Welcome, Public Comment, Review of the Agenda 

There was no public comment.

Margot stated that we would hear presentations from the Facilities, Resources and School Choice task groups, following  the same process as the last meeting.   She requested groups limit their presentations to 45 minutes, after which there would be opportunity for questions and dialogue.

Each group was asked to address these questions in their presentations:

1. What are the primary issues or focus of your task group?  Have you broadened it?
2. What are the primary sources or references you are using?  Have you gone to the broader community to gather input?
3. Are you beginning to see overlaps and/or gaps in the areas with which you are dealing?
4. Given the unique characteristics of the Eugene School District, what design or characteristics do you see emerging?

Facilities Task Group

Primary Categories:

• Physical structure and design
• Accommodation of all internal and external programs
• Student After-School/Sports Activities and Community Use
• New Schools vs.  Remodel & Large Schools vs. Small
• School Safety & Security

Jeff repeated that these are just brainstormed concepts and ideas.  The committee did not come to consensus on them. 
Additional comments from Mr. Faust:

• plan ahead
• a place kids really want to come to
• safety/security design should include school grounds/ fields
• safe, healthy materials used in construction
• expandable or flexible to respond to changes in population, staffing
• design to accommodate community needs and special programs

New Schools vs.  Remodel & Large Schools vs. Small - David Brewer, Bill Hirsh

David  listed the factors his subcommittee feels should be considered  in building new schools or remodeling of old schools. 

Bill Hirsh described the group’s analysis and vision of smaller schools within a larger school.  He talked about definitions of ‘large’ and ‘small’ schools and how they may differ around the state and the country.   Larger schools may be able to support more programs.  School size is an instructional issue, he feels, and it will be important to work with the Educational Programs task group. 

The subcommittee believes that it is important to look at an extended period such as 50 years when planning for replacement, and that the community should plan for phased replacement of all 4J buildings.  While replacement is recommended, he acknowledged that realistically it might not happen in the foreseeable future.  He estimated the cost of a new high school to be $40 million; a new elementary school $8 million, including architect’s fees and permits. 

School Safety and Security - Tod Schneider, Eugene Police Department

Mr. Schneider is a crime prevention specialist, with interests in  crime prevention through environmental design and school safety issues.   He cautioned against thinking that school design is the place to prevent juvenile homicides;  the vast majority do not occur in school buildings. 

He described the basic concepts of “crime prevention through environmental design.” 

• Natural surveillance: how well can you see what’s going on; opening up the lines of vision; mirrors and windows.
• Natural access control:  limiting the ways in and out of building; controlling access to school site as a whole;
• Territoriality: ways to establish who’s supposed to be there and who’s not, and how you can tell.
• uniforms can be very effective
• badges can easily get lost
• Increasingly the office/entry design and location is seen as key factor, the guardian of the school.

• Every principal sees the CPTED research/analysis that he does
• Schools should be positive, non-threatening and build hope instead of reinforcing fear
• Need to involve architects so that they understand and incorporate CPTED standards in their design

1. Assuming we have vacant properties, what policies should we apply to their use and that of other properties that consolidation or closure make available? //  Not yet addressed; will look at.
2. Is the hybrid model (several small schools within one large school) one that you are going to recommend?  // It is not purely a facilities issue and we want to work with other task groups to come up with a combined answer.
3. A concern that other community uses of facilities, such as for SMART programs and senior citizens’ use, than the playing fields, be included in your discussion.  // Yes, that is something we overlooked including in our list of building uses.
4. Has the group talked about school siting in the city, and figuring out ways to preserve that important sense of neighborhood connectedness?  // Yes, we have talked about that.  That’s one of the tensions about going to larger schools.  That will be part of our final report.
5. An idea was suggested of combining all the language immersion schools in one, for instance, or for locating alternative schools within  neighborhoods unless this presents liability issues.
6. Work space needs to be provided for the professional activity of teachers to facilitate their planning and collaborative and individual work.  // Yes, we will include that in our discussions.
7. The group was advised to be cautious about responding to trends in their recommendations for facilities planning.  If we’re talking a 50 year life cycle, we may not want to be too trendy.  // We are going to need to work with the Instruction task force and have them tell us how they see education twenty to fifty years from now and think about how we’re going to design spaces to fit that model or some other model.
8. The Bethel Elementary School is a model of a combined facility, and we may want to have one of our meetings out there and take a look at it.
9. Transportation needs to be about more than access.  We need to look at the relationship between community, alternative modes, making those modes safer for children in the future.  There is a role for schools to play.

Facilities Task Group -Secondary Report

•  Having a written statement of endorsement by the school of the many aspects of civility, and expecting attending students and their parents to endorse them as well.
• Providing direct teaching of civility throughout the schooling process.
• Providing workshops for parents to teach them how they can reinforce and augment aspects of civility in a child’s home life.
• Teach parenting skills at the high school level so that high school graduates will enter parenthood well-prepared to raise children who are civil.

• Feelings of academic failure
• Rigid thinking
• Impulsivity
• Rejection
• Low Guilt and Unresolved Anger
• Hostile Pleasure
• Gun Skill and Access
• Homicide Endorsement
• Closed to Help
• Not willing to help stop violence

Resources Task Group

1. Presentations from the 4J classified, certified and administrative employee groups on the major challenges and issues facing each. 
2. Presentations by representatives of the local colleges and universities that offer teacher education programs about pre-service training for teachers.
3. Member of the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission presented the commission’s view of the challenges of recruiting a diverse and competent workforce.
4. 4J Staff from various divisions within the district including Human Resources, Instruction, Special Education, Financial Services, and Staff and Community Relations.

The three basic thrusts of their work have been: human resources, community resources (a subset of human resources), and financial resources.  However, they have only begun to look at financial resources.  They first set out to find out what is, then to look at what has happened over the past ten years and pre-Ballot Measure 5. This evening’s presentation also covered some of their areas of concern to indicate where their thinking is going.

Human Resources - Wally Bryant

Wally presented a demographic profile of District 4J.  Key points  included:

• Recruitment of minorities: a key concern, as they currently represent only 7% of the 4J workforce up from 5.5% in 1995. 
• By 2001, the goal is to have teachers and administrators reflect the student population.  Recruitment is key.
• The 4J workforce is aging, with the average age over 45 in all employee groups.
• In the next 5 years, it is possible 171 people will retire.

• At all 3 levels - elementary, middle school, high school - the FTE has declined while student enrollment went up.  4J is serving 1,000 additional students with fewer staff.
• Post Ballot Measure 5, some curricular areas or support services have been particularly affected: i.e. counseling staff at the Elementary level in 89-90 were 13.0 whereas in 99-00, the number is 0.5.

Community Resources - Svea Gold

She described some concerns she’s encountered in talking with teachers about their needs and the direction that has taken. 

• Focus on testing takes time away from instruction.
• Testing communicates a sense of failure to students who do not measure up to the test standards.
• There are more students with special needs in the public schools, and more agencies competing for the (mostly) federal dollars to address them.
• Many students are coming to school not ready to learn.
• Need to explore the use of volunteers, ensuring they get adequate training.  Ideas/suggestions included establishing a central place for screening/clearance of volunteers; a trained volunteer coordinator, train the volunteers to study/observe children to help sort out their needs. 
• Suggests that we try not teaching reading in K-2.  Need to try to figure out what is going in to students and less of what is coming out (in terms of test scores). 
• Need to engage teachers in understanding how to meet the needs of a diverse clientele.

The issues they will be looking at regarding financial resources include:

• Further comparisons of the current situation and that of pre-Ballot Measure 5
• What  schools are required to do now that was not required ten years ago - without additional funding
• Consequences of greater demands on staff

1. What about the coordination of resources in the community?  // It was suggested that the city could coordinate all the volunteers, do the background checking, then identify who wants to work in schools or elsewhere for the city.   Some sort of coordination is needed.
2. What about the possibility that comprehensive assessment be done as a child comes into the system to determine what needs to be added, what needs to come into this child?  // Kids disadvantaged from childhood have many deficits that impact their ability to learn. These deficits can be identified and addressed.
3. Facilities and Resources both have to address the interconnectedness and potential in co-location of services and sharing of facilities.  //Community Engagement task group is looking at this.
4. Determining the need for financial resources may need to wait until other task groups’ recommendations are forthcoming, then opportunities for partnerships and collaborations may surface.   //There is a concern about collaborations built to attract outside (i.e. federal) dollars.  Instead, local resources need to be developed and collaborations developed among local partners.
5. There may be some legal issues in trying (as educators) to address the needs of special needs kids.
6. Are there more refined indices to use than the CPI?  Costs may be substantially higher than we think. // We get, for children with special needs, about $10,000 from the federal government, and we spend about $17,000 per student, and some are much more expensive.
7. Has the task group looked at what the actual costs would be to run a program?  //The group may look at program staffing and how to fund it.

School Choice Task Group

Characteristics of Schools of Choice in District - Mike Dubick

He noted that the Choice task group is very large and diverse.  He presented the brainstormed list, and noted that the group is not at consensus yet.  Follow this link < http://www.4j.lane.edu/future/schoolchoice/dec8.html > to see the list.

Key Issues in Schools of Choice in District 4J - Jan VanderTuin

Jan directs a private alternative program that contracts with 4J and teaches kids hands-on building, framing.  He became involved because he wanted to expand the knowledge of school choice options around the country; to reduce the polarization around these issues.  He wants to bring education to the community and the community in to education.  He believes youth should study education so that they can have a true voice. 

Jan highlighted the relationship between choice and transportation, noting that it requires a systematic approach to fixing the problem throughout the city.   Educational programs on transportation are needed. He stated that he personally has appreciated the opportunity to hear all the perspectives, and wishes that the community could have that opportunity.

Criteria for Evaluating the School District’s Program of Choice 4J - Hal Sadofsky

Hal presented the task group’s key issues and concerns, as he perceives them to date.  The group has not had a chance to fully discuss them.

• What should the parameters of choice be for us?  The task group needs to discuss, and so does the community.
• The effect of choice programs on neighborhood schools.
• How do alternative schools define themselves and what their alternatives are?
• Is information about OTHER alternatives disseminated widely to students and parents?
• Are resources fairly allocated?  It would be good to make this information as transparent as possible.
• Access to district resources and more information about district resources.   Optional programs would like to be perceived as part of the public schools, not competitive with.
• How do we evaluate alternative programs, especially their educational goals, philosophies. Evaluations need to reflect the goals and philosophies of the program and not merely be based on the performance of students on standardized tests.

Questions/Dialogue

The group was challenged to be more aggressive in visioning.   A lot of the work to date has been gathering information about what is working today and how it could be improved in the near future.   It was recommended that the group look farther into the future or broaden the context and address the unique challenge of describing what education could look like in 20 years.   The presentations from the various  interest groups were brief and there is much more information that they could provide and many more models out there to consider.  One SFC member asked that we talk about future alternatives or reframings of educational choice with the goals of keeping community, supporting democracy, of a sense of civic health and well-being as well as justice, equity and education for all children in our community. 

A  task group member suggested that one question that could come up is how much education takes place outside the walls of the school and the school pocketbook and who are the best educators in our community. 

Another question asked, would it be helpful to have a definition for “public” (in education)?  Is it tax-supported, universal?  The SFC member suggests that what we have is compulsory education.   Education is a resource-constrained system in which related policy goals have evolved over time and compete or generate conflicts: 

• Efficiency as a starting point: the most good for the most students at the least price
• Categorical programs equity-based to meet the needs of special needs students
• Excellence
• Choice
• Dignity ( a variation on choice; the inclusion movement)

A member of the audience requested that the committee explore the tension down the road between charter and public schools, and what opportunities there might be to share some of the visionary ideas in charter schools with the neighborhood schools.  It was noted that there is also innovation and difference among neighborhood schools.

Next Meeting: