted to get to though is with the levy with the way that it's so Portland is at the cap for how high we can have our levy is my understanding and I don't know how that works but I know we're at the top of the cap but if we're having this issue where it's going down because of our fund real estate dynamics um does that mean that we could actually like make it higher to get back to the cap or is the cap based on like a percentage versus a dollar amount And if you don't

199know, that's okay. >> When I first started here, I actually reached out to our adviserss to see what it would look like to uh increase or ask for another additional uh local operating levy. And they uh shared with me statistics that because of the limits, the tax limits for education and compression that it wouldn't yield >> uh the same amount as it would. Now, >> I can answer that question too. Um, having worked on the campaign, um, I believe the state limits the total amount that we can get from levy at I want to say 116 million. >> Oh. >> And so if we raise that percentage that this was a discussion about the local option LA when we campaigned for it, if we raised it by like say a percentage, it would go over

200that and so any extra money would go to the state instead of going to PPS, >> right? I was just wondering since it's gone if we need to raise it to >> Oh, I see. Is that making sense? Cuz we're not getting 16. We're getting 111. >> Yeah, it does make sense. And I know that we have our general counsel out there, Ora Capori coming to the mic to give us some facts about that. >> Oh, Capori. Love it. Another doctor. I see this is Dr. Capori. You have staff. Um although I am a doctor or I play one on TV and this is my wheelhouse. I will say I don't want to misstate, but I'm pretty sure almost everything that has just been said is wrong. So, what I will do is come back

201to you in the next couple of days with the correct answer. I don't think we're at the top yet, and I don't think the state limits us by a dollar amount, but more a percentage of the formula. So, we'll come back in with the actual information since none of us seem to have it right now. Thank you. Um so I had a question um so at the beginning of the presentation you had noted um that that you that the the stuff that's here which are like which seem like the big fish in the market are not you know are not really representative of the whole market and like the residential um piece seems to be the biggest piece of the pie. So what I was wondering is like I guess like what like how big

202of an impact do you know do like these you know albeit few you know but like uh but big uh properties have on the overall you know property tax pie. >> Yeah. So, um, uh, student representative, um, we have, uh, the the amount of kind of assessed value that we're talking about as a percentage of the total for Multma County is about three and a half% if we're talking about kind of downtown commercial u property value. I I don't know what it is for the PPS district, but it's a higher percentage. Um, so it uh some of these buildings are so la so large and and worth so much that you know their annual property tax bill you know could be uh well over a million dollars. So if we're thinking about you know a

203decline in assessed value or an increase in what we're losing to compression um you know one of these buildings you could be losing something in the kind of high hundreds of thousands or even a million dollars. Um, so again, because because of our constraints on our property tax system, it's kind of already not growing at the rate that we would want it to to keep up with expenses. So then if you're then taking, you know, a million dollars here and there kind of out of what you're collecting, it's it's not enough generally to to make that decline, but it's enough to slow that kind of already meager growth by by even more. Yeah. Any more questions? >> Should we do another cheer for property tax? >> Well, just another just another thank you for making

204it clear and all the graphs. >> I mean, I don't totally understand it, but I understand [laughter] it way more than I did before. >> I understood it perfectly fine. And I was like I was surprised I understood it. I was like I was like, wait, this actually makes a lot of sense. So >> great. >> You did a good job. >> Yeah, >> I definitely would just comment. I just want to say like how important it is right now that we support our downtown businesses. I get down there as often as I can, at least once a week. Whether I'm having coffee or shopping, if I can do it there, I do it there for our businesses that are, you know, propping everything up that's going on down there. So, needed to come back.

205>> Feels pretty good down there. I will say >> it. You know, I'm going to tell a quick story. I don't tell stories up here very often, but I was downtown going to Nordstrom [laughter] >> and downtown and I don't know what you're talking about. Um, and was in an elevator and it was busy. It was a Saturday and it felt like the old days, if you will. And I was in the elevator with someone. I have no idea who he was. And he commented out loud, you know, gosh, it's like really busy out here. It feels like, you know, you know, five, 10 years ago. And I'd just been typing the same thing to a friend of mine. And I said, yeah, that's really funny. I just said the same thing to my friend

206and he's like, you know, there was this really great article in Wamut Week about property tax compression. [laughter] So that was the and I sent it to everybody up here because it is such a good article. Um it's like a tell me like I'm five article and um so I just thought it was funny that that was the last, you know, casual conversation I had with a stranger downtown two weeks ago in an elevator was about property tax compression. So there you go. [laughter] >> Was it you, Jeff? It was not junk. [laughter] >> The Portland Art Museum is opening that new pavilion. That's really, really nice. So, >> well, I have a target to try to get us out by 9:00. So, thank you Jeff Renfro, Michelle Morrison. Really appreciate the presentation and the

207education. Uh next up uh we have the other hot topic is the update on enterprise resource planning which was included in the 2020 bond package. I'll hand this over to Dr. Arm. >> Yeah, perfect. Thank you. So board, one one more update for discussion or questions. Um you will learn about our inner source uh enterprise resource planning or ERP initiative. It's a key part of our district's ongoing effort to modernize and streamline how we manage resources, operations, and data. Um, welcome to our chief integrated integrated officer, Tom, and um introducing our uh senior >> senior director of digital transformation, Russell Adamson. Um, congratul we we saved the best to last. You know, digital transformation is going to be pretty exciting stuff. Uh Russell's only been on our team for a few months now, but he's

208already made so many great strides. Um and we're really excited to share this presentation with you and see where we're going. >> So, thank you. Thank you, Tom. >> I'm super excited. Super excited to really just talk about two topics. One is what the heck is the ERP modernization program? Um and talk a little bit about what's taken so long and why is it so difficult? >> I was going to ask if you could turn your Yeah, your mic. Is that better? >> Yes, it is. >> Thank you. Um, but I'm really excited to talk about phase one and then we're moving forward with the data management platform here very soon. So, what is an ERP? Lots of words on this slide. Unfortunately, I was shown up by the wonderful graphs earlier. Um, but ultimately

209this is the digital backbone for PPS. We're talking about all of the core business uh operations, all the core business functions of how we work. So, this is about people, this is about process, this is about data. And what we're really talking about is how do we get better at automating, reducing manual effort, and how are we building and ensuring that we're uh designed for growth? We're designed for how the district evolves over time, but we're also compliant. We have high level of security and we're able to do all the reporting and analytics we absolutely need. I think it's interesting a lot of the conversations we've been having at this uh this forum been around data. This is the system that we're going to evolve to to make sure that we get the data that

210we need to help drive this district moving forward. Yeah. Go ahead. Um so ultimately this is around people, process and technology. So a lot of the conversations we've been having with our steering committee, a lot of the folks are here today is this is a technology program at the center, but ultimately it's around how do we organize the people around the work. So this is about how do we be more efficient? How do we make sure we have meaningful data? It's available at all times and we're resulting in better decision-m across PBS. The obvious question is what do we do today? Um we have a ERP system today that's based on Peopleoft which is from Oracle. It's perfectly fine. It's 25 years old. For uh reference the iPhone came out seven years after we implemented

211that. So we've had 17 versions of an iPhone. We've had one version of the software that we've been using for 25 years. And if you go forward, you can see from a scope perspective, or at least try to. Yeah. From a scope perspective, I don't expect anybody to read all this, but this is essentially how PPS operates. All of our finance, procurement, sourcing, all of our budget management, including grants, including all the revenue, and also all the assets. If you think about the dollars that flow in and out of all of our buildings every single day, this is a huge amount of information that we need to have heavily coordinated and available at all times. And the system we're using today is 25 years old. So in terms of who this impacts, um this impacts

212everyone, every adult in the PPS community, right? Ultimately, we're hyperfocused on the central office because again, this hits all of finance and HR, but also all the school admin staff will be using this as well. Um, and all of our partner entities. So, the grant providers, all the vendors, if you think about the dozens, almost hundred different vendors that we have, all the different government agencies, they'll have a direct impact and direct access to the system. So, really, every single adult in our community is going to be impacted this in some way. Okay. How are we going to do this so that we're optimizing cost to benefit? As someone who's done this a few times and been involved in many of these large digital transformations that take multiple years, it is super easy to get

213off the rails and get off the rails very fast. 50 to 60% of the time you do these programs, they fail. We do not have that opportunity. So, what we are really centered on these three core principles. One is we're leaning into standardization. As you can imagine, over 25 years, any system kind of drifts in terms of how it's used and who uses it and all of the supporting processes that we do around that. We are not lifting and shifting. We are building a standardized tool. We're moving everybody into it. That's a very different approach than has been in the past. So, what we're going to be doing is looking for an ERP vendor that can help us with really robust out ofthebox functionality over a highly customizable solution. Customization equals cost which equals death.

214We are going to be buying a highly robust out-of-the-box functionality system. We're going to move directly into those tools and optimize those processes as we go. The next one is data is an asset right now. It's mostly a liability for us. We need to manage data as an asset. This tool will help us do that. And lastly, change. Change is hard. We're going to be moving a lot of people who've been doing their job a particular way for a very long time into these systems. And we're also going to be moving people that have never used these systems or anything close to it into these we will be measured by adoption of the these new processes and utilization of this data. So we're going to be bringing in dedicated expertise to make sure that we're

215leading that change. The thing I'm really excited about on this one is we're moving forward on number two right now. So we're moving forward on a data management platform. Why now? This is foundational, non-negotiable work. So, back to the house analogy, you wouldn't go and start building with the lumber and the drywall if you didn't have a solid foundation. The data management platform is that foundation. And again, just want to be really clear, it's a non-negotiable. It's not an optional cost. It's incredibly uh more cost-effective if we do it now, we do it ourselves with a trusted partner, and we can do it in parallel with while we're choosing and identifying the ERP that we're going to have long term. Okay. So, where we're at is, and a reminder, this is all bond funded. We

216are in the process of uh purchasing a cloud data warehouse for 300K for four years. The way these systems work is you're basically buying consumption credits. And how you use it is how much money you get charged and you basically buy in advance. Very similar to like AWS. Okay. >> Amazon Web Services. >> Sorry, I had to teach him. Um this is a snowflake is the uh platform that is used by Oregon DOE. It's used by Multma County. It's used by thousands of of K through2 school districts. It's really the industry standard and it also is the platform by which has the most operational functionality with any ERP vendor that we'd eventually buy. Uh we'll also be looking to bring on professional services that'll ensure that we don't go over that cost that we bought

217in the contract. We'll validate all our data is moved safely, all the integrations, everything is compliant from a security perspective and basically ensure that we've optimized that system because this is just not uh technical expertise we have in the team today. Okay, so that's the data management platform. The I'll be coming back here hopefully in early March, potentially early April. We do have an RFP that went out for that ERP solution on Friday. It was a huge milestone. And I really want to thank everybody, some of the folks here in the room who really contributed to a really robust RFP that went out on Friday. Um, we will be getting all the proposals back on January 8th. Uh, we'll be doing demos here in the PEC building the last week of January and we're hyperfocused

218on that February 12th date, which is the intent to award. We're assuming four to eight weeks of contract negotiations if everything goes well. So, be back here late March, early April for approval. That's it. >> I I had one question. Um this has nothing to do with like synergy for student >> uh yes and no in that we will won't be replacing synergy. >> We will not >> no >> okay >> no but the data that goes in and out of synergy will live ultimately in that data management platform. So you can think about it like a giant data lake that's cloud-based secured and everything that we do in synergy will kind of flow in and out of that. >> So it'll be there to get >> but we are not doing touching synergy itself.

219>> Yep. >> So so will there be like a new uh like user user uh user side like interfacing platform um outside of like like parent view and student view that would then be used in the future if like we're not renewing that. uh anything that's studentf facing we're not touching other than other than making sure the data is flowing in out of our data management platform. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. >> I think the one thing this does open up to your question is long term as we look at those we're refreshing our overall tech strategy. This is a huge component of it because then we can look at what are all the things that we're spending today that we don't necessarily have to renew contracts moving forward. >> Um yeah quick question. Oh, >> number

220one, um 25 years old, is this compatible with my Atari? >> Um yes, >> thank you. >> Maybe maybe you're Nintendo as well. >> Number two, because this um program is bond funded, are we moving specific central office FTE towards being bonded? And then well, I guess that's my first question that has to be answered first before I ask my second question. Um >> I I'll just say oh I maybe we can split this but if you remember we have um out of the bond for 2025 there was an amount that um covered um admin costs and though we had it as one lump sum when you look across the programs um the staff if it's bond compensible is where we would um use those funds to to cover staff but we're not able to

221use those funs that like let's say cover the entire technology department but for ERP there are some some functions where the bond um compensibility um committee I think that's their name um has approved it so I don't I don't know if you want to say more about >> No that's correct absolutely so the bond compensibility committee um does help us navigate that but this first step enables us to access some of those bond dollars to then help us move forward >> beautiful yeah I just want to highlight this is a good example like how confusing sometimes it can be when we have you know who's hired by the you know like pay for it by the bond versus general fund and stuff like that. So I that's the reason I asked that question. So thank

222you. >> I had a question. So, I thought that a couple years ago we in 2020, we also had an ERP project on the on the bond and I remember talking about the RFP for that back and forth um because it was a pretty large contract and we had there was not a local firm that could do the project. Um, I I I argued for and finally successfully got some language in that RFP that required um as much as as much as we could to hire locally, whether that be maybe not the entire project, but a a portion of the project. And that took some digging in Minneapolis and Seattle to find an RFP that did pri prioritize women and minority owned businesses for as much as we can. And then on top of that,

223local businesses, especially for bond dollars, you know, I really feel strongly that, you know, as much as those bond dollars, you know, stay in the community or spent in our community. And so, I know you said it's already gone out, but is there a way to issue an addendum that requires >> us looking at women and minority owned and locallyowned business for this? So with the goal of um spending as much as possible locally and and and people are you know not people Facebook um let's be clear >> Facebook is a person according to the federal government. >> According to Meta it is um there's some chatter about you know um you know why are we using non-local firms? Well every every local um locally funded publicly funded agency uses non-local firms for all kinds

224of things. Um, but this is one where we could actually lean into our values around locally spending specifically with minority and womenowned businesses. >> Yeah, >> it would really be able to like prove our value set. >> Um, and and if you can't find someone to uh to do the work, then can the project be broken into like we do with construction, break it into pieces that are doable. >> Yeah, the RFP that so one could not agree more. Um a clarification the RFP that went out on Friday was for the technical solution only. So for the actual software itself. >> Okay. >> So I'm in the middle of doing the RFP for the systems implementation which should include the program management function and the change management function. >> And I've been doing software deployments

225locally for 25 years. So super wellworked in that community. Excellent. And could not agree more that we're going to try to pull people who are in this community for all the different roles. And those will be the people that are actually going to manage the work with that ERP vendor, that technical solution provider. >> Okay. So the the human piece will be locally sourced hopefully. But then >> uh let's see. Yeah. So okay, so that's good. So there will be some spend some portion of that those bond dollars uh will be spent in our community. That's great. >> Thank you. >> So did you want to speak to that? So that's to come the RFP. Did you want to speak specifically just so that the board is informed on um the um the two amounts

226that you talked about today? Um because that will show up on an expenditure contract um on December 2nd. >> Yeah. Do you want to go back like a couple of slides? Sure. To the >> Yeah. So the specific um expenditure there. Perfect. The specific expenditure we're talking about is this 436 which would like to get on the consent agenda for next week and again this is for the data management platform. Again the sort of phase one non-negotiable foundation for the actual ERP and again we're looking to sign the contract with the ERP in April. We're planning to be done with this work by the time we get to that contract signature. >> And that's 300,000 for all four years. >> Correct. >> Not each year. >> Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah, >> I guess I can't

227myself. I just want to clarify. You said it the 300 300k is for four years and then the 136k is like one time. >> It's essentially 10 hours a week for a year. >> Okay, great. Thank you. >> Exactly. Yeah, I would say that um I have purchased Snowflake contract for when I worked for a private company before and when they gave us that price, I thought they were missing a zero. So, we're getting a very good price because it's going through the public entity uh path. >> That's good to know. So, this is up for approval on December 2nd. So, now's the time to ask questions if you have any. We're trying and this is a great Let me just say this just we're we're really trying to model we've understood um and understand

228the questions and the energy around some of the things that you all may vote on that shows on a cons typically shows on a consent agenda. That's a contract that um we just are modeling you know making sure that you have the information beforehand just so that you can consider and ask questions so that on um on decision day it isn't a surprise. So that's why uh thank you not just why but also to understand the ERP some of the associated costs there's an RFP for one part here's this amount it'll be before you December 2nd and just your opportunity to ask questions I should have probably opened with that but um just wanted to give you that opportunity to ask questions >> thank you said more eloquently than I could have um and then

229the next slide I just want to really reiterate there's another decision coming before the board in April or June June, April, May >> either >> board, >> if we can squeeze the contract negotiations down, I would come to this forum in uh early March. If it takes eight weeks, and it'll be early April. >> Thank you. We have one minute before nine. Any other questions? >> I was just going to say I'm I'm excited for you. Like it never gets any money. So I'm just really excited for you. [gasps and laughter] So my one of my closest friends works in in you know edtech. So heard a lot about really happy to see investments like this in our >> IT infrastructure. It's great. >> Yeah. >> It sounds like 25 years in tech years is

230probably like 50. >> Yeah. >> It's exponential. So it's a 24. Yeah. Sorry. >> All right. Thank you both. Thank you. It >> was very educational. >> And with that, if unless anyone has any other comments, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> And on time, too.