2024-06-11 Board of Education Regular Meeting

001all right good evening good evening this public regular meeting of board of education for June 11 2024 is called to order all items being considered this evening are posted on the PPS website under the board and meeting tabs this meeting is being streamed live to on ppsv Service website and on Channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times all right good uh good evening welcome everyone I want to thank everyone for being here um this evening before we get started I want to share a few housekeeping reminders I see we gonna We have a large crowd um and an and an invested crowd this evening so in order to ensure safety please keep walkways and aisles clear we also ask that you please be

002considerate to those around you and keep any signs below chin level additionally I would like to emphasize that our primary objective is to engage in the business and service of our children we want everyone to be examples of being respectful and courteous to each other including us as board members even though even when we uh disagree I want to be very clear this evening if we cannot conduct business in this room what this means is if we hear audience members yelling at the board or board members if we hear chance or anything that disrupts us from doing our work on behalf of our kids I will give one warning on the second warant on the second disruption we will move our meeting to another location broadcast a meeting from that location and that you the

003public will not get to participate that means we will have no public comments or statements this action will affect those who came here with good intentions of participating in this public forum before we get started I wanted to say a few words I'll just make sure that's clear all right so now I want to say a few words last week um the board unanimously unan unanimously approve the appointment of Dr kimy Armstrong at the next superintendent of Public public school is Dr Armstrong in the building sorry there she is she in the [Applause] back um so we going to say welcome back as she was here um before um we believe you are the right person at this time to lead PPS to the next level of our kids I also want to take this

004opportunity to publicly thank Dr hus um for her leadership the last several months stepping in mid year is not an easy task dealing with board members like us was not an easy task um but your experience um has helped us get through the school year so I want to make sure I thank you for joining um the PPS team um and I know our colleagues would like to say a few words as well all right um I don't know since I don't know if we're just going any random order I just want to jump in I got the mic now so I just want to take this moment to say um thank you for um your willingness to come in thank you for accepting the challenge thank you for for blazing forward um thank you

005for um being up front being vocal not being afraid to um to share um where you feel like we need to go amongst you know just like hey what about this no this is this is good and then being able to um explain the why the rationale behind the why and um just being very upfront and forthcoming so I just wanted to take this moment to as a just me to personally say thank you thank you for what you put into this thank you for your service um and thank you for caring about our community I really appreciate having worked with you these few months um I've learned a lot from you just um just by your presence really appreciate your steadfastness um your knowledge of this organization and just your willingness to come in

006uh at a crucial time in the middle of the year uh with budget cuts in front of us and the hard work of as chair Holland said working with us um and it's just been a pleasure yes you're just always there every time I would call you'd call right back and always had words that would help me with whatever I was dealing with and everybody's already said it but just really appreciate you thank you Sandy I've known you for a long time and I want to tell you how much I appreciate you answering the call last winter when you knew what I was calling about because it would have been very easy for you not to answer the phone um you know uh anytime you have an interim often it can be a time in

007which um things stall out and people agree we're just going to wait for the next leader to come to lead things and I love the spirit that you brought with it which was um that you took the Baton from Guadalupe um and continue to move things forward and not only in a sort of placeholder way but really looked at what we were trying to achieve um with our budget and for our students even during a difficult budget year um that you know we were trying to keep our eye on the board goals and what uh we wanted for our students and you didn't miss a beat you came right in um we're super lucky to have an experienced superintendent because um I think it would be very challenging for most people to come into a

008district that's already Midstream with a lot lots of things happening and as we all know um there's a there's a metaphorical fire in PPS every day um and not only did you deal with those but you also um kept the work going for our students it was really important after the start of the school year when we had um you know the the the start of the year with um students out of school because of the strike and it was important for PPS that and for our superintendent recruitment that we had a strong end of the school year uh because you've really left are going to be leaving things in a way that um our next superintendent um is going to have a district that's well positioned um to have a strong opening next fall

009for our kids to have a great experience um so I really appreciate your willingness to like give up your spring because I know you could have done many other things um so thank you so much from PPS and also on behalf of our students yeah it's okay if I go I don't want to go last um I everyone's kind of said a lot of things I already want to say um so I'll say something different uh I think you're a little bit crazy you must be a little bit crazy because I think um when you could have spend time in your your beautiful house instead you decide to come Midstream in you know Post strike uh crazy winter storm but budget cuts um I I I would have say I would have said no um

010but I am glad that you're here I I think we couldn't have gotten a better person I think one of the things that's understated a lot is someone who has been in in quite a few districts had led a few other districts is that you bring a wonderful perspective and fresh new ideas and I can always tell that you you are an educator because I've learned so much from you and um really enjoyed your time here I think uh uh calm you're a little bit crazy but you also exude a very wonderful calm presence and uh because of that I never panicked or uh tore my eyes out so um thank you I think just from the very first moment you called me I could tell how personally invested you are and I think that

011shines through and all of the actions you take you really are so caring um and that has really translated to your emphas on communication I've heard wonderful things from the community about that just like the thoughtful responses to emails and the way you really take the time out of your day to make sure that everyone knows they valued whether they're on the board or sitting in the community um and I think you are just the best example of a leader I could think of really you exemplify all the qualities I always look for in leaders so thank you so much for your service well High Praise thank you all very much and I I some of you I've just met recently and I hope we'll stay in your life as friends and colleagues for a

012long long time um and Julet and I have known each other a long time I was hoping my husband would not figure out how to stream these meetings but he has figured it out so I I do want Julia knows him as well actually it was Charles who guessed as soon as I saw your number I went in and he said you know what she wants he said call her back and then he said and you know how to do it and they really need you you and so that was all the permission I needed and this district is really worth it an amazing team fantastic student body carrying adults elected leaders all over the place and I know it's been a tough year and it's been a year with a lot of obstacles but

013I like to focus on the gifts and the positiveness you're inheriting or adopting I should say a fantastic leader who knows this community who really loves PPS you're going to be in great hands so thank you for the compliments it's been very rewarding and I'm very happy that I did it not crazy maybe just a little overly energetic well once again you know from all of us here at the district um again just a big heartfelt thank you um and give a round of applause [Applause] all right all right so tonight we have a full agenda um we will start with recognizing some of our outstanding students um we will vote on transfer Appropriations for this year's budget um and vote adopt a budget for this year 2024 25 school year we are also monitoring

014um our board goals by reviewing our spring Maps data so so tonight we're going to start with student recognitions um we have several outstanding PPS teams um and students individual students will be will begin with students who have place in the top three for State tracking field and tennis and we have I think Dio is going to the I don't know what the the exact title is but you would do the honors well my script says something else thank you good evening uh it's assistant athletic director or assistant athletic director all right I thought it was just my [Laughter] guy so good evening uh thank you for having us here this evening to uh recognize our spring 2024 um athletes and their accomplishments at state it has been an amazing spring season as we've had

015a number of um uh successes along the way or I i' like to say wins i' like to celebrate our wins and I'm I'm thankful for this opportunity to be here this evening to celebrate the wins of our students this season uh I want to acknowledge our coaches and our students uh for their dedication and their commitment this this season um we oftentimes look at or we see the finished product or the results of the season but I know for our coaches and our students the the work to have the success that they had this spring uh took place well before um that that day in in mid-February when the season officially began so I just want to acknowledge their commitment and their dedication to their sport I also would like to thank the families

016uh building staff community members who came out to support our Stu our students coaches along the way uh many of whom uh traveled down to uh Eugene a few weeks ago to support our students and have attended the very State competitions this spring this spring as I mentioned we had a number of of wins or huge accomplishments um we had 22 top three finishes in track and field individual finishes in tracking field and we also uh had two top three relay finishes in tracking field um we also celebrate our an individual state champion in tennis um but tonight I want to acknowledge the students that are here tonight and uh celebrate their accomplishments so students as I call your name if you can come forward uh Peter Bradberry from Roosevelt third place finish 400 meters

017[Applause] so jevie TBO Jefferson High School third place finish in the 100 meters hold on di so what we GNA do because I think we have a lot of kids and I don't know if they going all be able to stand up can yeah can you just have them go back to their seat and then when when he gets done with all of them we have all of them come up but that's where they a't GNA be have to stand all the all the time and I want to make sure he I want to make sure he speaks too Malia Canada Elliot from McDaniel High School first place in the triple jump and first place in the long [Applause] jump Aiden Gallagher McDaniel High School second place in the 400 m and first place in

018the 200 M Havana Alonzo Roosevelt High School second place Javelin I'm just I'm just I'm just curious because I love the javelin what did you throw all right congrats asther Jones Roosevelt High School first place in the 100 meters and second place in the 200 meters [Applause] and also Roosevelt High School so Aster Jones second place in the 4 by1 relay joined by uh Ellie hesam Alana Munoz and NAA Landrum 4 by one [Applause] relax again I just want to congratulate all of our students um not everyone was able to be here this evening but I want to congratulate those students that are here this evening on their amazing accomplishments thank you awesome awesome so what what I would love to do is that we can get all the students to come up to the

019dasis all everybody who got come up to the dasis so we can take a picture y just just line up around the dasis [Applause] this is for the want to thank every um student that came today and once again another round of applause for all of our [Applause] students and I see um director Scott has joined us hello director Scott hello hello how's everybody all right so I wanted to know that we all was giving our flowers to Dr hus so if you would love being so inclined to give your flowers as well the floor is open great yeah no thank you sorry and my apologies for being a few minutes late hold on let me get the camera on there um yeah no I and I heard that and I don't have a whole

020lot more to add than my colleagues do but just thank you very much for being willing uh to help Shepherd us through this inter perod of time like everyone else has said I think we're really set up um to be uh a stronger District going into this transition to our um our new superintendent and so again just thank you very much for that and I look forward to keeping in touch with you and and appreciate all of your work and effort thank you Andrew I'll hold you to that commitment that we'll stay in touch thanks great all right um so not only do we have outstanding athletes but we also have outstanding musicians so Christian Brayson the director of viseral and Performing Arts is here to speak about the accomplish accomplishment of these talented musicians

021thank you can you hear me okay great great great um thank you chair Holland members of the board interim superintendent husk it's a pleasure to be here tonight my name is Christen Brayson director of Visual and Performing Arts and tonight I have the distinct pleasure of a acknowledging our District's high school music education program as many of you know our school's music ensembles and soloist recently competed in the OSAA state competition I'm thrilled to announce that they have emerged as Victorious state champions and top tiered finalists this is an extraordinary achievement that deserves to be celebrated it's a testament not only to the talent and hard work of our students but also to the dedication and expertise of the district music program directors that are joining us tonight we know that such such success does

022not come easily it requires countless hours of rehearsals unwavering commitment and a passion for Excellence our award-winning music programs have demonstrated all of these qualities and more I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the members of the ensembles and The Soloist who have brought so much pride to our district love to join I'd love to encourage these folks to join me up here there's 22 of them count them 22 Awards we won um so we're going to start with the directors standing up and waving and directors if you don't have students here today if you could come up and grab their certificates that would be great um so first I'd love to recognize director Jeremy Dell the band program at McDaniel high school and in the tuba category we have Beckham weatherbe that won

023the state championship for Franklin High School we have the coral director Katie Simmons and the mixed vocal Ensemble won the state championship their name is Freya and Paul duet Allison cell is the coral uh director at Cleveland High school and she had a third Play Place Meto voice um student ol Olivia Carson Place third place Allison again her small Trel vocal Ensemble third place was the Cleveland treble duet and then finally as a state champion is tonin Nel Ramirez at the metso voice and that was Alison quell too its director Gary ryler who's the director of bands at Cleveland High School his large percussion Ensemble named Tweety fleety Birds plays third place also for Gary the trombone and the category of trombone Tai Tai Friel Place third place in the category of small brass Ensemble

024third place went to the middle part Trio in the large woodwin Ensemble second place went to double read Ruckus and then finally um and this is really great honor um in the state band Championship uh director Riley ryer and his group the Cleveland win Ensemble Place third uh director of coral program at Grant High School John Eisman couldn't be with us tonight but his large treble vocal Ensemble named nothing but treble placed third and in the category of Base voice second place went to Dean bot in the category of large treble Bas vocal Ensemble the state champion was hooked on harmonics from Grant and in the small tenor base vocal Ensemble the average John's won state champions for the band program at Grant we have director Chris mcer here and in the category of clarinette

025soloist third place went to Sasha Drews also for Grant the OBO category soloist Elanor price third place and then for Grant in the category of jazz combo second place went to the all female jazz changes PDX I miss somebody oh thank you I did miss let me go back I'm sorry to Cleveland there's two I missed thank you the category of small percussion Ensemble state champions went to the Librarians and for the low clarinet soloist Cooper hendrik won state champion now the last three are really important too uh in a big way um if you are from Portland or if you've been here a while you know that we have a huge Jazz scene and I feel like we as PPS feed that jazz scene because we swept the competition so in third place was

026under the direction of Jason Mar was the Roosevelt Jazz Ensemble in second place under the direction of Gary ryer was the Cleveland Jazz Ensemble and in first place under the direction of Chris mccartie was the grant Jazz Ensemble it is worth noting that last year first place when to Roosevelt second place went to Grant and third place went to Cleveland [Laughter] [Music] so these these directors are in a heavy competition each year but it goes to show that uh we we have a strong presence so I wanted to finish out by just letting the musicians in the room know your Osa season is from Fall to spring it is a season that was nothing short of spectacular and it has set a new stand standard for what can be achieved in the Arts in Portland

027Public Schools you've not only won a championship or placed in the top three but you've also inspired your peers and the entire Community to come together to achieve greatness this part's important PPS will have 88 school music programs this fall showing an increase of 92% since 2015 with the majority of programs being added since 2020 achievements like this are a direct result of the value our district places on Arts education and underscores the importance the Arts have in our students lives throughout their K12 TR trajectory none of this growth would have been possible without our outstanding Educators including our elementary and middle school music educators who fostered a strong pathway of Music courses for students to thrive huge thanks should be given to the directors the families and the school sites themselves for ensuring the

028success as well as the perseverance and dedication of our beloved central office music tosa Laura Arthur who spent five years cultivating high quality music education and PPS thank you so much so congratulations everybody you've brought an honor a great honor to our district and we look forward to many more outstanding performances in the future all right so if we if we can get all the students that got a word to come on up students I mean teachers directors y'all come on up too they just come up by the Das just just walk up around Das Andrew if you put your face on the screen that can get you too e e all right give one last round of applause to our musicians [Applause] all right last but not least you want to recognize this year

029OSAA state champion champion for policy debate our own student director Frankie Silverstein and her teammate Luke s sus thank you struggling yeah they won this year OSAA uh championship and policy debate never losing around in the entire competition this is nothing new for this team they won six out of eight tournaments they competed this year sometimes debating teams that had two years or more experience in debate the team will also represent North or northern Oregon at the national speech and debate championship in June the first time that Franklin or the Portland urban debate league has qualified a team for this tournament Frankie and Luke ALS o admire admire represented P udl at the urban debate league National Championship earlier this year Frankie team was founded in partnership with teachers and mock trial coach Brian Hallberg

030congratulations Frankie and Luke and we want to come get a picture with them too we believe in getting we getting our steps inep back [Applause] I love that okay now we got to get to the business all right uh resolution next is going to be the resolution to recognize June as pride month in Portland Public Schools our first resolution this evening is to recognize June as pride month um intern superintendent hus would Dr hus would you like to introduce this item yes I would thank you chair holl as Educators we all understand how important it is to have an inclusive environment for all of our students creating an atmosphere of respect acceptance and understanding has an excellent impact on the well-being and academic success of students I've invited Dr Bernard a Adams chief of accountability

031and Equity to speak to tonight's resolution good evening chair Hollands Vice chair green board directors and student director Silverstein I'm here before you tonight with a resolution honoring June is pride month and PPS for your consideration pride month is an opportunity for us to reflect on the societal accomplishments of lgbtq plus Americans and the diversity that spans the range of sexual orientation gender identity gender expression and more pride is a month of inclusivity where we recognize all colors of the rainbow pride month is a time for lgbtq plus Americans to stand and Shout we're here pride month is a time of cele ation and acknowledgement is a reminder to LBGTQ plus students staff and community members that they are seen that they are valued and that they accepted exactly as they are you may have

032noticed that I wear a pride flag on my suit lapels every day if I have on a jacket I wear my rainbow it's a signal not only that I'm gay but that other lgbtq Plus members of the community staff and student body are safe with me and they are seen by me I wear this flag with pride but it wasn't always this way I've worked in places where I did not feel safe to be out to be my full authentic self growing up I was bullied and harassed because I was viewed as different believe it or not for most of my life including when I came out and my early 30s I was skinny very skinny but once I realized I was gay I wanted to change that I needed to change that because I

033didn't feel safe in my skinny body I had been beaten and bullied and I was determined that I wouldn't be beaten or bullied for being gay so I started eating everything with ins sight and lifting weights five or six days a week all in order to build a body that would signal to people you don't mess with that dude all because I didn't feel safe why am I sharing this personal anecdote because each year I look at our data and our data are upsetting each year on the youth Behavior risk survey our secondary lgbtq plus students tell us they don't feel safe in that they're bullied on our on our successful School survey the data are the same our lgbtq plus students rate their feeling of safety as 10 percentage points lower than their straight

034peers and that's not okay in fact it's unacceptable all students and staff should feel safe and valued within our buildings and Greater Community affirming jun's pride month is a reminder that they can be who they are without fear especially during this month but hopefully always it is a reminder that we must pause recognize and uplift our LGBT TQ plus students staff and community members those of us with power must use that power for Good by supporting and affirming others who are in the minority so that they feel less alone and less afraid a quote I recently saw said quote encouraging someone to be entirely who they are is the loudest way to love on them so let's love out loud and love on our lgbtq plus students staff and community members so thank you board

035directors for your consideration thank you for standing in solidarity with and solidarity with and in support of lgbtq plus students staff and community members thank you from all of us happy pride month thank you thank you happy [Applause] Pride do I have a motion in second to adopt resolution 6926 motion second second director green director BM Edwards and director on second I'll just put yall C is there any board discussion I want to thank you Dr Adams for showing up as your authentic self and sharing a story um because I know uh our students are looking for representation and to see a leader in the district um speaking up and speaking out is really important so thank you I I think this is I don't know how many years in a row but I really

036appreciate appreciate it and for every day showing up who you are director BR Edward said what I wanted to say as well but I just want to appreciate you for all of you um your skinny self your bigger self and your gay self and um I really see you and appreciate you um not just today in this month but every day and um also want to appreciate you for bringing forth that data about the climate survey because we hear that every year that our gay and transgender students feel um don't feel safe at school and that's something that's really important to me so thank you for modeling um great leadership and great gay ship thanks discuss yeah I mean everyone just kind of said uh what I wanted to say too and reiterate the the

037safety at schools it's it's so important I I hope that we can um focus our work and and and do what we can to make that happen um I was there on the front lines of creating trying to create safe environments and uh before this was even the thing early my career and it's still a struggle today so um let's let's move this forward thank you and thank you for sharing that unbelievable how much bravery it takes and I absolutely just respect and admire um the amount of Bravery it takes to to kind of share a personal story thank you yeah so just go ahead yes I I really appreciate you I appreciate that we do pride month I appreciate that our district cares I have a a trans child who when they were in

038high school they weren't really sure but there was no support then and now I see there is support and I really I don't it it affects me deeply and I really appreciate everything that you said tonight thank you yeah just want to say thank you for your comments I see you especially as a black man um with this so let know I see you all right any other comments any any public comments yes we have M Maline mola Maline can you hear me um my name is mateline mola do you need me to spell it m a d l i n m n d i o l a um I've been a teacher within PBS over the last five years currently I teach a class on race and social justice as well as gender studies

039at McD high school that's being cut because of your proposed budget cuts um has my time started uh first yes recognize June is pride month it's 2024 however don't be surprised if our community doesn't applaud your obvious pink washing during a genocide more importantly you know what I'm thinking about this Pride as a queer educator I'm thinking about all of the innocent queer Palestinians whose remains are still under the rubble and how their families may only be able to identify them by a pair of car keys or a ring on their severed finger the other day I saw a Palestinian man holding his baby's charred decapitated body I'm thinking about how that baby will never grow up to discover their sexuality I'm thinking about the queer PPS high school student who can't afford college so

040they fall victim to the predatory grooming of military recruitment programs in our schools like JC maybe that high school student will end up standing side by side with an iof Soldier slaughtering 300 innocent people just as US soldiers did only three days ago in the nerat refugee camp they disguised themselves in a humanitarian Aid truck and waited for starving people to gather does that not make you sick I will not give you a history lesson on the Israeli settler Colonial project a simple Google search which I'm sure you all are capable of proves through historical fact that what the Palestinians have experienced for the last 100 years is ethnic cleansing apartheid and genocide and to pretend it's not is delusional today more than 15,000 children in over 36,000 Palestinians total have been slaughtered Palestinian children

041have such severe PTSD there are instances of children dying from heart attacks the images I've seen and the screams of Palestinians will haunt me for the the rest of my life our students are seeing the same exact Horrors on their screens and see your silence for what it is cowardice and Corruption during my time at PPS I have had class sizes of 40 I have had rats and water damage and broken heaters I've watched the school def prison pipeline fully functioning in our historically black schools I've witnessed students bleed and SB and fight and Bully and use hateful language because we didn't have the resources to help them navigate trauma and this is all to say that I've witnessed an inconceivable amount of preventable violence within PPS schools violence you all could have prevented excuse

042me if only you had actually staffed our schools properly and lowered class sizes instead of spending our budget on a bloated Communications Department an awful inequitable curriculum that kids hate how much did you spend on that again 20 million got 30 seconds side note I find it really interesting that you refuse the clause in a proposed contract requiring District officials to disclose a personal or financial conflict of interest with contractors now at the end of my time in PPS I have witnessed the district and the board at its lowest cowering in the face of taking a stance during a genocide because it might not be lucrative my anger sits in my chest like a rock for the suffering of the Palestinians that you and so many others have chosen to ignore for the suffering of

043my students for the suffering of my colleagues and for my own suffering I know that beneath that anger is a deep well of grief and I'm going to be grieving for a very long time thank you I do not believe that criminality as defined by the state must dictate what we know in our hearts to be criminal so for your crimes of Silence corruption and negligence I will never forgive and I will never forget I hear there's an election coming up from the river to the Sea festine will be free all right thank you all right uh thanks for your testimony all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed hearing none resolution 6926 is approved by a vote of 70 with student director Silverstein V voting yes yes all right

044all right next we have on agenda um in May of 2021 the board adopted a process by which board members could be considered for board leadership positions the resolution states that in order to be considered for a leadership position board must notify the board manager in writing by June 1st if they plan to run for board leadership in in the July election then at that first board meeting in June which is tonight um the board chair will publicly confirm board members who are interested in serving leadership both director green and director Wong have submitted to miss pal their desire to be considered for board chair and director brim Edwards in the P the past have indicated they would like to be considered for board Vice chair the board will vote on board leadership at the

045July 9th board meeting the first board meeting of the school year do any of the um candidates want to say any words all right moving on um superintendent Dr hus would you like to give your report yes I would thank you uh so I think most of you know that this will officially be my last time at the board uh Dr Armstrong has generously offered to come to next Tuesday and the following Tuesday's meeting I've shared that with board leadership and so will be working in the district I'll be supporting her and working on transition with her but I wanted to use this opportunity just to say a few things about my work in respect with the board and I think we all come into these positions for the same reason we run for election

046we you know go through degrees to become teachers and principls and other kinds of Educators superintendents because we want our students to grow to thrive to be creative to be purposeful thinkers and doers after they spend time in school we want them to have options and it's why you run to be on the school board and I know it's a real challenge to serve on a school board it's a volunteer position it requires a lot of hours it requires looking at a lot of materials and a lot of complex situations especially in a district of this size and so it can be a challenge to stay focused on the bigger picture it can be easy to get distracted by the day-to-day swirl of a big and a vibrant District so even when we are focused

047on politics and outside pressures and by events that we have no control over my measure my message is simple let's stay United in our desire for our students to succeed and Excel we must remain United the kids as chair Hollands always says the kids are too important PPS has detailed plans that Define what student achievement will look like they have an instructional framework we're looking at an effective schools framework so please please help the staff stay focused on that work I have a set of uh observations and recommendations that I'll pass to you and uh share with board secretary Etc uh but I in here are some recommendations I have for you to examine your own work in governance now and as you go forward and I've talked with Dr Armstrong about this and I

048know she feels the same and I know you'll agree as well so I use John Carver's policy governance model to frame my comments in here it's not the only model out there but the reason I chose it I think it's a really good one for thinking about role Clarity what is the board responsible for what are you holding the superintendent responsible for and then how is she holding her staff accountable role Clarity clear Communications stay focused on the big picture and then measure for accountability and for support the reason we want accountability systems is so people can learn from each other students and adults like so I'll leave this with you this evening if you have any questions in the next two and a half weeks I'm happy to talk with you about it and

049if you have any questions three or four five years from now you know how to find me I won't be far away I'll be in Oregon just in a different location so again thank you so much thank you so oh yeah director B says she has your number yes she does all right thank you so much uh student director your report well this is also so my last official regular meeting of the board um there is so much I want to say but first of all I think starting with a happy pride month and thank for your comments that really means a lot not just me but many students in the district and also going alongside that like you pointed out there is still more work to be done I mean I have been coming

050up through PPS since first grade and so I've actually gotten to witness that progress and I I really do think things have changed just the comfortability about talking about lgbtq plus issues has really increased um I remember in elementary school and a lot of it kind of felt like it was on the students you know proposing this to teacher can we talk about this today whereas now I really see that in most curriculums especially like in our health classes but that being said you know it's very clear that there is still an issue um and I do hope that we are and I know we are devoting time and concern to that because it has very real harms for these students because even if we are more comfortable talking about these issues we're still not

051all the way there um and a lot of times the way we're talking about them is frankly not appropriate so really I encourage everyone to listen to the student voices on this um because there are a lot of them and they have been speaking for a long while and I'm glad we're finally getting to he them um gosh and then looking at this whole year it has been a wild year there has been a lot going on in this District I think every single year of my PBS experience I go wow can't get crazier than the last and then something happens um but we have pulled through and I just I think there are so many things I want to say about everything because every single day you know we're passing policies all of that

052but really I just think what comes comes out of this for me is gratitude we are still a community and I see that even now we have a really engaged Community sitting in the audience advocating for what's important to them and I think that's really important that we have this space um and that people are taking that initiative I also want to acknowledge that we always have more work to do especially on the student side of things I do feel like student voices are valued but still we need more space for them um they need to be more actively engaged and I know that's always a frustration and always a focus and that's why I have full confidence that things are going to change because even though there is disagreement in our district I actually

053think that's really really healthy and what we should have because I also know at the core of that everyone is just fighting for what they think is right for students um but also at the same time students know what's best for students so I really do look forward to the day when education is not an afterthought or a talking point but valued as the Cornerstone of our society that it is you know thinking of a fully funded quality education model um and you know I'm always touching on Hope and we do have hope but more importantly we have each other and somebody that I think I'm really excited to have had by my side this year is JJ who will be our next student representative [Applause] JJ has been the most wonderful DC member he

054is so consistently engaged in one of the biggest things about him is his passion so I just know that his year as a student representative is going to be wonderful and I'm so excited that we will have this voice for students on the board very very soon so thank you to the board thank you to the community thank you to everyone for a really challenging year but a year where I learned a lot both in and out of school um yeah just a big thank you so I just wanted to have a few remarks since I know this is your last spard meeting um I didn't write anything I had have anything prepared because I wanted to come straight from from my heart um I really appreciate you I am grateful of you being on

055our board when I think that you know with the last uh student directors I like can't get no better than this can't get no better than this and then bam Here Comes Frankie right and it and it gets better um I love your your your wisdom I love your voice and I love that you have been unapologetically using that voice regardless of what all of us Folks up here say right that has been such a uh Guiding Light for me um listening to your voice your voice representing the the students and your constant advocacy for student voice at the table um and that's something that I will take with me long whatever long journey this is going to be um so I just want to say thank you I look forward to seeing everything you're

056going to be doing um in the next year that you have here um and Beyond so from bottom of my heart thank you so much for your presence and your being thank you well I've had the privilege of sitting right next to Frankie all year long and to see her creativity I even get to see what she's done on her for her report and then what she can even do just out of her head she's just just brilliant and I said to her soon after the strike oh I'll bet you wish you weren't student rep this year this is really a rough one she said no no because now I'll really learn more and so that's the kind of person Frankie is and I I'll miss you but I think you're probably right about JJ

057I've met him too so anyway thank you Frankie it's been it's really been a privilege also on a way in um I'm lucky I haven't sat next to you at the same end of the the Horseshoe um as as you this year um but I also want to speak to you I feel lucky that um I had you on the policy committee um and you know we have some Sometimes some mundane issues at the policy committee um administrative things um and then we have some big hot topics and what I really appreciated is um that you didn't hold back you weighed in uh you held your ground you um I thought you showed that you're the debate champ that you are I was very appreciative that I don't think it was often on the other

058side for few because um you I say you took a St I think you did a good job not only um representing um your your your views and experiences as a student but you brought so many other student perspectives to the table and encouraged other students to weigh in even if they had different opinions than you so that we really got the um sort of the mo the Mosaic of different um student voices um not just yours and that takes a special talent and and we're super lucky that um you're a junior so we don't have to say goodbye because usually um I've said goodbye to 11 um student reps over the years and this is not goodbye and I'm really looking forward to your continued engagement because I I know that you'll stay active

059um this next year and I can't wait to see what next year brings so thank you so much for your service I appreciate your openness I appreciate that you come to every conversation um prepared to get new information I I appreciate that you listen to understand versus listening to win um that takes a a skill set that sometimes us as adults can't even manage and I I appreciate that from you I I appreciate your your willingness to to get new information and to be wrong and then I appreciate your your steadfastness to know when you're not and to and to stand on it and so I just want to encourage you to keep doing keep doing what you're doing stay stay focused on your vision stay focused on your purpose stay focused on your on

060your calling and that it's going to take you places everyone may not agree with you but that's fine you're not here to be like you're here to change lives and so keep doing what you're doing it's working I would argue that she is listening to win as obvious evidenced by the recent win I didn't realize you were a debate person um but I can see it now um I've really appreciated serving with you um I feel a little removed um just physically have um learned from the way you Advocate you're also um a quiet leader I consider myself a quiet leader as well and have just um appreciated that you do listen and you are still um very steadfast in your values that's the best way to win up here and to win um at

061life and um is to to really listen to learn um I've appreciated that about you I've appreciated the policy committee work and um just the way you show up so thank you and yeah you're not going anywhere so hopefully we'll stay in touch next year didn't want to go last but I guess I am um no just kid um thank you Frankie I I have so much admiration I it it's funny in my teaching career like you know I work mostly in high schools and I always get the comment a lot of times from people who don't teach are always like you know W it must be so hard working with kids all the time right and I'm always like no actually in a lot of ways it's a lot easier than working with adults

062because they tend to be more open-minded about new ideas and I think you really exemplify that and and you know like so many times I I kind of wish that I was as well put together as you are when I was a junior in high school and I wasn't um and and so it's just really deep admiration I'm just really glad that my first year on the board I got to work with you and um I think your inspiration for everyone who got to see you at work um and I only hope the best for you so thank you you are mature beyond your years you are super smart I hope you run for election because I'm GNA vote for you um director Scott once again ditto to everything I have nothing more to add

063but Frankie thank you so much for serving with us this year it was been a real pleasure all right once again let's give a round of applause for director s [Applause] Stein next up we have student comments Miss Brasa do we have any students signed up we do all right before we begin I want to review our guidelines for public comment this would be for our students and for our adults um first the board thank you for taking the time to attend this meeting and providing your comments public input especially from our students um it informs and improves our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts and Reflections um our Board office may follow up on board related issues raised during public testimony um we request that complaints about individual employees be directed

064to the superintendent's office as a Personnel matter for materials would like the board to receive handouts pictures Etc please do not come to the Das please hand them to our board manager Miss Bradshaw oh ra hand um and she will distribute them um them to us if you have additional materials item you would like to provide to the board or the superintendent um we ask that you email them to public comment all one word at pps.net public comments at pps.net net please make sure when you begin your comments that you clearly state your name and spell your last name as the time will start then you will have three minutes to speak you will hear the sound after three minutes which means you will have 30 seconds to wrap up your comments after that um

065then we'll go to the next person Miss Bradshaw thank you we have Hala abdulali Valerie Rivas and Fiona alibo in Calypso cuper and just wanted to note that um the three students here in the blue shirts they signed up together but only wanted two spots so I'm going to set their time for the two spots and ask them to go ahead and go first hello my name is patience Jenkins um Jen k i ns I'm here to make testimony on behalf of Hala Abdullahi who unfortunately could not be present the school I'm representing is Harrison Park Middle School I in I am in a yield program and if you don't know what that is it's a yield leadership development program by working together PPS and yield can ensure that no student has to worry about

066the safety of their drinking water this collaboration is crucial for our peace of mind and in health what we have been doing is science project around different schools testing their drinking fountains to see what's in the water unfortunately two schools in Portland Public Schools district have tested positive which leaves our school Harrison Park the only the only school that was negative th those two schools were Caesar Chavez and Oakley green just because Harrison Park tested negative doesn't mean we shouldn't show up and fight for our other schools as a student I expect to I expect to be able to trust that the water I drink at school is safe learning that this might not be the case is deeply concerning for any schools with positive test results we ask that PPS work with yield to

067replace all waterf found filters immediately this is a crucial step in safeguarding our health we ask PPS to commit to immediate testing of all water of all water fountains and publicizing the results for all PPS schools Leed during summer 2024 all all positive tested schools for lead should have all water filters replaced in overnight from PPS to M maintain our water quality before the new school year 2024 2025 begins [Applause] hello my name is Fiona Alo albo and I'm a student at Oley Green Middle School I also participate in an after school program called y we have come to talk to you about the lead in our school's water earlier this year we tested our water fountains and found that they came up positive for lead and pesticides as a student who drinks from these

068water fountains every day this is quite shocking and I was filled with questions as we all know lead can be very damaging especially to our kidneys and our brains and so yield is as here to ask you to commit to intermediate testing of all water fountains and publicizing the results for all PPS schools for lead during the summer of 2024 all positive tested schools for lad should have all water filters replaced and oversight from PPS to maintain our qu our water quality before the new school year of 2024 and 2025 begins I'm a firm believer in that safe water safe water is a basic human right and that we must ensure that it is maintained so thank you for listening and I urge you to act on this information hello my name is Valerie Ras

069r i v as inv Victor as I am a Caesar Chavez yield student and I'm here along with my peers to bring our project to life first and foremost yield is a student Le proog program dedicated to keeping our environment safe for students our major project and the one we are bringing forward today is the Safe Water Project in this experiment at Caesar Chavez our findings concluded that our water is positive for lead and other chemicals this is disturbing and calls attention to the urgent need for immediate action to ensure the safety of PBS drinking water this is not the first time it has happened this has happened a couple years back in mine and others experiences the water has tasted warm and almost undrinkable many students do not have water privileges at home or

070water bottles they can fill up so so they come to school hoping that they can get refreshing water and stay hydrated what happens to those children when their water isn't good for them water is a human right and not a privilege everyone should be allowed to have good drinking water this is one of many reasons why School water should be good for us to drink we ask PPS to commit to immediate testing of every school's drinking fountains as of the summer 2024 and posting results publicly LED positive schools should have all water water filters changed for the better and oversight from PPS to keep our quality of water before the new school year of 2024 to 2025 begin if applicable thank you uh okay hello board members uh I'm kpo copper copper spelled k u

071p p r I'm a student at Franklin High School the working class and the employing class have nothing in common these were words WR over a hundred years ago that still ring true today student demands are teacher demands we need better schools and better education so that we may create a better world and yet we are faced instead with military recruitment shrinking staff overwhelming class sizes and private contracts taking the place of genuine Educators and building Personnel cutting from the top should be simple and clear as a solution when budget cuts need to be made any staff lost is a travesty but when these staff are lost from our schools where myself and many other students thousands of us need these staff and rely on them to have a good education and to be able

072to grow up and Thrive that is a travesty another place that PPS has shown woeful ignorance and inaptitude is in acknowledging the loss of thousands of other students lives and a thousands on top of that in Palestine where PPS has remained silent through months and months of genocide this is unacceptable words are not difficult to create and it is so often said that the pen is miter than the sword but where the pen does not fall the sword will and we have seen that for too long it should not be that difficult for all of you to write a statement like you did so quickly after the October 7th attacks months into a genocide are the lives of 14,000 children not important to you because they are not directly in front of you is that

073how you will govern our schools that is unacceptable I yield the remainder of my time jrtc out of PPS that concludes student comment that concludes student comment all right thank you all right next we have resolution to transfer Appropriations um of the 2023 2024 budget we received an overview from staff on this topic at the last meeting do I have a motion and second to adopt resolution 6919 second director B mward move director green second any board discussion hearing none any public comments no all right the board will now move to vote on 69 uh the board will now vote on 6919 resolution to transfer appropriations of the 2024 23 2023 2024 budget for school district number 1j onoma County Oregon all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes sorry all opposed student director

074Serv time yes resolution 6919 is approved by a vote of 70 with direct student director serin unofficially voting yes all right next the purpose of tonight is to adopt the superintendent's proposed budget for 24 25 school year interim superintendent Dr hus would you like to speak on this yes yes thank you chair Hollands we're requesting that the board resolve to adopt the 2425 budget that you approved at the May 20th 2024 board meeting which to remind the members of the audience was amended to move 1.8 million from contingency to cover the CBO contracts in the coming months staff will continue to update our financial projections including estimates of revenues expenditures and reserves these updated projections will be used to determine the scale of budget reductions that will be needed in 202 5 26 to maintain

075adequate reserves per board policy thank you do I have a motion and a second to adopt resolution 6920 so moved second director to pass moves director BM Edward Edward second is there any board discussion all right hearing none this is this the vote final vote on the budget just adoption just the adoption yes that would be the adoption um I'm going to say just a couple things first I want to um thank the superintendent for coming in uh mid year with a um challenging hand um that required um I think we normally wouldn't ask interim superintendent to do um so appreciation um and also meang for for coming back um your team did a great job continuing on during the time that you were gone we appreciate you coming back I um just want to

076briefly say that uh this budget should be a call to action to our school Community um and to the legislature and Community leaders who support Public Schools we've had um last fall we said that um our costs were going to exceed um what we get the funding what we get from our state um and that we were going to have to make Cuts this year and next year and um I believe this community knows that our public schools are the foundation of our community um we have so many great things happening in our schools I'm glad we started tonight's meeting um with our recognition of our students because um it is um really it demonstrated the amazing things that happen in our schools um every day and I'll just take for example the the music

077students it wasn't just their High School band directors that impacted them but their Elementary and Middle School um music teachers um you know we have art music PE dual language program college prep classes um Career and Technical education um students we have competitive middle school sports program relatively low class sizes and and we have a great public school system and it shouldn't be dismantled um because of um State funding not keeping up with um the cost to actually provide that education in addition we have we know that we have work to do because it's not um not all of our students are benefiting from um the education programs in our in our schools so um in order to both maintain our program programs and to accelerate students who deserve uh better from the school district

078we need adequate funding from this for the state and um I know that this board and um our incoming superintendent are going to be focused on um communicating a um to the legislature and the governor the need for for better funding um so I I I want to put a fine point on we're expecting our elected leaders many of of them who sent their kids to public to public schools and benefited from the things in Portland Public Schools that we expect them um to step up and lead for us um in Salem and we're going to be right there with lots of parents and others um advocating for it um I want to there's one um the I want to acknowledge that the staff attempted to as much as possible um make the cuts that

079had to happen um as far away from the classroom as possible which meant that um there were District level cuts that will impact the level of services and also that this budget does contain cuts that our our schools and our students will feel and um that's really unfortunate but again I think this is a call to action to our community that um we need to um change the the debate and the outcomes that we're getting from Salem thank you see uh director Scott has his hand up thanks CH Holland um yeah I think um I think it's worth just giving you know a little bit um in terms of the context of why we're here and I won't repeat uh earlier comments I've made about State funding uh I think director M Edwards talked about

080some of that I'll touch on it briefly but you know I I I I'm going to vote for this budget tonight I think it's um tries to achieve the balance um that we're trying trying to achieve when we're looking at cuts that we're looking at and I think it's just worth reminding you know folks that you know the reason why we're cutting $30 million from this budget is is twof full and it one it's because we've made really important Investments um in our staff and we've invested more in pay for our teachers more in pay for other staff um it is not as much as those employees wanted nor is it as much as the board wanted to give I would have loved to have given much more in terms of pay what we also

081gave was also more than we could afford and and we talked about that at the time and and that's what we're talking about now with this cut budget and simultaneously the state you know has failed to fund us um adequately and you know if the state was funding us adequately at the qem we'd be able to actually provide not just the the raises and and and employee Investments that we've made we'd be able to provide even more um but you know because of that state funding level uh we are where we are um like I said I won't repeat I've made some extensive comments and op-eds around State funding I wish I could say I'm optimistic about it um I'm not I'm actually very pessimistic about it and the reason is because the political incentives

082in this state are not aligned to put pressure on our state officials to increase at funding for Education um I'm hopeful that some of the um newly motivated and activated parents uh from I think from this year are going to be able to put a little bit more pressure on um but I haven't seen the type of movement I'd like to see from the governor of the legislature that shows they actually take this problem seriously so it's going to be a long effort to get there with all that said I do think we've done the best we can with a budget that needs to cut nearly $30 million to find that balance um I continue to have concerns about the cuts we're making in administrative Services um and the reason for that is because and

083I've said this before I think this dichotomy between classroom and non-classroom expenses is false every dollar this District spend should be in service of increasing student achievement for our kids and if it's not in service of that we should cut it and if those cuts are on the administrative side then I am all in favor of cutting them but I also know that any organization of our size needs administrators to actually function and function well and even tonight when people talk about different things we hear in testimony so much of what these what what are the public and our constituents are asking for is actually on the administrative side of the budget we're slashing that we're slashing that significantly and I think people are GNA see that impact we're also slashing teachers we're also slashing

084other staff in this District um and and I think as director B Edward said that that is going to have an impact as well so I think it's a good budget or maybe I should say as good a budget as we can do um and and which is why I'm going to support it I do want to end with one comment and and it still troubles me quite a bit because we talked about cutting $30 million this year we're not cutting $30 million because the board at our last meeting chose to add the $1.8 million back for our resj partners and they chose to add that back without any offset and I think it's just worth really calling out that money is coming out of our reserves and it is taking us below our board

085policy of 5% and what makes that really frustrating to me is not the investment we made I I said at the time and I'll say it today I think it's quite possible that that is where we should be investing additional dollars maybe that $ 1.8 million doar is the best way to increase student achievement but because we didn't engage with the district and District staff and the superintendent on the best way to do that and instead we stepped in in the last minute amendment to cut you know to add that $1.8 million without an offset um we we we've really taken this budget out of balance again and I just want to point out we didn't do that when teachers were complaining about increased class sizes we didn't do that when parents and Community was

086talking about sped spending we didn't do that around some of the key admin staff positions and we didn't do that because we were trying to send as a board a signal that we need to balance this budget and we need to make some hard decisions and I think that last minute Amendment which has now been not offset it simply punts $1.8 million doll into the 25 26 school year so we already have a very difficult budget that that amendment made worse I'm still G to support the overall budget as you know uh as it stands but I'm I'm I'm very frustrated by that and I I think the board should really think about how we approach these issues moving forward uh thanks for your comments any other board comments yeah okay I mean I think

087realistically we have to make decisions like this people are not going to be happy but I think it's also really saddening to hear that it's not just frustration or disagreement it's heard um and I'm really hoping that in future budget processes you know even if people like not all the feedback that is given is actually implemented that people do at least feel like they've been listen to um because even if there have been opportunities to provide feedback if people aren't aware of them or if people don't feel like they're enough that is a very real problem that also feels very real to the community so I'm really looking forward to seeing what next year even though I won't be sitting up here what that looks like yeah I I'm going to vote for this budget

088too I am as I've told people not very happy with the 1.8 million either and but I also think this budget has to be passed and I think we really did try to make it as Fair as we could and fair isn't always enough but I think that's what we've we've got and just hope we get some money I know Andrew is very pessimistic about getting more from the state I'm going to try to keep a positive mind about that and do all I can to to to go down there and talk to people and if anybody out there knows people on in the legislature work on them um if you can go down do it but I think we need everybody doing it so I'm just hopeful and um and I've you know this

089is my first year and I've heard we did this budget because of so many things didn't have enough time for it so I hope next year we do have take the whole year do it as best we can hopefully get more money but we've got to live with what we've got this time and nobody's happy but I can honestly say I think we've done the best we can thank you any other board comments okay so I'm I'm GNA make a comment um I always you know since I've been on the board I've always voted no for the budget only because that's my way of protesting um the state not funding us at an adequate level so that's the reason why I'm going to vote no on the budget um otherwise I the budget itself is

090fine I do have some issues um with some of the comments know when we tout r j which is our racial equity and social justice um and we put that out there on Front Street and then when we look at funding those things whether they had Cuts or not Cuts it's really disheartening if anyone has actually and and I'm not 100% sure I don't know how many people here on this board have actually spent time at SEI or Latino Network to really say if that's somewhere and when you compare in teachers and libraries and and all that stuff if if if folks have actually spent time in these organizations we're not just talking about dollars we're actually talking about lives and if you if you understood that because these organizations actually save lives not just

091a dollar amount it ain't just 1.8 million how much do you put a dollar amount on somebody's life I've seen these organizations actually save people lives and if you haven't engaged with these organizations if you haven't talked to these organizations if you haven't been to these organizations it's really disheartening that you criticize a a decision now maybe the process wasn't right I thought you know when you have a budget committee that's the time to make amendments and the and the things I got the information in a in a in the fashion that I got it which didn't Le time to have staff in engagement and and talk with staff and make make sure I'm and I'm being absolutely transparent here that was not a strategic plan for me to add to to add that amendment

092to this um to that to the amendment at the last meeting that was me seeing the realization of our so-called resj priorities and making sure that those resj priorities are holding true to what we say we're going to do and once again if nobody up here knew I was going to do that I didn't even know I was going to do that I thought about it I didn't know if actually was going to do that but when we sit here and talk about you know teachers and and Librarians I'll be honest when I see kids who are literally getting saved their lives getting saved I'm not worrying about a library book you know I'm not worried about some of those things that we talk about when we actually talking about actual lives I don't know

093how how many kids and children's funerals you guys have been to I've been to enough where it's sickening to where I see kids getting shot and when you have organizations that's stopping that there is no dollar amount that you can put on that regardless of if we have teachers and another thing I want to say is that every single one of us here on the board has the obligation and a right if they feel something else is a priority to speak up for it but don't don't come at don't come after someone for speaking up something for what they believed in and so everybody has the obligation or the right to speak up for something that they they believe in Dr director Scott CH holl I respect that except my my issue and I want

094to repeat it again because I said it but I want to be really clear it's not with where we spent the money it's how we did it because I want to be clear you did not amend the budget to spend $1.8 million more on CBO you just on the on cbos you just kicked that can to 20 26 so if we as a board wanted to spend more and I there's a majority to spend that and honestly I would have probably supported that but we needed to make the cuts and we didn't we didn't go to the community and honestly say what you just said was these programs in your opinion and maybe the board's opinion are more important than teachers administrators you know sped programs other things but we didn't make that decision all

095we did was we took money out of our reserves we are at a dangerously low level and we said to the next year's budget and the next Year's board you guys are going to have to find this $1.8 million because we weren't brave enough to do it that's my issue it's not that you amended it's not that you asked to spend more on on on on cbos it's that we didn't do it in a way that actually that actually amended the budget to make those those necessary Cuts may I um I just I want to support what uh chair Hollands um is saying about um aligning our actions with our values and I also want to read from an excerpt from a celebratory day um the day that um chair Hollands and director green were

096sworn in and it was um director Brun Ed Edwards gave me a prompt top talk about Albina and this day in this place and I'm going to read an excerpt from that history piece because it's important to our Germaine to our conversation today so for over 70 years 170 years PPS has had a failing pattern of response towards the struggles of communities of color especially black and and Native American stems from institutional and cultural racism that continues to exacerbate the inequities we see in society and in fact the origin story of Portland Public Schools is one of a district that viewed black and Native children as burdens to educate one of the earliest instances of active exclusion by PPS occurred when William Brown a resident of Portland in 1860 tried to enroll his children in

097one of Portland's only two Public elementary schools launching what would be the first an only case of official segregation of black children in PPS after repeated attempts to enroll his children in PPS and being denied Mr Brown appealed to the Board of Education including directors whose names that I won't recount again his children were denied access the school board explained they resisted integrating schools by saying if we admit them then next year we'll have no money to run the schools in 1867 the Board of Education was afraid to provoke the taxpayers and Rouse their ey rather than risking the anger of PPS white parents the school board eventually allocated $800 for segregated School in downtown Portland where 26 black students many of whom had had attempted to attend one of the two public schools and

098were denied enrolled in this new school every year at Schoolboard meetings this school's existence was called into question until it was finally abolished in 1872 and 30 black black students were welcomed into an integrated PPS and I share that story because we're having the same conversation today um over a hundred years later and I want to um support I know that we um made a risky move in terms of our fund balance and we also have an obligation to provide a level of service to the kids that we haven't um served in 172 years any other board discussion I want to thank uh director depass for those comments and um chair Holland um I guess I also want to speak to like the question of how it was done because we have a budget process

099and um we we can offer amendments and um the maor the majority of the board gets to make that decision and I I think we had an issue of timing that occurred that the data on how things were going to land and how Community organizations were going to be impacted came very very late in the process and it should be noted and I noted earlier um in the tax supervising um Conservation Commission meeting when they asked about the specific issue is that we spent other money out of the reserves I mean we we knew last fall that we were going to need to spend money out of our reserves because of um the budget situation we were facing um this just happened to be the last money out of the reserves but it wasn't the

100only money so it shouldn't be if we're going to um talk about the money being spent out of the reserves you know we could we could pick one of you know any one of the other things in the budget that we didn't that we didn't cut and we instead spent money out of the reserves um and I would just say I at the end of the day we we know that we aren't serving and haven't served students of color well especially black and Native students and um when I look at the list of organizations that are going to be receiving funds and part of it also was of not just the organizations that we have Partnerships with also with other organizations that serve other students that we know that haven't been well served is I

101I'm trying to imagine what those organizations if we didn't fund them um the what happens to those students next year's with without those additional support so um I I just want to say I was um fine voting for it because I know again that other funds came out of the reserve and that um I always say like if your child's in second grade and need support they don't get they don't get a do over at second grade so to me these are an important investment for our students for next year chair hanss I just need to add those statements are not true and I think it's worth really saying on the record we were all told the entire board was told months ago that the CBO budget was going to be cut that would have

102been the moment for a majority of the board to say in those briefings we're not comfortable with those cuts we didn't say that we waited till the last minute and I agree we have the right to make those amendments but what we didn't do as a board was take the brave action to actually make those cuts to director brim Edward's point it's not a matter of oh this is the last one and it counts of the reserves no no if this is the most important thing then we absolutely should funded and then the least important thing should be defunded we shouldn't just go below our Reserve levels because we don't have The Bravery as a board to make tough decisions and that's my point and frankly this focus on like how important the cbos are

103as some sort of counter to my my argument is really missing what I've said multiple times these Investments are good Investments the process the board engaged in is a bad budget process that's what's frustrating to me excuse me I'm also a point of person personal privilege because um statements aren't untrue we got the specific cuts to the C to the cbos and our longtime Partners I think three to four days before the budget vote so yes while we knew there were going to be Cuts made we didn't know there were going to be very disproportionate cuts and that that's not um a criticism at all of Staff I'm just saying it was the facts we got we got the list with the cuts and it wasn't everybody got cut 20% off the board and we

104added new we had had some that were cut more than 50% and that was new information and so yes we acted on it um but it's that wasn't an untrue statement you may you may disagree with the action but we operated on the facts we operated within the rights of all board members to offer an amendment um and the majority of the board voted for it you said we didn't know about the cuts and that was the untrue statement but I'm gonna say we we didn't know about the proportionality of the cuts and is a true statement my point is well your first statement was was misleading your second one was more accurate my point is that we didn't actually make the cut that's my point it continues to come down to that we still

105haven't we're going to adopt this budget we haven't made the cuts we've punted the decision for $1.8 million for next year and it's frustrating for me to be on a board that is willing to do that because we're just the decisions next year are going to be two or three times as hard as the decisions we made today but we just added $1.8 million to that through this decision nobody has brought forward an amendment no nobody's brought forward an amendment that actually offsets this and pays for it that's my issue thank you any other questions discussions all right we're GNA go ahead and vote on 620 I mean 6920 um oh public comment we do have public comment do we have public comment yes all right sorry go ahead and call it okay Charlotte fiser

106and Diane Newton prior my name is Charlotte fiser last name spelled f i h e r um I'm a par educator at Pioneer there's so much to talk about here um first I'd like to mention on behalf of all workers that last week one of our iron workers died on site at Benson we understand OSHA's investigating this but it would be really disrespectful to continue with business as if it didn't happen PPS workers are saddened by the loss and our hearts go out to this employees family and co-workers on the topic of the budget we continue the slide into privatization of a public school district the amount that was spent on finding a new superintendent via human capital Enterprises according to PPS was $137,000 but we're saving money by doing away with our library assistant

107EAS The Print Shop restorative justice employees adaptive PE teachers the feeding team talking about kids alive and bookkeepers art teachers the maker space coordin ators and demanding custodians give back their Hazard pay from the ice storm I'm going to seed the rest of my time to Jeremiah hi I'm Jeremiah Wade I work in the print shop at least for the next couple of weeks after that well good luck with everything you need because they've decided to vend it out to a vendor who is hiring all minimum wage employees non-union who cares about classification right at the same time when they terminated the five of us they turned right around and hired seven non-classified employees in the same Department Hey grape shaft guys thank you very much I love the union you know it sounds to

108me like the board and school district is trying everything in its power to destroy the workers of PPS the people who wanted to strive and educate our children I mean I pronounced some nice little reports and I realized you know what you guys don't give a damn I printed this report three weeks ago shared it with you with through my co-workers saying print out another report for today 1 million more clicks in 3 weeks 1 million pieces of paper printed in our shop over the next 72 hours I'm expected to produce another 200,000 pieces of paper to get out to the students before the end of the school year why because I've got the books there for the next three years their planners everything sitting in my office okay I've got one employee one cooworker

109out with an injury because she tore her shoulder up trying to get these jobs done they're trying to kill us down there in the print shop granted they're trying to eliminate the whole sub basement as far as I'm concerned and then turn around and tell us nope your dad is all wrong you don't know what you're doing well that's funny these reports come out of your own storefront the very documents the very system that your teachers used to get everything and they shut that whole thing down I've got teachers emailing me why is the storefront working well Communications sent out an email who reads that crap Communications has become spam nobody reads it because it is impossible to read it's subcategory subcategory subcategory you've outsourced everything you can so you know what's going to happen

110next you're going to Outsource The Print Shop you know what you lose out of that $300,000 that we bring in from nonprofits $300,000 a third of our budget that we bring in from outside people and you guys just don't care oh well there goes $300,000 in Revenue whoops oh well you're going to be spending $200,000 additional dollars for someone else to print it thank you good job thank you you want to know what that is that's General quarters yeah that's General quarters next Sor about that next hello members and Frankie hi I um find myself in a happy place tonight which I didn't think Dr husk you responded to my email thank you I felt seen for the first time in years I appreciated that and Julia I I wanted to talk with you more

111but as a friend as a neighbor trying to keep it professional but Frankie the first time I went to Glenco my first year there she was there and she was rocking oob and I see rock on and it just pleases me so much so uh Newton prior Diane Newton prior NE w t o n hyphen p r i o r and this is Chang I was supposed to be with a a colleague whose husband is having brain surgery today so she couldn't make it so here I am instead saying my words and then changing my words words with every person who's been here we don't have the money but I have a passion and a love for my job I can retire I'm one of the lucky ones I don't need the money I will

112miss the health insurance I don't want to retire this is my calling this is my destiny I make a difference in children's lives how many kids funerals have I been to three three so I am connected with the people I serve I love every single aspect of my job I love walking to work I love reading reviews The Ordering of books the processing of books the cleaning of books the covering the books with myar the repairing and dusting and shelving of books the recess duties in the library the recess duties out on the soccer field the sharing of stories which this week I don't know if I shared this with you I always share this um movie The Fantastic flying books of Mr Morris lesmore and we cry not the kindergarteners first graders second graders

113third graders fifth graders it's moving it's about your life story I love to check out books I love to show them how to line up how to look look for books on our destiny system dust clean the tables I love every child and I have a relationship with them they are seen and they are heard and I do this full-time I've got two halftime jobs so every week I see 32 classes in both my schools that's 32 classes a week and all the other things listed here that I do and here's the budget part because I got to make it budget right that's a screaming deal for $23 an hour that's a screaming deal right and that's not uniique the library assistants that I work with I'm so proud to call them my colleagues they

114give and give and give uh I I just feel like I just feel like we're not seen the teacher strike we were assumed to be clerical we are not clerical we have our own job and we love our jobs and we do make a difference and we do save kids' lives not with books but with relationships we get those kids from kindergarten to fifth grade we get them all for six years and we make a difference thank you [Music] that concludes comment on the budget all right right uh the board will now vote on 6920 po post tax and Adoption of the 20242 budget for school district 1j all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed indicate by saying no I will say no student director civil sign please indicate vote

115Yes all right resolution passes with a vote of 6 to one with student director s Stein voting yes all right next up we have general public comment BR Brash do we have anyone signed up for public comment yes sorry just one we have yoshio dreser Melissa osmore Michelle Owens renit and Anna York who virtual I'll move her over in a minute just start say your name and spell your last name and then the time will start minutes what's up um my name is yoshio y shio dresser my name is Caroline Dishman d i hey my name is yoshio Heim I'm an instructional coach at Franklin High School and and I'm Caroline Dishman I am uh I use Z them pronouns and I'm the science teacher and Saga director which is the GSA at or saga

116coordinator at Franklin all right so we're here to tell you about the experiences that our transgender non-binary and gender expensive students have been having with the bathrooms of Franklin and ask for your assistance in finding some solutions to help meet these students needs so when Franklin was modernized the bathroom are largely designed with only two genders in mind male and female there are only three single stall gender neutral bathrooms in the entire building shortly after Franklin's remodel PPS created a restroom Equity plan that recommended that moving forwards all restrooms be all gender this includes single occupancy restrooms as well as multi-stall or Banks of single person toilet rooms while we applaud this recommendation and how it's been Incorporated in subsequent modernization projects it also means that Franklin by virtue of being the first PPS High

117School to be modernized has missed out in this opportunity uh so our big concern here is just that it's going to get skipped um and I'm just jumping that in just the concern that because that part wasn't even thought about at the time that that we're not going to ever get that funding to be able to change our bathrooms and be able to have enough bathrooms for everybody um and I'm going to go into some of the things of the situation for the students um I've got to chat with a lot of them about how their experiences are what their experiences been um so what's the bathroom situation like at Franklin some students say that the main issue is that with the bathrooms that they are sometimes just not enough stalls gender neutral bathrooms are

118hard to find and rarely open so that I have given up on using them I'm going over some quotes here um another describes that they don't feel safe in either gendered bathrooms and so they end up using the women's bathroom because it's safer it feels safer even though they have lots of people staring at them another student says that it feels like there is some judgment on how you present and student feel pressured to present themselves as more feminine Fe feminine or masculine that they can't use the gender neutral bathrooms because they they look more um male or female um and then this makes it uncomfortable to use really any of them um at the moment we don't have enough gender neutral bathrooms uh to meet the students needs and many of our students are

119having to evaluate their safety every time that they decide to use the restroom yeah so how can you help we have two requests for you tonight one is to please look into finding funds to increase the number of single stall gender neutral bathrooms on Franklin campus so that our building can align with the district's restroom Equity plan and two to FastTrack approval for the project development request that Franklin submitted in January to convert some of our existing gender facility facilities into single Sal gender neutral bathrooms thank you for your time and your continued support for a transgender non-binary gender expensive students and happy pride month thank you look like look like director Scott has a question am I it's not a question I just wanted to thank you very much for that testimony I actually

120wasn't order of this issue and I guess I would just like to ask I well I guess it's probably a question to the board but I would like to refer to this to the facilities and operations committee um to look at uh not just Franklin but I think it's a really good point Lots has changed as we've been building over the last 10 years uh and best practices have changed around restrooms and and particularly around having single single user gender neutral restrooms um so I would love the facilities and operation committee to take this up and to figure out what is our plan for schools that were built um prior to that policy and and and what's our timeline for making those changes I have a comment as well Sor I wanted to um just

121appreciate you for bringing that issue forward um I have a lot of bathroom remodeling experience about 68 Parks bathrooms and about 32 um Class A high-rise in the Lloyd Center District bathrooms and also a little bit of experience um converting to gender neutral bathrooms um while I worked at Metro and also as a student at Portland State I have um several trans family members and I know the importance of having safety when one's using the restroom and I've actually worked with someone a colleague that had to walk six blocks away to use the restroom while working for a public agency and that's unacceptable so I all agree we should put this um directly to the facilities um committee and we should make a plan for um implementing the retrofits that are needed but also moving

122forward that we understand um the these gender neutral spaces or gender inclusive spaces so I really appreciate you uh your testimony tonight thank you yeah go um I just want to give a quick update I'm gonna talk with Dan I believe this issue is actually on our next Bond um piece but I will definitely uh check with Dan to make sure of that oh yeah you kind of answer my question um I was going to Second what Andrew said I think also I think I'm being on the facilities committee I can request that we talk about this and bring up thank you for bringing up I really appreciate the the also the requests as well and focusing on on problem solving so thank you and good to see you again Carolyn and know if you

123remember me we talk together a long time ago all right next good evening my name is Melissa osmore o z m o r e I use she her pronouns I know a child in their 20th educational change in four years taxpayer dollars spent four hours paying a room of Staff including legal counsel to enforce a boundary that people knowledgeable of the child would have a meeting about their 21st placement from separate rooms without access to hear what the school team was saying no meeting occurred it likely cost a few thousand in salary when people could have been in the room or could have been handled in a more trauma-informed Way kids are expected to be on their best behavior when disability behaviors do not go away especially without providing needed accommodations there's no evidence exclusionary

124discipline is effective I speak as a mother and as a nurse I work in our community as a mental health nurse Advocate and I'm involved at the state level on a cabinet with regard to Human Rights and ethics I take care of teachers who end up on leaves of absence because of challenges faced in their work environment often from Portland Public Schools most often I'm passionate toward mobilizing efforts and dismantling the school to prison Pipeline and PPS must do better the past two years resulted in excess turnover with key leaders and administration changes can be difficult parents have concerns of censorship and dishonesty with them people do not feel valued or heard I once felt that Portland was the good guy teachers feel overwhelmed and under resource told they can't speak directly to families this

125prevents families from connecting with teachers about the truth of what's happening it contributes to school staff experiencing moral injury families unaware of rights are taken advantage of and those families advocating and knowledgeable are retaliated against thank you for all of you for what you do I've met with you in the past and you help space to hear my loved one's story at a time when you allowed suspensions to be appealed by speaking to you state law requires a hearing with school boards when greater than 10 suspensions and after 22 that has not occurred for a child that I know please bring back the ability because dup usess is not happening there must be oversight I've been asking to speak to you again through the complaint process and a complaint on sexual harassment by an administrator

126from the fall finally deserved a reply last week after after excessive Outreach resulting from censoring and stonewalling special education reported this allegation would not impact a behavior plan and wasn't worth discussing effects on sexual harassment do not discriminate with new administrative oversight within the district I'm concerned about how many other voices are being silenced I should not have to request public records to read my son my loved ones educational records or for answers let's amplify the voices trying to help children my advocacy around disproportionate discipline especially for black and brown children and those with disabilities has led to teachers being told not to engage with me I've never hurt anyone at PPS I'm not a threat to anyone's physical safety I do have trauma responses due to my PTSD I'm considered a threat because admin

127doesn't like my assertive tone or me asserting rights and I feel retaliation and race is involved I'm forced to work with and can't escalate above admin our family has active Federal complaints about PPS has a large legal council and I suspect we spend a significant amount of Council on money on Council who represent PPS instead when we could spend those funds on the unmet needs of children attending PPS schools more harm results when you don't address spending money on what the children and teachers need costs are higher when you must repair the impact of harm thank you thank you for listening [Applause] thank you Anna York hi good evening Anna York uh my last name is spelled y r k and tonight I just really wanted to talk about my CTE program um Portland Public

128Schools has had an educator preparation program for about 10 years now and I was saddened to hear that the board and the District administration were unaware of our existence about a month ago at another board meeting so tonight I wanted to share some of the things that our programs are doing to help prepare our future Educators and let you know what we're doing currently there are future educator Career and Technical education programs at Franklin McDaniel idb Wells and mlc sadly ml's program will be ending this week as have multiple other schools educator preparation programs since I started my program at Franklin in 2016 while we have had a wonderfully full year in my classroom and I'm so proud of my students work um some things I wanted to share were that my second and third

129year classes help in a variety of classrooms at ainson elementary which is our neighbor they all teach short lessons as well as provide tutoring and uh small group support for students across the school um we're in the process of transforming that class into a dual credit class with Portland Community College next year my first year students take a dual credit class already through Portland Community College it's called introduction to education they split their time between our classroom at Franklin and they also go to ainson about every other week um to have the opportunity to read and interact with kindergarteners and first graders in the library thanks to um the welcoming of the ainson librarian there um some of the things that we learned in that class include the history of education we learn about different

130career opportunities within the education field Universal Design for Learning um spending the day shadowing a particip or practicing educator and just about learning differences that Educators might see within their classrooms uh this year was the first year that our class was able to present at Portland Community College's ethnic studies conference both in December and in May um and they shared their research and advocacy about current issues in the district and the school um this work has included the removal of English selective classes at Franklin High School um it's also advocated for africanamerican studies at the AP level to be offered as a US History credit which it currently will not be um and and ironically also talking about the gender neutral bathrooms um at Franklin and how we don't have enough for students that need

131them um in addition the staff we're very excited that we were able to host our first ever educ a preparation day at the district office recently uh students from Lincoln Franklin and McDaniel came together to share their work meet with Professionals in the field and learn about opportunities um that are available for them in the future um I really just wanted to say thank you to our CTE Administration as well as other District administrators who came and gave some of their time during their busy schedules to meet with my students and the students at the other two schools how you thank you so much no but my time is up well you got you got 36 okay oh good okay so the last thing I just really wanted to say was I really hope that

132you all feel welcome to come and visit any of our classrooms we would love to share with you what we're doing um either out in the field at our internship sites throughout the district because McDaniel and Lincoln also have interns that go out to schools in their area um or come into our introduction classes and learn a little bit more about our programs uh we also would love to have support interacting with the grow your own program um at the district level right for adults um we're having a really hard time making connections with that department um when we're doing a lot of the same work with our students thank you thank you very much so I asked director Holland since um other board members made comments during um after public comment that I just

133wanted to acknowledge three things first I wanted to acknowledge the workers at The Print Shop I also want to thank you Diane for um your passion for our students in your job and I also want to acknowledge um and director um green Holland this is when you were gone but I want to acknowledge um the person who spoke up to acknowledge the loss of life um of an iron worker on the bench and job site um that doesn't happen often um but I appreciate um somebody raising it so I just wanted to speak to those three things absolutely thank you again for your comments um please feel free to contact senior board manager uh Rosanne Bradshaw if you have something specifically you want to follow up with um the board or Board office now we're

134in turn to monitoring our board goals and uh superintendent Dr hus would you like to introduce the next item I'm sorry Gary you uh you do something I do all the time you combine a first name and a last name for two amazing people and they knew who you were talking about so I was taking me a minute to get Orient no worries no worries thank you chair Holland for the second time this evening I'd like to invite Dr Renard Adams chief of accountability Equity to walk through the the to walk the board through this recent map data and and as he does that I'd like to give two pieces of reflection to think about anytime you look at achievement data there are four ways to measure something growth over time compared to a standard

135compared to well now I'm going to forget I'm compared to yourself over time and compare to potential map data is one kind of data it's not all four state assessment data is one kind of data it's not all four so whenever we get a presentation I would encourage us to not draw immed mediate conclusions just to know this isn't the whole picture this is a spot in time and I think Dr Adams does a great job with that so I just have one question about that and I'm glad you're here because you have experience so as a board member we're looking at the data and we're we're getting like the map today we get the sback data later on how do we as a board and I've asked P this how do we as a

136board know that our kids are learning I think that the the best data you have is the whole picture combined with the analysis of somebody from research and instruction together so for instance if we look at our as ASC data and we look at our map data and they're both underwhelming then we know that our kids are performing underwhelmingly well I'll say this last thing and I I think Dr Adams can address this better than me because I'm not a researcher when I look at the student achievement data from a school like Lincoln and I'm going to exaggerate and a school like Roosevelt I'm going to expect because of the neighborhoods that they come from that you will probably see some differences if you're comparing everybody to the bell curve okay so what I want

137to know is in both schools really important what progress did they make over time I may be scoring high on the bell curve but I didn't grow that much this year year I could be an overachieving kid and I didn't grow that much this year or I could be an underachieving kid because I didn't have the same opportunities by the time I got to kindergarten first and second grade and I needed a support system to grow faster so I would want to have the instructional expert and the data and the research saying this is the picture of what we think is going on this is the concern we have and these are the recommendations we have that's that was very helpful thank you well good evening again I'm very pleased to be sharing with you

138our spring data which focuses on our map growth our agenda for tonight's presentation will include a review of how we use the assessment in PPS an examination of data across grades 3 through eight a disaggregation of those same data by race ethnicity an English language learner and special education status and an overview of the current PPS actions to address our results we will then have time for questions for those who desire additional information the slide deck includes appendices there um those slides are gray with student participation counts and rates as well as data for grades 3 through five and 6 through eight respective respectively when trying to do better at honoring the board chair's request that um then there not be 25 slides so I'm working on that it's appreciated I wanted to take just

139a moment um as Dr hus started to talk about achievement milestones and PPS first in spite of the various disruptions and pandemic related challenges PPS graduation rates remain steady and strong this is a testament to the many supports we have at the high school level that catch kids as they fall and support them through activities like Credit Recovery when it comes to our Statewide Assessments in English language arts and Mathematics PPS is one of only two districts in all of or Oregon whose student achievement has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels we still have a long way to go but this academic rebound bucks a national trend of continued decline in student achievement we're not yet satisfied but we're cautiously optimistic about what may lie ahead and finally as we know and as this board has this

140board has been committed to interrupting and closing gaps in our student performance that fall along the lines of race and ethnicity staff are enacting a road map to educational Equity that we believe will stop this these patterns and begin closing gaps if we call it our three big bets we've placed high quality instructional materials in the hands of every teacher we have a unified vision of what high quality teaching and learning should look like in every classroom and every school every day and we're providing just in time job embedded professional learning to Educators via our principles and their school-based instructional coaches one of the ways we can monitor progress towards achieving education Equity by examining student growth within each year and over time growth and achievement are highly related and I wanted to take just

141a minute to talk about the relationship between student growth and the map assessment as it relates to student proficiency on assessments like the osas as we move through the presentation you may notice that our growth percentages are often higher than our osas proficiency percentages here's why we know that we have a good a good number of students who are currently performing below grade level as measured by the state assessment the books on this slide represent an amount of student growth within a given school year we know that when students are below grade level they have to grow academically each year and hopefully accelerate their growth so that over time they have more growth or more books under them so that they can reach gr level standards so under scenario where we are monitoring growth and

142proficiency we can have a large proportion of students who are growing and at the same time whose growth has not yet gotten them back to that grade level expectation on the next few slides we'll look at our growth in mathematics and reading for all tested grades and then we'll look at our growth data in each subject by students race ethnicity and multilingual learner or special education status as a reminder in PPS we assess students in grades 3 with the map assessment in the fall and again in the winter the data analysis we can produce depend on the timing of the assessment in the fall each student has a single score we can examine achievement at a point in time and we can also compare ourselves nationally and we can look at achievement over time in

143two different points we're now in the spring and after the winter assessment each student has two scores within the same year this allows us to examine growth during that year and we can compare growth over time growth is an important measure because we know that we want and expect each student to make at least a year worth of growth for every year they are paired with an Effective Teacher when looking at our map results the minimum amount of growth we should expect is at least 50% when more than 50% of students are growing we're Shifting the distribution of the bell curve that Dr husk mentioned of learning and students are accelerating or they're catching up on the other hand when we experience growth that is less than 50% it means that students are declining in

144their growth and some are falling behind let's start with math here we are seeing a year-over-year decline in the percentage of students who are meeting their growth targets for the current year 49% of students met their growth targets which is a five percentage Point decrease from last year 2022 23 when examining Elementary and Middle School results andp ently we can see that the that the overall decline of 49% is a result of a decrease in both elementary and middle school so our growth is down in math across grades three through eight on so just quick quick question so when you explain that if we're at 50% or lower lower than 50% means some some kids are probably not growing as much as they should or SL so they might be falling behind okay yes sir

145as noted on the previous slide overall mathematics growth is down and Below 50% which typically means that students are falling behind as I previously mentioned here as we look at these data across our different student groups in grades three through eight we see declines and growth for all student groups with the exception of our Pacific Islander students notably the following student groups had growth percentages below 50% our black students are Latin next or Latina students multi-racial students who were underserved our native students our English language Learners and our students with disabilities as we turn to examine reading growth across grades 3 through eight we see more stable and steady performance as compared to what we saw in mathematics here the percentage of students in tested grades has consistently demonstrated growth that is slightly greater than

14650% and then we're going to look at these data disaggregated as well there is a slight one percentage Point decrease but again we're above 50% there so that's better news when we disaggregate our reading data of students in the tested grades we note that latinx students showed a slight increase in growth and students with disabilities remain steady in the percentage of students who met their growth targets all other student groups show decreased growth growth this year as compared to last year of particular concern are student groups who student groups excuse me whose growth percentages are below 50% these student groups include our Asian students our black students our Latina students multi-racial students who are under served again our native students Pacific Islanders our English language Learners and our students with disabilities next I'll discuss um

147and highlight some of the things we're doing that should help to address of these data one uh We've provided student learning analysis protocols for building leaders and instructional coaches focused on understanding the map data so what we're doing there is giving people a structure for how they can look at student outcome data to think about what instructional adjustments they could make so we provided those protocols and we've trained our instructional coaches who are the principal's lever for um increasing building capacity among the Educators we continue to provide professional learning for building leaders and instructional coaches around math and Ela instruction and we're going to continue to provide that um one of the things we know and working with um Chief Bruno and being a former special educator is we know we've identified that Universal Design

148and Scaffolding is an area where we know we need to strengthen our professional learning you often will hear uh teachers talk about me meeting students where they are and I what I would offer to you is that's not quite enough because if I meet a sixth grader reading on third grade level where he is then I'm always teaching him at the third grade level for a while and he doesn't ever get exposure to that grade level expectation and so what I would offer is we want our Educators to understand where students are to meet them there and then scaffold them with supports to the great level expectation and so we continue to provide professional learning around how to do that our senior directors of school from the office of student performance under Chief um Dr

149Franco review their um Network or cohort of schools their map growth results and they work with our building leaders to make adjustments to their focused strategies and efforts that are found in their school school continuous Improvement plans and then in addition to that we had um Dr Franco had his senior directors meet with each school's instructional leadership team that is a team that's Ty Ally comprised of the principal the assistant or vice principal the instructional coach and other teacher leaders who are charged with really um understanding the school the school continuous instructural Improvement plan and going about um knowing and understanding what professional learning and other opportunities are needed to move the school forward based on its situational context within the students that they have in the building the community in which they sit and

150so I have just three takeaways um and I promised to keep it brief so we could have lots of time for discussion um so we know that our students mathematic growth decreased to below 50% for the current year while reading growth remains steady it is likely that school interruptions have contributed to the current student growth results um we know we had the um teacher strike we know we that meant that students were not in school for all of November we had makeup days those makeup days fell um a significant portion of those makeup days fell during winter break um and we know that our attendance waned during that week as we monitored it and then we had the um vicious ice storms that I was promised I wouldn't deal with when I moved over here

151I might add that lasted for a week and um you know sent some schools uh Clos closed several schools um some that are still remaining closed and damaged many others and then lastly um we look at these data and we stand committed to our theory of action around giving people high quality materials around giving them Just in Time Professional learning and support in their buildings and in having a unified idea of what teaching and learning should look like in every school in every classroom every day and we do that with our instructional framework by breaking down what observable teacher and educator behaviors are are and what are observable student behaviors that we can expect if things are really clicking and moving in the way that we really hope that they would and with that I

152and possibly team members are helpful are are ready to have some discussion and answer any questions you might have so um I guess I'll start with a couple questions so we're talk about some of the likelihoods of the decline um do we have have any data that we can go to or data points that we can go to to actually pinpoint where those decline were when you look at all the different data points where there's Maps you're looking at Maps as back and any other assessment tools you have that's a that's a great question so what we would have needed to really say um school closures absolutely cause this is we would need a group of PPS students who didn't experience any school closure to compare to the students who actually experienced the school closures

153but we don't have that but what we can say is we know there were gaps in instructional uh time that we've tried to make that up as much as possible but there have also been disruptions you know we've got as you all know Markham Elementary that's been spread across four different campuses we had combined middle schools between um Robert gray and Jackson and and that um our students and our staff are incredibly resilient but that is some turmoil when you're thinking about I'm used to my neighborhood school I'm used to walking to school I I I still see my trusted adults but I don't see all of them because we may not all be in the same building and so I don't want to um discount the impact that that likely had on our results

154so when we look at so when look at the math from 3 to e and we went from 57 54 to 49 so we're looking at the data before the disruptions right which was still a decline of three is it are we were we anticipating declining less or were we looking to go well I'm always hoping that we stay steady or we increase right I have um I'm going to remain optimistic about our osas results because even with for example last year's 2022 23 a decline compared to 2122 we still saw some increases in our math osas data and so what I want to believe is just in the incredible power of our Educators and our students to rise to the challenge it's been a year I think we all can admit that um and

155many of us are counting down I know my teacher friends are counting down you know only so many more days to go Renard um but who's counting and I want to um remain optimistic until we get those results result so we can really see what's going on any other board questions yeah so I've foreseen 50% growth more comfortable right I mean 50% seems low to me but that when reading that but the the map assessment is normed on the bell curve so if you get 50% it means at least half of the students have grown as much as they could have we also have students whove grown but haven't met their growth Target um so that so my growth Target may have been five points and maybe I grew through your instructional facilitation three points

156we don't get credit for that but we can examine that to see our students growing over time so it's it's not what their score was it's what their growth was from between the two scores right so I scored let's say 200 in September and then in January I scored 203 and then is that also compared against what you would expect at a certain grade level it is the grow scores are individualized for the student by his her or their grade level and their previous scores great questions I appreciate the director we just GNA go down the down the row you wait I'm looking at the disaggregated data and have a wondering um on SL slide director rememberers I'm sorry I hate to say this slide 20 you asked for it it's all right so I'm

157just comparing slide 20 to um slide uh seven where we have the reading growth rates at just this is grades three to8 at 51% but then I go back to slide 20 and I'm wondering if I'm looking at um white students growth is 52% um and then black students is 46 Latin X is 48 Native American 43 native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders is 39 is the 50% um actually more because we have um just in terms of absolute numbers more white students which brings the whole average that is that is very much the case so while we're at 50% that this is relatively stable we still have in our student groups who need more growth absolutely okay um because I think that's just instructive for our decision making around um our budget and where we're

158focused and then this is an a more general question I'm going back to it's the sing in the single digits find the slide number the slide nine the ongoing PPS actions mhm and um I love the systemic approach because I think that's what we need for too for too long we had s of curriculum that was all over the place we didn't have um formative assessments we a whole host of things that were missing um so I love the systemic approach that's captured here I'm going to go back though to I think the very first presentation we had on the on maps um and I think the O un principal at the time who's now our interim is this right presented who is now the interim Chief academic officer presented how the maps data could

159you could help teachers in their individual classrooms and when I look at this I don't see a teacher a direct teacher component um sort of Click down to that level and so I'm curious whether we still view if it's still viewed as a tool for Teacher um ways to sort of zero in on where students specifically are at points in time other than osas at the end of the year when they they're off to the next grade um so I'm curious about that because it's not mentioned on the sort of and I don't know maybe you're just focusing on the systemic actions but I is it still a tool for teachers I I appreciate that feedback um the teacher related actions would be captured in the first bullet around the student learning analysis but but

160teachers aren't explicitly called out so I appreciate you point pointing that out one of the things that I'm a believer of as a as a educator is we're trying to get our schools and teachers to focus on the curriculum embedded assessments the most look at your map data when it comes out hopefully it reinforces what you already know based on what you're teaching your students and how they're responding to your instructional facilitation but the curriculum aedit assessments are happening at either even a more frequent cycle they might be every four weeks or every three and a half weeks or every eight weeks depending on the grade level and so if we're analyzing those assessments and making instructional adjustments in the moment my belief and we're um exposing students to the rigor and and structure of

161the grade level expectation and standard my belief is the map growth takes care of itself osas takes care of itself because you're using the instrument that's closest to what you and how you just taught in the curriculum embedded assessments I I appreciate that and I wasn't um I guess I wasn't providing feedback it was a curiosity um and I think maybe the difference between then and now so that was maybe seven years ago approximately um I don't know that we had curriculum um embedded assessments so this was this was the primary tool is that yes okay great um so as again I really appreciate the more systemic approach because I think it in the past has been more hit and miss what school you're in who the principal was what the classroom teachers were using

162and I think what our students deserve is more sort of uniform support and um this looks like it so I'm appreci I don't have any other questions that the ongoing giving us the trends I guess I you know I'm a a little bit concerned by just the general trend lines on some of the slides especially the disaggregated the disag data is there something we should be looking for my fingers stay crossed okay I'm I'm concerned as well but I want to be optimistic and and wait until we have all the data back from osas our students are just finishing up um with that assessment and we'll have those data um at the end of the summer um towards September it's usually when the OD allows us to publicly release them the other thing I'd like

163to add um director brim webs is um the assessment team that works under my leadership has worked really hard with um Christina Howard our chief academic officer team and we've included on our assessment calendar all the required curriculum embedded assessments and when they likely should be given so that principles and instructional leadership teams have an idea of when they could expect teacher teams to be looking at student work along those lines like when are we given that writing assignment in wit and wisdom in fourth grade oh that should be completed by the first week of October so around the second week of October or the third week we could look at that student work as a grade level team and then think about how students are performing and so we're really trying to systematize some

164structures and some protocols and supports for schools all our schools yes chair Hollands could I just add to that I I think when you look at that you can ask a question are our kids not learning quickly enough or you could flip it and you could say what teachers in what schools are getting such amazing progress that we want to use them as exemplars so that we can all learn from them because when you find those spots of Brilliance and we have them if we highlight that it'll be motivating to those that are working really hard and need to know some other strategies to try and especially from their colleagues actually I'm glad you said that I was actually bit a followup like how do we know if it's if we can get if we

165can get down to the individual individualized student how do know the teachers are actually using it and how do we know they're making those adjustments so um Dr Franco isn't here because he's um under the weather but I would say that our senior director is a school schools are charged with that implementation of the instructional program and so in their walkthroughs and their discussions with principles in their sitting in data team meetings um we it is our expectation that they are reinforcing and monitoring for those results because we know we need to inspect what we expect um and I know that they are doing that work and I wish Dr Franco was here to talk it up in more detail than I can just I'm clear so it goes from the senior director to the

166principal to the principls to the teachers yes and okay just to add to that teachers also have yearly evaluations from the teachers their through their um I forgot what it's called but you know every category is marked meets or exceeds or proficient or does not mean and those are ratings as well um but I think the only issue with that is that when you have the evaluation for teacher does not tied to their kids performance so if we've been looking at these we've been looking at these numbers historically um that has been going down down down down I don't know how effective those evaluations are and if you look at once again look at the data and those numbers have been going down I have a question about okay um this is comparing growth from

167what time from the September test to the to from the fall to the winter so it's within the same year okay so in September we'll see what happened we typically in September um look at student achievement compared to how students are doing nationally and how they did the previous fall okay oh previous fall not the window right because there the reason we don't look at winter um we've not been emphasizing winter to fall data is you have those months in summer where students may or may not be in school and they have the summer slide and so there's so many things that could have happened where we were looking from fall to winter we know they were in school with us all right Dr Green than he doesn't have any questions not at all not

168at all I'm just go throw this out there for anybody to see where it sticks though um going back to page nine um I love the systemic thing um stuff that we're putting in place my questions would be uh around measuring how are we measuring um the the both the implementation of it and the adaptation in that how are we measuring to make sure um we've done this with an entire school or have we not um so if we look at a per school can we say that every teacher in this school or every educator in this school has gone through this level of training and of that how many of those teachers or Educators or whomever are actually using the training because there's a difference between getting the training and actually using the training

169that you have actually gotten so can we correlate or how are we measuring um what they have been given and then how they're using what they have gotten and then are we able to curtail and see results from the ones to say the ones that are using it are getting results and the ones that are not um aren't and so I'mma throw that out there because you just said Franco wasn't here and I'm sure that he's going to be the one to possibly I'm in everybody's business I know a little bit about everything I'm G throw that out there as something that has been heard somebody should get back um and answer the question what I I can offer you a response there's a couple different ways we can understand um how well to what

170extent our professional learning is being TurnKey in school schools one way is through the office of teach professional learning that's the office that's charged with training the instructional coaches and being in contact with the instructional coaches about how successful they're being in their jobs um in terms of I was able to turn key this professional learning I haven't had the time or space to do it yet um we're two modules behind we're not having PLC meetings we are having PLC meetings and teachers are talking about data so that's one of the ways we know the other thing we've done um this year is we created an instructional walkthrough tool that um staff have been using senior directors and other staff from the teaching and learning office have been using when they're in buildings and observing

171instructions so we can get calibrated and understand the extent to which you know basically on a basic level how to what extent do we see curricular adoption and use by teachers then when we're seeing curricular adoption and use by teachers there are these things called The Core actions that are specific moves that we expect teachers and students to make during instruction we look and can measure the extent to which we see those specific moves happening because we know if those spec what we know and believe is if those specific moves called The Core actions are happening student learning is taking off so those are two of the ways and then I'll also ask Dr Franco for more info okay when he's back in the office thank you thank you for that so you mentioned that

172we can so then the question would become are we and is that a tool or metric that we can then begin to see every time we talk about the the data that we also talk about who's actually using it and who's not using it I'm a firm believer in the thing that you measure um or the thing that you count get success and so I would like to put I would like to move us space where we we have conversations and we allow the data to lead the conversation and the data is the data whoever is doing it they're doing it and whoever is not they're not but the data is the data and I would like to see a lot more of the data around um the types of professional learning that we're doing

173because you put it in here um professional learning for the building leaders and instructors instructional coaches I'd like to see more about who's actually using it and who's not and what are we doing to ensure that everybody has access to the same information so that those that may not be using it are are not using it because they simply don't want to maybe as they didn't have access to it or maybe but we are we are pushing that if we believe that did this is what it's going to take to help us move the needle then we should be ensuring that everyone that's going to be leading and educating is doing what we want them to do and if they're not doing what we want them to do then they need to find another to

174do what they want to do but it shouldn't be in PPS so I can certainly work with Miss Howard and Dr Armstrong on understanding what kind of information we could present to the board um I thought personally that some of our conversations around the curiculum that we had earlier in the school year coupled with implementation data I think we had some very robust conversations around that so we could continue that I'll talk with Dr Armstrong and Miss Howard about that absolutely are we going in a line um thank you for that pardon me I said sort of sort of sort of sort of popcorn sort of in the line okay I can roll with buches um I'm I'm really curious about learning more about this um idea of measuring curriculum curriculum adoption or the rate

175of adoption in schools and also like interested in learning what those core actions are those look fors um when I looked at the presentation I was um I know it's aggregated is there do we do we have any exemplars I mean I I'm sure we do Dr husk mentioned that we do but where are those exemplars and I'm wonder if there's a way we can use Behavioral Science to um highlight those those places where that learning is happening and make them like you know the cool kids and everybody wants to be like them um so so yeah I'm interested in knowing a little bit more about the rate of adoption how we measure that and are we just measuring that by the the the outcomes test outcomes or there other things we're looking for and

176then where are those exemplars within our school district um that are that are getting the kids to wear over the Finish Line sure we we can look into that and we are measuring based on what we observe in the buildings so we're not waiting until we get map data back or we get osas data back we're in schools on a regular Cadence spending time in classrooms observing what teachers are doing we also debrief with group of teachers after each visit and with the principal okay and then you don't have to name the schools but are there schools within our district that are doing a better job of teaching black and brown kids not teaching where the achievement the scores of black and brown kids are are are higher than the average or higher than the

177aggregated data would show we had a few that we identify this year I can't remember them all off the top of my head was siton one of them siton was one of them and we intend to to do a similar analysis when we have this year's oass results to see because it helps us understand right how are you moving the dial what are you doing I think you heard principal Barry um really boil it down initially to beliefs like we believe that all the all our students are brilliant bright and capable just as they are um and we know that I know that from being a teacher my students went as far as I believed I could take them and I believe they could go so it's the combination of both of those things that's

178great thank you um just want to point out Sher Holland has a left to right bias because I'm going last again except for um thank you uh Frankie for saving me from being last again or uh Andrew um so I'm looking at page 13 the appendices thatal dependes yeah page 13 uh map growth participation rates um I have a question about this um it's a little concerning uh when I look at so just look at math right um the Asian participation information I'm just looking at eighth grade just because I don't want to look at all the numbers um you know Asian we have 86% white we have 81% I assume it's not 100% because we have whether they're not there or they um there's people who opt out testing right um so it's never

179going to be 100% but then when I look at black we have 74% Latin 8 77% you know multiple 78% I mean this is got 78% yeah lower than than the others you know the Native American 69% how much do that is because of attendance issues I couldn't give you an answer on that on the spot what I can tell you is that we do monitor participation while the windows are open Dr Franco sends a Weekly Newsletter to all of his building leaders each Monday and we put the participation rates of all the schools in that newsletter while the windows are open and I know that senior directors of school um I I I can think of a few that have encouraged some healthy competition around participation rates among their schools we still have work

180to do as you can see yeah I was just wondering if because I I wasn't specifically thinking about the math testing I was just wondering if this is kind of a snapshot in maybe our attendance problems right and you know kids can't learn if they're not at school so in your best professional judgment if we were to focus more on say like fixing our attendance problems would that also be raising a lot of our map I think it's possible right we know butts and seats matter like you said well you didn't say it quite like that I said that yeah like that um but we know that matters and what I would offer is um I would not believe attendance should necessarily be a barrier when we have a lengthy window within which you can

181assess a student so if I'm absent on Monday and I come back on Wednesday you have have the next two and a half weeks to assess me because the window is you know five or six weeks whatever it is at the moment okay I just I'm just thinking about I'm looking trying to look behind the numbers I think you know because one thing about testing you know my analogy I've used before is they're kind of like dipsticks for a car right they tell you one thing about a car but they don't tell you if your tires are worn out right and that's the same with a student right when we look at the the math test when we look at the reading test it tells you one thing about the student it doesn't tell you

182about the whole student um but one thing we do if if it you know I always I want to focus on problem solving I understand the the interest in in looking at the adopt curriculum adaptation rate and you know that's interesting too but you know if if we put a lot more effort in in stuff and finding these students who are not regular attending schools who have who have chronic absenteeism and stuff like that I would think that fixing that problem would automatically also raise our test scores just because they're learning right and so that's my guess so I anyways that's just something I want to point out was a little concerning when I saw the participation rates um and that got me thinking so just appreciate it thank you I like that question great

183question my gosh saved you from being last um so on slide nine the third bullet point um where it talks about making adjustments to the strategies in the skips I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about like what those adjustments look like or if you have any specific examples you're actually catching me with a blank director silver Stein um what I could say is regarding the skip is there's usually a three part action step if um the instructional leadership team does X teachers will do y and students will be able to do Z and we Empower building lead Leaders with their instructional leadership teams to really think about what those actions are based on their in their um school and students data and so what you want to be able to

184say by monitoring map data and those curriculum embedded assessments is what we're doing doesn't appear to be working let's not wait until next September to find out it didn't work it isn't doesn't appear to be working we've been trying it since September it's now December maybe we need to course correct and make a little adjustment and um this is those are the types of things that happen as a part of those conversations thank you quite welcome okay uh director Scott you have any questions no just really appreciate the conversation all the questions so far and listening to the yeah so thanks everybody so I just have two more questions and that's it um so I've been on like three instructional walks um which I think they've been one was learning it was really getting understanding

185of these instructional walks um one question is can you describe the followup piece of the data that's gathered during those instructional walks and what's the next steps for those I would love it if Miss Howard would come down if she's here and help me with that and then I asked a second question while she's coming down um do we have faith in our senior directors that they can LIF what's needed in schools well I certainly do one of the things we talk about um we meet we've been meeting pretty regularly Dr Franco meets with them weekly but we've been meeting pretty pretty regularly as like a teaching and learning team and talking about the same things we ask our building leaders to talk about with their staff we're building our own capacity we're increasing our

186own muscle we're calibrating so am I seeing the same thing in that third grade classroom that Miss Howard saw and then we're trying to also coordinate and collaborate our responses like we if we both have a school where similar patterns are occurring with similar students what is our similar approach to try to give some support to that building leader with some accountability and Miss Howard could talk more about the followup thank you for coming down do I have to okay you good hi um so a couple of things to know I I'm not sure if you went on an instructional round or if you went on like a learning walk we have a couple of different ways that we were approaching going into classrooms um through learning I don't know which one I did we

187walked around school and we had notepads and we were looking for look fors for teachers and probably a learning walk okay you had a clipboard it was official right although we do that with the instructional rounds too but um I guess the essence of that is um in both spaces whether it's a learning walk or an instructional round the ideas is that we building our capacity um so that's generally principles instructional coaches um central office members guests right um participating and so the idea is that we're building our capacity and then through the debrief process if we're talking about a learning walk it's generally a three or four hour um structure where we end up each group because we split into math and Ela in each group debriefs and then we have a whole group

188debrief with both subject areas and the principal gets a lot of action steps and then the senior director of schools under um Dr Franco's team uh facilitates that conversation and then works with the building leader and just like a coaching our coaching model um has actually at the end a followup so the idea is that then they would follow back up with that building leader to see it in action because if we're talking about coaching and taking taking a coaching stance with either a building leader or an instructional coach we want to make sure that whatever we're working on with them in the form of of a specific action step is actually happening happening to your point right and so the idea is in a coaching model is just not one and done you want

189to be able to go back see it in action or ask for evidence of that through an artifact or ask for a follow-up coaching conversation they maybe had with that teacher show me model for me how you did that so I can continue to give you more feedback and then we want to see Improvement happen that's the whole purpose of that right and so I think this is a Learning Journey we if you even think about where we're at in curriculum implementation I know we've we've been up here over and over saying that but that's in itself the coaching piece is also we're we're learning and we're grappling with that and we're we're learning how to coach around specific indicators that you saw on your on the paper on your on your clipboard I'm sure

190and so I think that that's the piece too is we're trying to build the capacity of our school supervisors we're trying to build the capacity of our coaches and the building leader and ourselves at the same time and it's going to take some time and we have to practice and we have to we have to get in this habit of giving feedback because feedback is necessary to improve um and so this is also an area that we're working through and and I think I know uh Dr Franco is not here tonight but really the senior director of schools um and then my team we've been really working this year on trying to align and get um really tight on how we work together and how the vision needs to be rowing in the same direction

191and so that's also an area that we're we're really trying to get better at and Dr Adams has been part of that and um Chief buo he's been part of that as well and I think that's been really um helpful this year to really get on the same page but it's a learning journey and we're not we're not all the way there yet at all all right thank you yeah any other board questions all right thank you both thank you so next we have board committee and Conference reports I want to turn this over to my colleague um to provide updates um on their committees we also have a request from director suvan to have some time to hear a bit more about the student climate Summit from cat Davis um advisory advisor for the

192climate Justin and one of the student participants is Cat still here and the student all right way in the back all right thanks for your patience thanks for being here so late all right you're up Dr me director s sorry um well I went to the um climate Summit and was really excited about what I saw and just invited cat I hoped she'd been earlier tonight but sorry that it's so late and um just really appreciate your coming and appreciate what you're doing and it was just really an exciting place to be so please tell us more thank you so much directors for having us here tonight we're eager to get to share with you a little update a brief update um so last month over 150 students from seven different high schools across the

193district gathered at the red building on salmon Street for the second annual PPS climate Summit uh and the events goal was to connect students with leaders from across the district um around the power of climate action through the seed of the event which was seeds of change and at the summit students heard from state representative kfam about environmental justice and from representatives of the Portland clean energy fund uh as well as meeting with local author Elizabeth door they had a chance to meet with over 20 amazing Community Partners for some Hands-On projects and learning and participate in a project management Workshop as well so the summit was really made possible by key inut from our climate Justice youth advisory which is made up of dedicated and passionate high school students from across the district and

194at that acted as thought Partners in defining our climate Justice initiatives and Leadership this year as well as really um helping us understand what students really need out of this community engagement so in order to learn a little bit more about it I invited Issa Taylor to come speak with me who spoke at the summit and has been amazingly involved not only in the climate Justice youth advisory but also the District student council and our PPS design team use is just everywhere so thanks so much for joining us welcome hello my my name is Issa Taylor I'm a sophomore IW Wells High School and a member of the climate Justice youth advisory team I would like to give my input on this year's climate Summit and how much of a success it was the climate

195Summit was a really fun opportunity for high school students to get more in touch with climate work and how we can actually make change the summ included a workshop for on how we as students can actually create and lead a climate project at our schools and hosted a lot of really cool organizations that each impact our community in meaningful ways it also hosted very very informative Q&A sessions with representative fam and organizations involved in climate work such as the Portland clean energy fund as a member of the youth advisory team I play an integral role in planning the event by giving recommendations and feedback on organizations who wanted to attend the summit I also gave feedback on Summit tabling and how the actual event should be laid out during the actual event I acted as

196a speaker I introduced the Portland clean energy fund Community engagement coordinator and the author Elizabeth door events like this which make the community and its students more aware of our climate crisis and how we can solve it are instrumental to the future of our community and should be should and should be prioritized in the future thank you thank you thank you your mic your mic turn your mic on turn your mic on oh I saved my wonderful brochure I mean this was this was really very professionally done and I could have stayed a lot longer I just wanded around yeah I did want to mention that um all of the recordings from the event uh were taped and will be available on our YouTube page shortly um as well as the different resources that we

197shared so thank you I'm glad you mentioned that you saved your packing so I was like good yes and they'll be available as well so and I planted my seeds and I made to save my button there was a lot of good activities going on I just I want Tok the youth commission um I work for the city of Portland and we're going to be standing up a sustainability and climate commission that'll involve four youth um Commissioners that will receive $1,000 stiens per month that will get PSU credits in governance climate science and advocacy and um really hope to see some PPS representation on that thank you all right so next we will go Gary I have one more go ahead I was busy having fun things going going to different student things and I

198just think it's so important to talk about the really good things that are going on because sometimes at board meetings we just hear about things that are people are frustrated with so um I besides going to your summit I have the opportunity a coup couple weeks ago to attend an award ceremony that was hosted by a group called communicare now I really didn't know much about community care but I got the invitation they had a dinner so I went and um it was really a great event and I want to give a shout out to the students that are involved in this program the program sponsored by the Arlene Schnitzer Care Foundation the purpose of the program is to give students that are interested in service to their Community the opportunity to contribute Financial grants

199to nonprofits of their choice and the way you talked about the way you organized sounds a lot about how these students organize for their program so there's many steps in this year-long process first the students choose a community issue that they care about then they write a brief mission statement outlining their Grant make Grant making priorities for the year each group starts out with 7500 and can double their money through fundraising with a fundraising goal of $750 every dollar raise will be matched 10 times up to 15,000 students choose their own fundraising activities so they're going to have $155,000 if they raise the 750 to give to a group of their group or groups of their choice so from November through January nonprofits submit applications students can conduct their own research into Oregon nonprofits and

200invite them to apply and nonprofits can also apply directly to a mission statement that the students have written without an invitation through the public web submission portal on communic Care's website then in January and February the student groups developed their own evaluation criteria and review applications and they select three to four organizations for interviews and in March and April the students schedule and conduct an interview or site visit with each of their top nonprofit piics using interview questions they develop and after interviewing for superintendent I realize that's not easy so the they go they do a lot of work for this then in April they choose which nonprofits will receive the grants and how much each will receive in May there is a celebration where the checks are presented to the recipients and that's what

201I attended that's what I saw all comprehensive Portland public high schools and Alliance at Meek participate in the program and also there's lots of um high schools throughout the state of Oregon sometimes there are multiple groups groups at a single school all schools participate in a celebration the one that I attended was one of six um in the Portland area schools so I'd like to give a shout out to the many students in Oregon who gave their time to this program I was able to see four of our PPS high schools give presentations and want to give them special recognition McDaniel was represented by three groups a business management class Justice La class and a business launch class Jefferson was represented by their international human rights Club Alliance was represented by its leadership class and

202Lincoln by its communicare Club I would also like to recognize the teachers who serve as advisers these Innovative programs would not be possible without their support but I was just really impressed by the amount of work they have to do through the whole year and um you know really learn about the community by doing that oh that was awesome thank you before our guest leaves I just I want to uh just also thank for shepherding um whatever four years ago there there wasn't a climate policy we didn't have a climate advisor and thank you for nurturing um and supporting our students um and really amplifying their voice voice because they were very instrumental in helping develop the policy um but thank you for um your continuing to uh support students and also our staff as

203we strive to meet our clinicals and also for being our temporary DC adviser for just like the beginning of the year that was thank you guys so much all right so up next we're going to have committee updates we're going to start with uh the audit committee I don't have an update all right Student Success committee I didn't go last um uh I did that on purpose thank you anyways um now I forgot what I say um yeah so one of the things we're gonna we started the year um talking about trying to um focus on graduation so how the the the agong question of how do you increase rigor um at the same time increase graduation rates um one of the things that we're going to be talking about next meeting is how to

204keep you know I think this year we had a lot of distractions and kind of popcorn around and stuff like that but next year with this next meeting we really want to talk about um how how we're going to put guardrails up and and set up so that we can achieve a singular at least a singular goal that would help the district um or an actionable item for the board the rest of the board to consider that could uh increase our our graduation rates as well as um you know what does what does riger look like or or having a diploma that has some Prestige behind it but not dropping you know not leaving students who uh behind so um that's going to be a very difficult discussion we're g uh that's what we're going

205to do next but just kind of really focus on on problem solving and yeah that's all I have so it'll be hopefully an exciting one next time all right no no thank you I have a question about that can I I'll ask him I'll ask him after the meeting all right next we have the policy committee uh so we met earlier this week uh we have three um it seems like it was days ago um we have three primary policies under consideration um first director Wong has brought forward some modification propos some modifications to our travel policy and we're in the process of gathering data um that we'll consider next meeting and then second we had um i' describe it as an in initial exploration of a PPS policy relating to um AI um and

206PPS both how it it could be used in positive ways in ways that maybe not not so positive um but again it was a preliminary conversation just assessing um kind of what what the various issues of how um so as I think as director Wong pointed out um AI has been around for a long time writing a spell check is most basic uh type of AI um but really looking at what are the implications for sort of the evolving um nature of how AI is used in the classroom and in our school districts and by students and staff and then the third topic um we're um continuing committee discussion and work about um potentially on a districtwide cell phone uh use policy and I want to thank um student rep uh Frankie uh for volunteering

207to take the lead on a uh student survey regarding a cell phone policy at the very front end I'm sure we we will get throughout the process have lots of feedback from uh students I guess parents and others about and and staff about a policy um but I really appreciate your taking a lead on that um as we begin the work awesome thanks CH Hollin yes just wanted to jump in it just happened to be relevant I'm actually at a conference which is why I'm not attending today we had a a keynote speaker on Sunday Casey Newton who speaks about technology and its intersection um and I'm just putting this out there it's one one voice but he he uh he really recommended the governments not adopt AI policies at this point because of the

208constant changes that are going on so he he really recommends that we continue to look at it very closely which it sounds like the policy committee is doing which I appreciate but I think it's worth sort of having this conversation about um you know whether we want to actually be adopting a policy or whether we want to be prepared to ad op a policy at some point in the future it kind of sounded director B was like that ladder was maybe where you were headed anyway but just it it hit a key there was a keynote speaker that I heard that seemed very relevant to the conversation perhaps yeah I really appreciate that and we' love to have whatever um if you want to come present at the committee um that'd be great um but

209and in the vein that you talked about we did um I say we're in at the point that we're exploring it and we've had a pretty explicit discussion that it would be fairly High high level and probably very high level guidance and there also is going to be likely other policies that are implicated there might have ai implications um but that we wouldn't want to be too specific um or detailed um again it's a rapidly evolving field and we don't want to be in the business of like changing the policy all the time so I think your um what you're pointing out is something that we've also considered in the committee and um will continue to consider and you can pressure test whether we've met the is it high level enough that you have some

210sort of values and guidance um that can stand somewhat the test of this for length of period of Time versus um something that is immediately dated you know in a short period of time great and also too we we actually went to a seminar on that when we was at the nasby uh conference and they talked about that too so we have some information as well we can bring back Andrew bring back some information director green is in my ear saying make sure you bring back information all right Dex is the facilities and operations committee um we just really talked about um Bond planning and then um we had a good conversation with um about the grant Bowl um looks like they're going to do some fundraising for the to make the grant bowl lights

211um situation happen so we're gonna um keep you guys updated on that and then we don't have no more superintendent search updates because we've already hired one so got that's it all right next is the consent agenda the board will now vote on the consent agenda board members if there's any items you would like to pull for discussions we will set those aside for the next time we meet Miss brashard is there any changes to the in agenda no board members are any other items you would like to pull do I have a motion and a second to adopt a consent agenda so moved second director the pass moves director green seconds is there any board discussion on the consent agenda hearing none the board will now vote on resolutions 6921 through 6925 all in

212favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed student director Silverstein please indicate your vote Yes all right motion cons pass 70 with student director s sign voting yes do we have any comments from our Union Partners so we have to make sure that we you know based on the bargain that you notify us to let us know um I was just see you in the back so that's why I called you up no worries I'll send an email next time we're a learning institution so I think it's okay to learn together yes hi everybody uh Chris Walters SEIU nutrition services co-chair and uh last month I came in front of you to make you aware of of a situation regarding back pay for custodians around the winter weather event in January where

213the custodians came in oftentimes risking their lives uh to try to keep our schools functional for when the weather event ended and students were going to come back and because of the extraordinar length of time that the bargaining uh session took place the new contract wasn't ratified until after that event um although if the contract had been bargained and ratified in a more timely manner this would not have been an issue and I wouldn't be in front of you talking about this uh so retray was assigned for the seciu unit that retropay included the hazard pay negotiated in the contract and because the contract was ratified after the event the district is now trying to claw back $53,000 from approximately 200 custodians um which because our custodians are among the lowest paid folks in the

214district this money has already gone to food to rent bills that sort of thing and I'm hoping that in the past month youve all taken time to consider uh that particular situation I mean this is a you know obviously the district is trying to pinch pennies at this point but the district has also been willing to pay $90,000 to someone who was getting fired um to fire them so I feel like you know $53,000 across 200 custodians who in many cases as I mentioned risk their lives to keep our schools going if you all could see it in your hearts to forgive that we would be appreciative uh especially with you know a new superintendent coming in and hopefully a reset in uh relations with the unions we would definitely appreciate your consideration on that

215that's all I've got thank you thank you thank you all right all right any other board business all right well the meeting is adjourned the next regular meeting of the board will be July oh no June 25th that a work session all right okay work session July 9th right July 9th is the next regular board meeting all right meeting journ