001right let's get started all right let's get started um car are you are we ready yes okay I apologize for the delay um we had an executive session right before this which went a low over and and wanted to give the board members and people a little break before we start um all right let's get started this public regular meeting of the board of education for February 4th 2025 is called to order all items being considered this evening are posted on the PPS website under the board and meetings tab this meeting is being streamed live on ppsv services website and on Channel 28 and will be replayed to the next two weeks uh please check the district website for replay times um good evening and welcome thank you for being here and caring about public
002education uh thank you all for uh uh before we get started I want to share a few housekeeping reminders we ask that everyone attending tonight's meeting um members of public staff board members treat each other with respect we are excited that you have taken time out of your day to to be here and get involved with our school district um whether testify or observe if you wish to display signs or banners we ask that you please keep them below chin level so not to block the person behind you um for reasons of safety you also need to keep the walkways and a clear clear in general would appreciate if everyone can be mindful of others in the room lastly um I also want to welcome director Chrissy split as her this is her first regular
003meeting uh really appreciate you taking a huge chunk of your life uh to do this volunteer non-paid job uh to help oversee our wonderful School District so thank you um next up uh I also want to um director Hollands has a little presentation you would like to do yes so there's a educator in the building who has spent over 56 years um with our kiddos and so I want to I have something that I want to say to her so I would love if Miss Jan was could come up to the podium please she has 56 years of service you must have started when you were very very young so I wrote something out for you and I was just going to put in a card and give it to you but I wanted to
004make sure you heard it from me um I found myself genuinely moved by your remark your remarkable Legacy your dedication of 56 years years to the educating and uplifting of our young minds is a remarkable achievement and your steadfast commitment to this Noble calling is nothing short of extraordinary for more than half a century you have dedicated not only your time but also your heart and your soul to the lives of countless students your patience wisdom unwavering belief in the potential of every child make you so much more than the educator you have been a guide mentor and inspir ation to many generations your efforts demonstrates that education transcends mere knowledge transfer it's about nurturing confidence sparking curiosity and enabling students to recognize their own value 56 years is not merely a milestone it represents
005a remarkable Legacy your influence is reflected in achievements of the students you've guided in the heartfelt appreciation of families whose children you nurtured and in enduring Legacy you've created with within the community through every lesson every word of encouragement and every challenge you help a student overcome you have made a lasting impact that will resonate years to come your remarkable Journey highlights the incredible impact of commitment and passion for your work your influence extend beyond your students to touch the hearts of your colleagues parents and now myself as well as everyone lucky enough to be in your presence when generations of family speak your name it will resonate with profound admiration recognizing that their dreams and achievements are built on the foundation you helped lay on behalf of all the lives you touched I express
006my heartfelt gratitude I truly appreciate the late nights testimonies at school board meetings the early mornings and the sacrifices you've made to ensure that every child you encounter had the chance to thrive your presence shines brightly illustrating the significant impact that an individual ual can have on the world around them so as you reflect on these 56 years of service may you feel a deep sense of Pride knowing that your work has truly transformed lives your legacy will always be cherished by those fortunate enough to have learned and collaborated with you so with sincere admiration and warm appreciation thank you [Applause] I'm sitting here in year 57 not going into the building every day but keeping my eye on all of you because I want to live long enough to walk into a new Cleveland
007High School that we have been waiting for way too long as others have have and also because I will never ever forget how it felt when we have successes and how it feels when kids are down that's when I'm at my best when kids are down I want to see those kids be so fraking pumped when they walk into that building and I want to be able to say to them that even though I left them daily I'm here to help them see that I really really mean that as you said it's for the kids and I appreciate you very much okay I I've got to chime in here because you know Jan you just can't walk away from the elector like that so as somebody who's known you for over 25 years uh when
008I first got on on the school board I'm going to say um that you used to scare [Laughter] me umare and um you know then I became when I was on the first on the school board from 2001 to 2005 um we were working on um the Cleveland field project that took over a decade um and then I went off the board and then in the midst of the time when I H went off the board I became a parent and lo and behold I became became a parent at Cleveland and oh my god there was the legendary Jan Watts so there was hardly a sporting event in which Jan wasn't up in the the Box um taking stats helping uh with whoever was announcing the game announcing the game or doing the introductions um
009and then always an Ever presence and really the the spirit of um Cleveland um and then I came back on the board again um God you were still there I was a little less scared of you though then um although I will say um whenever if you did a Cleveland graduation um when Jan was the special projects person um and you were the board speaker and you went to the rehearsal oh my God you knew that nobody was going to misbehave on graduation day because Jan made very clear what was gonna happen if you misbehaved um and I just want to say like I so appreciate that you are just like uh I think green and yellow uh runs in your veins um and you always are advocating for Cleveland students in the Cleveland Community
010and I think it's just so classic that when um director Hollands um gives you a tribute you take the opportunity to once again advocate for Cleveland and um I guarantee you you're not going to walk into the remodeled Cleveland in an earn okay thank you thank you very very much thank you Jan for everything you've [Applause] done that's awesome all right let's uh tonight we will begin with the resolution that recognizes February as Black History Month superintendent Armstrong could you introduce this item absolutely thank you Cher Wang um board director and student director I appreciate you being here this evening as we enter Black History Month we are reminded of the vital role that education plays in fostering a deep understanding of our shared path and the ongoing Journey towards equality and justice this is
011not only an opportunity for reflection but also a call to action to engage and learn year round tonight we have some members of our school teams to share out how we are celebrating black history in our schools so I'm going to invite Isaac Cardona senior director of schools and Margaret Calbert assistant superintendent of school Improvement and modernization they are here to introduce their teams and while they are making their way up I want to also recognize that today February 4th is Rosa parks's day a day in which we recognize the Civil Rights leader on her birthday and I understand understand that we have a brief video of students from her Nam namesake School here in Portland celebrating so we'll watch the video and then after the video I'll turn it over um to the two
012of you thank youday and um we're going to um um show our pictures and sing it the song and then this is my happy Rosa Parks D first of all let's say that big round of applause happy R [Music] dear bir to you and every February 4th triat will not collect fairs as a honor to Rosa Parks we will not do that on any of our bus [Applause] [Music] [Applause] about a special project that trat was working on to celebrate Rosa pars and I immediately was like okay I have not written a song about Rosa pars yet although I've written lots of children songs [Music] [Applause] all right thank you for having us today my name is Isaac Cardona I'm the senior director of K8 schools it's good to see you all again and first
013thank you to chair Wong uh director to pass director Holland director green for coming out to Vernon K this past week for a parent listening session really appreciated that um but prior to this role I was the principal of Jason Lee Elementary School in Northeast Portland and I'm proud today to talk about the work that they've been doing with black Brilliance it's love to call to the stage principal Alma Velasquez and Miss Mariam low the sunsight manager uh she you might recognize Miss low as from last year she was a PPS Allstar Award winner for the incredible contributions that she's made to the Madison South McDaniel cluster but they're going to talk about some of the work that they've been doing and are currently doing to celebrate Black History Month and black brilliance hello everyone
014um my name is Miriam L I am the site manager sunsight manager over at Jason Lee Elementary I'm not a public speaker so this is really hard and this is why I had both of my um previous principal and my current principal here to support me and good to see that all you guys are smiling and it's not so serious so it makes me feel a little better us um when I first started this job uh one of the main questions was what can you do to bridge the gap between uh families of color coming into the school um they were having a big problem with a lot of the families just coming in for um their kids when they're in trouble or you know they need to be talked to about something and So
015my answer was um everyone loves to have a good meal and some good music and so uh that was my way of getting my way to the door uh but then I had to check myself and say well I said it so I need to come up with something uh I am at my home I am the person who throws a party so I said okay everybody wants to be a part of a party so let's do it uh but then I said I needed to be different it it has to be different we can't always do uh bless the road that they have have served for us in our history but let's do something outside of Malcolm X Martin Luther King Rosa Park let's do something different let's find the Brilliance in the history
016that we have had in these years of America that um blacks have put on this this Earth um so I said at one point my school needs to learn the black national anthem what happened we came together and every Friday those kids would have that piece of paper in front of their face and they would learn the black national anthem and we would play it over the loudspeaker and every Friday that is what we did I changed the aspect of what the Educators was doing with the students don't just give them Martin Luther King and teach them what he did we have scientists we have poets we have many different people in our Walk of Life in history that we need to let our children know we don't naturally get black history in our Public
017Public School schools unless we have gotten it from our parents or from a class that a student has taken outside of PPS so that was my biggest thing was to bring something that these all of these students would be able to see that it's just not one person or three people that have made a change in this history it is many that have made a change and so from that point on my black Brilliance has been the Brilliance of all black people and so I would decorate the hallways with dolls of all kinds of history and um all of the um fraternities and sororities I had come out I had line dancing come out I had black hair cutters come out braiders come out all of this was free at some point in the beginning
018when I started I was looking for everything for free everything is donated I don't want to have to pay for nothing you guys got to come out your pocket and Isaac was like miam we got to use this money so you got to spend it on something and so I got the top DJ Portland's top DJ Mike Morris came in and he did his thing and he has been doing it every year he doesn't even live here anymore he comes all the way back just for this um the 503 steppers they come out and they dance for us and so it is so good to see that we bring the history in Oregon we had um break dancers come in and them tell where that came from and the hip-hop side so um that is
019mainly what I want my community to see and come from is to see what we have created from our history to now and where we're at and that was my way of bridging those families and feeling like they're comfortable to see someone of their own face and their own color in the school that normally didn't have any people people of coloring it and so I was Bridging the Gap between now they don't think of me as a site manager I'm either Auntie or Mom and so those families come in and they feel comfortable with um talking and having those um gaps bridged between the principal or a teacher and having me in the classroom to support them as well so it is just a lot more than the black Brilliance it is to make sure
020that everybody that walks through that door feels comfortable with being adjacently and so that is what I mainly was felt like I was there to do and I hope that I have done that and succeeded in trying to continue to do it so that is what black Brilliance for me is is to bring the history of Blackness into the school system and when is Black Brilliance this year this year black Brilliance will be February 27th from 5: to 7 um again we will have the DJ and um Tasha Taylor will come out and cook and cater so we have some of the top people who will be in Jason Lee so come on out and dance and uh we'll have the steppers out and enjoy Jason Lee and what we bring to play so thank
021you I just want to add um Alma Velasquez uh principal Jason Lee good evening uh director superintendent Armstrong What uh Miss miam didn't tell you is that in the process of all the events that she organized she created a very strong community in an identity of a community as a place where black black Brilliance could be highlighted I uh came to Jason Lee in the fall of 2020 we were not able to have the event live but it happened it happened and what you were able to see that year was uh virtually all the families coming together people from their kitchen showing sharing recipes crafts their they're just their art and in so many ways still highlighting the Brilliance within our community uh and ever since it has continued it continues every year to be
022uh the the most important event that we have and the one that people look forward to our teachers organize lessons around that based on the many different aspect ects of black Brilliance and so it truly is part of our community and something that we are very grateful to uh Miss Mariam for having brought to us and having really maintained all this time Co didn't stop either we had we we had it in the parking lot we danced in the parking lot we gave out gifts and so that that didn't stop us either every year we have had it and nothing has stopped us from going to have black Brilliance I hope that you're um list letting the kids listen to country music because we just had the first black woman get the country music album
023of the Year Beyonce Amen to that yes I love it I i' just like to say you said you're not a public speaker but yes you are you don't know how my hands are sweaty yeah so I have worked in many parts of the district I I am a basketball coach as well so I coach for the cluster I coached for high school I coach um St Andrews and uh I yes Jason Lee undefeated last year um Jefferson and uh McDaniels and so I have been a coach in the system as well that's where I first started I am actually a nurse but I came from that to to hear the laughter of students that that is what br the happiness to me so that's what keeps me in there because of those babies so
024you're welcome good evening directors and superintendent Armstrong I'd like to call down um principal Katie parman from Roosevelt High School who brought a couple of go ahead let's clap it [Applause] up who brought um some um virtual students with her I think tonight hope that they are able to get in um but part of the um the work that has happened over a number of years uh across the city is um has really taken shape at Roosevelt and sort of in the embracing of um where are the opportunities to learn um about the variety of things um that have impacted our history here in Portland as well as um the students lives in in North Portland in particular and then how students have been able to incorporate that into their um how they uh devise
025plan um look for opportunities to bring their community of students together so I want to uh just thank uh Katie parman and and the students and staff at Roosevelt High School for building a strong Legacy of um support and um celebration in the month of February and throughout the year and uh just really wanted uh again just turn it over to uh principal apartman and this at least one student has joined us so this is great hi good evening thanks for having me um I think Marian is there are you there is Gloria with you yes I'm right here I sorry I see Gloria I'm the tendy section but she's declined the request to be a panelist so Gloria accepts that accept the request to be a panelist so these two students Mary and Hassan
026and Gloria body are part of our black student union um when I came to Roosevelt in 2019 uh we had a strong history of uh celebrating Trayvon Martin's birthday with a hoodies up celebration our students um continue that through the pandemic and when we came back from the pandemic our black student union decided to do something different and so um the assemblies and the celebrations that we do during Black History Month are very much run by and for our students and so so I want to turn it over to them so they can share what their plans are and then I can talk a little bit about how that connects to the instruction that we're doing hello good evening everyone my name is Gloria zaadi I'm a senior at Roosevelt High School and I'm also
027the president of the black student union here at Roosevelt um we are currently in the process of planning for this year's black hisy month assembly that will be um on Friday the 21st I believe um I have been a part of the planning committee throughout all four years of high school but this is my first time taking charge as the head president although we're still in the process of planning this year's assembly nothing is quite like set in stone so we'll be meeting tomorrow to discuss how that will look like but in the past I have like I said been involved in planning and have also been a part of the assembly as a dancer in the previous year last year I did two dance performances with one of my friends who was a senior
028who graduated graduated last year and we did one African performance and then one hip-hop performance just to like highlight different asp aspects of the African diaspora besides our Black History Month assembly that we have every year that is a big part of what Black History Month looks like at Roosevelt we also have what we call our black live is matter of action which I will turn over to Maran to speak more about yes hi my name is mar Hussein I'm also a senior here at Rosevelt and um for the years that I've been at roselt we had this um black action week for black history months um the kind of shed light on um important parts of history and just to kind of give us uh time to understand and acknowledge and recognize a black
029history and uplift one another and even educate one another as well and throughout this time classes um and teachers um teach us about specific stuff within history like in my photography class right now we just currently watched a documentary about Gordon Park's a very influential photographer Who challenged stereotypes and harsh realities that were put on um black individuals and people of color in general and how influential he was and how we can challenge those beliefs as well and kind of carry those stuff with us so like that's one um important thing we do in our classes and also just kind of using this week to just appreciate one another and understand and educate and it's like a very important week for us and I really appreciate it um and like with BSU as well we
030just kind of use this whole month in itself to just hold each other and like uplift each other and just again recognize and it's a very important month for us um especially for people who really don't want to appreciate it kind of gives us a chance to educate um and help them recognize uh the importance this month holds for a lot of us thank you they they were great that's exactly what we do so one last thing um our ethnic studies classes all of our students take a US History ethnic studies class in their junior year um in the past they've kind of highlighted different um black artists and Scholars through some posters that they filled the building with and this year they've shifted and they're going to be creating Zen I didn't know people
031did that still but uh the students will be creating Zen so they go a little more in depth about who these people were and how they um brought forward advancements in different places in in scholarship in athletics in all sorts of different things so I'm really excited to see the Zen that should be coming out later this month thank you [Applause] thank you everyone for amazing presentation um before we move on just quick word I want to say um black history month right there's so many reasons and purposes for black history month but one of the there's two that I really want to highlight one is to recognize all the amazing Educators um from principl staff teachers and students who have worked through the decades to to um you know change and and and kind
032of disrupt the old habits of exclusion right US history is or sorry black history is American history um it at the same time another purpose for Black History Month is to also remember that we're in this together we're you know we're we're all part of a big movement to change old habits of exclusion and in order to change old habits whether it's in your daily life from putting away the is to what you teach in history um takes targeted and deliberate action and so this is a reminder that um our work is not done but we're in this together so thank you do I have a motion and a second to adopt resolution 744 proc excuse me Proclamation and recognition of February as Black History Month second thank you I have director split moves and
033director Holland seconds any board discussion yes I I I kind of wrote something up was sure if I was going to read it or not um but hearing you speak uh I think I will um I've been reflecting on this whole education system um and I've been doing a lot of reading and a lot of a lot of reflection and so I this is what I wrote um America we have a problem in 1860 Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis stood in the US Senate and opposed the moral land grant act a bill that would have funded education for black people it took 30 years before the second moral Act of 1890 to finally Force states to provide land Institution for black students but only if they wanted Federal funding meanwhile public education for white students had
034already begun in 1647 213 years earlier and even after that Jim Crow laws locked black students into second class education until 1954 and really didn't have full dis segregation um happening until the early 70s why did this matter because right now in the 99th year of celebrating black achievement we have the president of United States trying to erase our history our contributions our struggles our victories our voices by trying to eliminate things like Dei and in my own opinion public education America we have a problem I'm G say it again America we have a problem this is a system still CLE cleaning to White supremist ideology while still Whispering our children are not as good still pushing studies and Stu and tests designed to tell minorities we are behind when compared to White students but
035let's ask who controls that narrative this is the same system that once refused to educate our children the same system that had to send the National Guard to escort black children into schools the same system that forced Asian students into segregated Oriental schools from 1850 to 1920 this is the same system that use special education to exclude Mexican children for speaking their native language the same system that ripped Native Americans from their families and forc them into boarding schools to erase their culture America we have a problem but we will no longer let your studies your screwed facts your whitewash virgins of History Define us we will not accept your barbaric hunger for power hunger for power and control we will not let you dictate the standard of success for our children our children are
036brilliant they are right where they need to be they're navigating their own Futures writing their own stories their success does not need to be measured against anyone else anymore every black doctor engineer teacher CEO or superintendent every electrician plumber truck driver lawyer or elected official that is success that's the Legacy that we're teaching here that is is the truth we uphold and that is what we will fight to protect America we have a problem and we're not ignored it anymore thank you thank you director Holland um M Brasa is there any public comments oh sorry discuss so I just want to um you mentioned uh black Educators uh chair Wong uh I wanted just to speak to some other black excellence in PBS and I'm going to go back to 2001 when I was elected
037to the board uh with Al lenzo Po and Derry Jackson um and we had a student rep at the time John elbel all great EXA I know it's funny he was a junior at Benson I know it's hard to believe he's an adult now um yeah examples of black excellence and then when I came back to the board um in 2017 and then had the opportunity to uh serve with uh director dep pass and then in 2020 2021 um an opportunity um a historic moment to be elected at the same time that um director Holland and director green uh were elected um and to have for the first time uh three black members of the board um black excellence and then to have JJ join us um at the dis um so I I feel
038like we you know we're really blessed we've got great Educators and great principles who are examples of black Excellence um but also on this board and we can of course not recognize um our superintendent as well um so we we have a quite a blessing of excellence and I just want to call that out so I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to work with all of you here and uh both Leno da and John L as well and is there any public comment there's not all right thank you all um we will now vote on uh resolution 7044 Proclamation and recognition of February's Black History Month all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes all oppos please indicate by saying no student representative kav please indicate your vote
039Yes all right resolution 7044 is approved by a vote of 7 to zero with student representative unofficially voting yes thank you next up we have the superintendent report uh super Armstrong would you like to go for it absolutely excuse me sorry absolutely I think the slides are being queued up it's a short superintendent uh report this evening um maybe if I talk slow enough the slides will pop up yes in case you're curious it is day 92 of um school days and so that 100 days of school transition plan um will be realized come February 14th which will mark 100 days of school um so this evening I wanted to through my superintendent report introduce three um humans who have joined the team in Portland and so I'm going to ask the three of them
040to come forward while I just say a couple of words I'll just start speaking and then they'll have a chance to introduce themselves to you as well um we have Candice gross our chief of communications she is coming with industry expertise and experience in public schools her last position was as Deputy Chief of communications for the Cleveland metropolitan school district um where she had the district's where she led the district's brand campaign the future of cmsd we are excited to have her here uh we also have Michelle Morrison who came to us just a few stops away on the freeway from Hillsboro School District where she has served as Chief Financial Officer since 2018 then we have Nicole Watson who has been with us for several months um and so through a couple of resignations
041we were able to officially bring her on board as senior director of Engagement Nicole is currently the president of the Oregon Association of black school Educators past principal in park roll school district and former Portland Public Schools teacher welcome he so I have asked them yes to just share a few words as they introduce themselves and that will conclude my report so starting off with Candace can you all hear me okay there we go good evening uh chair Wong Vice chair to pass and please uh forgive me if I am mispronouncing names just correct me uh PPS board of directors student director superintendent Armstrong and members of the Portland Public Schools community sorry about that I'm honored to be here tonight and grateful for the opportunity to introduce myself I'm excited about the possibility of
042serving as the chief of communications for Portland Public Schools at my core I do believe that Communications is more than delivering information it's about building trust fostering transparency and ensuring that every stakeholder feels informed valued and connected to the mission of PPS Portland Public Schools is at a pivotal moment right now and I see Communications as a powerful tool to strengthen relationships Elevate the district's vision and drive engagement in the way that turns our stakeholders into our partners and in Student Success my vision for communications at PPS is rooted in three areas Clarity accessibility and impact um and so with that I'm just super excited to be here and I'm excited to call Portland home I'm still trying to get acclimated to this three hour time zone difference but I think with time I will
043uh catch up to that so thank you Michelle you're going in the order of your recency so oh yes oh hello um thank you for having me here this evening and for many evenings to come I'm sure I'm just thrilled to be a part of Portland Public Schools um I have served in public finance and schools for 25 years and I'm hoping that I can really uh a lens and um practical accountability to this role and just very thankful for um the predecessors prior leadership current leadership our Communications uh officers going to be amazing to work with as well and a lot of our goals are shared in terms of transparency accountability and building trust in our community very thank very thankful to be here welcome wel good evening everyone I'm Nicole Watson uh it's
044good to be home I um I'm excited I this is the District of my classroom route uh I was a student in this District a classroom teacher in this District um and now to be able to return back as a senior director is feeling very um Kismet and blessed as uh director Rim Edwards shared um if you know anything thing about me you know that family and Community engagement is something that is Central to my heart to who I am as a person I believe that we must build Bridges between classrooms and communities but we must build those bridges and so I am elated to work alongside Dr Armstrong and our team to be able to build an erect a bridge that our students families and Educators can cross between and around and from um
045I think that engagement is more than just an event it needs to be authentic it has to be because we care it has to be because because we're willing to listen and it feels very much that at a time where we need to be listening to One Another that this district is ready to do just that so I'm excited to be home I can't wait to get to work and uh it's it's really lovely to be with you all tonight thank you great thank you thank you team and I just want to acknowledge that we had an educator um Town Hall last night and we will will have a community town hall on budget tomorrow at 6: pm and I should have had the image to show more information about that but all of that
046information can be found on our website at pps.net thank you and as always together we rise all right um next up we're going to go up to uh public comment we're going to start with student comment I just want to um note for the board uh I did kind of change the uh order or sorry the the format just a little bit we had three people signed up for public comment during the consent agenda and for the sake of not having them wait till 9 o' I figure I move them to the general public comment right after and the idea is that hey they can go a little earlier and it'll also just kind of be a better flow just have all the public Comon go together um so if you if you notice in
047the public comment the regular there's six slots that's just because we move the consent agend a public comment up um so first off we're going to start off with student comment uh student comments um Miss Brasa do we have anyone signed up for student comments we do kle Jackson anyone else that's it all right let's move on to uh regular public Comet uh do we should we call let's call up our first three and then I'll go over the rules Greg Davenport Jason Caffrey Suzanne Clark all right before you begin just I kind of want to go over the rules against thank you for being here today um our public comment is very important and informs our work so thank you for taking your time out of your evening uh you know there's a lot
048of great things to do like watching a movie on the couch um uh call yeah calling your legislature um so uh couple of things our Board office may follow up um on board related issues raised during public testimony request that complaints about individual employees be directed to the superintendent's office as a Personnel matter uh for materials you like to board to receive hand out pictures Etc please um give them over to uh Miss Bradshaw over there and and she'll distribute them to us if you have any additional materials or items that you would like to provide uh to the board or superintendent um we ask that you email them to public comment all onew pps.net uh please make sure that when you begin your comment or sorry before we do that um especially if it
049involves um students we ask that there not be any identifiable names Etc that could potentially identify name or viol violate ver laws um where am I oh yeah you uh when you begin your comments please clearly state your name and spell your last name you'll have three minutes to speak you will hear sound after three minutes which means that you'll have 30 seconds to wrap up your your comments all right whoever wants to go first may go d a v Greg Davenport d a v n p o r t welcome and split to the board the rest of the board and Dr Armstrong may recall that I met with you on September 24th the board voted six to one that Heather Roberts varsity basketball coach at Lincoln High School deliberately retaliated against my son and
050family by withholding vital Communications this retaliation was an addition to the harassment intimidation and retaliation that had already been substantiated in the investigation report conducted by deorah hercilia and Marshall H Haskins Heather Robert's unprofessional conduct continues to occur since we we last met Roberts is now retaliating against my youngest son who is a freshman at Lincoln my sons have done nothing wrong Heather Roberts has threatened to sue me personally unless I stop reporting her unprofessional and retaliatory behaviors this is classic behavior of a bully who takes zero responsibility for their own misconduct and blames others the victimizer claim to be the victim Lincoln athletic director Matt wild sent a memo dated December 6 to the parents of Lincoln basketball players quote we want you to know that PP SS his investigation did not find evidence
051of homophobic or racially discriminatory Behavior within the Lincoln basketball program this statement by athletic director Matt WS is false on October 2nd Mr W spoke to the parent who witnessed and cooperated Heather Roberts say unprovoked to a group of black students you guys doing gang signs Dr Armstrong please investigate Mr Wild's so-called investigation who he interviewed in his circumstances that led him to release this memo you may also want to investigate wilds and Robert's work history together in previous roles and who hired WS as athletic director at Lincoln last summer and Who provided a recommendation recently I and other parents of Lincoln's students have filed complaints with the Oregon Department of Education regarding Heather Robert's conduct and how PPS Administration has mismanaged its avoidable situation we urge that PPS and OD take immediate action to
052launch a real investigation into Robert's alleged homophobic and racist behaviors interview the students who were Witnesses and have been W interviewed so far and investigate the continued retaliation directed at our sons and other students at Lincoln High School Dr Armstrong as you aware the odd OD last week has accepted my complaint and will be conducting their own investigation please reach out to me if I could be of any assistance in your response to ensure its accuracy Roberts has deliberately destroyed my son's Junior and freshman year of basketball something that never can be replaced please don't allow Roberts to continue her vindictive retaliatory behaviors that is ruining their basketball High School experence experience this is Heather Robert's fourth year as basketball coach at Lincoln this season Lincoln varsity basketball team has won two games and lost
05314 the team is currently ranked 45th out of 49 6A teams the average margin to defeat is greater than 21 points a game they're not even competitive in games they lose this is not a sign of a maturing or competitive program under Robert's leadership one of Robert's personal attorneys has a one one of one of Robert's starting Varsity players father is also one of her attorneys this attorney filed Robert's tour claim against PPS in September and October according to the wamit and Argonian seems like a conflict of interest to me along with many others that has occurred I thank you all for your time thank you um Jason CFI Ka a f o r y I'm an attorney with the law firm of cfor and McDougall I'm here talking to you though uh in my
054personal capacity um this Lincoln High School Story and this basketball coach um hits hard for me um I was a Lincoln High School basketball player myself uh 93 to 96 um my coach Mitch Whitehurst uh you may remember that name uh multi- decades Portland Public Schools would ship Mitch whiters to different places and he abused people H and the school knew about it and it took a lawsuit to actually uncover the truth about what really happened uh with my basketball coach these are really serious allegations there are multiple students that heard her use homophobic slurs and I don't even want to say it it's so bad but it starts with an f and Tech describing other players describing other people describing how they look is that the kind of school is that the kind of
055student athlete experience that we should be having uh a at at a Portland Public School I liked Gary Holland statement a lot about problems nationally and what's happening we have a serious problem here at Lincoln High School um this is pretty easy to investigate we've got multiple kids that will come and say if asked by a real investigator yeah I heard her say it so for coming out for Portland Public Schools coming out and putting out a PR statement saying we quote fully investigated this when no one was interviewed is really not okay that's not the way that you as the board uh should allow our Portland school um folks to to act so let's have a real investigation the some of the best players including his sons have not been allowed to play basketball
056this year because their families had the courage to stand up to this coach and you know what think about what they're losing they're losing the ability to put on their resume when they appli to college that they were a senior or or a junior basketball player they're losing their dreams the things they spent their whole life playing because a vindictive retaliatory coach kicks some of the best players off because their parents complain about them is that the kind of school system that we want to operate within in our community the city that works look this is easy to investigate there's plenty of allegations out there and the truth is you guys have the files her assistant basketball coach also filed a complaint about her okay it's not just players it's the assistant coach also you
057guys have the internal files someone needs to start taking this seriously and go through and look at all the complaints the wam week's been asking for this you guys are denying their public record request but there is real There's real smoke uh here that needs to be investigated and there's real kids that are losing out and it's not fair to them it's not fair to them to have a bullying coach who's retaliatory and treating people this way my dad has a great closing argument he says you know what for the rest of your life if a bully rubs your nose in it in the ground you're going to taste that dirt and if you're a kid and you run down and you fall down and you taste dirt in your mouth you get up and
058spit it right out there are a lot of kids that are facing long-term uh emotional distress damages for what this this this uh coach is doing I just filed a very very high-profile case against Western Oregon University uh last week went all over the the country um focusing on this abusive type Behavior by coaches and administrators that wouldn't do the right thing I implore you take this seriously do a real investigation and I would like to not have any more abusive Behavior by this coach toward any more of our student athletes in our community thank you very much great thank you hi my name is Suzanne Clark c l a r ke for over a decade my family has been part of the Roosevelt Oley green and Beach School communities I often think about all
059of the planning discussion and angst you all experience around Capital bonds I think about how if PPS had the funds to support healthy class sizes funds to provide staff to maintain school buildings and grounds funds to offer all students their best outcomes then the capital bonds would be a no-brainer and overwhelmingly supported by our community it is a testiment to Portland's support for public education that the bonds continue to pass despite the legislator's decades long neglect when it comes to funding everything else about our schools portlanders should absolutely continue to support these bonds and I hope the board will stand up for students and send a letter to the oregonians editorial board board to remind it that PPS is leading the nation in its effort to have a more to have more efficient and sustainable
060buildings if Oregon fully funded the Q to create excellent schools few fewer people would be questioning PPS as school construction budgets today I heard that Senator Weber's news uh newsletter said that she and her Republican colleagues are fighting to expand school choice in Oregon because students are quote stuck in a system that isn't delivering the quality education they need to succeed it is difficult to deliver quality education when the quality education model is underfunded by at least $2 billion and20 billion since 1999 please prioritize educating the PPS Community about the need to advocate for their Public Schools it is more important than anything else you're well I can't say it's more important than anything else you're discussing tonight because you've discussed quite a few important things but it's really important and the K through 12
061cycle means that parents in the know about funding leave the system except for some Cleveland High School teachers um and new people enter all the time that have no understanding of the multi-generational lack of investment in our schools why are we in this Perpetual state of begging for current and inadequate service levels this is a choice a matter of will what we have all accepted the reason I'm here tonight is to spread word that PPS parents have been organizing educational public school funding forums to support a growing effort across the state to end this 30-year tragedy that we've accepted as inevitable for our kids my daughter helped me write that sentence she's a Roosevelt High School student I have seen some of you at these forums I want to see all of you at the
062next forums which are at dunway elementary school on February 10th and then I'll be uh and KD apartment will be hosting one at velt High School on February 20th legislators will be present at these meetings to answer questions and I'm also asking superintendent Armstrong um to at tomorrow night's Community budget meeting if you could inform our community about these forums I have dig digital paper Flyers uh with me here if anyone would like one thank you can can you say that again where's going to be at and what time uh I'll give you a flyer but uh February 10th is Dunaway Elementary School and February 20th is at Roosevelt High School and at Roosevelt we'll have Senator Lou Frederick Lisa Reynolds Shannon Isidor and Travis Nelson thank you thank [Applause] you we have Dr eie
063GRE house Dr Rachel roachester and Miss Rebecca schn sorry schn and who is virtual and I'll be bringing in Dr Effie great house g r a t h o u s e I am a mom at hayhurst elementary and Robert gray I'm also an environmental scientist and I run safe indoor air for Oregon schools I'm really pleased that PPS is modernizing our schools the 2,000 air purifiers are also critical to modernizing our schools I want to take a moment to apologize to Dr Armstrong you inherited a problem you did not know that the 2600 Air Purifiers in storage were yet another betrayal of the community's trust I wanted myself and a couple of our air quality moms and dads to meet with you in the first month you generously took on this uh tough and
064time intensive job and if we had maybe we wouldn't have uh be in this position of PPS parents shock and dismay at uh your and the board's a well-intended effort to help La kids uh but during your first couple months uh I didn't have the time to figure out how do you get a meeting with the superintendent because safos folks and I were busy trying to reach some of our Elementary and Middle School principles here's an example of the kind of information that um we bring when we meet with the principal uh this this is the airflow report for Roosevelt High School uh and uh one of the uh classrooms classroom 86 is typical of classrooms in the building and it only gets 1.2 air changes per hour if no air purifier is running in
065the room we're advocating for a minimum of six air changes per hour so with uh one air purifier in that room what running at its reasonable noise level you only get 2.4 air changes per hour at 2.4 air changes per hour it takes 58 minutes to clear out 90% of the kids respiratory Aerosoles so with only the one air purifier in room 86 uh it takes over an hour to each and every sneeze viruses that are kids the kids are coming down with keep lingering and hanging in the air for over an hour if we add the second air purifier uh we bring the room up to 4.1 air changes per hour so we don't even reach our goal but uh it still uh helps clean the air faster and does it quietly uh with
066two units in room 86 sneezes and coughs will clear out by 90% in 34 minutes uh instead of nearly an hour uh I want to wrap up with sharing that our fall push was trying try to get our custom packets to uh teachers uh and uh in uh in the packet we include our handout on the best settings for their intellipure air purifiers and this handout talks about why it's critical to our handouts talk about why it's critical to their students health and safety that they run the intellipure but turn the DFS button off uh this over here is an intellipure uh do any of you know what the DFS button on the intellipure is and does uh our third commenter is going to be educating you about that after Dr Rochester speaks thank you
067Dr Rachel Rochester r o c h s t r i am a mom at lellan elementary school ghost Stars an enthusiastic classroom volunteer and an Oran educator myself I'm also a scholar who examines climate chaos and scientific literacy like Dr great house I am really pleased that we are rebuilding and upgrading the remaining high schools at the same time I'm troubled that Oregon is currently in the highest outbreak of hoop and cough we've had in 50 years this notice went out to Lincoln High School families a week and a half ago this notice informs Lincoln families that on Monday January 13th the school started getting cases of whooping cough so on the very same day Lincoln was facing a reportable outbreak the board with good intentions authorized Dr Armstrong to give away 2,000 air cleaners
068that are supposed to be in our classrooms scrubbing the air of infectious aerosols students and staff breathe cough and sneeze out into the classroom air including infectious air cells containing the bacteria that causes whooping cough it is particularly difficult to reconcile Lincoln having this report to report this airborne disease on the same day of this vote because Lincoln is a key School in ongoing misrepresentation of facts on this issue superintendent Armstrong and the board were misled when this poor plan was presented to Dr Armstrong leading her to falsely State quote all of our schools all of our classrooms have air purifiers at the moment this is simply not true Lincoln has not had any air purifiers for nearly two years not a first unit let alone a second one all of Lincoln's air purifiers were
069removed in Spring of 2023 for modern schools for safe schools we need to filter the air in our classrooms in our libraries band rooms in our school's main offices cafeterias kitchens Health Centers the list goes on the units you authorize to donate are supposed to be on and running year round in all of our schools Even in our modernized schools because the ventilation requirements in our building codes are not health-based and because we can't meet our climate crisis response policy goals by moving all the air that needs cleaning through the whole HVAC system air purifiers in the classroom are the most energy efficient way to get effective particle filtration my heart goes out to the people in La I have friends and family there but their root classroom air problem is the same as our
070root classroom air problem um the problem is school boards and Leadership who have been misled into thinking that adequately filtering kids classroom air is only supposed to happen when there is a wildfire emergency we are asking you Dr Armstrong to maintain the pause on any more air purifiers going down to LA and to work collaboratively with us on a responsible evidence-based air purifier plan that advances your goals for PPS these air cleaners are important for our new goals in the district cleaning air right in the classroom is critical to student focus and improves reading and math test scores the entire history of air quality and air cleaners in the district is riddled with falsehoods and broken trust and getting all of these air purifiers into our schools as promised so that enough filtration is happening
071is essential for safe clean air thank you I have a question I've been seeing this um this issue come up and it's it's been disturbing for me so I understand you know the issue that we have here as as a as a Oregonian for 45 years so when you make the claim that our a is the same as LA right now I'm I get different scenarios because they have Urban it's Urban Fire not just a wildfire like we have here Urban Fire we know we have a lot more type of chemicals which sheet rockbestos all that stuff so it's interesting that you're saying that our air is the same here as it is down there in their time of need right now I I I've talked with folks down there I've talked to air specialist
072down there and it's it's hard for me to believe that we didn't but she didn't state that hold on hold on and then other thing is that are you saying because we decide to help kids down there who have zero air filtrations going on right now that we should make sure that our schools have two before we decide to send one for their schools down there we have a third comment uh it would be great if you would hear from our third commenter thank you um thank you um my name is Rebecca Shanker she her um thank you board members and superintendent I'm actually calling in today from Los Angeles as a mother to two LAUSD students and a an aunt to my two nieces at luell and Elementary um I've also worked on large
073scale air quality pollution reduction projects for the last 20 years um my family is very grateful and we are safe from the fires um certainly heavily impacted by toxic air I've also been working with Dr great house for the last several years is one of 14,000 members of the national indoor safe safe Air Group um which brings leading experts together on air quality specifically to support schools I'm devastated by the tragedy in my city and I deeply appreciate the generosity of Portland Public Schools it's a compassionate gesture and it reflects your commitment to kids health even beyond your community however I'm also concerned that this is not actually the best approach to Equitable and safe air for all frankly I'm concerned that the donation was made from a place of ignorance about the fundamental air
074pollution science of the intellipure air filters which were sent to our schools I understand so far that 500 of the inel here units have been sent our district Dr greous asked you if you know what the DFS button is on the intella of pure air filters and this is a really really critical item because that DFS button is not on all air filters it is on the intellipure units and it is a hidden ionizer and what an ionizer is is it is a chemical attempt to clean the air which actually ends up creating even greater chemical reactions and more toxic indoor air we obviously have challenges in Wildfire conditions as you so eloquently stated that are severe and challenging and include asbest and Benzene and all sorts of other chemicals which are going to interact
075with this hidden ionizer in every single classroom where they are placed so this is an especially unwelcome problem for kids in La that the DFS button defaults to on to avoid uncontrolled chemical reactions teachers actually have to know that the ionization is a problem they have to know that the DFS button is an ionizer and they have to actively turn off that ionizer each and every morning that they use that unit locally you have dedicated parents like drct great house who have been educating PBS schools on how to safely use these intellipure units and to rely on the main air filter to avoid the risks from the ionization of the DFS button unfortunately L USD won't have that benefit we won't know where these are placed our parents won't know how to go into the
076schools to protect our kids and teachers and staff from even more toxic air we understand that these donations were made without a full understanding of the situation of the air quality science and without the input of this sort of educational response we understand that you did it from a place of deep compassion and thank you for that we we implore you to stop these additional shipments and use this opportunity to collaborate on the best air quality solutions for Portland and Los Angeles thank you so much great thank you with that concludes our um public comment thank you for showing up if there's any uh thing you would like to follow up with the board sorry I think I was supposed to read something I love a chance to talk to you Gary about some of
077the the issues here and the the needs in our district we have these um uh information about the uh the ionization okay thank you thank you no I I I want to just because we're we're kind of behind schedule um if if there's stuff you want to follow up with please feel free to contact our senior board manager Roseanne po um you may also discuss at your own time um it's democracy still so do what you can um at least for now um right now we have schedule comments from our Union Partners I see pres bunia in the audience I don't know if I saw anyone else I don't know if you have great welcome all right hello good evening happy Black History Month um uh thank you again for the opportunity to speak um
078for the board as a union partner as always I want to start with Kudos um kudos to our superintendent Dr Armstrong for trying something different with our budget process this year the budget conversations have begun much earlier than usual and included a community listening session that's going to happen tomorrow as well as an hourong educator uh question and answer session where more details around the potential Cuts were shared she also had senior cabinet help answer those questions and today I received an email from employee and labor relations with the recording of the session the new budget website and a budget engagement feedback form so although we have lots of concerns about the impacts and the depth of the cuts we are happy to be part of the conversation early enough to actually impact these decisions
079this is a big step in building or helping build trust with our Educators so thank you um also kudos to this board for reaffirming this 2017 board resolution that exclaims our support for black and brown communities impacted by the racist executive orders um to send Ice agents into sensitive locations like our schools um the school board made it clear that PPS will not be intimidated and we will protect our community um lastly a kudos to our PPS lgbtq2sia plus program manager for their collaborative approach to the message that went out to all PBS Educators with resources and protocols to support our trans and gender expansive students and community members against the increased hate and discrimination um caused by the executive orders and chaos being sewn in the federal government so p is not new to
080using our contract and Union to protect and support our marginalized communities we have long-standing language that enshrines the right to a respectful working environment free of quote verbal abuse or other behavior that demeans threatens humiliates or intimidates others in the workplace we have parents and Educators who are working together in different School communities to support families if and when ice enters their neighborhoods we have Educators engaging in learning around trans jooy and trans Justice where we hosted a panel to kick off a book from rethinking schools which was edited by one of our own PPS Educators we also know that this Federal Administration is threatening to eliminate the Department of Education which helps enforce and investigate violations of the individuals with Disability Act they've threatened to cut title funds which directly support the budgets of
081our schools impacted by poverty we know this Administration will use this funding as leverage to demand compliance with their unconstitutional acts so my question is what does Trans Safety mean to y'all and what is that cost because we will be asked to make difficult choices at the risk of losing close to 10% of our budget um from uh Federal funding does that mean more to this body than supporting and loving our trans and lgbtq plus students in our schools I don't I believe not I hope not and just as we spoke up against the discrimination and harm done by this Administration to our immigrant Community we must also speak up about the impacts to our trans and gender non-conforming siblings these communities don't exist in a vacuum and the intersections are where the deepest impacts
082tend to occur we must also look to the state and advocate for a proactive response to threats of or the actual loss of title funding including funding for Title 9 which was built to protect against all gender sex-based harm and discrimination we must be expansive in our definition of community and not allow this harm to build so by acknowledging and planning active steps such as training for educators and staff in Coalition with parents and Community organizations we can reduce the harm experienced by our lgbtq2sia plus community at our schools um so I'm coming here to ask that we continue to collaborate we continue to speak up and that we make sure that our family Ames and our communities here that we are in support and collaborating to support all of our communities that are being
083marginalized right now um and that we take concrete and proactive steps including conversations with the governor and with legislature for them to have proactive plans because we need to be ready and not just react um because the pain is coming and and the only solution to that pain is community the only way that we get through the these hard times is not by isolation it's by collaboration um so thank you for the time thank you [Applause] absolutely thank you president Bonia for the strong words um always welcome your your input here um next up we have um the resolution to appoint Representatives uh to the 20242 parent advisory committee distribution of donations for Staffing um both director Holland and vice chair to pass were part of the selection committee which reviewed and selected this first
084group of advisory committee members before I asked them to share a bit more about the process of the pool of applicants they had to choose is there anything you would like to add Dr Dr absolutely I just want to publicly thank Robin Fone our director of strategic Partnerships um who has taken the lead on recruiting for these positions so thank [Applause] you oh yeah I'll speak to a little bit to the process of um uh selecting we had I I'm sorry I don't have the numbers in front of me we had quite a few more applicants and we had spots to sit on um on this committee um we carefully consider um the members based on geography uh whether or not they had children in the system and where where they were in their educational
085journey and I believe we met twice and I'll let you finish up our process we selected some that's it no um we would make sure we was intentional too um you know we made sure that we had a representation um um based on race as well you know I know that's a dirty word right now but you know when be intentional you just have to be intentional and damn whatever other folks that are posted that say as or do um and and I applaud uh director the pass for helping lead us down that that road as well you know we in some some different times right now and I think it's going to take those folks to be intentional and not worry about you know what the way we're going or the way it seems
086like we're going to still make sure that we have representation um in spaces and places like these so thank you all right thank you do I have a mo do I have a motion and a second to adopt resolution 7043 resolution to appoint representatives to 2024 25 parent advisory committee distribution of D of donations for Staffing so moved second d pass moves uh director brim Edward seconds any board discussion um I'd like to say a few comments uh so the establishment of this committee came out of the fundamental change in PPS policy around fundraising and around moving to a districtwide foundation um where we're all we're all in it together or we all rise together and um I really want to thank the individuals who are um on that first uh this this first wave
087of um the committee because you're going to be foundational um hopefully of this success um as we start out um together uh versus individual School communities looking out for their own School community so I really want to appreciate um the parents who've stepped up and volunteered to serve on this um I know it's going to be um foundational to not only um a districtwide fundraising but also to um districtwide advocacy which um really I think withered during the years in which um individual School fundraising became the focus instead of how do we use our Collective voices Al together um in advocating for our kids so um thanks for the parents and also um to director Hans and director depass who I'm sure picked a great group of leaders to lead us in into this new
088era and we also want to make sure we thank the students uh we have two student reps as well we actually be voting members um so we we working on that JJ we gonna get you um but I want to thank the the students as well because this you know this is all for them and so while we are making these decisions it's great to have students on there that actually has a another voice to to add to those and enthusiasm CU you know they a lot more active than we are so great thank you um Mr Brash is there any public comment no all right um the board will now vote on resolution 7043 resolution to appoint representatives to the 2024 25 parent advisory committee uh distribution of donations for Staffing all in favor
089please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any extensions student representative cavi indicate strong yes strong yes thank you resolution 7043 is approved by vote of 7 to zero with student representative can un unofficially voting yes thank [Applause] you all right next on jenda is a draft of the 2025 26 calendar school year uh Dr Armstrong superintendent Armstrong would you like to introduce this item absolutely as staff comes forward we just want to acknowledge how important it is to have a calendar out early and have an accurate one so that families and uh relatives can plan vacation and child care and all those other important things before you today I have two members of the team to present the 2526 school year calendar team good evening uh board
090of directors chair Wong uh Vice chair to pass superintendent Armstrong uh we are here tonight and are pleased to um share a draft calendar for the 25 26 school year um we the goal always is to strike a balance um as best we can with the constraints that we have in terms of um some of our cont contractual restraint constraints excuse me and also um uh balancing the need for predictability for families and consistency as well as opportunities to provide robust professional learning for our Educators as well as planning so last year um as part of the uh negotiation process there were some adjustments that were made to um the requirements in the in the in our contract and we also coming through that process made some adjustments to the school day so we ended
091up with um slightly longer school days that allowed us to um make some adjustments and provide some targeted um time for educators to both plan grading days as well as um to excuse me grading days and planning days we've made a distinction so I just want to make sure that that's in there uh that that we uh designated those uh clearly uh there are other pieces in the calendar that we have worked on and the result is that um we actually uh increased instructional time across the system with uh these adjustments last year this year's C that what you have before you for the um 25 26 school year is mirrors this year's calendar and um some of the rhythms that are in it currently there's not dramatic changes um uh and so that's what
092we' brought forward to you uh just a couple of highlights that were in the um board memo um uh we used uh as I said we use this current uh Year's calendar as a guide uh there were we received some feedback um from uh Educators other staff members uh we shared the calendar with our Union partners and as well as uh got some feedback from families so their original calendar that was posted on January 21st is that right but it came down so that uh there was a a calendar that the original calendar we took those that input and we made some small adjustments to it but the structure of it is essentially the same what you'll see is that um K5 and k8s in middle schools have uh 10 60 Minute staff uh meetings
093that are distributed throughout the year we have identified eight early release times for professional learning um some of that time this year for example uh has support Ed a cohort of elementary schools with the science of reading uh as part of as an example of how that time some of that time is being used um we have uh the high school structure stayed essentially the same we made modest adjustments to um the school day uh so they have 30 high schools have 30 staff meetings um at the end of the first three quarters there's a planning day and a grading day that is designated as two separate days we tried to balance those on Mondays Tuesdays Fridays Mondays Thursday Fridays so that we could um uh rotate through uh employees that work halftime etc etc
094um in addition I think that we um uh as we mentioned we talked about the early releases we've particularly from principles we heard very strong uh reactions to having dedicated time over a period um within you know an eight- hour workday to do professional learning with their staff has made a significant difference um we also recognize that uh early releases uh can be challenging for families and want to give people much as much time and lead lead time to plan for that moving forward um which is why we have the calendar before you uh essentially we try to balance the semesters as much as we can but I'm going to be honest we also try to have slightly longer first semester to support our seniors and also to to mitigate um some potential weather that
095make may occur so we uh the we may not have experienced last year so I'm going to knock on wood about tonight um and so there are some slight adjustments the calendar we try to be balanced uh we try to balance the quarters they're not perfectly balanced I think that um we added snow days there are three designated snow days that are in the calendar um one is again uh we usually use President's Day then we add in the other two at the end of the year um I think the other part to just notice is that uh again we've earmarked or set aside um CSI TSI um days as well and that is um they are marked in the calendar one is at the uh start of the year and one is in in
096March similar to what we've done this current year was that okay I'm in and I'm going to continue um I think that other pieces we are starting before um Labor Day as we did this year we do align um the end of the school year with um our plans for graduations and our commitments this year we're moving to uh PSU and away from Providence Park we've aligned that again with where we are with um in the coming school year so we try to align that as much as possible we also look at um the uh higher education calendars and and so you'll see that our spring break aligns with uo OSU psus as well to support families that may have students both um in college and also at PPS um ironically this year it we
097did hear that there was some benefit that um Halloween falls on a planning day so uh there was some uh some Educators were happy to have to have Halloween not be in school necessarily um uh and I think that that ultimately the goal is to have predictability as best we can in the calendar um so we're not uh anticipating any major adjustments um it meets our uh obligatory minutes instructional minutes um it meets the contractual requirements that we've laid out we have a checklist it's about three pages along that we have to we we've cross referenced and then again we sought feedback um from our employees uh I'm trying to see if there's any other uh I I think I misspoke I think there are four snow days that are marked on the calendar I
098said less than that but I think um there's three at the end of the year and there's one in the in the on on President's Day yeah um so we did post the calendar for some Community feedback and also did some Outreach um I think there again the there's tradeoffs about uh ear releases and sort of how families plann for that and what does that mean um so we are cognizant of that and we're trying we're hopeful that uh giving people lead time will help with planning um I think the other thing that came uh over a number of years is that there was a request to have on the calendar when some um major religious holidays were so that we could help uh Educators um avoid evening events and that sort of thing and
099just be cognizant of that so we've done that again and uh this year you'll find that on the calendar I'll pause there for a minute um and uh I think one other additional piece that that we did lay out is the calendar does include um conferences as part of which is a division 22 requirement for um it's one of the things that is you take into consideration when you adopt this calendar is that you're you're acknowledging that we're going to count um some uh days two days and um essentially three school days of um conferences as instructional time as part of this process I'm going to pause there for a second I said a lot very quickly um I've spent a lot of time in the calendar and um I will pause and see if
100you guys have questions and let um this Ro also I I just have a comment I just it sounds like there's a lot of moving parts and there's a lot of considerations contract whatever and my I think you answered my question about the religious holidays and I haven't looked at the calendar and lined it up with the best calendar in town which is the Planned Parenthood equity and inclusion calendar I mean it has everything on it that anyone of culture or gender would want to um celebrate or recognize and that was my question sounds like you that was taken under consideration and included in this calendar I was just looking for the icon for it there's there's actually a policy that the board drafted that um required that and then the calendar followed that because
101for about two decades we had just year after year um parents um who family celebrated not the majority maybe either religion or cultures um holidays um found that back the school nights and a variety of things were being scheduled on what our really significant family days so we passed a policy and then it got carried over into the calendar and I will say not everything's in there because there's a constitutional um provision that PPS has to provide by of like how we decide what gets um included and um so not everything is on there but hopefully we'll have few fewer conflicts between families who um have a cultural religious celebration that's important to their family that um conflicts with a an important school it's the square the the outline of the square is what the
102B is that yeah I just like to say I noticed that on I think was late openings for some reason I can't find the calendar I'm sure I printed it out can't find it um I remember we were asked by U some parent please have those late openings un least on the same day so we can make it work and you've done that and I noticed that right away and thought thank you with all the other things you had to do so I appreciate it and somebody else will too I'm sure and I appreciate your institutional knowledge about that that's really um great to have some context well if you don't want to hear the same complaints year over year taking action I only have um one suggestion I was wondering if you ever thought
103about making a deoder ring for the symbols I I spent more time decoding the symbols than I did reading the calendar um I did have one question though um yeah when I when I was like six I think I got one in the serial box back in the day um one question uh about those late start ones I I see a lot of effort so um was there some obstacles for having it say like on the on the same like Wednesday of the month yeah okay we we tried we we heard loud and clear can you get some consistency can it be the second or third of a month so there were the and there are a number of challenges so we tried to become more consistent so that there was an original draft that
104was much less consistent the second there's a second version that has an aster that I hope people have um and if not we'll make sure that you guys hav't that puts the the uh more regularly we don't quite get there um for the regular parts of late openings um trying to balance the where it is relative to the end of a quarter um where it is is relative to holidays um so if it it we tried not to proceed a late opening on the week prior to a a longer break like winter break so that was an adjustment we made from the current calendar I think the other part that um with the late openings uh again we're trying to get greater predictability to them and we heard that so we we went back through
105and tried it we try to rearrange it and get closer so we think we've gotten closer there anytime we do that then there's tradeoffs so um I think that the other pieces around um for our uh K5 K8 Middle School that have only 10 staff meetings try not to have them on a short week a 4- day week they like we're trying to do as much as we could so we built in more consistency I'm sure that we will receive some feedback that it's we're not quite there but um you know we're we are we continue to strive to to get there as close as we can thank you hi thank you so much for getting the calendar out early um for those who don't know I'm an elementary school parent and have been really
106engaged at my elementary school and one thing that um I flagged to rosan and I think she flagged to all of you was the memo sort of makes it sound like it's new that it's a 4day ramp up so I just wanted to flag that again that it if you put adding a day would provide or has provided all students stud in the memo and not to Wordsmith but I think it would be so helpful so people don't read it and get alarmed like I did that we're adding a day and then I also just wanted to flag and the reason it struck me and I did get concerned is that that that kindergarten ramp up is really important for the kids and for the families but it is also a surprise to a lot
107of people um people that register late people who aren't as proactive in getting engaged in their school communities or have a firsttime kindergartener and you don't know what that week is going to look like until after teachers get back from the summer break and so for Working Families it's a real Challenge and so I don't know if it's your job or someone else's to help with communicating that or also maybe thinking about ways that that could be smoother like we're going to have all the a through L kids there on this day and the N through Z kids on the second day instead they do like a half and half sort of thing and it just depends at each School how they do it I think there could be some things that we could do
108to really help those Ames because kindergarteners they need full child care you know like you you need and so you need to take the I mean we ended up having to take vacation days in order to be with our students because there's no summer camps and by the time that week comes you're usually out of any daycare situation so I just kind of wanted to raise the flag for the kindergarten families out there that I think we could do um I think we could do better in helping to kind of educate folks so they can get prepared for that um I also just I think I might have said it and might have forgotten because I got tied up in my kindergarten rant but I also just wanted to say how important it is I
109think that you're doing this work early and how grateful I am for the careful consideration and also if you don't know it there's a PPS parent who plugs all of it into a Google Calendar that you can subscribe to so that you have it all in your Google calendar um which is really awesome so if you haven't found that trick yet I can send you the URL but I think that's really cool that um somebody does that work and makes it a lot easier for all of us although I love your beautiful GP and my Dakota ring works perfectly for it but um but thank you for all the work and um and know that you have Partners out there doing cool work like that with your work thanks thank you I think um if
110I could just add one last thing and I want I just want to reiterate that when we hold the CSI TSI days we we put them on the calendar as as placeholders until the budget is adopted so I just wanted that that our ability to do that is based on the budgeting process so some of the things that are on the calendar like we're trying to just say here's where they would be and then there'll be things that happen throughout this throughout the spring that will um make the you know what those days look like final well I just want to thank you and all of staff for your hard work in this process I was wondering if you could share more how student engagement looked like in this for the uh for the student
111engagement for the calendar I I think that we did not probably JJ do enough so as I'm saying this I think that the um I would have to go back and see if we ended up I don't well you can tell me I don't think we took it to the District student council other than to have it on the website so I don't believe that we did go back out and and offer um direct feedback to students so I appreciate that you still have the calendar committee or is that not thing anymore uh the calendar committee calar the calendar committee I has um we're hearken back to Rudy Rudolph probably on that um so I think we need to um we need to uh the goal and it is to do it even earlier so
112like we are we last year was you know coming out of negotiations but we need to go back to calendar committee so I appreciate that feedback as well because it gives us more of a Runway um so well I ask that question because I think it's a place where a student can be involved but also um I know back when Rudy was during the caler committee that when we came out of the instructional days complaint um that um parents got on the um on the committee which really um also then drove an earlier start to the school year because lots of parents realize that their kids getting um instructional days earlier in the year um made a difference um later in the year uh so um I always think it's great to have parents and
113students involved because um they'll just bring up different things than U maybe School staff um I did have a question um that you're well prepared to answer I know okay um the uh if you take the days that are on the calendar um tell us where we are in terms of meeting the state's minimal instructional hour requirements at the at specifically at the high school level I'm sure the Elementary Middle School were yep so thank you uh coming out of negotiations last year we did increase instructional time so we we once you vote on calendar with we we have we are above the thresholds at each of the grade levels at kindergarten at um middle and high so the threshold uh at kindergarten is for 900 hours last year we plan the current year that
114we're in we planned for about 930 hours around there so we're o significantly above um similarly for um uh 1 through 5 and 6 through eight the minimum hours are 900 we are well above that we will once we finalize schedules and whatnot I will do the actual calculations but we're significantly above that as well same for high schools um the concern is always seniors with their 966 and we are um uh significantly above that you know right now like back of the envelope calculation we're closer to like 990 hours for seniors which gives us some um room in case there's inclement weather and whatnot which is it's always the challenge is that there's less space for seniors to make that out prior to graduation and there's still a requirement that um students actually be
115scheduled yep um so high school students so that they'll have a full school day and therefore all the instruction hour yes yeah and then you know like there's there's slight adjustments that we make um based on we we model the calendar um but there so there's slight adjustments year to year um so there whether it's passing time or various other slight adjustments that b schedules people ask for and once we have the calendar set then we'll go through and we'll run all those calculations on the back end so that we have that Baseline ready to go and then my last question is some um districts choose to count what I would consider non-instructional time um as instructional time they're allowed to by Statute um this calendar that doesn't do that in order to meet the
116instruction that's correct the only thing that's embedded in this calendar are conferences that that is that is the only piece which was decided I think between the parents and staff the but that was yeah so that's the only simar to instructional time that's right so it's of the division 22 um pieces that you vote on in the fall um we track the only thing that we uh include in that is is the um is the three days of conferences so there's no you know hours for professional learning we're not counting recess that sort of thing is is not in in the calendar as it is and we're above the instructional time I guess my last question since we're not voting on it tonight but it's a future item if people wanted to comment how would
117they do that I believe that the that the there's a spot on for public comment that is still up on um it's on the uh office of school performance website and then also if there's comment that comes into the board if there's public comment or questions then we can respond there as well we welcome further board questions if there are some and um JJ I will connect with you about student voice as well thank you any other questions is our chance to almost get back on schedule um thank you for all your hard work this is this is wonderful just kind of reminder this calendar will be on the February 18th agenda for a vote thank you too right what you all been waiting for next up we have uh we have the high school
118construction cost including analysis and Report done by Cornerstone Group uh earlier this fall the board requested a high level comparison of the costs associated with our five schools uh sorry with five schools no all ours uh Beaverton High School Lincoln Jefferson idab Wells High and Cleveland with two main object uh objectives identify the difference in Project costs and to identify potential areas for cost savings uh superintendent Armstrong would you like to introduce us yeah absolutely thank you for that so tonight um school board we're hoping to get some initial Direction um in the areas that were identified in the Cornerstone uh report on reductions and so I have the team here to walk you through some cost comparison um just an overall report but we are looking for some initial Direction and feedback on next
119steps thank you I'm gonna have um Chief uh Dan introduce his team good evening everyone oh yeah it's working uh good to see everyone so uh you stole a little bit of my thunder but we're going to go through like an intro real quick uh and then we're going to get into questions and then get into some prompts for uh as super Armstrong notes some feedback that would be helpful for staff um so so as you know back in November the project teams for Cleveland Jefferson Wells uh were directed to pause work on the project designs in order to complete a cost analysis the objective for tonight is to have a discussion on what information the board requires to provide so we can provide direction to staff to resume work uh today specifically we're seeking
120direction from the board regarding cost saving options outlined in the high school cost comparison report um a committee meeting is being scheduled soon I understand but potentially very soon um where we will bring Project Specific cost reduction options to the board therefore we want to ensure that the information that we provide aligns with the board's preferences and reflects the details that you want to see in that cost analysis so uh as I mentioned we'll run through a couple of things really quick uh we have some project team members here to help answer questions next to me I have stormy Shanks who's the senior director of The Office of school anization uh plus we have Steve F Ros and Eric gerding both senior project managers working on uh modernization projects and I believe we have Kesha
121Locker or we might have Kesha loer who's another senior project manager joining virtually and we got some staff in the back too if we need to to call them up uh so I will go quickly I was told to go quick I'll go quick framing uh the modernization projects appear is kind of like where here uh appear High when compared to other projects and PBS aims to bring those CL those costs closer into alignment uh in order to reduce costs it's important to understand cost drivers so in simple term project costs are informed by thirdparty cost estimates thirdparty cost estimates align with project designs and project designs are informed by Design inputs each one informs the latter with the design inputs really being the driver for the project designs and therefore for the project costs
122so for the sake of ease and time uh we can break the design inputs into two primary categories one we'll call all guiding documents and the other stakeholder feedback a lot of this is in is in the memo um and and if we look at the guiding documents and oversimplification but think of these as the materials that are handed to the design teams when we start a new modernization project uh and they include a number of documents but ones to the the big ones that you think about more often are PPS is education specifications I think we're all familiar with uh PPS is facility standards that materials and performance specifications and then District policy and directives that provide Direction on Project design and project implementation the second component to inputs is stakeholder feedback uh PPS
123is stakeholder engagement process for modernization is robust to say the least uh and it's even noted in ppss education specifications that modernizations of PPS high schools will be accomplished with robust stakeholder engagement process that will consult in a form stakeholders throughout the design process so we do that uh each project uh will engage in hundreds of stakeholder engagements and there are a variety of forums before that uh before planning and design is complete uh board members will be familiar with many of them such as dag meetings and steering committee meetings and Community workshops however it's also worth noting that the teams also coordinate many dozens of non-public stakeholder feedback sessions with subject matter experts such as performing Arts staff CTE staff uh media Specialists sped Athletics school counselors maintenance it Transportation Community Partners and many
124many more so when we talk about stakeholders I think the point is that there is a lot of stakeholders and it's it's a really robust process that goes on for a very long period of time years essentially that in inform these projects so getting to the point um these design inputs really culminate in each Project's comprehensive plan the comprehensive plan is when these guiding documents the stakeholder feedback unique School characteristics and programs combined to one cohesive plan that is the project scope the project schedule the project budget uh and this comprehensive plan is approved by the board which Begins the formal design phases and as we know the Jefferson Cleveland Wells projects all have approved comprehensive plan so that's just some framing we might reference back to that if there's questions about how we got
125here so I think that's that can be helpful uh if there's no questions about that we'll jump into Quick highlights about the high school compar report uh which was already noted had two primary objectives um comparing the various projects the five projects and identifying features that help explain the cost differences in the projects and then uh objective two identifying opportunities for potential cost savings that help support this cost analysis that we're in the middle of right now so regarding that first objective uh identifying the cost differences um when you look at the report there's there's a lots in there and there's a staff M that tries to tease it out a little bit but there's really no one factor that explains why there are cost differences really there's lots of them and and they add
126up and so escalation is a big one for example the size of the buildings is a big one um there are different spaces some more costly spaces in some schools than others like like our health centers uh kitchens for example uh athletic improvements like those those are expensive and so some some projects have those spaces others do not uh PPS also has unique design requirements such as all electric infrastructure and Energy Efficiency goals uh which have upfront costs and then then each project has unique site characteristics some of that sometimes that costs more sometimes that it can be more efficient so there's a lot of data in the report and it can be it can be confusing and we could easily spend weeks just parsing out all the different potential differences and why something is
127thing why it's different cost somewhere else so what I think might be helpful is to talk through maybe a simplified version of that that I think is helpful at least for me and hopefully it'll be helpful for you um in the report on page four there's a table called costs escalated for comparison it's the second table that's in there and this table aims to Aims to estimate the cost of construction escalation for each project to normalize them per assumed escalation to provide more of an Apples to Apples comparison and when escalated the Lincoln project is about 15% more more expensive than the Benson project and these projects are similar in lots of ways for example they're roughly the same size so the total size between Lincoln and did I say Benz yes the B throws
128me off every time beavon high school sorry I'll probably do it again but doing it all day um between Lincoln and Beaverton Lincoln's about 15% more they're both roughly the same size so size isn't a big driver the they're both cmgc delivery methods so that isn't a driver however the report notes a number of differences that add cost to linkoln and help explain that 15% difference for example Premium cost spaces such as a kitchen and servery Beaverton already has this in place so they're not constructing that so it's not part of their cost I think it's about 25 or 30,000 square feet so it's pretty significant uh and expensive spaces um the 1.5% green energy improvements uh PPS is uh equity and Contracting goals site Logistics uh and Lincoln's also in the Eric the name
129of the overlay that Lincoln is in well it's it's the downtown design commission or review and design overlay so there are more requirements for materials thank you so so some that's not in the report but just thought that of noting so so when all these factors are taken into account the Beaverton project Lincoln project have similar project cost not the same but that helps explain why there's that 15% Delta further when the the report Compares Lincoln now to the three high schools that uh the current projects those are about 30 to 35% cost difference again when escalation in there to try and and level those out and that's not perfect but it's getting close um those projects are also similar in many ways they're both informed by PBS's Ed specs and facility standards they all
130use the cmgc process uh they all follow ppss equity and Contracting goals so none of those are going to be drivers for why the costs are different but where the report notes there are differences includes PPS is newly adopted climate policy which requires electric infrastructure as energy goals Etc uh the total building size is different and then athletic improvements are significantly different Lincoln because of a small footprint didn't have a lot of athic improvements um um whereas the three current projects have significant funds dedicated to that so when all those factors taken into account the projects are closer in cost not exactly but that helps explain getting to you know a precise number would be either impossible or take Infinity so I to me that's kind of helpful to to do those comparisons uh if
131you have any questions on that but I'll keep running through and then we'll get the questions I'm just gon to say Dan that Lincoln though has money for the athletic facilities in the bond so while it wasn't in the cost comparison this the 2025 Bond includes money for the finished to build up the 2025 Bond yes includes funds for improvements offsite at West s been that would it be for Lincoln's use yes yeah so further adding to that point I guess right yeah okay um the second objective almost done in the report is uh looking at potential cost savings and recommendations so not all those differences between the projects are opportunities for reductions so for example escalation is a big factor but there isn't much that PPS can do to influence future cost uh escalation
132also a quick note people are very scared about tariffs and what those are going to do but that's a topic for a different day um and so the report has 15 recommendations that can really fall into three categories hopefully this makes the report seem a little simpler too uh those three categories are factors that have minimal that PPS has minimal influence over therefore not there isn't likely cost savings factors that may have some cost savings such as the preconstruction services and general conditions uh what the teams are already looking at so we plan on bringing information about those forward when we meet again um but but as Cornerstone know there's probably not real significant savings there uh the third category is areas of potential material savings so certainly we can talk about lots of little
133things that could have lots of little savings but really what we're hoping here tonight is these big drivers we'll call them big rocks like where those potential savings are what is the board's interest in looking at Cost reduction options in those categories and I'll name those categories as the building area so square footage um the CL climate policy construction requirements uh PPS is equity in Contracting policy requirements uh and then PPS is oops wrong one think I lost Oh wrong page another one oh it's the the cost premium spaces such just like Health Centers the teen parent centers and athletic improvements uh in in the health center teen parent centers I think those are good ones to to get some feedback on those aren't big spaces um so I don't think they're they're huge we'll
134call it a medium Rock but uh it'd be good to get some feedback on those as well so let me just frame what the what we're hoping to hear as far as direction for us and then you can pepper us with questions um so those again those bigger areas for opportunity are building square footage I'll just do one of them uh so the primary opportunities for reducing square footage are going to be reducing overall student capacity uh reducing non-required edpc spaces such as acquire rooms or CTE programs or reducing larger than Ed spec spaces such as things like theaters so what we're interested and like those three in particular what is the board's interest in in those are those non-starters or is that something that the board would like to look at um and then
135as so we can bring back some inform information I'll I'll go the other ones too but I'll stop there I think I've been talking too much so I I have a question I it seem like we do this again the same way so board gives Direction you guys go out do yourself based on that is has there been a recommendation um projects that staff has built based on the report already because what I don't want to do is I don't want us to start talking about what we do or don't want to do and then staff has a different recommendation that could be more feasible because we're not the subject matter experts you guys are um so I guess I would like to see what your guys' recommendations would be based on the report that
136has been done sure so the the report doesn't it gives some areas where the district can potentially save costs so square footage for example uh the square footage largely is what it is based upon those inputs that went into the process so what we have now are designs and cost estimates that are the output of the process so another way to frame the question is if there if we can reduce square footage let let's go to student capacity well that is based upon the education specification so is the district interested in doing something different changing those inputs effectively to produce a different output staff doesn't have a recommendation of what that student capacity is on a individual project but if the board's interest is savings that is an area that we could look at so
137I guess we already know the board enters in Saving like we that's why we have the whole report that's why we're here right now right so we you guys know our interest is in savings I guess what I don't want to do is I don't want us to have individual board members saying oh we want this or we we can do without that we can do without this I want your guys's recommendation based on that you guys know we want savings what is our options what is our possibilities to come back and sell us that because for me that would be better so then I can say okay this is what their recommendation is based on this report knowing that our priority is saving and then we can kind of look at okay this is
138the trade-offs for this or this is the tradeoffs for that just seem like it would be premature just to give our say because you know nobody's going want to say well we don't want to get rid of you know the Health Center or nobody want to say oh we want to bring the square footage down from 320 to 300,000 square foot nobody's gonna want to give that information so based on the what you guys already know about us want to save based on we kind of look at as far as the other cost of schools whether it's here or Nationwide I would I would just feel more comfortable as you guys are being the experts on this to give us a recommendation what you guys think based on knowing our priorities our savings and what
139the report says Patty um Gary I kind of think they need from us because um nobody wants to do anything but we have to and um what I'm like I have a question about square footage so can we cut square footage without with still keeping the Ed specs and if the rooms are a little smaller or what because I I certainly don't want to not have the same ad specs if we can maybe you know that in a little bit is that possible or do you have to do away with everything we want in the Ed specs if we cut scrub footage and another question I have it came up like a basement is really expensive is it possible to do Cleveland without a basement so just personally i' I'd rather go that way than
140have you come up with something and we say oh we don't like it well I appreciate the question um and I definitely want them to answer I do appreciate um Dan having um the the leads of certain projects here and um I think the team would be prepared to say I appreciate the question about in their expertise like thinking of timelines thinking of meeting some of the goals many of these members have been sitting with the design groups and know the interest and and wish of the community um I think a recommendation is just that and I I feel like the team probably is and should be prepared to say what they're recommending which would I think answer Gary's question um and so I just I wanted to see if we can just see if
141if there were some things that that they want to offer up based on their time in the in the work as it's been going on for quite some time they've invested a lot of hours so I have a question just about process um I hope this or there's not going to be a limit on this discussion because um I have a l questions and as I think other uh board members do as well and I just want to make sure that it's not we're not going to be like okay we we're at 40 minutes we're moving on to the next agenda item because I think this is a super important discussion that should have happened before the referral so I just want to make sure if we if we go into hearing some recommendations that
142we're also goingon to have time to go through questions that board members have and talk about a process by which we're going to land something more definitive for the community so that's that would just my question yes absolutely and so maybe what I'm recommending is that they respond to director Holland's question and then to director Sullivan's so we're not prepared for recommendations what we were hoping to hear is what are the board's values because we don't want to bring forward options that are you're the decision makers the non-starters and the as we talked about the the design inputs are those documents such as the Ed specs such as board policy and stakeholder feedback those are the values of PPS that is that that reflects PPS as values that process those inputs and then the output
143is what we have and this board approve the comprehensive plans for all of those projects that includes the current scope the current design the current budget so if if I guess we could use if you want a recommendation I think we'd even need more gu on that if it was we want the most we want to get to a number what's the most efficient way to get to a number or if there's something else we're we can take guesses at what the board will find acceptable in the end but if we have some direction on the front end that'll make it think a more efficient process how about if I try answer your question do you want me to try answering and you can see I what I need in to order to be able
144to answer your question and maybe that will help so you ask about squ sare footage overall student capacity um at specs spaces okay so what I would need to know is in the current three designs what spaces go above and beyond the current ad specs because that tells me I mean that that'll allow me to think about um what that is because otherwise it's just theoretical I can say that's easy because it's already in the comprehensive plans okay so to better understand that by school so we can see that then um maybe how much those changes would save in the total cost along way I mean so I have this all in a series of questions um then let's take the um two examples that are outlined in the report the teen parent Center and
145the um Health Center so I have a a series of questions because um currently um ID Wells uh doesn't have um Health Center um Cleveland the question is would they have a health center three years later would the would the county still be funding that or would we go to like Lincoln has which is a nurses station uh which is very different from a Comprehensive Health Center so um if I knew the answers to those to those questions about the health centers that would help me answer like yes or no the teen parent program I understand that there's um because we've been um as commission as former County chair uh deor noted um we've been while fairly successful at reducing Teen um parents so do we need one of the Teen parent Center in every
146high school it's my understanding at many of the high schools that have teen parent centers that most of the children the vast majority of them are um children of St um students at that school so I guess I'd have a utilization question so I'd want to know those things then in terms of like the overall capacity um I'd want to know what the current School enrollment for each of those are and I'd also like us to look at what happened when we opened the other high schools um so I was here in 2017 when we were at the time Madison and the question there was a big push to make it400 just like Roosevelt it's a good thing we didn't um because at the time it only had 900 students um and now it's one
147of our larger high schools so I want to have that before I because because I think both IW Wells and Cleveland for the last 10 years have been over 1500 so I I don't see why they would be reduced um but again that's the type of information I would want before I'd say yes go do that but but I think those are spaces that we should definitely from my perspective talk about so if I can that helpful yes and if I do a quick recap before I lose it um so what I hear is reducing so I'll start the bot the looking at the health centers the teen parent centers and looking at reducing I'll just say uh back to Ed speack minimum uh are all viable options and and reducing student capacity is also
148something is not a nonstarter that is something you'd want information on it's just my okay I'm just I'm only speaking for myself I'm sure everybody's gonna say and and I would want more information to know whether I'd want like the next step but like part of that would be informed by what information I got would be like go yes like keep proceeding um because those seem like um again my recollection with Lincoln is for example they traded um the health center space for more CTE space um and also I understand we opened a health we built out space for a Health Center at Grant there's um it's it's not financially viable for providers unless it's the county and there's a significant number of students who would um could could get be qualify for services but
149like I don't even know that we have a health center whether students could um we'd actually be able to um have a provider that would provide services so those are things that I would want to know okay and I can ask generally if other board members agree D the director um yeah thank you I was hoping um to be able to have a conversation about our values when we're talking about tradeoffs so we've gotten some mail about um the climate policy and how that fits with what we're looking at um our equity and Contracting goals and are whether or not to Veer from Ed specs or not so I'm hoping that I know you're seeking Direction right now I'm hoping that we can provide some so you can come back it sounds like it might
150be an iterative it might be an itative quick moving hopefully conversation but it sounds like you guys need something from us to be able to come back with us I also want to say I agree with um director brim Edwards I would also like to see um those those spaces those Extra Spaces we're talking about the health centers and the Teen parent centers but not the Performing Art centers cuz those are also I mean I think I don't know if those are auxiliary spaces or if those are included in Ed specs but I you know we're we've heard from the community that those spaces are dear to them and and to me on the climate um I'd you know I work in climate and I believe that there's that we have a climate crisis and
151I also um am curious about building to lead gold standards without getting a certification I know that the certification is an incremental cost and it's not that much but it's still something when we're talking about cutting U millions of dollars from these projects um I think that we should have a conversation about Mass Timber versus you know steel and concrete um that's another place that we have uh jurisdiction over um square footage yeah I would love to see uh what the trade-offs are in terms of square footage and student capacity but I don't think that we should base it on current enrollment because if we do then again Jefferson suffers because Jefferson has a really low enrollment so if we're basing any decisions based on current enrollment Jefferson is harmed so I'd like us to
152not use current enrollment I'd rather use uh population Pro projections to be a little bit more accurate in terms of um who who will be in the schools in in the future um I also just wanted to note in the report that Jefferson has an extremely high cost of doing business and I I still I've looked at this several times and I don't understand why I don't understand why um Jefferson has such an incredible Delta from the mean of these construction costs particularly in lines in the table I think it's on page four pages aren't numbered um on on page three let's see if I can reduce this a bit the lines 18 through 22 just indicate you know Beaverton and Lincoln are you know 23.3 million and 34.9 million and Jefferson comes in at
153a whopping 89.6 um for the same Services um preconstruction fee contractor the general conditions Etc so I'm I'm not sure why it is what is it about Jefferson that is so at least twice as much if not more than that than everyone else and I'll stop and let others um weigh in I I don't want to um I want to just say about the climate specs I I also believe that we should still build all electric because we're looking at cost over the long run and all electric is where it's that so I have a question because I know that one of our uh initial ask is making sure that we are able to um hear your thoughts and feedback and I I hear the questions and they're all um so important and I I
154just want to make sure that we're going to get to a place where um to director burm Edwards point we're able to move forward on a solid list of of recommend ations and I fear that um we could probably spend the next hour or two um answering some of the questions or even going around and hearing from all the individuals about um those items that are important and not get to like number one on the list building size you know is it the I mean I will just say you know my recommendation is that we pursue a 300,000 um square foot size high school that would save 24 million um across three projects and so you know as an example the question would be um is there board for support for that is that does
155that meet your your interest and guidance and kind of going through some of these on you know things that are are possible while you know of course the Hope was to be able to save upwards of 70 80 million um through this report and all of these features that's just not going to happen so what are some small wins that we can get out of this so that we can get these project teams back up and going and we don't lose time or Worse delay any opening timelines that are um before members so I just I just want to make sure that our this structure or the way in which we're receiving or giving information inputs or outputs is going to get us to a place of being able to leave here with your um
156initial guidance or um reactions to the items that we have listed christe was she was waiting um sorry I was gonna basically say something pretty similar to what you were saying something I want to put out um I think a few of you have heard this from me already I feel a real sense of urgency to figure this out to not over engineer the conversation the process um in order to get to all the answers we all might want um but I think it's important that we be able to ask you questions and know that you'll get back to us with that information so that we can make decisions in that timely fashion I hope that you don't tonight answer those questions I hope you watch the video later and get back to us with
157answers to make best use of our time and your time and to give us the most educated answers you can using more than just like papers that might be in front of you right this second um I wanted to say something really similar I um I want those in the audience to know anybody who's listening um Zone one includes ID to be Wells um and so this is I to make sure you all realize that that's my my school my dis my we my you know whatever however you want to put it put it to consider um as I'm saying this knowing that there's going to be people in my community that might not love it but I really think that looking at the size is important I think that question of how the Ed
158specs match up to the size that might help us to sell that change but I think that's $24 million and I absolutely agree with you that I think that's a place that we need to look um I think of looking at Lincoln and I look at that school it's a world class high school it's a world class High School in a city like we should be not necessarily trying to add Bells whistles or square footage to what we have just done there and we can all agree um seems like a pretty awesome space so I wanted to put that out there and if people are concerned like oh you're going to take this or that um I think really it's no we're going to build these high schools to roughly the same size and not
159have others that are bigger than the ones that we've just we've just done and can all agree look pretty great um I also just wanted to put out there that I think that um the climate policy is relatively new and it was student L and I think to me that's really important that we adhere to that I was a little disappointed to get some emails today that were suggesting that be where we look to make the sacrifices um I think our students would not want that and we can ask them to confirm and maybe JJ can help um find that out from um your cohort at the um student council District student council thank you but I'm guessing that's the case that they would not want to make the sacrifices there but I do think
160there's places like director depass mentioned um I looked at the climate policy and it doesn't say it has to be lead gold there's a list of like EG with some different possibilities so maybe one question I have that I'd love to hear back and I mentioned this the other day is how can we comply with that policy but does it have to be the lead gold or is there another one that's listed there or that's out there that we think does the trick by the way having a smaller school is also more efficient and utilizes less energy so I think that's also in line with the climate policy so I just kind of wanted to get out there you said you wanted some guidance from us that's at least two of us and I'm seeing
161some nodding heads that are saying on the climate stuff like that's going to be a little tougher tougher sell for me and maybe for some others as well in addition I'm really not interested in making changes to the equity policies regarding the workforce so if you want to hear from us um quickly said those are the things that I would say to me I'm not as interested in but those what did you call them cost premium spaces and area make a lot of sense to look at as well as like the basement consideration um and with that I'm happy to kind of get off let let things move forward given time but um I'm looking forward to continuing the conversation and happy to be the one that's like okay let's make some decisions let's get
162this done um I think it's so important that we settle this and start getting out to the doors getting out I maybe we're not allowed to say this Liz is probably like don't say that but um but just to say that um you know we need we need to have community support for the bond is that better and um that they need information elected officials can speak to the campaign all you want staff that have the res okay thank you so much um but really we need that information to go out there and sell it because I think anybody watching and in agreement anything that's stopping us from going out and doing the work and actually getting it done and anything that continues to jeopardize the like media messaging or anything out there on the
163bond that's not good for us and so um I just want to put it out there like let's get this settled let's land this ship and get moving on on getting it taken care of and not let any uncertainty continue to be a risk just to go on that roof um right now I think the Bond is in Jeopardy if we don't quickly resolve this issue I mean it's frankly dead dead in the water if we don't answer the question to taxpayers what what it is they're buying our taxpayers our and Community is very supportive has been very supportive of us but I don't think we can say you're going to get everything and by the way we're going to c a 100 million out of of schools so getting it resolved as soon as
164possible and I think we also should do it in a way that's it's um informed by information so I I'm with you Christie like I'm sorry um director split um of like moving fast um again this should have happened before the January 7th referral um so that was a false deadline we should have had that done but it's not too late um so I'm going to also weigh in on the I could maybe get to 300,000 square feet if if I knew what's in it because I feel really strongly there's been a there was a promise before the referral that we weren't going to cut out like Ed specs bases and academic and student spaces so I'd want to make sure we could do it but I think it's a worth looking at so I'm
165for the ECT spaces I'm going to speak to the climate pieces um because I think those are the other big bucket I'm next cat director B we still have three board members who haven't had a chance to speak so I want to hear from them first okay um director green thank you all so much um for um allowing us to have this um this conversation um I'm I'm not in any way shape form or fashion okay with um US changing our ects for what we said that we were going to um give our students now um I I believe that I don't believe that we should be building the um the school smaller um because that's looking at right now and it's not thinking about um where we're going when you start thinking about um
166Cleveland and idb Wells and and Jefferson um there may be some things that we can um take off the table but the size of the um what we're building for as far as like the the number of students I don't believe that that should be that should be one of them um if we're talking about taking away square footage U because of land m um then my question would be can we go upwards um how can we go higher and provide them the the same things um as far as like the the nursing you know like the the team parents um I could be okay with um moving that off the table um and if we had a plan if we had a plan for how we were gonna um address it from an area
167perspective I wouldn't be okay with taking it off the table if we don't have a if we don't have a plan for how we're going to be intentional about addressing the issues um that way um the basement I I think I could get with um the the no basement um as long as we can assure um our community um that that whatever it was that was in that basement we're going to replace um by putting on the ground floor or another floor somewhere else so if we can take away the basement and yet still provide them whatever service was in the basement then I can be um okay with that um I'm not okay with um the idea in any shape form or fashion of us taking away um any of the Arts um any
168of the Arts from any of our schools um I'm not okay with um it's just a lot and to I I believe I was also expecting to hear from um Dan and his team about what um what they would suggest you know based on you guys have been going at this for years now you've been um dealing with this for years years now and so I was expecting you guys to be able to come to the table with based on the the the temperature and where things are at and what understanding what it is we're trying to do these would be our recommendations on how we can how we can get there because you also understand timelines you also understand um the the scope of the works and the different the different projects and what
169it's going to take to get involved so I'm a little disappointed um that you're not prepared to um to have that uh to provide that level of that level of input um as far as the um the C you you um mentioned a couple times that they all use the cmgc process but what the report didn't mention or at least I didn't see it was was that um process um with the same with the same company or were that c was that meaning that um in those other projects from baverton and other places around the country that the CM and GC we're all we're both held by the same the same company because what I'm trying to understand is in all of this as we're looking at our numbers does this take into consideration um
170the overages that we've had in some of our schools and so if it doesn't take that into account then what is the actual number considering the the overages the I'd also like to um speak to how again this is a lot so I kind of agree with Julia about um excuse me director um brim Edwards around this is this isn't something that we should we need to be we need to hurry up and get through this so that we don't go over time because I've been asking about this for a long time and so to now to try to Buck but anyway I digress um understanding that cmgc process um where they was Beaverton that they used it where it was split and then how we managing um the overages is the overages taken into
171account is the um the reality that when we start looking at some of the um things that our schools and our school communities are um benefiting from um Portland Public Schools didn't even didn't even pay for it so when you start thinking about the um the work that was some of the work that might have been done in Cleveland with their track and field and some of the different places although we're grateful that they've they've done it we're not taking into consideration the um the the amount of money the amount of time the amount of energy that the community went in to pay for something that PPS benefiting from but PPS didn't actually have a real infant um Roosevelt was the same way with their track they had to raise the community had to raise
172money for um for their track and to get that going because before it was ever being put into bonds some of these schools were going out trying to make it happen for themselves because they recognized that those that those School communities needed it is that something that's being weighed in and and something that's being taken into consideration um something that's being at least talked about or acknowledged so that we can give some level of a nod to say listen we see what you guys have done and this is how we're going to ensure moving forward that we um we continue the the work that's being put in I just believe that simply um saying you tell me what to do I think that lets you off the hook for for actually being the the person
173that's over all of this and being the person that's supposed to to be able to have um taking the information that we're given and have a vision for what all of our schools can look like and then come back to the table with some recommendations and then allow us to allow us to do like a Battle Royal over those things and and instead it it to me it seems like the like taking the easy way out well it's not me you know I'm I don't want to be the one to to do it I I don't and so I'm director Herman can you finish finish up no stop please stop don't do that don't do that we're trying to just director director Wong don't do that I've been bring I've been talking about this for
174a minute and now we want to get here and you want to tell me don't do that don't do that so I would like to hear directly from our operations team on what it is what it is that they have they've looked at some of the things that they've recommended and or that they will be recommended and how how they can see us moving forward before this evening is over thank you thank you director green director Sullivan yeah I guess I'm back to what I said before um they could present us with what they think is best and then we just say we don't like it so it seems to me they're going at it with a much more knowledge if they know how the board what the board will accept so so and and
175I would love to get information about how the health center and teen parent centers that we have built for being used before making a decision um as I said about the basement I personally could go with uh steel and concrete versus Mass Timber but I would like to keep the um um the electric of a climate goal and um you know as you said General conditions is a small thing and we could look at somebody mentioned I think Julia you said look at um square footage but make sure it doesn't affect uh the overall plan so I I agree with you that you want input from us and that's my input there you go so so this is so this so this is the issue right because this is the same process we did before
176if as far as giving input to them and then coming back and trying to figure out stuff so I my guess my is I would love to do something different yeah we didn't have because we don't have the we don't have the information we don't have all the information because everybody's asking other questions so we don't have information to really make those decisions I'm G just say this I sent I sent a list of questions a week ago and I have from this staff I haven't heard anything from so when they say well we ask your questions so we can make give directions if we're not getting our questions answered from the staff to be able to make those decisions or make those recommendations or guidance how we supposed to do that I sent questions
177a week ago I didn't hear anything still haven't heard anything about the questions that I asked why haven't those been answered no I want to hear answer so on a different topic I believe there were questions that were submitted no they was Cornerstone questions about the report I sent these a week ago I all I apologize I don't recall receiving those I might just and this is the problem so when you ask us well give us Direction and I send questions and they don't get answer how am I supposed to give you direction if I'm not getting my answers my questions answered I think director holl I think there's some disagreement in terms of kind of the purpose of what we're doing here the the staff is asking for direction trying to figure out kind
178of what director split said seeing where our values lie or sorry director to pass as well and you director Holland they're the experts seeing where our values lie in terms of where the leeway can be in terms of trying to find find cost savings now so if I ask question so if I ask questions so I can give that and they don't answer how am I going to give that question to you then is what is the outcome you're looking for with having these questions answered so for instance some of my questions was can you explain the equity Contracting how could that reduce savings if they're asking for directions on that now and I asked a question of how that's going to affect it how am I supposed to answer that question it's the same
179issue it's the same issue I raised it's like I think we're being asked to give input I think we want to provide input and then also hear your recommendations but we also need to B basically otherwise we're giving uninformed feedback which is not the right thing it's not going to move us forward that's hold on hold on hold on um I want to yes I want Direct represent I want to respond to that but I also want to give some space to our student represented do you want to yeah I think this is a really big decision we're making and it really impacts our community and students and I strongly believe with my colleagues we need more information on this I think it's essential to make this big decision but I think if I were
180to choose some things that are non-negotiables for me I wouldn't be in support of reducing any performing arts or basing the school size on enrollment thank you um so I want to back up just a little bit and first of all say thank you to the staff and people producing this Cornerstone report I mean this is above and beyond what frankly what I've ever seen before in terms of a district doing its due diligence to figure out where and where we can save money and also we're spending uh how to spend our public dollars well we're not wasting it so thank you for I mean this is incredible work it's a lot and I just want to say thank you I haven't gone yet hold on this wasn't this wasn't District Le this was board
181Le this report was board Le the district didn't come and said none of the staff came and said you know what or at least in public these schools are a little bit too expensive we want to look into it deeper that was a board decision may I just remind everybody why we're even talking about cost because we can't pick money off trees and we have a limited resource in the funds we have and we also want to spend it responsibly and we also want to respond to what we heard during the teacher strike and that's that many of the schools in our District are um need help they need HVAC help and they need improvements to the roofs and and mechanical systems and so I don't want to blast the staff I I know this
182is hard work and you're trying to hear from us so we can be values driven and I thought that we were going to talk about our values and you guys would come up the staff would come up with a list of things that we had control over there's some things that escalation and inflation that we have no control over square footage the extent to which we follow the climate policy those things we have control over but the reason we're doing it is because we have lots of schools in our district that need help if if that wasn't the case we wouldn't even be here tonight so we're trying to do as much as we can respons responsibly be good fiscal stewards of the Public's trust and and funds thank you um I want to I
183want to give um my values and then hear from director suvin to finish her uh values as well and then uh we going talk about how to move on so um just really quick I have some questions and I just really want to clarify a couple things just so like when the public watches they not freaking out um because you know in Greek mythology this creature called a Hydra right it's got seven heads right just like we got seven heads here well it's a monster so I'm sorry thank you for dealing with this um it's considered a monster uh so Lincoln High School is built for uh just under 300,000 square feet right Beaverton is built for under 300,000 square feet and currently the plan for Cleveland Jefferson IW Wells is about averaging about 320,000
184square feet now lincol was built for 1700 which is our Ed speec for 300,000 right and so it it seems to me that we can still be building for edpc um targeting 300,000 now I also want to just reiterate what what director split said smaller buildings are more efficient uh it also means that we don't have to do tradeoffs in some other areas now personally my kid is probably going to be going to Cleveland so I'm very invested in in Cleveland and its success and a beautiful building uh so just to lay this out there this is something very personal to me um but if we're talking about if we reduce some of the square foot and that means we can keep these beautiful Big C spaces right I mean this is a trade-off I
185would definitely take um a couple other things I also want to talk about um I am also very adamant about Jefferson being a full beautiful well- enrolled High School just like everyone else right Jefferson deserves its moment it's been waiting um and so much historical things have happened to it that has been unfair I think um so and I remember uh a PSU study that came out not until a population study that if we enrolled all our high schools equally right even including all the new high schools we wouldn't even be able to fill up our high schools to maybe about a little less than 1,200 each right and so here we're talking about are we going to sacrifice the tradeoff is like 30 empty classrooms or maybe build the rest of our classrooms nicer
186right or bigger spaces right I mean these are the TRS we're talking if we're if we're if we want to explore maybe building 20,000 less square feet so it's just like Lincoln and our other high schools um and what we get from that is beautiful big rooms um you know I've taught in beautiful big rooms I've taught in cramp rooms it makes a difference so I think um these are kind of the trailers I I would love to hear about so in terms of value statement um I think is worthwhile exploring a square footage reduction I think that the trade-offs are well like there's really good tradeoffs that we can get from that um I am also in terms of climate you know whenever you burn any petroleum product you're always going to get off
187gasing of chemicals and things like that and so um in terms of just like yeah it may maybe up front and maybe a cost savings but in the long run we're talking about you know we don't there's no number put on health I mean there is but it's more difficult get but there's there's Health cost savings from that so I think value statement I think uh sticking to our climate policy in terms of all electric which means that um even even if we don't get lead certification there's still you know a lot of evidence of long run long-term savings so maybe it's a little more expensive up front but longterm the hope is that we save more in maintenance which is where where we're struggling to try to get money right and so right and
188energy costs as well and the future of natural gas is kind of up in the air right now so um so I think that's where my values I think I'm going to hear really quickly can I make a statement really yeah thank you for that Sher Wang I think just to uh respect the the time of the board and the staff I think what I've heard really clearly is that um we have some unanswered questions and so my request is that um we have some time to go and answer some of those questions if there's any other questions that are held in this space with board members and student director that we collect those questions and that when we come back based on some of the things we heard you all say about your values
189um we receive feedback from the questions that we send the answers that we give back to you will'll be prepared to come forth with a set of recommendations based on what we heard from your values and whatever reactions you have to our our responses I just I want to call out that we need some more time to answer the questions and and we need to I really appreciate that and we need to continue the discussion tonight so I've been cut off twice and I I will say I've been involved in six Bonds in 30 years with PPS and either leading them or on the board and this is the bond that's had the least number of meetings the least amount of public comment the least information no Community stakeholder group and so to continue to
190shut things down and it's not staff's fault at all I think there were only three to four board meetings and then there was not a community stakeholder group set up we we need to have this Des we can't just keep shutting it down because um the filing deadline is coming up and the election is three months away so I think we should just keep having a discussion I think we should go give a share the categories and we should tell you what at least our top of Mind thoughts and then send the questions but we ought to keep moving this but I don't if we shut it down like then we go on to the next topic and then what we're going to meet again next next week then we've not given you any any
191guidance so I think we should give the rest at the top level guidance that we can so I think we should get you had four buckets or three buckets four four did just I appreciate that director burm Edwards I'm just wondering like from the guidance and the values as I as I listen there there are some some differences even just going around and so being able to um quantify that so that we're able to then come back with a a strong recommendation based on what we heard um I just I want to make sure that we see a path forward and I do agree and I believe we plan to add some meetings so that we can um have more time to discuss these things I just I just really wanting to collect questions and
192hear 34 questions yesterday and think based on that I I can give you my my point of view um I want to give the climate piece though because you asked about that so you have maybe you'll have start having almost um a majority of the board um I was the chair of the climate policy committee as you know um and um very much the community and students drove that policy um while the policy was being drafted the Benson project went ahead with fossil fuel infrastructure um and so we knew we were building a 100-year school with fossil fuel infrastructure so there's no way I would support this project um not being El electrified so that would be just sort of a baseline because that's putting a longterm if if we don't Electrify it's building infrastructure
193um with fossil fuels that would be for another 25 years and those are long-term carbon emissions that um I think it's just totally heading Us in the wrong direction however there's a whole host of other sustainability stand and what would be helpful for me is to hear from staff here's here here's the cost and where we see um the best return on investments because maybe we want to make some trade-offs I mean homeowners do that all the time it's like I think I'm going to put insulation here but I'm not going to do this other thing because it's exp it's more expensive and we get a lower trade-off so that that would be helpful and like where we draw the line I wouldn't um I would distinguish diff something different between the sort of mass
194Timber and steel and concrete Choice um is different from electrification because that's a onetime in into the input into the carbon into the project but it's not a year-over-year carbon emission so that's how I would and I think there's a point where we like okay these are the ones that um we could get some cost savings that have a lesser value so I'd be interested in that list um also on the the gold certification um we can build to what we think are the most important um lead standards and we don't have to go get the certificates it's not a big it's not a lot of money but it also takes a bunch of time and I think we can say this these are built to lead standards if they are built to the main
195lead standards to me that's more important than a piece of paper that somebody certified so that's it's actually a plaque it's a plaque um I have a couple from my time at Nike um and and frankly though the wise decision is to know how to build to the standard but you don't actually have to just keep getting the plaque um because you pay a lot of money for that you spend a lot of time to get the plaque um so that's where itd be on the um sustainability pieces and what were the two other things that you were looking for guidance from and I have a bunch of questions that relating to some of those things uh also noted in the report where we there's the the spaces that have cost to them and we
196we've already heard that the health center and the Teen parent centers you'd like more information on those so those are on the table for more discussion Athletics was another one I haven't heard any comment I kind of assume that that's a non-starter but that's one we haven't heard any feedback on uh and then the other one I think that you did not touch on Direct brim Edwards was uh PBS's equity and Contracting policy we've heard a couple others say that that was a non-starter so I had just um I suppor Equitable Contracting but I did I'm interested in the same question that director Holland and I have a question like it here is like what what is that premium that we're paying for for Equitable Contracting so I don't I don't understand why there's a
197premium for it so getting a better understanding of that um lessons learned from the previous one and then on Athletics I don't think it would make we have a whole separate part of the bond where we're actually making Investments so that um our our high schools have Equitable athletic facilities so it doesn't make any sense to be making that pretty big investment on one side of the bond and then saying oh we're going to take it out of the if you're a school that's being modernized we're going to take it out and now you're going to be the two because at the same time we're catching everybody else up because I believe if we make those Investments every High School will have Equitable and um athletic facilities which has not been the case in I
198think PPS is history thank you I it sounds like you have way more than enough work to do for too much work to do for and just a reminder we do have another meeting next week to answer even more questions so whoever's interested may may watch that if you have nothing better to do um thank you for all your hard work and I really appreciate all the thoughtfulness that went into this um it sounds like you have enough we right to work on um okay we're going to move on I would like to give us question have another question question question we got I have another question it's like we we have to finish this discussion because we don't have I just want to know and it's be well I I get it efficiency is
199not a a advantage of RC PPS and that's what we working on I just want to know from Dr Armstrong when we send in questions what can it a reasonable time that we will get a response from it depends um I our goal we know that this is a Hot Topic and so we will um expedite our responses I will say that if there are some questions that are sent in that requires a little bit more research or um some deep dive um that will take more time from staff then we will communicate that hey this is going to take us more than uh 48 hours to to answer um so that you're not waiting and and we'll work to see or say that if it's going to take three days or four days because
200we have to maybe look at some external documents or things like that um then we'll communicate that so I guess in short just to summarize that um we'll answer within 48 hours and if we're not able to we will communicate you with you the timeline that it's going to take to answer um due to other uh points of information that we may need is that fair team is that something we think we can meet yeah absolutely yeah just I because there's multiple multiple people involved so we want to be reasonable so we send the questions to you Dan well let's continue to send the questions to Roseanne I mean you can certainly send them if you send them to Dan please copy Roseanne but it helps when we're able to track the questions coming in
201and because we know that we have a meeting next week we will work to be even sooner than that 48 hour um turnaround um but at the very least 48 Hours um so just continue to send them copy Roseanne send to Roseanne but if you send them to other places please copy Roseanne it'll help us be more efficient thank you uh with that let's take a three minute break thank you for all your hard work appreciate it thank you you I'm I'm good thank you always pause for chocolate y all right uh next topic tonight is a presentation on the initial draft of our 2025 26 budget uh superintendent Armstrong would you like to kick us off absolutely I know that we are calling up the slides um and I'm going to have the opportunity
202to walk through our initial draft of the 2526 budget and I have just a couple of slides that'll guide us um sorry as we queue up the slides I also want to acknowledge that we have Chief CFI and and chief Morrison um at the podium to they will also share in this presentation so this is the presentation that we prepared to walk through um our our budget I'm not sure what the the grade out line is but um so we're here for three reasons um the first is rising costs you know inflation has resulted in higher cost of uh goods and services we continue to invest in our employees and the needs of our students continue to grow limited Revenue we know that the state is not funding the quality education model um and we
203are receiving less special Revenue including um the end of the federal pandemic Aid and then decline declining enrollment we are declining at a faster rate than our Oregon partner schools all of these things are contributing to about a $40 million shortfall for the next bayum clicking is there we go so um did we skip oh well we have a I think we skipped a slide or did we delete there we go so there's it's been a multi-year process as you know between 2022 and this year year we've been working on Cost Containment where there's been some restrictions in hiring and putting limits on spending our current focus in this 2526 year has been addressing the $40 million um shortfall and planning in the future our future outlook as we will continue to um look at
204reductions as we are in a decline in enrollment and so just to visit the timeline really quickly before I turn it over to our CFO so I think you all know that Administration last year communicated a $72 million budget shortfall that was announced in about April and so 30 million was reduced for this upcoming year last year which would mean that we had about 42 million to reduce this year for the upcoming school year in November we found out about a Pur increase that add add it to our deficit which is where we um had that $100 million um number that we were focused on reducing so we had that 32 million pers increase and then in December we heard that the governor was recommending an increase to the current service level and that increase
205to the current service level resulted in about million um dollars coming in so that our redu ction was back to 40 million and so that is currently where we're at for the bayum I'm going to turn this over to CFO Morrison to talk a little bit more about uh reductions thank you Dr Armstrong and thank you again boor for having me um it's getting a little past my bedtime so if it gets sketchy please please bear with me um we do have a little bit of background here um and we provided this to you in in the packet because we are um impacting schools as you know you've probably looked ahead and seen this list and um want to give some context for that and the efforts that have been made thanks to Prior leadership
206to kind of protect schools as long as we can in this process so with this slide just kind of um shows for 2223 this was set in motion long ago and we've done a great job staying on that path in 23 24 we had um central office Central budgets and sometimes those are um staff and services that are distributed to the schools don't have the detail here for you tonight but that total was uh 10 million in 2324 and for the current year you can see that um it's started to creep into schools a little bit more more we have our central office budgets again taking almost $16 million um reduction and again those are cumulative so it's not a reset every year that's an additional reduction additional reductions and um coming into this year
207we identified um just over $14 million of impact to our students and we're looking ahead um you guys have been informed we've done some early work in the fall thanks to surveys um um Dr Franco um conducted and compiled some information um as we were coming into this knowing that for 2526 we are targeting $40 million worth of reductions you can see that Central budgets are up there again just over 12 million and the school-based budgets are impact at a larger proportion um going into next year at almost $30 million this is just a c cumulative slide talks about uh $67 million from the central office or Central Services over that four-year period okay did you want to speak to our let me speak to the why um just really quickly as you all know
208we continue to ground in our guiding documents whether it's the PPS reimagine that holds our graduate profile and our educator Essentials work um our forward together plan that is our strategic plan for racial Equity inclusion and excellence and then of course our Board of Education goals which are our goals around eliminating opportunity and outcome gaps and so of course our why even with the reductions is to continue to provide high quality education in all of our spaces and to make sure that we're providing as many support supports as we're able to to those who are closest to our students thank you again Dr Armstrong this is getting into the nitty-gritty this is we're talking earlier um than we have in the past at this level of detail for Budget reductions because we want to have
209that um opportunity for engagement and for input to um inform the budget that we will bring to you later in the spring the proposed budget um and you can see here um listed out the central office reduction just over $12 million for the school level reductions we have included a component for um kind of a line item that identifies the amount of savings or reductions due to declining enrollment so we kind of hold those out a little bit separately um it's also referred to as chewing up your Staffing and so that's um focused primarily on um licensed staff and support hours question about the enrollment um certainly I I sent this in but it was something like eight million that um if you took the enrollment reductions cumulatively it looked like there was 1,00 students
210we lost over the three years and we had like eight million I think four and then eight I sent the question um this afternoon is that so this this year this coming year we it'd be this year's eight million plus the 12 from before cumulatively yeah but we're really looking at and I did see your question thank you very much and um I was uh used our Department of Education estimates in order to identify those uh changes in numbers so I think if you asked someone from our data team they would provide slightly different numbers but that would be a cumulative amount over time due solely to student enrollment reductions that was not including student waiting so the 40 million in some ways it sounds like almost 20 million of them of it now would
211be because we've lost 1900 students not because of the teacher contract or any of those other things I mean is that like losing 1900 students is that there there's not necessarily A through line to that because get do whatever the formula is that gives per student um yeah so if you if you go through these slides and you add up the enrollment uh reduction amounts total that's just over $2 million and so for us operationally again we're trying to kind of take the reduction in revenue and distribute it kind of through other services as well so there there's not a straight line there doctor or director I'd be happy to be a doctor I know there's a lot of here tonight so I want to be a doctor okay I I did mention that my
212bedtime is nine so it's getting a little silly here um so yeah terrific questions and we've we've gathered so much feedback already and have um started making progress towards um developing a plan especially around the multiple School levels item that's just over1 10 million dollars um because those are supplemental staff they're not necessarily classroom staff but they provide a lot of um services to our schools and so working those um through a formula and considering the needs of the students in each schools is that's a process we're going through now so this list that you have before you is um just the beginning of our engagement timeline because as you know um the board passed the budget timeline which goes through June so this is where we are right now winter 2025 you can see
213that this is a busy week um we have we did an educator Town Hall last night we're doing this public uh work session we have a central office listening session tomorrow here at noon and then tomorrow night we have a community budget Forum virtual and Thursday we are meeting with all the principles and building leaders again um to give them the more of the specifics and have a listening with them about getting getting their feedback we we believe it is Central to our beliefs that the principles are core to the ability to have our students receiving the high quality education they need so as much feedback as we can get from them is um important I'm curious on that um how are you going to get feedback from specific School communities who might be disproportionately
214impacted and I think about um the southeast guiding Coalition um the there was a recommendation to take 10 FTE out um which was a fiveyear promise uh from the district which it's if we cut those that would be um basically I think violating a major commitment we we the district made to those schools so I'm curious like is there going to be where there's a disproportionate impact um especially those are usually communities that are not going to show up at a town a town hall necessarily um how are how are we going to solicit feedback those groups or even let them know that that is happening definitely um we understand that people that turn out at these events aren't always the people who um we need to aren't they aren't people we need to hear
215from but we need to hear from other people as well so we are have a myriad of ways that we're trying to reach people um through uh social media through online forums through um principles being the conduit to their communities uh as you heard earlier there are two of many um Community engagement sessions that are scheduled one at um dway which in invitation went out to the entire Southeast Community there's one at Roosevelt scheduled there will be more and we will give you the dates for all of those but that is something that we realize you have to be intentional about you can't just sit back and wait for people to respond and then you have before you the board adoption timeline which you seen before and voted on so I think we can move
216past that one um and now as uh Michelle or sorry Chief Morrison got to talk about all the negative things I get to talk about the good stuff which is how we are going to advocate in Salem chrisy I'm sorry director split thumbs up on that how are we gonna advocate in Salem because we know that they need to hear from us um we have uh legislative engagement many such planned our our superintendent has already met with the governor and has voiced her concerns about her thanks for the CSL increase but her concerns for the other pieces that need to be added um as we've been talking about the external engagement we have in this state advocacy to tool kit toolkit I'm tired too which if you click on that it takes you to a
217whole document that gives you templates and scripts we're sending this out to through principles to their um School communities as well well so that parents can get involved and they can figure out who are their who their elected officials are which districts they're in contact them directly either through email through phone call through personal visits and we're planning um days advocacy days in Salem and as soon as we have those scheduled we will get you that information as well this is the legislative agenda which you all have seen and um the reason you're seeing some of these slides that are maybe a little redundant to you is because because this is the basically the template that we're using for all of our community forums and public forums mod modified depending on the um the audience
218but this is what we show them so we talk about what um the advocacy agenda is that you all passed with as you see um the quality education model is the number one um issue at the top and then the other issues that were also advocating for we also are providing everyone with a budget uh the link to our budget feedback form and we're compiling those um adding to the already long list of comments that we've receive from people uh parents community members um School leaders central office staff you name it everyone is writing in and giving us their feedback and then of course we also are advocating that people contact you so um we want to hear from folks right that's our goal is get as much input as we can in this very
219important budget decision and also ending everything with we are not just sitting around and waiting for these cuts to happen we are out there advocating every single day explaining to our legislators or elected officials what these cuts are going to mean on the ground for a community that as um our CFO has said has already been really hit very hard how can we expect our students and our teachers to teach to the uh levels that they need to be and stents be if we don't have the adequate funds to do that thank you that concludes our presentation do you have any questions or comments I have a couple couple questions um and this is kind of payb backing on uh director forward statement as fars um getting out to communities um that don't normally you
220know able to come to Virtual meetings or what have you and I made a suggestion to our board um I don't know what's the boarder board manager um about doing some Community um Town Hall meetings so we can talk about people can have questions around the budget and things like that I kind of got inspired by uh Senator merkley's Town Hall which was awesome he had like three 2,000 people or something like that there um so I know I already made a recommendation for us to look at doing something like that as well I just want so the rest of the board knows I asked for that um um as far as the budget goes when um when we look at like our elementary schools and when I try to look at how we align
221with our board goals especially with early literacy and an early literacy campaign we're doing is there a way oh guess we got to go huh it's time to go it's aelle we got we got to go I think the audience is sleeping because that's what happens right oh um is there a way that we can maybe squeeze out a little bit more from say central office to put more or invest more in our Elementary School area and that's not a question you have to answer right now just that's just a question that I have and I will say that this is that's why it says raft all over because this is really an yes nobody wants to make cuts and well I don't have a problem making Cuts oh yeah no as a business owner
222know we have to make those decisions all the time I just want to see if we can make them somewhere else and then you know you know look at our elementary school piece basally with our early literacy programs that we're looking at and the importance of literacy right now so that's but I don't have a problem making Cuts thank you so along along that lines um director um director split been waiting for a little bit um I just I just have a couple of things I wanted to say um so um I already committed to this board that I'm planning on visiting every Middle School cluster and when I go I'm planning on talking bringing doing like um hey come talk to me about school funding and the bond um and so I just wanted
223to reiterate that that's a plan I'm going to ask each of you when I'm in a middle school cluster that that's in your katchman area if you would like to join me for that and come prepared to share the advocacy toolkit some other things that resources that are out there to help families understand that it is not like I am not okay making Cuts I realize we may have to but personally I think it's unacceptable that the state of Oregon continues to chronically underfund our schools and I know all of us agree and so we need families to be out there we're going to hear we're going to get emails I hope every time you get an email you reply with that advocacy kit every time because it's not we can't fix it we cannot
224fix it so we need to make sure people know the tools and how they can actually fix who actually can fix it um and I know resources are limited for the state government too I don't want people blowing up my phone or anything but um but it's a it's a question of priorities and to me kids ought to be a high priority and um also I just kind of so I just wanted to make sure to say to all of you like I'm planning on getting out there to help engage teach people how to engage effectively with the legislature I hope you'll all join me will'll all I'm sure be going down there and also trying to effectively engage with legislators as well um but I just really wanted to say thank you so much
225for coming and having that budget presentation paired with the need for advocacy um honestly anybody who is upset about cuts and that includes people in this room it includes principles it includes teachers it is not hard to send a message and I am still hearing that legislators in Portland are not hearing enough they're not hearing the like as much as we want so we really need to make them feel uncomfortable I'm sorry all of my legislative friends in Portland but they must feel uncomfortable continuing to allow Cuts in our schools so join me and making them uncomfortable but also being very friendly and kind the whole time um and with that I'm glad to move on and SE seed back to to director B Edwards and uh director split if there are things that the
226district office can do to support you and the board in that uh work as you're going out to meet with Community giving you information or attending whatever you need from us where willing um before director brim Edwards goes can I just say just a comment and it's a meeting standard that I use at work and it's called wait it stands for why am I talking or why am I not talking I'm not directing that newbody I'm like looking Inward and saying why am I not talking very much I am not talking very much because it's not like I don't have a lot to say but I I feel like we need to seed to each other we've all got something to say up here I've hardly heard anything from director Sullivan and a student representative
227Ki and I miss your voices it's it's a call for us to be a little bit more self-reflective about how we're showing up and I'm aiming that at myself thank you Michelle and the reason I don't have too much to say is because uh Christy pretty much said said it and you said it and I think everybody knows I don't like making Cuts I don't really have to say that so um anyway but thank you Michelle letting me to talk yeah thank you V Shar to pass for making this some space I'll share some of my questions and statements so I know we do have local priorities so I would love to see how we can better engage our local officials because I think that would also be helpful and just looking at the engagement
228I just want to say thank you staff and the superintendent for putting this all together amazing but I would love to see more student specific engagement whether that's a virtual form specifically for students because we will be most impacted in this decision so I think our voices should be centered in this and then my next statement or suggestion would be I saw we had a press conference with tons of journalists and news people I would love to see a press conference with our high school journalists that way they can be civically engag in this process and that way we can share this information out more to our students thank you fantastic idea um I may call on you to help with that press conference uh and we do take student voice very um seriously in
229fact one of the days that we're planning or working with student groups is the student day of advocacy in Salem I don't have the date in front of me but think it's March 3 yeah that's what I was thinking and then superintendent Armstrong do you want to talk a little bit about your group I just was going to say and I think this is great because this came from a conversation that I had with uh student director KV we had our meet and greet with the Middle School uh super Sac students the superintendent student advisory council members because we're waiting for the dag members to join us so we had a middle school meet and greet today and we'll meet monthly for about 90 minutes and so I talked about how we will be um
230centering them in our decision making and engaging um with them and I mentioned the budget and some other things that are coming up so I'm looking forward to the super sack um officially kicking off with all members on March 11th they were ready to talk about policy changes so watch out I love that um student representative Ki was like the kids were probably like looking up to you like one day I might get to be a teenager and how cool that must be yeah so I have some questions about the budget presentation um since we were supposed to have this two weeks ago and we're just having it now um about the budget slides I'm totally supportive I've spent 20 years in advocacy I'm glad christe some fresh energy coming in um that's great but
231I have some questions about the budget presentation um on slide 12 and I'm GNA um key off of uh the director Holland's comments so slide 12 I ask a question question um I don't know about two weeks ago about these central office reductions um and because there wasn't a page number I I think I wasn't able to clearly articulate what I exactly was looking for um because I got a I got a cumulative response but I sent resent the question today looking for individual line items and I'd like to have this is to to me I um it's hard for me to even tell the scale of cuts like just say because my my question was let's say let's talk it's a 100,000 but out of what like is it a million dollar contract or
232is it a 200 like are we cutting it in half or we cutting like one tenth so for all of these I'd like to better understand like the overall size of what it is because it's not within any context so to if these are the central office Cuts I'd like to better understand so that's a request to get that information does it make sense I I do have an over and kind of a summary number for you it's about % that um 8 Million number that we were talking about that's about 9% of the total non-personnel cost yeah I guess I'm not being clear yet I'd like to know on each of these items so the take the Le talk contract we say we're getting $100,000 in savings but is that a million dollar contract
233that we're getting at 100,000 savings or is it a $200,000 contract that we're whacking in half um I don't it just doesn't give me any scale of for these individual items okay we do have those notes that I can provide for you I was thinking more kind of globally so um we can get that line by line for you I know some of those things are being reduced completely some of them only partially um depending on recommendations um from those budget holders yeah and I think that's important to know because for example if we're completely eliminating something I think people need to know like hey we're just not going to have that next year so um like when people say let's cut the central office it's like okay we cut that like we're not going
234to have that next year so again is it we just going to have reduced capabilities or um are we actually not going to have any capabilities um like I'll take another one the central office travel $200,000 some people might think it's like wow you cutting the whole budget is or is it vertion of it I know it's not um so I'd like all those numbers just in context I also um and this would be my standard um question I would ask during the budget process is all of our contracts that are like over $500,000 um and I'm so I'd like to see those because those are not actual FTE but they are contracted services and um we've had a proliferation of them so i' better understand that we also got a um email today about
235all the learning apps there's something like 54 of them and just understanding like all of the soft like are we looking at um sort of our Tech and the software side of things of when we're making reductions so if we have fewer students do we need the same number of licenses um so those types of things um also last year I believe that so we had the largest investment ever in curriculum in the 2020 Bond something like 3 million but the district spent something like 75 million and so that's the 20 million came out of general fund and some of that I know has to because it's a training but some of it was just it was more than we had budgeted um so I'd also be interested in like there's nothing there in that
236category I don't have any context in this category and I think I know when you get into a multi-year cut scenario when we get to the bud and we're going we might have to make Cuts because christe hasn't cten every last penny from Salem um that when that we have scrutinized all the sort of non School Personnel because there's what is being suggested are some pretty significant cuts and especially the cuts that are Beyond enrollment based Cuts so that's that's what I'm going to need to see and I'm I'm going to go back to the southeast guiding coalition um because I asked a question and I also got the last four years and I look I look at the list so this was definitely a commitment the district made for five years to those schools
237and there's some of the lowest income schools most of our schools that were heavily impacted Harrison Park Maryville Lane lent Whitman Vestal um and we'd be totally breaking our promise to those schools that we were going to provide some stabilization for five years by taking that out um so I wouldn't be supportive of that and um I'll just note that um Dunaway was the I think one of the only few schools in southeast that wasn't impacted by the southeast guiding Coalition boundary changes in program closures um and I think if the district is going to propose cutting this those communities need to be engaged and they're not going to they're not going to come to a meeting here or in dway they're going to go to meeting at their school community and there need to
238be translators and people to explain like what's happening and why they're you know Harrison Park would be is losing you know a number of different supports which was one of the main reasons why we did the southeast guiding Coalition work um so I've just got to speak up for them um but I have a sequencing question so generally in February or March the Staffing goes out and I'm curious when that's happening because that's 85% of the budget I'm sorry you wanted to hear the human resource timeline so um while we don't get into the budget the proposed budget until April actually a lot of the Staffing decisions get made in February or March when the Staffing gets sent out and I'm wondering when that's we should be getting close to when it goes out and
239to understand what the Staffing um criteria you're using because as soon as that goes out like we'll start to hear from people so yeah it' be good to get the Staffing manual and to know when that's happening that'll be the third week of February okay so it's coming up it's coming up yeah and um will staff commit to providing the Staffing manual and the guidance that goes out that's what we usually get from Dr Adams yeah absolutely okay I don't know if we have a date um let me see is Chief Reese in the back that has a date on when we typically get that a date that they can expect that February February 25th says Chief Ree and so for example this the 69 the reduction the 69 that category group and then the
240um kindergarten EAS that will flow out at at that time it will be I will say that uh we spent a chunk of time today reviewing the feedback that we received at the educator town hall and made some adjustments and we know that over the next couple of days we'll hear more feedback we'll make some more adjustments and then at that point we'll say that um the superintendent's proposed budget um will be ready to move forward through the um fi the HR human resource timeline process which will then get us to um putting it before you all as a recommended budget for you all to weigh in on I mean ideally and I and I hear your question I mean ideally we would um have the the processing a lot sooner but because of those
241constraints as you know it's always awkward sequencing because of the what we have to do with the schools they need to get the staff to get set up and everything but it doesn't really work with the budget process so just asking for visibility at that point well your point is brilliant and I appreciate it and that's one of the reasons why we started our engagement so early because our our motto is early and often um so that we can have feedback before getting it out into schools and then watching it play out after some preliminary decisions have been made um so that's that's one of the reasons why we're doing the town halls and engagement sessions any other questions before we move on thank you thank you thank you um I haven't gotten any um
242board members tell me they had a report uh for the Committees so do you have a report all right sorry I just have an announcement that the audit committee is trying to find a uh day to meet we're still trying to get everybody's and I'm trying to find the paper that says the date but uh it'll be the I think second week March that we'll be having an yes the week of 311 and we're still looking at availability but if you really like audit committees you might be interested in that and did I hear you found two people for the audit committee yes we'll be having students join the committee's upcoming meetings okay yeah I'll let you know when we decide it thanks awesome thank you all right we'll now move on to the consent
243agenna um f board members if there's any items you would like to pull for a separate vote please state that now all right um do I um sorry uh Miss Bradshaw are there any changes to the consent agenda no great do I have a motion and second to adopt thank you director Hollands moves director uh split seconds the adoption of the consent agenda is there any board discussion on the consent agenda the board will the board will now vote on resolutions 7039 through 7042 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no student director consi please indicate your vote Yes any extensions consent agenda is as me as men is approved by vote of 7 to zero with student representative cons unofficially voting yes um
244great uh fellow board members if there's any items you would like to be added on or or discuss in next meetings or future meetings please feel free to email call I'm always available almost um since you open the invitation I think we should have several more meetings to land the bond cost reductions because we H we have to do that in order to get the campaign going so I would just I know we've now got a meeting next week but I think we need to have several more meetings so we can land that and be clear with our community and get going just be my suggestion thank you all right without the may I just ask if we we would we I support that and I just want to be able to make sure staff
245is as prepared as possible so I guess my question is next week are we setting the dates for the future meetings or is there any way that we can name some dates now or is that just completely inappropriate at the moment I think ranne ask for some dates has some dates for us okay yeah okay we're also there's a informal work group tomorrow morning we can't have a quum with the board but inform a work group that's going to sit down and hopefully work through some things try and find a path to land things was just gonna say that rosan is working to find sorry Deborah C fory chief of staff was just gonna add that Roseanne is working with you all to find dates uh in the future thanks we're not waiting till next
246week great thank you with that the meeting ised