2025-06-24 Board of Education Special Meeting and Work Session

001Let's get started. I know. We're gonna wait till director Brim Edwards sits down so we don't ruin the record. And there we go. All right, let's get started. This special meeting and work session of the board of education for June 24th, 2025 is called to order. All items being considered this evening are posted on the PPS website under the board and meetings tabs. This meeting is being streamed live on PPS TV services website and channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks. Please check the district website for replay times. Good evening. Welcome. Thank you all for being here uh this evening for uh the last board meeting of the 202425 school year. Before we get started, I want to share a few housekeeping reminders. Ask everyone at the meeting, remember to be

002respectful, public staff, board members, all all the above. Uh we are excited that you've taken this time out of the day to be a part of whatever this is. Um whether you're here to observe or testify. Um if you're displaying signs or Ben, it doesn't look like anyone is but just, you know, keep it down. Uh keep the aisles clear. Don't trip. All right, let's get started. Uh the first thing we're going to do is the consent agenda. So let's start with that. So moved. Second. We have a director Brim Edwards moves and director Holland seconds. If there's any items, board members, if there any items on the consent agenda you would like to pull for a separate discussion, please indicate that now. All of them. You're trying to drag out the last meeting. Okay.

003going to be at night. Uh, is there any do we have any public comment on the consent agenda? No. All right. Is there any board discussion on the consent agenda? Yes. Yes, there is. Director Split. Um, sure. I um I'm like kind of a mess because my someone in my household has destroyed my laptop and I found out last night. Um, so, um, I wanted to ask a couple of questions. I'll just ask one for now and then we'll see if anyone else has questions. Oh, sorry. Are we good? Okay. Um, so I wanted to ask about the um, Jigsaw Learning DBA teachtown contract. So, can I have a friend? Do I do we phone a friend to come up or just ask? Yeah, absolutely. I will pull uh, Chief Buuno to the day to

004speak to that. Thank you. Um and I know I hopefully you heard that there were some questions earlier today. Um what I wanted to know about was what process was used to consult with special educators about that contract and could you just tell us generally a little bit more about it? Sure. Um well first of all good evening. Um so uh Teachtown Jigsaw Learning is a parent company. Teachtown is the uh alternative core curriculum that we use for our students with significant or that are significantly impacted by their disabilities. Um it's this is a renewal. So it's a it's a resource that we've had for three years. Um when we first brought it in um we used uh a group of teachers to select it. It's one of three of its like resources that are

005available. So, um at the time we had the the staff review the three resources and so this was the resource that we or they selected. Um in addition to that um we gather feedback through our professional learning sessions, through our coaching sessions and it is um something that we heard during the listening sessions that we conducted throughout the year and we um um work both with the vendor and with our um professional learning supports to help address whatever issues are coming up through that. So that's how we respond to feedback that we've gotten. Thank you. Mhm. I'm so glad that director split's going to take my my role of asking questions. It'll be a similar theme probably frequently of how did you engage staff and uh maybe I'll start to add in uh student representative

006concents in that decision as well. you know, if it's I appreciate that and if it's helpful, one of the things that we can do so that it doesn't have to be a ton of questions just for the sake of asking questions is we could actually make sure that we add that in a cover report for the items so that you have that information. So hopefully during the July session when we're um doing some planning, I think those are things that we're happy to add if we can answer questions before uh we get to the business meeting part of it. So, I'll I'll make a just a quick um because Director Hollands is still here. Um we added a column I believe in 2021 about certified businesses and on this particular resolution we don't have any

007certified businesses or womenowned or minority owned. and just a flag that um personally I know I would like to um see more of those boxes checked yes and especially if it involves local spending so we can keep the dollars in the community. So it's something that is uh top of mind for me all the time and I'd like to see more yeses in those in that column. Thank you. I do have um one question it's actually it's less of a question more just kind of bringing to light was about the the reading results contract um there is in the contract um a measure for you know uh accountability how to measure the the impact and success that's for our high impact tutoring. So I just want to make a note that that that question is

008answered in the contract. One one question I do want to ask is that um is is this are these jobs also available to our PPS employees? Yeah, let me call up the team. We have both um director uh Dr. uh Glas, sorry, Emily Glasco and um Senior Chief Christina Howard that you want me to. Good evening. Um so next year we'll have two different high impact tutoring models in the district. Um one of them is using um limited term EAS hired through PPS processes and one is partnering with reading results. They do their own hiring. Um they work hard to hire from within the communities they serve. Um and they hire tutors through that process. Right. Great. Thank you. And I think a lot of that's also outlined in the the contract. I just want

009to to highlight that. But thank you. Can I just say point something out? I found out today and all of you already know this, but maybe not the public because my children destroyed my computer. So I was using the like PPS website to look up the board materials and I realized that our contracts aren't publicly available. So when we're saying the answers in the contract to folks in the public, that means they don't they don't they still don't know the answer to that question. So, I just wanted to point that out um because it was something I learned today and it makes sense why we don't post it because it was used to gather information um in a way that that you know it's it's just putting a lot of information on it. But just

010FYI, they they used to be posted and actually if somebody wanted to request it, they could get it, but they'd have to request it. Great. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Is there any other other questions or discussion? All right. The board will now vote on resolution 7130 through 7135. All in favor, please indicate by saying yes. Yes. All opposed. Student director can yes. Abstensions. Great. The consent agenda as amended is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representing Canvi unofficially voting yes. Director Wong, sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to note that we did add a resolution today. We So, I want to put that in the record that resol resolution 7135 was added earlier this afternoon. Yes. Great. Thank you. And it did say so yeah, through 7135. So, I think

011we're all good. Thank you for that. Uh next up uh we have the climate crisis response policy annual report. Dr. Armstrong. Yeah. Thank you uh Chair Wong School Board. Tonight you will hear an overview of the progress made on the implementation of the climate crisis response policy. And before you is uh chief of staff Deborah Kafuri and she will introduce the team. Thank you. Thank you. We're very excited to be here tonight. And I'm actually going to let our um Oh, Cat, now I'm spacing on your title. I'm not good at I'm going to have uh the wonderful Cat Davis, who you all know very well, uh introduce the committee members who are here with us today. Um good evening, directors. Uh my name is Cat Davis. I'm the climate justice adviser here at PPS.

012I oversee the implementation of our climate crisis response, climate justice, and sustainable practices policy. Um and tonight our climate crisis response committee, which is the community oversight committee that holds the district um accountable and moving forward on our policy initiatives, is here to present their annual report. Um I have a few slides to provide some context to that and to share uh our plan for the staff annual report, which is a little bit different this time. Um but first, I'll let the committee members introduce themselves. Um I'm Alma Val. I am a sophomore at Cleveland High School and I was one of the two student representatives on the climate crisis response committee this year. And I'm Barbie Alexander. I use she her pronouns and I am I've been serving as the chair for the past

013year and I have served on the committee for almost four years and it has been quite a pleasure. I also serve as a Multma County Planning Commissioner. Excellent. So just to provide some context um on the activities that have taken place uh for the policy over the last year at a really high level and to prepared like for the committee repres um I'll just go through and share some um context. So as the staff liaison to the committee and um the administrator responsible for this policy moving forward, I really hold the committee's recommendations very close. And so I wanted to make sure that we review the recommendations from the 2324 school year. Um which were to make the dashboard that we worked on last year publicly available to the PPS website so that the public

014could see uh progress on towards every policy point. um as well as to add fundraising and project management staff to policy implementation to pursue additional funding sources more aggressively and to more effectively reach students about our climate related opportunities uh and make sure that they are really engaged with how PPS is advancing efforts to impact climate change. So to give a really high level staff update of where we're at with those goals, um I wanted to share that our dashboard did launch which is very exciting. It's using the Invisio PL platform that our strategic um plan also uses. It's available on our climate justice website. Um it's really interactive and fun. So I just put a screenshot of it up there and it really talks about the systemic integration of the policy goals. That was

015one of the challenges we had is there's 75 different objectives and they require a lot of different levels of coordination to actually even get to the um outcomes, the key performance indicators that we're measuring. So this dashboard really shows the way that our district is mobilizing resources and doing cross collaboration across departments and with uh different partners. We also were able to advance um another goal which was using the Portland Clean Energy Funds grant money. We were able to bring on a new climate justice student projects coordinator who is actually a past teacher at PPS um and uh Carrie Jones Bajara. She's amazing and is really helping to advance the teacher and student engagement in our piece of project. So super excited to share that update. In a time where we've had some, you know,

016budget challenges, being able to really celebrate where we're able to effectively use our grant money to add capacity for our students is really exciting. I also wanted to highlight some of the funding sources that we were able to acquire this year. So we received another piece of grant which is great uh towards our infrastructure investments um to really just take the original grant from last year and take it the next step forward in a really I would want to say but can't say positively unprecedented partnership between all of the school districts in Portland um working towards this grant together through MESD. So we're really excited about that. And um there's also uh I just shared as well some of the um Oregon based grants that we were able to uh move forward. And as always,

017we're always continuing to advocate at the legislative level um for better outcomes for our students in addition to our, you know, overall general funds funding as well as how our students have access to resources to navigate the climate crisis. Um and then finally, I wanted to share around our plan to effectively reach more students. A lot of these scopes were in progress during our report last year. So, I wanted to make sure to share updates of where those landed before I provide a more comprehensive report in the fall. Um, in spring of 2024, our team led a really comprehensive community- centered climate action design team where we navigated um, engaging over 20 community partners, parents, uh, students and teachers in developing uh, with the partnership with the innovation studio, recommendations for how to more equitably

018support students through different pathways for engagement in just not just leading in the climate crisis, but like navigating what it's like to live in the climate crisis. So, that was amazing. We included um the report, the final report in the appendix, so I hope you have a chance to look at that. It's pretty it's pretty great. It's a well-designed report, if I do say so. Um um and um we also expanded support for our climate justice youth advisory. And I do have a correction now for students engaged in the PCF studentled projects. Um that was an estimate given the proposals that we received in November are more up to date as of yesterday from the actual submissions is close to 1500 students engaged um in the just the planning of the projects um it's pretty

019great um and over 4,000 students actually affected by the projects from just the high level at a glance from the reports that were submitted by last Friday. So, we're really enthusiastic about that first year. Um, uh, and I just wanted to highlight, uh, before I toss this over is that, um, you know, we talk a lot about how interdep departmental and comprehensive this climate policy is. And I just wanted to put on the screen a really high level view of all the different departments that touch each of the different pillars that move our policy forward. It's a really collaborative, strategic initiative um that has the opportunity to provide just really meaningful as we're seeing place-based learning outcomes for our students. Um I did want to mention that as a result of some of the initiatives

020this year, a lot of the data, especially for our bi-anual greenhouse gas emissions report won't actually be available until the end of July or early August um for this academic year. So, uh, rather than doing a full comprehensive report this like spring, I am going to use the summer to take all of that data around the PF projects, around the greenhouse gas emissions update, um, as well as the other amazing work that all of these departments are doing and provide a more comprehensive 2025 report for you all in the fall. So, wanted to let you know where that's at. Um, and without further ado, I'm going to hand it over to our committee members. Well, let's go ahead and get started around our schedule. Um, this year we met quarterly. Um, and Alma, if you

021wanted to go ahead and highlight some of the areas that we covered during our meetings. Um, so yeah, during our meetings this year, we talked about the dashboard that Cat mentioned, um, the progress, the process. Um we were um reviewed on the decarbonization tool um what that shows us and how it's working. Um funding pathways and then um we talked about how we want to move forward in the future and what we want our priorities to be next year. In the spring in April, we moved to focusing on our strategic plan implementation update and as well transitioning to how are we inspiring and connecting with the community around keeping this initiative alive. It's as much our responsibility as committee members at is as it is the board to support the work that we do. And

022oh, I was just gonna Oh, no. The just the last part on that was was our special meetings. Um we'll plan another orientation in the fall for incoming. Um it was incredibly helpful um to help onboard new committee members and not lose the momentum that is built yearly through the work that's done. Um so our key successes that we wanted to highlight this year um was um the student reports that we did at the beginning of each meeting. So myself and the other student representative on the committee Tess Nestle um provided our student perspective on what's going on on the committee and what we're doing as representatives at the beginning of the meetings. And one of the main things we worked on this year and talked about in our student reports was the climate awareness

023survey that we put together and which we will talk more about later. I think it's important to highlight that operationalizing student involvement. It was key and as you'll you'll share later in how that produced measurable results that I believe the board is looking for in terms of public transparency and accountability to the work that's being done. Do you want to share any more about um some of the dashboarding? Um the Oh um yeah. And then the other thing that was really important to us this year was continued support for the electrification of schools. So um you all as the board of education I believe um held really strong in making sure that the modernized schools are going to be all electric which was really important to us and we really appreciate that. And it's not

024left on us the difficult struggle that you faced during this recent budget season. And we understand and we applaud you for supporting the future. Is there anything else you want to I think we covered the decarbonization um the digital showcase of the student projects. Um, Cat, can you tell can you share if there is a link available for them to review the digital showcase? Um, the digital showcase that's listed here is a public digit, um, it's a showcase of all the student projects that participated in the Portland Clean Energy Funds studentled climate projects. Um, so on our climate justice website, um, there's the student projects tab and if you go to that, there's a full dashboard where you can actually see a map and click on the school and see what project that they did.

025So yeah, it's good. Um, so the survey that Tess and I conducted this year, um, received 276 total responses, which we were really proud of. It went out to all of the high schools in the district um, through Triory. We emailed teachers directly. It went out in newsletter emails and we really did everything we could to get it distributed. It was a 10 to 15 minute survey um that asked questions, some of which are here on the screen and others of which we won't have time to talk about, but we tried to get a really comprehensive idea of how students think about climate change, how it's impacting them at schools, and um their views of how the district um as a whole is addressing climate change. Um, it was open for almost a month and

026we got a lot of really helpful feedback from students that I believe that we'll be able to use moving forward. Um, we the sort of graphic here talks with words um those are words that students um sort of thought about in relation to climate change. And then the two statistics that we wanted to share with you specifically um were the barriers that students are facing and the actions that they're interested in. And a lot of these climate actions that they would be interested in um if they were given proper support in um engaging in them would actually be relatively easy especially with the Pep grants to enable students to participate in. And then in terms of the barriers, 54 54% of students responded that um they don't know where to start in regards to climate

027action. And that seems like a really important statistic to me because that's something that we can directly improve on by providing more opportunities for students and publicizing those more. I think it's important to highlight that this student survey was student initiated, student developed, formulated, applied, and executed and continued to be analyzed with the guidance of the committee. This was incredibly impressive work that should continue be operationalized. And I would point out the first thing, the greatest thing is time. And that's something that everyone in front of me can address. I think it's possible to to carve out time. So the last thing that we want to talk about is our recommendations. Um, we want uh our our we start with aligning the climate work with your goals, the PPS priority goals. The second one. Oh,

028sorry. Um, and then embedded transparency and engagement goals, making sure that um, what we're doing, what the district is doing is super accessible to the public and super easy to um, act like engage with and help out with if possible. Tools like the dashboard, the student survey, amplifying, continuing to refine and continue to create access preserving and scaling the climate programs, not losing the momentum. Um, institutionalizing student voices. Um and a start to this would be continuing the student survey, making sure that it is um continued to be distributed and analyzed um specifically by students and instit or expanding and and redesigning the volunteer program to include climate policy implementation support. We have a phenomenal community around us. I'm looking at some of the biggest brains in the community right now, right? And there are

029more out there. And we can tap into them and operationalize that in a way that benefits our entire community. I think that's it. Uh so that's the conclusion of the presentation and we have time for questions I believe if you all have anything. I was wondering if you might share a just a couple of the projects that the students led. Oh, yes. Um, okay. So, there's some pretty there's some Do you want to share the one from Bridger? I would love to. I'm like on the edge of my So, Bridger Creative Science School um led an ethnobbotanical hydraology and historical tour. They started their tour at Delta Park and Vanport and moved to the stockyards and the Japanese internment. moved across the river to Vancouver and visited our IBR offices or interstate bridge replacement program

030and learned about the history of the bridge, the engineering and then took a walk down to the confluence and learned about the World War I and World War II engagements as well as native tribal influences in that area. It was incredibly powerful to watch the students and many of the students took the information that they learned and submitted them in competition at the Oregon Historical Society this year about Vamport and the bridge. So, did the students actually set up that tour? I mean, did they figure that out? Wow. Yeah. I I I I offer myself, but it was actually interesting that the in that the invite came because they thought that I still worked in my previous employment at the Port of Portland. And so they asked me if I knew anyone and I said,

031"Well, as luck would have it, I'm on the IVR leaders team." Um, so I might be able to swing that. But but they they planned everything. They planned their tour and they met with the engineers. They met with our administrative staff. They asked incredibly powerful and meaningful questions. They also took home a token from the original bridge, 108 years old. They placed it in a time capsule that will be opened in 25 years along with drawings of the bridge, the current bridge, and some visualizations of what we hope it will be and their stories around what they learned in terms of Vanport, the sediment, the river, the impacts in the economy, the history, this place-based learning and incorporating environment into it. It's a win-win. And then Elmo, would you like to share your project? Because

032Elmo also worked on a piece of project. Um, I'm co-president of the climate club at Cleveland High School and um, our club led uh, the Cleveland High School project. Um, the club last year had wanted to get composting at the school and have compost bins available for staff and students to use. And so we wanted to incorporate that into our project. Um and by the end of the year we did have compost bins and waste sorting bins in the cafeteria. Um but along with that we did some outreach to students trying to educate the community um in why composting isn't important and kind of the surrounding careers. Um so we had four different um speakers who talked about their careers related to waste management and sustainability in Portland. Um they talked during um study hall

033time in the library and it was available for all high school students to attend those talks. And um in addition to that, we um did our best to reach students on um why the compost bins were important and um sorry um and uh engage teachers in that. I just give you a little sneak preview for some other ones there. Grant High School did a um a student, they worked with a student to produce art to create an a children's book that they then wanted to go and actually read to the kids in the elementary schools in the cluster that they're in. Um there's projects around, you know, native planting, um field trips, career fairs, clothing swaps, like there's a huge wealth of projects. It's amazing. A little overwhelming, but very cool. So, um we're really

034excited to take all of that information. we have pictures. Um, and then we're going to put it into more of like a something that is visible and accessible for everyone to be able to enjoy. Um, and we'll still have that digital showcase up as well. So, we'll be updating that. And and were these um supported by I know there was a grant where you could apply and you get they got some funding. Yeah. Yeah. So, the Portland Clean Energy Fund um has a studentled climate initiatives fund that um all the school districts in the city of Portland have been awarded uh for middle any school that serves 6th through 12th grade. So, K8's, middle schools, and high schools. Um every school receives $15,000 for studentled climate projects every year for five years. So 5,000 of

035that can go towards administrative support, paying teachers, doing all the central coordinating, and then 10,000 goes directly into the hands of the students to get to learn about project management, planning, you know, so everyone from sixth graders working, you know, once a week for 20 minutes during their lunch period all the way up to, you know, clubs and um the high school level. Um so it's just it's been a whole it's been a pilot. Well, it's been the first year uh where we've done a lot of learning and we're very excited to see it grow. um next year and get really fine-tuned. That's really a lot more than last year, right? I mean, you've you've done tons. Uh yeah, this this uh funding is available to 38 schools and so it's a huge um opportunity

036for Portland public schools. So from um it really like amplified all of the things we know are important for climate justice that students you know centered voices deciding what the projects are understanding the impacts um embracing curiosity connecting it back to their curriculum and then yeah it's been a very cool thing to get to see for this first year and I'm excited to see it continue to grow. So yeah you mentioned some you mentioned something about time for that we could provide time what do you mean exactly? Let's say you wanted to um add an hour a week dedicated for every student in the curricula to learn about environmental and climate issues at their appropriate level. I think that that would be a first step. So a curriculum change integration carving it out. I have

037I have a comment about that. Um, I was going to speak to that because time seemed to be one of the things that was, you know, a limited resource and the response would be to embed, you know, climate education at all grade levels, not just the 6 through 12 in the curriculum. And it could be math, it could be science, it could be social studies, it could be um history even. Um, so I just had a comment and a question. I was curious because I'm actually going after an Oregon um Department of Land Conservation and Development grant, but not for Portland public unfortunately. But it's an amazing project because we're going to do the community the economic development piece as well as the green infrastructure. Um I was curious if we have plans to depave

038some of our um asphalt um and and increase native plantings. So those have been the two most popular projects for students. Um that the tricky part is figuring out how to make that work within the year timeline for the student projects. And then at a larger scale um uh I think yeah that would be a question for the for the facilities. I'm wondering if there could be a model you know protocol developed that could be applied to school buildings. So, you'd have to get an architectural firm to or landscape architecture to do a site plan, but you would still be able to do the native plantings, the the you know, um increased tree canopy, you know, some of those things. So, I was just curious about that one to just put that out on the

039record. Um the other thing is something that is really important to me and I talk about almost every day on my job is about how to um have culturally responsive questions about climate. So uh the way that you approach uh let's energy efficiency for instance um could be looked at you know through a cultural lens. It could be looked at through an economic lens when we look at who's most energy burdened or the people of color and people in poverty and and so the way that we talk about climate um helps bring people in as long as it's inclusive and welcoming. And so it's just something that I work on and I think about every day. Um, and then I was just going to put a plug for place-based learning, especially like in our neighborhood

040schools, all have a special place that has a special history. And you know, our neighborhood schools are great, you know, across the city. They all have a special history about that place. Um, the plants that are in that place, the microclimates, and um, my hope is that the kids get to know the places where they're going to school. And I wanted to um offer around the landscape architecture vision if it would be helpful. There was a program at PPS um called RISE where we worked with a contractor to actually work with schools to design um mostly K5 schools to redesign their schoolyard grounds um and kind of imagine what they would like it to be. And it created this plan that um everyone could get on board with that says, "Okay, here's the native plant

041garden. Here's the storm water like so." And so, um, that was a really great program because it had the, um, the students were really at the center of designing that space. Um, there was they would took all the cool crayon drawings and turned it into landscape architecture. But if you'd like, I can share um after this the some of the plans that came out of that to see because we still Yeah, we'd love to look at them. I was just going to say this is going to be a partnership not just with the school which is unfortunately not Portland public but um the blueprint foundation um to do the workforce development piece and um the Kajjani Collective which is a black lead energy and steam effort um and there's a curriculum component. So for the

042deep paving of the playground there needs to be um a curriculum that'll be designed by I believe Pacific University uh teacher teachers in training. So, it's a really cool project. I'm really excited about it. I'd love to see PPS adopt uh some of the things that have happened in say Reynolds and Centennial uh who've done some really amazing uh deep paving on their playgrounds. Yeah. Isn't there already a maybe not Portland public schools, but a deep paving project out there, isn't there? Because I've read Centennial has a really nice one. Yeah. Have you worked with that, too? Or is that the um the organization Deepave? Yeah. Yeah. We partner with them a lot to do deep paving. Yes. Um, do you want to go first? All right. Obviously, please. Thank you for all this. I

043I um just some feedback. If I could, I would have you here all day, but to respect your time, I won't. Um uh I really appreciate the kind of focus on uh operationalizing um these grant money and then the projects and things like that. I think that's amazing to hear. Uh to put some maybe a positive spin on the survey, you know, when you first look at it, it's a little bit depressing, you know, because you see the big words like um hopelessness or or powerlessness, right? Uh but one thing I want to point out there that may be a positive is that frustration is actually a big word. And the reason I I say that's a positive doesn't sound pass but um let me explain. Uh I remember this what you're doing here is

044like light years beyond what we had like maybe even 10 years ago. And I'm really thankful for that. Um I remember as a as a science teacher when we did PD on for example teaching climate one of the things that we really focused on was that uh we want to not focus on the problem but focus on action and because what we wanted to avoid was students feeling powerlessness right and focusing on action changed the tide a bit and the studies were showing that that was changing the the perception I think I'm hoping because powerlessness is one thing but frustration usually means trying to do something but can't, right? And so there's action embedded in the word frustration. So I'm hopeful that that that there's a real link there. So um but otherwise uh uh

045keep up the good work. I good work. I wish I could um have you here for three hours, but no. Thank you. Great project, Dr. Billers. So, I'm really glad this is happening at my last board meeting because um this is like what we imagined or we hoped would be the outcome of the policy. It was at the time a a big really bold policy and the students um with two parts. the one part about reducing carbon emissions and the second one was related to all the the all the other pillars and um there was a moment in time like we need to just make this very high level and kind of like a couple paragraphs. Um but really the students um and the parents and there had been a school-based climate committee or schoolbased

046staff climate committee that really pushed the board to be specific and be um bolder than 2050 which was the original language and I'm looking at director or former director Rosen in the back of the room who um showed up I think even after you had left the board uh to really be the enforcer that we didn't slip back um when we passed the policy. And um I say there were um many components of this that the students really um felt strongly about and wanted to own. Um and we let them. uh Danny Cage who's now uh MASD um director uh served as uh a student uh representative on the committee at the time and like I say our students really pushed us and so it's also we were really thoughtful about the committee being sort

047of the keeper of the the flame um so that there always would be staff work there would always be board work um but the committee was really designed to sort of um keep keep driving forward, hold us accountable and um like I say, I look I look at this and um I can see the just the progress that's been made and Cat, thank you for your leadership and I want to thank everybody who's served on the committee over the last four years for um keeping the flame alive and keeping us accountable. I know um when we came to a tough decision about the uh cost of electrifying the high schools, it was helpful to have you have our backs um to to remind the larger community that we'd made this commitment. And when I look

048through the uh all the additional uh materials that were sent to us, really the the places where we're seeing um real changes at the school level in decarbonization is where we are moving away from um fossil fuels. Uh so you know thanks to the board for also standing strong and sort of keeping in mind that this was a this is a hundred-year um project and that we're doing this for it's really our students who are going to be the benefits and who are going to be living in the future world. So I don't have any questions just like great job. Um thank you cat for leading leading the work. Um and thanks for all the community members who have spent so much time keeping this moving forward. Thanks. And thank you, Julia. It's your vision,

049right? It's your support that continued lift standing in the gap. And we're here to support you. And you have an entire community. This is the conversations we're having around how can we support and also hold folks accountable. And we do that with creative solutions. Thank you. Well, I first want to thank the both of you and Cat for the dedication and knowledge and just wealth you bring to this committee. Truly appreciate that and I really appreciate that especially at the board level. I remember meeting with Alma and Tess earlier on this year and just they just educated me so much about climate justice and I truly appreciated that. I remember attending an event that you guys hosted at as well which was amazing. My first question was I was wondering if you could just provide

050some more clarity on what the climate youth advisory or climate justice youth advisory council does. Um yeah I can provide so that group has uh adop adapted over the last few years and um the space that I as the administrator of that space feel that it serves is um to to move forward PPS with a climate justice lens. need to make sure that those who are most affected by the decisions are at the center of what we're doing. That's just justice in in general. And so I really view the opportunity of the climate justice youth advisories to bring together a space of passionate um students from different high schools to be able to share very similar to the district student council what they see is happening in their communities um what they're passionate about what

051they're interested in and then also to literally advise me when we're making tough choices like what from your perspective like I came to the uh we call the CJYA um I came to them when we were talking about modern modernization and like the electrification and said, "Hey, look, there's like some really um because Elma goes to Cleveland, so direct directly impacted here." Uh Elmo's on the CJA, too. I don't know if you've noticed, but involved in everything. Um but um yeah, just saying like these are some of the complicated questions that we're grappling with. Uh from your perspectives, like what like just what do you what do you see as like the pros and cons and all these things? And it was a really complex and thoughtful conversation. um and it really helped me shape

052kind of my perspective too on like what is is feeling you know most important and what are these trade-offs that we're talking about. So the advisement part I take seriously anytime I get to meet with students um and then the other part of it is also guiding how we continue to further student engagement. So, um, in the past, the students have had the opportunity to, we've had youth climate summits, um, uh, which have been districtwide as well, and, you know, from an adult perspective. I'm like, let's have speakers. And they're like, yeah, um, we could do that or we could do other things with our time. Um, and so they've provided some really great feedback on those other things that we could be doing like having, you know, curating the um, engagement tables or like

053what kinds of vendors they'd want to see there and community partners and how the space should move. And so really being able to provide some thoughtful and um, just like fresh really like student centered and focused perspectives on when we're adults are creating these big spaces just actually going and saying like does this like what do you think? Um, so that's been a a major space for it. Um, and I'm hoping to see how we can better support our PCF projects and be more in alignment with that as well next year as our capacity kind of gets stretched and we really think about the best way to um, support students in all these different projects. Um, I did want to make a little space for Elma since you were involved in it this year. If

054you want to add anything. Um, yeah. So um this year the CJYA was spearheaded by Rosie um an Americanore member and she did an amazing job with it and um she allowed it to be very very much student oriented and student led. So after first couple of orientation meetings um which also had lots of space for student input um all of the meetings were run by students on a volunteer basis and it was totally up to us what we wanted to do with our time, what we wanted to prioritize and um we decided to host an event for climate groups AC across the district. So, climate clubs um and um you know like elective classes that are based on climate change and um we um invited those groups and um uh that was the event

055that you attended um and it was intended to be a space to share what people are doing to make connections um and meet people who are interested in the same things and people that we could collaborate with in the future. And so on the CJYA, is it only high school students that are allowed to serve on? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I would definitely would love to see middle school students be included or some sort of like middle school equivalent of the CJYA because I know I recently attended um Roseway Middle School and their climate justice club. and just hearing all the excitement and all the knowledge they had. I would love to really center our middle school students in this process because I know oftentimes we don't really include them. So, I think if we

056can include them as much as possible, especially in the survey next year, that'd be really that'd be amazing. Absolutely. I would love to just echo that because that's one of the models at Creative Science Now, Bridger Creative Science, which is employing always having elder students teaching younger students. Um that model moves on and there is a path that looks from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade. Um scaling engagement through intentionality. I feel like that's a great opportunity there to create some time for our high schoolers to mentor our middle schoolers. Start them early. They were trained the trainers and teaching is one of the best teachers. So, can I say something? Oh, sorry. Thank you, Director Smith. That's okay. Um, I just first want to thank um Barbie and Alma for your volunteer service

057and commitment. Alma, I hope you're not going too far away. Um, and also Cat for your leadership um and all that you do. Um, I'm hearing a lot of praise and I think it's so well um well-earned. And also I just want to point out that um policies like this sometimes pass and then they can get sort of attacked and changed or just as you put it like just kind of we were talking about operationalizing make sure we're continuing to do these things. Um I work at the state level and I often see state programs get set up do great things and go away. We're in a huge um as far as the state of Oregon goes, we have a moment where in the last five years, I could name seven climate programs that have

058been stood up and will um end um on June 30th. So, I just kind of want to flag that it's so important that as the state um is sort of abdicating that responsibility like we think it's like everybody knows like the federal government is abdicating that responsibility. Um but maybe not everybody knows that the state is also really struggling to hold on to the climate policies that they have enacted. And I just want to thank you for being an example of where we are sticking to the plan and the policy. And I want to make sure that you hear the commitment from this group to to continue to support the policy and the work that you're all doing. And just really flagged for the public how important it is for like you think local action.

059This is like hyper local like school district action that um is going to get us through um what I imagine will be some tough years on the budget front. Um and then also um as far as federal government and federal climate policy, I just wanted to say just give like a couple of really random ideas for you to consider in the future. Um one is that there's a state senator Janine Sulman who's the chair of the energy and environment committee and she holds space for youth voices on every single committee agenda and they're almost never kids or youth that show up to testify. And so I just want to make sure that you all know that there's this opportunity. The next legislative session will meet in February. There'll be probably 20 meetings or something. No,

060less than that. Probably like eight meetings because just February. Um I don't know why I said 20, but like eight meetings, let's say, where you'd be able to have folks show up and talk about whatever issue they want related to energy and environment. So, I think taking advantage of that um it's not just because um it will get our whatever policies out there, but really it gives students like a really cool civics education experience and the legislators eat it up. They love it. So, it's a really feel-good feel-good environment for somebody to come down to Salem or um testify remotely is also now allowed in the Oregon legislature. So, it kind of reduces that transportation barrier. I was also hearing about the projects and um I think that there are probably schools around the district

061that have have had like really visionary leaders including parents who've done cool projects over the years. Um I'm at Hayhurst um where we have had composting for I think 15 20 years and we have volunteers I'm actually one of them um who show up once a week and make sure that we are like properly sorting recycling from compost and trash because you can imagine kindergarteners and first graders need some support by the end of the year they really don't need it but especially at the beginning. Um, and it's like a whole thing that's been happening for a really long time at our school. And I wonder if other schools are doing those cool things and we just don't really know that they're happening and they could become models because you were setting up a composting

062system. You could have called me up and I could have told you how we do it. Here's the manual. Here's what we figured out with our um, we found out at one point that our hauler was just putting the compost into the garbage because we didn't have they just decided that it was a school and we didn't need it. We were like, "Wait, what?" like we do all this work. So, we had to we had to do some some work with that. Um, so just know that it might be interesting to just see like, hey, I don't know how to figure it out, but like, hey, does your school do a cool thing around climate that we don't even know about because it's been happening since before the policy was in place or we also

063have replaced all the vegetation on our campus with native plants over the last probably 15 years as well. Probably the same parents spearheaded that honestly. Um, so anyway, I just wanted to put that out there that I bet there's like magical things happening that are kind of off the radar. Christy, I just want to jump in because I absolutely love that and that's one of the things that we envision through expanding the volunteer program. While you were sharing about um reducing imperous surfaces, increasing tree canopy, we know that there's funding out there. I personally know of architecture engineering firms who would step up to the plate and offer free engineering, free architectural design if they knew that it was helping a school. You have a community ready. You have things happening at different places, but

064it it is led either by that Amina S or Laura Axen. Who are those instructors? Who are those communities? Is it Alyssa Kumas at Sunnyside School? Who are those people that are stepping forward? But how do we operationalize it? And that's one of the things at Creative Science, we sign on as parents, we sign an agreement at the at the onset of starting the school that we commit to two hours of service a month, the entire time our our student is there. Um, and sometimes that looks like reading in the classroom, and sometimes that looks like picking up garbage. Um, it depends on what people's capacity and time, but there is always space to serve. So, I I love that. What does that look like to create that place where people can go, "Oh, they

065did it. Here's how and we want to do it here." I I really quickly also wanted to respond to that and um say that the first thing I learned about PPS when I started was that there was amazing things happening everywhere. um especially around climate action, but just kind of in general. And it's, you know, one of our greatest um uh hidden gems that doesn't have to be hidden. Um but I do think one of the most powerful motivators for um those words that you saw, despair, disappointment, frustration, hopelessness, is the myth that nothing is happening or no progress is being made. And so, um I've been really wanting to be able to get those stories from the school sites and just kind of see what's happening so we can share them more. So, uh,

066I'm optimistic with the piece of projects that gives us a little bit more of an in, but also want to put out there to the world for anyone who's watching or interested. We have a email climate justicepbs.net. And if you want to share a cool story of what's happening, we I would we I would love to see it. Um, um, and would love to like continue to create pathways to getting those stories amplified and shared and, you know, on all of our different communication channels. So, I just wanted to throw that out there. Thank you for sharing that as an example because we have an amazing cohort of active parent volunteers and community members doing great work at our schools and it would be great to better elevate those stories. Um I'm going to be

067really quick because we're a little behind time. Um I just want to say put in a plug for uh the cube conference is doing a call for um presentations and it would be great to present on all the great work that we're doing in Portland. The cube if you would like to partner. Okay. Thank you. Perfect. Unless they reopen it. They haven't reopened it that I know of next year year after. Thank you all. I really enjoyed this presentation and um yeah, thank you. I'm excited to see supporting. Thank you. Yes, absolutely. Can we clap? Yes. [Applause] All right. Next up, we have an update on the staff engagement plan for the relocation of the central office. Dr. Armstrong. Yeah, I'll just ask my chief of staff, Deborah Kafuri, to stay at the deis and

068share the update, introduce the team. Thank you. Thank you all. Um, we are here following up on a request from you all and from Dr. Armstrong to um write down a plan of action of how we are engaging our staff throughout this long process to move to relocate this building in partnership with Albina Vision Trust. And I have with me here today um the woman who's spearheading this who can answer all the questions for you and go through the presentation. Uh Dana White. She's Oh, thank you. I'm really not good with titles. Senior director of of fabulousness. Yes, there you go. I think that's what it is. Good. Make sure they write that in the paper. Um, good evening. It's nice to see you all in your last uh board meeting as this group. Things

069are going to change next time. It's going to be kind of exciting, fun. Um, for us at least, new people. Um, so this is a relocation update and well, not you, Director Holland. I know you're always there. Um, so we have been doing a lot of work on communicating with staff and so wanted to share this with you and kind of what the plan is. So this is there we go. Our agenda here will be to explain what we're doing on the staff engagement and our comms and then we wanted to share a little bit the um project schedule as it stands right now just to have a high level understanding because I I do think that one of the things that creates a lot of anxiety with staff is that people don't realize how

070long this takes. We're still very much at the 50,000 foot level. though there there is no secret building that we found that we're not telling anyone about. Um I wish there was but there but there's not. Uh I would definitely tell you. So we have done um we've been focusing on identifying our needs obviously for the last for the next 50 years. We know this buildings will need to be around for a long time and we've sent out an RFI to the real estate community, the commercial real estate community in Portland asking for submissions. We have uh gotten a number of submissions from folks that are interested in potentially working with us. uh a lot of um NDAs being signed and a lot of um uh quiet conversations, but uh this is a really big

071opportunity for the city and for the developers in the city. So, as you know, we're working with AVT on that and then we um we'll bring when we once we've been through looking at those and start to come down to maybe there's a few options, then we'll be bringing those back for folks to understand and get more information on and share that with the board. Um we did uh last week I think it was last week could have been the week before listening sessions with staff. We did um three sessions and this was staff only. We asked our managers and directors not to participate because we really wanted it to be staff being able to share and feel safe that they could say something that their boss wasn't sitting right next to them. Um so

072so that was about 250 staff came to that. We had two in person and one virtual. So that that went really well. We are going to have a follow-up meeting this Thursday with the directors to let them know what we're hearing and what we've heard from their teams. So, that's that's the that piece of that sort of initial piece right now that we're working on. Um, and then we shared with them as well where we're at right now and what the schedule will look like. So, it was really good. A lot of a lot of good questions, a lot of um a lot of folks attending and and really appreciated that. So, we do have um multiple different ways that folks can stay informed with us. We've created a QR code and and uh and

073our lovely chief of staff has allowed us to actually pay for it. So, I've got my very own QR code for PEC. I think it was $6. It was we probably have to have a fundraiser. Um so, and we have a website now and we um we also have an email, the PEC planning team at PPS.net. Um, if you want to go on to the internet, you can look under facilities and on the left side where it lists all the different areas that we touch. Um, there is and there is the PEC relocation team and all of the board materials, all of the survey information. Everything we've done so far is on there so people can go and look if they are interested in in getting more information that way. Um, and then there is

074this more newsletter uh that we are starting to send out. I think we've had one Deborah Kennedy has worked on. I think we have one had one of those go out. Um, and we've done about 20 one-on-one interviews with different departments and that's basically all we can do till we really get to a point where we say this is these are the options. How what will we do a test fit? How how might this actually work? So, um there'll be that will change us to a a whole new level of engagement at that point with various different departments. So we will of course be bringing back to the board via executive session initially I expect and then into the full board uh publicly as we begin to make progress on on options here. Um can

075you can you go back to the prior slide? I also um want to sorry the one before this one ma'am. Um part of doing any process like this is is it's an ongoing you know this is not written in stone somewhere we have to follow it is that we are continuing to update our engagement plan as we engage people and hear back from staff what type of information they want and when. And one of the things that we heard um loud and clear from our union partners was that they wanted to have um specific trade specific listening sessions because they are the experts in their fields obviously and they are the experts in knowing what is needed for their trade to work in their space. So um we will be holding and we're in the

076process of planning right now um four um specific trade specific listening sessions um so that we can get that voice and that input as well. And um I I I don't I have no doubt that we will be doing many many more just as as as the need arises. Um we want to hear from people. We know the only way to make this a successful move is to as Dana said ensure that people get their questions answered that they feel heard and that they've been involved in the process. We remove all the um things that will give them anxiety or try or right try really hard. Right. We are trying really hard. Um thank you. I appreciate that. That's that big help. Um, so this is the phase 2 schedule um that we've been sharing

077with with folks uh in these past few weeks and it just kind of gives you an idea of where we're at in the process and like I said, we've have an RFI that's gone out. We're starting to get information back. We'll start actually start looking at some properties here in the next few weeks uh with AVT and their um consultants that they're bringing along as well. So, we have a lot of work going into this right now. a tremendous amount of uh information out there that we're trying to get through to find out what might might work for us. U is it can we do one building, two buildings, what is it going to look like and where would they be? Um that sort of thing. So this gives you Oh, go ahead. I had

078a quick question. Yeah, you bet. Those are times I'm trying to I can hardly read this thing. Uh oh, yeah. So some of them are Yeah, because we've gotten Yes, it's those have happened. Yes, but are they not necessarily? They're milestone there. No, it's an indication more of what we've done on those dates for the engagement piece because this is really just around the engagement opportunities. Does that make sense? I'm sorry. Oh, okay. Um, and then this is the high level project schedule. And again, sharing this, this is what we've been sharing with staff. So, I want to make sure that the board has seen it. Um, they've have the the presentation that we use for staff is basically the same presentation. Uh, maybe has a few more slides that explain why we're doing this.

079Uh, but this is the same information that we're sharing. So, that was the end of that. So I'm sure there's I'm sure there's questions. I can go first question. I think the diamonds are when they're engag when they're doing the listening sessions. I'll just say what I was going to say. Am I right? Okay. Yeah. Those are the one, right? That's when they're planned for. The thing the filledin ones are the things that have happened and not filled in is as far as engagement opportunities to be done. Yes. Yeah. Great. Um, so, uh, but to what I really wanted to talk about, um, I have really just maybe just one question. Um, I'm curious, um, as you get to the point of talking through the different options for the move, the new locations, and I

080know we have to have conversations in executive session because of I'm not I'm not a business person, how business works. um h how will you overcome that need for NDAs and all that in order to get staff feedback on that final decision? Well, as we get closer and start to whittle this down and we have a couple of options, two or three options, say um at that point, we we have to be able to be to discuss it with with a broader group of people and with you all as well, of course. And so we will have to work with the landlords or the owners on that as we get there because there there will come a time when um we're close to we're going to make an offer on something then we need to

081obviously share that with folks. So, I'm not sure that um we can't tour everybody through every building, you know. So, it's trying to keep people involved to the degree that they need to be. And there'll be a lot of staff involvement uh and departmental involvement when we do test fits on various sites because that's where we really see does this work or would this not work or could we not do the agencies, things like that. So, we will we will have to work through those and I'm I'm sure that our uh council over here, Miss Large, would be happy to help me on that. So, yeah, it'll be fun for this. Um, and then I did think of the other thing I thought of earlier that I wanted to ask. Um, the um feedback that

082you're getting in those listening sessions, are you compiling it in some way and can we receive it once it's all compiled? I know it's pretty recent. Um, just so we can have those perspectives in mind because honestly what where I think we should move I I mean, what do I know? So, I think I would benefit a great deal from knowing what you're learning from all levels of staff about what they um are interested in seeing in application and and staff have worked with um staff and Dana's department worked with comms to put together an FAQ that actually is up today. So, Yep. on the website you can check out what people are asking. Um I I think it's fair to say that um people at this point have been staff have been more interested

083in hearing about the process and where we are and there hasn't haven't been as many questions to date. I think that in my opinion is because that we've done a good job of talking with them up to this point. Um I don't Yeah, we've had I I looked tonight before we came up here. We've had nine nine questions. Um and typically as it generally happens it's around space. Well, we have conference room space. Parking is always an issue, of course. Um, and then and the concern I think that we hear of folks thinking that maybe this is some broader strategy to outsource certain functions or things like that, which which it's not. Um, but but that fear shows up, but I think I thought it was pretty good that we only had nine so far.

084Are you just soliciting questions or are you also soliciting comments as well? Comments. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay, great. Yep. Absolutely. Got it. Thank you so much. really appreciate the work and um the um responsiveness to the concerns that we heard however many weeks ago that was really appreciate your your leadership all three of you and making that happen. Can I just clarify just adding on to director Split's questions. So the questions and comments they're posted somewhere publicly or they on the they're not they're not from staff the questions and comments they've given. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean just like whether it's the summary or like could any PPS staff member or the public see what the comments were or the questions and what the answers were? No, not for the questions that the staff

085is sending to us to to PPS. I mean the the right now the website with that includes the FAQ is for staff only, but there's we're in conversation about when to switch it over to a public facing document. But yeah, that's it. Just um as I said, the FAQs just got added today and the website was just up I think Friday. So, this is all relatively new. But the at some point there will be a switch over to have it be more public. Great. And just as given it's a public act asset that um a lot of people use other than just staff um I think it would be great to just have broader trans transparency. Um, I had a couple questions. Um, in the RFI that uh went out, did it just have the

086minimum criteria or did it also include the desired features which were the things that were there was the minimum criteria, but there also here are some other things that would that you spoke to that we would like. Did it include those other things? It it did. It includes other things that we that would be important to us. Hopefully, we'd like to have if it's multiple buildings, we'd like them to be close together. Things like that. Um, so it it does speak to um here are some of the other things that are important to us that that they may not be drop dead minimum criteria, but they're important. So, and when things come back and staff are it's, you know, things shared ultimately with staff, it'd be like here's how things compare against the minimum criteria

087and then here's, you know, things that match the also the desired features. Exactly. Okay, great. Um, then how question I'm going to go back to the chart because I'm not sure that in this space right here that we're all in agreement what the chart what the chart means. I didn't create the chart but I kind of wish I did because so if I look at this it says there's down at the bottom identify properties that are finalist for final selection um or preferred and then there's three diamonds. Does that mean that these are points where there'll be staff engagement around the identified properties? Yes. So those are points that we've said this is where we need to and whether that's in big staff meetings or just smaller departmental meetings. We want to make sure that

088we're checking in. Again, that's tied to the test fit piece as well. But those will be like actual properties. Yes. Right. Right. We we've done the rubber hits the road. Yeah. Exactly. Um because I was a little bit concerned when I um so the chart because the the phase two that says um which is on page and I'm sorry but I can't read what slide it's on. It's well this is phase two property search and evaluation. There is you know the third bullet together with ABT. The team will evaluate properties, identify the top solutions to the to present to the board of education in a private executive session, and then it's just not clear like like what what's going to happen between that and like the board voting. I'm assuming there's a lot that go

089yes, there's a lot that Sorry. So that will be a fair amount of time that the staff and public will be able to see like what the district is before the bill's helping me. Okay, we can't see the No, we don't see I have all the little the little details here. So um was there one? I'm sorry. Um so this is oh the value my just qu my question is after this like the confidential executive session is that then I'm assuming it's not then just going straight to a vote that there'll be staff engagement right and the community will people will express their opinions and right um and there will be work we need to do internally with leadership here um to say how do we want to address certain issues you you know, the

090parking comes to mind always because that's uh part of our climate issue as well. So, there are a number of things that that we'll need to make sure that we're all aligned on um how we're going to handle the pros and cons, I guess. So, just um one thing maybe is like um we're maybe a good focus group here like um we're all interpreting this different ways. So, I appreciate that. For me, it's not clear when after property is identified when that space is because that is really when people probably are like, "Oh, or yeah, that'd be great." Um, like when that is. And I'm not sure we know quite when that is. I guess we're so early in the process. There's just space for it, right? Um, so the other question I had is

091I'm glad that the listening sessions had an opportunity for staff to attend where there's a safe and open environment for people to um raise issues. I'm wondering at the last meeting we had um a report that a supervisor sort of had a chill basically told staff that they couldn't engage in discussions about it and they could be potentially terminated. I'm curious what um messaging has gone out to sort of counter that that people should be able to I mean I always feel like staff should be able to share their point of view um whether you know the board or the senior staff agree with it or not but that people shouldn't be told they might be terminated for engaging in a discussion. Sure. and and it's hard to speak to that specific uh that uh

092issue or that that specific uh situation. Uh but but my feeling is when we're talking to staff and we're having these these groups and we usually meet in here. Um they're sharing and we're I'm giving them my honest answers. I'm not trying to sugarcoat anything. I'm not trying to sell them anything. Um there's pros and cons to all of it. And so, um, that's that's the way in to me the best way to engage with those staff and say, "We do want to hear what you're what you're thinking and what you're worried about. Um, because I think there's underlying concerns a lot of times that drive those questions." And that's why we specifically had these listening sessions for staff only and not having supervisors or managers necessarily there so that folks would feel comfortable and

093and know that that they we're being we're they're being asked to to share in any way that they feel safe. And I think that's going forward with our trade specific listening sessions as well. Um, it's been asked if we could have their union representatives in the room with them to help facilitate that conversation and that's been obviously agreed to. I mean, we are not trying to silence people's feedback and input. That is the last thing we want to do. So, any ways that we can uh open up the process to make it more visible to our staff and make them feel encouraged and to participate is what we want to do. That's great to hear because you'll get a big this will be a really big failure if we don't engage the staff. time if

094there's if it's not colllocated, if it's two separate sites, is there sort of like two different staff engagement um around the different sites based on like that's probably how we would do it. Uh because we have departments theoretically at least is you know sort of would go to admin versus operations center. Um, and again that depends on what buildings they are and and so exactly which teams are where. But that's probably the easiest way to be able to give enough time um is to to say, "Okay, you're in the group that would go to the admin, for example. How would this impact you to be at this location? Here's sort of the pros and cons, things like that." It it sounds like it's a really iterative process. In other words, as you take in more

095information, you know, you see what's out there, you hear from staff, you move on to the next phase, which is maybe on the chart, maybe not. But it's an iterative process. It's a learning process and you're going to bring people along and I'm confident that, you know, it'll it'll go it'll go well, especially listening to staff and also just, you know, good engagement practice to let people know what to expect in terms of how how their input will be used or not, you know, to set the expectation that this isn't a consensus like everybody that works in the building has to agree. um I think would be really important to make it clear that we'll do the best to incorporate what we've heard. It's one data point out of many that are being considered. That

096that's absolutely you were absolutely right and I appreciate that. Thank you. And as I've been saying, it's like when you go to buy a house or rent a house, you have a list of 25 things that you are you definitely want and then as you start looking around, you realize, well, actually, I don't really need the fireplace. I do need the pool. I Exactly. And and that's what this process is going to be. A man cave. I have no swimming pool. Yeah. Did you say that um the union representatives are welcome to participate? Yeah. Great. Yes. Thank you for that presentation. As my realtor always says, if you get 80% of what you want, that's a win. Thanks. That's true. We'll take that. Right. Write that down. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Um, for the

097sake of embarrassing our outgoing board members hopefully. No, I'm just kidding. I know that uh Director Holland's body language is signifying asking me to shorten this as uh adjourn as soon as possible. So, um, I'll move to close. Do we have a second? Uh I have I have some staff and then we'll we'll have some uh time after this video for uh board members also to share some words. But yeah. Yeah. So actually I'm going to send the video in our Friday message. We had one little technical difficulty, but the great thing about the video is it's a message for me and the executive leadership team that wanted to bid everyone a farewell. And so I'll send it in the in the um last Friday message for this group. And then also one of the

098things that we were missing was just one last picture of the group. And so I know that um our chief of communications wanted to grab that. So I don't know if it's time to grab this now or if we're going to do it at the end. Just wanted to flag that. So it might be a good idea to do it now. Okay, great. Let's while we're all cheerful. Video coming Friday. So, I'm going to reserve my remarks for the video that will be released on Friday. You want to come take a picture? Great. Do you want us to stand or sit or maybe we could stand behind? No, you want us in the front. In the front. Why you trying to leave? Why you trying to leave? We're all family here. We don't want any

099evidence of you, right? Understand that sideways. Yes, I'm just noting that my own I asked for the orange suit. I was waiting to see the shoes. There we go. Count of three. One, two, three. Oh, there we go. One, two, three. And then the last one. Say PPS. One, two, three. PPS. Don't sound so exciting. Thank you. Excuse me. All day, baby. All day. All right. Um, I didn't really have a plan for this section because, you know, some people like to popcorn and some people like to say it all at once. So, um, because my last name starts with W, I'm used to going last, but and also Cherry, you're supposed to go last, but today I'm going to pull rank. I'm going to go first. Uh, and I'm going to popcorn. I'm just

100going to do one at a time because I don't want to speak for, you know, 15 minutes in a row. Uh, I want to first start off by just thanking Director Green. Um, I had this wonderful opportunity this year when I actually went down with Director Green and we were uh um lobbying in in Salem and just watching the mastery of this this guy over here uh being able to communicate in a way that was both real and aspirational at the same time. It was really inspiring to watch. And one of the things I I am just truly inspired by you all the time is just how often or how you always center and unabashedly uh speak out for our black community, our black students, our black families. And I think one of the things

101and I'm going to keep this short because I'm not much for long words. Um you know, like you say, poop or get off the pot. Uh, although I I do have to say that I am still not certain what version of pot you mean, but I'll leave that for a different conversation. Um, that was never clarified. Anyways, I want to I I just want to put this out there that um and I hope you don't take this the wrong way. Uh, but the I know way to get everyone interested what I'm about to say. uh you know the work of the board is actually the scope of the work is actually quite limiting and I actually truly feel that it's actually been holding you back and this is the what I mean by that you

102know Portland is full of good people a lot of good people who really want to do the right thing uh Portland is also full of a lot of good people that want to do the right thing but don't know what or how to do that and your voice is critical for that I think that and I've been I guess I'm I've been trying to find the right word uh I you workshop in different words. I tried ask, demand, but I think the right word here is beg. Uh I beg that you remain in the Portland public or sorry, Portland political sphere because we really need your voice. And so I am begging that you constantly stay out there and and and just keep pushing and being a voice for our our black families, back black

103students, black community, uh because they need it. and I will always be championing you in that effort and I um will truly miss you. Thank you, sir. U may I go next? I'm going to speak just very briefly to everyone and I couldn't help but think about the Wizard of Oz. Um I don't know who's familiar with it and I haven't watched it in about 50 years so I might not get this right. Um, I wanted um, Director Holland have just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate how smart you are. Um, how big your brain is. Literally, every time since I've met you that you've opened your mouth, I've appreciated you deeply. Um, I haven't agreed all the time, but I've just been like, "Yeah, that's such a good idea." Like, I

104wouldn't I wish I would have thought of that. So, I'm um likening you to the Scarecrow because he he uh had a brain. And that doesn't mean that everybody here doesn't have a brain because we all have brains. Um, Director Broom Edwards, um, I look at you and what I've appreciated about you is your courage that you bring and the courage that you allow other people to bring. Um, you have stood in the face of, uh, been a lone vote many times and you stick by your convictions. Um, that's the lion in uh, in the Wizard of Oz. That was the cowardly lion. He wasn't actually cowardly though. And um that's how I remember you and and how you've um impacted me to be able to be brave in those moments. Herman. Herman and I

105had an opportunity to be in a fellowship at the same time and we were invited to an in-person convening at Alex Haley's farm. And nobody told us it was a farm, but it was a farm that's owned by the Children's Defense Fund. And it's in this little bitty town in Clinton, Tennessee. And you can't even get a taxi to get to that town. There's it is in the middle of nowhere. And yet, Herman Green shows up in a three-piece suit with beautiful shoes on on a farm. And I took pictures of him, of course, and I wish I would have loved to share them tonight. He looked great. And the farm looked great behind him, but um what I appreciate about you is the size of your heart. Uh you have a huge heart for

106community. Um not just North Portland, but we've seen you downtown, too. and um your unabashed um love and um for black families has been very encouraging to me. Um it's given me a little bit of courage as well and I really appreciate that. Um that would be the tin man who always wanted a heart. So I'll keep it at that. None of those were the flying monkeys at least or the wicked witch. So the flying monkeys, right? No, we were we were not going to talk about the witch or the flying monkeys, but or Dorothy begging to go home or Dorothy and I know we all want to go home. Okay. Well, I definitely want to speak to everyone who's leaving. I'm very sorry you're leaving, but um anyway, I've it's been very special for

107me. And when I was elected to the board, Eddie and I were the new ones. And we joined Michelle, Julia, Gary, Andrew, and Herman. And I was very comfortable being the newbie and looking to the more advanced, experienced members for guidance. Gary pointed out to me early on that he had only been on the board two more years than I, but it seemed like those two years made a very big difference. Except for Julia, who I knew would have to leave after serving out her term. I had really thought that I would be serving on the board with this group for the rest of my term. Now, here I am along with Eddie, one of the most experienced people on the new board after only two years. Thank goodness for Michelle to give us some

108depth. This could be really frightening, but it's not. And it's not because board members have been so generous with their time and skills, and I have learned enough to be comfortable in this role. I would like to particularly recognize the three board members and our student representative who will be leaving the board at the end of the month. Julia is an encyclopedia of information which she is willing to share. I have appreciated her organizational skills. She is always available to share her experiences and knowledge and comes prepared to meetings with armloads of files. How she does it with her other work obligations is absolutely beyond me. One time she had a phone ringing in her bag. She had to pull out three phones to figure out which one was ringing. Herman's heart is on his

109sleeve when it comes to caring for the students in PPS. I asked if I could visit him in his community to learn more about his work and he invited me to his church. It was hard to believe how many things were going on to support students in this relatively small space. I understood just how much of his work on the board is an extension of who he is in the community and how he is committed to giving every student in the district the opportunities they need to succeed and that gift of speech. Oh my. One time when we were discussing some policy, he stated quite eloquent eloquently the same opinion that I had. When it was my turn, I said I was going to share the same thought that Director Green just shared, but it

110would have been much less interesting and a whole lot shorter. I will miss his eloquence and passion for wanting to meet the needs of all our students. And what will the board be like without Gary? He's usually my next two person. As anyone who has ever watched a board meeting knows, Gary is passionate about what we are doing for our kids. I can't say it quite the way he says it. Say it, Gary. Our kids. Our kids. See, it's different. Our kids. When when he says it and when he says it, you can feel the passion and immediiacy he feels for giving the students at PPS, his kids, the best education possible. Every time I hear anyone say the word kids from now on, I am sure that I will think of Gary. We didn't

111always agree, but we always listened to each other. And Gary made it a point when he was um chairman and when I was new to call every other week to talk to board members to see what they were thinking. And when he wasn't chairman, we kept it up. And I don't know anybody. We usually talked for about an hour. I don't know anybody else I would talk to for an hour every couple of weeks that have that much to say, but Gary always listens and makes you think your ideas are about the most important things there are. JJ has been such a breath of fresh air. He has w worked hard to get the board members to listen to students. He is eloquent when giving his report and asks probing questions. He is a speaker

112that I wish I could be, but I avoided speech class and debate because it was uncomfortable for me. I would bet that JJ has always approached difficult situations fearlessly. Working beside him has been a privilege. He is such a great ambassador for PPS. I know that he will shine in his next adventure just as he has here. I wish you all the best, JJ. I will miss these four people, but I know they're all going on to continue their work in their communities. The board's loss will be someone else's gain. I wish you all the best wherever you are and whatever you do. And when I need advice, I think I still have your phone numbers. Thank you. It's going to be hard to lose you. I know we've got wonderful people coming up, but

113you know, you get very attached. It's hard. Sorry to lose you. Be very difficult you though. I mean it's you're ready. You should you're going to college. Ready for him to go. You've got big things to do. Yeah. JJ, I just want to popcorn in really quick. Um every time we work together, uh I wish I I said this to a few people already, but like I wish I was as well put together as you are at this at your age. Uh when I was that age, I was definitely not that well put together. Um, and I want to say that Patty, me, and Herman have been absolutely lucky and privileged to not only just work with you one year, but two years on the student success committee. And I got to see your brilliance

114then, and I still see your brilliance now. And um, we'll miss you. So, thank you for being here. Let us know what you're doing. Yeah. Also want to say a little shout out to you um JJ student rep Concevi I have really enjoyed working with you too even when we've disagreed. I've enjoyed like doing the Tik Tok stuff with you. You've increased my Tik Tok literacy just by a little bit but I know you it's not for lack of trying. Um I'm really excited about your future and I hope that you'll remain I believe that we are on LinkedIn connected. I hope that you will do what my dad always has encouraged me to do that's like network. get out and talk to, you know, adults. And so I am 100% in your corner if

115you need connections. Um, and I hope I can contact you if I need connections. So, um, keep in touch. Uh, so I'm obviously the new kid here and I didn't have I think you all had like this kind of wild trauma bonding experience over the last couple of years, too, of course, with the strike and everything. So, I'm definitely like the the new kid and don't know everybody as well, but um I do just want to say a little bit about what I think I'll take from each of you. Um I want to say I was actually going to say the kids thing. Um I think that's a decent approximation of it. And um I even, you know, wrote the video script for the Bond thing and I was like, but Gary, I need you

116to do this because I wrote the line for you. Um and then instead it's somebody else just being like kids and it's just like not the same. Um but I think um but I think having um just I'll remember your commitment always not just to kids but reminding us that our community supports our kids and I think with the bond we were all like worried right and then I was 60% because you're right our community stands with our kids and they'll do anything for our kids um and so I think I'll bring that with me thanks to you um JJ the first time we met you talked to me about time I said what what's the thing you would fix and you were like time management agement at board meetings. So, in case you guys

117wanted to know what he's thinking about when we're here at board meetings, um I just wanted to thank you for that and I promise that I will continue to work on that and helping us to be more efficient with our time. So, especially for our student representatives who have places to be and homework to do on their Tuesday nights. Um I also just have to give a shout out to JJ or just tell a story really quickly. Um, when I had an endorsement interview with the WAMIT week, they were like, "Who's your favorite board member?" And I was like, didn't skip a beat. No offense everybody else. And I was like, JJ Kun, like, of course. And like gave a reason why. And they were just like, no, no, that's like a copout. And I

118actually think that our student representative should have a vote, frankly, be be more part of this table. And in addition to time management, I'll bring with you from you that um a belief that our student voice shouldn't just be symbolic, but should actually be really meaningful. And another story, my husband and I worked in the Oregon legislature for 18 years or something like that together. And when you whipped out the uh storage for the phones, um he texted and was like, "OMG, that that kid's going places." Like he just loved that. So, um I just think that um your creativity um really means a lot and I know that that was like a battle that you didn't win, but like I hope that you remember that even when you don't win on a piece of

119legislation or policy, something I've gone through many many times, um you still can can like come out of it looking really good. So, good job there. Um let's see. So, I've done you. I'm going to do you next. So, um I just want to say that I think um I heard it tonight maybe more than I have before. Um uh and that's just about your commitment to the black community. And it's something I've talked about here um last two weeks ago or three weeks ago when we talked about Jefferson. Um and something that I'll just commit to not just saying I'm with the black community, but listening to what the black community wants and trying to make sure that I find that out and am in alignment with that um as somebody who wants to

120be a real genuine ally. And I'll ask you for your opinion when I'm not sure so you can tell me what I should know and how I can be a better white person, I guess. um helping to bring black concerns to the school board. Thank you. So, thank you for that. And then finally, um I really feel like uh Julia um really like took me under her wing um from the beginning of me saying I was interested in running for the school board. And I just want to thank you because I feel like I learned so much. I know I'm getting emotional. I didn't know that was going to happen, but I just learned so much and I know how hard you work and I just really want to thank you for that and um

121really try to like emulate that. And so that's what I'll take from you is like the the kind of combination of hard work and the need for somebody that shares something we share which is having that deep experience in the legislature and bringing that here and connecting back because they're such an important body to our work. So thank you. So, um, if unless somebody else is going to go, I I'll be really quick about Gary and I'll move on. Okay. Um, I really enjoy our three-hour arguments and that laugh is uh the my favorite laugh of all time. Uh, I we may disagree a lot on how to get somewhere or what to do. Uh, but we've never disagreed on what was important. And I've and you're one of the people who I've never ever

122doubted that you always put kids first and foremost and thank you for that. And I'm gonna keep this short. I could I could talk for hours, but I won't. Thank you. Okay. So, um I know this is time to talk about board members and I'm going to talk about the board members and JJ, but I also um having spent 12 years here, I feel like I've need to thank some people. Um, but I first want to just shout out two people who got Randall and I involved in public schools when we first moved to town. We moved into this 56 in Hawthorne and we were a couple with no children and these people invited us to a sales tax party and it was Joyce Creswell and Dick Cherry and we're like, "Yeah, haven't they heard

123that these go down in Oregon?" Um but that started really uh what 30 years 30 plus years um partnership and they um I think about the people whose footstep I followed in and Joyce and Dick are one of those people. Dick he was an accountant but every time we took our kids over there he'd like give me that baby. I want to hold the baby and like sure enough he went from an accountant to a elementary school teacher um here in PBS. Um served on Yes. Um, Joyce worked for Randall in the legislature and we were like the school funding powerhouse there. Um, so I just Sorry, I just noticed you were here and I'm really touched. Um, and their daughter and her wife and their kids now go to Arita and like potential future

124school board members. So, um, the generations live on. Yeah, I twice tried to get both of them to run for the school board. Anyway, um I want to say some thank you to some staff um because um we couldn't do our job, as you all know, we couldn't do our jobs uh without staff. So, I thank them before, but um Rosanne and Cara, you guys know that like I wouldn't have made my 12 meetings because half the time I didn't know where they were or I didn't have the link or something else. And I really appreciate you your approach. You were both kind, courteous, um, always professional, very patient. Um, and I was like, I have lost something or I need something printed out, but one side only, please, with X number of fonts and

125there's no page numbers or whatever my goofy thing was. Um, or I'd be up late, I'm a night owl, and I'd be up late at night and sending off like, you know, 20 emails and then calling at 8 o'clock in the morning like, hey, when am I going to get the answers to those questions? Um, so I just want to tell you how much I appreciate um both of you and um your work to support the board's work because we do better work because of both of you. Um Terry, who I think is back behind here and then Brian and Frank, the video um team that I have worked with um and Terry and talking tonight since for 25 years um we've uh been engaged. I just want to thank them for um always I

126think trying to help us look good turning off the cameras when it was time. Um and um I he's not here but I want just to also thank so I want to just acknowledge some of the people who shared the journey with me um which is my fellow pale hall of famer uh Marshall Haskins. Um we both experienced athletics as a place where um we learned leadership and discipline, a whole bunch of other things. And for two decades he and I worked together just to um the 10 great fields project to make sure that all our high schools had artificial turfs and tracks. Uh we built a middle school program that thousands of students now get a chance to um participate in middle school athletics so they can see whether they like it or not

127and go on to high school or they can just be recreational student athletes. Um he also helped facilitate the Nike designers who created new logos in the brand the new brands uh for Franklin Cleveland and Roosevelt. And finally, um, and this is with an assist from Director Green and Hollands, um, putting in, um, $80 million in funds for equitable athletic fields for our student athletes and the bond that recently passed, which I think will really be a legacy gift. So, I want to recognize Marshall in the PIL um, office. Uh, I mentioned there were some things that I was proud to be involved in and one of them was setting ambitious board goals around student achievement and especially for students of color and building those into the superintendent's evaluation. Uh, director Hollands and Green um,

128thank you for your leadership in that. Um I think that will be a lasting legacy of like keeping us focused on on the thing that we're here we're here for. Um the superintendent's hiring. So I was involved in three of them. I led two of them and then supported the ones that director Holland and Green led and um they're really team efforts by all board members. So um to the board members at this table and the other 12 board members I served with during superintendent recruitments. Um I just give a shout out to because it's one of the most important jobs we have. Um okay so people who served on the policy committee meeting with committee with me whether it was board members most recently uh director Sullivan and to pass and uh student reps

129over the years uh I think we have some of the best policies in the states that really reflect our values whether it's the professional conduct policy um a more equitable district-wide fundraising policy uh the cell phone policy Uh we revised the student rep policy and we created the district student council and that was really driven by um students on the board. Uh we changed the religious and cultural observance policy so that our policies reflected the more diver the diversity of our school population. We have a more parent friendly complaint policy. the naming school different policy we changed from a parent complaint from um a parent at Franklin who felt it wasn't appropriate that the mascot was her religion and by changing that policy it also gave way to the opportunity to change the name at

130U McDaniel and also um it gave us an opportunity to um remove the murals at Grant um gave us the opportunity to change the name of IDB Wells. And I want to just recognize and director Jass for um during the middle of the board meeting when we were voting on the name change and the mascot change um that we recognized that we were about ready to make a mistake and that we should change the mascot um in the middle of the meeting. Um which was a little bit awkward but a tree. Yeah, it was a little bit awkward but it was totally the right thing to do. Um so thank you. have to approve it. Thank you for speaking up. And then finally, that that change in that policy also um allowed us to change

131um easily change the name of this building because u one of the things that the superintendent didn't mention is the policy also gives the board the final authority and that was the thing at the night that we could just decide at the DIS to change the name to the profit education um center. None of that would have been possible without um the person who sat every policy committee meeting and um was a trusted advisor um provided really wise counsel of like yeah you might want to do that because that's not um legal or something else. Um but really I I appreciate um none of those policies would have happened. um you you gave us sort of best practices to draft behind. You helped us imp implement them. Um I think it's some of the best

132body the best work of this body and um so I really thank you Liz. Okay. Better school funding. We had a lot of talk about that for 25 years. um parents and board members went to Salem and um advocated for better funding for our schools, whether it was ballot measure 98, the student success act, outdoor school for all, all our bonds and local option measures. And so for the board members who um went to Salem and all the all the parents um as well, I just want to share my appreciation. Um, Director Split, I am counting on you to um sort of carry the torch and organize the the crews. And I also want to, you know, Lisa had her last day last week, but I recognize that also we um we get organized um

133by the government affairs leads um at the district. So from Bonnie Hobson to Patty O Silvin to Courtney Wesling to Lisa Merrick. I mean, they did great work and I just want to call that out. Um, you know, middle middle school equity, we have some former board members who ran specifically to um make our middle schools more equitable. And I think I'm leaving the board after eight years with we're not completely done, but we did really great work with Tubman, Kellogg, Harrison Park, and Roseway Heights by reopening them and giving kids equitable opportunities, the bond. So Dan like all my people are leaving, so I guess this is the good time for me to leave. you know, Dan Dan Jung and the the um OSM staff and all the trades really did phenomenal work um

134to start the modernization process for our high schools. And when you walk into those high schools, like you go into McDaniels now, it's like, oh, this is just like such a better environment for our students. Or you go into Franklin or Grant or Lincoln, I mean, name the school school, it's just like such a better environment. So really for the people who shephered um that those construction projects through through very appreciative. I also need to um thank former director Rosen again and Angela um Jarvis Hollands for prioritizing making our schools more and facilities more accessible. That ramp right there did not exist two years ago. Um, and so Roseanne and the facility staff um, made our boardroom accessible and all of our by the end of the 2020 bond, all of our the first floors

135of our school buildings will be accessible. Um, so I I'm going to get get to JJ and Gary and Herman, but I want to also um just shout out to just in terms of oversight, accountability, and transparency have been very important to me. And so I want to thank all the auditors who've been my thought partners for 20 years. Gary Blackmer, who is the state auditor, um this year's audit committee chair, Patty, I thought you did a a great job. Um I hope you're signing up for it again. Um our internal auditors, um really also made a a huge difference and so I'm very appreciative for that. And I'm so I'm going to close with uh JJ. I remember meeting you was in the middle of COVID. And I think we were out at um

136McDaniels and there was like a mixer between the board members. Do you remember that? And um the new members of the district student council and I met you and you were like very enthusiastic about getting engaged. I was like this is great. He's just like starting his time on the board or time in in the district and hopefully you will continue to stay engaged. And um look look at you. I'm so proud of the work you've done this this year. Um when we got into thing to issues that were important, I know in the policy committee that were important to students, you didn't just say like here's what my opinion is. You went out and like for example, how does survey for on the cell phone policy and we said at the very beginning like

137if we're not going to listen to students, we shouldn't do it. But I will say that the policy the survey that you did did have a big impact on it. Um and I really appreciate that and because also we couldn't say well we don't know what the student thinks think um because you provided us with the data um so thank you for being a champion for going for representing us um in the broader community um as we heard today from your principal you um do a great job on that. Um, Herman and Gary. Herman and Gary. Um, we came in together and we're finishing our service together. And I know that each of us are committed to the success for our students. And while we're leaving the district, we're not leaving our students. Early on,

138what did we promise? Till the wheels fall off. We're going to ride together till the wheels fall off. I don't think they fell off but like came close a couple times. Um, you know, we promised to have each other's backs and and we did and I really appreciate that even when we didn't agree with each other and I loved when I like I'd be calling Herman and be like, "Just a minute. I'm I got Gary on the other line. I'm going to patch you in." I'm like, "Well, wait. I don't have time for a long call." And next thing I knew, I'm on the call with Gary and Herman and who else who knows who else was on the call. There was no one because that would have been a quorum. Well, I meant just

139like usually Nike was in the car and Herman was telling her where to drive or something, but um you know, we didn't always agree, but I think we respected each other's perspectives. Um I appreciated that you both centered students of color, specifically black students in our work and every day pushed for PPS to change the trajectory for those students. You shaped our board's goals which focused on improving outcomes for black black and native students and other students of color. You led the hiring of our new superintendent which is the most important act as a board we will do for those students. It's not the modernized schools or the selling of the headquarters, the superintendent and how she leads principles, the school staff and supports teachers will make the biggest difference in getting better outcomes. So

140very important work that you did. And then I also want to acknowledge that as a board leaders, you were the target after the teacher strike, but it's important to note that you weren't acting as rogue operators as was as was sometimes alleged. And you know, on some other topics, I might say that might be true. Um, rather you were representing the board's position that was what we wanted to pay as teachers as much as we could with the resources we had, but those resources were limited. And I know that took a lot of courage. And I'm just thinking of Gary sitting in the fire the firefighters hall pedalling on that machine. Oh my god. I feel like dripping sweat, you know, after hours and like that some of those all night times. But I just

141really u want to share like my respect for both of you. Um you served for four years on the board, but I think in dog years um it was it was much longer. and I'm sure that's what it felt like to you and your families. Um, but I just want to say I have so much respect for both of you. So, uh, thank you and, um, I'm just going to close with the superintendent. Um, our overlap was a short period of time. Um, you have the most important role in changing the trajectory of our students. Um, so I wish you well. Um, and I hope you will be a good steward of our resources, our students future, and know that this community, um, as Gary and Christie has said tonight, um, loves our students and

142our schools. And so, um, we'll be ready to be supporting you in the years ahead. And finally, to my board members, if you stay until the work is done at PPS, you'll never leave. So, um, while I'm leaving, I know that you all will carry on, um, the work that we've done and make very important, um, you'll both sustain the work and also continue to really make important decisions for our students and keeping them at the center of the work. Um, so, thank you to all of you for the service. And sorry I went long and JJ um I didn't work my time management didn't get any better and you also didn't help me with my you didn't help me with my TikTok either. So po postboard service. Thank you. Let's clap everybody out. I'm

143I'mma just say a couple things before Herman gets on the mic because I know how it's hard going after you. So, I just want to just say I just wanted to thank each and everyone on this at this DAS. Um you guys have been such an inspiration um for me and the way you guys show up um the way you guys decide to challenge you know challenge me at times. Um and it's just it's you have added a great deal to my life from for that. Um, one of the fondest memories I have is I can't remember what it was. Um, but Patty had a issue with something I did and I was like out of town and she called me and say, "Gary, I need to talk to you, you know, and I'm I'm

144kind of confused on, you know, why you made this vote or what have you." And I thought that was such a a courageous and thoughtful thing to do. I mean, I was I was telling Isa about that for like days later. It was like the fact that she was willing just to call me and talk to me about why I made a decision was shows so much respect for me. Um, and I so appreciate that and cherish that. So, thank you so much for that. Um, man, JJ, you have been as a black man inspiration for me to know that our we are going to be okay. um when we look at society and their um assumptions and their biases for black men, I literally talk you up. And so, no, this is what we

145should be showing out here. And for me, that is so encouraging. And so, just continue being who you are. And I am so whatever you need from me, you got it. Thank you for being who you are, Michelle. So, um, one of the things that made me motivated on getting on the board was actually that meeting about, um, IDW Wells and the whole tree piece. They wanted to do an evergreen tree piece. I was watching that board meeting and I was like, I gotta go help her. That was my feeling. literally. And that's one of the things that sparked me for even getting on the board. Your reverence for us as a people um and your speaking truth to power. It's so refreshing, especially in especially as time we're in now. And I just hope

146you continue to do that. And don't let your voice be squelched, silenced or anything because you might not know it, but you do inspire other folks with your words. Absolutely. Um Eddie, what? Oh man, Eddie. So me and Eddie, he said we'd be having like three hour conversations. It's for real. And there are very they're very great conversations. um we come from different backgrounds and being able to learn from those his experiences has been eye opening for me. Um I I love excuse me the way your brain works. You know sometime it seems like he's scattered sometimes but he's not not at all. Um, and so those have been so helpful in me as far as being able to take my lens off and seeing through another lens, even though we both wear glasses, but

147you know, not literally lenses. Um, I wanted to talk about, um, some of the other board members that was here when I got here, Ay, Amy, um, and Andrew. Um, they were so welcoming and showed me, um, how to be a board member. So when Patty and and um Eddie got on board, I knew what to do. Yeah, you did. I knew what to do because of them. Um because they was they were so welcoming. They will have conversations. I can call them whenever I had a question about something. So I wanted to take some time just to thank them as well because they was really influential on how I was as a board member. Um staff, you guys, I tell you guys this all the time. You guys are rock stars. Um Rosanne and

148Cara, you guys are freaking awesome, you know. Um you guys have made being on the board so e so much easier. Um it has been a pleasure. Um talking with you guys, not even talking about schoolboard stuff. Um and that has been such a great great feeling for me. Um Liz, oh you've been awesome. Oh my freaking gosh. I love how you look at all the aspects of it at the same time, especially with my weird ideas. And we've had some weird idea sessions and um and you're like, "Yeah, Gary." Uhhuh. Well, let's let's let's think about it this way and let's think about it that way, right? Like, you know, take a word from Herman. We're not going to go to jail. Um and that's been that's been great. and you've been one of

149the people that I have learned to be able to trust on this out of this experience. And so I just want to thank you for that. Um Chrissy, I don't know you that well. You you you here, but I remember you called me. You called me to I can't remember what it was about. Um after that conversation, I was like, "Oh, she going to be fine. Oh, she going to be fine." You know, um and so I just give you all encouragement. Um, you can always reach out to me with for whatever you need. I am here. Um, because when this board is successful, our kids are successful. And that's all I care about is our kids are successful. I don't care who's on the dis. I don't care what administration. I don't care what

150political stuff is going on. If we're successful here, our kids are successful out there. And so, I just kind of leave you with that. Um, as well, man. Uh, I'm Dr. Armstrong. I am so glad you're here. Absolutely. Um, you know, when we was looking for someone for this time in this place, I knew you was the one. There's always a time and place for folks. and to be able to have you here now. Um to be able to the passion that you have for the work that you're doing, that's very far and few in between that people have that. You know, a lot of people look at things as jobs, paychecks, what have you, career moves, um but you just have a passion for making sure all of our kids excel and they can

151have the best that we can give them. And so I thank you for that. Um, I thank you for even putting your hat in the ring on coming here. Um, because Portland is not an easy place. Um, and you have been showing up and showing out since you've been here. And so I I leave here knowing, you know, you got this. You got this. So I just want to say thank you for that. My partner's in crime over here. Good trouble. Good trouble. Oh. Um, I can't thank you guys enough for the friendships that I have learned. Now, I didn't know neither one of them when I got on the board. Absolutely. Did not know Herman, didn't know Julia, didn't know it at all. Um, we clicked immediately and everybody tell, you know, they talk

152about your circle. Everybody tell me I have a triangle. I don't have a circle. I have like two or three people now. I have a square. because of you guys and that is something that I will cherish from this board on from from here on out. Um, you talk about the OG, Julia is a OG when you talk about coming in taking you under your wing like she just does it like for probably anybody. I thought I was special till I just heard you speak. Yeah, I thought I was special. Right. But that just shows you the person who she is, right? She makes you feel like you're the chosen one and she she brings you in and you brought me in and you showed me the ropes and you was like, "Hey, look at

153it this way and do it that way." And never had an issue with sharing information. That's huge because in the world that we in, people hold on to information. People hold on to power and control and you was just like here. Um, and that's powerful, um, to be able to do that, especially when you're coming to a table that is not built for you. When you're coming to a table that's not made for you, and for you to be like, you know what? Here you guys go. I'm going to help you here. That was awesome. And so, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for that, Herman. Oh my gosh, dude. You made it so easy being on this board. I thank you for your friendship, for your counsel, just for your presence.

154Being here with you has literally changed my life. No doubt. And I'm not just saying it just because for whatever reason when I was going through my issues, talking with you gave me a whole lot of hope that everything's going to be okay. And I greatly, greatly appreciate you for that. I look at you as my brother, my friend. all of that thing that happens. So, I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. And I know when you talk about God's will and what God has for your life, I know he brought me here if it was for nothing else to meet you. And I thank you for that. That's it. Thank you. That is so wild. Wow. So that's wrong. So I just want to say thank you to

155to everybody. I I I wrote this is the only one. So I didn't have nothing planned for out there. I actually had something planned for in here and I don't even want to read it. Um but I do want to say thank you to Liz. I have to say thank you to Liz because I was doing I was ready to do some dumb stuff and she'd be like, "No, I don't think you want to do that." and I listened to counsel. So, thank you for keeping me out of jail because I wasn't going I wasn't close. All right. I felt close. It felt dangerous to me, but no. So, I I want to thank Liz. I definitely want to thank um Roseanne and Cara. I remember we were going to um it was one of

156the cube conferences. We was going to um a cube conference, probably one of the first ones I had gone to. And Kira puts together uh a packet that has I mean it had everything in it. It had my my flight information, the which what time I was going to be l I mean it had everything. And then when I got to the hotel it was a separate page that had all the hotel stuff set up. We get there and the people like who put this together for you? I said oh in Portland we got some of the best. You know what I'm saying? I look you know me. I'm like, I'm not going to tell you the name because y'all look like poachers. So, I just want to let you know that in Portland, we

157got some of the best and they make us look right. I have no idea where I'm supposed to be, but if I turn to page five, it was all there. The type of room I was going to have, I mean, it was it was per. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you um for everything everything that you do um to make this work, you know, feel as seamless as it can be. So, that wouldn't happen without y'all. The other people that I want to um that I would like to give a shout out to um and I know we all we all know them, but see my guy back here in the blue shirt, the security team is on point. Y'all may not know it, but when we was having the issues and they was

158ready to stand up and the room would be all crowded, they would have somebody there. They'd have somebody in the middle. They would have somebody by that door. They was always poached up ready to go. They they making eye contact with us to see if we nervous or anything like that. Are you ready to go? And then they was escorting us out the side door. Even when I didn't want to go out the side, I said, "I'm not going out the side door. I'm going right through the middle. They gonna have to see me and deal with me. He was like, "That's cool. Go over there." So, I was like, "Fine, I'mma go over there." Um, but I wanted to make sure women. I was just like, "I'm trying to go cuz I'm like I'm

159I'm like I'm going to stand right here and after everybody I'm going that way. and it was like n that door. So, I want to say make sure that I say I say thank you to to them as well. Um to Dr. Adams, he had to leave. But I definitely wanted to make sure that um I give a shout out to um to Dr. Adams again because um one of the things that I did put down is that um I wanted to be focused on literacy as a justice issue, literacy as a freedom issue, and literacy as the foundation of everything that we hope our students can become and because I truly believe that if we change the curve on our on our literacy rates, how our kids are doing and how they're doing academically,

160both in um reading, math, and science, if we can change the um the curve on those things, then we can change the temperature of our society and then we can change the the the climate that that our kids are growing up in. So it's upstream work but we have to do the downstream at the same time. And that leads me to to to Dr. Armstrong. I knew she was the one after I read her book. If y'all don't know it yet, Dr. Armstrong wrote a book on on leadership and it is from the first chapter she starts breaking down the need to to bring in the right staff and not just bring in the right staff but to keep the right staff, retain the right staff and then create a program to bring in I'm

161like we got to get her. We we we got to get her. She's this is this is what we're looking for and she does it through a cultural lens making sure how we go talk about we need black staff if we're not doing anything intentional to keep maintain and retain black staff and she had it was like she broke the whole thing down to a science rubric and I'm like why we ain't do we got to get her so she can do this and so I knew that you were you were who we needed and I knew that with everything even with you leaving and going somewhere else and and coming back. You were you were being cultivated. You were being prepped and primed so that you could be what we needed for this season.

162I have no I have no doubts that that we're in good hands. the the way that you communicate, not just with the with the uh the staff, but the way you communicate with the communities. Making sure that you're getting um getting out there, that you're talking to them, that you're listening, that you're you're hearing what they have to say, you're allowing them to offer the way that you communicate with us as a board. I I just I'm I'm good. I'm I'm good because the same values, the things that are important to me are clearly and evidently important to you. So I'm for me I'm I'm solid. You know it it's one of those things where it's like you you've you know you no longer need to be here. You no longer need to there was

163a moment where you need to be here because a voice need to be you know need to be amplified. That season is over. You no longer need to be here. And so I feel good to to JJ. We've had um quite a few three other um student reps that I've got to sit with and every one of them have been absolutely absolutely amazing. What you what you do for me is remind me that we don't all have to go through the same path. that some of us can be super amazing black men and that we can we can carry our communities and we can be the voice of our communities without having to go through all the hell that some of us have gone through. So you can you can be who you are. You're

164you're changing the the narrative in that what happens when you know what I'm saying? Everybody is looking for this person to look a certain way and you come in with your own JJ flare. It's like, I don't have to wear this. I don't have to put this on. I don't have to succumb to whatever it is y'all thinking about. I'm a king and I know it. And when you a king and you know it, you put on what you want to put on. You can go where you want to go. It is what it is. They just got to deal with the fact that you a king. And that's what I that's what I see. And that's the that's that's what you put off for me. And it's just like I love that young man

165because the where his head is at and where his vision is at is beyond he been here before. Just he he been here before and so thank you for for what you're doing to Julia. Julia when she walks by a place trees shake. [Laughter] Trees. Trees are afraid of Julia. Trees have been around for eons and eons and eons and eons. And yet her reputation precedes her. Even with these million-year-old trees and they shake because they know when Julia comes by, she's prepared to cut them down so that she can get the information and have it. And she has it all. She She does. I don't even know how somebody else said, "How do you do this with a day job, a family, a husband, and kids, and still remember it all? It's like ins.

166How do you So, there'll be sometimes I'd be like, "Julie, I forgot what page this was on." Say some weird stuff like that. Julie, I'm looking at this document and I I can't remember what page this is on. Just so I could see. Just so I could see. and she'd be like, "Oh, turn to page 137. Look in the bottom. It's going to be the second paragraph from the bottom, the third line." What? But the the way that you that you retain this information, the way that you keep this information and the way that you keep us focused on We're not here to be to be liked. We're not here to um to get a bunch of people to to give us accolades. We're here to change lives. And the work that we do on

167a daily basis is to change lives. So let's stay focused on that. Let's not focus get focused on the the pats on the back. Let's not get focused on how many people like you today and how many people told you good job. Let's just stay focused on the work that you know that you've been called to do. And that's what I that's what I appreciate about you. You stay focused. It's just like ah they didn't like it. I don't care. It don't mean that it wasn't the right thing to say. It wasn't the right thing for us to do. It wasn't the right thing for us to stand up for. It wasn't the right thing for us to be loud about. It wasn't the right thing for us to push forward. You continue to press

168it like, "No, I'm going to do what's right regardless of who likes it or not because it's what's right. It's the right thing to do." And that's what I I appreciate about you. Even though you make trees shake, they are they are deathly afraid of you for good reason. She's brought I have a light. She has a lot of paper and it's our last night. It's the last night. I I sent Gary a message. She don't want to leave. She don't She don't want to leave. Look at But you know, but this is who she is. She's focused. It doesn't matter if it's the last day. Something has to be said to to to Gary. That's my guy. That's my man's 50 grand. We did not know each other. I I did not know who

169he was at all. I was literally at the church. Shante Sims was um was doing um a photo shoot and he said, "Man, do you know Gary?" I said, "I do not." It was when I was actually running for the He was like, "Do you know Gary?" I was like, "I do not. I know. Is he the other black dude that's um running for the um for the school board." He was like, "It's crazy to me that you don't know him. Y'all both about the same height. Y'all both got the same kind of haircut. Y'all both been married a long time. Y'all both got about the same number of kids. I think they're in a different order. How can y'all not know each other? Initials are are the initials. I'm like, I've never even seen

170this man before in my life. He's like, that's crazy. You got to you have to meet Gary. So that day while we're doing the photo shoot, I called Gary. Also at that time um I don't know if you remember they had accused me of being a Trump supporter at at that time among other things they they accused me of being a Trump supporter and because we went down to the waterfront and prayed and they had a picture of my wife and I on the stage praying and um they said oh his mask wasn't all the way down. I'm my wife was praying. Why? How you going to have your mask? We not even going to get into that again. So I said, "Calb the bowels of the internet and find one more picture of me

171at a Trump event and I will stand up and say I'm a Trump supporter." They combed the boughels of the internet and came up with absolutely nothing. So I was like, "Y'all need to get on about my face." But I called Gary and I said, "Gary, I want to um you know, I'm running for school board. I'd like to lock in with you, see what we can do. We got some um a mutual friend um Shante Sims. He said, "I need to meet you." And but I do want to be upfront with you. running with me right now is not a great option. It's not. And so with the campaign, you might want to keep me distant, but I do want to lock in with you. He said on the I don't give a dang

172about what might look good or might not look good. I want to know if we can be friends. If we can be friends, I don't care what the news articles say. I knew at that moment that I can lock in with somebody like that because when if you locked in with somebody only because the times are good, then that's flake. That's that's trash. And I don't want to have anything to do with trash. I'm too bold to have anything to do with trash cuz I'mma tell you that you trash. And so when he was like, I don't care nothing about that. I want to know if we can be friends. We got together and we've been locked in. Locked in ever since. You know what I'm saying? man, he done he done been to the

173house. We done ate. He got to come to the new house cuz that barbecue is going to be off the charts. It's it's it's ridiculous. So, um I'm grateful for that. I'm I'm grateful for that. Like our our families have locked in. Our kids have locked in. It's just been it's been real good. So, I'm I'm grateful. Um Michelle, when I came on, she was the the lone black um school board member. you know, just trying to do her thing, trying to puddle through, trying to get it. It's just like, and it's just like, she's like, "We need support. Support. We need a voice." And she was like, "Whatever you need, just just let me know. If I can if I can help you, I will. I'm going to do whatever I can to help

174you. I'm going to do very little to hurt you." And so, I was like, "Um, I I appreciate it. I I appreciate you for for being there, for being um for being consistent, for for being willing." Um, we went to we did go to um, Alex Haley's farm together. Um, and we were out there. It was my first time. And even though it was a podunk town, it was it was small. If they're watching, I am sorry. I didn't do that to your town. I didn't make your town that small. You can't blame me for that. Don't. It's like it you couldn't leave except until it was time to go. But the farm was there and it was it was great. And she was like, "Find some time to just take it all in." Even

175while we were there supposed to be doing work, she was like, "Find some time to take it all in." That where we're at and the ground that we're standing on and what this means to us, what this means to us as a people, like the we grew up on on watching that series and what that meant to our families and the lessons that we lost. um you know, we were taught from that that our parents taught us and and all of my trying to do board stuff and trying to make sure that I was locking in so I could be you know what I'm saying right with the board dollars and not wanting to do she's like pause find a moment to take it all in where we're at. And so I want to appreciate

176you for for the pause, the pause that there life is always going to be going, but sometimes we need a pause. And so I want to appreciate you for that. To um to Eddie and to to Patty, y'all came in. Patty came to the church and she was just like, I just want to see what you do. Like I I hear a lot of talk about you doing stuff and I hear a lot of talk about you know about you know you being this community person. I want to see what you do outside of this. And it was she came out she was like I'll come to you just I just want to see what you do. I want to have conversation with you. I want to get to know you as a person not

177as a board member not simply as a colleague. I want to get to know you as a person. What is it that makes you tick? What is it that that you're excited about? And that's refreshing because for a lot of people, you're always on. You know, I'm a preacher. I'm always on, never off. You know what I'm saying? All gas, no breaks all the time. It is what it is. But to have um Miss Patty come in and to say, "No, I want to know you, aside from all this stuff, why do you do this? Why is this to to be in quiz? Why is this important to you? How can I support? What could I do? And she sat with me for a good hour and a half. Like she was running late to

178another meeting that day and she was like, "Oh, well, I'm going to have to call and I'm just going to I just got to let them know I'm I didn't know you could pack so much stuff into here. How did you She was so It was But she I I want to appreciate you for for taking the time to to get to know people like not just not beyond just being a a colleague, but to know me as a man because sometimes um it's just what what did Dr. AB say? It's good to be seen and not viewed. And in the in that moment, it's just like uh you saw you were trying to see me. And um Dr. Williams said one time in one of her messages, she was like um some people are

179crying simply because for the first time in a long time they've been seen. And that's that's what you did. You allowed for it's like you just saw me. You didn't see the board member. You didn't see like I want to see you. And so thank you for seeing for pausing and coming from your space so that you can see me. I appreciate you for that. Yeah. You saw. You saw. Um Eddie, we didn't always agree on stuff, but you stayed you stayed focused on I just want to create a space where where we can we can all try to figure out what it is that that we're doing. I I want to create a space without contention. That's not my vibe at all. I am all about pressure. Um, and it's like I just there's

180I want to try to find a space where where we can all work in and I want to hear this side and I want to hear that side and I and just wanting to wanting to hear. So my reflection in that as I was as I was thinking about you is, you know, because you want to know what you can take. Sometimes it's it's better to know what the other what the other person is feeling, why they're doing what they're doing, why this is so important to them, why they're they're so driven about this versus trying to help someone else understand your perspective. I know my perspective. I'm solid on my perspective. I don't need any help on my perspective. I've got it locked down to a science. It is what it is. Sometimes I

181can do a better job of understanding somebody else's perspective and why something is so important to them. And my reflection was that's what I can take away from you that I need to try to be a lot more understanding. And I'm saying for me a lot more understanding of where the other side sits because if I'm not careful, if I'm not careful, I can become the thing that I hate and listen to win versus listen to understand. So it's important that we that we stay open. And so I I appreciate you for that. Um and to Yeah. To Christie. Christy came on and she was like, "Look, I'm going to do this and I'm going to make sure." I didn't know that you knew Julia. I mean, I met her through this stuff. So, when

182when you started talking, I'm like, "This is like a mini me for Julia. This is like a Julia mini me with less paper." It's like, oh my least favorite because you were inquisitive. You're you're very you're very inquisitive as to the why. It reminds me of the just like why? Okay, we've been doing it this for so long. But why? And but this is how it's been for so long. But why? Tell me more about about that. I I need to understand more about that. And I believe that's what we're going to need in this season cuz for a long time we've been doing status quo and we've been going along simply because that's what we've always done and that's not helping us. That's not helping our kids is not helping our community. What we

183need somebody is somebody like yourself right now who's not afraid to ask the question of of why. And it needs to make sense. And you've asked the question why after they gave you a response. So clearly you're trying to get an understanding like don't just tell me a response simply because you know this is what you think I want to hear. It's actually got to make sense. And I appreciate you for forcing forcing the card to make it make sense because if it don't make sense then why are we why are we doing it and be prepared to change and I don't have any any reservation in that you're not afraid to change and go in a different direction if you think that's where we you know you believe that's where we need to go.

184You're going to ask enough questions so that you can get enough information so that you can make a solid decision. And I think that you're the level of pressure. Probably not as aggressive as I am. You'll probably make it sound sweet and then they'll probably actually think that they came up with it and you know that's what you do. We put I put out a little thing for a video and then I was like maybe we should do She said that is absolutely great idea. Then she came back with a script and said this is how we're going to do it and she orchestrated. She got video people together and I was like this was her idea to begin with. Nope. I couldn't. You wouldn't have been able to tell me that you would I

185thought you telepathically sent me the message, had me run it down so it wouldn't come from a new person or something and then you just took over because that's what you wanted to do to begin with. So, no, thank you for for being willing to just course correct if necessary, being open to to hear new information and then being prepared to do whatever work is necessary to get a job done so that you can get it across the finish line because what we need in PPS right now and what Dr. Armstrong is going to greatly need is somebody that can be on her on the back end helping her get stuff across the finish line because in PPS delay is deny. And so if you don't ask the question, continue to ask the question of

186why. If you don't continue to be the voice of reason, if you don't continue to to press back when they give you an answer that doesn't make sense, then it'll get delayed. It'll get delayed. It'll get delayed. It'll get delayed. And you know who suffers in all of this? The kids. Our kids. The kids. I knew the answer. So So thank you. Thank you so much. And to the to the people watching, for those that are out there um who are are sitting at home wondering why this is still going at 9:40 and it should have ended at 8 o'clock. I want to see Megan's summary tomorrow that she's going to send out about the meeting. So, I I want to say to y'all, continue to apply um pressure. Do not allow um us as

187a district, do not allow us as a board to fall asleep at the wheel and get back into the the habit of going along to get along. I can't remember her name. She's a Cleveland um she's a Cleveland Jan Watt. This is what I've done for the last four years. Herman, what's her name? Jan. This is what she she That's what is so amazing. She came in. I've been doing this for 50 years. I'd like to see this done before I die. If that's not pressure, I don't know what is. She said, "I don't want I want to see this done before I die." Who says that? Miss W does. And she says it so nice. I was I was afraid like she was the kind of individual that made me feel like I can

188still get a whooping. You know what I mean? Like and she's not going to chase me. She's going to say, "Come here and I'm going to get a whooping." I It was It was crazy. And she did it with She made me feel like just loved I just She was like a great individual. It's individuals like that that I'm going to miss. The I'm going to miss the the Mr. Hopson coming and saying, "Hey, do your job." You know what I'm saying? the the so to Mr. Hopson, I I did what I could, but don't forget to keep coming back and remind us to do our job. To Joe at a PIC who's building a a huge I mean what he's doing with the alternative is absolutely amazing. It's changing the game, but it's not

189going to happen if they don't keep coming to apply pressure. So my charge to to everybody else is to if you want to see change, be change. come to the district, come to the board meetings, apply pressure, and then support when they need support, be a voice when they need a voice, and then if we all do what we can, if we all do our part, amazing things will happen for our kids. As nobody can say it like Gary, our kids. So, with that, I'm done. Um, I've closed four of my five preacher closes. As a black preacher, we get five closes, and I've used four of the five. And so, I'm going go ahead and use the fifth. I'm gonna go ahead and close. I give it back to the meeting. I cannot I'm

190not not a cheer. You have to hit the gavl. Beat it. All right. Last words, preacher green. He's done. The last words. He's done. That's great. Last words. He's done. Um there's no We have to follow tradition and close with the preacher. So, thank you all. This meeting is adjourned. All right.