 Can I do that because honestly it's my dream come true? Oh my gosh! How cool is this? This is so cool! Okay, can I do like, uh, we're live? Like, uh, okay. We're live! Oh hey, didn't see you there. Hi, I'm Travis Curran. I'm running for City Council. My name is Torrid de Rodriguez and I'm running for Portland City Council at large. Hi, my name is Victoria Pelletier and I'm running for City Council for District 2. My name is John Hink and I'm running for City Council. So I live in Parkside. So my district is, a lot of people think it's just the West End. It also includes Parkside, Valley Street, parts of St. John Street, and then the Oakdale neighborhood as well. I live in the greatest district in Portland. It's District 2. My district is District 1 up on Montjoy Hill. You're at large though right there. At large, oh yes, every district. I live in North Deering. I'm running for the at-large seat, which represents the entire city. I've met a lot of people which has been great and we've had really good conversations too. You know, knocking on doors and having individual conversations with voters has been like the ultimate reality check. There are so many interesting people that live in the district in each of the neighborhoods and I've been on just about every street. Talking to them on the person-to-person, you'll find that there's not exactly as much nimbyism as a lot of people are scared of. Everything that you see either on the media or on social media, it almost becomes irrelevant when you have a real person in front of you and you're having a conversation about the issues that impact them. Certainly a lot of people will talk about a major issue that we face and that's the affordability of Portland and more specifically affordable housing. And they're concerned about it for themselves and they're also concerned about it for other people. When a community has a conversation in an effort to have a shared understanding of the role of different services, when we call law enforcement to address an issue, we've realized that a lot of our societal issues including homelessness, substance use disorders, these are health issues, these are not criminal issues. So we need to have a conversation as a community, like who do we call to address these concerns? I don't like using terms like safe injection site. I like overdose prevention site where a doctor's present. And once you have these centers, the folks, the addicts and the users know that they can go. Once they're there, then they can meet the people, get the resources, get the information and the education without those. Everyone's like, oh, they were just going to keep doing drugs and it'll be bad. It was like, no, no, no, they're going to keep doing drugs if we don't do this. In one word, confusing, really confusing. When I go out and go canvassing, I've had a really poor canvassing experience because of a lot of the conversations that I've had and a lot of the racist, sexist, ageist comments that I've heard at the door on a regular basis. Running for local office and putting yourself out there in the public eye can be really concerning. We've seen it happen with other black leaders that are women here in Portland. I'm Lisa Savage and I'm here as a retired educator and a former candidate for the U.S. Senate to have a panel discussion with these candidates for the Portland City Council. We're going to focus on the topic of education and equity today, which is a topic that hasn't been as covered in some of the other candidate forums. And I know that we're going to have a very civil discussion and people are going to be respectful of each other because it's such a great group of people. Also, it's a ranked choice voting election. So even if someone isn't going to rank one of you first, you might very well want to get their second ranking. And that's always an interesting aspect of ranked choice voting. I have a confession to make. Travis, Victoria, Roberto, and John, I have been reading the online comments in the Portland Press Herald. I know it's not recommended, but I noticed that every time there's a discussion about school policy and public schools in Portland, the online comments, many of them say, why is the school board concerned with equity? They're supposed to be there to take care of education. Why would they be spending any time on equity? So I thought that it might be helpful to show a little visual aid, a graphic about what we mean by equity and how that's different from equality and how it is very much a fundamental educational issue. So in the typical equality graphic, you've got three people that are trying to pick a fruit off a tree and they're different heights, so only one of them can reach the fruit and the other two can't get there. In an equity situation, you have given the two other people something to stand on that gets them up to the level of that apple, or in this case, that quality public school education. So that's what we're meaning by the word equity. And I'm just going to start us off. I am a teacher as I mentioned, so I'm going to be choosing names randomly out of this coffee cup to see who goes first each time. And I am going to start us off with the question, how is equity an educational issue? I'm reaching in and I'm going to say, John, could you give us your thoughts on that? Equity should be fundamental to education as it should be to many of our endeavors. I think the example that you gave makes it plain. Equity is needed for there to just be fundamental fairness and for people who may have been disadvantaged to have an opportunity with access to excel and to realize their educational goals and prosper in the educational system. It's particularly true or at least is brought to the fore in a community that has great diversity. I heard from one of the candidates here that there's some 60 languages spoken in the homes of kids that go to Portland schools. I know when my daughter was in King Middle School, there was something like 35 languages spoken in the homes of her classmates. That's a great thing, but it also suggests that some students start with challenges because English isn't their first language. So if we're paying attention and using equity, we're giving all kids a chance to be able to get as much out of the education as those that have advantages. How was equity an education issue in your mind? I love that we're talking about equity because I think it's the first conversation and the first starting point at understanding that we're not all starting at the same starting block. We're all starting at different points of life and we're all going to face different obstacles based a lot on things that we can't control. So when we think about systemic issues and systemic oppression and we're talking about your background or when we're talking about your ethnicity or your race or your gender, we're not all starting at the same block. So it's really impossible for us all to get the same things because we are starting at different areas of our lives based on things, like I said, that are out of our control. So I think when we think about schooling and we think about supporting the students and supporting our kids in schools, we need to take that same lens and say, okay, yes, we want everybody to have a great education, but are we also putting into place solutions for students that are maybe not starting at square A or square B or square C? So I think when we're having conversations in terms of equity and schooling, we need to really think how can we make sure that we're providing academic support and resources to everybody and also looking at where there's an imbalance and looking at how we can help the imbalance and not thinking so much, this is equal across the board, but really saying where are we seeing disenfranchisement, where are we seeing lack of resources and how can we put that forward to make sure that the students that have always historically had less feel like they're part of the conversation and feel like they're being invested in as much as everyone across the board. Thank you. Roberto, you have some experience with this. You're on the school board. How is equity an important part of the school mission here in Portland? So our comprehensive plan has four stated goals and equity is the centerpiece of that goal. And in my view, in your example of the apples and the three people trying to reach for them, there's two ways to analyze that. The outcomes, which is who ended up with apples, and then the opportunities, right, who had the access to reach for the apples. In the school board, we've had to look at both of those things. Our accountability measures are going to be those outcomes, right, however the achievements represented in the classrooms, and there's a whole bunch of other areas that we want to measure, such as our discipline data through our school suspensions, our attendance data, certainly our access to rigorous materials, like AP courses and college-created classes. And so when we look at who has access to this or who has opportunities to take advantage of these services, we see that the gaps are huge, and we usually see them represented either by racial differences, socioeconomic differences, or in the schools, we see special education students and ELL students overly represented in all of those areas that I mentioned. And so our responsibility as a school board has been to allocate resources to bridge those gaps, those opportunity gaps. I want to underscore that we've been, I'm really proud that we've reframed it from an achievement gap, which again puts the onus on who had the apples, and we've talked about opportunity gaps, as in what role do we play to allow them to take advantage of those apples. Great, and just to clarify, ELL stands for? English Language Learners. Okay, so students whose first language was not English. Correct, thank you. Great, thank you. Travis, why is equity an important issue in education? I think it's fundamentally tied to the good of a community for equity and education. It will make the city better. I believe we're doing a pair of similar things that we've all just said, accessibility for every student, making sure everyone has the same opportunities with ELL teaching, as well as reading recovery. A lot of students who have difficulty learning in the very get-go depend. The reading recovery program is very important to me. My mother was a reading recovery teacher. As long as everyone has a fair shake in the play, then the city will be better, they'll improve. We have to make sure attendance is important. We'll see less of a decrease in crime, and just fundamentally tied to the good of the community in the city. Great, and just to clarify, reading recovery is a program aimed at primarily first grade students who have not shown the amount of progress toward reading that it's hoped and it's considered that that's a very sensitive period for literacy acquisition. It can go beyond first grade, but that's kind of near and dear to my heart as well. Let's talk about public education. Why is public education important? Do you send your own children to public schools? Did you yourselves go to public schools? Why is that important? I'm going to pick another name to start with. Victoria, can you start us off? Yes, so I don't have kids, but I'm a proud aunt. But I did go to public school. I went to public school in Brunswick, and I absolutely loved it. I think it awarded me a lot of great experiences. It really shaped who I was, and it gave me this access that I really probably would not have gotten otherwise. And so I think when we're talking about public schools, I feel like that's the beginning of talking about the framework of our democracy and how we're shaping ourselves and the opportunities that we're receiving. And I also think we can have great discussions about cost and availability and diversity in public schools and being able to really celebrate everybody's differences. And also just being able to feel like you're closer with the community, you're closer with your teachers, and you're having that experience of being able to see different ethnicities, different cultures, and really getting to understand them, learn about them, celebrate them, and then take those tools that you learn from public school and apply it to the rest of your life. So I am a proud graduate of public schools, and I had some of the best years of my life there. Great, thanks. John? Yeah, I think public schools is one of the great markers of whether or not a society is successful. Irrespective of whether we have another set of schools, the private schools, all people should be contributing to making a very successful public school system. I'm a product of public schools. I did later on meet people that came from my hometown that were going to private schools, and sometimes it looked as though they had more resources. That shouldn't be the way it is. Our public school system should match the best education, including resources of any school system. My daughter also went to King Middle School in Portland, and Portland High, and I think her education was excellent. But we need to pay attention to boost our public schools. These are our citizens. These are our voters. These are the workforce. Thank you, Roberto. Lisa, our public schools are fundamentally what connects us as a community. So many of us who have ties to our neighborhoods, our social groups, they originate through the schools. As a parent, you end up having social friends or social networks because of your children's friends and their parents. After your child goes through a whole school district's education, they have a connection to the community that they're probably going to bank on as an adult. I think that when we talk about how we invest into our communities, it's also representative of our values as a community. So when we support our teachers, when we support our students and their families, and we recognize the role that schools play in helping our students and families thrive in our communities, we will see that schools are the most important piece, both in our economic growth and our social emotional learning as a community. Great. Travis. I also don't have children, but I was a child that went through public schools. My parents divorced early on, so I went to a few different public schools, and I think it's incredibly important that public education is the mark of a great community because one of the communities I went through, I saw a great amount of class disparity. There was a lot of very, very poor kids that went to my public school with me. I was one of them, and unfortunately, it was further north in Maine, and I think in the class of 3,000, there was maybe three people of color, and so I really got to see a great deal of racism sort of stem from that, and a lot of really horrible behavior and miseducation and uneducated people becoming... A lot of people didn't even go into the workforce immediately after school. A lot of people did not go on to second education, so I mean bolstering public education is the most important thing. It was a privilege and a strange opportunity. I taught at Wayne Fleet Private School for two years. It was a very bizarre, it was a pizza cook, and then they also handed me this job to teach filmmaking and acting, and so teaching at Wayne Fleet, I got to see a private school from the inside, and that was probably the largest culture shock I've ever seen in my life, but it was very strange and unique, so I mean I really wish a lot of those kids could have gone to a public education and then maybe get some more culture, and yeah, I know which... I'll end it there, yeah, I'm sorry. It was very bizarre. I'm very thankful I got to go to college in Portland because they got me away from a community where I probably would have been working at Walmart or at Hannaford, and a lot of those folks still would live there and work there, and I mean I still wish the best for that community, and if they had better public education, they may have been learned, they had better opportunities. Well you bring up one of the biggest equity issues in public education in the state or nationally. I don't know if it's a big issue within Portland public schools, but it's basically your zip code because America, the United States is alone among wealthy nations in funding public education largely through local property taxes, in which if you live in a zip code where property taxes are high, your schools have more resources. I know that the outcomes of some of the Portland schools are different. I don't know how much though that would be based on property taxes, the funding structure. Why are we funding public education? Why would we perhaps pay higher property taxes to get a better public education system? Roberto you want to take this one first? Sure. I think it's important to first recognize that Maine actually has one of the most equitable school funding formulas compared to other states and it's been recognized as such. It is a very complicated formula and most people will not be able to explain it to you on how it works out. Even I, after five years on the board will probably struggle to give you clarity on it. But the way that it works, again when you look at it through an equity lens, you see the shortcomings of it. So for example, we base the amount of state funding on the evaluation of a town. And so that in Portland has the impact of them assuming that we're able to raise a lot of money locally and then paid through our public education through local property taxes. Now if you don't take into account the average income of that municipality, that valuation is not really telling you how capable we are of raising taxes. So for example, here in Portland we get less than 17% of our state of our school budget paid through state funding. In a municipality for example, whose valuation is lower than Portland's, they get as much as 60 or 70% of the school budget paid through the state formula. So again, two municipalities that in Maine stand out because we have a large percentage of ELL students, much more diverse enrollment than other municipalities, but yet you see how that state formula treats us very differently. So again, even though it's recognized as an equitable one, it doesn't work that way in the way that it distributes funds Interesting. John? I just think that we have to work even harder than we have to have all the schools in the Portland system achieve the greatest academic outcome as the highest performing. So we can have a school demonstrate excellence in let's say sciences, and what that means is we would like to model that and raise the outcomes at the other schools. We do some of that, I understand. Roberto would probably know more than I, but I know that expeditionary learning was demonstrated to be something that was working at King Middle School. So in the years that ensued that demonstration at King, other schools in the system started using and getting advantages from expeditionary learning. I think that's what we should be doing for all our schools. Great, thank you. Victoria? Yeah, I agree with both John and Roberto, and I think that the goal that we want is for all of our students to succeed in school, regardless of the school that they're going to. And so I do think when we're talking about funding local schools, it's a difficult one to have, because of course there is going to be in balance. There is going to be equity issues depending on the location, depending on the income. And like I said, at the end of the day, we really want to put forward a narrative that is we support our kids in schools and we want them to have absolutely everything. We don't want to have one school going without just based on the property and based on the income. And so I do also think that it would help for us to have assessments and re-evaluations more often in terms of property or talking taxes, and when we're talking taxes being raised, because I think the last one we had was 15 years ago. And so, you know, I think it's absolutely worth a discussion. It's worth a discussion at the state level as well, because I think we can talk about how we can make sure that we're sharing revenues between locations to ensure that we are moving forward as equitably as possible for our schools. And so I think that this is going to be a constant conversation that we're going to continue to have, and really try and figure out how we can open up about, we want public schools to be amazing. We also want our property taxes to stay what they are. And I feel like these two things are always going to be in clash with one another. And so I look forward to opening up options about having these conversations at the state level, talking about ways, like I said, that we can continue to find formulas and continue to share and balance revenue. But it's going to take multiple conversations and I think we all want the same thing at the end of the day, which is for everybody to have a fair shot at really graduating and feeling like they were really invested in the way that they're investing in our community. We might even need a funding formula that people can understand and explain to each other, possibly. It would be a step in that direction. Travis? Well, I completely agree, yeah. As far as funding is concerned, I don't believe the city should be reliant on property taxes as much as it is, especially recently with the revaluation. We need to find alternative revenue streams besides hiking up the property taxes, and the other ways the city gains revenue are through fines and fees. I believe we should increase fines and fees for illegal STRs, Airbnbs in particular. There's a great deal of them in Portland Man at the moment, and the Portland Housing Safety Office, I believe their only method of discipline is sending them just a letter. But I mean, there should be a strict fee for that because it's affordable housing. It's a crisis going on in the city. It's my big flag I wave. These are affordable units that are already available. We have to shut down these, and it's not they're unhosted properties, they're investment properties. A lot of property management companies even run them. We just have to really get these affordable units back on the market, find and fee the ones that are already existing illegally. We also could increase vacancy fees for the condos that only occupied maybe four months out of the year that sit blocks down from my house. There's different ways to find money that we can do without raising the property that are probably one of the marginalized communities, but as well as our seniors and people that have lived here for their entire lives. We shouldn't be pricing people out of Portland that grew up here. Okay, thanks for that perspective. I think also, I'm glad that you brought up housing because being unhoused is a huge equity issue for students. Students that have experienced being unhoused and moved around and maybe moved between schools or school districts often do not have the same kind of access to the resources that their more stable classmates have. And again, why would we want to under-educate those students? We would like to give them the tools to really be able to be housed. That seems like a basic human right and until it is a basic human right that we're meeting, certainly schools are going to have to take that into account. I know as a school teacher in a very low-income area I okay, I very often had students who were not housed properly. They were maybe living in an unheeded camper in November and they would leave and they'd disappear and then they'd come back and we'd say, where were you? Oh, we went to my aunt's for a while and you know, that's very tough and it's very very hard for middle-class teachers often to be fair to those students, honestly. They look down on the families for not being more economically competent and they care about the students and they think the students are suffering and I think again, you know, many middle-class teachers have never experienced being unhoused and they really don't know what they're talking about but they have strong feelings about it, which leads me to my next question and that is about staffing. Not only educators in the school district but it's so important, the bus drivers the first person that the students see the school secretary sets the tone for the entire school, the kitchen workers are super important in terms of setting a tone for that school. How can we address having teachers and other staff and administrators that reflect our community or the diversity of our community and so that there are people that are able to bring the point of view to all the many, many students that are coming through the doors. How should we go about that, Travis? I apologize, what was the question? The question is how shall we go about getting school staff not only teaching staff but all school staff that reflect the diversity and I don't just mean a certain kind of diversity but socioeconomic and racial diversity and language diversity how can we go about getting school staff that reflect the community's diversity? Absolutely, I mean employment opportunities through outreach campaigns and marginalized communities can certainly benefit that it also comes down to funding I believe a great deal of the American Rescue Plan funds will be going to public education or at least I sure hope so City Council will vote on it and if we're on City Council hopefully we'll all vote on that as well but yeah, absolutely we need to it's very important that every voice table and every marginalized community is represented especially when it comes to equity and the staffing as far as bus drivers are concerned they're typically you need a certain class of a license we can get programs to teach people how to drive those sorts of licenses for the buses just community outreach but we'd really need the funding first Victoria? I think when we're talking about making sure that our staff reflects our community I feel like people sometimes think we can just snap our fingers and suddenly our staff will be diversified but it's really important that if we want to make sure that the staff is reflecting the people that live and work among us that we're taking the extra effort to ensure that even our process of hiring is equitable and so we have to think about how are we advertising? Are we making sure that this is multilingual? Are we partnering with organizations to ensure that this information is making its way to our unhoused? Are we making sure that we're taking into consideration neurodivergent learning styles? Are we making sure that we are not requiring things that really aren't necessary like a driver's license or a college degree based on the position and so I think if we really want to reflect our community we really need to start with how we advertise and how we ask people to come into the spaces that we hold because if we're saying we want you to be part of our space but you can only be part of our space with a college degree and a driver's license we're cutting out a huge amount of people that are amazing but haven't had those opportunities to have a driver's license or to get a degree and so I think that's step one is asking yourself how are we presenting this opportunity to folks and are we making sure that this is equal across the board and then it's also tapping into your community in an authentic way not just going in when you want to hire someone and diversify your staff but making relationships knowing folks by name making sure that we're asking about individuals days as they're a shadow program a mentorship program not just for teachers but for all staff because I think that there are a million wonderful jobs to do and I think if we are not taking the extra step to really go into the community and establish those relationships and then be able to say hey we would love to do a shadowing program or hey we have this job opening we think you would be great for it that's the first step into making sure that what we're doing is authentic but also equitable and saying okay this is the community we live in and these are the people that we want to share this real this this opportunity with and share this space with so something that you said reminded me of how many sometimes called new mainers or in other words immigrants that have come to Maine have degrees and expertise in so many areas and when they get to the U.S. they can't use those degrees and how rich our schools would be to be able to tap into that amazing talent pool John do you want to comment on how we can get a school staff that reflects our community well I certainly want to agree that the hiring processes must be equitable and the point that you are making Lisa we have in the community now underutilized resources possibly because of our prejudice or blindness to the skills that new mainers bring to the community over and beyond that there's something that starts earlier and I trust we are improving in letting the students know that are coming up through the system that they have every opportunity certainly to be teachers which is one of the greatest careers but also to be captains of industry and leaders in the business community and every other thing that every other career every other job that they might want to do they should be able to feel like they can do and I don't know we've reached that yet but I trust that people in Portland would like to do that Roberto so in that comprehensive plan that we have in Portland Public Schools one of the four stated goals is our people goal which speaks to our staff one of the criteria that we're trying to advance is diversifying our staff and so we as Victoria said we could easily open the door and I can bring you 100 black educators and 100 Latino educators into Portland Public Schools how do we retain them how do we make sure that Portland Public Schools is an environment where people of color can thrive and be successful and have pathways towards career leadership opportunities and all of the above right now unfortunately that's not the case and it's important also to remember diversifying your workforce is a goal that almost every school district throughout the country is aiming to achieve so something that we did in Portland Public Schools was the most comprehensive look at the experiences of our staff of color we interviewed almost all of our educators that identified as people of color we had the support of Doris Santoro from Bowding College Julia Hazel who's one of our educators and Alberto Morales who's one of our high school educators and through those interviews we identified some themes of their experiences one of the overarching themes was as an impenetrable wall of whiteness so these are black educators Latino educators who did not feel like their views, their positions and their experiences were being reflected in the decisions of the district and so through that research report there were some recommendations that we implemented such as putting in place a professional development specialist for our BIPOC staff we also put in place channels or rather people in our buildings that would give mentoring opportunities for career development of our staff and then to your point growing your local talent we have the most diverse enrollment in the state of Maine and if you can identify students who want to pursue careers in education you want to support them and you want to clear that path for them to take advantage of that and I think that those are all things that important for those schools we're thriving to achieve and we've stated as goals that we're committed to advance great thank you I'm going to take a little break now we'll be back in a moment Hi my name is Mary King I'm a mom and a public school administrator here in Portland, Maine Hi I'm Peter Dugas and I'm Peter Dugas and we've been with CCL for about three years. Hey all I'm Susan Hancock and I'm a proud member of the Citizens Climate Lobby. I've done lots of work with the environment and environmental justice but I found a home with the Citizens Climate Lobby. CCL you know climate change we've talked a lot about how it's such a big and scary problem it's uh it's kind of overwhelming a lot of people don't know what to do but so exciting to be able to do something very specific that really helps and will make a big big difference. What I love most about CCL is that there is something for everyone literally do you want to travel to Agastar DC to lobby for proven policy? How about getting your town to adopt meaningful action to keep global temperatures in line with Paris agreements and CCL community is very welcoming you can do whatever job you're comfortable with and whatever you're good at. Coming back with us I'm Lisa Savage and we're here with progressive candidates for Portland City Council that election is on Tuesday it is a ranked choice voting election so our candidates are here to talk about education and equity and we've been having some really good conversations so far I'm going to open up kind of a can of worms here but I think it needs talking about the COVID pandemic has changed education quite a bit are those changes permanent? How do you feel about those changes? Are some of them good? Are you hoping some of them we never have to do again? Where do you stand on these and let me pull out of my let's hear from John first. Okay the COVID pandemic did require changes in education I mean for a while I think it was almost nothing but disruptive but adjustments were made over time and we probably learned quite a bit about how to educate through zoom and how to get the most out of education that occurs outside the classroom I think most people would agree that it is great to be able to return to the classroom that being in the same place with your teacher and other students could be the most uplifting experience but nonetheless we could use what we learned about remote learning and learning on zoom and continue to do that I think one of the most important things is this is likely not to be the last pandemic let's hope that our community is one that came to understand what happened when COVID descended on us so that if it happens again we're one of the communities that is well prepared to handle it. Okay Victoria. Yeah I think that the pandemic highlighted a lot of things for everybody and I think one of the biggest things to be honest was the inequity that it highlighted when it happened because I think then we had to learn talk or understand learning styles. We also had to understand digital inequities and the fact that a lot of people don't have access to high speed broadband a lot of people don't have access to internet I mean to laptops or even understand really the depths of how it works and so I think we are making assumptions that everybody is at the same place which again brings us back to the equity issue that we were talking about before but when we're talking about kids learning everyone is learning in different ways so some are not able to sit in front of a screen for eight hours and take in information and some are and so I think we have unlocked a new way of learning it's unfortunate that it did take a global pandemic for that to happen but we have and we will go forward in a new way in a different way I don't think it's going to revert back ever to what it was before and so whether that's entirely remote whether that's a hybrid option which I think will work really well for some individuals as well getting to be in school some of the time getting to be online at the time I think it opens up an avenue for a discussion about how we take in information how we look at existing inequities and how we're making sure that we are reaching every single student even those that are not super extroverted learners especially versus those who are introverted learners and I also think it gives us an opportunity to talk about how we're tapping into our community and how we're really connecting with community leaders to help shape some of that teaching and so it's educators talking to those that are in the community that are advocates that are activists and saying how can we make sure that when we are having these conversations that we're also bringing you in and we're also learning from you and we're kind of taking a collaborative approach to shaping schooling which I think ultimately will make us better for it in the community great yeah I think one of the big equity issues is not all students have a quiet place at home to do zoom they may be having younger children while their parents or other caregivers work or they may just be living in a situation where there's no quiet and that can be a big equity issue for people doing education over zoom or other platforms Roberto you've lived to this for a couple of years now absolutely I agree with Victoria what the pandemic did was highlight a lot of the inequities that were already in place and augment them you know you said there's some children whose home environment is not a safe environment and school is that safe environment in their lives there's children who don't have food at home and school is where they're fed social services public health services a lot of our families connect them through our schools in March of 2020 when we had to close our schools it was obvious on March 13th the day that we sent out that announcement that we were losing children because schools are what gets impacted to our communities and that day we lost children and yes that will have a forever impact into our communities thank you a sobering thought Travis I agree completely I'd augmented all of the inequity and all of the really systemic problems that we were going to face if there is another pandemic but so I live with them I live with a single mother she is a seven year old and she goes to the East End Community School and she obviously lost her job during the pandemic as well and when schools were open she was able to work homeschool her child and do the remote learning but then when she finally got her job back suddenly she cannot do the remote learning anymore and it became very difficult for her and like I helped out as much as I could we ended up calling her father who lived in Florida her ex-husband he moved all the way from Florida just so he can help homeschool his daughter and yeah and like that was where she got socialized and she's forever impacted by that and you know she didn't get to see her friends she didn't get to play we really need to work on social services that can really benefit our marginalized communities that are more at risk because a lot of just highlighted all the problems yeah I was still teaching on March 13th 2020 and I think my school district in a very low income area was an elementary school probably providing food to families became the immediate number one job because so many students were being fed at school and also that was the delivery point for other food support that was happening in the community and I was really happy to see that happen and at the same time it wasn't exactly education though it was important you guys have been going door to door in your districts is that right some of you are at large candidates you're an at large candidate Roberto Victoria is an at large no sorry Travis is the other at large and then John and Victoria are district 2 what are parents telling you is the most important thing for their children the thing that's the most on their mind they're really worrying about and thinking about for for their children for their young children Victoria so I am running in district 2 it's interesting because depending on what part of district 2 you're having two very different conversations and I'm hearing multiple things but I think the two biggest issues in terms of what people are concerned about for their kids moving forward are how can I make sure that if there's a pandemic and we go back to entirely remote what am I going to do to make sure that my student is not falling behind and then the second one I thought was interesting because it was how am I going to make sure that if we are going remote again that I'm part of a pandemic pod which I actually had not really heard of but apparently parents are getting together and kind of having small pods and really hiring tutors and hiring additional help to support their kids through the pandemic so that they're not falling behind and so I think these two issues are interesting because they're highlighting the different life experiences based on who I'm chatting with so the parents who are worried about the pandemic pod are worried about not being able to afford these extra resources and are worried about not being able to bring in a tutor or bring in extra education or resources or books to really help continue the learning and then I'm also having discussions with parents who are saying if we are going back to a remote lifestyle I'm worried about having the time I'm worried about my child falling behind and so everybody is similarly talking about the issue of what is going to happen next what does the future look like especially for the younger kids who are in elementary school like in high school and what is going to look like in middle school high school college how is this going to work and so I think there's a lot of concern and again I think back to the question we just talked about it's going to highlight how we learn differently it's going to take a lot of different and creative solutions it's going to take hybrid solutions but it's really going to take equitable solutions as well to make sure that we are equally distributing resources across the board and really providing for those who have had less historically and feel like life is moving on without them and they are not able to keep up John what are you hearing at the doors from parents well I must say I did not hear about pandemic pods from anyone but the largest thing across the board had to do with the affordability of Portland and affordable housing but it plays out differently in the part of the district and also age brackets so older people may be talking about the fact that their income is fixed but the expenses are not fixed and housing is one of the big things but it was much more gut wrenching to talk to mothers particularly who have had to move repeatedly because of housing problems and one thing they would always point to is how difficult it was for the child continuity and education when their home life was being disrupted with a move or just with nervousness about being able to make the expenses and stay in the place they are staying in and I remember a conversation distinctly from someone living on Dearing Street a young woman who said that her child had been moved twice in just elementary school and she did not know that it wouldn't have to happen again I do think affordable housing is just something the city council has to pay attention to as a top priority Travis, you've been knocking on doors all over city of Portland so you may be hearing some rather different things from parents. What are they telling you? It certainly varies from district to district but more in all the peninsula they're worried about safety particularly in transportation and services and with walking around which goes directly to the unhoused community they're worried about their kids getting to and safely from school which is why the city really needs to work on taking care of the unhoused community and on harm reduction and addressing the opioid epidemic because there's a lot of drugs still on the streets which cause dangerous and criminal behavior I know a mother yesterday who was actually assaulted and the West End at Cumberland Farms Fetemines attacked her and destroyed her phone and she was absolutely gobsmacked by it but the children on the parents on the peninsula worried about safety worried about getting their kids to and from school safely off the peninsula worried about safety in the schools as far as vaccines and mask mandates making sure if there's another pandemic if there's a variant, if there's anything that everyone's on the same page and that their children are going to be safe if possible and if you go out towards Riverside where the big shelter that we're all talking about most is going to be built if on the unhoused are out there and they get a criminal trespass order they're seven miles out of town they're then left to walk up Forest Avenue past Riverton School a lot of the parents out there were really upset about that you know I mean we use the term dimbyism a lot but a lot of the folks that are genuinely worried about the safety of their children which is why I believe small shelters is a better idea and it's one more humane and one two more safe they're smaller and they'll be able to be better taken care of and they will treat the unhoused as the humans they are and help them on the path to recovery so just to be clear nimbyism is not in my backyard an acronym we hear increasingly Roberto what are you hearing when you're knocking on doors Ann, I'm sure you hear from many parents as a school board member many parents what are you hearing? I hear from a lot of parents and when I knock on doors because I've been on the school board it lends itself to people talking about the schools and I think it varies both by neighborhood and also what age group their children are in so what I've heard a lot from the elementary school parents a lot of concerns about safety measures safety and health protocols that we have particularly because their children are not eligible for the vaccine and then when you get into the middle school and high school levels I think one of the overarching themes is the need to make up the loss of last year or at least the last 18 months both in academic achievement and also in the social skills of children I think that the what we hear through emails on the school board I like to always remind folks in public schools there's I think John alluded to this earlier there's 64 languages spoken at the homes of parents and families 100% of our emails come in written in English so who we hear from and who we're serving might not always be on the table at the same time interesting when I was canvassing as a senate candidate when I spoke to immigrants, adults and new manors and asked them what do you care about education was always their number one topic they might have others but education was right at the top let's change Lane's little bit here and talk about another equity issue in schools how would you as a city counselor help queer and trans and non-binary youth feel safe in school and in their communities how would you go about doing that Travis let's start with you when I taught at Wayne Fleet there was a really strong LGBTQ alliance group it was really great for making people feel safe but there's also even inside the school we need some programs outside of the school after school programs where these children will feel safer to go to even if there is one inside of the school it can still be it can be a little marginalizing for them to poor behavior I saw it all when I was coming up in high school I came from a very homophobic high school and so I was very thankful to come to Portland which is far, far far more liberal and equitable but yes we need outside programs after school programs safety groups and also LGBTQ allied teachers bilingual teachers as well you know safe community members the children will feel safe around great thanks Roberto so one of our last years we did our sexual harassment policy and the process that we took to rewrite that policy was a very inclusive process that brought in community partners such as Equality Main and various other community partners to help us draft it we also took in a lot of input from our students they played a key role as a matter of fact the reason that we started this process was from advocacy of student groups and so what we identified was to make sure that everyone knew who the title nine representative was in the school district because that's the person that all of these harassment reports should go through we also wanted to make sure that the student handbooks and that every opportunity that we had to explain to the student body how these things are reported and there were clear opportunities for them to do it both confidential and when they needed to do it as an emergency situation so again asserting your values through policy implementing them by allocating the resources that are necessary I think that these are starting points that we're taking right now in public schools and we're taking them because we've had a history of students that did not feel like they were completely safe in our schools so a lot of work yet to be done but I think the foundational pieces are in place at least in public schools we should be proud of that great thank you John you know in one form or another I've been thinking about this for many years actually my music teacher from fourth fifth and sixth grade was one of the early people to trans in America and became against the will of that individual a celebrated case or a widely recognized case and the community of Basking Ridge went through this confrontation over values and and didn't react well but it had me decide early on that Paul Grossman who became Paula Maria Grossman should not have been treated differently than others and so I've watched a debate develop nationally over the years and at least that fundamental view hasn't changed I am very happy and had noticed that the Portland Public Schools changed and updated the harassment policy and it does seem to me it's how we implement it and whether it's reflected in hiring decisions and whether it's also reflected in curriculum it seems to me that we can develop a greater feeling of tolerance through hiring policies through the curriculum so that we adjust as a school system, as a city thank you for saying that literature what a powerful way to help everyone think a little bit more about equity. Victoria what can you share with us about having trans queer and non-binary students feel safer at school? Yeah I agree with what Roberto said I think that it's important to have resources and to have policy that really backs up what you're saying especially when we're talking about harassment and discrimination I also think that the pride flags, the trans flags, the black lives matter flags all of these things are great and helpful but I think what's even more helpful than that is really celebrating and telling the stories of LGBTQ IA plus individuals and heroes that have trailblazed before and really not celebrating all of our stories with such a white centered narrative and so when we're talking about trailblazers, when we're talking about history talking about Marsha P. Johnson and talking about Harvey Milk and Ma Rainey and really telling these stories and talking about it in school and naming it so that we're not just talking about these heroes that were men and heterosexual and white but we're actually talking about individuals that are people of color that are people that were non binary that are people that are LGBTQIA plus and I think it goes even beyond that in school because if you're celebrating you also need to empower and so how are we making sure that these individuals feel like they're part of the conversations how are we making sure that there is room for them at the tables are we moving out of the way to allow them to lead are we just saying we actually care about them and that we want them or are we actually amplifying their voices and boosting them and saying this is your time to shine we want a diverse perspective we want you to lead the conversation so you know the flags are great and I think it really takes policy and it takes actual action steps to make sure that we're amplifying the voices in an authentic way rather than just saying yes we support you but then behind closed doors kind of doing what we've always done which is really silencing people Thank you. As a teacher and a grandmother I've been thrilled to see so many children's books come out in the last ten years in case viewers tuned in late these are Portland City Council candidates the election is on Tuesday I'm going to give each one of them half a minute to remind you who they are and why they would like you to rank them first let's start with you Roberta My name is Roberto Rodriguez I am running for the city council at large seat over the last five years I've served on the Portland school board two of those years I served as chair of the board and I've been telling everyone that the same work and the same reasons I've been working on at the school board are the same reasons that I want to advocate for at the city council level the same issues that keep our students and families from thriving are big societal issues that the schools cannot solve alone we talked about a lot of them here today and I'm a strong believer that policy should have a broad systemic impact and so again advocating for the same issues at a different scale is something that I would be privileged and honored to have an opportunity to do Great, thank you. John? and I'm running for city council to represent district 2 I would like to approach any opportunity to serve this city being able to help and uplift all the people of the city it seems to me that the key lens to look at decisions is what does it do for all those who are in the city and if you're going to do that you have to understand the people who have had the least opportunity and are often the ones that do not access government processes do not come to city hall do not even email or contact their city councilors so it takes extra effort and we're going to do better if we lift up everyone in the city Great, thank you. Travis? My name is Travis I'm a city council at large I'm running because I've worked in the city for a very long time I've rented I've been in every position you can imagine in the restaurant industry I used to be a tour guide I used to be a housekeeper I've been a carpenter, a painter I've been very, very poor and I believe that there's a lot of class disparity in city council and I wish to represent every working class Portlander that we can be able to afford to live here so I'm going to focus on affordable housing creating more affordable housing for our working class addressing the opioid epidemic harm reduction, overdose prevention better public transit Victoria, remind us who you are why we should drink you first Hi, I'm Victoria Pelletier I'm running for city council for district 2 I'm running because I think it's really important that we have individuals serving the city who are living the issues that we're trying to solve from time and equity to racial equity when we talk about access and opportunity we need to have someone leading those conversations who has been historically under-resourced who understands how to amplify voices and who can see every issue from an equity lens because they are somebody that's been living with inequities and they're somebody that has been advocating for the voices of all Portlanders so I'm really looking forward to hopefully being your city councilor and getting to work together leading with community rather than being a political figurehead that maybe you wouldn't be able to access but I think it's very important that we are electing people to office that again, our young, our black and our people that are really advancing the narrative when we're talking about equity and Portland being a city for everybody Great, thanks everyone for being here thanks for watching or listening in get out there and vote, November 2nd Happy birthday, Tori