“Pisses me off” – Board Chair Says

Corbett School District Special Board Meeting Held on May 23, 2016

Board Meeting Notes  from audio recordings, courtesy of Karina Lande. Approved minutes and agendas can be found here. This web site is provided as a courtesy for those interested in following along with the happenings in our school district, especially those that live in Corbett. This site and these board notes are not meant to replace official CSD board meeting minutes. Many residents appreciate and thank Karina Lande for attending, recording and sharing these updates.

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Here’s what our Corbett School Board Chair, Todd Mickalson, had to say regarding his personal feelings towards those who did not support the bond. Corbett has now failed four general obligation bonds since 2013.

“This isn’t the community that I grew up with. That is the problem, because the community I grew up with came together and took care of what needed to be done and they handled it. 

They did not handle it like a bunch of babies whining and moaning, face booking or face timing. It’s disheartening and people that say they’re proud of this community that are only working to drive that wedge in deeper to get what they want for themselves, verses for the whole.

You can shake your head, you can disagree with it but it’s what’s happened and it pisses me off.”

 

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Although the majority of this school board meeting was related to facilities, there was public comment from parents regarding inappropriate materials being used in our classrooms. I’m separating this out from the rest of the meeting notes for easier comprehension and discussion. Please select here if you wish to read those public comments or read the letter submitted by Eric and April Eaton.

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Todd Mickalson Board Chair opens special meeting

We’re here for a brainstorming session for how we want to go about getting middle school students out of the current building and put a time line together and come up with a plan so that’s what we’re doing tonight.

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Public Comments

Karina Lande:
Also handed out copies of student numbers and building capacity options & ideas, shown here after statement.

Corbett School Board,

Contrary to popular belief I too am saddened about the last bond. I feel the school board failed in their job of representing their constituents by not offering a reasonable and realistic bond proposal their residents would support. Because of the refusal to not only outline a clear plan for the bond proceeds, but also by not passing on the state matching $4 million dollars as a savings to your taxpayers you’ve caused the failure of yet another bond, and in turn have deepened the divide amongst the community you were elected to serve.

I urge the board to rethink the direction the district has been pursuing in regards to bond proposals. It’s time to ask the hard questions and decipher the issues that cause the majority to vote no. The board needs to work to resolve these issues in the best interest of the students and the community, above all else.

It is wrong for the superintendent to state a bond will never pass in Corbett. His ideal bond and vision may never pass, but a bond that sets clear limits on the space built and addresses all campus safety needs, likely would. It is the job of the school board to represent your taxpayers and support their vision of their community school, for their children.

If you decide to close the middle school please be aware that the community will expect to see documented proof from outside agencies that its closure is in fact necessary. I would advise that the district make the sacrifices needed to house the students in the facilities we already have should this be needed. I know that the CAPS program at Springdale is loved by many but the best interest of the 1260 total student body must be put ahead of the wants of the 180 students in CAPS. I would recommend turning Springdale into the middle school until a reasonable plan is put into place to address the current building. This is possible, please see attached for numbers and student facility breakdowns.

The cost of adding a few portables is minimal and would allow for the education of all students to continue with the least amount of disruptions. As opposed to eliminating gym space for physical education and sports needs, or the excess costs of renting or buying an entire new facility.

It is time for you the board, elected by your community, to decide if you’re going to step up and begin to represent your constituents or continue to be lead by the administration, in a direction the majority of your community clearly does not support. Ask yourselves if the children are truly being put first in your decisions, because from where I sit, if that was truly the case a reasonable bond would have been passed years ago and our students would be in a new school now. Do you want to continue repeating the past or do you want to be the board who brought the community back together and truly stood behind the claim of putting the kids first?

Thank you

Housing student option:

There are currently 60 6-8 graders & 120 k-5 graders at Springdale.

Current MS = 244 students & the GS = 412 students.

Current GS has:

16 classrooms
+ 1 preschool
+ 2-3 classes in Library (possibly keeping CAPS program in library)
———-
19
X28 kids per class
——-
532

GS 412 students + K-5 caps 120 students = 532 total students

If loosing the revenue of the preschool is too great then adding 1-2 portables at the GS could be an option.

MS 244 students + 6-8 caps 60 students = 304 total students

Note: 114 of these are 8th graders now going to the HS, so this number would likely be less dependent on the incoming 6th class size, as there are only 96 6th graders & 94 7th graders.

Springdale has a capacity of roughly 270 students & staff. If needed based on numbers adding 1-2 portables may be necessary.

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Ellen Penny:

My names Ellen Penny, I live in Corbett those of us whose names are on this statement are among the many who worked hard to pass the bond. We agree with Dr. Trani’s recommendation that the MS building should be closed, it is seismically unsafe. The board wisely again asked for community support for the revenues necessary to build a safe MS, the community again rejected your request. It is now the responsibility of the board and the administration to explore options for getting students & staff out of the building that both the legislature offer of $4 million and the Rommel facility study indicate that is unsafe at any. Thank You for acting so quickly to start the decision making process. We truly appreciate your dedication and hard work. We also appreciate the history of expertise that you each bring makes your table well suited for this deliberation. We support cost benefit and safety analysis of all of Dr. Trani’s recommendations with one exception, because we believe it would put too big of a hole in the budget and do damage to the educational experience of Corbett kids, we do not support the drastic enrollment reduction. We do however support board exploration of the following; potential for using other buildings in Corbett, potential rotation of students and schedules using existing buildings, a loan for a new building and demolition of the old building, or rent or purchase of new property or a new building. Another option, portable classrooms.

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Stephanie Nystrom:

We ask that you keep the community informed of your deliberations and when you have more information actively engage the community in weighing in on options of closing the MS building and relocating students & staff. A fact sheet with options for alternative placement and cost benefit analysis and a survey that engages parents of Corbett kids is one tool for getting community input. The results of a survey could be announced at a facilitated community meeting that includes discussion between the board and community members. We ask that you do not take the potential for a future bond permanently off the plate. It may be that voters will reconsider a bond if the legislature puts Corbett back on the list to receive funding and the board and administration have done what must be done to ensure safety of our kids for the near term.

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Ellen Penny:
We want to say that there were a number who worked on the bond measure and co signed. A few of them are here tonight Lynn Buckfold (?) and Caroline Oakly. Thank you.

Audience member:
I have a comment to put in with these lovely ladies I’m sorry I didn’t fill out a sheet, I didn’t know, is it ok?

Todd- Board
Yeah go ahead…

Unknown audience member who did not state her name, or introduce herself:
(Since this meeting from other comments this person has been identified as Lynn Cutler Kaufhold.)
I just wanted to commend you all for your tremendous efforts and I want you to know that not the entire community thinks you’re awful and unsuited for this. I truly believe in all of you and we’ve elected all of you to help make these decisions and we really do appreciate your efforts. I also want to bring to light that Michelle Vo, I didn’t discuss this with her but she is actually one of the best assets that we have going for us. She has an education and experience as an architect to understand and convey the aspects of this discussion to the whole community. She does this on a daily basis and I’m not saying we put this all on her plate because obviously we need input from everyone but she’s a tremendous asset to us and she’s a lead architect on the Portland airport project which is arguably the biggest construction project in the Portland area. So we need you and I thank you. To be honest if we needed to hire her as a consultant, Corbett couldn’t afford her, so we’re really tremendously lucky to have her.

As a mother I urge the community to make a fresh start and I really really emphasize that. We need input for lack of a better word from both sides. Yes people and the no people. We need to just have unity again, we need to stop bashing each other. I’ve lived in Corbett for 13 years and to be honest I had no idea that this fracture even existed in this community. Sadly the only place to get information is social media. The Corbett SOS site is the only place really to go to get information and I think that that’s a huge problem. Where do we go to get information? There’s no information available. Even the meeting tonight, I don’t think it was publicized well enough. Rehashing the past further deepens the fracture in the community and I truly believe in everyone’s right to speak as well as their opinions and I’m begging you guys to please look to a positive solution as one community without sides. Let’s get rid of this yes vote and let’s get rid of this no vote and let’s be one community. I truly believe that we all want the same outcome and we won’t ever, ever achieve that with all of the negativity and name calling. That’s not really what we want to model for the kids, we don’t want our kids to be like that, so as adults we need to come together and we need to quit with all the negativity. I think that Corbett can be a beautiful community once again if we all come together.

I really want to emphasize communication, there is no communication. I don’t have a way to solve it but I think that it would be a great thing for us to do and brainstorm and figure out ya know the people that don’t know or are misinformed, how do we inform them? Once again I just want to thank you guys, I think you do a tremendous job.

Also voiced here were the statements from Scott Trayhorn & Eric Eaton, regarding inappropriate media and materials in our classrooms. Please see separate post on this page if you missed it.

Todd – Board
Temporary solution housing students discussion item.

Randy Trani – superintendent

I don’t know if you’ve all had a chance to read this but I’ve gone through our facilities analysis and I took out all the pieces related to the middle school and I highlighted the key components from the packet. This is to address the urgent nature of our decision making and why we know the building is not safe. We have plenty of evidence right here in front of us that if the building were to fall down tomorrow filled with 240 kids and staff members everyone would say you have all this evidence why didn’t you do something about it.

Reads lengthy list of code violations from Rommel report in 2013, some of which are:

*No fire rating or sprinklers and proper exiting
*No identified seismic stability
*Boiler not operable
*No insulation
*Windows – heating issues
*Ada (entrances & bathrooms access for disabled)
*lower level fraught with Asbestos
*Questionable whether there is reinforcing in the foundation
* no anchors to roof in gymnasium
* clay tiles
*heating system not energy efficient
*oversize Windows
*walls most likely unreinforced
*the masonry walls may fail and there’s a chance the building may collapse
*costs required to repair or upgrade would likely exceed the cost to replace the building.
*power & panel board distribution code violations
*generator non emergency load
*lighting fixtures in poor condition
*emergency egress lighting non existent
*no automatic sprinkler alarm system
*access and entrance do not comply with standards
*ventilation does not comply with standards
*wheelchair access does not comply with standards

It goes on and on, middle school does not comply with these standards. So from my perspective we have plenty of information to let us know that the building is not safe and that we should do something about it as quickly as we can.

Todd – board
You think with that many issues we could have a state agency as requested….

Randy
Yeah it’s clear there’s many issues with it but it’s Grandfathered in and was built before the codes existed so we are not going to get a state agency to come and close it on us, There are many schools like us and they can’t just come and close them down because then what are they going to do with all the kids right? But that doesn’t negate us from our responsibility to do all we can, we know it’s dangerous.

(In years past at a board presentation one of the architect companies (Rommel) had stated when asked; if the building had been X-rayed or physically opened to determine if in fact there was or was not any steel supports, the response was the district had not asked them to do so and their report was based on only their assumptions that there was not. I’m not sure if this was determined at a later date by means mentioned above, something to check into before closing it down, as it could be safer then we think.)

David – Board
Maybe we can start, and I don’t know if you’ve received any additional information regarding Reynolds resource center?

Randy
No, all I got was that they were going to discuss it, their superintendent will talk with their chief financial officer and that’s where it stands.

David – board
So is it their board that would need to discuss it?

Randy
No, well yeah, eventually their board would need to discuss it

David – board
Is there anything we can do to promote those discussions?

Randy
I don’t know. It would be easy for our board to draft a letter to their board and that could prompt the discussion.

David – board
I certainly consider that resource center as a solution and we can talk about other solutions. I did a little bit of research on the troutdale market center by Dairy Queen. Lots of space & broken up into different sizes $12 per square ft per year 15,000 = $180K a year. I’m not trying to sell the option but it’s close and there’s space.

Bob – board
But it’s in Reybolds school district so wouldn’t they have to agree?

Randy
Yeah they would have to agree to that.

David – board
What about portables do you have any sense for what those might cost?

Randy
Date is old but when we looked during the first bond it was about $1 million and potentially you could sell them after. The issue was getting them in the gorge and that was a hang up, could you ever get the gorge to let you? Especially now we haven’t passed a bond where we can say its temporary.

David – board
So was that for purchase?

Randy
Yeah that was purchase and setting them up, the septic and all of that.

(Note this cost was based on housing 300 students/staff not broken down to know cost of just a few to house say 30-90)

Lacey – board
What about CAPS or that & using portables?

Randy
Caps is filled, so now you’re just robbing Peter to pay Paul and you’re gonna move kids who are perfectly happy in caps and families that are perfectly happy in caps out of caps to displace the middle school kids so now you’re impacting an even larger percentage of our school district by doing that.

David – board
Do we have room for portables down at the Springdale school?

Randy
I doubt it and I doubt that primarily because, I mean maybe one or two, the septic system is going to be the possible problem at that property. We know we have plenty of septic on this piece of property though.

Todd – board
What about septic at the old grade school site, could it be resurrected?

Randy
Maybe but remember what we heard from soderstrom when we looked at it as a building site, that the septic there would need to be brought up to date to house that number of students but you could house less or some of them there.

David – board
The reason I question portables at Springdale is because it’s not under the regulations of the gorge commission.

Randy
Right it’s not the gorge.

Margarite – board
If we were looking at caps, would it be enough room for students on Springdale and enough on GS for those from caps

Randy
Its 2,000 sqft less at Springdale then we’re using at the MS.

Michelle – board
What about adding portables to Springdale?

Randy
Potentially, sure.

Bob – board
I don’t think they’re going to let you put portables down there cause the parking was maxed for the counts, so if you increase the counts you’d have to increase parking and you can’t.

Todd – board
And the septic, what’s allowed so if you’re adding more students?

Michelle – board
What about taking out the 6th graders and put them up here?

Randy
Yeah in rough terms you would have 700 kids split 16 ways but I mean frankly trying to address this problem without using space or creating new space is going to get huge class sizes somewhere.

David – board
We talked about possibly converting gyms, how realistic might that be?

Randy
Yeah if we used the back gym and say the weight room, in broadest of terms that’s about 10,000 sqft so you have 8 classrooms and the shape isn’t ideal but you could get that from those two spaces but at an obvious cost.

Todd – board
That’s fine & dandy for classrooms but you’ll probably get tracked down & beaten by half the community if you shut down a gym.

Randy
Yeah a cheaper building to build would be a new gym and you could likely put in a new gym on the old grade school property without the required septic. We could build a gym cheaper then a school.

Bob – board
At one point we talked about using MHCC & what was the cost of that?

Randy
Yeah it was really cheap but it was strictly temporarily and it was a different time then to, they weren’t as full as they are now. Because the state is providing funds for community college they’re all full now.

Michelle – board
Have you talked to the port of Portland or Troutdale airport about any large buildings?

David – board
I think when I was looking I’m pretty sure they have some buildings available down at the airport so I’ll look into that more.

Todd – board
First foremost would be to look in our own backyard….

Audience commenter 1
Yeah does anyone want to send their kids to town to go to school? I think we live in Corbett for a reason. I know some have lived here for 10 years but some of us have been here 30 or 40 and I think the school size is getting out of control and if you guys get rid of open enrollment and maybe look at your superintendent that was brought in by Bob Dunton that was not one of the best caretakers of our school like we spent $300,000 in Gresham from the insurance money from the old school that burned and nothing became of that. Get rid of all this open enrollment and maybe you’ll pass a bond. And maybe get back to the Corbett kids.

Audience commenter 2
That is the elephant in the room. I mean come on let’s just talk about it.

Audience commenter
I don’t have any kids in the school right now, nobody wants to piss anyone off because they all have kids in the schools and they’re all afraid somethings going to come down on their kids, but I don’t and I’ll say it.

Todd – board
So here’s where I stand, if we go back to where we just have our district kids, we become Reynolds.

Commenter
Why’s that?

Todd – board
We can not sustain and keep the school open and keep any programming open. We would be a bare bones shell of a school.

Commenter
I don’t believe it

Audience
But why is it always all or nothing? Why do you guys always say “we have just district only, scare tactic fold into Reynolds, or we have 600+ out of area kids.” Why not cap it at 300 and find ways to make it work? If we build big we could collapse too when these outside kids realize we’re not that spectacular and they leave, then we can’t keep the lights on in a bigger campus.

Audience
Or reduce as they graduate out

David – board
I wonder if we should go back to signing up and audience cards?

Margarite – board
Can I say something? I just, I think “the elephant in the room” is the perfect thing to say about this, and this is something that all of us especially, have thought long and hard about and one of the things we want the community to know is we know it’s better to have a small school. We know it’s better to have just our kids or as few kids as possible. What it is though is if you get in and actually have to work with all the contingencies, all the labor unions, all of the actual funding numbers that are coming through, the increases in cost, all the stuff, if you actually would like to see this change to a smaller school then we need to see you guys get your tail ends into the business office!

I will champion you. If you can work those numbers better then anyone else that’s been working with them for years, if you can figure out a way to do that, oh my gosh it would be a miracle, it would be great, it would be wonderful! It’s not that we don’t want this, it’s not that we aren’t listening, but we look at the numbers, we look at the reality, we look at everything that’s going on here and it’s not about ego or glory or wanting AP or wanting all this stuff. We want this school to stay Corbett school we want it to stay independent. We want to do the best job we can for the kids. I feel like we’re in a lifeboat already and what’s happening is people are drilling holes in it instead of coming in and helping us try to plug the holes, and it’s been very frustrating!

This is my take on it and I’m not trying to speak for everybody but I think saying the elephant in the room, this is the thing we keep coming back to, is why we have these out of district kids. And if you don’t believe it and you don’t believe this is reality, then you have to do the homework just like we are. You can’t just stand on the sidelines and lob grenades in from the sidelines without having the facts. I’m sorry I’m getting upset here but that’s just my take on it.

Audience
So the schools have done fine until about mid 2000’s, before that it did just fine.

Audience 2
And there’s other small town schools that are surviving.

Margarite – board
Other small town schools are as in bad as shape as we are. There is not another school district in Oregon that’s not having these same struggles. And if you don’t believe that you just have to go talk to some of the other boards you have to go look at what’s going on, they’re struggling too.

Audience
I have a question, it’s just a numbers question

Todd – board
Here’s what I want to do, so we’re not just going back and forth, if we’re talking about something and you want to talk, come up, sign up and say your piece. We can do it formally because we’re not here to go back and forth, we’re here to, you know, hear what everyone has to say, their ideas. We’re not here to hear about the administration or somebody’s problem, we’re not here for that right now.

We’re here to figure out what we’re going to do with that building because I’m telling ya, I’ve been here 39 years and I’ve got one kid that’s leaving that building in a few days and I got one that’s going into kindergarten this coming fall. I’m forced with if that’s the option of where my kids gonna go for middle school I’m moving to The Dalles, I’m moving to, I mean of all things, Portland, before I’ll put my kid in that school. I would hope that you guys can understand where I’m coming from. So any differences, they can be worked out.

Audience
But how, if you won’t discuss them? If you just say “talk & we’ll listen”, but then you don’t respond, that’s not really working things out.

David – board
What I’d like to add as one realistic option for keeping Corbett small and limiting it to Corbett kids only, is if this community would ever support an operating levy?

Several audience members responded with “yes” & “I would”

Todd – board
So then when we went out for an operating levy, where was everyone?

Audience members:
I wasn’t here then
That was before I could vote

Todd – board
Asks Randy what the general annual budget is

Randy
Just for the sake of easy math and discussion let’s use $10 million
(it’s between $13-14)

Todd – board
So $10 million dollars and this is the one thing that I figured out really quick when I got on the school board that budgeting for a school district is the dumbest thing on the planet. It is the most backwards thing that you’ve ever done, ok?

For years, it’s about the size of business that I budget for every year, $10 – $15 million, it may be that I deal with local realm but still it’s $10-$15 million that I budget for every year. And I thought man that’s going to be a snap, then you come in here and you see oh geez they’re taking $300,000 away from 2 years ago from the funding change.

Then the May adjustment, I kept hearing about a May adjustment, and great one year we’re up, hey we got another $100,000. The next year we’re down now they took away another couple hundred thousand. There’s no set, there’s a formula, but there’s no set guarantee of what you’re going to get, you know? It should be that the state just gives you X amount of dollars and that’s what you get. Then you’ve got a decent budget to work with, then it’s a stable budget and you’re not trying to figure out how you’re going to cover that $200,000 that they decided to pull out of your last check of the year.

So it’s a lot more difficult then you would think it should be, and ya know we get funded differently, the formula doesn’t work for us like it does for Reynolds, like it does for Riverdale, like it does for Barlow/Gresham. You know, you go to a rural school and we don’t get rural funding cause we’re too close to Reynolds. You know, there’s a lot of things. I mean it’s a tough thing to deal with.

David – board
Correct me if I’m wrong here but I think to give you a sense of what we have to deal with in the budgeting process is that next year expenses are going up by what 8%?

Randy
Yeah, yep at least 8%

David – board
And then revenue from the state is going up by 2% so next year we have a 6% loss of funding. We as a board and as the budget committee we have to figure out how to fill that. You can do it a number of ways. You can increase class sizes and reduce staff, you can increase the student population and bring in money that would go to other districts and that’s one solution that I know a lot of you may not like but it does keep you from having to pay an operating levy. That is a choice that you have, you can choose to pay an operating levy to keep the school running and when we didn’t have the money to keep it up and running we brought in out of district students and the money that comes with them.

Audience
But that seems to be the only option you guys ever look at it, that’s all we’re saying.

Margarite – board
If you can come up with something else, then we’re with you.

Audience
Why is it always everybody else’s job to tell you?

Bob – board
Then you figure out the budget, and you do the numbers, and you show us.

Audience
It’s your job, and you never give the community options and say “hey we can bring in more kids or we can do this”, it’s always just “we’re bringing in more kids” and that’s that.

Todd – board
So here’s something that happened just recently and it’s one of those deals that’s frustrating. The community says that we don’t want more students so we vote as a board not to increase and we have a $900,000 budget deficit for next year to cover. We have to cut $900,000.

Audience
But you have $1.5-2.5 million sitting there from last year so we shouldn’t be in a deficit.

David – board
Could you just let him speak please

Todd – board
Yeah for once.

Audience
Sorry

Todd – board
Yeah so $900,000 was cut this year, we’ve cut positions. So, we voted as a board not to increase students. To show the community that we’re hearing them and we’re not going to just keep bringing them in.

Audience
But you just voted for more open enrollment

Todd
Open enrollment, yeah we didn’t vote to decrease the numbers or just to decrease by attrition, we voted to not decrease the numbers, so 1266 students total is what we had for our cap and we chose to leave that cap so what we did with open enrollment this year was we allowed slots to be backfilled so we don’t decrease that number but didn’t increase past our 1266 student population.

Audience
But can’t we when seniors leave not fill those spots for next year?

Audience
Every year they can choose to close open enrollment, period.

David – board
Sure but there’s a budget and so we’d have to cut something else.

Todd – board
Yeah so how much do we cut?

Audience
Right, I get that but I am also curious about private fund raising? I haven’t heard any requests to donate to some type of fund to build a school. What about those who voted yes we could all donate whatever we would have paid on a bond, and those from out of district can donate if they want to come.

Todd – board
I apologize I got us sidetracked, Eric had wanted to speak.

Eric Eaton
I’ve never done the math but if we do take it back to in district and get the small school funding back and in proportion reduce the staff requirements, not to minimum but to overwhelmingly support our students, I’m not talking minimal work here cause I’m happy to pay a premium here for our kids in Corbett, particularly if we go back to old Corbett. What’s that per month, is it equal to the bond?

Margarite – board
It’s not that simple, there’s so many factors involved.

Eric
But I think it is, currently what’s our current net revenue from out of district?

Randy
About $4.5 million

Eric
So divide that by 2,000 people, what’s that a month?

Randy
The most that we could go out for in an operating levy is probably going to be about $700,000. for the year. We’re capped at how much we can even ask for and I’m going off what it was last time we tried a levy. We tried twice and both times it went down 2 to 1, the second one was $100,000 for athletics only and it failed too. To try and replace $4.5 million dollars, which obviously we would have to if we got rid of all those kids the most we could ever levy is about $700,000 which is about the same as this bond.

Eric
We just did the figure and it was $2,200 a year.

David – board
Well I did the numbers and I made the assumption that only 1000 people would be willing to pay it so that’s about $4,500 a year. I think the bond was $200-$300 a year.

Audience asks about the small school funding coming back and being deducted from the $4.5? Another person asks how much would come off for less being spent in teachers salaries because we reduced students? Another asks if a levy would be a tax write off?

David – board
So Eric that would mean that you’d have need to be paying $4,500

Eric
We are blessed that we could afford that but I know that would not be a successful proposition community wide (based on the $4500 per year) but it’s a start. And my opinion of that is you give us a small school we’ll find a way to build you a nice small school.

Todd – board
Calls next public comment

Kristy Falt
Wondering if you’ve looked at the Corbett community church for space at all and also there’s a camp for sale. My son has gone to Corbett since kindergarten and he’s a 7th grader this is where he belongs but we live on the other side of the river. We lived in Corbett but we had to move I got a divorce that’s not his fault that happened but he should be yanked out just because you guys want this tiny little school? It is a small school.

Audience
No we’ve always had people that live close by & come to Corbett and we’ve always had some out of district.

Audience
I think it’s not out of district or none, I think it’s finding a balance.

Kristy Falt
But why should he who has gone here I mean this is the only school he’s known, he’s 13, I lived here, I had to move, I couldn’t afford to live here, and now we should just go because you guys have been here for 50 years and you have roots or had a dairy 50 years ago. It’s mean, it’s selfish.

Audience
Corbett can’t take in the world

Audience
There’s no point because If your X husband still lives here your kid is already guaranteed

Next Public comment – no name or introduction given

I have one thing to say to the process which is your work is really hard to do and you came together tonight to discuss options on how to shut down our middle school building so that our kids and staff can be safe. I appreciate that there is so much interest in having comment here tonight but I don’t think that it is constructive to disrupt the board in their process. If the board wants to turn their meeting into an open house conversation that’s one thing and as the folks who worked hard to pass the bond measure we really hope that you have the opportunity to get all of these recommendations and there are some good new ones out there tonight and put them back out for public comment in a different kind of meeting.

I didn’t think that this meeting tonight was going to be a free for all about issues unrelated to the middle school. Congratulations that you can talk to everybody in this group at the same time about multiple agendas but I appreciate that you have one. I appreciate sunshine laws and you don’t have a lot of time to come together and talk about this issue. I hope that this time can be used to think about all the options you have and think of a way to solicit options from people who would speak them from the audience maybe they can get them to you in other ways, and then get them back to the community. Thank you for your time.

David – board
I did want to address something that one of the comments brought up and that is Crestview and we did look at that as a possibility it’s under our impression it is for sale.

Todd – board
Isn’t it around $4 million?

Randy
Well I had $2 million. Everything’s on the table of cause but there’s some potential issues with Crestview that are costly. Although the buildings are very nice, it was not constructed to be a school so it would take lots of renovation within the buildings and even more difficult then that would be conditional use. It never has been a school so getting a permit for it to be a school would be a process as it’s in the national scenic area which only complicates matters. Getting access to the property itself would probably be met with resistance from neighbors if you’re trying to drive 300 kids down that one lane road which you’d have to make it a 2 lane road and cause even more angst. It’s an idea but there would be some hurtles to that.

Just because there’s an audience here, and this is a misconception of how school districts are funded. Corbett residents will pay about $1.65 million in property taxes next year. That number is not connected at all in no way, shape, or form, to the number of outside students. If we could magically wave the wand and every one of them was gone, we would pay $1.65 million in property tax. If we had 500,000 people and every one from the rest of the state suddenly moved into Corbett and all the students were going to school in these tiny little buildings, we would still pay the same $1.65 million in property tax. Our taxes are not impacted by out of district students and that $1.65 million if you use that $10 million figure, we pay for about 17% of the operation of this school with our property tax the rest of our operations is largely paid for by other Oregonians. We are not self sustaining, that’s just the way it is.

(Note that our resident students’ state funding per student also covers operation costs along with our residents’ property tax. It’s not quite the slant to us being funded by outsiders as this makes it sound.)

Randy
Then if we talk about ya know the other districts in Multnomah County, the next closest district gets about 25% more dollars per student from the state then we do. Portland public is about 60% more and Riverdale is more then 200% then we get. So when the state raises our revenue by 1.89% and our costs go up between 8-10% we end up doing things like cutting 9% of our budget, $900,000 just this year. So when state funding does not go up, the canary in the coal mine is Corbett. We get funded far less then most other districts in the state. It’s just how the funding works.

(To my understanding we are funded by the same formula state wide, other districts get additional funding but also have additional costs in providing services that we don’t have the students with those types of service needs in our district. Victoria Purvine can probably clarify all of this much better then I can.)

Randy
So we the district for the decade plus that I’ve been here have tried to address this problem many ways we brought up operating levy, we tried it. We sold off every spare thing we had, and this is like pre-me, this isn’t just Randy deciding, this is the board. The old school burns down, they get a settlement they buy a Cal building, it’s under utilized by Corbett very few people went, but it was the only way the district had to collect the dollars is they had to. Then they sold that asset and lived off that for several years then the county of Multnomah put up an income tax and that kept us afloat for years, then that income tax went away and we said we need, ya know we are the canary in the coal mine, we make less money then everyone else. We don’t have any choices, will you pass an operating levy, it was defeated 2 to 1, maybe you’ll pass a smaller one, it was defeated 2 to 1. So we began cutting and we began letting in students, because if you go down the path long enough, it’s where Todd started, and so for the last 3 years we have kept our students flat. Even if we hit our target students next year we still have a 9% cut.

Todd – board
You know the last thing that I want to do and I mean the absolute last thing I want is if we merge with another school district because you know, I mean, we can figure it out, you know, we don’t need to resort to that. I mean, I know that we can come together and come up with a solution that’s gonna work for everybody. Maybe everybody’s not the happiest on the planet but if, ya know, if we had to combine with someone else we’d pick up their tab, alright? I mean that’s more then the $1.78 per thousand that would’ve come up if the bond would’ve passed. It would be more if we had to combine with Reynolds or Barlow/Gresham and I don’t want that. I want to keep it contained here in Corbett, we’re a little bit bigger then when Eric & I went through here ya know I think my graduating class was right around 50, and we were one of the largest at the time. What do we got this year? 94, so I mean we haven’t tripled in size but we are a little bit bigger and we’re trying to make do and not go crazy with our spending. We’re pretty responsible with how we’ve been spending our money and so I think we just need to continue that.

Bob – board
Can we get back to doing the discussion about what we’re going to do? The first one was the national resource center, we sort of bantered around the board putting together a letter that prompted a discussion at Reynolds, does it take a vote to do that?

Randy
I think it would be great if you guys took a vote if you wanted to send a letter to them.

Todd – board
Technically I don’t think we have to but we can.

Motion and vote to draft a letter to Reynolds for the purchase or lease of their property to see if they’re agreeable. 7-0

Randy
I want to circle back to something that David talked about, with the property down by Dairy Queen, did you say it was $180,000 or something per year? Roughly? David replies yes. For about that same amount of money per year, we could have a loan for $2.5 million and to put it in perspective, we spent $1.6 million on Springdale. So if we could get the property from Reynolds we could easily upgrade that and it would be affordable to have the property.

David – board
Oh I agree, the Reynolds property seems much more fiscally responsible. Something that we brought up and a question I have is, what is our borrowing capacity? I mean if we decided we wanted to build a building, could we borrow the money and build it?

Randy
Yeah so I talked to Piper Jeffrey about it and very rough numbers guess is $10 million @ 2.9-3.4% interest.

David – board
I did some numbers on that and if we borrowed $10 million at 4% for 30 years it would be a little under $600,000 per year in payments.

Randy
Which she had 3.4% for 20 years and they built in 8.5% contingency. That was $705,000 a year, I guess that’s the difference between 20 & 30 years.

Margarite – board
$600,000 a year? Where would we get that?

Lacey – board
Yeah, we’re talking about cutting and looking at our budget, how would we do that?

David – board
$600,000 a year is about what we would get if we recovered our small high school funding. So we could cover that essentially making the payments on the building.

Randy
Yep

Michelle Vo
But in order to get the small high school funding, you have to have a small high school.

Randy
You know we’re talking about getting every human out of that building and this is the next step after that.

Todd – board
Well there’s all sorts of scenarios, you could have middle school or K-12 in the current high school and you could have K-12 down at Springdale and you could have your STEM and your standard or whatever high schools, and recoup your small school funding.

Audience
Yeah play with loopholes again, that’s smart.

Michelle – board
So I guess we need to explain to the community then, how you’d break up, or however you want to explain it in order to get that.

Randy
Yeah small high school funding is a formula that Corbett enjoyed for a long long time, probably since we started. At 350 students you lose it all, all small high school funding. 340 students the amount would be pretty small, maybe $10,000. The most money you get is in the 180-220 student range, those high schools get the most dollars. When you get down to very very small ones with maybe 10 students then you get incredible high amount of money per student. It’s a strange curve but at about 200 students is where you realize the most dollars.

David – board
So just as an example we’ve got 400 high schoolers for easy math, and if we had 2 separate small high schools it sounds like we’d be at the peak of the curve.

Randy
Yep

Public comment

Mary Stevens
I just wanted to ask if you were out at Crestview if you’d be far enough out to recoup the rural school funding?

Randy
It’s 7 miles and it’s for grade schools. It’s from the next nearest grade school. So no.

(Wonder though as I’ve heard legislation may have changed to not include schools outside of your district so it may be if Springdale was not a grade school but instead a middle school we could possibly recoup this extra rural funding?)
No name or introduction
Hi, I’m just curious when your talking about facilities and cost analysis and I’m wondering especially with the gyms, are you going to be able to address fire life & safety issues across the board? Especially in the gym and other facilities, is that part of the cost and part of the plan? I hear the conversation what are the alternatives and talk about building things in the gym and weight room and for me I’m trying to wrap my brain around does that address the ADA, the fire, and some of the other things? My daughter was in a classroom last year that I wondered if there was a fire, I mean there was one window and it was high, how would they get out of there? So as a parent I’m thinking ok if it’s the gym you use, I’m hoping there’s a hard look at does this facility solve the issues and what are the costs for that if that’s the resolution.

Todd – board
I know for the gym, we’re still working on the seismic grant. We didn’t get it this go around but there’s a chance we will this next go around. That was part of what we didn’t account as far as spending bond money on cause we’re pretty confident we’ll get that money and even if we get it this next go around. For me the gym, that’s a last ditch effort to take that gym space for class space. The whole point of the bond was to address the most dire needs. First and foremost is that MS building then we dive into safety issues and seismic stuff. So that’s where the total dollar amount of $15.9 million out of the $25 million seemed to need for the most dire needs.

Commenter
Right I just want, I haven’t heard discussion ya know if we go to another facility for the middle school does that improve the safety of the students.

Randy
The good news is that as soon as we get conditional use for a school, everything has to be brought up to code. So whatever the solution is it will follow those rules, seismic, fire life & safety, ADA, it will all be included in whatever it is.

Commenter
So you’d have to potentially spend a chunk of money to upgrade, a huge chunk of money, for something that’s only temporary?

Randy
Yes a huge chunk of money. It’s just the trade off is, what if it happened today? There’d be people in there who are dead, and I know them, I work with them. You’re trusting your children with us and so we have to do something. It’s on the board and me to do something now, we have to do something.

Commenter
I know and I totally support that.

Todd – board
Ok 2 more public comments

Isaiah Irving
Grade school student reads letter

I think that what we need to do is each contribute our own creative solution to the school funding problems and to raise awareness to the kids of Corbett because this is our future and we all need to share it. A couple solutions are to first tell the kids about the failed bonds and in writing class to write a letter to someone that probably didn’t agree with the bond. The second approach is to allow out of district kids to help pay the bond can we do fundraisers like we did to go to Opal Creek?

Travis Younker
This is my first school board meeting because my girls are not in school yet but I’m trying to help the process of getting things back where they need to be. Not really a dairy farmer but I did grow up on a farm as most people did here. One of things that people are saying how if the schools did collapse that I would like everybody to think about, I have no problem with out of district kids there’s always been a few, I don’t want anybody to have to move and sorry about your problem and divorce but your son can still go to Corbett because his dad lives here. Anyway if the school did come down today, what’s going to happen? Who’s going to come? You have a 50 man all volunteer fire department most of them work on the other side of the river. When I drive through Corbett everyday I can’t believe the amount of cars coming from town, and the school buses going to town. How much did we spend on buses, maybe not a lot but everything adds up and they’re buses we had to buy to go from Troutdale to come here. I just can’t believe the amount of cars and traffic that comes into town now. I understand that you think we’d go under if we didn’t have all the out of district kids but I don’t really believe that that would happen. I’d almost just assume that happen then to shove all these kids into Corbett.

Audience
Wow that’s a big statement

Travis
Well I’m sorry but there are some people who grew up here, our parents grew up here

Audience
That doesn’t make it right

Audience
Corbett can’t save the world, it’s not our responsibility to bring every single kid here

Audience multiple simultaneous comments regarding being selfish and close minded, some back and forth amongst audience members.

Todd – board
We’re getting off track here

Travis
What I’m trying to get at is basically that this town is not built for the amount of people that are coming to this school. And this talking about building 2 more high schools? That’s not going to solve the problems. You need to fix the problem and then we’ll vote for a bond, then I’d have no problem. I think everyone thinks it’s a money problem but it’s not I have no problem paying for my kids to go to school but there’s no way, if this school collapsed today, who’s going to show up when everybody’s parents live across the river?

Katey Kinnear – board
Interrupts Travis….
Ok for one my kid goes to school there and I will be down here. And out of the board my kid is the only one that is there right now.

Travis
We want to bring all these kids in and build these schools, I mean we don’t even have a stoplight in this town and you’ve only got a fire department that’s 100% volunteers. We’re not the city of Gresham. If anything were to happen, heaven forbid some weird school thing happens, I mean we have no cops in town and what 1 resource officer. I’m just wanting to throw that all out there for some thought.

Todd – board
I guess before we jump back into it, This isn’t the community that I grew up with. That is the problem, because the community I grew up with came together and took care of what needed to be done and they handled it. They did not handle it like a bunch of babies whining and moaning, face booking or face timing. It’s disheartening and people that say they’re proud of this community but that are only working to drive that wedge in deeper to get what they want for themselves, verses for the whole. You can shake your head, you can disagree with it, but it’s what’s happened, and it pisses me off.

We’re working to come up with a good solution to the problem at hand. If one dies whether it’s in district or out of district kid, if one dies because one brick hits them, that’s too many. So when there’s 240-260 in that building and the whole thing comes down, it may never happen, but if it ever does I don’t know how I’d live with myself. Even though I am on this side of the table, and I am trying.

David – board
I’ve only lived here for 20 years but I know enough about the history and the schools and in the past the community has supported it’s schools. They built school when it needed them and it built good schools. The middle school and the high school were build with 4 or 5 times the square foot space then we’re giving our students today and I don’t really understand what’s changed? Why do we value education so much less then people did 100 years ago or even 50 years ago? What happened? I mean it’s so important and so important for our kids and we’re just totally ripping up our kids.

Karina Lande
I’d like to just touch on a couple things real quick, it’s nothing negative Todd, so please allow me to speak. I think that people need to not take things so personally. When Corbett residents talk about the out of area kids, it’s not the families as individuals because let me tell you as a Corbett parent, at a lot of the activities and the things I’ve done with my kids I see more of out of area parents present then local. So I get it, you guys are great. But the issue is when is enough enough? It’s the cumulative masses, it’s not about individuals, it’s about finding a balance between the two.

I think that Travis’ point about the out of area kids wasn’t so much I think how Todd took it, but it’s a question I’ve wondered too and that is, if we have 650 kids here who don’t live here and let’s say there is a catastrophe and their parents can not cross the river or get here to get their children and we have very limited means for support here in Corbett, a lot of us wonder, what is the plan to take care of these students that are here who’s families can not get to them? I think that’s the point and what he was asking.

David – board
When it comes to out of district students. I think enough is enough when the kids in Corbett have a reasonable class size and are getting a good education.

Todd – board
I think as far as solutions to getting kids home & reuniting them with their families there’s options, you gotta figure it out. There’s a landing strip on trout creek….

Audience
No not anymore

Audience
But let’s say there is an earthquake, do you have supplies? Cots, sleeping bags, food, to house these kids in our gyms for days? It’s a legitimate question.

Bob – board
If we have an earthquake here that buildings going to be a pile of rubble in 2 seconds, it’s a clay tile building. It won’t matter where you live to come pick your kids up because they’re going to be buried.

Audience
That’s one building, what about the rest of the kids in the 3 other schools?

Bob – board
The other buildings are fine

Audience
So what are you going to do with those kids if the parents can’t get here?

Bob – board
We’ll lock them down and keep them here until the parents can.

Audience
That’s what we’re asking, are there supplies? Are there plans? Has that been taken care of?

Margarite – board
I think that what we need to do first is make sure that the school is operational with what funding we have and not stop doing what we’re doing because of that possibility or eventuality that could be with that. I think that’s pretty far off in the distance then what we have to look at right now. It’s not a bad point but it’s not what’s in front of us right now.

(So the possibility of an earthquake is far off and not a priority when it comes to planning for how to house out of area students in an emergency but it’s not far off when it comes to passing a bond or closing the middle school?)

Todd – board
So we’re looking into finding out information about the resource center, we’ll work on a letter to send to them.

Audience
Corbett used to own that right, and we sold it?

David – board
So Randy should someone talk to Reynolds about putting a little piece of our district within their district over at the market center?

Randy
Sure yeah I’ll approach them.

David – board
Yeah just as very temporary, a couple years until we can get a building built.

Randy
There’s one more place potentially, if we’re going to talk about, there’s the school at Cascade Locks. It’s a school and has conditional use. Every one of these ideas are not optimal but there’s a huge potential there in a temporary situation. It’s large and has a gym and not made out of hollow clay tile. I can approach their superintendent.

Todd – board
And we need to look into leasing modular space and price those. Different configurations whether a six plex or whatever.

Lacey – board
I was just looking through things we were thinking of and we haven’t mentioned rotating schedules?

Randy
So there’s lots of ways you could use your existing space and get multiple use out of them. So I call it hot bunking like in WWII, you can do it so a portion of students can use the room in the morning and a portion can use the same room in the afternoon. Or you could do it throughout the week, M-W and Th-Saturday. You could even do it across a year where you’d extend the school year and do it that way. You could do longer days, some start early some go later. It has the big advantage that it’s free and we don’t have to build anything or buy anything or get conditional use or anything. It’s hugely disruptive to families if all the schools are now on different daily schedules, you’re dropping one off at 6:30 in the morning and picking another up at 7:30 at night.

Audience
Take that one off the table please

Randy
Yeah then there’s other costs and extra staff. Plus who would want to come here for that?

Todd – board
If you’ve got ideas go to the website our emails are on there. If you’ve got ideas send me an email. We’re not fighting this out tonight, this is the beginning but we’ve got to figure out something. Maybe I’ll go home and get in the shower tonight and have an epiphany and solve all the worlds problems, I hope it happens but it will probably happen to one of you before it happens to me, so send the ideas in and I’ll pass them along.

Board recess to executive session regarding deliberation of real property transactions.

Beard reconvenes, lists coming events and adjourns meeting.

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