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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 1
good afternoon everybody so what we're going to be doing this afternoon is it's primarily what we refer to as a targeted selection interview process some of the questions are very targeted selection oriented some are experiential and some are trying to get a little bit more at maybe philosophy of the candidate and so the questions are a compilation of input that I received from board members and then just some best practice type questions and my recommendation is that we will the six of you or five of you to start we will round-robin the questions and I will also provide the candidate a copy so that he can see because sometimes it helps to be able to see the questions in front of you and then when I'm gonna ask you to do is to make notes and then score those questions based on the criteria if you look at the bottom of each page you can see there because you know it's important if you're going to use some type of rating scale to have an indication of you know how you're using those numbers and so basically we're looking at this as an entry level or first time school board attorney if you feel that his response meets the job requirements for this position it's an acceptable level for you as a board member then you would give that a three and then I kind of say use that as your what we what use is acceptable and then if it's above that you would then give a four or five if you feel it does not adequately do that then you would give a to one or a zero would be if you asked the question and the candidate just you know sometimes the candidate just says I just don't have an answer for that question and that would be when you would or they completely answer it in a different way what I would say to you is it is perfectly appropriate if the candidate answers the question but you feel that you want to probe a little further you can ask a follow-up question or say can you please expand on that a little bit further I would also recommend that due to the nature of this scenario that if it's not your question but you still feel you need a follow-up that you please just do so because the goal here really is to determine is this candidate meeting your needs for the role of school board attorney and so the only thing we would want to stay away from or any questions that we feel would be you know not appropriate in any interview setting you know those typical questions about you know religious beliefs about personal situations and things like that we would want to stay away from those if I feel that a question comes up that I don't feel is appropriate I will simply interject and say you know can we move on to another question or I'll say something that would be appropriate just so that we're all making sure we're not asking anything that wouldn't be appropriate as always remember this will be public record so anything that you write down on the paper just you know know that it will be memorialized and so you know keep that in mind as you're you're putting your notes I like to recommend that your notes excuse me your notes if you feel that you're gonna give a 2 or a 1 or a 0 then that's what your notes would reflect if you're gonna give a 4 or 5 then your notes would reflect you know great response to this or something so that if the candidate was looking for feedback later we could say well several you know board members put on this question that you really didn't answer it or your details weren't you know you didn't provide a specific example or whatever so that we could provide appropriate feedback you know if the situation requires it there are there are 12 questions and then there's an opening question and a closing question so really 14 questions so we have more than adequate time because even if he spends five minutes which is a really long time on a question we have you know that would be done in 70 minutes so we certainly have enough time are there any questions so I just want to clarify I have a couple of questions that are not on here but could be related to one of these categories if it's yeah if it's appropriate to the question if it's something that I think wouldn't be appropriate like I said then I'll I'll just say something and let you know that any other questions thirty minutes we're going to start he can and I am he's provided me some very specific feedback on from his one-on-one so I feel comfortable moving forward at this time would you like me to tell him how it's gonna go or do you just want to give you a little insight as to what we're going to be doing here this afternoon we're gonna be as you can tell engaging in a panel interview and the questions are going to be primarily targeted selection based or and I've got a copy here in case you refer to them and they're gonna round-robin the questions they're gonna be taking notes as you're talking so they may not be giving you know direct eye contact while you're talking if you would like any clarification or you know anything then just please let you know let that board member know if another board member would like to ask a follow-up question they will do so at the time that the question is being asked so even though it's a particular board members turn you may hear from other board members as well did you have any questions before we begin I don't okay all right let's get started okay this is the opening question would you please tell us briefly why you are interested in this position what skill sets talents and work experiences make you the ideal candidate for this position well thank you first of all let me thank all of you for the opportunity to be here today it is an honor to be here to answer your question and I think it's important to note that I had individual conversations with all of you so some of this may be repetitive but when you're 49 years old and have been toiling away as a lawyer for 24 years there's times in your career where you have to go all in and for 13 years I've been the staff attorney as you all know and I have learned so much and had the opportunity to work for five superintendents numerous board members and have developed I think the ability in my current job to communicate with all people in all walks of life and the second question is about skill sets and talents my talent and skill set lies in my ability to communicate I also have I believe a skill set that lends itself to teaching to mentoring and I think I said to at least one of you in my individual meeting I take pride in the word counsel when people call me counsel that goes right to my heart I believe in the ability of a lawyer to counsel their clients and although a school board is unique in that you're an entity that is a collection of seven individuals you need to work together and I believe as an attorney the collective advice I can provide to all of you will be able to it'll allow you to understand why I'm saying what I'm saying today about myself because I think I have the ability to bring people together and I also think I have the ability to lead now that may not be the point of this job but I think they're important in a lawyers ability to communicate with their client and so those are the things that I bring to this job why I'm interested in a position well I think I told all of you will anecdote I always bring up sports not that I'm in the minor leagues now but kind of in triple-a it's time to go to the majors it's time for me as a lawyer to step into a position that in essence for 24 years I feel like I've been preparing for and I'd be able to if that satisfies the answer but I can answer anything else you might want me to answer where do you feel that you would take the board attorney position in the next five years and please provide some examples regarding advocacy district levels legal services and training well I think some of the things that the board attorney can do are within their restraints or the constraints of what we face now I believe and I think all of this may have come out in other forums I believe this district is underserved legally in house I believe that a district with almost 100,000 students and 12,000 employees should avail itself of in-house legal counsel more than two attorneys I'm fond of saying that I've been here 13 years and after about eight years we had three lawyers and now we only have two we've gone backwards in my time here we've added 25,000 students so the question which is somewhat open-ended where would you take the board attorney position is I envision a legal department for this School District and how the board attorney fits into that is the board attorney should have at some point additional counsel under him or her well I believe how that's how it should evolve so if the board attorney takes a vacation or if someone's out of the office you all still have access to someone although nowadays we have really 24/7 access to everybody but I think there's a need for lawyers to collaborate I think good lawyers in a good working situation have other lawyers to collaborate with I just believe it's necessary to talk about legal issues it's necessary to talk about the law it's it's necessary to talk about political and social issues and the implications of decisions and with only two lawyers and the current set up being divided the way we have it divided that setup doesn't necessarily lend itself to that so I envision in five years a legal division for the school district but of course knowing full well we are strained for money we are in the business of educating children and that's the primary business here it's not lawyers and it never should be however I think and I said this to at least one or two of you we need to grow up as a school district we need we're no longer a little school district in a small little town this is big business here and I think we need to treat legal services similarly advocacy well you may be able to tell in the short time we've been talking today I'm an advocate that's what I believe in that's why I went to law school tell you a little bit about my past I was a legal aid attorney my first job was representing poor people in landlord-tenant cases and special education cases and I was in court all the time I then went to work for the state of New York and or I was in private practice for a brief period of time representing the Flagler County School District and kind of as they say went to the dark side and started representing school districts and in that job I was charged with basically providing every day representation to the school district the senior partner was the board attorney then I became a legal aid attorney again in New York and once again was handling poverty law issues which involve tremendous advocacy because you're fighting against the establishment in those jobs landlords trying to evict tenants folks trying to get food stamps or public benefits then I went to work for the state of New York and I was an advocate for the state of New York dealing with children that were incarcerated by the state of New York I eventually became their on buds Minh and I was then the representative that all of the children contacted when they had a problem with their facility that they were incarcerated in whether it was mail or talking to their parents or the ability to simply get free time or recess their schooling so I had to advocate on behalf of all of those young men and women okay that with the agency that I worked for which was an interesting juxtaposition which has really helped me tremendously in my current job as the staff attorney because there are times when I have to provide bad news to folks and say look at that school something happened and it was wrong and we violated a student or a parent's rights and we have to move on and and do better regarding training I think this is one area where something in the board's philosophy I think it's board policy 1.06 talks about being proactive and not reactive it's one of the philosophies of you all as a board and proactive to me means training when I was in dr.
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Volusia County, FL Volusia County School Board transcript source: youtube Central Florida Public School Boards Coalition Meeting · passage 1
again hmm [Music] so uh so uh good morning morning how are you good good could you are you busy no i'm just doing the index on the um contracts okay could you by chance i already did this one i apologized yeah thank you [Music] so plus i don't know if many of my board members are going to be on hello everyone we're going to go ahead and start our meeting in just about a minute so we'll just wait another minute allow more people to sign in and we'll get the meeting started good morning it's abby can you all hear me good morning i hear you abby oh good thank you i guess we can't see everybody's faces right depends if they put their camera on i'm sorry depends whether they put their camera on okay oh look yeah i see durian okay a lot of people signing in right right right now so thank you yeah you're good all right happy valentine's day we're going to go ahead and get the meeting started if everyone can just put their microphones on mute for right now that'd be great except for you abby because you got to say the pledge of the pledge of allegiance so why don't you go ahead abby and start us off all right i pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america oh my gosh why am i like you guys being with stay with me please this is just like a crazy morning yes i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the united states and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you uh abby and good morning everyone hope everyone had a a great weekend had a super sunday of course and uh perhaps your team won or perhaps it didn't but in any event it was a super game uh went right down to to the end so yay uh good times and here we are beautiful monday morning in central florida uh valentine's day hey what could be better right so uh once again thanks everyone for joining we have a very uh uh interesting agenda this morning so i'm looking forward to hearing from everybody as we move on through here so uh let's go ahead and get started with our first order of business which is uh always to approve the minutes from the previous uh couple of meetings we have approval of minutes from december the second and also from january the 10th do i have a motion someone to approve those minutes uh that was uh by abby and seconded by lynn lynn gray got that okay all those in favor of the motion say aye and the motion carries unanimously thank you very much for for that we're going to jump right in uh to our meeting like i said we have six or seven people that are standing by uh willy uh ready and willing to uh bring us up up to date on some very important issues uh danielle thomas are you out there i am here all right good good morning and uh happy valentine's day to you thank you same to you thank you and uh so uh you want to start us off and tell us what's the latest and greatest and things we should be worried about in tallahassee sure i'd be happy to um so a couple of things a couple of um big things since we last spoke um so of course from the school board's perspective one of the big bills that we've been watching very closely and working on quite a bit is house bill 1467 which is the k-12 education bill and its companion of senate bill 1300 so house bill 1467 is senator gruter's bill i'm sorry is um representative garrison's bill and uh this is the one that taught that uh in its original form uh was changing actually was eliminating school boards member salaries and also has some provisions in it changing some of the provisions around instructional materials the review of instructional materials and materials in the library uh keeping in like an on running database that um parents and really anyone could use to be able to search and find um what materials are in the library so uh that um bill was heard on the house floor last week um on second reading it was amended so all of the language around eliminating school board salaries and uh the 200 stipend that they were going to give instead was all taken out of the bill and term limits was added to the bill so now um in its current form the way that it passed off of the house floor last week school board members would be term limited after eight years so eight consecutive years matching up to what we have here in the legislature um their current uh the time served would not count toward those eight years so the clock on the term limits would start in november so any previous service would not count toward that um and the rest of the bill around the instructional materials and the library materials stayed the same that did pass off of the house floor um down a party line for the most part uh and did get sent over to the senate in messages uh and was picked up by the senate and was referred to the rules committee um which is exactly where it's uh companion bill which is similar but not identical um senator gruter's bill 1300 is also sitting waiting to be heard by rules as well so we're now going to be monitoring this um continue to monitor it very closely to see if rules uh schedules either one of these bills and if they do which one they choose to hear senator gruter's bill does continue to have school board salaries in it it adjusts school board salaries to where all school board members would make the same as legislators which is um 29 000 i forget the exact number but it's like 29 600 and change um which is an uh an increase for some of our school board members and some of our very small counties but it is also a decrease and in some cases a significant decrease for some of our other school board members there's also some slight differences around the instructional materials and library materials pieces in 1300 as compared to 1467 as well um so uh there has been a bill um actually a joint resolution um that was filed in the senate at the very beginning of session to um put term limits for school board members on the ballot that bill has not been heard has not been calendared um and we heard very early on that the senate was not interested in term limits um they were also not interested in eliminating salaries completely so um it's been very interesting to watch this whole thing um go and uh we are continuing to like i said monitor it very closely as well as um have some conversations with some of the key people in the senate to try to just figure out um where this might be going and uh if rules is going to pick up either one of those bills and calendar either one of them so um that has been a big one um the other one that i want to touch on and then i know that uh there's several others on the call who are going to probably want to touch on a couple of other pieces the other one i wanted to touch on is um the student assessment bill so um we have uh representative placencia's uh student assessment bill um i have to look at my little cheat board here to make sure i get the number right 11.93 um and then uh senate bill 1048 is senator diaz's student assessment bill um so we talked about these last month when we talked about them last month they were very different from each other in its last committee stop uh senate bill 1048 was amended to um more closely align to the house version there are still differences between the senate and the house version but the senate um version 1048 does now look um more similar to the house version than it did prior um so it is um adjusting and and getting into more of the specifics around what the implementation of the new test would look like it is still calling for three progress monitorings of fall a winter and a spring with the spring being what they're still referring to as a comprehensive progress monitoring um which my fsba members who were here for fsba day in the legislature uh about a week and a half ago will tell you um i always kind of make a face when i say um comprehensive progress monitoring because i'm not really sure what that means because progress monitoring is not designed to be comprehensive but that's another conversation um so it also uh adopted the specific language that the house had around some of the experts that would be involved in uh determining by 2025 if that third progress monitoring needed to continue to be like a comprehensive um assessment um there's still some differences between uh the two bills specifically around um uh school grading and the uh house had adopted in its last committee stop um some wording around um the automated adjustment of school grading um we've had conversations with representative placencia about our concerns um about that wording that was added i am hearing that there are a lot of others who have concerns about that wording as well um representative placencia has concerns about some of that wording as well so um the senate did not add that uh to 1048 in their delete everything um so that kind of tells me that the senate doesn't like that language either um so i have a feeling that adjustments are going to be made and some of that language will either be amended or may even be taken back out of the bill um because there are a lot of parties that are are not um not fans of that particular language and how it's worded so um that will continue to um move through one committee stop was um was eliminated uh in the house and so we're just it has uh i believe one more committee stop um in the house to go through so we'll just have to see what the landing point is as far as what the final birdman is going to going to look like but we know that you know this is part of the conversations that are happening between not only the house and senate but also uh the governor's staff and doe as well and so we can already see some of that happening with how much 1048 has been amended to come closer to the house version um but there's definitely still some pieces that that are going to need some adjustment so but we still have four weeks to go we started today starts week 6.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 2
Pruitt's department in HR I did a lot more training than I do now in the position I'm in as a staff attorney in the superintendent's office but I think you all could benefit from training just in this setting let's talk about some issues or perceptions that you have of a certain law and how does that work and sit down I mean I enjoy teaching in fact tomorrow night I'm starting to teach for FGCU so I've taught at Ave Maria Nova and that's one of my strengths also is teaching so I think we can be much more proactive in the in the world of legal services relative to what board members confront and have to deal with would you give us a specific example of a time that your personal beliefs were in conflict with the position you had to take in your role a staff attorney how did you handle it what was the outcome well I think that's a great question and I think that's not hard for me to dig down and find one find an answer if any of you know or don't know I happen to be an advocate on LGBTQ issues I believe strongly on those issues and that comes from when I worked in the state of New York I dealt with a lot of LGBTQ students and when the President issued the edict regarding President Obama at the time the edict regarding bathrooms and how gender identity should be dealt with in school districts I thought that was a positive step I thought we were headed in the right direction well subsequently to that the country elected a new president who issued a follow-up memo and really rescinded the guidance from the Obama administration well I will tell you that I will follow that edict that is currently at least as far as things are concerned right now the state of this issue there's not a lot we can do about that issue however that may conflict with my personal beliefs but my job with as a board attorney or even now is the staff attorney is to provide advice based on the current state of the law and in doing so I will be honest and with the utmost integrity do that I have no problem in doing that my personal beliefs are irrelevant in that situation and they need to be irrelevant okay now I deal all the time with people that have a lot of different opinions as as the as the staff attorney I mean I'm dealing with school administrators and so their their minds are everywhere on a lot of different issues politically and socially because our people they're educators they're aware of what's going on around them so that's a common thing for a lawyer I mean you have to advocate the position of your client which I think I've been able to do I told you and explained I've been on both sides of special education issues I've represented parents and represented students there are times in my job where we have collectively determined that an employee should be terminated I may not personally have believed that but I have advocated that position I have gone to due process hearings on those issues in front of DOMA and we have prevailed and we have prevailed and looking back I would have say to myself well I probably wouldn't have gone that way but as an attorney I undertake and my client wants me to do so that's really I mean I could give you countless times when when that has occurred yes element to the healthy board member / attorney relationship explain how you plan to communicate with the board as a whole and also individual board members it's a great question and I know mr.
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Volusia County, FL Volusia County School Board transcript source: youtube Central Florida Public School Boards Coalition Meeting · passage 2
uh looks like there may be some questions so uh before we get to wayne and others let's uh if you have questions for dr thomas go ahead and ask it uh lynn i see you have your hand and uh go ahead put your mic on and and good morning thanks uh dr thomas uh yeah the news i i'm trying to smile all through this but uh my question is this uh and and the familiarity of um bill making has become very real as i guess we all are getting acquainted but the um the salary uh for teacher i mean for um school board members is the likely ship could be put on a train bill at the very end or do you get a feeling of that um and and for that matter the term limits so um well first of all and i would say this it's gonna um everything that we're hearing it would be one or the other it would not so part of the reason why the salary piece was amended in the house and changed to term limits uh from everything that we're hearing is they were having there were members of um there were republicans and some leadership republicans who were not sold on the elimination of school board salaries um were really put were giving some pushback um on that and representative garrison term limits is really what his goal was he just didn't feel that he was going to be able to get term limits through and felt that salaries was like the next option um but he was getting um pushback from fellow republicans um especially those who are going to be going into uh bigger elections like those that are in the house that are maybe running for senate um and you know some others as well so um i believe that's why we saw the switch um on the house floor um to you know because that's a that's a dramatic uh change to happen um so if we were to see anything um it's gonna be one or the other i don't believe that we will see both um and a lot of it is going to come down to how much each side is going to dig their heels in each side has bugged their heels in pretty deep as of this point but we've seen a lot of things change in a short period of time um obviously ideally what we would like to see is that um you know either both bills just die or the instructional materials language which we're not thrilled with um but is um you know it i could see that getting amended out and put into um a bigger bill considering some of the other instructional pieces that we already have um kind of looming out there and moving through um i don't know if then you know term limits or salary then get wrapped up um into that um we're just really trying to continue our conversations with the senate because it's really all it's really in the senate's hands right now um and there's definitely you know like i said we had members of the senate tell us right from the beginning they weren't interested in term limits we'll have to see if that changes um or not we had others in the senate who did not want to hear anything about either the elimination of salary or even changing the salaries at all um and we had uh senator hudson was very vocal about that in its committee stop um in senate education several weeks ago so um our hope is to keep the sides as separated as possible on that particular issue and that then if we see anything it would just be the instructional and library materials portion of that well thank you thank you thank you lynn for the question thank you dr thomas i know we these are all very interesting topics uh let's just let's move on uh wayne are you there yes sir i'm here all right hey wayne good good morning to you uh uh would you go ahead and coordinate us uh through the next four or five speakers and uh i'll let you start you know what well i will uh kind of uh uh bring them here sorry um so i'm going to kind of hear this high level drop it down to uh to wendy and brian and kristen but uh just to give you all an idea of just real quickly the issue that we're also going to hit on we're going to hit on uh budget we want to hit on the third calc that's happening which uh wendy dodge has been uh digging into uh the last couple weeks uh we're gonna hit on the 200 million dollars uh hold back from randy fine but we're also gonna uh we're gonna hit on the um we're going to hit on the 200 million that was held back from last year we want to hit on uh school concurrency we've hit school board salaries but let's also not forget that president simpson is pushing to raise all school school district employee uh salaries to a minimum of 15 an hour uh we've got flvs that we're all fighting on again randy fine that popular name uh of course is trying to get rid of franchises uh and then uh we've got a couple bills out there floating around with causes of action and that's related to uh if we make johnny or susie feel uncomfortable about talking about issues that uh maybe mommy and daddy haven't uh spoken to him about that we need to hit the pause button and get permission so with that i'm going to kind of go back to the to the big budget stuff and let uh wendy dodge china in on that morning wendy good morning can everybody hear me yes okay good i uh sometimes i have audio issues so um in terms of the third calc that was released two weeks ago the biggest issue that is that impacts this year's budget and the biggest issue there is that this is the first calculation this year where they have included the scholarship students in the calculation and what they have done incorrectly is they have credited the districts for the base student allocation for all of their scholarship students but they have not credited us for any of the categorical workload that comes along with those scholarship students being added to our roles however when they deduct from our budgets the amount for each scholarship student they include by statute statute says that's what they ca what they get paid they are deducting the bsa plus a proportional share of all the categoricals so every district who has had an increase in scholarship students in their district is seeing large deductions in your budgets based on that third calc because more revenue is going out than you were credited for this is an issue because if we don't get it fixed this year that's how our budgets will be calculated for all eternity so now is the time and we are being very gracious about this with the legislature we are not characterizing this as an attack on public schools traditional public school students all we're saying is that there was an error made in the calculation and that we would like it to be corrected in the fourth calculation so that there's equity within the funding formula because as you know the fefp has been held up for 30 some years because of the equity within the formula and so when you start disequalizing what one student in the formula gets as opposed to another student so much in in such a blatant way then it jeopardizes the formula itself so statewide the reduction is about 52 dollars per student impacts each district differently based on whether you've had growth whether you've had not had growth and the number of scholarship students that you have participating in your district so um for my district for example it's over five million dollars and so what we're asking again is for there should be a calculation a recalculation not a recalculation but a corrected calculation made in the fourth calc to make sure that this issue is resolved this year so one thing that's kind of in the weeds and i don't mean to over complicate things but i do want to talk about it is the teacher salary allocation so the original year of the teacher salary cal calculation the amount of funding was 500 million dollars and all that money was required to be put onto teacher salary schedules to get them towards the 47.5 and at in the first year of its existence it was not allowed to be paid out as part of anyone's scholarship last year they changed that language to say that they would receive an amount equal to the a proportionate share of the teacher's salary allocation which is 550 million this year but only 50 million of that is new money and they have not added any money into the fefp anywhere to account for the other portion of the 500 million that is now being calculated for the scholarship students so now we have given teachers three or four thousand depending on what happened in your district raises last year based on that 500 million and a portion of that money is now going out the door for every scholarship student and that's money we will never you will never have enough money to pay for those raises if they're giving a portion of that original 500 million away for scholarship students it's correctable the legislature just needs to account for that in the budget so that we still receive the money we were supposed to put into those teacher salary teacher salaries and are now in part of our collective bargaining agreements and so that we can pay that amount to the scholarship students without impacting our students and our teachers so i hope that was it is a very complex problem we have dug through the work papers from the third calculation and we can show in the categorical pages where they say here's the esc guaranteed here's what the workload should have been and it goes up like 50 million dollars and then they adjust it back down to the original allocation so we can show where that money is supposed to come from but we have to get that information to the legislature and then we have to get agreement that they need the department to go back and calculate the fourth calculation correctly and wendy if i can jump in that's right so because one of the things too in that is that the the categoricals are statutorily capped so and then the the scholarship kids get paid based on second calc when we have that information at the beginning of the year when the adjustments are made those kids have already been paid you're not gonna go ask them to send a check back for five hundred dollars in some ways it makes the district pay even more if it's fifty three dollars statewide average that we've lost per public school student it it might actually be more about eighty dollars per district student i'm making up a number but it's more because a portion of those kids that it's calculated on have already gotten their scholarship money and they're out of the equation but with it being the categoricals being statutorily kept one of the other things we're looking at is because they put 465 million whatever it was in reserve and used less than 200 million of that that money's still there in reserve and if the statutes don't allow them to move it over for categorical costs certainly in the back of the bill we could get implementing or conform some you know get some language to get that money out to the districts because now you do have a wide disparity between what a traditional public school student receives and what an fes scholarship student receives and it's not equal and i think even with districts with charter schools you're getting other factors in there too because you've already paid you know so are you going to collect back from the charter schools there's there's you've got a history of doing things where maybe that hasn't been done in the past because the numbers were so small now that they're this big you know you're gonna have to be looking at so there's a whole lot of layers that as wendy said you know 30 to 40 years the fefp has worked because it treats everyone the same and now we're coming up with these wide discrepancies and so we'll have to see what happens there but that it is definitely alarming what happened and it is definitely a tightrope of not coming out and saying this is all because vouchers are terrible or vouchers are killing public schools you can't make that argument you have to talk about unintended consequences and now a lack of you know what is the fefp built on it's not accomplishing that anymore look what happened um and so in each district it'll be slightly different but it might be that an fes student is getting 8 200 and a district student is getting 7 600 it can be that wide a range and you know it'll be slightly varied per district but i mean it's a huge thing and i don't think too many people understand it other than a few senate and house staffers uh maybe senator diaz um and then a bunch of us that all have our hair on fire thank you brian wendy can you uh clarify uh so what is the amount of money in the budget so far this year for teacher salaries and and how is that money supposed to be dis distributed so in i'm going to have to ask my colleagues to help me i believe that it goes up to a house has more in the teacher's salary allocation than the senate does and is it's is it 150 more brian 250.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 3
Martin has done things for 19 years his way and I and I think that way may work for all of you but I think what's important is for me to ask all of you as a client if I'm honored to be I'm selected as the board attorney to ask all of you how you want to be communicated to I think that's of utmost importance having said that I pride myself on communication I know a number of you meet with the superintendent weekly and I don't I don't think there's any reason I can't piggyback on those meetings so if like this Morgan comes in at 3 o'clock she can meet with me at 4 o'clock I think it's important and even if it's just a touch base on a weekly basis and there's nothing hot going on I think it's important to just have those lines of communication I'm one that likes to sit down and learn about people I think it's important for me to know you all and what makes you tick and what you believe in as a board member and what led you to run for office and become elected and what your issues are that you feel strongly about I think that's so important for me to know as as the board attorney I do agree with the question it is a critical element I don't believe there's things that you should find out in some other way when if I had that information I could have told you I just don't think that's appropriate and I think a happy client is an informed client I've said that to you on I think information is valuable your elected officials you have to answer to the public you need to know things you need to know things and I think within parameters obviously sometimes there's things that may or may not be able to be out there but you take that information and you do with it what you need to do and I would provide advice saying I'm telling you this however this is student information that's not public and you can't provide that in a public forum what do you believe to be your greatest strength that you have not been able to do fully maximize as a staff attorney how will the strengths the apical as the board attorney I'm thinking because I think there's a few but I will say I think my greatest strength I talked about communication I don't want to talk about that again I think I want to talk about leadership and I have I think leadership skills that has the staff attorney I haven't been able to exhibit because I'm part of a big huge team and I have said this in plenty of cabinet meetings and I've said this in other forums not everybody can be the third hitter on the team not everybody can be the quarterback not everybody can be LeBron James the best player on the court everybody has a role okay and I am fully cognizant of that and I take my role as it is as the staff attorney but having said that there are ways in which we as human beings can blossom and one of the ways I can blossom is the ability to exhibit leadership skills for you all as a board now I don't for one minute intend to spend one day in your shoes that's not my job but I do believe public bodies in some way need to be led because you all ran for this position with your own issues and what you think but we have all been here and we know the system and if I can use that to lead you in some way as a lawyer because I'm not the superintendent that's your other employee I think that's something that's one of my great strengths that you as a board can benefit from I really believe that yes can you talk to the decision that the board made to vote what was the superintendent's recommendation to opt out of the common core you know there's we had a recommendation from the attorney the board took an action that was not necessary as you mean the testing issue the testing issue yes thank you thank you yeah I think on that issue I'm probably reluctant to tell you exactly how I would have advised you I think putting you in an awkward spot what I think once again we're getting back to information and we're getting back to the law and the rules and I'll be honest with you in my job and I can't disclose what I may have advised the superintendent I just can't do that or what that communication back to me was but there was scrambling going on to figure out what the rules and even what we did and didn't have to do going on at that time and I think if there's anything that could have been done is there could have been more of an education piece at the board table oh okay and I say that knowing and I think you all know this full well that I have the utmost respect for mr.
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Volusia County, FL Volusia County School Board transcript source: youtube Central Florida Public School Boards Coalition Meeting · passage 3
similar to your point that's right go ahead and finish it well no that's fine i'll jump so it's the the governor and the senate asked for 50 million more that's what's in the senate so it'd be 600 million total the house has proposed 250 million more to bring it to 800 million but the house has language and so this fits in with what we were just talking about with third calc the house language says half of the allocation needs to be used for raising to 47.5 you know the old 80 20 language and the other half needs to be used for everybody else so they're actually finally going to address some of the veteran teachers who have not been able to get anything but the problem is is that they keep talking about the allocation as though it's 800 million and not 250 million and when they say half of the allocation you've already allocated 550 million of it half of 800 millions 400 like it doesn't work like this is the stuff where they get ahead of themselves or get confused themselves you know and and i think wendy hit it the reason this is coming up as a categorical is so that it can keep getting out the full amount can get out to those scholarship kids even though you've already bargained it this should be you know when the governor uh i can't remember when that was 2013 2014 we had everyone's going to get 500 480 million dollars put into the budget for that the very next year that was just rolled right in to the bsa yeah because it's already been spent it's recurring this keeps staying out there and it keeps causing these problems because they're not careful with their language um but anyhow that's a long story for all right 50 million in the house wayne i'm going to turn it back to you now who who do you have next theresa had her hand up theresa jacobs theresa i'm sorry teresa thank you chair i and and thank you brian quick question wendy um do you have a dollar amount for the impact of the teacher salary uh allocation and by the way excellent job to both of you on describing um a very technical i would call it a glitch not that it's a glitch bill but it obviously um wasn't intended uh so if you had a dollar amount that'd be helpful the other thing chair i think would be really helpful because i can see we have a handful of people who are really in the weeds um what we probably need is a position paper of some sort that we could get out to all the districts and see if we just can't push this um with an avalanche of emails and just get people's attention then we'll have legislators across the state asking the question i think once the question is asked the problem will be identified and it will need to be solved but without that what is disaster yeah we can do that right thank you thank you thank you and wendy do you have an idea of the value of that um i want there's so there's 98 i'm trying to do the math in my head because i had it on a work paper and i have it in front of me but they're 98 000 scholarship students divided by uh 550 million i think it came out to about 200 give or take one way or another per student that's going to the scholarship students um from the teacher's salary allocation wow from the original teacher salary allocation additional 50 that they were calculating that would be in total with the whole 550.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 4
Martin and I have the utmost respect for the job that he's in and but I don't think there was a fully informed board republic for that matter on that issue I think emotions got carried away I think there was it's a divisive issue and I think fully informed board may be saying hold on let's breathe do we have to make decisions tonight there's motions flying I think leadership in that respect may have been able to make things a little bit better I mean it's a divisive issue so I don't know if you're ever going to get a totally clean situation there comes to me I know I'm taking finishing my night so please I'm taking diligent notes I'm glad how would you handle a situation where you and a board member disagreed about either an issue or a course of action well I think I think those are two different things at issue or a course of action I don't know who wrote the questions I'm not criticizing but I think a course of action is much more significant than disagreeing on an issue of course of action suggest you're doing something and one of the things that I wanted to tell you all today is I read your board protocols and I've reviewed them and I think there's a great chart in there that was provided by the Florida School Boards Association about the division of powers if you will between a board and a superintendent and the thing I got from that which I've always known is that you recommend you suggest but on the administrative side of the district Act okay so a course of action suggest you're acting in some way which I'll just simply I guess talk about an issue I think I don't think what I believe or the advice I provide you if it's followed or not should put me in a situation where I have an issue with that I provide legal advice to you as a board you can question that you can ask me more questions about it you can suggest that you don't think that's the right way to do things and none of that honestly will hurt my feelings I think the key is for me to be well thought out to research and provide you the best advice that I think I can provide and that I will provide and use all the resources that I have including colleagues and other districts and the ability to to dig down for 24 years of my experiences and and provide you advice if you disagree with my course of action that's okay that happens if you are not an advocate for your client that will never happen because you're not putting yourself out there but your job as a lawyer is to advocate a position that you think is in the best interests of your client and if you as a board take a position that's contrary to the legal advice of the board attorney that's the board's decision and I would certainly live with that and I would be happy to explain all of that to you individually if that in fact comes up but I am NOT going to ever provide you legal advice that I think you want to hear that's not my job that is not my job and may making you unpop me unpopular in some respects but I think in the long run and this is what it's about right the long run ultimately and I've done that here here for 13 years in the long run I believe the advice I've provided to my clients in this school district they realize he was right about that one that satisfies the question everybody sorry I came at the top of page page four I just want to say provided some questions I asked mr.
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Volusia County, FL Volusia County School Board transcript source: youtube Central Florida Public School Boards Coalition Meeting · passage 4
thank you and not seven you know yeah not the s what is it yeah not the 750 the 550 so with the 750 and that the houses proposed that would be an even higher number got it thank you okay i'm gonna i'm gonna hand it off to kristen she's gonna uh touch on the randy fine uh money issue oh good and good morning christmas as well good morning thank you thank you thanks wayne thank you thank you chair purses um real quick so many of you are familiar with the um the categorical in the house education budget proposal the putting parents first adjustment that adjustment is essentially a 200 million dollar penalty to the 12 school districts who adopted mass mandates and targets as they're saying the the non-school-based district administrators in those districts so funds from the the 12 stated school districts i think many of you are familiar with them um would be taken from those districts and then distributed to the 55 districts as i guess like an award for not requiring masks um the on so that the senate doesn't have that same proposal in their version uh and then many of you may know that on friday the governor did share that um he he's not so much in support of that but instead would recommend that parents school school districts instead of taking this route this proposal so that's just kind of a quick high level update on that good that's good news thank you brian brian moore you want to chime in on some issues yes the the lawyer in me might say that isn't necessarily good news and even randy fine tried to spin it as potentially more costly for the districts than than 200 now i don't know how i mean logistically are they going to pass a law that says retroactively if a year ago you committed child abuse by masking your children your your subject you know like creating a separate cause of action for 12 districts i'll let them figure that out but but it's part of it i wanted to touch on it which is really scary trend which is turning parents loose against the districts at the local level i this is just me speaking this is not an official fad statement but my opinion is that most of these legislators and i think this goes on both sides they don't want their base bothering them because their base is very bothersome um and but they're more than happy to use all the energy that their base has to turn them loose on you as long as they're not here in tallahassee or in their office and demanding that they fix things so stop ask every time we give you what you want you want more so what they're doing instead is saying i'll tell you what you want more i'll give you the power to go sue those districts directly i'll give you the power to go you know demand your three minutes of finger-pointing at the board meetings luckily that language all went away but um you know they're they're i i haven't brought myself to write this in any of my updates yet but i'm i've called it weaponizing parents um and the potential cost what's that passing the buck yeah but the potential costs to that are enormous because they've also got the sovereign immunity bill which right now our limits are 200 000 per individual 300 000 per occurrence and the two bills that they have floating up here now one of them is up to a million per individual with three million dollars per occurrence the other is a million per individual individual with no cap on her occurrence 50 kids injured in a school bus uh accident doesn't matter if it's the bus driver's fault that's a lot of potential lawsuits and let's let's let's take a flyer on something i got 50 potential clients it's worth saying uh negligent hiring or something let's find some way that the school board can at least be partially responsible they're going to settle and now we can maybe get maybe 500 000 as an appropriate nuisance settlement for 50 kids do they really want 50 kids parading or you know this this is like trial lawyer bonanza time yeah um so with higher sovereign immunity limits on the horizon apparently uh causes of action to sue um that's i mean so that's one of the things we're talking about you know everyone focuses on don't say gay you know that's the buzz buzzword for for the two bills the the new parents bills but it includes a right to sue the district and so one of the things that we're trying to do a lot of is kind of nibble on the edges all right we may not be able to get into a policy discussion with you on whether this is a good or bad idea policy wise but do you really have to create lawsuit central are you really trying to make the trial lawyers rich because their eyes are lighting up the prevailing party fees it doesn't work in reserve reverse there's going to be a whole bunch of people willing to come flood our courts bring people think about all the staff members that will be doing depositions showing up in court doing hearings i mean it was all i could do in my previous job to keep divorce attorneys from subpoenaing our teachers to come testify in custody disputes you know like they don't need to be out of the classroom dealing being in court and yet that seems to be this big push is to stop asking me to fix things here let me just give you the tools to go sue for them and it's really scary because that there are people out in your districts that are more than happy to file a lawsuit and fight for their rights my rights you know whatever those rights that they are you know but uh so that's just something that i mean when you're talking to your delegation members and your representatives your senators and you may not be getting much headway on this is a good or bad policy how about the way that you're implementing it how about what the effect is on the districts we don't get to raise taxes to cover these additional costs you're putting on us our our revenue is fixed you fix it but now you're going to make us pay out millions more for insurance or in settlement claims you're opening the door for more lawsuits and legal fees um the 200 million dollars you say we can't use it can't take the money from the classroom but no district can operate without the head of hr food service transportation if you have a staff attorney they're wonderful people you can't operate without a staff attorney but you know you're going to have to have those positions that money's going to have to come from the classrooms so they are punishing the the classrooms through it but so those are the discussions that you can have nibbling around the edges on on that and because if you look back even to the mask debate in the fall get those districts get those districts and what did they do they withheld board member salary and people that felt you know they felt that wasn't enough they all they did is withhold some board members salaries a few thousand dollars a month um people were disappointed but they kind of realized that they don't really have many more tools than that and so but now this is the year this is they appropriate this is the body that appropriates the money this is them rattling the cage and saying we are the ones who determine how much you get and we are not happy but but they can't figure out yet how to punish you without punishing the students and they don't want to do that especially in an election year so messaging how this will come out of classrooms how this will i mean you've already got you know all your teacher shortages all the other issues that they are aware of and that parents do tell them about um so like connecting this to the classroom is is important in those messages if you can't get on the policy if you can at least get to the practical effects of these things that's why i will take the conversation thank you brian thank you wayne uh does uh i want to put danielle uh on the spot for just a second and maybe just give us give the group a quick uh a quick update on at least we've got one success that we can talk about and that was concurrency and then uh maybe if someone wants to chime in at least we've got the the two mile to one mile that issue has been kind of slowed down too i guess but but danielle if you want to update on the concurrency well sure so uh when we talked about school concurrency last month on our call we were dealing with the fact that um both of these school concurrency bills um were changing it to where they were going to look at district wide um as far as concurrency was concerned and of course we knew what an issue that would be for so many of um our districts basically saying that um you know if you had any space at all anywhere in the district um you know they were going to consider that um space and they were going to allow for um building of you know new neighborhoods and and those types of things even if that space was well on the other side of the district and especially for our larger districts that would be a huge issue when it comes to how far students would need to be bussed and you know all of those different things so they're um pretty early on we were able to meet with both senator perry and uh representative mclean to get that wording changed um both were uh very honest with us in saying that it was never their intention to hurt the school districts in that way and once they realized what that would have done to the school districts um they were already working on amending that language so in both the senate and the house bills uh that district-wide aspect has been taken out of the bill um the bills still don't quite match there's still a few little um differences between the two of them that are still being worked out um but it was a a big win for us to be able to get that district-wide piece out of the bill you know pretty early on in the process and um i've continued to just kind of do little check-ins just to make sure that we're still kind of good in that and there's um no intention of any of that language um coming back from either one of the bill sponsors nor from the lobbyists who's been working very closely with uh the builders which is really where the bill originated from so that was definitely um definitely a good win early on that we had to be able to get that um get that language out of there okay thank you thank you danielle wayne i think you're still on you yeah sorry about that um so the i think the last issue that we probably need to update the group on is related to flvs and i can i can kind of touch on that um early on and uh oh oh i'm sorry before i get started uh linda colbert you have a question uh thank you wayne i just wanted to comment on what brian had said about messaging on the the 200 million here in orange county that's going to be about a little over 16 million and the communication that we have put out both to the legislators and public is that that 16 million equates to a little over a one percent raise for our teachers so i think that puts it in perspective and that's that's where you have to go back to the legislators and say here's here is the real consequence for that so just wanted to share how we're messaging in orange yep good point yeah thank you thank you um in house bill 5101 5101 it's a conforming bill uh coming from the house it's a uh regarding education uh it contains language currently that will eliminate franchises for flvs however and and wendy dodge and i and and some of the others have been uh going back and forth with the stakeholders but also with flvs and flvs is of the opinion that we can get rid of franchises but we can still contract with flvs um but also we've had several conversations now with our folks in the senate and we're we're getting the the temperature that there's not an appetite to uh to take this on but with that being said we still uh still have to remain vigilant uh as we get closer to the the budget process and uh yeah mr moore do you wanna you wanna comment on the s-a-t-a-c-t you mean while i'm texting it to the group chat okay yeah yeah yeah so uh so this would be my last part last week the state board of education met here in tallahassee one of the things that they were considering was an amendment to the rule about uh basically graduation requirements as you know everyone has to pass the 10th grade english language arts fsa they have to pass the algebra one end of course but there's been a rule that has allowed you to demonstrate that through other means up until what was originally the 1819 ninth grade class you could do a matching pert score for math or you could score i think it's a 430 on the sat i don't remember what the s8 the act score was but they had uh concordance scores that you could hit instead of for whatever reason after five tries at the fsa it's not happening but you got a 480 on the sat hey obviously you're ready to go we're going to let you go that they had bumped that up made it tougher starting with the 18 19 9th graders this year's seniors they got rid of pert they made the s.a.t and the act harder what they amended the rule last week to go back give this year's seniors the old standards so this year seniors do get to use pert this year's seniors do get to use the lower s.a.t and act score that was in place for everybody up through last year's seniors because this year seniors didn't even get to take the fsa in 10th grade and really only got one year of normal high school ninth grade this year seniors only got their freshman year which was already awkward enough for them probably as it is they didn't really get much high school uh normalcy and so the school the state board can't waive everything uh but they can set the scores and so they've amended it to go back to the what was in place up through last year's seniors and in some districts that's doubling the number of kids that are now ready to graduate other you know there's still gpa requirements and things but a lot of kids now have already gotten a 4 30 on the s.a.t or i don't know if they've taken the pert because it hasn't been in play for several years but i'm sure there's a bunch of pert scheduling happening in districts now too to help those algebra 1 scores hey hey brian what about the the algebra do they have to have past the algebra yes they still have to pass the algebra one end of course but they have now more options for demonstrating that other than just the official end of course exam they can they can get a matching pert score um and i can't remember what pert stands for what the acronym is but um but that used to be a way that was a lot way a lot of kids up until a few years ago would would get their their needed scores up until last year thank you um i think the rest of my colleagues uh john boyd did you did you want john good morning everybody i just wanna add there's a couple bills related to uh employees and unions that you might want to pay attention to because they're moving through committee on at least the house side um house bill this one regards uh juice deduction which it would in the practice of school districts including that in their information system for employees to opt to have their dues deducted and then in addition to that they slipped in language regarding what's called automatic decertification if a union's density falls below 50 percent according to the language of this bill it would be decertified and then they would have to apply to recertify that usually will affect well in our district for example the support staff union and the uh for us it's teamsters or your bus drivers food service etc the other bills i'd point out real quickly um house bill 1203 which has the title of education i don't mean to be simplistic but could possibly become a um train bill it's the one that has language in it regarding employee evaluations returning that to management's right as we understood it because there was a perk ruling related to this for orange county that stated that evaluations had to be a mandatory topic of bargaining in some districts they've been bargained in whole or in part but the majority of districts especially in central florida they are considered management right until this perk ruling so the the good news is if you're on that side of the argument is it's moving through the legislature and it's on a bill that could potentially be a train bill in the end based on its title alone um also there are bills related to it on fingerprinting that i would encourage folks to watch because it would regard when we on board and hire folks sharing fingerprinting but it wouldn't be the school board necessarily that it would start with it could start with another educational entity is defined in those bills and that's all i have for today thank you all right who else do we have on the call here wayne what about uh jason jason jason hey jason you know what but wendy uh wendy did bring up a point to me the that everybody on the call just so that you know procedurally we are coming down to the end of committee meetings as well both the house and the senate uh this is this is this will be the first week that we start seeing at least subcommittees shutting down and while in the senate their big committees will be meeting this week next week it becomes sketchy because we start hitting the the 50-day rule where committees stop stop meeting so that means um even though bills will be dying we also have to be respectful of the fact that once a bill moves out of one committee it does become available to be in an amendment and as john points out um that 1203 bill had a nice long very narrow title uh when it originally came out and when they amended it and made it a cs they did change the title on that and and made that a like ron points out it it's definitely right to be a train um so you know we'll have to continue to watch those term limit and those salary amendments uh from from jumping on those and then finally um i will reiterate because i i don't think i think we caught it but maybe we didn't but there is the uh one of the top priorities of the senate president is uh is bringing all state employees but also district employees up to the 15 uh minimum salary and um i know brian and several of us have all already kind of doing the the calculations and what that's going to cost but also uh the the biggest concern and it's not any different than what we were all talking about the last two years on teacher calories and that what's the compression gonna look like because we're bringing employees up to fifteen dollars an hour but we've already got employees that are at fifteen or sixteen dollars an hour what's that what's those increases going to look like in you know what what type of new morale issues are we all to have to uh you know wrestle with yeah wayne and that's another one i meant that i it was supposed to just flow from me and i forgot it because the this senate budget proposal language includes a cause of action which i don't think they can put into a budget language but right now it does it says if anyone's not making fifteen dollars an hour uh by october first beginning on january one of next year they can sue the district over failure to be making 15 an hour we told them that it was going to cost about 400 million dollars just to get people 215 that's statewide and that was supposed to be over about five years that doesn't cover the compression those of you that are on phones i'm making a lot of hand gestures so uh just imagine that it's very informative what i'm doing um but but so you know there might be enough money in the senate proposal which is a 200 and almost 240 dollar raise to the bsa to get all your 11 hours up to 15 there might be but there's not enough to make sure that the 25 25-year veteran head custodian makes more than the brand new entry-level custodian who just started working at the school the same day that this head custodian supervises why why would you go from entry level administrative assistant to executives you know like they're if it's all the same pay food service manager i mean think about all the people right now in your district making between 14 50 and 16 an hour and think of them all staying going a few can go up to 15 but they're not going there's no money to get everyone else up but everyone else gets pushed up why would those new people want to take on a harder job for no extra pay you know all the stuff that you're dealing with with the teachers in terms of morale so we really got to try and crunch the numbers on that but that's in the senate budget right now is you will be 15 an hour by october 1st and if you're not every employee who has not has the right to bring a class action lawsuit against the district if i could uh ask either dr thomas or brian was there any talk out there about some sort of special allocation uh for bus drivers i thought i heard something about bus that category of employee being singled out uh because perhaps they've become aware of the shortage of bus drivers that think every district is that the senate president in his opening day remarks talked about recognizing and get helping bus drivers but he also mentioned a couple other categories of esps i think this flows from that okay thank you thank you for that uh wayne has everyone had the opportunity i don't want to shortchange anyone here i believe so i think i think everyone who has uh who wanted to say something has had an opportunity to say something am i right i'm gonna look on the screen here presenters headshotters presenters everything's good good yep good we're all dead all right thank you for that um go ahead go ahead wayne i was gonna say just uh you know everyone just keep mindful of you know paying attention to your updates from your your district folks um you know things will start moving but hopefully things will start dying um but we can't uh we gotta remain vigilant until march the 11th so you know thank you all for your time to to listen to all of us uh give you all an update on uh what what could be happening in tallahassee well let me uh say to each of you thank you for what you're doing all of you whatever district you represent association superintendents school board associations your your your representative uh from each of the districts uh y'all doing just awesome job and uh uh and i and i and i like the way you i think you were crafting it in that you you you gotta you gotta make it real for them in other words that the messaging about uh this would this is taking away 16 million dollars that's a one percent raise for our teachers if you do this this is what it's going to cost us in terms of teacher salaries i mean you have to bring it home it has to affect someone personally and and i think when when they when they're up there they just look at numbers and and it's just broad and it it's it's it's really not a person but when you bring it back and you can connect it to someone that they know someone in their district some place where they live the uh the schools that they are familiar with and say how it's going to hurt me how it's going to hurt us and this is the challenges that i have now and this is going to make it even harder i i think i think we have to touch them there we're going to we got to pull on those uh heart strings and we gotta we got to make it emotional and they gotta gotta understand that this that some of the things that they have out there uh would truly be painful and we just can't do all these things we we can't take money away from the districts and at the same time expect to pay everyone fifteen dollars an hour and then deal with all our veteran folks whose morale is sinking because they're not getting a whole lot more than the entry level people so i think these are issues i know that you guys say it but we got to continue to say it and and just keep just keep making sure that they are understanding this is not just an orange county issue or pasco county issue this is state statewide this is how it's affecting and going affect all all of us uh i think i just think that's so important hey uh i need to um jump in here a minute uh karen karen bishop can you hear me yes yes uh karen karen had the housekeeping thing we needed to do here and i'll let you speak to them yes we just need everyone to say here in the comments section for roll call thank you karen righty does anyone have questions for any member of the group that was presenting i certainly want to give everyone a chance if you have a question out there i think superintendent jenkins has her uh i think you do dr jenkins hey just really quickly um i put in the chat the actual statute statutory reference just in case folks were interested 1203 it seeks to reinforce what was already in statute regarding the superintendent's responsibility to evaluate staff just put it in the chat for you just in case anyone was interested it's not a new issue it's why um many believe perk got their ruling wrong thought i'd put that reference in there for you good and so am i hearing dr jenkins uh that there's a possibility that this could change is is that what we're trying to do i'm sorry i should have been clear i apologize so the reason for the attempt at legislative correction is because of belief by many that perk got the ruling wrong if you look at state statute 1012.34 paragraph 1a there's very clear language there that we think um should have needed no clarification nonetheless this is where we land at at this point but i wanted to give you the reference of the original language as well in case so i i got you thank you for that real quick can i jump in drill 30 seconds yeah i think there might be some messaging going on around this that uh i've already been accused by one superintendent that fads has written a letter uh trying to do away with the teacher evaluation system and signed that superintendent's name to such letter but that that's not the case this is really small this is about the evaluation procedures and something basically recognizing what was already in statute if you've got a good working relationship with your union over the evaluation process nothing has to change but it just recognizes it's ultimately the superintendent's call um and it's all subject to doe approval anyway why would you bargain for seven months only to have the doe disapprove and then what go back and bargain for another 13 months meanwhile you're not evaluating so anyhow uh yeah i lied it's more than 30 seconds but just be aware that there is at least some messaging going out there probably i assume from the fea that uh whether it's just the game of telephone and it's lost you know like as it gets told from one person to the next it loses what was originally said but it's expanded to something quite broad that is not the case so gotcha gotcha gotcha thank you dr jenkins did you want to add i'm good okay thank you um and did anyone else did i miss anyone else that had a question i'm hard for me to see phillips everybody his hand up go ahead hey there um i i just wanted to throw this out in case it becomes of interest for any superintendent or district um you know we were looking at ways to look at the evaluation system that had been approved by doe for this year because of the pandemic dle was was open receptive to some some small adjustments even in the middle of the year we just made an adjustment we met with our principal council we got together and the adjustment was that first and second year teachers could opt in to the second formal evaluation that's required under our model and what we did was as before we went through as brian said before we negotiated with the union we simply um sent it to doe for kind of a sniff test to make sure that it would pass muster and be fine and and it did and they allowed us to make that adjustment uh mid-year so so kind of mirroring what dr jenkins was saying before you would even sit down and negotiate with the union just get a a head nod um from from doe that it's the right direction that's it thank you dr fritz uh anyone else have a would like to make a comment or ask a question now's your time don't think i see any anyone there thank you so much uh once again uh so what do we have this this session ends march 11th so what are we 50 what less than that it's counting down now it's counting down now uh is there any way the legislature uh they can circumvent getting a getting something to a floor vote without it being through three committees can they still work that can someone comment go ahead wendy so as long as something has been through one committee it's available to be amended onto a different bill on the floor so and then a lot of times we have seen the past few years where stuff who that didn't get through a committee somehow was deemed eligible to be amended on the floor so we are being very vigilant there's um the you know we've also seen the past few years where the senate like they're doing now there's four weeks left the senate is not having policy committees meet anymore so if they do have a policy committee meet it's going to be because it's going to be a signal that this is something that is a house priority that they have to get it uh moving in order to get something that they want from the house so from here from here it's it's less policy more politics but um we're watching everything um unt until something is signed by the governor it's uh it's in play yeah yeah and i guess that's what scares us about like what what john boyd said about that bill called education how everything could be tacked on and amended onto that bill i believe that's what you were implying john yes sir yeah all right thank you again uh any other comments from anyone all right seeing none i think they are our committee we thank you all uh thank you so much for what you do all the time for each of us and for all of our students and our in our employees uh i think i think you gave us great marching orders um i think this is just just awesome we just cannot stop we've got to just monitor everything and keep talking to them keep talking to your legislators uh we're not going to have a meeting in um in march because as it turned out it's kind of like right it would be right when many folks are having their spring breaks and so and so forth so when we meet again the session in all likelihood should be over uh will be over and uh and then it usually takes us a a few months to kind of figure out what what happened and and how and how are we going to be affected by it so uh i'm asking all of you who were were who are participating uh if you just just kind of keep that in your thinking that's what we really want to know next uh uh and in the mean in the meantime if anyone goes to tallahassee uh i know these folks would love to see you there and uh just let them know when you're coming and you can tag along and talk to your legislators they can open up doors for you and get you to meet your representatives uh so let's let's do it if you have any time at all get up get up to tallahassee before march 11th i thank you all enjoy the rest of your day be good to your valentine partner and i'll see you again if not before definitely in april bye bye you
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 5
dodyk some questions when we were together and the way he responded I felt it was very important so I submitted those to miss to dr. Pruitt so that you could because I wanted him to articulate and I let him know that those questions are gonna be asked again because I really I felt those issues were important for him to particularly to the whole group from a legal perspective what do you believe is the weakest area of this and most school boards how can you assist in improving on that weakness not about you in fact I do want to say this I've been here 13 years and I have worked under or with some cohesive boards some of which you have been members of at least mr. Tolbert dr. cocoa however I will say that currently this is as cohesive and as good a board as I've seen in this district in my 13 years so I'm not blowing smoke I just want you to know that the weakest area I don't know if I can identify a weak area of this board currently I think I'm sure I can come up with one offhand I do say this I think the weakness of the system okay I'm not necessarily advocating this and I'm stealing this from one of your colleagues but I do think the weakness of the system is the elected nature of school boards in general relative to the politics and all that goes on the University and college system in Florida with appointed boards of trustees seems to work more fluently there's not a lot of politics going on at least in the public it seems to they seem to be able to have some harmony and get things done at that level okay having said that the system's not changing so I'm well aware of that so I think the weaknesses of most school boards that I am familiar with is something we've talked about which is those boundaries that line that blurs and the line between taking administrative action and being a board member advising or coming up with recommendations I think that's the weaknesses of a school board school boards in general because you have to answer to the public and that's okay that's what who you were elected by however there has to be trust in administration and staff and the board attorney for that matter and the superintendent that things will be handled appropriately so I have seen in my 13 years here that line hitler'd and that's when things become confusing I had graciously a board member asked me the other day for lack of knowing can I talk to you about this situation that was coming from my office and I appreciated that question because I understood that the board member would not know and my answer was respectfully I can't talk to you about that because it could come before you as a quasi judicial body and so I think I think those questions are important for board members to ask legal advisors but I do understand the system I think I bring up the University and college system because those folks are not elected so therefore not held their constituents are not bothering them all the time I guess so to speak or asking questions but that the democratic system we have it seems to work in some respects and but I think that's a weakness for most school boards for you all I mean I see good work being done I think the dilemma and the weakness for our school board is not inflicted by you all it's being inflicted by Tallahassee it's pulling control away from a local school board and suggesting that someone else can make better decisions on things like funding and other issues and I think that is the inherent threat to our system the you are eventually are not gonna have a lot of things to do if that continues and that is a weakness in our system not in you as a school board I think that's been brought upon you how can I improve it well how can I assist assist you in improving on that we can answer that part of that question I think like I told you one of my skills is leading one of my skills is providing advice that is not only the legal aspects of what a school board can and cannot do but I think I have the ability to determine or at least look at the social and political ramifications of everything you all do I am an information person input is one of my big strengths and I like information I can sort of tell what's going on I have unfortunately I watch too much news and watch what's going on in the world and but I think that can benefit the board I really do and I think that can assist maybe improving on on the weakness I mean I've been trying to improve on the weakness by helping with the legislative part of this school district and feel very strongly and passionate about public education I'm a product of it and I think you all are fighting and we need to continue to fight absolutely as the board attorney you will be working with the superintendent on a daily basis so how would you maintain the fact that we report directly to the board yeah I think that's a great question I hopefully answered that individually with all of you but the current superintendent and I go back 13 years I was sitting in his office 13 years ago interviewing for the staff attorney job I won't hide that he's been a big benefit to my career and I appreciate everything however one thing that I think I made clear to you is dr.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 6
Atkinson and I haven't always haven't always seen eye-to-eye on issues I've had plenty of disagreements with him I've had plenty of issues with him not that's how I will deal with him but I think it's clear that a separation between this board attorney and the superintendent in some respects is necessary however what I will say is the collaboration between the two positions as it is currently constituted needs to improve and I think I can be a benefit to dr. Atkins however that benefit only goes to the point where I believe I can go with what my client wants to do as a school board there will be times when the school board and the superintendent are not on the same sheet of paper and my job is to advise the school board however we are the only two employees currently there's an auditor position we're the only two employees I shouldn't say we the school board attorney and the superintendent are the only two employees of this board so there is some synergy that's necessary there's a reason for that and if you look at the job description if you look at the board protocols the superintendent and the school board attorney are supposed to work pretty much together and I've seen that happen I've seen that really work in this district and I think we can improve upon that so then my second questions are followed to that I'm if there was a recommendation coming from the superintendent that was not in compliance with the law and not a good recommendation would you advise the board in advance yes and I would advise the superintendent in advance yes absolutely would you stay current on legal issues that could potentially affect the school district and what about legislation well the first question is I mean I think we all today have the ability to stay current on legal issues not just lawyers I mean the internet and the world wide web which unfortunately or fortunately has kind of grew up with me career-wise I think when I was in law school we had Westlaw or Nexus but it wasn't like it is now and you can pretty much read a case without paying for it today he never used to even be able to do that so as I told you I'm an input person I'm an information person so I do stay current on legal issues relative to the news and other sources the Florida school board Attorneys Association of which I'm again a member for 13 years is an invaluable resource to us it's kind of a parallel organization to FS ba fads the superintendent's Association joy Frank their legal counsel is an invaluable resource we have school board attorneys that have believe it or not we have some emeritus folks Ned Julian and others Ned's been a school board attorney for about seventy years I think he was and he still participates on our listserv where we exchange information with each other and some things hey did you is this happening with you all no but maybe it will and that's how we kind of find trickle-down information there's plenty of folks that like to make public records requests around the state in every school district some districts get them before we do well we know that kind of thing is probably coming so that's an invaluable resource I attend conferences FS PAA has quarterly meetings that I attend I belong to the Council of School Attorney's cosa which is under the school boards association so I try albeit in my current position which sometimes is like triaging in an emergency room but I try to read an hour or so a day on on relevant case law on things that are going on that are relevant to school districts so I think all of those things help me stay current legislation as you know for at least the past two years I've been intimately associated with handling or at least trying to be the liaison for the school district relative to our lobbyists previously with mr.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 7
Cerra and now with Miss green legislation is kind of interesting because you can get surprised I mean we had some surprises this year finding out things through other sources and things which I feel like maybe should never happen but it seems to so especially at the end of session when thing gets stuffed in bills or or others one of you miss Patrika actually you know would email and say how did when did this get put in and sometimes you have to dig and find out oh you know that was brought up in a committee or wasn't ever even went to committee so that is a little bit more of a difficult chore and I think and I and I have advocated with all of you I think that I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to have an insane house person dedicated to that kind of role full-time I've thought that I believe in that I've expressed that to the superintendent but as the board attorney I would be certainly on top of all of that and I think in the new job description some of that is in there which if I was honored to get the position I'm real happy about because I kind of enjoy that world I know that sounds may be sadistic in this climate but I enjoy knowing what laws are going to be passed or possibly passed so I would look forward to that no I don't mean another attorney not necessarily no I think a person with legal background would be helpful of course I always advocate for lawyers but no I don't I don't think so I think there was some thought given in fact I participated on the interview committees for a legislative person that was also going to be a community relations type person some of which dr.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 8
Carlin has undertaken and I think we had some real great candidates that we offered positions to and they chose not to come here unfortunately so I think that position I know this year that's probably not possible but I think it should still be in the mix I really believe that and I think that would not only aid our current lobbyists they would aid folks in house here too or state of Florida mr. Tovar might be able to take 30 credits every two years and I'm also admitted in New York however I don't have to participate in CLE in New York because I don't practice there currently but I still have to pay dues in New York other than about 50 minutes ago no I'm just kidding well that's a great question because this my current job doesn't come without stress and I'm not going to necessarily talk specifics I don't think that's fair to people involved but you all know in general sense that we had a significant cycle of superintendents over the past four or five years six years and during one of the terms of that superintendent things around here got pretty stressful and how did I handle it well I think we seek out folks that we love and care about and that love us and care about them and I think talking about things is the best way to handle stress I think we can seek out professionals to do that we can talk to our loved ones we can deal with our issues the way we think is best some people pray some people whatever works for people what works for me is talking about things and what also works for me as bizarre as this may sound is the truth and honesty because they will always set you free and so if you're in a stressful situation and you're honest with yourself and you're honest and truthful with what occurred I'm not gonna lie I had to go speak to the inspector general about that superintendent situation and I told them what was happening and there's no more liberating a feeling than doing that so you handle it with the truth you're honest and I don't think you'll ever go wrong and that's and I will I pledge to you that I would always do that with you all the situation where you had to solve a difficult problem what did you do what was the outcome and what do you wish you have done differently I'm not necessarily in the position of solving problems I think I'm in the position of providing advice that will allow others to solve problems I think but there's throughout life throughout it doesn't say at work necessarily I mean I think I went through divorce in my life there's no more difficult a problem in a person's life even death I think a divorce is more difficult than a death and the outcome for me was I had to go back to my family I had to be around the people that loved me and the outcome was I met my wife I had a child I moved back to Florida I've been in this wonderful County for 13 years what I wish I had done differently is I wish my first marriage worked my ex-wife is a special education teacher in Volusia County she's a wonderful person I'll never know why it didn't work when was the last time you thought outside the box and how did you do it why about three seconds ago question that way but I thought it's important to not just talk about work all the time I think you're hiring an attorney who's also a person and I think it's important for you all to know that lawyers it's a great question because lawyers don't get to think outside the box very often we're in that box were one thing I'm fond of saying although I know other people in other professions make what you're always a lawyer and I know we have a couple in this room I mean even when you're home even when you're outside your job or where you're where you work your office or court or wherever you do your business but you're always a lawyer so the ability to think out the box I'd the Box professionally for me is very difficult to tell you that oh yeah I've done that ten times this week no that's not that's not reality you cannot provide the proper legal counsel and advice with your client if you're constantly coming up with outside the box thinking that's not what a client needs to hear now there are people in this school district that are in jobs including dr.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 9
Pruitt and others we're thinking outside the box is part of their job and then what they do is they consult legal counsel and say hey is this okay do you think we can do this do you think it's okay to go to the legislature and ask them to pay for scholarships for students that may not seem outside the box now but it was when we first thought of it absolutely and I was a part of that do you think it's outside the box to go to a job fair and offer people contracts on the spot when I came here and we started discussing that I thought that was a little bit risky but then when I heard there's five or six hundred job openings a year by all means let's figure out a way to do that and I participated in drafting the job offer document that we currently use and it's been refined over the years so the last time I thought outside the box honestly was when I answered your question about the previous question that mr.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 10
Tovar asked about difficult problems so not long ago and but I think in my personal life I think I'm I think outside the box often but I can't I don't think a lawyer can do it necessarily all the time professionally I just don't think you're not coming to me I don't think mr. Giovanelli to say hey come up with a novel legal idea for this if you are then by all means tell me and we'll try to do that but I think you're coming to me for consistent clear zealous advocacy and advice that's that's what I think a lawyer should be doing I'm just reading the next one excuse me mr. dodyk would you tell us about a time that your tenacity our resilience really paid off during your time as staff attorney what was the outcome well I think I'm going to answer that question I'm gonna bifurcate the question so to speak I think tenacity and resilience I think tenacity I can tell you over the years I've been tenacious in advising certainly Human Resources on certain issues relative to what's appropriate for instance on our employment application there was a time ok when we asked individuals what their date of graduation from high school was on an application and we were advised by the EEOC and a Lee County office of equal opportunity which existed at the time that it's easy to determine how old someone is by their date of graduation from high school and that could lead to an age discrimination claim well and dr.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 11
Pruitt still has these meetings but when I was in HR there was always Friday meetings with the leadership group in HR and I was part of that dr. Atkins was there at the time and I was tenacious in telling our folks in personnel and our computer folks that dealt with the online applications that you need to remove that question well back then we had a system called binocular and the computer system was very difficult to manipulate well that's what a long time to remove and I but I constantly was today it comes to mind because I wasn't here that long at that point and I kept thinking to myself where they must really think I'm like totally overbearing on this issue and it came to mind as soon as you said that I was just tenacious about us making sure that problem was cured and honestly age discrimination based on that kind of thing never did come about in any of our cases but I've also been tenacious I think in advocating in my job as crazy as this sounds because I do represent the district but advocating for those groups that are marginalized in our community I feel as though we're on the cusp of an agreement with the n-double-a-cp and I think the resilience and tenacity tenacity of people like myself and dr.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 12
bohat and others is finally going to pay off and I think an agreement is great but we need to continue to move forward we need to continue to move forward for those young children that I hear about every night from my wife that come to Edgewood Elementary that can't speak English whose parents can't speak English and we have to enroll them and provide them as best education we can well what are we going to do about that issue and we need to move forward and we need to continue to be tenacious about those issues currently I think we were confronted with an issue going on in our public schools regarding violence that we've never seen before and what are we going to do about those issues we can bash past bills like 70 26 and not fund them enough and say this is enough no it's not children should not be afraid to go to public school so what are we going to do about that are we not as a school board are you not going to talk about guns are you not going to talk about the issues that are relevant to us as a society I think that's as the board attorney maybe I can lead you in that direction because I think that's relevant for school boards to talk about I really do and I'm passionate about those issues and tenacious and resilient and some of the outcomes of these things are TBA or TBD to be determined I mean we don't know but I think I could go on and on about I what I believe our social political issues that school boards need to confront and I think some of your boards in other counties have they have in some way or another a resolution from a school board does mean something words mean things and there are people in groups that need to know that the school board supports them tell us about a time when your initiative at work caught caused a change to occur what was the situation and what was the outcome it's just that I kind of did I mean I will tell you that there's a lot of credit to go around but one of the most obvious outcomes I think of some of the advocacy that I've done with others is the creation of the office of diversity and inclusion I believe the situation you all know the situation I mean we you know we have we have a situation to confront in this community and I have been and just last week went to the stars complex and spoke once again with dr.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 13
bohat and others about the district and a passion for those issues I think my initiative I'm not gonna take credit for all of it I think I've been a participant in that I've been a significant participant in the development of restorative practices in this school district I kind of try to fly under the radar on some of these things because administrators need to take responsibility for them but I am a strong advocate of not suspending students out of school I am a strong advocate in doing everything we can to not expel students from school obviously the Florida Legislature has seen fit that if the child brings a firearm to school they have to be expelled and I respect that however giving children no chance is never a good thing so those are a couple of things that I feel strongly about that I was involved in if you would call them initiatives I think I was an integral part of would you please tell us anything you would like us to know about you that will aid us in making this decision about me B regrets so no I'm just kidding I don't know I'm not gonna sit here into my own work I will say this I don't think there's any better person suited for this job than me so I'll just tell you that I believe in myself I as you can tell I have a lot of love in my heart for what I do in this school district and I think I'm the best candidate for the job and 13 years from now 14 15 years from now hopefully I'm still sitting in that position and all of you will look back maybe some of you will still be on the school board I don't know what's gonna happen with term limits I'm glad we hired Rob to be the board attorney that's a good idea thank you take a five no break you we're ready to resume so I am going to ask dr.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 14
Pruitt to take us through what she would recommend as next steps for this process well I think at this time it would be appropriate to get feedback from the group and see what if you can come to consensus on what you would like the next two action to be at this point the choice choices would be to extend an offer to mr. dodyk - that's one option another option is to take some time think about it and provide me feedback individually - which then I could communicate to you as chair or you could determine at this time that you would wish to you know the only other option would be to hire a search firm okay so how many people would like to discuss what we've heard amongst ours I know some of you asked for panel so that you'd have an opportunity to discuss so I'm just sort of throwing it open to you all what would you like to discuss with your colleagues about this appointment well one of the reasons I wanted to do a panel is because we're all asking the same question at the same time we're hearing the same answer at the same time so it makes it easier to ship ensure that we're all getting the same information appropriately so I appreciate that I also you know that you can get a lot about people and I've sat in on other interviews with targeted questions with schools and as we would do those you get your answers but there's a lot that happens from the demeanor and also interconnectedness with the people on the team so I that's one of the benefits I believe that we have for this I am I was there were certain pieces that came through to me that I will share with you and that was a his passion definitely does come through his eye I like the fact I have often wanted to have more training than than just ethics I believe that aspect of of providing us some guidance and I again don't workshop to be a just a workshop for a workshop but I do believe that we all could benefit from learning more and even beyond the ethics that we do get with FSB a with our training and the other part that came in to me was that I kept going back is as he shared he learned a lot about his character and one's character is very important to me as I look I'm an attorney and so that aspect came to me that this is a man of character tell us the question I should have asked is there anything we missed in the process of doing it this way that you wish should have done or feel you need to do in order to make a decision about the board attorney just for me I had nothing to really compare to that's probably the piece that I think is missing unfortunately we don't have another candidate to compare just that alone and especially me being new I feel that that is that's not there for me to even to make a really full why Rob I don't have anything negative but I don't have anything to compare it to that's just my thing I guess that's my biggest piece for me rather than the president president our president attorney and then what our experience with robbed so I only have that's the only piece I have I mean III I can empathize with with Melissa you know I've had the experience the ability to deal with a lot of board attorneys in the different school districts through the years and some of them professionally and actually Keith Martin's best friend there in a poke I actually trained with him for as a certified mediator so he spent two weeks together and surprisingly the stories he told me about Keith Keith never let it on about that their relationship but it was it slowly interesting a whole different side of Keith I learned that when I confronted them in turn I never seen Keith turn so red before but but it was quite it was quite easy because the dynamics the personalities between how quiet wes is the complete aunt the thesis of Keith and for them to have served together in the military on the same Jag Corps you know as close as they are really a yin and yang it's really really interesting but anyway so I can understand Lisa I guess you know my point with Robert or any in that position you know we want to look at the skills of the candidate the experience and knowledge and not only spirits of knowledge of as a board attorney but also you know how he functions in legal aspects and you know we've seen him and blazes seeing him for the probably the youngest as a few and Chris other of us have seen him for longer and then but to see how adept he is with doing you know he served as our own board attorneys several positions but you've seen how he's handled with our students so I mean we've really as far as I don't think there is anybody out there in the state of Florida with the depth and breadth of skill and experience and knowledge if that person were to come if it were to be John Paul Carlin from the West Coast it was who was here now he served over there I don't think anyone would stack up to the credentials that we have with with mr.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 15
dodyk the other part of it is the issue and the biggest thing is I've seen a lot of people that I've known professionally in my prior life you know in manufacturing that I know they're good because they're in a with a competitor so I know what they can do and I pull them into my company and the one thing you don't know until they're in your organization is how do they fit what's the synergy what's their personality how do you know what you're getting and that's a huge that's a huge wildcard and I've had people that I've dealt with for years that I you know they were a client you know they were a customer that we were they're a supplier base or on the other side they were in both ends up and down the chain then I would pull him into my organization because they were that good it was just like a train wreck and I'm like holy cow you know that I just didn't know that part about him working you know in our organization and I would come to me pick my you know my people would go you know he's just not fitting this is different with with Rob because we've seen he interacts with our staff we've seen how he interacts with our superintendent and with our board for the most part that's a really huge thing so I mean I wasn't that much he as the process goes going along I didn't expect to have everybody fallout but in reality when I you know I met with dr.
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Lee County, FL Lee County School Board transcript source: youtube School Board Workshop - Board Attorney Interview · passage 16
Pruitt with it really wasn't that much of a shock to me because all the people that apply just have no clue they don't even know what they don't know and the ones that you know didn't apply because they know we're good but he's better so his colleagues didn't apply because they knew if we got in a got in this in the ring we're just really wasting our time and wasting you guys his time because that's really he's the best guy for the job and they all conceded that even though that would have been your comparison because I know there's certain people in a smaller districts would say what they love to be at Lee County but they're like we can't compete with this dude because he's just got you know he's been there for 13 years he knows the skeletons and in particularly Lee County especially for the superintendent say we've seen fly through here like a revolving door you know the history and the nuances and the and the uniqueness of Lee County you can't find that anywhere I mean we've really got idiosyncrasies in our community it is what it is and if you don't understand them when you're giving it in legal advice you're setting people up that it may be the right legal advice but it's not weighted with with the surroundings you may really set this board up for something that's really gonna blow up and I think the Lee County has benefited the fact that he's lived through some of this stuff and the biggest one you know for example you know our whole desegregation order all that experience that's really a big deal and for somebody to not understand it that's those are the priceless new things I don't think we get but for donating like I said Paul Carlin was the only one that I thought would even have a chance you know we lost a really good at attorney with Heather you know they found places I mean they got soaked up because we really had some good counsel in this in this district that wood that we left and everybody cuz I know some of you know this but I mean I did some proactive reaching out to some of these people and that is exactly what they said that they I mean so that's been confirmed by people actually saying those words to me or to somebody on my staff so just so you know that and it's different and I should just coach the thing in the legal it's not that it's not like in a superintendent that they're not doing it because of the bias because he's working here that they that they don't feel they're applying like the superinten you know internal positions because that's more political this is more an illegal level it's where do I fit you know as far as to where do I stack up as far as horsepower and that's the reason the lawyers wouldn't do it same you know and that's the same thing when you look at when you plan for judges and stuff people don't do it and I'm gonna talk about Matt against a sitting judge but if there's new people running for judge chips they'll see somebody applying for a judgeship they're not doing it because he's more politically active it's just they know him pull it you know professionally you know they don't match up and people don't run we just want what Steve said I was appalled when I saw the applications like those who had applied because it was clear they did not read what we were looking for and I so if I was just stunned and I thought you know if that's what we're getting and I knew that you were definitely out there trying to see if anybody was willing to leave and come over here so no but but in deference to what Pam saying those attorneys that applied I don't fault them they people don't know meliza learned Chris learned recently I learned when I first came in when I first came in I had no idea what I didn't know they have no idea how complex of a organization and an entity this is and when you get in there it blows your mind and they don't even know they're there thinking in their little legal realm they don't even know what they're getting what they're getting themselves into guys know I'm a note-taker so I wrote some words down I think Rob was a great communicator and I think as far as his character he really lays himself out there he definitely is motivated I think to take us forward even in our personal conversation he talked about how this district really does have a need to grow up and I think he repeated it here and he has a plan for that so I mean I think that's important he has experience he's accomplished a lot and he definitely has the skills so you know I don't know if we went out and looked some more if we were gonna get anything better than what we saw in that folder for the people who applied previously he knows the district he has the institutional knowledge and he certainly has a passion for this is his home and he has a passion for John and it seems to me like he's been thinking about this you know for quite a while and I definitely felt confident when I had the experience for a couple years when I was the legislative liaison I mean I could not have done that effectively without him and he does his homework he was very thorough and made everything easy to comprehend so I really think that he can can be a leader and help us and advise us ahead of time about things that we need to know about because I'll go back to the testing vote had I been I've been fully informed before that things may have been different I asked the question did we miss anything do people feel that we need to continue the process with respect to we've missed something in this interview or we've missed something in the process of doing this then my other question would be is there something the candidate doesn't have that we feel we need that's essential as we go forward that would cause us to you know feel obligated to okay so mrs.
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