2025-04-29 Public Comment and Work Session on the 2025-26 Proposed Budget

001All right, let's get started. All right, thank you all for being here today. Uh, this budget hearing on the proposed 202526 budget and work session and budget hearing of the board of education for uh, May 1st, 20 24. All items being considered this evening are posted on PPS website under the board of meetings tab. This meeting is being streamed live on PPS TV services website and on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks. Uh please check the district website for replay times. Welcome. Thank you all for being here and being part of PPS and being involved. Uh we are so excited to be holding tonight's public hearing on the budget and beautiful Grant High School. Uh I want to thank Principal McGee for hosting us this evening. Um Where is Principal

002McGee? I was going to ask if he would like to say a few words this evening. Thank you again. I'm principal James McGee. Um I just want to take this opportunity to welcome our PPS board of directors. Um our student director and superintendent Dr. Armstrong. Um we're excited to be able to share our space with you tonight. Um, we left a small gift for you on the table, a grant cap. JJ, we won't tell anybody if you put it on. Um, again, just, you know, welcome, you know, tonight. We're excited to host you. Thank you, Principal McGee. Uh, before we started, I want to share a few reminders. Uh, to ensure safety, we ask that you please find a seat and keep the walkways clear. uh be consider uh considerate to those around you and

003keep signs below chin level. Uh we ask that you do not hang or attach signs, banners or posters to any object in the room or on any walls. Uh we have interpreters with us this evening. Uh I would like to ask them to come forward at this time. Uh introduce uh yourselves in the language that you can interpret. Olivia Wang and I Vietnamese. Yeah. uh my name is uh I'm a Chinese interpreter speak uh Cantonese and Mandaring. Thank you all. Um, if anyone should need their assistance, um, I believe our interpreters are hanging out in the that side of the auditorium in the back. We also have child care available this evening. Uh, if you need it, it's located in the library which is located just to your right if you are exiting the auditorium.

004All right, let's get started. Tonight, uh the board is now convened as the budget committee. The purpose of tonight is to hear public comment on the proposed budget and to have an opportunity to ask questions and requests further clar clarification on the proposed budget. Uh before we move on to public comment, I would like to um ask to have a brief overview of the proposed budget. Dr. Armstrong, could you please introduce the staff? Thank you, Chair Wing and members of the committee and Dr. Armstrong and everyone for your time this evening and attention to this matter. Uh some of the materials we'll be covering tonight have already been shared with the board on April 22nd as we proposed the budget. So all of those materials are included in um this slide deck in the appendix

005for anyone who is interested in that. So uh with that we'll go ahead and get started. So this is reflecting a little bit on the approach to our budget development this year. So um we began to communicate early and often this um budget situation. It's it's very unfortunate but it's not a surprise. it's been um coming for the last couple of years um and as we've addressed uh budget shortfalls um the last couple of years and it looks like we have a structural deficit in our budget and we'll continue to do that. So under um Dr. Armstrong's charge. We've been communicating early and often and moving from our projected numbers to our actual figures um as they u become realized. This year we've also really opted to provide some uh flexibility and stability to our

006systems based on giving our administrators a little bit more flexibility around how they use some of their FTE as our student enrollment declines. um they're making the most of the FTE in their buildings. Um and so in order to do that, we had to provide some flexibility through our staffing manual. We've also been really centered on student outcomes. So throughout we've been focused on the the school board's goals and the strategic plan really focused on literacy, math, eighth grade readiness, and graduation. The final thing here is fostering fiscal sustainability. So as we move through this process and we make our decisions, we have to shift away from one-time budget closing um strategies which would be use of reserves, use of fund balance um into more sustainable reductions which are are impacting our staffing levels. our

007district is uh 80% staff in terms of our operating budget and so when reductions are needed um staffing is impacted. This slide has been shown throughout several presentations and it's just a constant reminder of the situation we're in and I think many of the folks here that came tonight um recognize the rising costs of business and just living. So whether we have services, supplies, um transportation costs, utility cost, and staffing for sure those costs are on the rise. Most recently, we have had um last fall we learned of a significant increase to our PERS rates, which is our public employee retirement system rate. And um that's been incorporated into our proposed budget. We do have limited revenue available to us, especially as we're coming down off of those post-pandemic relief funds and our declining enrollment,

008which drives our um funding for not just the state school fund, but also our student investment account, high school success, and other major grants. Those um those funds are shrinking while our costs continue to rise. So this was a slide we showed as we proposed the budget. It's a comparison by major fund type uh the different um years. So the current year that we're in and that's our adopted budget that you would see in our proposed budget document um next to our um proposed budget. So overall the budget if you look at all funds there is a reduction of 15% but the majority of that is a spendown of the capital project funds that um we have been um using to uh work on projects. You can see the general fund it actually increases slightly

009between uh the two years but that uh increase is not keeping track with costs. So for school staffing, we have some uh changes that have been applied through the formula, our equity formula across all schools. So even though um there weren't targeted class size increases, there were uh changes in staffing due to declining in enrollment. We have um implemented uh targeted blended classrooms at the fourth and fifth grade levels which is not a strategy we've used in the past. Um but where the again our schools are uh declining in enrollment that makes the best use of the teachers in that school and our program staff are working on a plan to support teachers who are shifting to that model. again, flexibility um for our principles to really have a a bigger say about the staff

010that they have and how they're being used to serve the current needs of our students. That was important to us as well. This is a great chart that was shared that shows our projected elementary class sizes. This is just elementary. So on uh the left hand vertical you can see the number of elementary classrooms that we have and as we move across the bottom that is the class size that we're targeting. It will be slightly different when our students actually show up into our schools but this is what we have for based on our current enrollment. The different colors represent the different grade levels and 98% of our classrooms at the elementary level are at or below our target class size. So that is a pride point that we've been able to maintain that central

011office staffing, excuse me, has been impacted um pretty significantly as we moved from our first iteration of recommendations uh to the second which we brought back to you after um pretty significant feedback from um generally all of our populations that we uh interact with and survey. The personnel reductions are for central office positions but also central service positions. So those include um some that do more directly serve our students although they are dispatched from the central office. The non-personnel reductions are focused in contracted services uh professional development and travel. And so currently we're under a significant contract re review to ensure that we are getting the best value from our current contracts. So this is our most recent iteration of the reductions that have been made as we move into 2526. Um, as we came

012into late spring, we began to look farther out and the impact to 2627 school year and recognize that given the size of the variables that are in play right now, there's a minimum of $32 million in reductions that would be required in 2627. In an effort to minimize the impact of those reductions, we're trying to take some early steps now to have savings in 2526 and 2627 to kind of um provide a little bit more stability and kind of an off-ramp for some services. And of course protect the student experience in the schools. This is our adoption timeline. We've um shared it in multiple places at multiple times, but you know that we are here tonight for the board hearing. We have a significant turnout. That's very exciting. Um and then we'll continue to have

013additional discussion and reflection and then move towards adoption on June 10th. This budget has to be adopted prior to implementation on July 1st. Any questions? Thank you. I think um now we're going to move to public comment. So, thank you. Thank you. All right. Now, we are going to be next we're turning to our public comment for the 2025 26 proposed budget. Before we begin, just want to review a few guidelines for public comment. Um first, the board thanks you for being here. um public comment uh provides us valuable um insight and also helps inform our work. So, thank you for being here. Um tonight, um we have planned our public comment till 8:00 p.m. Uh this presentation went a little longer than expected. So, we will go a little bit over 8 past 8

014because I want to give a chance for everyone to who showed up to have a chance to speak. Um and then we will be moving to a board discussion and that's when we as a board will have an opportunity to ask questions that we may have. Uh in in an effort to make sure that we have as many school communities as possible have a chance to provide comment. Uh we are calling on one person per school until we make sure that all the communities have a chance to be represented at least once um before calling on someone else from that school community. So again, it's our effort to be as fair as possible. It's not perfect, but it's our that's what we're trying to do. Um, if you did not get a chance or if

015you would like to add additional comment, you are always welcome to uh submit your comments in writing and email them to public comment pps.net. Um, when you begin your comment, make sure that you clearly state your name and spell your last name, indicate your school community. You will have two minutes to speak. Uh, you'll hear a sound indicating that you have one minute left. Um, I am going to be pretty strict about the two minutes. So, uh, if you're providing public comment and I'm interrupting you, please don't take that as, uh, rudeness. I'm trying to, the reason trying to keep it strict about two minutes is we're trying to get everyone a chance to be able to speak tonight. Um, so I'm going to be pretty strict about that. Um, for board members, this is

016also our chance to be hearing public comment. Um, we're our our role here as a board is to be here and listen to uh the feedback that you have to give. Um, I asked this earlier today, but I'm wondering if um, we can be sent the list of people who signed up. Um, just in case not everybody lists, I'd like to know who signed up for public comment. It was emailed earlier this afternoon. You can try and resend it. We had our email. Let's see. Not seeing it, but I'll look for it. All right, let's um get started with public comment. Uh Miss Bradshaw. Um who do we have signed up for public comment tonight? We have Representative Daniel W. Good evening board members. Uh, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to be here.

017For the record, I'm Representative Daniel Wyn representing Lake Oiggo and Southwest Portland. I'm here to testify in support of continued funding for the Vietnamese dual language immersion program in the 202526 Portland Public Schools budget. We're so thankful to have full funding for this important program. Today, we're here to reemphasize its strengths and why we support it. I'm here as a dad, a legislator, and as a business owner. And first and foremost, as a dad of two daughters, I'm grateful that we have programs like this where they can learn about their heritage and culture. When we hear and see our language and culture being taught in school, it validates our experience as something that is worth learning and studying, not just for Vietnamese Americans, but students of all backgrounds. Because of VDLI, kids like my daughters

018have the opportunity to be fluent in multiple languages, including Vietnamese. DLI programs established an infrastructure that provides a sense of belonging, a venue for learning for students of all backgrounds, and a celebration of culture. As a legislator, it's been my great honor and great pleasure to be a part of multiple Vietnamese celebrations recently that were well attended by all levels of government. Earlier this year, I was thrilled to be part of a that celebration where hundreds of community members came to McDaniel High School to celebrate Luna New Year. And tomorrow, I'm carrying House Concurrent Resolution 34 designated April designated April 30th as uh Vietnamese American Remembrance Day on the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. And in fact, tomorrow we're having students from VDLI come to perform the opening ceremonies at the

019state capital. On so many levels, we're putting our culture front and center, and it's so exciting to see, but it hasn't always been this way. VDLI is a huge part of connecting people outside of the Vietnamese community with our culture and reconnecting and reinforcing Vietname Vietnamese Oregonians with their roots and heritage for generations to come. Though relatively still young in its lifespan, VDLI is an critical part of celebrating the Vietnamese community in Oregon and sharing with others our strength and history. Our schools are more than just institutions for learning. there are places where our kids inter interact with other kids and share about our values. Again, I thank you for your support and I uh hope that you'll continue to um recognize the importance of this program. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Representative. Virtually

020we have Representative Tu. Uh good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee. I'm in my car right now, so it's hard to read my comments, but as a former Parklo School District board member and the current state representative of Health District 45, which includes Grant High School, McDaniel High School, as well as Roseway Heights and Rose City Park. They are um at least the three school are part of the VDLI program, the Vietnamese dual language program. In TPS, you have a lot of program that are unique like all the language immersion program. Um you just name one program, but they allow kids to drive. Those students are excited about school. They're doing well. They're thriving. and going to school is something they look forward to. I encourage you to invest in programs that help children

021thrive, get them excited to come to school and create a community that can use um the best practices of these immersions uh language immersion program in our classroom at large. uh because they work and that we need to continue funding to expand the best practices that are in the um emerging language uh program so that all kids can benefit. Uh better reading score, better math score, eagerness to come to school and participate in the school as a community. So, um, chair and, uh, members of the committee, I hope you will continue to invest in programs such as the Vietnamese dual language program, but there's also Chinese, Spanish, etc. that is a gem in our Portland public school district and continue to support the kids that are and families that are in those program and maybe

022expand the best practices um, that made these programs so successful. Thank you. Thank you, Representative TR. This uh just a quick reminder, if you are giving public comment or if you haven't and you still would like to submit or submit the rest of your comment, didn't have a chance, uh please feel free to email them at public comment pps.net. Thank you. Who do I have next? Chair Wong, it would be helpful if I called up multiple people at a time to come forward and Oh. Um, let's do two at a time. Okay. Yeah. Two mics. Okay. Angela Bonia and Nikki Kaufman. [Applause] Hello, my name is Angela Bonia. I am the president of the Portland Association of Teachers. Um, and I am here to voice some of the concerns and um, frustrations that I've heard

023from our educators and from our community. Um, one piece of history that I want to make sure to give to contextualize a little bit of my remarks, um, is that, uh, when I first was elected, uh, the spring before I started my term in PPS in 2022, um, we saw almost 100 educators cut, um, from our schools. So, we have been experiencing cuts year after year after year. Um even when we had esser funds, even when we had increases in supports, we were seeing educators cut from classrooms and from buildings. Um we are at a point where this is untenable. Uh we have I equate it to like there is no more meat. We're cutting straight into the bone. Um we are demanding that our uh district that our school board pass a budget that

024reinstates the 25% that was preemptively cut from title funds that are going back to our schools. Um, this could help especially our title one schools being able to support some of the high needs that will be coming into their buildings. We're also asking that if there is a May adjustment on May 15th that provides more funds to our school district that those be allocated directly to schools and studentf facing positions. Um, lastly, the concern that came from my membership uh that I cannot step back from this mic without stating is a frustration when we have called for cuts to central office. seeing those cuts be coupled with a pay raise for certain administrators. We heard from this board state, you know, we can't expect folks to do more with less. And yet, that is what

025educators are expected to do every single day. We do not get an increase in our salaries when year after year our classes are crammed or the number of schools that we have to work at increases. And with over a hundred educators, almost 150 educators who do not know where they will be next year, who still do not have an assignment, um this is a dire situation that we're in emotionally. And I implore that this board look at any other way to bring funds back into our schools to support our students and our educators in doing what we want to do every day, which is serve. Thank you. Thank you, President Bonier. Thank you to Grant High School and the board for hosting this event. Uh my name is Nikki Kaufman. Uh I'm one of the

026field reps for Portland Federation of School Professionals. Um this is my daughter Runa. Um I am here on behalf of our classified staff. Um over a hundred of which have been cut for the next school year. that includes um our entire language access specialist team. They provide federally mandated and crucial language access services, translation, interpretation services for the district. Um again, that's federally mandated under title six of the civil civil rights of 1964. Um they uh follow our um uh educational assistance. Over 30 of them have been cut for next year. Um, I find it hard to be um, optimistic when I see the district saying that their priorities for this upcoming budget are, um, reading proficiency, um, safe and supportive schools, um, college and career, uh, post-secary and graduation readiness when they're cutting vital

027and integral support staff that help achieve those goals. Um, that's our career and college coordinators. Um again, our kindergarten EAS are uh language access services that help um bring our multilingual families and communities into the school um and contribute and be a part of their students education. Um I am deeply disappointed that um we continue to see the prioritization of contracts, private vendors over public um public employees. Um the print shop was shut down last year um as a cost cutting uh measure um that uh I've seen now looking at the budget for next year and as Julia Brimmed Edwards so rightly um pointed out last uh last uh board meeting um it's costing twice as much this year to outsource to Pacific Office Automation and I'm uh hearing now that um as I'm sure

028you're aware uh that uh the school district intends to outsource to Hillsboro school districts uh in-house print shop next school year instead of bringing back our print shop. Um that equipment is gathering dust in the POA warehouse. Um the staff are still within their recall rights. You can bring back the print shop. Um and I challenge you to do so if you're so concerned um with uh cost-saving measures. It's costing you twice as much to outsource to yet another private vendor. Um uh like what friending spending freeze are we talking about here? I just saw $1,900 in Ingalinas come through the PEC this morning for six people. Um, it makes no sense. The mismanagement of the budget. Um, I Okay. Um, could you finish up? I try so hard every day to be there for

029our our our members. Um, I don't see that happening at the district level when you um are paying so much for leadership who are non-existent. Um I I I want to see something better happening uh for next school year for my child's future. Thank you. Could you um Oh, she left. Never mind. I miss what school she came from. Um I guess you should ask. Okay. I'm sorry. Could you remind me what school um you represent or come from? All right. All right. Thank you. All right. Uh, next two and Cherry and Bodon Kasha. Again, just a quick reminder, um, it's two minutes. When you see the the yellow light, it means you have one minute left. And then the red light means it's two minutes up. Um, I'm interrupting if I interrupt you again.

030I'm trying to make sure we have time to fit everybody in. So, thank you. Hi everyone, my name is Bodam. I'm from Ukrainian. I speak three more language, Ukrainian, English, and Russian. I go to the McDaniel High School and every time when I need help in translation or interpretation, Miss Ola solves me or comes in person to help. Miss Ola helps me in the school during field trip or school events. Every time I go to the field trip, Miss Ola help me when I don't understand everything in English. Last Friday, I went to the college visit with my friends. She kept explaining what the speaker said and what we needed to go to the college. When my parents need help with the clinic appointment, attendance or local community support, my parents calls call Miss Ola

031and went to here continuing to be with with his like she has been science. I starting going to McDaniel High School. Thank you. Thank you. Ann Cherry is virtual. I tried to move her in but I was unable to. So I'll loop back to her. Um Katherine Tucker and Emma Pate. Is Emma here? I see Ann Cherry, so I'll have her get started. Ann, can you hear us? Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead and provide your comments. Okay. Thank you. I'm just watching my phone because my little kid is at the childcare um and I'm reading my comments. I'm Emma Pati. I am a parent of a incoming PPS kindergartener. Uh I also wrote a novel called Tilt that deals with earthquake risk here in Portland. Um and I recently wrote an article for

032WAMIT week about the seismic risk at the brick schools here in Portland. Um as some of you know and some of you don't know, we have dozens of schools that are not seismically prepared for an earthquake and thousands of children go to school in these buildings every day. And I wanted to just read a a small piece of the um of the article. Here's what will likely happen if you are inside an unreinforced masonry building. When a major earthquake hits, the wavelike shaking will cause the mortar holding the bricks together to crumble and crack. The brick walls will peel away from the building, collapsing onto the lawn or street. Depending on the structural elements of the building, the roof and upper floors could end up without walls to support them and they would collapse on

033anyone still inside below. Even scarier, the described scenario could happen with a smaller earthquake. And for a school like Beverly Clearary, which is one of the most dangerous schools in Portland, certainly it could even be a full collapse. And so I've spoken to first responders all over the world, and so many of them have told me that this is a lost cause. and that nothing is going to change until an earthquake hits and these buildings kill school children and then we will rebuild to be protected against an earthquake. And so I'm, you know, here because I care deeply about this topic and because I I want to implore all the parents and community members here and all of you um that we prioritize this issue, that we prove these people wrong, um and that we

034show that we can take this issue seriously before the earthquake comes um and and protect the children that are that are inside. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hi, my name is Katherine Tucker, TU CER, and I'm the teacher librarian at Mary'sville School. I am here today on behalf of my community of core enrichment educators. These are the educators who teach subjects like art, music, PE, and library. Core enrichment educators deserve better. Every year our jobs are on the chopping block. Every year or this year we were told we were safe from the cuts. However, because PPS is inflating class sizes, this gives an excuse to cut our FTE again. This is because last year our FTE was cut into 0.2 increments coinciding with days of the week. So when there are fewer sections of

035classes per grade level because students are being consolidated, core enrichment educators don't need to be teaching as many classes per week per this new FTE formula. Thus, we are being cut again by one or two days a week. Many of us are already working in at least two buildings. Because of the cuts and larger class sizes, some might now have to work in more. This is detrimental to our students because they can't form a good relationship with the teacher who is only in a building one day a week. This is also detrimental to these programs because educators are having to teach and plan for multiple different populations of students. I don't know how much longer core enrichment educators are willing to be treated like this. Soon they will start leaving and there will no longer

036be any programs. There are already core enrichment educators on leave because the workload is too much which is causing the classes to be taught by a rotation of substitute educators who are not necessarily trained in these areas. This once again demonstrates how these point2 FTE increments are ruining these programs and hurting our students. And I also want to point out that our school counselors FTE is formulated in the same way. And though it's not my expertise, I really don't think students can form the important relationship they need with a mental health professional that's not in a building every day of the week. We are not just numbers on a page. We are people with needs and workload thresholds that need to be upheld. Our students and schools deserve better. Thank you. Thank you. And Cherry,

037you want to go now? Can I Can I make a comment? Can I make a comment? Can you hear me? Uh, we wait. Well, I want to catch the representative before he left. Yeah, I I did I wanted to speak before before you left. I really appreciate you coming to testify, you know, for um for the continuation of the programs. Um I also want to ask you and I'm I'm hoping you're you'll be an advocate to for us down in Salem as well when we're we're talking about the QEM and getting that funding for the districts that you guys say we need to have in order to provide that quality education. So that way we wouldn't be having these conversations around keeping certain um programs because if if we can get the QEM, we can

038probably we wouldn't have this conversation right now. So I'm I'm I'm begging you to make sure that you are advocating for our QEM down in Salem just as you are here um tonight. I know. I appreciate you coming. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Virtually we have Ann Cherry. Uh thank you for uh inviting us to speak tonight and to review the budget. My name is Anne Cherry. I'm a parent to a first grader at Arita Elementary and I myself am a graduate of PPS. Um, as I was looking through the budget, I noticed that as part of the bond spending, in addition to the $400 million for construction that we have in there, we also have $115 million set aside for architects and for management services. And that seems like a really big number as

039we're talking about these extraordinarily painful cuts to make it to 40 million on uh the general fund side of things. Um and I you know as average at at average construction cost for high schools in the United States with the planned size of these schools that could make almost eight of our planned Jefferson high schools. And I urge the board to to keep looking at that cost per square foot and why our prices are so high. This city wants to support Portland kids and if there is any other way to use some of those funds even before the next bond to benefit students today whether it's to compensate in some way repairs maintenance for some of that 40 million or seismic upgrades for schools at risk. Thank you again for having us. Thank you. The

040next two ITN Kent and Ginger Hous What's What's the issue? Yeah, if you would like to substitute someone else for your place, that's totally fine. And I did this a while back. Hello, Portland Public School Board. Thank you so much for all you do. My name is Allison Taylor and I'm a parent of Ben, a third grader in Portland Public Schools Vietnamese Dual Language Immersion Program, VDLI. I taught in PPS for over 17 years. Go Ruff Riders. My comments are here to remind you of how important this program is uh to the district. Families think this program is so critical to their children's education that they are coming from around the city and even outside the school district to choose VDLI. During my son's first and second grade years, newcomers from Vietnam entered his class.

041Vietnamese students in the VDLI program have a teacher in every grade that speaks their home language and shares their culture and background. So extraordinary for a student from a historically underserved community. What a gift for these new students. A dual language program offers a range of benefits. By learning two languages, students develop bilingual and biliterate skills which enhance co cognitive flexibility, problem solving, and focus. There has also been compelling evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of dual language as a model that can not only close but eliminate the opportunity gap for underrepresented populations. In addition, students gain a deeper appreciation for diverse cultures and perspectives, fostering empathy and global awareness for the district. This program should be set up as a huge win for equity. The VDLI program is closer to the ideal 50-50 mix of students

042from native English and Vietnamese families compared to other DLI programs that serve mostly white families. Vietnamese is the third most spoken language in this state. PPS's VDLI program could and should be an example for the nation of best practices for emerging bilingual students. My son loves being a part of this program. He loves performing at TET. He loves that he can listen to Charlie in the chocolate factory in Vietnamese and follow along. And I know that it is making him a more global, thoughtful citizen. Thank you. Thank you, John Dwire and Noah Johnson Green. All right. Hi. Uh I'm John Dwire, a parent of uh two kids, third grader and kindergartener at Beverly Clearary uh right down the road. Uh I'm here because of the danger that my kids and other kids across the district

043face. Uh the risk of an earthquake destroying unsafe buildings. We hear a lot about the high schools, but nine elementary schools and middle schools that are unreinforced m masonry buildings were rated poor in PPS's 2012 seismic report and have the highest risk of collapse. Beverly Clearary has the worst risk score and the second highest enrollment. Even a moderate earthquake, which recent studies say is more likely than was previously thought, could cause mass casualties. A structural engineer said Beverly Clearary has alarming deficiencies, including beams and trusses resting on unreinforced masonry walls. In his words, it could be a complete collapse. I'm here to remind the school board and community that PPS has a moral obligation to protect students and staff. This risk has been known about for at least 13 years, and yet there is no

044timeline for keeping our kids and staff safe at the highest risk score schools. It's unacceptable. As a parent, it terrifies me. I think about it every day when I drop my kids off. In the Beverly Clearary Field, there's a large storage container. I recently learned that thanks to advocacy by the safety committee and PTA, it's filled with earthquake supplies. Uh, but it's not food and water in there. Instead, it's stretchers, shovels, and crowbars that'll be needed to dig kids um out from the rubble of the school. I asked the PPS school board to publicly publicly vote to allocate 2025 bond funding to seismically retrofit the elementary and middle schools that are expected to perform most poorly in an earthquake. Thank you. Thank you. Virtually we have Briana Jarvis. Hello. Um, my name is Briana Dervase.

045Ge R A S she her. I'm a previous PPS student, a PPS auntie, and a member of the PPS deaf negative advisory board. Thank you for allowing me to speak to the needs of the Native American students and the efforts of the PPS Indianed families. It was just a few short months ago during winter break PPS Indian Ed and the Native American community asked the board of to consider additional funds in the bond to develop a center for the Native American Student Success Center. During those conversations, we asked for our students and families to have the opportunity to dream big about what the educational experience of PPS Native American students could look like. During those conversations, we asked for our students and families to have the opportunity to dream big. We were told it was

046not an ideal time to put those funds in the bond. Everyone shared the same message that there was a need to continue the conversation and work together. to serve Native American students. Six months later, Indian Ed is now unhoused with no clear messaging from the board or the district. Where will we go? We have taken multiple steps backwards. I'm here to share the same message as the Indian parent committee. We need funding. We need our students to be reflected in this budget. We need a home. We don't need a new building. We need followthrough. PPS has empty buildings. The Meek campus is one of them. It's located in the Coley neighborhood where Superintendent Armstrong has publicly pledged investment. What better way to honor the commitment than by transforming Meek into a native student center. We

047need a gym, a kitchen, an outdoor space for growing our plant relatives and our youth. A place where native students are not guests but the heart of the space. where culture, identity, wellness, and academic success are all nurtured together. We need to be able to provide our Native American students and families an opportunity to dream big about what their education can look like. And to do that, we need investment from the district. We need a home. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Great. Next, Aaron Frasier and Arena Kosa. Jackie Banette Jorge Sanchez Batista. Am I going first? Yeah. Okay. Just double checking so I don't see anyone coming back. Uh thank you uh Chair Wong, Vice Chair Depass, members of the board, uh superintendent, Dr. Superintendent Arm, sorry, I forgot the doctor on there.

048Uh for the record, my name is Jorge Sanchez Batista. I am a senior at McDaniel High School as well as a candidate for the Portland School Board Zone 5 position, but I am speaking today at my own capacity today as a triilingual student in PBS. Um, so Spanish, English, and mine, just for that out there in case folks are curious on what languages I know. Uh, I'm here to testify in support of the language access department. Without interpreters, staff and families like my own will struggle with translation on important matters. Our district has an obligation to ensure families face no barriers when coming into our schools. At McDaniel, we have an amazing woman, uh, which I will name, Gail Gomero in the back. Please stand up. Gail. Miss Gail, stand up, please. Miss Gail. Uh,

049Miss Gail, who I want to acknowledge, has been a translator and gone out of her way as a community agent to ensure newcomer students and families who don't speak English feel safe. I ask that the district continue to fund this department to ensure that all our families feel heard and that Miss Gill doesn't have to work as twice as hard to ensure that students whenever we go into field trips or any like matter has to struggle with what exactly is being said. My last point that I want to uh make is that we continue to uh is that we continue to fund our immersion programs like representatives win and tran have mentioned. As someone who has been in the Spanish immersion program for over 10 years, we know that they are important and benefit students

050really well. I ask that you continue Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, uh, and so much more to benefit our students. Thank you. Thank you, Mary Watkins and Melissa Cooper. Peran, Raia Palsski. Hi, I'm Mary Watkins and I'm a special educator in the intensive skills center at Ainst Elementary. Um, ISC students are some of our most impacted students requiring a high level of support to learn functional academic, social skills, communication skills. Basic life retains anything. Some of them need constant one-on-one assistance for physical or medical or safety needs. Participation in GENED is part of the ISC program and it's a legal requirement if it is on their IEP. An overwhelming majority of ISC students need PAR educator one-on-one adult support when in Jined. The proposed budget says that the staffing allocation for an ISC is one teacher,

051three pair of ed pair of educators for 13 students, which sounds great. but with four staff to 13 students. If there are say two students participating in gened who each require adult support say because they're in different grade levels then there would be two staff in the ISC with 11 students any number of which need individual support for academics safety two people for toileting and there's only two adults in there so it's not that many people there's a process for getting additional pareducator par educators assigned to specific students based on their IEPs on their needs called designated pareducators RSC has some. They're great. They've been allocated to students with intensive medical and physical needs, making it possible for us to support these students in JENED um for significant portions of the day in compliance with

052their IEPs and um as appropriate to their academic levels and to meet their medical and physical and safety needs. However, and this is true in learning centers, CB CB rooms everywhere, it can be very difficult to get that FTE allocated to his students. We're often told there's no guarantee the FTE will be allocated even if the IEP mandates that level of adult support. Um sometimes we're told we need to use building resources as if there's just an extra adult laying around the building waiting for something to do all day. And there is not ever, at least not in my building. This support needs to be available. It's on their IEPs that they get that level of adult support. We are not able to meet their IEP mandated time for inclusion in GED without it. and

053we can't meet their basic safety, medical, and health needs. You need to find the money. Cut something else. Thank you. Hi. Uh my name is Perolstead. I am a parent of two kids at Beverly Clearary School just across the street. Um one in second grade and one in fifth grade. Um I have a much longer statement that I will submit um in writing later. It's not two minutes. So I will instead focus my comments to build on uh what my fellow parent John said and what the reporter Emma Pati said. Um building on her excellent article in the Wyatt week. The issues of seismic safety at elementary and middle schools are being ignored and that has to stop. Nowhere in the budget and nowhere in the bond is there any specificity about how the board

054and PPS management are going to deal with the backlog of issues that have to get fixed before our children die in these buildings. One of my co-parents has said this pre uh in other meetings, but a parent's number one job is to keep their kids safe. A community's number one job is to compete keep their kids safe. We are failing at that job, but we do not have to. The resources are there if you prioritize them. Many of you have said in general terms you support prioritizing this funding going to seismic issues. We are way beyond general terms. We need specifics. We need commitments. We need you to tell us how you are going to prioritize dealing with the riskiest schools in the PPS portfolio. That includes Beverly Clearary, but it includes many other URM

055schools and other schools that are not URM that have horrible risk ratings. These issues are not your creation. I don't envy you the job of having to manage it, but it is your job and we need you to do that job and we need you to do it now. We desperately want to support the 2025 bond. And it's not just at Beverly Clearary. There are a number of schools across the district that are getting involved in this effort now. We want to support the bond. We believe in the projects at Cleveland, at Wells, and at um Jefferson. They need to happen. But you're putting us in an impossible position where we're having to support between having to support projects we believe in and our children's safety. We can't support the bond if you don't make

056a commitment to address the issues at our schools. So, we are calling on you as members of the board. Please make a public commitment. Dr. Armstrong, please make a public commitment, not just that you care about the issues, but how are you going to deal with it? Be specific. Be clear about the priorities. Thank you. Thank [Applause] you. Good evening. My name is Rissa. I'm the career coordinator at Roosevelt High School and a proud member of the Portland Federation of School Professionals. I've been at Roosevelt for over a decade. I love my school and my community so so deeply. My partner, a K5 physical education teacher at two elementary schools, Grout and Woodstock, has also been with the district for over 10 years. He's still currently waiting to hear back about his unassigned 2 position.

057But tonight, I'm here with urgency because Portland Public Schools leadership is making decisions that are not just shortsighted, they're damaging. So far, 10% of our classified staff have been unassigned. That includes 38 educational assistants. 19 are bilingual EAS in Mandarin, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Those are not just numbers. These are potential cuts to trusted adults, cultural bridges, and daily student support, especially for our underserved communities. Career coordinators. Positions like mine, which have existed for nearly 15 years, are being cut from the central budget entirely. We are student facing positions that serve our entire school and not just a small case load. The entire school population. And now school leaders are being forced to scramble, pulling funds from already depleted areas to keep us. Some schools like Alliance and MLC aren't doing that. They can't afford it.

058Jefferson tried to rehire someone and then pulled the offer due to budget uncertainty. So Jefferson students are left with nothing right now. No career coordinator. You heard from Chris Bridle last month about career connected learning. What he didn't mention is that we, the career coordinators, are the backbone of that work. We are the ones organizing and transporting hundreds of students to the Northwest Youth Careers Expo every year. We are the people doing the work that is required by the state. Tracking career related graduation requirements. Coaching students, building partnerships, hand selecting opportunities based on student interest. Supporting the creation of the education plan and profile, a mandated mandated piece of the Oregon diploma, OAR 581022. Documenting progress, career goals, and accomplishments. Who will do this work when we're gone? Will you push that burden onto already

059overworked teachers and counselors? We also play a vital role in career technical education serving as the connection between teachers, employers, and students for work-based learning and real career exposure. Without us, those systems collapse. So, I ask you again, who will do that work? Now, the proposed budget says the word equity 85 times. But where's the equity in cutting the positions that work mostly closely with our diverse student population? Where is the inclusion when many of the staff being cut are people of color, role models, and mentors that reflect the very students we claim to center? We are not expendable, but we are essential. And in the moment when public schools and public services are under constant attack, I leave you with this. We must resist boldly, loudly, authentically. And I ask you, our board, our

060leaders, stand with us. Stand with the working-class educators, the ones doing the real work, the ones who hold these communities together. Let's not just talk about fully funded schools. Let's actually build them together. Thank you. Tori, thank you. Next, Tori Clark, Virginia Lefore Hi everybody. Um my name is Virginia Fort. Um I'm a Grant High School parent and I'm here to speak about the importance of college and career coordinators for our high school students at Portland Public Schools and to highlight the serious inequity in the current budget proposal. In the current proposal, funding for college coordinators comes from the classified staff budget. The funding for career coordinators is left up to individual high schools who must use their limited FTE allocations. This means principles are forced to choose between hiring career coordinators and maintaining classroom

061teaching positions. That's not a fair or sustainable choice. Career coordinators don't just help students choose a path. They help them find one. They connect classroom learning to real world opportunities and open doors that many students might not know even exist. Whether they're considering college, trade schools, apprenticeships, or entering the workforce directly, students need guidance that goes beyond academics. For first generation students, for those from underserved communities, and for anyone unsure of the future, a college and career coordinator can very well be the difference between drifting and direction when they graduate. It can be the difference between high school students showing up for school or not showing up for school. We need students to show up. The current budget forces high school administrators to fund these critical roles out of their limited FTE allocations, which means

062making impossible choices. Hire a career coordinator or keep a classroom teacher. That's not equity. That's a trade-off that short changes both students and staff. If we're serious about preparing students for life after graduation, we shouldn't be asking schools to sacrifice teaching positions to do it. We must fund career counselors equitably and sustainably from the classified staff budget because this is not a luxury. It's a necessity for the students who need it most. Thank you. Have Zara Farqui and Suzanne Clark. Oh, sorry. He's not here. Um, we have Bruce Morrison virtually. Just turn it on. There we are. Sorry about that. Good evening. Hello. Uh, I'm Bruce Morrison with Portland Public Schools Indian Education Program. Uh, I'm pretty new to my position. Uh, oh, and I u, let's see, I use hehim pronouns and um, I'm

063here to also talk about u, the Indian education program and some of the things I've noticed since uh, starting. Um, let's see here. Um, I I guess I'm I'm uh, let's see here. My uh colleague from the Indian parent committee had pointed out that uh you know the Indian parent committee is feeling a little bit frustrated sometimes with uh some of the types of communication we've been getting from Portland public schools. uh it feels often uh despite uh Indian education's federal requirements for meaningful communication with tribal communities and tribal leaders and with uh you know the federally mandated uh established Indian parent committee. It feels like often instead the communications that we're receiving from the district uh from the board and from just uh you know and from our colleagues in the district uh just

064tends to be keeping us at arms length holding us separate and not really inviting um not really inviting native educators, families and other staff in to sort of be part of the decision making process. Uh something that I'm hearing a lot from the Indian parent committee is that we uh the native community here want feels like we want to have a seat at the table and we want to be invited uh to be part of the decisions that are being made for native students and being uh feel like uh you know the the the native community has agency in how it is growing and how it is um how how the students are growing within PPS. PS and how their futures are being determined. And so the Indian parent committee and other native uh people

065in PPS I've heard from have said that they would just like to see uh more opportunity being extended for them to be involved in the decision-m process as opposed to how it often has been for native folks throughout the history of North America, which is simply just being told what is going to happen to us. And I believe that's Thank you for having me here. Sorry to intro. Thank you Sakura Hamada and Tori Padell Ford. Hi there. Um, my name is Sakra Hamada. She her and I am a school counselor at Mary'sville Elementary. I'm here to represent my community that I've been loving working for two years. I know it's short, but yes, at Mary'sville. So, Mary'sville is a very special school with unique needs. And we're a title one school with diverse community and

066we serve a lot of students with from a house of shelter who's al which is also taking victims of domestic violence along with many other students from low-income household and a lot of our students come from um ex like in like a lot of trauma from home and need robust mental support mental health support and unfortunately due to the lack of funding a mental health team is already understaffed and next year we will be losing significant support over the past few months The number of 101 check-in requests I receive from student has increased dramatically with the majority of these coming from students of color as many of them are fearful of the current political climate and worry about what might happen to their families and friends. We have uh we have students and families who

067have been evicted and lost their homes due to the unaffordability of their basic needs. And my fellow staff and members and admin are unable to meet all of our students need and many of them are f are falling through not cracks but a huge chasm created by the severe lacks of funding for public education. As if that wasn't already challenging enough, we have been implementing the neighborhood school model for the last couple of years. On paper, this full inclusion model seems amazing and in ideal world, every child deserves to be attend the school right in their own backyard. But unfortunately, reality though is that this model is not providing adequate support to students with the highest needs again due to the lack of funding for staff members. And next year, we will have even fewer

068staff members with a total 8.5 FTE being cut from our class building. This means larger class size for teachers and case increase for our mental health team. In order for this model to tr truly succeed, our students will uh need to be uh have more one-on-one time and simply do not have enough pair educator support. All of our students, it needs our academic support. Our student deserve better. Our SPE teachers deserve better. Our classroom teaches better and our community deserve better. And our Mary school community deserves better. Points blank. Done. Thank you. We're in a pickle. Hi. Thank you, Dr. Armstrong, esteemed school board members. I hope that my message goes out to our mayor, to the citizens of Portland, and to our governor, and all other Oregonians. I dressed in yellow and clearly all

069of these other voices here. We are the canaries in the coal mine. I have been involved with PPS as a citizen and as a parent and I have been honored, deeply honored and grown as a human to serve as a library assistant. This is my 21st year. I was Thank you. I'm honored and I've served well as have all of the other library assistants and librarians I know. And I say you're in a pickle. You're in a pickle, school board. And we're in a pickle as citizens when we are cutting studentfacing positions and adults, caring, educated adults that create relationships. One of my fourth grade students from Lewis Elementary last year came and spoke to you. She spoke of me and knowing every student's name because I was there because our library was open five

070days a week. I want the public to understand because the public does not understand that our school libraries are not open five days a week this year. And there will it it sets up inequity because there will be schools that will have parent volunteers that will come and run that library and shove books, but then there will be schools that will not have a community that can make up that gap. Libraries are the hearts and souls and hubs of schools and communities. I am asking you to be our voice. Be extraordinary and be brave. Call a state of emergency with our governor. You everyone in Oregon follows PPS's directive. We are in trouble. We are not serving. I would love to speak with any of you more. I've been around a long time. I've made

071a lot of observations about this district and I want to continue serving our community and our students. Please, please be brave and use your voice. Thank you. Thank you for being here today. Zakayia Rhodess, Brian Healey, Aria Harbower, Maya Vanel. Um, thank you. My name is Aria Harbower. I am a special education teacher at Oley Green. Currently, I am teaching 1.0 of a communication behavior classroom. Next year, that becomes.5 CB.5 learning center. Nobody can tell me what that means, but it's actually not even why I'm here. It's kind of its own mess. I'm here to speak out against the dance cuts planned for our school. In case you do not know, Aley Green is a title one school, a school that serves one of the most diverse communities in Portland and one that is not

072experiencing a decline in enrollment next year. We serve a historically underserved community and somehow when the topic of cuts come up, we somehow always find ourselves on the block. Well, that happened once again this spring when we were told that we would be losing our dance program. For those who don't know, for the last several decades, Oley has helped produce nationally competitive dancers that that go into the pipeline at Jefferson High School. This has been a vital service to one of Portland's most diverse communities. Ask anybody at Auckley Green and in North Portland and they will tell you that the dance program is our heart and one of the most important things we do for our community. As a special education teacher, I've seen firsthand how important this is. I've seen some of my most

073shy and anxious students open up and grow into themselves through their experiences with the Oley dance program in a way that I honestly don't know if I could ever accomplish through just teaching. Our communities deserve more. As a special education teacher, I also know that the district is under a disproportionality investigation. We have been found at fault for underserving our communities. I was just in a meeting last week and I was asked, "What do I think the root cause of the disproportionality is?" Well, let's look at the fact that we are cutting a dance program in North Portland, our most diverse community. I wonder how a disproportionality exists in this district. I urge the school district to change their course on this matter. Our communities deserve more. Our school deserves more. We have lost so

074many of our services. We teach in a 100-year-old building that doesn't have AC or heat. And now you are telling our kids they can't even dance. Thank you. That's going to be a hard one to follow without getting emotional. Hi, my name is Maya Puo Van Gelder. Um, one thing I wanted to point out is that every comment tonight spoke to the importance of the rules, programs, and positions that are extreme extremely important to our communities. Whether it be buildings that are safe for our kids, cherished positions, or the rights of our children with 504 plans. With the decision to save one item on the list of cuts, we sacrifice something else on the list. We are in the position in this position because Oregon has never funded to QEM or the quality education model.

075We are 22.9 billion underfunded and 11.6 billion or whatever the current service level is set to be will not help us dig ourselves out of that $22 billion hole. And I use the term current service level um with a grain of salt because there's nothing about CSL that is going to provide the current services that see we see today in the next year and or two. It should be current funding level and that is not good enough for our kids. So I ask of you and everyone here in the room to come with us to Salem tomorrow. We have a planned lobby day for public schools and we need to work together to make sure our legislators hear our voices when we say that our kids, every single one of our kids and public education

076matters. our dancers, our athletes, our academic overachievers, our academic hard hard workers who are trying to make it through the day, every single child. If anyone is interested in advocating for QAM tomorrow in Salem with us or in the days to come, please come find me after this meeting. And for all of you, I hope we get to see you tomorrow. And I thank you for advocating for our kids. Thank you. Hung Freel David Machado. How my name is Hung Fel. I just graduated from Franklin and I just want to say that I don't know anything about the financials. I don't keep up to date with all the different news on what's going on, but I am here to share my testimony on the Vietnamese interpreters of PPS. So, just to give you some context,

077I skipped quite a bit and I always told my mom, we're I'm Asian. I always told my mom that uh it was okay because I got my assignments done, but she was always kind of worried, not really sure what was going on. Eventually, it got to the point where I almost got dropped out of school and then we had to have a meeting with the school and with my mom had to come as well. And I was like, "Oh, shucks. My mom now is going to find out what's going on and all that sort of stuff, right? And it was really important to me that I had a interpreter that could really understand my mom and where I was coming from. I had never had that before. And it was always difficult when I was

078speaking with my counselors and I'd bring my mom. But there was that language barrier, that Vietnamese language barrier that I could never just it was hard because my mom and I, we were both emotional. We both had our own beliefs on what we thought was right. But it wasn't until Kohaa or one of the Vietnamese interpreters of PPS that she came through and she was really she really went above and beyond to understand me and my mom where where we were coming from and we had a really just distorted relationship. Not it was built on glass, you could say. There wasn't that trust. But if it wasn't for her, I don't know. I I have a feeling it'd still be that way. I don't know if there would be the trust that my mom and

079I have that we have today. And so I really appreciate her and all of her work. And I hope that other students that are graduating soon because I was a senior. I hope that other students get the chance to work with people like her to advocate for them and to just help them and their lives because this really impacts not just our school lives but our relationships with our parents and the time to come. So thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is David uh Contra Machello. I'm the associate director for educational access for Latino Network. Uh thank you for having me here today. I'm here to advocate for the continued funding for uh community based organizations um that are part of a lot of the PPS schools uh and other districts as well. uh

080the resources the uh the support that we provide for our students are very crucial and vital for their success. Um and I believe that the funding that is provided to these organizations um is money well spent. Uh we use that money not only directly to support our students um but we also are very uh frugal and know how to stretch out a budget. Uh we use uh our and we we use our resources and leverage them uh to provide even more uh of an opportunity for our students to experience um things and and experiences uh like going to OSU for an entire week um over the summer, summer programming after school, uh out of school time support, uh case management, one-on-one check-ins, the the very um necessities uh and support that they need to graduate

081uh uh high school on time and then even supporting them through uh their post-secary career even over the summer trying to reduce summer melt um getting students into and enrolled into their classes to start in the fall. Uh we've done trips to go to um to California uh have presented the WOOI scholarship to allow them to know that they are getting scholarships and able to pay instate tuition even in Northern California schools. We have uh some of our students who actually are attending uh USC, Stanford. Um all thanks to the trips that we are able to do and the resources that we're able to bring in. Um our community, specifically Latino community, is facing a very difficult time as it's completely obvious. Um our very presence in these spaces are under attack. Uh our rights

082are being questioned. A lot of our families are very fearful of being in these spaces uh to engage in these public spaces. Um, and it's just very disheartening to see that the progress that we were doing is now being uh clawed back. Um, so please continue to fund programs uh like the Latino network and others as supported by RSJ programs. Thank you. Thank you. Chowi Zoya. Hello everybody. Uh my name is Zoe Sitz and I have been working in the Russian immersion program uh for 13 years by now. I know Olga Filinova with language access as a as a language access specialist uh from from day one of my work at PPS and I can't even imagine our program without her. Throughout all these years Olga has been an integral part of sustaining our immersion

083program helping us teachers and Russian speaking parents to connect find resources resolve problems organize networking events and many other important tasks and activities. Teachers in the Russian immersion program don't have to or any other leazison zone professionals. We are very isolated in our classrooms. Uh same goes for parents, especially newcomers or non-Russian speaking parents who want their child to learn Russian but don't have an idea about this program. People like Olga connect us and bring a s a substantial substantial amount of families into our valuable language program just because they've been working in the district and have a great experience and knowledge in the educational system and support. as an example of Olga's um support. Uh she was one of the organizers of Russian speaking youth forum for um many years. Um Latin language access

084specialist to continue doing their indispensable work in supporting families, teachers and students is absolutely critical in raising the future citizens of the world. Great. Thank you. Hello, my name is sorry to interrupt. Um, you're using interpreter, correct? Yes. Okay, if you're since you're using interpreter and you kind of have to say it twice, um, we're going to allow four minutes for your testimony. Okay. Thank you. So um I I am a mother of uh two children they are study at West uh school. Uh today uh I was uh I am asking some question to keep the interpreter uh team Okay. Uh first question uh if firing interpreter team uh when parents uh need help where or who should we find help? second question uh if uh hiring uh interpreter outside school uh when the IEP

085meeting uh that have a special terms need to be translate accurately but sometimes uh this interpreter cannot accurately translate those special term from the IVP meeting. Are they cheaper to be hired? interpretation was not accurate and it causes a misunderstanding or miscommunicating. Who will be responsible for it? Once when I attended an IEP meeting with my child, the interpreter cannot find the accurate or correct word to uh translate what I want to say. And so I strongly uh request to keep the interpreter team. Thank you. Um uh one last thing uh there's an uh Chinese and English version uh of the petition to uh present to you guys. Great. Thank you. Natalyia Gunther, Mariah Bennett Gillard. My name is Natalyia Gunther and I'm a 30-year PPS veteran ESL teacher. I'm here to speak for Olga

086Filinoa and others in similar positions as language access specialists as their positions are currently being cut. Our district vision uh I'm sorry. Our district vision states that a PPS graduate will be a compassionate critical thinker able to collaborate and solve problems and be prepared to lead a more socially just world. This defines the goal we set for ourselves as educators and a promise we give to the PPS community, our families, and students. I, as a teacher, can't accomplish this goal alone. It takes a team of dedicated, hard-working, and innovative individuals who work together to get this monumental job done. This team should include and should continue to include Olga Filinova in her capacity. I have worked with Olga since she started at PPS almost 20 years ago. All young people in her role work the

087most with the most vulnerable families and students in our district. The ones who don't speak English may not understand how our school system works. The ones who come to us after experiencing hardships and discrimination in other countries. She helps them every day to become an equal part of the PPS community by serving as a leazison and a bridge. She is my voice. Recently, one of the parents said about Olga, and I think we just heard that also. It echoes uh the last testimony we just heard. She does it with a great sense of empathy, multicultural knowledge, and cross-cultural skills. Olga's work has a long lasting impact on the families and our students. And we just can't break this link. We can't leave our families without a voice. The journey of one child is guided by

088many lights. Without Olga, there will be one less light along this path. Are you okay with that? I am not. Thank you. My name is Mariah Bennett Gillard and I am a senior clerk one with the records management department housed in the basement of the profit center. I have a master's degree in archives and records management and I've been in records roles for the vast duration of my career. Records management manages all student records and archives for the entire district dating back to the date of inception for PPS. And yes, we do have records that old. Registration records are under permanent federal retention. That means forever we have those records. Transcripts for high school are retained for 75 years after the date of graduation. PPS cannot be without an adequately staffed records department because under

089FURPA law, any records under attention must be produced upon request within 10 days or PPS will be in non-compliance with the state and federal laws. Non-compliance will lead to the following. Loss of federal funding costing PPS money. Legal action. Individuals who have had their furper rights violated may file lawsuits against the district which will cost PPS money. The Department of Education or what's left of it can impose fines costing PPS money. We we can our accredititation loss will be pending which will affect affect our ability to operate and receive funding in the future. We will receive reputational damage that will take years to repair. We will have employee turnover at the school level because the records management department will not be able to assist them with their workload as their positions are being cut to

090part-time. There will be extensive corrective measures that PPS will have to undertake in order to correct the non-compliance standing that you end up with the state and federal FURPA law violations. And all of this can be avoided by not cutting the records team by 25% which was a decision made by Otis. And after the egregious error made by Otis management at the end of last school year to close the print shop costing us double what it costs to run the print shop, records management needs to be removed from Otis management and assigned to either the legal department who understands compliance law and sees the value financially and the community value in what we do or under business management who will also understand the money involved with the importance of of our job and staying within

091FURPA compliance. Thank you, Nancy Perez and Joe Rose. Uh, hello. I am Joe. He him, parent at Roosevelt. We must pass the bond and I do not feel the board is in the streets and press enough. I have been a longtime volunteer in schools. My volunteering started in 1993 in Houston in the fifth ward in Thug Marshall and Bayiew Hunters Point and I volunteered in many schools in se in San Francisco and Portland. Volunteering changed my community and it changed me. I was once a tech bro. I supported the Roosevelt teachers in the strike and learned how PPS is wasting 3% of our budget on admin not found in other audits of other districts. Furthermore, PPS was told to produce homework and how to cut that overspending. And no such homework was done. And meanwhile

092during the strike, you guys were all on the board, not all of you, but many on the board were badmouthing my daughter's teachers at Roosevelt. I cannot believe what you say because I see what you do. The excessive admin are a budget drain on the child services that you've heard here. And they also slow down my daughter's educators with their top- down mandates. No one wants a micromanager looking over their shoulder. Less micromanagement. Uh valuing my daughter's teachers means bottomup leadership and cutting the top. I was volunteering last Saturday to elect a PPS student and three moms. I also handed out uh these things to pass the bond. Please pass the bond and get out in the streets like me as the board and I respect you and Dr. Armstrong, but we are facing a

093crisis. If you could hear what the public said, I knocked on a hundred doors and it is not good news. So talk to me and please uh spend the next few weeks passing this bond. Thank you. Thank you. Virtually we have Ginger Husar. Is that my turn to go? Yes. Okay. All right. Um my name is Ginger Husar. Uh I am a special education learning center teacher at Atinson Elementary. Um, I teach students kindergarten through uh, fifth grade. Um, we are a Spanish immersion school. Um, I have been a learning center teacher in PBS for seven years. Um, each year has gotten progressively more challenging. I've taught through COVID. Uh, I used to teach middle school. When we came back, it was a public health crisis in my opinion. Um, returning to a high needs

094population of students with unmet supports. Um, I moved to elementary school three years ago and um, I can say that that there have been changes at the district level that have not encapsulated how we serve um, our vulnerable populations who also have coexisting needs. So, in a Spanish immersion school, um, we have students coming in from other countries, we have newcomers, we have students who don't speak English, we have students who come with IEPs from other countries. And when I ask for support from the district, they don't have an answer. Um, so I the the lack of support that um special education staff and I say staff because it's not just special education teachers, it's par educators, it's speech pathologists, it is everyone. It's school psyches, it's everybody on our team who is doing this

095work and we are taxed because we are working really hard and we are not meeting the level of support that our kids need. Um, and for those of us who work in schools like Spanish immersion schools, we have a higher level of need. I work in a school that also has two um, focus uh, ISC classrooms for um, like those are considered life skills classrooms. Um, right now none of the three special ed teachers are getting their contract um, case management and planning time as we should. We file grievances because we went on strike for these very things that we are told that we're going to have more of and we don't have it because nobody can give it to us because we are not staffed appropriately because our case loads can be outrageous numbers

096and nobody cares. I have sat down with people from the district and found that I have 2,000 minutes a week that I cannot serve my case load of students that's unmet legal obligations. I've asked for the district to write compensatory service letters to the families to let them know that their children are not getting their legal services because I can't serve them because I there is not enough minutes in a day for me to do the job that I am expected to do. Um because my case load is so high. I don't get my planning time and when I file a grievance and it goes up to the district level, the district staff do not show up because I don't mean anything to them and serving my students and my job and to do my

097job doesn't appear have any relevance either. And I speak on this freely because this is what's happening with so many special education staff in this district. I am not unique to the situation when it comes down to it. I'm sorry. Can you please finish up? Um I please feel free to email the if whatever you didn't get to say, please email it in. We would love to um read the rest of your testimony. Thank you. Thank you for being here today, Simone Crow. Hi, my name is Simone Crow. I use she her pronouns and I'm invested in the success of our schools to the point where I'm running for school board. It's such an honor to be here providing comment among so many heartfelt and courageous community members tonight. Thank you for taking their words

098to heart and incorporating their input into your budget because it's these folks and their kids who are the ones who will be most impacted. I mostly want to underscore what the community tonight has already voiced. I hope the budget will prioritize upgrading schools to be safe for our kids if an earthquake hits with comfortable temperatures all the time. I hope that it prioritizes language access, values teachers, and prioritizes small class sizes because this will help kids in our greater community thrive. I will also be in Salem tomorrow advocating for more funding and education and invite all of you and all of you to join me because we must find more funds. I appreciate the public comment hearing held today, but my question is how much community involvement has already happened in this budgeting process beyond

099today. It's something I care deeply about and would love to hear more about. Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback on the budget and for the work you do. Great. Thank you. Chair Wong, that is everybody that I have signed up. I do show somebody in the virtual attendees who's not on the list. Would you like me to bring them in and ask them? I don't see anyone's name. Okay, let me see what he says about. Yeah, that's fine. We have until 8 at least. Hi. Um, my name is uh Nicole Sophronic and I am a teacher at McDaniel High School. Um, um, I'm specifically a newcomer teacher. So, I work with students who are moved here in the last one or two years. And, um, in that capacity, I've been able to work

100with the language access um, services team a lot. Um you heard from one of my uh students earlier today who was speaking about how much um Olga Fillinova has worked and helped his family. Um a lot of people have commented about language access services today. Um and it was news to me at the end of last week that the all the people in that department um had been unassigned. Um, and this is a team of just five people who create content in PPS's five supported languages for the entire district. Um, but document translation is basically the least of what they bring to our community. Um, these five people are long-term community members who bring years of connection with families and students to their work. Um I think what I'm noticing in the room today is

101that um the interpreters who came here generously offering their services um are not getting to do any work because the families are sitting with the language access services people who they know and trust. Um they're uh they have a rare mix of language expertise, knowledge of school systems, and community connections um that positions them to help bridge the cultural gaps between immigrant families and the US school system. Um I personally contact language access services whenever uh native language can enrich my classroom activities. Um they have supported me when students are completing surveys like the successful schools survey which the translation is terrible and students have lots of questions about what the questions mean. Um they have supported students in lessons about their rights as immigrants. Um they even chaperon field trips if you ask them

102to. Um they not only make the content comprehensible for my students, they engage students in questioning the content and expressing their own opinions and concerns. um essentially they give voice to students who often feel that true communication is impossible for them um and um also to their families. So I really encourage and uh hope that that team will be reinstated. Thank you. Thank you, [Music] David Roberts and Reggie Nook. All right. I am David Roberts. I represent two kids who go to Beverly Clearary. Um, and first of all, I want to thank you for creating an inclusive and beautiful environment for my kids to learn in. It's because of you that when my kids my kid went to superhero day, he dressed up as a Navajo code talker on the same day that our president

103said that he wanted to wipe it off of all of our US history things. So, thank you for creating that environment. But this is all mute in the face of him sitting in a school where he could die from an earthquake. Um, it's heart-wrenching to think that the left field of the baseball field at Beverly Clearary is full of equipment to dig kids out of that situation and not as a way to say like, hey, like let's figure this all out, but as a safety measure, knowing that the emergency response teams won't be able to get to our kids in enough time to save them. I was in the streets with the Portland Teachers Association during the strike and I think it's important for them to have a safe environment to go to work in.

104It's impossible to believe that we're even sending kids to this environment. It's impossible to believe that our teachers are being sent into this environment. And right now, we're asking for part of this budget to go to that seismic effort in order to make sure that our kids are safe. There are 19 schools affected by this and my kids go to one of those. So again, I thank you for creating an environment where they can learn about all of the diversity and inclusion that we've been talking about and all the cultures that have been represented in all of our public schools. But this doesn't make any sense if the school isn't safe for them to learn in. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Reggie. Uh, my pronouns are they, them. I am a school secretary

105at a Title One Elementary School. Um, and aside from the numbers side of things, my job is about trust with the family members in my community, with students, and with my colleagues. Um, and I'm just here to tell you that it's really hard to build trust when the answer so many times is going to be no. When I have families that I can't communicate with because the only language I speak is English and they have to like cycle through various phone interpreters rather than having a consistent person that they can like build a relationship with over time. That makes it hard for me to build trust. To think about Olga, who is like many people I've talked about, who is the person who is like walking some of like the refugee families at my school

106through their experience here. To think that that is going to disappear for them, that is going to damage their trust with this district forever. Like we build trust through consistency. That secretaries are constantly cut and like told that our positions aren't important. That means the person that families talk to every day is going to change all the time because we will like grow out of our ability to have a job that pays you very little and only half of the time. I think this is true for EAS, for many other foras, for like the classified contingency that is being cut at a huge rate for teachers, for for everyone. Like we need to be able to be consistent to show that like someone will be there for you. We are humans. we are walking you

107through this life. Um, and it's just hard when we say no when someone comes and they say, "I'm new to your school. I know my kid needs a parah." And when I know in my heart that the answer is going to be like, "I don't know when you'll get a parah. I don't know if you will get a parah." It's just hard to build that trust. A good friend of mine has on her like computer a sticky note that says you can't professionally develop trust. And I think about that all the time. Thanks. Thank you, Yasmin. Lauria. All righty. Hello. Um, thank you for letting me speak. Um, I just wanted to say as much as I do care about the earthquake and emergency response. Um, I just need to say we need to allocate

108funds towards maintenance for for our older buildings. Um, especially in the title one schools. I'm a pair at a title one school. Um, and in October I slipped in a puddle from a leaking water fountain. No joke. I was out for 6 months and needed knee surgery and it was almost career ending. Um, sorry. It was, yeah, the entire thing was very, and I'm still healing. It's still a lot for me, but um, it was unfair on my students and especially my co-workers, and I wouldn't want this happening to anyone else in our district. Like, I'm being so serious. Sorry. Um, but anyways, that's all I wanted to say, but yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. My name is Charlotte. I'm a parah at Pioneer and I pretty much second what people are saying about

109the budget. Um I do have a friend who's a records clerk that couldn't be here today and I wanted to read you his words. Um again seconding everything about the budget. We need to chop from the top. And I'm just reading the last part of what he wrote. It's unrelated to the budget directly. I would like to urge the board to continue to advocate for our most at risk communities and to constantly reaffirm our community values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Unfortunately, the current federal regime is attacking any and all institutions and communities who hold these pro-social values. As a part of their ploy to implement Project 2025 and secure their fascist agenda, we need to call it what it is. We must resist any and every way that we can. And we need our

110leaders to boldly and loudly proclaim this resistance. We are not living in a stable or normal times. and we cannot allow our most at risk community members to be further at risk. Thank you. Thank you. That's everybody signed up. That's everybody I have signed up. Oh, I'm sorry. It's not one more. Aaron Frasier. Sorry, Erin. [Music] Good afternoon everybody and thank you for having me. Uh I recognize I'm last so I will do my best to be brief. Uh my name is Aaron Frasier and I'm the executive director of the Center for Black Excellence. Um and I implore you all to do three things. The first is to maintain funding for RESJ partners. RESJ has often been one of the first places the district looked to make its cuts in the past and as a

111result J partners are already doing more with less. Second, I want to ask you all to do something that feels like it should be easy in this incredibly tight budgetary environment where we do have to make a lot of hard decisions about how to demonstrate and advance our priorities, which is spend the bond dollars that you already have allocated and cannot use for any other purpose to identify a site to purchase for the Center for Black Student Excellence this spring and complete the transaction on that property as soon as is possible and certainly before the end of this calendar year. There are an abundance of community partners, some of whom you contract with, but most of whom you have never given a dime, who are ready and waiting to help fill these gaps that your

112cuts will inevitably leave by putting on programming at the CBSC related to core academics, positive identity development, family engagement, professional development, wellness, research, and more. Finally, and directly related to the previous request, dedicate at least one full-time staff member to the CBSC with the authority to oversee the completion of that transaction for for the center and to coordinate its use upon its opening. That may sound like a big ask in this context where we know we're fighting for every dollar in every position, but I hope it feels like a smaller one when given the context that in the fall of this school year, there were two PBS employees dedicated specifically to the CBSC and two others who were dedicated to the innovation studio, which are often supporters of that work. And now, in two months

113time, without this district's leadership's action, there will be none. So, with that, I thank you for your time. I know you've got a lot of hard decisions to make, but I ask that you make the easy one, which is to spend money that can go to no other purpose except the Center for Black Student Excellence. Identify and purchase a site as soon as you can. Thank you. Thank you. That's it. Um, was there a wait list or is that That's everybody that I have signed up. Okay, that's everybody. All right. Thank you. Thank you everybody for being here and uh providing especially those providing public comment. Uh your words help inform our work. So, thank you. Um all right. Right now, board members, now that we have heard public testimony on the uh proposed budget,

114uh we have an opportunity to more deeply review the budget materials. I'd like to use this time to see if anyone has any clarifying questions of the superintendent or to engage in discussion with each other. I have a clarifying question. Um, we heard a lot today about language access and I think it's something all of us on the board are probably interested in learning more about about that and I know that there was a change from the Oregon Department of Education. I think related to possibly that program. Um, is this the same thing or something different that we were hearing about tonight? Um, it's something different. Um, I'm happy to share more if needed when needed. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Go for it. Sorry, it's hard to hear from over here. Okay. Okay, I'm going to

115call forward my chief of uh communications to share just a a a brief overview of um just some data that's been collected. Sure. Um good evening everybody. Um first let me start by saying that we truly do value um the presence of the language access team. I knew that when the district had to make these tough decisions and as I was going through my budget and my staffing uh one of the things that um came upon me was that one we uh are duplicating some efforts. We do have a community agent team who is also in um the schools and connected with the families. It's a multilingual team um a bilingual team that supports our schools. The second thing that I noticed was that um 80% of our interpretation requests were being used by our

116vendors uh while about a good 14% were used by our uh full-time staff. Um also uh the um vendor services were costing the district 40% less than what the full-time staff was costing. Um, and so, um, after going through, um, and learning those things, um, I knew that we would still be meeting the Title Six criteria if we were to continue on with the vendor services which were in place and, um, still maintain the community agent services. um so that no family would be interrupted with um the um elimination of the five uh language access services. So I'm hoping that clears that up. I am able to prov provide more documentation in detail if you would like. Great. How many language access positions are there and are those part of the 75 central office cuts?

117There are five language access uh service roles and um as far as yes that is part of the 85.5 reductions from central office um how many schools do those five serve? So they serve around a district. I can go into detail um I can I'm happy to send you all detail on the schools but when I looked at the numbers um some of them some of the service at the schools throughout the district may be one school for the entire year so the data that I have is from the first day of school starting up until today as we sit here and so there are some times where full-time staff may have gone to maybe one school this entire time where um the vendor services may have served 80% more um of the schools. Yeah.

118Just to just to say that the the team responded uh to my request to really examine the way in which we were functioning and with our central services and out of those budget uh out of those funds and to see where we saw services that were duplicated in buildings in a way for us to be able to make some reductions at the central office level and keep FTE at the school site as much as possible. Right. None of these conversations were easy. They're even sitting today and listening like I I feel for every single person. If we can keep every single person, we absolutely would. And we still needed to address a $40 million deficit. And so, one of the things is we had to look at functions and where we were um needing to

119make some reductions based on um the use of those services. Um, so you talked about using vendors instead. I guess I'll direct it at both of you. I don't want to put anyone on the spot. You're talking about you're already using vendors. You're planning on using them instead. Um, how do what do you plan to do to make sure that schools and communities know how to connect with the vendors versus how it was probably easier to connect with somebody that they already knew? Yes. No, that's a good question. And so currently these schools are still using these vendors. Um and so it'll be the same process that they've been using currently because we use them 80% of the time. Um however, we do plan to with this change, we do plan to put more information

120out. Um as we know that there are some schools who are used to um having a specific way of how they do things. And so there will be information placed on just that reminder of the steps and and processes um to take with using those vendors. Yeah, I think my question was what what is the total cost of the vendors we use? Um, so year to date, um, do you want a comparison compared to the full-time staff? That would be great. Yes. So year to date, the total cost of the vendor services is about 161,000. Um, and the five full-time staff is about 400,000. So I have a have a general question. Um so I submitted a number of questions but one of the ones that I'm trying to sort through um is exactly where

121the positions are cut. Um because when I was thinking of language access like I wouldn't necessarily think that was a central office cut. Um so one of the questions I submitted is like where like how many FTE are actually being reduced. Um on the heat map it had 157 teachers but on page 90 194 and 195 it seems like that's the definitive here's the FTE for the whole district which has 183. So I'm I'm trying to do the math where in the um and maybe this is a question. Sorry, Michelle. Um, but or somebody else or maybe it's HR of where in the budget document does it show in what categories all the FT the FTE that have been reduced? Because the math I I can't make the math work between 75 or 80 something

122central office 157 teachers and I know there's a whole host of other people but that's more than 183. Yeah. So uh thank you. I we have had that question come up and I think one of the challenges is when you're looking at the budget document you're looking at our current year the 2425 adopted budget and adopted FTE and then the proposed FTE for 2526. And when we're talking about reductions and we're presenting information to you that's actually from our current staffing levels. So that's our 2425 actuals. The math won't be a straight line in the budget document. So what we're trying to share with you is our current state and the reductions we're making from the current state. So is the current state in the budget? No, it's more in the presentation materials we've been

123sharing. Okay. So I guess where what's not clear is what is the if you have a current state and you're going to cut x amount how how many are you cutting? So there's 100 157 in teachers in the heat map. There's 81 apparently in the central office. Where where would we find the rest the rest of them? and then also what specifically the 81 in the central office. So I think I'd like HR to confirm that information. I do focus more on the dollars than the FTE amounts, but um my last uh review showed about 285 positions. Um some were uh school-based, some were uh central office based. And then you have to we have to elaborate whether or not that includes all funds or if we're focused on the general fund which has been

124our primary um focus as we move through the process because that's our operating budget. And so when we take into the account the parent funds, the foundation funds and the title funds that total staffing number that you're seeing in the heat map is a reflection of a reduction of all of that. So it's a very long winded answer to say. I do have your question and I'm working through it and I'd like HR to verify. Great. I really appreciate that. I mean, one thing having just been through both upcycles budgets and downcycle budgets. Um, the worst thing is after the votes already happened to be like, will you cut that out? And not having any idea that that was something they cut out. So just having clarity because I also think it's important to know

125what um everybody who is one of those FTE provides some sort of service to our schools and so knowing what it is that will be missing next year I think will be really important not and not knowing not finding out afterwards. So I appreciate um that we're going to get answer. the and just to summarize um the charts in the book are not using actual correct numbers. Okay, that makes it challenging obviously. Yes. Yes. I have a comment um thank you for being here um about the reserve fund policy. I believe our board policy calls for a 5 to 10% target. Um, and I know over my time on the board it's gone up and down. I don't know what that is and I don't I wouldn't expect you to know either, but I'm looking

126for a percentage um of what that is and if we would revisit spending that down a little bit. And then my other um I just have a comment we heard from someone in the audience about a state of emergency. And I'm just wondering how much worse it's going to get if we don't, you know, with some urgency look at our system that we're working within and and really work together as a community to address these seemingly intractable issues that don't seem to be getting better. Um I love the idea of a state of emergency. This is an emergency. this is not we should it it it's dire and um you know it'd be one thing if there was light at the end of the tunnel but I don't I don't see it. So just a

127comment and I think my other question was what did the student engagement look like when making the proposed cuts for our language access services program? Um I am happy to bring students into this conversation. And I actually appreciate um tonight even hearing from some of these students um and finding and identifying ways that our community agents who currently sit in this space um and their role is to connect with families and students to try to bridge that gap. I think my question was more did the district try have any attempts to ensure that there was student engagement when making these proposed cuts? Gotcha. And if so, what were they? Gotcha. No. Um, I have a followup just based on one of the student comments we heard. Um, I guess I'm I'm still trying to understand

128like what the vendors do versus what the staff does and for example the field trips question. So maybe just sharing a little bit about like the job description between the two roles and then um if the vendors do the field trips because I think we heard quite a bit about the field trips um today. Correct. So um pretty much the same. they are they so we have on call as well so on call will be able to fill in whatever our full-time staff is not able to do um the vendors um also are able to interpret and translate and so for example some that are here tonight are those vendors because our full-time does not work after these hours so it's pretty much the same exact services which is why I believe that there's more

12980% use of that vendor services because they provide pretty much the same services and I'm happy to like pull down full job descriptions. I don't have that with me but I'm happy to get full job descriptions. Sure. I was it was more like quotes around job description. So the field trips the vendors can handle the field trips. I can identify I can research if they do but from what I learned that they were on call and they can come in and do those types of things. But I can look into that further. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Can can I address um vice chair depos your question about fund balance? I actually do have that information up here. And so as we went into the 2425 our current school year, we were intentionally

130spending down a big chunk of the fund balance about $40 million plus $30 million in reductions. So that was a much bigger chunk. And so we were already at that 5% minimum this current year and so we're maintaining that 5% minimum as we move into next year. So I just wanted to touch on that. And um state of emergency I I have to say my colleagues across the state are seeing this same thing at varied levels. So um it it it's not just a Portland public schools problem. It's it's a bigger deal. So thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you Dr. curious. I'm sorry. What do you do with a state of emergency? Can you actually do that? Can we call that for the governor? What have we been calling it? Well, yeah,

131but they're not govern. Are you asking me? Who are you asking? Or is this just something to say? Is there really something you can do? There are some actions behind calling a state of emergency for education. I don't think I got Yeah. I'll talk and not where we all are. Yeah. Portland. So, with your voice to speak up for Portland and to lead our state and ask us to help you, we do this. I love this energy. I do. Um, yeah. Here. Here. Um, I just want to say honestly, like I'm sure I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but I just I just don't think that our state- elected officials agree that we have a school funding emergency. And that's part of the problem. Say that again. Say that again. I don't

132think our state- elected officials agree that we are in a state of emergency for our public schools. I disagree with that and I will you've heard a lot about the lobby day tomorrow. I'll be there. I've been helping to pull that together. You can find out more at funchools.com. If you want to come, please just show up for for Oregon school. Fund Oregon schools. Yeah, sorry guys. Easy to remember, but then I forgot. Um, but you should definitely consider coming writing your legislators. It's so important, but honestly, like we have to do the work of convincing our state- elected officials that it's unacceptable to continue to underfund our schools and we please like we all are in agreement here that this needs to happen. So, thank you so much for your advocacy and I promise

133as a school board member and a human being and parent, I will continue to fight that fight until we have the funded schools that we need for our kids in our future. And then I think there's like an actual answer on the state of emergency question from like you know somebody who knows things like this. Uh yeah well someone who will try to know something. Uh Deborah for you of staff. Um we could as a district send a letter to the governor uh saying that we are in a state of emergency. I think that uh director split was correct that there would not be agreement and there's not a definition actually for a state of emergency on school funding. There's a definition of state of emergency for drought and for wildfire and for pandemics etc

134etc but not for school funding. So um you know it wouldn't hurt to give it a to give it a try. I do want to comment real quickly though on uh I think we might be conflating two things which is the using the reserve the the ending fund balance um which the board has directed the district to keep between five and 10%. viewing that as a rainy day fund. I just want to urge you very strongly against because that is those are the dollars that a you heard from our superintendent and from our CFO. We're going to be back here again next year. If this if the state legislature doesn't decide that that we are in a funding emergency and bestow more dollars on us, we're going to be back here next year looking at

135at least a $30 million shortfall. So, I wouldn't rate every piggy bank right now. um myself um is our advice to you and second it does affect our bond rating and especially as we are selling bonds and going out for a new bond when we try to sell those bonds if we don't have that reserve of at least and I'm saying 5% is the minimum I know at Multma County before I left we were trying to raise it upwards of 15%. 5% is the bare minimum. If we don't have that, the reviewing agencies will downgrade our bonds and we we as taxpayers will have to pay a lot more money in interest when we sell those. So, those are my two cents. I wish I had more for the night. Thank you. Thank you. I

136guess I will start drafting a letter to the governor. Speaking of the bond, um I have sort of two two questions and I don't know who this question before before, but I was kind of surprised when I was looking through the just line items that last year there was 127 million spent on architectural engineering and design and management services for the bond. And I know that the the the board had approved or in the in the bond there was 20 million for Cleveland and 20 million for IDB Wells, but I'm curious that that's 27. And then the second piece is there's for FY25 and 26 there's 115 million allocated for architecture, engineering, design, and management services, which seems like that's a that's a middle school. But I see the person who can answer the question

137is here. Good evening. Uh Dan Young, chief operating officer. I will be brief in in my answer and uh I don't have the details of of what went into that. We can pull data about what contracts exactly what invoices went against those expenditures. I don't know what those are at my fingertips. In general, uh the district spends, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of capital improvements every year. And so design services and management fees are a part of that, but I'd have to actually pull that data to know what goes into those specific numbers. And what about next what about next year? Do you have that? It just seems like a two years in a row a pretty significant Sure. I I think it'd be worthwhile to actually look at the data and I'll

138give some context around how we budget for capital because capital projects as everyone knows aren't constrained by fiscal year but they do go into the fiscal year budget. So when we're looking on a bond program that's you know a billion dollar program. What the team does is they put together a cash flow that can then be kind of broken out like we'll take this snippet and then that's what goes into the budget. that snippet that cash flow doesn't break out the services the way that goes into the budget. So then the budget team allocates that cash flow into the cost categories in the budget book. So one of the reasons I need to pull that data because that's not how we see the data that we give to budget. That's how budget kind of reflects

139it back. If that makes sense. I know it's very confusing. I guess it'll be interesting to see how you categorize it if if the budget document is not the document that provides like an accurate um summation of what actually is in that category. So I can jump in here as part of the budget development state anything that was underspent this year in bond on those services because of any delay in our spending would be included in next year's budget. So it really is a a snapshot in time for that year, what we think may be spent in those areas and that would be anything um in that area outstanding from the 2020 bond authorization and also the 2025 bond. We have assumed in our appropriation levels that that bond on the May ballot will pass.

140So giving that um highest level of flexibility in spending on the bond program. Um, I'm going just comment on that a little bit. I guess it'd be I guess it'd be helpful when we're talking about the budget to actually see some at least a little bit more itemization on what we're spending our dollars on versus just a a big a big number. I mean, it's hard to ask questions if we don't know where the money is going. Yeah, certainly. In the budget document, it does follow the format required by the state for local budget law. So we we are hitting that. That's great for the state, but we know the state don't care about us anyway. So we might have to do a little bit more for us in order for us to be able

141to look at our budget and see what we can do with our budget. Thank you. Yeah. So just along just the bond lines uh in the presentation last week or the PowerPoints it has at a high level that it's anticipating this budget document anticipates that um the bond this May will pass. And I'm wondering what what in the um this document it also talks about seismic improvements. what specifically is been committed next year in terms of seismic improvements? Yeah, I'd love to answer if the bond is passed. Yeah, thank you. I I'd love to answer because the docu I'm just going to say because the document from um no last November there was a staff example about how to spend the 190 and it had essentially one to two schools and five to10 million in

142seismics improvements. So, I'd love to see where there's the seismic dollars this next year or what the what the plan is. Yeah, I appreciate the question. I also appreciate all of the uh testimony and families that have been messaging as well as those who are here. You know, it's extremely important to us to make sure that all of our buildings are safe for not only our students but our staff as well. So in the latter part of last year, so in late 2024, we signed a contract with an engineering firm to complete a highlevel assessment and identify um uh seismic deficiencies in each and every one of our schools and provide a rough order of magnitude and the cost to correct the deficiencies in each of our school buildings. So, we're anticipating that that report

143will be out this summer and we feel like that is an essential step in the process of defining um the scope of work that we have in front of us for all of our buildings. We know that in most of our facilities, we've had um seismic uh work done on roof and we've had it in some other places for the um internal infrastructure and we know with the changing codes and more information that comes out. Um we're we're we fall out of compliance every time there's a new code. And so really having um an engineering firm come in and give us costs and um a a state of where we're at or will be our first step. And then once we have that, we can begin to allocate funds in our bond. Right now we

144know that we have um between 200 to 300 million roughly and also that increases as we find costs in the high schools to put towards priority scope programs. And so we deem any uh building that comes back as um unsafe like seismic as one of those um high priority areas as well as some areas around um heating and cooling. I will say that we also have information that um all of our buildings that were in um poor condition um with uh seismic issues have had at least some work done, not all in all areas, which is why we're bringing in this engineering firm to help us assess all of our buildings. So that's that's where we're at now. And so when we have that report in the summer, we'll be able to know exactly the

145work that's ahead of us and what the costs are so that we can allocate funds. Great. I appreciate that answer and um it would be I'd be interested and I think it would be helpful for the community to see um a copy of the contract just so we understand the scope of work of what's of what's coming. Um so I don't understand how you're saying here. Give it to us in the summer, but we're voting the like you just want us to trust you. You want a blank check? We're just going to wait and trust. There's no trust. There hasn't been trust for years as a young I've emailed you so many times and you've never once engaged. There is no trust. You need to tell us more than what you're currently telling us. Yeah.

146So, so I I we are prepared to bring some more information at the May uh board meeting that uh spells out a little bit more of what that scope of work is an estimated completion date in the summer. I mean, I I would love to be able to sit here and say we're putting 200 million towards seismic issues when um which, you know, sounds good and feels good, but would be inappropriate without the data that tells us exactly um where we need to allocate those funds and what impact it will provide. So, I mean, I I don't know exactly. Um yeah, I think I think what um I'm looking for that's all one person I can speak for is a more defined process of how we're going to approach that because um I know in

147the 190 million that was initially outlined um at one of the facilities meetings um Dan um laid out kind of here's the process by which we would spend the money with like you know emergency mergency repairs kind of being the first trunch and then there was a whole host of other things underneath that and I I think that needing the specificity of like here's the approach we're going to have and it it's different from the last several bonds because the last several bonds everybody knew that well we told people and we did we're going to go out again in four years. So there was people had a sense of like here's what we're going to do over the next four years and then there'll be another bond and we're going to prioritize again. And in

148this case there's not that specificity of here's what we're going to do and then also it's a much longer bond. And so um that is what I think this the specificity of how we we get there. And I really I really appreciate um you're leaning into this um Superintendent Armstrong. Oh absolutely. Anything that's about keeping our students safe, I'm going to lean into. I think our process is making sure that we have uh the report back that tells us the magnitude of the work that needs to happen in our buildings and then bringing that to the board for um the vote which rests with the board on how and when or just the prioritization um of that list. We'll definitely put forth a recommendation for the board to take action, revise, or give input on.

149Um, and then we'll be ready to lean into the work. Once we have that vote from the board, we'll be able to put that timeline and be a realistic because honestly, there are some of our buildings that are in um such a state that it may be a complete tear down and rebuild, right? And so, we would want to know that. I think uh Beverly Clearary may be one of those sites that with some of the work that needs to be done could be a complete re replacement for that school. And I think that's information that you all would want to know um at the end of our um when we have our assessment report back in the summer. The thing is we have data from 20 from earlier studies. So we have a general

150sense and we know what we know what works has been done and I think that's the frustration is that um we have we have a sense and we h we've you know we we've got on our website sort of here's what the risk the risk is and we also know what work has been done. Um I think additional information is useful and also the sense of you know once once the bond passes there's not the sense of we know what it is that's going to be actually in this bond. Um so that's I think what people are looking for. So what the engineering company will give us um and just to give you an example uh the extent of the seismic deficiencies, the cost to resolve um the seismic deficiencies, the location of seismic deficiencies

151um and what I mean by that is are we talking classrooms, assembly spaces, boiler rooms, etc. Also looking at the age of school, location of school, size of school. Uh schools that are not likely um to be um consolidated should that be a thing. Um schools that to get the seismic work done will need to uh be housed temporarily and what that plan is. And then if there's other work that need to be completed along with the seismic. So that's the information that we're expecting to get back this summer, which is more detailed than what we have right now. I'm sorry, but um if you have comments, please email those in. Love to hear it. Let me just let me just say a couple director can't just have outbursts. So, let let me just let

152me just say my piece on this. you know, when we and I and I hope and I wish Dan would really say what he really wants to say sometimes instead of just, you know, adhering to what he thinks the board want to hear. I I hope you get the courage to really just give your true recommendations. Um because I hear them in private, I wish you would say them in public because when we talked about this stuff a couple years ago when we was doing the whole bond piece and we was coming up with the amount of the bond at that time was around $2.8 billion or something. This was the reason why it was because we had a billion dollars worth of deferred maintenance. We had seismic in uh seismic problems with our schools.

153We had heat, cold, rat mold in our school. And this was one of the reasons why we had a bond that was higher even though it wouldn't have cost more money on the T. It would have raised taxes more. And so we had this information. This is not new information. Everybody on this board knew that information. And so when we came back and reduced the bond, then we automatically knew we're going to have to reduce the work that was going to be able to do on our schools for our children. So, it's it's it's it's frustrating for me to see, and I've said this before, when we talk about our kids, we need to make sure that we are being truthful, transparent, honest when it comes to our kids. We we need to make sure

154that we are doing everything and we can for our kids. And I said this before, I believe, and I still do to this day that folks would do whatever, spend how muchever they needed to spend in order to make sure their kids are protected. Because when you talk about kids and you talk about the things that they need, parents will bend over backwards. Parents will die for their kids in order to make this stuff happen. So, it's frustrating that we're talking about, well, what we're going to do now when we had the opportunity to do it then and to make sure we had a bond that could address these issues that we're talking about now and now we're trying to slice up a little even smaller part of a pie and and say, "Okay, well,

155we want to focus on our kids." I get it. Once again, the issue is making sure we have a plan, making sure that we have a process to make sure that we're addressing our kids needs where we where we're at now. We all knew 1.8 was not going to get us there. Everybody who was here last year knew that. This was not a secret. And yet, we decided to to to go with 1.8 A because we was listening to polling and not necessarily listening to what our really kids needs. And I understand people feel well polling tells us uh give us idea on if someone's going to pass or not pass. We don't know if this bond will pass now and we're still talking about little money. I would rather for us to be talking

156about $2.8 billion not passing whether there's $1.8 billion and it still we is that same predicament. It still might not pass. So, moving forward, moving forward, my goal and and I told Dr. Arson and I sent it to uh Director Ber Edwards a resolution to come up with a plan on how we're going to deal with the seismic um is going to be a seismic um resolution to how we're going to deal with this with the limited funds that we have. But once again, I I I I hope the next bond that we go after, next bond that happens, I hope we really look at the potential of what really we need to do for our kids versus what what it look looks like or feels like politically. Um, thank you for sharing that. Um,

157yeah, just really quick, but I I just want to kind of remind the board right now we are convened as a budget committee. So we should be um focused on talking about the 202526 proposed budget. Um when we talk about the bond we we need to schedule a separate time for that. Okay. So thank you director I brought in the context the actual director split and then I'll have director green. The bond is in the the next year's budget. I'm I'm going to just make a comment and I know it might not be Germaine. Um but I'll keep it quick. Um, so I just first of all want the parents in the room to know that my child, both of my children actually too, are in an unreinforced brickmasonry building in Portland. Okay. So, I'm

158on the team. I'm here to help. I hopefully will still be here um after the May election and will be committed to working with all of you going forward. I wasn't here when the bond passed out in January when I first started. I I got appointed a week later and I did a deep dive on the bond understanding the history. One thing that we're getting a lot of grief about is the flexibility in the bond and I see frustration with that flexibility. But actually, those of us in the room with kids in unreinforced brickmasonry buildings are lucky there's that flexibility because we can still get it taken care of, but we need to pass the bond or else we will then have to do a new bond which will have potentially a harder time passing

159or a different time passing. But if we pass this one, we have the resources. you have someone like me here promising to help move the ball forward from a board perspective who has kids in those buildings. So, I just wanted to make sure you all know that I have no issue at all supporting the bond. I've been knocking doors and talking to people and hearing that they're going to vote no because of the seismic issue. And I'm like, holy cow, we will actually get the money we need to take care of the seismic issue if you pass it. So, we need to pass it and then I understand you want the the the pledge and the promise. Now, that can't happen other than this type of promise of somebody like me saying, "I promise to

160continue to fight for us and for you and for our kids on this topic." Um, but if we don't pass the bond, then we won't have the money that we need available for us to spend for this purpose. So, I know I you can't just yell you can't yell from the audience. I'm sorry, but like I I'm here I'm here for you and I want to I I want you to believe that there are people that you can trust. Um and I understand that that you don't right now, but I want to try to change that. That's all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, director. Director, I do have a Oh, go ahead. I do have a a budget question, though. Okay. Can we go to director? I'll go to you next. Thank you. I

161want to um Oh, it's hard to speak with him next to you. I actually want to come back to the um but I don't know if it's a budget. It's about the the contract and who's doing the scope of work. Um do we is that something that we already have and then who's going to be managing that because am I concerned with it? Um as as anybody that that knows me is going to know, I asked for a an audit back in October and then it got pushed to November and then it got pushed to February and then it got it just kept getting pushed. So, I think I'd like to know when this one um if we're going to have this, what office is responsible for it? And then how do I get to

162hold them accountable? Because if we're going to be able to see it um whenever it is that we're going to be able to see it, then I don't want to keep kicking the can. And so, I'm really interested in accountability in that regard. I appreciate the question. We will have information at the uh May meeting um I think May 6. we can be prepared to have uh some details further on the um the work with the engineering company. Can we get that sent tomorrow just so we have that as a as a baseline and not wait till Yeah, I'll work with staff and we will um try and get that to you as soon as possible. Um I noting though that the preference is for tomorrow. So um I will I will make sure that

163we can get that as soon as possible. And then I just wanted to say because I just appreciated Director Split's word about flexibility. Um, and then just kind of noting in there when you talk about flexibility. I think you're saying that like if we allocated like 20 million towards seismic uh versus having this pot of priority projects, no matter how big a scope may be or how much a cost may be, we're still able to cover issues for those individual schools as opposed to be limited to a certain amount. Correct. Is that what you were talking with the flexibility? I think so. Okay, great. Let's just go with that. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Director Holland. I know, but Patty, you had a question, too. Director Sullivan, director Sel had a question. I did

164I didn't really have a question, but I I have talked to Dan today about the seismic stuff and last week I watched the uh BAC the bond accountability committee talking about what they've already done um with a lot of the seismic and handicapped and and lots of things that the last bond was for. And sometimes I think we don't realize how much we are doing in the background. I don't think I mean I didn't know when I watched that BAC meeting I thought wow I didn't know all that was going on or I kind of knew it was but I didn't see how wonderful it was. So I feel like Dr. Armstrong is getting kind of hammered for not doing stuff and Dan's getting hammered for not doing stuff but stuff is happening and I

165do think we have to be more specific about what's happening. We have to let people know. We have to say yes, this bond does have to pass if we're going to do anything we want to do. But it does frustrate me that sometimes people don't realize what is happening. So I guess that's it. It's just we are doing stuff. We're not just sitting here. Well, I am, but people in the district are doing an awful lot of stuff. Reactive. You did reactive things as I was. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. I'm saying it wasn't reactive. I'm saying no. No. I I understand. Yeah. Hey. Okay. That's fine. I'm I'm I'm sorry, but for the audience, if you have We want to hear your words. Um this is not the right format. Please email us your comments. Thank

166you. Director Holland. Okay. That's that's not going that's not going to you or not is not going to get anything done either. budget question, please. Yes, I had a budget question. Um, I had a couple. One, I'm looking at fund 220. Um, can you elaborate what the transfer funds are because it looked like it went from uh 16515 to 41756. Can you reference the page number? It was fun ffit fit tutu I can't uh I don't have my glasses so these numbers is really small the 522 oh gosh I've seen it reference on a couple pages the transfer funds transfer funds it was we can't hear each other very well up here could you say that. Can you ask your question? I was asked a question about fund 52000. Um it's transfer of funds and

167it went from 16515 to 41756 for 2526. So I was just curious what that was. And then the other one I have is about the uh PERS rate stabilization. That's on page 118. Um, and that's fun 225. And I wanted I didn't see the draw down that I think we was talk that was talked about as far as drawing down that to offset the PERS uh obligation that we have. Yeah. So, thank you for that question. We are planning to use fully use the PERS reserve fund which is 225 and that would be through an interfund transfer which is an expenditure or requirement out of fund 225. And then on the revenue um part of the general fund, you would see an incoming transfer. So those those two things should align fairly closely. There may

168be a little difference in the value. Um if there are additional transfers coming into the general fund. So are we are we drawing it all the way down? Because I thought the last conversation I thought we was only drawing half of that down. No. When we proposed the budget, I shared with you that we had some fairly high-risk assumptions going into it. And one was that we're fully um expending the PERS reserve in 2526. And so the use of those one-time funds to balance the 2526 budget. They're not going to be available in 2627. And so that's as we start to look further out, we see that gap and and how it's growing. So would that put us at risk for 2627? Yes. Yeah. Do we know how much that risk is? We know at

169a minimum because we have so many large variables right now. We know at a minimum it's about $32 million. Well, I mean just from the PERS obligation. Oh yes. It's about it's about the same amount actually. The increase in PERS was about 334 million each year of the bienium. That's due just to the increase on top of the PERS rates that we're already paying. So, we're going to draw down the $22 million now in PERS obligation and then next year, how are we going to offset that? That that's what's creating a big part of the budget gap in 2627. So, would it I'm just So, wouldn't it make sense for us to maybe draw down less and like and look for other ways to tighten our belts now than waiting until next year? So that

170that would mean, if I may just um jump in here, Director Hollands, um that would mean that there would be more reductions that we would need to make um across the board. And I think as you've heard from community and and staff which of course was difficult to hear the impacts of uh those said reductions. And so uh we decided that first you know make sure that we're able to present a balanced budget and then b look at some of those reductions that we can make next year. And so we're starting first inwardly again looking at some of those contracted services renegotiating contracts. We've had quite a bit of um uh overspin and maintenance and transportation and not you know for mismanagement or anything like that but you know we're transporting uh more kids as

171required by law for our kiddos with IEPs you know maintenance you know that deferred maintenance comes with that cost when we're not addressing um addressing it and we have to repair more and so some of those expenditures have uh put us over and then of course just all the other things that we've said about uh rising costs and not having the revenue to address them. So um so you me so you mentioned overspend that we have spent over over spent our budget I'm assuming this year based on what when I say overspend it's based on what our starting uh set budget was for an area like transportation is one of them I think and please correct me if I'm wrong I think last um I heard we were about 5 million over in transportation and

172there's some legal requirements with transportation now I know that we get reimbursed 70% % from the state, but even that 30% that we planned on paying is um significantly over than what we had planned, right? And then we also had some um one-time funds that were allocated like through the county office that was 5 million. We won't have those funds in the next um next year. So, you know, of course, when you have these funds allocated and you're planning uh the use of those and then it's no longer there, um it's a it's a reduction. So, um there's a there's a variety of things. And then the other thing I'll say with the PERS um account, so every year except for last year there were funds that were well not I shouldn't say every year.

173There were several years in a row where previous administration had put funds into this account to be able to address um the pers you know that we expected to see. Um, last fiscal year there were no funds put in and I assume that probably with a uh fund balance of 5% and the reductions that were happening they just weren't able to afford to do it. So, um, we're actively looking at how we can begin to build that back up. Um, but just noting I don't know if you heard that last year, but um, yeah, there were no set aside and so we're pulling off from previous years. Okay. So, I'm maybe I'm just a little confused. So, if we going to be in a budget deficit next year, how are we going to be looking

174to add funds to the PERS p uh the PERS bank? If we're going to be having reductions next year, and then another other question is I know you said when we make reductions now, it doubles next year. So I'm just saying could we potentially look for additional cuts this year that's going to double for the next bianium. So that way when we're looking at next year's cut it won't be as detrimental. Right? So it's a double when it's an ongoing expense when it's a one time right then we only count it once and it doesn't address our structural deficit. And so when I say putting funds aside, I mean it's extremely important that we get right sized as soon as possible so that we can adequately fund the things that we need to fund and

175we don't be in this space of um not being able to put away for any spikes and pers or um any other things that may happen that uh we don't have funds for. And then we have a fund balance that's locked at 5% um through um that direction. There there is no other space to pull funds from. So part of our budgeting is being able to um set some funds aside so that we're able to be covered in those um instances. Okay. And then fund uh 522 was on page 25, but it's it's all throughout the the document. zone. It could be 25, it could be somewhere else. It's interfluent transfers. Yeah, that's on a summary page. So, so the front part of this document is going to be kind of rolled up into more

176summary versions of the data that you'll find in the financial section, which gets a little bit more granular. Not as granular as you would like, I learned tonight, but um that that's just kind of how the document is laid out. So you will it is showing the same number again in this section right. So what is what is that because it looked like it goes from six I don't know if that's 16 million to 41 million proposed 2526. Yeah, this um page on on page 25 represents all funds. And so in that for that object, we have funds coming in to the general fund, which is a transfer of that $23 million from the PERS reserve, but we also have funds transferring out of the general fund into a reserve account that is for our

177some of our insurance needs. And again, that that's kind of further back in the book in detail, but this is because it's all funds, it's showing transfers going both ways. Okay, thank you. I have a just process question. Um, so I submitted a whole host of questions that obviously I'm not going to go through tonight. Um, when will I get those? because we because there's so few limited forums before we're asked to I mean know there's approval and then adoption but um for example next week we're getting the community budget review um will we have answers to and I don't know what other people have submitted answers to board questions that have been submitted before next week yeah that's a great question thank you for asking that we um actually have made some movement on

178those questions you know of course our goal is always 24 hours, but what we're not able to cover, there was a few. Okay. I I'm I'm saying I understand why that you wouldn't have had it in 24 hours. Yes. The the goal though is um by the end of this week for all and if there are any delays, we'll let you know. But I think we're on track with being able to get that document, at least the first draft of the ones that we were able to answer um back to you uh by tomorrow. and then we'll just, you know, keep updating as we go. And we got all the notes about the page note and appreciate the specific request to be able to track alongside the budget book. So, we're um going to do

179that as well. And I was wondering, could those answers to those questions be circulated with the board? Oh, absolutely. I think um Director Bur Edwards copied everyone on it and so we will send it back out in that format. We'll reply all and available to the public as well. or anything we we answer and we send an email is available to the public. Great. It was a thousand two questions. [Laughter] I have a I have a one more question too. It's on page 88. It's uh fun. Oh gosh, I need my glasses. 5121 0 and then 522200. I think that's right. Is that right? Yeah. 5122000. Okay. See, it's nice to have somebody with glasses, too. Um, it looked at it looked like it's um substitutes. So, when you talk about right sizing, so it

180look like we spent is that 11 million. Uh, we budgeted for 2425 and uh you're looking at another 11.2 million for 2526. as part of the right sizing to help eliminate some of those costs for substitutes. I'm sorry, say that object code again. I did you all I missed that? It's uh 51210 0 and 5122000. It's a license and classified substitutes. In 2425, we budgeted 11.4 million. And then for 2526 um is budgeted for proposed budget for 11.2 million. And I'm just wondering with the right sizing that we're talking about doing is that going to help relieve some of that cost for substitutes because that could be a that's could be a significant savings. Um right there as well when we talk about budgeting. Yeah, thank you Director Holland for the question. Yes, as we

181reduce FTE, we also reduce the amount of subs that we are going to be using because those those positions won't be requiring subs if the staff are are gone. Ideally, our our staff would be with our kids always, but in the case of a substitutes, if there's a reduced number of positions, the the kind of ratio of substitutes that we would require would also be less. So just going by here, you're looking to have possibly $200,000 less next year. Is that based on the budget cuts FT or is there going to be more realized with the budget cuts that we're having? This is our plan based on the data we have today. So uh we're we're planning for some savings there. Um but we won't be able to tell you until we're through the year

182how close we are to that in that line item. Because on I need this explained on page uh up at the top 51200 and 5122 200 again it's substitutes licensed and classified but here it goes way up from 2425 to 2526. 205 represents the grant funds. So so those are it's it's they're usually targeted grant dollars. So this isn't part of our regular operating budget. Okay. This is based on what we foresee needing on behalf of those grants for both FTE and for professional development for example. Uh okay. So it would be paying for subs for a particular thing. Yeah. Fund 205 represents a whole bunch of grants and we have more detailed information that's not in here. Um but I'm I'm happy to get that for you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. put another

183question. I had similar questions about the substitutes as well. So, thank you for asking, Director Hollands. I I just got one more question for right now. Um with the substitute um pool that we approved, what kind of savings would that or what kind of savings are we projecting with that? I think we did a a resolution to have a substitute pool. What is the projected savings from that? I think I need to get with my HR colleagues again to really look at that resolution and see what the the context was. I wasn't here for that, but I'm happy to look into that and give you more information. Okay. We we don't have HR here. Um, no, nope. We are we do not have uh chief here tonight, but we can get back to you on

184that. Luckily, we have multiple. I'm just saying we know we're having a budget conversation. I would assume that the person from HR will be here as well. Noted. We are scheduled tonight. I just want to make sure that everyone has had a chance to ask a question. Who still has a question? Well, I I saw your big list of questions and it covered a lot of mine. So, I'm waiting for that document, too. So, thank you for submitting that. All right. If there are no more, unless you had one more question, I guess this is just a um just philosophical because I don't know what the answer is going to come back on the print shop, but I'm curious overall because I don't think I'd want to know find this out next week. Are there

185any other services that are planned on being contracted out? I was looking at the materials for that's also for the May 6 on the profit education center and I'm noticing there's a pretty significant reduction in this space for the trades including the music shop and I'm wondering is um anything contemplated in this budget of of contracting out any services for this next fiscal year? There isn't a plan. Let me think about that question. There isn't a plan. I um I know that there's the one that we talked about language access um where we had uh two things, right? We had uh a pool of staff and then we also had um an agency that provides services during the day and after hours and it's accessed more. And so I'm and so that was one of

186the reasons why we leaned more into um contracted services um as opposed to um direct hires. I'm as I'm searching my brain I can't think of an instance where we are ending a program in ser or service and um then planning on contracting that out. Yeah. Um, I can't speak though if there aren't uh maybe individual hours or some partial support that may be brought in to lift up a body of work. I I think that would be hard to say at this point, but um but I can't think of a program or service that's ending and then the plan to restart with um an outside agency. Yeah. And I guess when we get that list of the positions that are being reduced that we discussed maybe that will because for example language access I

187don't think we're just not going to do it. So is that actually then going to be a contracted out service? I mean that's the type of things when I look at that list that I would ask is like are we just stopping it or are we actually going to have it done by somebody other than a PPS employee? So and just a note on that because I want to I want to answer that. That's a that's a really good question. So listening to um Chief Gross's uh comment in the in the dollars and I hope you all heard that you know 80% of our interpretation and translation services is by the outside agency that costs us um under 200,000 and the other 20% are by our staff that's costing us about 400,000. Right. And so

188um so it's an agency that uh our our staff at sites and even a district office access already. So it's not a it's not a a new model. It's more of a let's just lean into this model. Um and also because we do have employees on site that uh provide a similar service. So, not only were we looking at um you know costs efficiencies, but we were also looking at duplicated services and where we can make sure that we tighten up the belt in some of those areas. Yeah. Oh, I say when I see the the list, I'll have a better sense of what questions I want to ask because um and then I would like to have sort of a maybe like a little bit of a dissection of the print shop. Um because

189I mean I want to see what the um the the cost actually turned out to be, but it was really this was going to be some big cost savings. We didn't need it. And now to find out we're actually just going to have another school district do the work. Um, and that actually we're haven't paying more for it. So, I'm going to want to just dive into that a little bit because like literally when I looked through the materials for next for the sixth, it seems like the reduction in space um for the trades. And then some mention that other districts for example contracted out their music repair led me to believe um that may be contemplated. So, um, like I say, I don't think there's anybody who works at, um, PPS who job isn't

190inservice in some way to our students. So, just knowing what that looks like and who's going to be providing it is going to be important for me. Yes, we will. I'm sure that we'll be able to access information from last year and then some of those impacts that happened this year and uh, why we need to potentially look at a change in service. I just about quick my my my only question was about um my only but one I'm going to ask tonight um about the language access um is there are there has there been work or identifying I don't even know if there's a pathway so I guess my question is is there a pathway for example like it sounds like there's some structural barriers in terms of like utilizing our in-house for more

191effectively more efficiently again this is just from outside I don't exactly know the ins and out but I'm just my question is, and then you don't have to answer tonight. This may take some time to kind of look into, but are there any structural changes that we could do, whether that's relooking at the the in-house contracts or systemic barriers that could bring more reliance on our in-house for less expense. Um, anyways, or even if there's a pathway to do such a thing. So, I'm just I'm just curious if that that has been explored or still needs to be or is there even a pathway? Well, one of the things that the uh language access uh company allows is um access to individuals in different outside of the typical work schedule. And so when we have

192employees, right, um in an 8 hour day um unless they're we're finding ways to cover overtime, you know, we just don't have that same access. And so when we have evening events or things happening on weekends or maybe there's something that's early in the morning, maybe outside of you know the individual that's responsible for translation or interpretation of that specific language um with more individuals available to provide that service um for a a lower cost. It's uh it's it's it's tough to then compare. Um I think you know but like everything this is our proposal and you know we we bring forth for your consideration. We believe that we've done all the work um that we can do to present a proposal that um will allow us to get into the next year and start

193examining further reductions and not you know completely turn some of our services and programs um upside down. But there's some real impacts when I hear from individuals about the core enrichment uh some of the decisions that were made in the previous year and the impacts carrying over to this year. There's some significant concerns with that, right? And it's like, you know, with all of these things, how do we figure out um what to um to save? And so through our conversations, it's like staying focused on the priorities and figuring out what best we can do to protect classroom instruction, um our support staff, our teachers, and uh all those who provide essential central services in a way that's going to move learning forward. And not saying that some of those services that were reduced um

194wasn't moving learning forward, but we know that we couldn't move everyone into the 2526 school year. Thank you for that. I have couple couple questions. Last ones promise. Um, one was one one is clarity because I've been hearing about the funding of the other the senior the the two positions. Can we get a a net cost of what that is so we can get a clear so our public can get a clear understanding of actually how much that actually cost us because we have two internal employees. They're going to a different position. Can we know what that net cost is as well with the savings of not filling that other position um that the employee is taking on additional role? So I just wonder what that net is. So that way the public can understand

195if it's $30,000 that's really more because when we put it out there it's 200 people think oh we adding two more $200,000 positions when that's not the case. So if we can get that and then the other thing is um the print shop are we re are we looking at possibly bringing that back in if it's going to save us money? Because sometimes, you know, as a business owner, you make mistake, you're like, you know what, my bad, that didn't work out. Let's do something different. Is that a is that an option? If if that could save us additional dollars. What's not not an option? Um I don't know. I'd have to check with the team on the exploration of that. I think um as you you probably know our um our chief of um

196technology I'm trying to think of the title. Our chief technology officer and our thank you information tech. Yeah. Our chief and our senior director are no longer with Portland. They both left in the middle of this school year. And so um I know they were here in in key in in making that recommendation last year. And so, uh, moving forward this year, we do have an interim, I have Deborah in the back who is helping. And so, uh, that is certainly a question that I can bring to her and the in the team. I think we just we have there's most of us weren't here, uh, for that decision last year, but that doesn't mean that we can't explore it and find out. I heard some questions tonight uh, from you all, and it we'll

197definitely have a conversation and bring back more information. Great. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. All right. Um the board will now recess itself from the meeting as the budget committee. Our next regular meeting of the board will be held on Tuesday, May 6th. Thank you all for being here. This meeting is adjourned.