Jason Willis in Conversation with Nolberto Delgadillo, Chief Financial Officer for Portland Public Schools (PPS)
Danny Torres:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the second session of our online conversation series, Leading Voices. In 2022, WestEd will be spotlighting scholarly and practitioner perspectives on a wide range of pressing education issues. Today’s topic, Sustaining Investments for Impactful Student Learning Strategies, Planning for the Inevitability of a Fiscal Cliff. Thank you all very much for joining us to speak about this very important topic. My name is Danny Torres. I serve as associate director of events and digital media for WestEd. I’ll be your host today. Now before we move into today’s conversation, I’d like to take a brief moment to introduce WestEd.
WestEd is a national nonprofit, nonpartisan research, development, and service agency. At WestEd, we believe that learning changes lives. Every day we partner with schools and communities across the country to improve outcomes for youth and adults of all ages. Today’s conversation focuses on one really important facet of the work that we do at WestEd, and I encourage you to visit us at WestEd.org to learn more. Now I’d like to introduce Jason Willis, Director of Strategic Resource Planning and Implementation at WestEd. He’ll be moderating the session today. Jason, take it away.
Jason Willis:
Great, thanks so much Danny, and happy to be here. I’m Jason Willis, director for strategic resource planning and implementation. I work on a team at WestEd that works with a variety of states and local education systems to advise them on strategies for the use and leverage of their funds in an effective way and also thinking about their system design and system change efforts. So, obviously a very timely topic here today, and I’m excited to be joined by Nolberto Delgadillo from Portland Public Schools. And Nolberto is the chief financial officer at Portland Public Schools. They serve about 49,000 students across 81 schools, and Nolberto to is a pre-seasoned CFO. Prior to that, he was at Tulsa Public Schools in Oklahoma and was the chief operating officer for the LA Promise Fund in Green Dot Schools in LA, actually in California. And Nolberto is a native of California, graduated from USC and Loyola Marymount, and he is the son of an immigrant. So welcome, Nolberto. Thanks for joining us today.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Thanks Jason. Thanks for the invitation, excited to be here.
Jason Willis:
Yeah, and I… So, Nolberto and I before we kinda got into the session, something, I asked him if there was something that didn’t show up on his bio, ’cause it always makes it interesting. And one of the things that he mentioned to me that for one of his birthdays he flew a stunt plane, which is just such an incredible experience. You wanna just say, mention something about that Nolberto?
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yeah, so growing up I wanted to be a fighter pilot. So, I had posters of all sorts of things. Most kids growing up might’ve had baseball, football, sports things. F-16, Sr-71 was my wall. And so, went the traditional academic route at the end of the day. And so, my wife got me many years later for my 30th birthday, a chance to fly a stunt plane in Southern California over Catalina Island. So, essentially the pilot took off and landed and for about two hours I had a chance to just do stunts, wheels, hammerhead, dives, all sorts of things to get that out of my system. I will say I did take a Dramamine beforehand. It was just a great time.
Jason Willis:
That’s awesome. Thanks so much for sharing that Nolberto and appreciate you really being here today. And I think in particular really wanna kinda pull out some of the experiences that you’ve had in Portland Public Schools, talking about issues of the use of one-time funds and really addressing some of the big questions that we’ve been seeing in the field around issues of sustaining programs and strategies over time with the investment of these federal dollars. So, we’ve got… We’ve kind of broken it up into a couple segments today, but before we do that, I actually thought it’d be good to get a little bit of a warmup before we dive in. And so, WestEd’s been doing some of this investigating and supporting the field on these questions of sustainability.
So, just to kind of get us warm and loose for the conversation today, what I’d like to do for our participants, thanks so much for dropping your name and your affiliation and your position in the chat. So, Nolberto and I have another question for you, and the question is, what is something of value mean to you? So, when you think of something that’s of value to you, what comes up? What word or phrase or sentence comes up for you? So, when you’re ready, just drop that into chats. And Nolberto, as folks are kinda thinking about this and putting this in chat, how do you respond to that question? What is something of value mean to you?
Nolberto Delgadillo:
When I think of something of value to me, it’s something that’s important. And thinking about important, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be important to me. It could be important to my wife, my kids, to the community I serve, to my stakeholders. So, it’s value because it’s important to someone to accomplish something. And so, I think that that’s what comes to mind when I think of something of value it’s that. It doesn’t have to be tangible, but I think something that just brings importance.
Jason Willis:
Yeah, what I appreciate about that response, and we’re getting some stuff showing up in the chat, is that often it’s not very tangible, right? So, we often, sometimes in the context of this conversation the kind of worlds that you and I work in, it’s often about, it’s monetary, right? There’s something tangible that you can kind of put your arms around. But what’s so interesting about your response is, and some of the things that we see showing up in the chat is largely that it really reflects something that you’re… There was one response it’s like something you’re worth fight… It’s worth fighting for, right? You wanna make sure that it’s something that you retain or something that you’re getting in return for something else.
And I think what’s so interesting about this prompt in particular with participants and its association with issues with sustainability is that what we’ve been finding, and we’ll get into this in a little bit, that largely issues around sustainability start with conversations with those that are sitting around a program or sitting around a strategy, and how you try to kinda create the architecture of finding the funding, the tangible, the monetary substance in order to continue something. So, thanks so much for all your responses and keep dropping them in chat as we move along and we get into this conversation with Nolberto. So, good for us to warm it up a bit.
And the other thing I will say, too, is if you all have questions out there that you’d like to drop into chat, please do that throughout the course of the session today. And my colleague Kelsey Karusen is gonna come in a little bit later to do a bit of a Q&A with Nolberto and I based on the conversation today. So let’s get into it. And we’ve got kinda two segments for the conversation as I mentioned, one on kind of use of one-time funds and one on the sustainability of funding. And so, Nolberto, I wanna start with a graphic we published in a brief last fall that really tries to organize people’s thinking around federal funds, and it’s kind of segmenting the use of some of those federal funds.
So, Danny, if you could pull up a slide six, I just wanna give our participants a quick look at this and kind of tee up Nolberto to dive in here. So, you can see here that across the bottom, from the left to the right is essentially time, right? So, this kind of represents the infusion of a lot of these federal resources and part of the segmentation of framework that we’ve offered Nolberto is kind of these three buckets of one-time investments, right? So, as a CFO, these are truly investments in modernization of a building or investments in buying a new curriculum that are gonna last over six, seven, eight years in a school.
This is kind of complimented by this middle bucket with that orange in the middle, which are short-term investments to address kind of the urgent needs from the pandemic. So, we’ve come to know this as really being pandemic mitigation, masks, testing, really public education infrastructure that they built around offering some healthy and safe environments for students. And then finally this segment around long-term system innovation, which really kind of focuses on what is it that systems can do in a meaningful way to make changes in the way that they’re delivering services for students that ultimately even as you move beyond the period of federal funds, you’re thinking about those things that can be sustained over time and where you’re acknowledging those less impactful and investments, you can kind of cycle those off.
And so, here’s… Nolberto, kind of the question directly to you, and Danny, thanks so much for the slide, we can take that down. What’s your reaction? Does any of this resonate with you in terms of how PPS is approaching its use of state and federal funds?
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yeah, it definitely does resonate in thinking about how. When we think about one time, it’s like there’s immediate needs that are just hitting you in the face. Like, what are the things that are happening on the ground? Everything from we need more hotspots to we need a Merv 13 filters, how do we continue to support the critical nature of what’s happening on the ground? But then also there comes this point, and also acknowledging that some districts may have bond dollars that can help support some of this and others may not, so there’s this balancing act around getting past one time to short term and thinking about… And then there’s that subsequent innovation, that third phase, but it’s like what’s in front of you? What is it that your school community needs, your school leaders need to get past that initial requirement of we need to teach kids, right?
We need to keep schools open. What are the things that needs to happen there? And then thinking about, once you get to that next phase, it’s getting to… Okay, so now we’re at that opportunity where we can start thinking about some meaningful impact based on learning acceleration or some of these other areas that may have impacted our students. So, what then are those opportunities that we can consider in supporting our families? So, some of the things that we’ve been doing when we just went through this first cycle is we invested heavily in opportunities for summer learning and summer activities across the community. And this was also figuring out how to increase, and it just wasn’t about instructional, but it was also like the opportunity to create how to assess and support social emotional learning.
Whether it was with our staff, supporting our students, or whether it was engaging partners, but it was like assessing and supporting some of those immediate needs as we were getting ready into this year. And so, then when I started thinking about part three, what does the next phase look like? When we start thinking about innovation and also fully acknowledge that sometimes using the word innovation tends to have a negative response in education and just like, it was like, hey innovation sounds great, but I need to just figure out what’s in front of me. So, how do you create that opportunity to say, well, innovation can mean the following, can mean how do we improve with our online learning offerings?
And so, when I think about, it may not sound innovative depending on who you… That’s like a relative term, but when you have industry, for lack of a better word, that’s been face to face for a hundred years, for the most part, and then you pivot to online learning academies, to virtual learning, and then you start developing models to try to sustain that… Hats off to our educators and to the teams out there they’ve managed to pull that off and support our students and community needs during those times. So, then you start getting into the questions, are there some learnings from that that we can then sustain? And what do those conversations look like to say, well, how are we measuring it? What stands out from this? Is this something that we wanna keep investing?
So, when I look at the chart and there’s the keep doing, and then there’s the little arrow that drops off, like, stop that investment, I think that’s where… When I find myself in my situation at Portland Public Schools is we’re starting to assess that, and it’s like okay, what data do we have? What are the key initiatives we wanna be focusing on and putting flags on the ground and say hey, we had an amazing summer initiative. And so, if that’s something we wanna continue, because the innovative way in which we engage community partners, innovative way in which we targeted our students with highest needs, how do we keep that going? So, as I see that, that’s kinda like that what flows through my head as I think about that journey and what we’re working towards, too.
Jason Willis:
Well, I think it’s a great term actually, journey, that you were using, Nolberto. I think that was one of the things that was resonating for me as you were talking, was that, that is to say that when Portland Public Schools entered this pandemic and started receiving these federal funds, you all didn’t have all the answers, right? You were trying to immediately meet some of these needs that were one-time funding items or pandemic mitigation issues that you had to kind of help to steady the ship. And then you kinda made some, I’ll say investments, right? You were using the example of summer school. You probably had some set of confidence around how it was gonna go, but you didn’t know the results.
And part of what I was hearing you say is after it was over you were like, wow, that really worked for our kids in Portland Public Schools. So, it gives you and other leaders at the system a bit of competence to say, “Hey, maybe we should come back around to this again. Maybe we should kind of refine it.” There was almost like a rhythm that I was hearing from you in terms of how you all, as a system, are thinking about the use of those one-time funds. Can you say a little bit more about that?
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yeah, and I will share that when the pandemic started, I was in Tulsa. So, seeing how some of that planning eventually also carried over, it was just mirroring a lot of what was happening across the country. And getting into Portland, it was thinking about that first phase, that rhythm of like, what are the critical things we need in front of us. Everything from this… When I say everything, I think about just conversations with building leaders around… trying to get to phase two, phase three was very tough because we need signage. Like, how are we gonna do lunch? That was just like, what are the resources available to just make lunch happen? And so, whether it was providing stipends for additional staff to cover lunch duty, getting tents to allow for outdoor dining, it was just like this realization of like, we needed to get into a rhythm of figuring what’s in front of us.
What are those critical things we can support? Has it been perfect? Absolutely not. There’s always opportunities to think about… It’s not gonna be perfect. Whether tents may work here, tents may not work there. What other opportunities exist and things like that. And so, as we get into the second phase my time now at Portland Public Schools, it’s been like, okay, we’re creating some capacity to start to allow us to now focus on some of these other critical issues where it’s… And it’s not that it hasn’t been on the forefront, but when we start thinking about the broader conversations of engagement and coalition, it’s like, okay, well, we can’t get to part two and part three, we haven’t taken care of part one, so let’s see what we can do. So, that’s kind of when I think about the rhythm, that’s what… We’ve thought about it.
Jason Willis:
Yeah, I mean one of the things that as a former CFO, CVO, Nolberto, that certainly in my experience and perhaps this has been similar to yours in Portland and Tulsa and other places, but you have to get kind of used to the rhythm of being able to kind of have plates turning at the same time, right? And so, part of what I was hearing you talk about was the kind of one-time kind of… The immediate needs that sit in the front of principals or other kind of district leaders, and I’m just curious if you’ve come across strategies that you think are effective of creating space for both. So, you have to be able to kind of execute on some of the short term but also create space for some of that longer-term planning and just curious how you have been going about that in public, in Portland Public Schools.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yeah, so one of the things that has helped tremendously is in Portland… In Oregon, the state initiated a corporate tax which created a new funding source. And so, this funding source, a student investment account, really focused on creating a specific cadence of engagement and aligning priorities that were really about student learning, assessing and supporting students with the highest needs, and really thinking about what are those transformational activities we need to be doing? So, because that existed there was by default already a lot of information and a lot of guidance that gave us the opportunity to think about how can we get past phase one, right? Thinking about the one-time funding, what now are we thinking about for innovative or other opportunities that support our students.
There was already an established framework which made it… I wouldn’t wanna say easier, that allowed for that work to continue or like since it had already started, as opposed to starting from scratch. And thinking about, well, what then are the innovative things we wanna put forth in the next two to three years? And so, having a head start allowed several of our team members to just be thinking about, well, this is what we want summer to look like. This is what we want our community partnerships to look like. We want to focus on having a strong principal pipeline. And so, they’re a lot of these initiatives that because of the opportunity that existed in Oregon allowed us to come and leverage a lot of that work that had been done.
And so ESSER wasn’t necessarily something brand new in the sense of part two and part three, like what’s a short-term investment, high impact investments. And then the system innovation, there was a framework in place that really allowed ESSER funds to slot in and have us… Okay, so this is familiar, this is what we’ve been thinking about. So, now we have additional funding sources to be thoughtful about that, with the caveat that it is ESSER, it is one time.
Jason Willis:
Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, different in, different in its type of funding in Oregon, but it seems like the condition for Portland and the rest of the districts in Oregon was that there was a bit of practice to kind of start thinking longer term about the things that you wanna be doing for the system. And that as I understand from the Act had a very specific focus on certain sets of students and certain types of school environments that you guys were trying to… And have been trying to really change in that context.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
And I would just add is, that’s the Oregon context. So, there’s other districts that may not have that type of a situation, so then how are districts thinking about their strategic plans, or how are they thinking about the board goals that may exist. And how does that then tie into allowing for some sort of north star or guidance to help with carrying some of that work in part two and part three.
Jason Willis:
So, Nolberto, one of the things I wanted to shift to was to talk a bit about some of the communication strategies that you all have been using in Portland Public Schools. And part of the reason I bring this up is, as we’ve been talking, one of the things that we see is as conditions of getting to sustainable funding is, ensuring that you’ve got a pretty broad coalition of internal and external stakeholders that are really bought in to whatever the strategy is. Like, we can pick up on what you were saying before around summer school. And I’m just curious from your perspective as the CFO, how have you really been communicating around the use of these federal funds?
What have been some of the experiences that you’ve come across that have been really effective in pulling closer some of these internal and external stakeholders around some of those investments? And maybe, I know, Danny can maybe put up a slide that I think you just wanted to talk a little bit about some of the budget dashboards that you guys have been developing in Portland Public Schools.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yeah, and as that’s like comes up, I’ll give a shout out to Mike Burke from Palm Beach. Current superintendent, former CFO there who created this initial template, and then we just kind of tweaked it and made it our own. And really, it’s a snapshot, right? There’s always a double-click. What is additional… Where did some of the additional projects underneath look like. But in leveraging a document, a dashboard like this is really being able to start including numbers and providing scale to what we’re talking about. And in addition to that, when I talk about the double-click eventually gets to transparency, and like, what are then some of the other projects that the district is investing in and what is it that we’re doing?
But a precursor to this that gets into really building a coalition and building understanding is really getting firm around what is ESSER and essentially this notion that it’s one-time funding. We can be hopeful and maybe something happens down the line and there is additional extensions or whatever the case is, but for now this is what we have in front of us. And it’s a one-time usage. And being able to create information around, like, what is ESSER? How does it work? Why was it funded? And so, we have other slides that help explain that information and being able to ground with the cabinet around that is important. And then the other stakeholders which, whether it’s external or internal, is also your board and thinking about what does that mean?
And so, whether it’s your superintendent or the board, having this collective understanding that these are one-time funds. I think that has been just like the recurring theme, because there’s always like, “Hey, why don’t we just do this over here?” And it’s like, well then, how are we gonna continue that. It’s like okay, well, that sounds like an idea. If you wanna increase salaries or do something like that. Like, well, we need to really think through what does that mean two years from now, one year from now. So, in building that understanding and awareness has just been, even before getting into the dollars, has been just honing in on like this is one-time money, right? And so, what are some high impact things we can do?
And so in thinking about that, that communicating and being able to do that, and then as an example, I was in a planning session yesterday with our lead coordinator for immigrant communities and thinking about some additional conversations we wanna have in February with our immigrant community. And being able to have this conversation, it gives me an opportunity to practice my Spanish and sit down with our Spanish speaking community around, like, what is ESSER? And like, “Hey, these are some of the investments “we’ve been doing.” And what additional insight or feedback do you have? So, as I’ve been working on creating awareness and having these conversations, it’s a two-way street for me, and I have this budget 101 video that I created with my team and it’s like, hey, the purpose of this is to inform you but also inform us.
And it’s this two-way dialogue, and the video has QR codes that people can scan and it takes them to a Google form so they can give us feedback around ESSER and a variety of different other funding sources as well. But it’s like being able to just create awareness and identify, “Hey, is the cabinet aligned? “Is the board aligned?” And then there’s our school community as well, right? Our school leaders and being able to have those conversations with our school leaders. And so, that’s part of being able to continue to… I think that’s an opportunity that can continue to improve and strengthen because we have these conversations. But then it’s like, “Hey, I have this immediate need.” You kind of then come back to some of the…
We need funding for supervision, or like being able to just get… We just need to find substitutes. Or whatever that other need is, it kinda, it’s like, hey, that’s great that you’re creating awareness and this and that, but like, how are we actively using it? It’s not perfect as we create these engagement opportunities, but the fact that we’re doing it and getting out and at least listening and taking in information is a key step. Being willing to get out there I think is important.
Jason Willis:
Yeah, I mean one of the things, Nolberto, I’m just reflecting on what you’re saying, and I think there’s a couple of really important highlights that you’re bringing up here I think in communication, kind of building that broad coalition. I think the first is, even when we look at this slide that it’s very easy for people to get a bit frightened or kind of nervous around numbers. But I think one of the things that comes across here is you’re using some pretty plain language to understand where some of those dollars are headed. If it’s to social, emotional, and mental health and wellness, if it’s to addressing student learning needs, but being clear about there’s also some places where you’re holding some dollars back, you’re saving some of that for potential needs. So, that kind of plain language that is matched with some of the complexity of the figures themselves, I think, is one thing that really stands out.
The second that was like, I think, really appreciative of you kind of putting out there is that, this idea of building this coalition of folks that are invested in the way that Portland Public Schools is using these dollars, that it’s not a one-way street, right? There’s two-way communication that’s happening, and that as much as they are benefiting from an increased amount of knowledge or increased amount of understanding about what’s happening, they’re also feeding stuff back to you that it sounds like might actually influence the way that you’re directing future resources to be responsive either immediately or in the longer term to kind of what they’re expressing as their set of needs.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
100%, and also, it’s an opportunity to get feedback. If there is this commitment to invest in a particular strategy and maybe we get feedback that’s like, “Hey, we don’t think that’s a good idea.” Or if there is additional insight around, the thoughts around high dosage tutoring, or what multi-tiered supports can look like. And if you’re getting feedback during this two-way conversation, then that can also help hopefully, right? It gives you pause to say, “Okay, well, this isn’t hitting well.” It’s almost like a focus group. Like, why isn’t? Are we missing data? Can we do a better job of explaining what this initiative is? And so, as we share and engage, that’s also one of the huge benefits is, it can influence and absolutely give insight into some of the things we’re working on and doing so that we can shore up the engagement, shore up the execution of the work.
Jason Willis:
So, I wanna shift to a topic that has been hitting the headlines fairly strong recently, and it’s largely been around just our shortage of professionals in our classrooms and in our schools, in our systems. And I’m just curious, in the context, Nolberto, of this conversation around the use of these one-time funds and thinking about the sustainability of the program, what’s been the context at Portland Public Schools? So has this been a challenge for you all?
Nolberto Delgadillo:
It has. Yeah, so it’s like, yes. And so from substitute teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria personnel, it’s been the gauntlet across the board. My budget team, central office personnel. I think just across… It has been hitting different facets of the district as I’m sure a lot of my peers and colleagues out there have been experiencing this as well. And so, it gets back to this one-time usage of funds. And so, what are some of the things we can do to attract talent and attract, retain as well, and thinking about the difficulties that a lot of our educators across the country are experiencing. And so, trying to find that balance. And so, some of the things we’ve done have been like, how are we introducing stipends to support some of the work.
Introducing bonuses for our sub personnel, to increase our sub pool as that’s kind of being one of the big drivers in doing that. And when I mentioned stipends, specifically one of the stipends we implemented has been to support our transportation. And so, this stipend was really in lieu of transportation, it was a stipend for parents where we’ve had to cancel routes. And so, in alleviating some of the pressure and stress that our communities have been facing, as we’ve had a shortage of drivers, we implemented a payment in lieu of transportation to our families who’ve been impacted by transportation, some of our transportation shortages.
So, really as, kind of back to what we were talking about, like, there’s these immediate needs that just kind of like, hey, that thing you’re talking about out there, that sounds really great, but I got this right in front of me. So, help me solve it. And it is this natural tension. But as we worked through that, that’s also been one of the things that comes to mind in that dashboard slide. We have this hole that’s almost right now, it’s about $40 million for the next two years. And trying to hold to what are some of the innovative things we should start pivoting and focusing to. And innovating could very well be how do we support our students at with highest needs? Our historically underserved students. What are the things we could be doing, whether it’s high dosage tutoring or a variety of other things. And so, it’s like, great but I need people to make it happen. How do we support that?
Jason Willis:
Well, part of what I love about the kind of duality of how you’re managing some of those shortages is you’re thinking about use of those one-time funds to take advantage of a very, I guess in that way, natural resource that exists, which is the parents of these students, right? So, if they’re willing to drive their students or other students, that that’s one way in which to kind of incentivize that kind of transportation to school, which is a critical function. They gotta be in school in order to kind of receive that learning as an in lieu of where you’re coming up short on bus drivers and things like that, which I find to be like a really thoughtful strategy, and I think to your point too, that may not last, right?
You may not like keep that in place, but part of what you were saying earlier around the rhythm is really important. It’s like you have systems in the inside of the district in addition to your engagement strategies that are coming back around to these ideas and saying, okay, it worked in this context, this is our outcome, do we need to continue it, or do we need to change a little bit differently, which is, I think is just great. So, I wanna pivot, Nolberto, to talk a little bit more about some of the kind of sustainability, right? So, like the future looking type of work, and I’ll ask Danny to just throw up slide eight and just to kind of frame our conversation here. And then I wanna pitch some ideas to you and see how you would respond.
So, part of the way that we’ve thought about at WestEd describing some of the pathways to financial sustainability, are generally… Everyone likes to have segmentation, but often some of these might have some overlap. But generally, the first one, which I think you and I are very familiar with, which is really matching increasing expenditures with ongoing revenues, right? So, if I have a hundred dollars and I add $10 worth of programming and expenditures one year, I just simply have to find another $10 in revenue to kind of match that over time. And that’s kind of been our very typical approach in the sector of increasing year over year. The second kind of pathway if you will really describes this idea which is a bit harder which is if you’re experiencing flat revenue from your combination of sources and you have to make choices, right?
So, you have a choice A versus choice B, and you have to decide, right? If you’re gonna take choice A away and put in B or some combination thereof to kind of maintain that kind of flat revenue and some of the stuff, Nolberto, I know you pay a lot of attention to, which is just basic fiscal health. You’re not bringing in, you’re not expending more money year over year than you are bringing in. I think the third and fourth strategies are… I think they’re known in the sector but probably not as well highlighted, so curious to get your feedback on this. But one of them would suggest that you actually identify and secure other non-school resources, right? So, as the CFO of Portland Public Schools, you have a certain budget that you’re responsible for.
You help leadership and the systems a guide in… But this pathway would suggest that maybe there’s other resources with the city or with the county or with other funders that are also serving a very similar population to the one you all serve at Portland Public Schools. And would say, what does it look like to bring those resources together to kind of create that benefit? And this last one is really around like building capacity among existing staff and resources. So, it really suggests that you have a certain number of people in the system, and what you could really do is basically make those investments in professional learning so their ability to be more effective and more efficient with the time they do have in the system is enhanced over time, thereby not needing as many additional resources over time.
Thanks, Danny, for that we can take that down. So, Nolberto, I’m just curious, does this makes sense to you? Any of this ring a bell from your experience in Portland and Tulsa.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
It does. One of the things that became like a staple of conversation was around it’s a pie not a well, and in just thinking like hey when we think about our budget and our revenues, and it’s like ultimately, right, it’s not just this bottomless pit of funding. We can all wish for it, but at the end of the day how do we take our existing resources to match what we want to do? And so, that’s always one of the key things. But the two that really resonate is around building capacity. I there’s… We think about what’s our, the biggest portion of our budget for most of us out there is in people. And that is our biggest resource. So, then how are we building capacity in that investment?
We talk about, which is important as well, but as an analogy, it’s like we talk about improving our buildings, fix fixing a leak or maintenance and operations… What sort of TLC are we giving our people in developing and being able to enhance their capacity. And that’s one of the… When we think about high quality professional development enhancing our PD opportunities across all facets of the district, it’s like how can that in itself pay dividends and continue to increase our goal of achieving our outcomes. And so, I think that’s one of the areas that as we think about our phase three and doing innovative work is like how can we use these one-time dollars to build our capacity to do some of this critical work?
And then thinking about how can we then divest. I think it was a second icon in that picture. And so that’s, it’s something that I enjoy having conversations with. And it’s that balance between fiscal prudence and human behavior in thinking like hey, fiscal prudence, how well are we managing these resources? And then the human behavior of like, well we’ve been doing it for the last 10 years or last five years, so what’s the data, why should we keep doing it? And some of the conversations I’ve had with colleagues over the years and even recently is like the idea of sunk cost fallacy, right? And it’s like, hey the human behavior… Well, I’ve already invested time, energy into something.
Well, like you kind of feel compelled to do it. So, then how do you initiate a process to assess that and make those determinations? And even in a revenue growing environment, I just feel like that’s part of the fiscal prudence. We should just be assessing what we’re investing in all the time and like how well is it impacting our students’ needs or addressing our students’ needs and impacting our outcomes. And so, I think there’s this through line that can be…. That I think it’s important to see through that as opposed to these individual components, but how do we find the opportunity to braid ESSER funds knowing that there is this fiscal cliff, knowing that people’s our biggest resource, and knowing that we wanna improve outcomes.
How do we start thinking about all those elements together to achieve that? And some of the work that we’re doing right now is having some intentional conversations around our black and native students. That’s one of the big focuses in our district when we think about our racial equity and social justice work is how are the resources in our district impacting these outcomes for those group of students? And it’s like this very pointed question. And then it’s like well then how do, how are we addressing that? And I don’t have the answers, but it’s a collective conversation that, hats off to our superintendent, hats off to our board that are like these are some of the critical things we need to focus on.
So, how are we building high quality professional development that can address those needs? How are we implementing high dosage tutoring for the students that are mostly affected by the inequities in our system? And how are we divesting existing investments that may not be attributing to the success of achieving that question. So, it’s like being able to pose a lot of these topics and questions. I think it’s important that can help move the needle.
Jason Willis:
Yeah, I mean one of the things that you were saying in particular around… I think what really kinda focused my attention on your comments, Nolberto, was what you all are dealing with in Portland in addressing the needs and outcomes of black and native students. And that it like in that way it’s really the community’s gonna come around this very clear question around what is the system to addressing, doing to address the needs of these students. And I think in large part it seems like part of what I was hearing from you too, is that you’re using different facets of those pathways to help like assess and test what’s gonna be the right thing to help create a better outcome for those set of students. Obviously, I’m inferring there, too, that you’re not satisfied with the outcomes that you’re getting for that current student population there.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yep, that exactly is it. It’s like there, it’s not just one, but it’s like looking at those four individual domains and how are you leveraging? So, even in enrollment and revenue growth it still should, we still should be asking ourselves how are we leveraging those funds?
Jason Willis:
Yeah, well I mean I think to that end one question that I wanted to bring back around, and I think this’ll take us into our Q&A segment, is really this phenomenon that we’ve seen across so many districts in the country, so many other school systems in which they’ve been experiencing a pretty rapid decline in enrollment. And as you know the challenges of districts enrollments as a support mechanism to funding, it is nothing short of like a lifeline. It is the lifeblood of the way that most systems get funded. And I’m curious to get kind of your thinking about how you’re tackling this in Portland. I think you’re not immune among other systems that have been experiencing some of this decline and in particular that it could have big ramifications.
So, I think one question that’s out there for a lot of people is how do you wrestle and ultimately resolve the use of these one-time funds in the context of kind of an erosion if you will, a slight erosion of the amount of kind of base funds that you’re getting as a school system. So, take us inside, what’s been the conversations going on in Portland and how you’re trying to think ahead to that reconciliation.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yeah, so in Portland we’ve experienced a 4% decline in enrollment from where we were in fiscal year 2020 and getting to this point. And so, that’s a big chunk of change to put it simply and-
Jason Willis:
And just to say there, Nolberto, because 4% may not seem a lot to people, but in the context of historical changes in enrollment, like that’s a pretty big drop, right?
Nolberto Delgadillo:
It’s a big jump when the district had been growing and kinda like it wasn’t exponential growth, but year over year of growth 1%, 2%, and then we have this spike. And so, the question we’ve been wrestling with is around… and it’s it’s thinking about data, like, demographic data. What is enrollment look like? Is this like part of the COVID blip? Do we anticipate it to recover? Or is this kind of like the new normal, right? We don’t have a crystal ball. But then there’s the fiscal impact of it of how you plan for it. And one of the questions that we are working through right now and maybe some districts did it differently than others but is a hold harmless conversation as far as what sort of allocations given to schools.
And when we think about, well enrollment was based at like, depending on your staffing formula and some of those things that happen, like enrollment is maybe based on a ratio or whether it’s a per pupil or per pupil funding student-based formula or actual FTE formula. But there is this like, okay we weren’t sure what enrollment was going to look like this year. So, it was buffered, there was this like buffer. Now based on what the actual information we have, it’s like okay. So, do we go cold Turkey and just say hey this is actual enrollment now? And so, if it wasn’t for that buffer, you would have been eased into it this year. And so, next year wouldn’t be so bad, but we did have a buffer.
So, it kind of drops and then your resources at school are taking this hit into next year. So, how can we manage that and kind of ease the transition? Because again you’re thinking about if ESSER can support our students with the highest needs, we know that small class sizes is something that can support that. So, is there this opportunity to bridge this FTE school resource fiscal cliff that was due to this enrollment, this hopeful aspect of like hey enrollment’s gonna recover this year, we’re going to be better, but it doesn’t look, that was not the case. So, what does that then look like for next year? And so, this is real time. So, this is part of the conversations we’re having.
And I think for colleagues across the country, whether it’s how information gets communicated to school leaders and was like hey this is one time. This is resources to hold harmless this current year that’s gonna go away next year. Or like what sort of runway do you put in place to ease that transition with ESSER funding or other set aside. Or using ESSER funding to create set aside to support some of that enrollment decline. And I think that as we go through how we think about ESSER as leveraging for transformational purposes, but then kinda getting back to that part one of like, well right in front of me this is what I’m seeing at my school or in my community, like, it’s hard for me to kind of get to part three. And so, it’s like how do we create that through line to bring it all together is part of the conversations.
Jason Willis:
Well, I mean what I find, I think really important about what you’re saying there, Nolberto, is that in part that the federal funds are helping to kind of buffer against some like dramatic shocks especially in your context of the schools and the school principals. So, they’re not having immediately from one year to the next having to strip out or cut away programs or strategies that they had relied on because of the enrollment that they previously had, but the question still stands for them and you ultimately, as a part of the leadership at PPS is how are you going to adjust the way in which those resources on an ongoing basis are gonna be invested? Because it is a bit of a soft landing, but it’s still a bit of a… It is a decline, right?
Like, you’re talking about less resources in the next few years than what you comparatively had in FY-22 with the kind of dissipation of these federal ESSER funds. But part of it like that I’m hearing too is like the money buys space and time to let professionals think about the best ways to engage students, right? So, we’re kind of maybe taking the advice of not kind of ripping the band-aid off too quickly, but thinking about what is a more kind of soft landing into the plane if you will-
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yeah, this year we leveraged ESSER to create that buffer. So now it’s like okay, we still have ESSER funding. The word I’ve been using is springboard, like how can we use it to springboard into… And that springboard might be giving us time, giving us a opportunity to like think through additional strategies and putting that soft landing and springboarding into transformational change. And just like kind of like a site note, as we think about that transformational change is thinking about it not just springboarding into next year, but it’s spring boarding into the next two years, again with the intentionality of like what then goes away, what then stays on. So, in having that runway and springboard gives us time to continue to assess our data, engage our community, engage our stakeholders to be able to make, continue to make as best informed decisions.
Jason Willis:
Yeah, great. Well, I wanna transition. I wanna bring in Kelsey Krausen, my colleague. She’s one of our senior managers at WestEd. She’s gonna do some of our Q&A for today. So welcome, Kelsey.
Kelsey Krausen:
Thank you. Thanks Jason, thanks Nolberto. So, I’m gonna ask, pose a mix of questions that we received in advance during registration and some of the questions that have been posed in the chat in Q&A. And there were quite a few questions, so we’ll see how many we can get through. The first question for you is what guidance did your state department provide that was helpful in terms of thinking about the use of one-time funds, and or, what could they have provided that would have been helpful in your view to districts?
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yeah, I don’t have all the information off the top of my head, but there’s several resources from the ready school framework to that initial SIA investment. So if you go to ode.com, Oregon Department of Education has been just amazing partners. And being able to give us that runway, they reach out to us ahead of time. We have these conversations with other group, other districts across the state. And a lot of this work happened with our student investment account maybe three years ago, which really put into stage how we can leverage ESSER. And there was this intentionality about it. The state was like hey we know there’s a lot of work that was done with the student investment account that just applies to ESSER, like check out these resources.
How are you talking with your community? What are the different steps you can do with community engagement and being able to put out a… I can’t recall if it was like a PowerPoint deck or a PDF, but there’s like this intentional aspect of the state saying, hey, no need to… I can’t think of the idiom, I’m really bad with idioms, but like no need to like duplicate or redo things, we got this framework that you all did participate and do this, how can we leverage it with ESSER? And at the same time pointing us towards like hey, community engagement is gonna be important. And here’s some ideas on how to do it. So yeah, I would recommend folks to check out ode.com or .gov, sorry yeah.
Jason Willis:
Oh, I was gonna get-
Nolberto Delgadillo:
I forget what the extension is.
Jason Willis:
And we can certainly find it and perhaps send it in some of the follow up materials. One of the interesting things, Nolberto, that you were saying there too is that in part like what the state agency is doing is trying to think through what are the frames or what are the materials that we could provide as almost like shells to LEAs that they can kind of like pick up, dump in their specific information, but it gives the broader frame of what generally is gonna be really useful for school systems.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yep, exactly, yeah.
Kelsey Krausen:
Great, yeah, I know there were several leaders from state ed agencies, so I wanted to be sure to ask that question.
Jason Willis:
Thanks Kelsey.
Kelsey Krausen:
All right, next question. How do you and your team hold yourself accountable in your work?
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yeah, so it starts with making sure we are as transparent as possible. And that goes back to being able to show that dashboard, and I’m thinking ESSER from an ESSER perspective and how that investments are being tied to students. Now, there’s still opportunities for us to continue to just advance how we engage. And as an example, last June our board approved our strategic plan. So, we have a five-year strategic plan and thinking about how do we… There’s this awareness around our strategic plan and board goals, so we’re working through essentially how do we align our investments to those goals and being able to talk to it.
And at the same time another aspect that we’re developing is we’re developing a tool to help report out our progress with our strategic goals and strategic outcomes. And the goal is to have like this community facing dashboard and bringing all of this information together, right? And so that’s like accountable to be able to show what we’re doing and then accountability with like what are the grows and glows, what are the things we can keep doing? What are the things we should be stop doing? And those are just continuing to be internal conversations right now as we think about what that looks like moving forward.
But really, I think the biggest key, one of the things that the team’s done a really good job is having board work sessions and having these open conversations with our board and with folks who are interested to know more. So we have that information.
Jason Willis:
One of the things that Kelsey, I just wanted to jump in that I was listening to Nolberto is largely around like how you use the… I mean transparency is like a really kinda like loaded term, but essentially what I’m hearing you say is that you’re being very open with the public, with the board, with other decision makers about even like your process of decision-making, right? ‘Cause often we think as a CFO like one of the things I was taught, Cardinal rule which is like you are the steward of taxpayer dollars. Like this is not your money. Like this is the public’s money, the community’s money, and you have to do the kind of best by it. And that you’re really using that like openness, that ability to say, like this is the process we’re going through, and this is how we’re making those decisions as a way to kind of like engender, to build trust, but also I think to Kelsey’s question, like you’re holding yourselves accountable to dollars that are really the public’s.
Jason Willis:
100% yeah.
Kelsey Krausen:
That’s great. That’s a good segue ’cause there are quite a few questions related to communication and engagement with different education partners. First, how do you handle skeptical or resistant administrators in your work?
Nolberto Delgadillo:
So, one of the things that has worked is really not for me to do the talking. So, thinking about who are, and there could be… And I think about skepticism could range from the efficacy of a program to the decision to invest dollars in one area versus another, and so I think right that can kinda range, but just generally speaking, I think about like hey we’re making a decision to invest in a specific area. Like how feasible is it for those that are, those stakeholders who are benefiting to have that conversation or to come out and say like yeah that was really great that we were able to leverage these funds to support X cause. Maybe it’s a community partner or maybe it’s someone that can talk to the benefit of addressing that skepticism maybe, right? It depends on exactly what that skepticism is. But as a general strategy, I usually find that helpful in being able to ask a partner, a key stakeholder to speak to it.
Kelsey Krausen:
Okay and this is a more technical question. And then, so I’ll give you two questions as one. One is someone asked in the chat which platform you’re using for your two-way communication. And then another question is around how you are incorporating educator voice in the decision-making process and budgeting process.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
So, nothing high tech, Google. Google forms, and you can create a QR code pretty much free any which way. We eventually wanna figure out how to get more sophisticated, but for now it’s… And thinking about aspects of our community, already Google form may be too technically challenging. And it’s been trying to, like for example yesterday I mentioned we’re having a conversation around how to engage the immigrant community, and so, as much as we wanna use, as much as I wanted to be in person and think about how can we do this in person, because I know there’s this engaged more thoughtful engagement, we’re going to do it virtual, right? And so, when then thinking about the tools to capture feedback for now, it has been like online tools.
Really, I can’t recall some of the other tools we have access to, but for the team it’s been fairly easy where we can low lift and create using Google forms. And then as far as underground educator feedback, those are still some of the ongoing opportunities where we continue to get feedback through our collective bargaining partners and our team that manages that engagement receives feedback and is like, hey, these are some of the concerns or initiatives we’d like to see happen. So, there’s this formal engagement that happens. But then also we’re working to continue to increase our school leader voice and being able to incorporate them into some of these ongoing conversations. So, I mentioned this a few meetings ago around like when we talk about community, it’s also like our school community. So, like, what does it look like when we intentionally engage a school site? And so that’s as well part of the conversations that are happening.
Kelsey Krausen:
Great, the next couple of questions, I’m gonna combine them, are I think one of the things we know is that engagement with our education partners can be resource intensive, not just dollars, but in terms of time and ensuring that it’s really a meaningful engagement process. You talked about using free tools like Google. Are there other resource efficient approaches to engaging the community and other education partners in meaningful ways. Another participant asked about the grants for supporting CVOs and doing a more rich engagement with the community. So if you could speak to both of those.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yeah, and it’s… I’m kinda like a believer, I enjoy in-person, face-to-face contact and it’s tricky. It just kind of depends. But then right there it also takes up time and in thinking about finding the balance is how, there are… On our team, in our special funds programs, there are ongoing monthly meetings with key partners. And so, it’s like, how can we leverage existing engagements to just step in. So, it’s like, hey, can I get 20 minutes at your next meeting? Or like sharing this information with directors at the central office and being able to say, hey, if you’re having a conversation with external partners or whatever, like loop me in, loop us in. We’re working through creating like a cadence of engagement with community partners.
And then with, like, for example, our community program, a community partnership program, just hey, this is what’s happening. This is what we wanna do, and so it’s on their radar, so as they go out and have these opportunities to loop us into that. So instead of creating new meetings, how can we leverage existing engagements to have those conversations? And then the other one, which ties into like the Google form was really one evening recorded a video. And so, then the team translated it into our five languages that we translate our materials. And so, as kind of like that first step to create these synchronous opportunities for folks to engage in like, hey, budget 101. You can watch the video there and there’s opportunities to provide feedback.
And so how do we create like a wiki or repository of this type of information so that folks can have access to. And, yeah, it’s been a lot of like me rolling up my sleeves as well. just thinking about, we were talking about labor shortages and it’s like, hey, team’s not fully staffed. What are the things we can do to still try to keep the work moving? It’s not perfect. Can we be everywhere? We cannot, but like what are the pieces we can put into place at least try to find that middle ground as we continue these conversations.
Jason Willis:
Yeah, part of what I’m hearing you say, Nolberto, there too is like not being additive, right? So, it’s not like layering one on top of the other, but it’s really thinking about how can you use existing forums to engage folks in these conversations and kind of manage with the resources you have but also kind of pull another. So, I imagine some of those community partnerships are probably pretty powerful in terms of the type of resource and support that it brings to Portland Public Schools and its schools.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yeah absolutely, and even powerful just from being able to provide some of the aspects of our racial equity and social justice lens. And it’s like leveraging some of our community partners to do that. But yeah, it really is, in like leveraging some of the initiatives that may already be on the table, because it’s also like this shift where it’s like, hey, it’s team CFO, it’s not just about spreadsheets anymore, right? So, we wanna get out there. So, it is like wait, you wanna get out there? I’m like, yes, I actually do wanna get out there. So, that in itself it’s also… So, have there been missed opportunities. Yes, where it’s like, hey well, oh darn it. Should have been there. Or wish we would have been out there and do this. But it’s like how do we create this also awareness that we wanna try to do business differently, which doesn’t happen overnight. And so that’s kinda like what we’ve been working towards too.
Kelsey Krausen:
Great, I think we can sneak in one more question, which is a little bit of a whopper I think. You’ve talked about this a little bit, but the question is about what strategies you plan to employ to sustain programs once the federal relief aid is no longer available. I think you’ve talked that about that to some degree, but this question is particularly if you’re unable to retain the staff who are hired to carry out the work. So, do you foresee that being an issue in your planning at all that you maybe started things and hired staff to run those and that you will no longer be able to support.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Yeah, so whether it’s staff, initiatives, and the staff that come into it, there is this nature of one-time funds. And something we introduced and are working through is a decision-making rubric around, like let’s have these conversations around what stops. And so like thinking about these domains, like does this initiative negatively impact our racial equity and social justice work? Does this initiative have clear and measurable outcomes or strata, outcomes, and is there data? If this initiative went away, what would be the community impact? So, it’s a work in progress as we’re working to create essentially a decision-making rubric to allow us to have those conversations, right? And it’s like barring the words from… I can’t remember the former superintendent, right?
It’s like thinking about not being a decision maker, but like the decision architect and helping to get information together to put this in front of us to have those decisions, because these are one-time funds. So, what may exist in the system, back to human behavior and fiscal prudence, and like what are those things we can at least assess and have a trade-off conversation. At the end of the day it’s, well, this is… And something else that I’ve heard, and it’s like if everything is a priority, nothing’s a priority. So, it’s like, how do we then try to differentiate the work? And so that’s part of like, what can we point towards to decision-making rubric to have these conversations and then assess. Is it gonna be perfect? Is there gonna be tension?
You know, of course it’s not gonna be perfect and of course there’s going to be tension. But being able to have as much information in front of us and at least some sort of organized way to have that I think will be key. And each school, each cabinet, each community will figure out what does that rubric look like to make those decisions?
Kelsey Krausen:
Thank you. I know we’re right at time. I’m gonna pass it back to Jason. Thank you so much, Nolberto.
Jason Willis:
Yeah, I just wanna be really appreciative, Nolberto, of your time. I know how busy things are going on at Portland Public Schools, and so for you to give us this time has been really, really a gem and I think valuable for all of our listeners today. So, I just appreciate you joining. Thank you so much. And I think from there, I think we’re gonna wrap up.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
It was a pleasure. Thank you.