School Board Workshop: April 25, 2022

001good afternoon today is monday april 25th 2022 and the time is 12.02 on the workshop today the order of business and the purpose is we have the agenda review of april 26th we have the legislative report we have the conversation regarding the superintendents and that looks like that will be it so dr savage if you would go ahead and start us off with the agenda review that would be great yes madam chair be my privilege the first question we have comes under the j-1 consent item for human resources the first question is in which is the approval for personnel recommendations first question is district planning director planning growth capacity please explain the need job description how important this position is to the district please advise if this was advertised in-house and also outside as i'm

002concerned that was not advertised very long in less than one week seems to be a very short time period why was it not advertised longer also the movement of the district playing director to coordinator was that an open position or a new position this position is still in the same department correct question mark we'll go and do that one first i'm sorry before before we start that i apologize is miss morgan and miss patricka online mr p renault i believe that ms patricka is still in the other meeting yes so she'll join us when she's finished out of her meeting but do we have miss kathleen morgan on the phone with us i wanna make sure we don't have to call her and miss vaughn will be with us within the next five minutes soon

003ms juvenelli's on her way as well i know that miss patricka is in another meeting in tallahassee i just didn't want him to have to repeat absolutely understood thank you for catching me nobody's online you're gonna call her okay if you want to go ahead and continue okay very good thank you madam chair absolutely and our typically if it's a human resource site we'd have our chief i'm sorry executive director for hr answer the question but in this particular one since it is an operations recommended hire just want to give a chance for mr ross who is available today to answer this question mr ross is it question all right good afternoon frederick ross executive director of operations so yes this job description can be provided by our human resources department and it is also

004on our website the district planning department is very important vital to our growth management and our educational planning our educational facility planning and leads that planning department in doing that work so vital important this position was advertised for one week typically positions are advertised anywhere from one week to longer depending on the need of the department in terms of the coordinator position that is an open position we had someone leave that position in january of this year so that position is an open position in the planning department and i think i addressed all of those questions in there okay and then mr juvenelli or afternoon so we're did you have any other questions regarding because i know that was yours my concern is that it was not advertised very long i mean and i'm sorry

005was it advertised outside of the district yes it was both internal and external great that's what i wanted because there seems to be some confusion over that so i just trying to get clarity for the community and also there people think the position is just for planning planning of schools and it's not really that it's the when planning with the new schools i'm sorry let me say that we're verbage right and there's a confusion of that so i really wanted that to be clear it's not it's the planning of who's going to attend how many people are going to be in schools like how many students are going to be in schools trying to get that on this level not this one so and that's where the confusion was because that was actually my confusion

006from the beginning so that's why we raise that and we have a severe problem and you know our school choice is not the you know it's not the optim right i mean it's not it's so we know that there's issues so and there's definitely issues this year i feel like i've received many calls that my child didn't get in the school and they literally live within two miles of the school and that shouldn't happen so i may i can't explain it go ahead well i just have to thank you for bringing this i think sometimes in our world in educators we're often guilty we use acronyms and things and then forget that most folks have no idea what we're talking about i think this is just such a really good point and i really want

007to thank ms giovanni for bringing it up one of the so a lot of people think of planner they think of municipal planners which is a very specific body of work that they do school-based planners are very different while there are some areas where they overlap in terms of working with local municipalities and looking with zoning and comp plans and so forth the school-based planning really has a whole different type of additional set of responsibilities that are very specific to schools add that to our district which is very unique the most i would argue the most challenging aspect of our planning here at this district is because we are a choice district so they are responsible for setting our program capacity with budget and student enrollment and so some of the examples that we're living

008through right now that mr joven only talked about where you know people live right near a school and are not in it those are absolutely directly related to the program capacity as well as projecting what you're going to have in the fall enrollment and so this drives the budget which is huge this drives the staffing which is huge and this drives our daily student enrollment so when you take talk about all of those critical pieces that intersect at this one vital piece that is what happens and that is the biggest significant issue to us not necessarily the just the planning of new schools and the architecture design work which is great all those things are really important but that one piece is so unique to lee county so thank you for trying to find a

009way to help us translate that for the public and for anyone who doesn't if they want to if they want to understand the term program capacity that is a huge part of our identity as a district is so unique just to lee county too so thank you for that and i know frederick's been living this challenge every day since he took the job so and i just want to apologize for not understanding and i truly did not understand and it i mean it took a little bit for it to sink in for me because there's a lot that goes into and my actually my newsletter editorial was about that a little bit the understanding the planning and preparation for the next year is huge and it's a huge undertaking that starts early and when we

010get behind that we're and i feel like us delaying this has caused some of that so i really personally want to apologize for that sincerely because it's important that everybody is in the right seats of the bus and teachers are allowed the opportunity to change their seat if they want to be closer to home or for whatever reason so this starts that process right now and that planner is actually how it's part of that major process so i just really want to that's why i really brought it back up is just for people to understand it better and for me to actually apologize thank you thank you thank you and thank you for the clarity that you just explained miss gins well okay here was the confusion for me and i spoke to someone that

011clarified it to an extent the way it looked overall this position was going to be someone taking kathy ebal's position and running planning growth and capacity that's right okay but then it was explained to me that this person was basically going to give from the perspective of a principal to add that view to all of it this is where the confusion came in so if if they're replacing someone who has done this this and this but they're only doing this and this do you understand how people get confused because and i always had heard that yes the perspective of an administrator that's been in a building is important but in the past when we're building a school there's a committee of administrators when they were building lands they had two or three administrators that had

012the same floor plan as lambs to sit in on the meetings and say if i could you know make some changes to my building that's this floor plan i would put this here and they listened and that's why lambs has a few little tweaks and things that are different from the other floor plan of those same middle school so you know you've already got this in place where you call in people to do that and then we're saying now we have someone that's going to be full-time doing that but then they're replacing someone who did all of these other things do you understand the confusion oh i think you just put it very nicely i want to clarify just because this is this is a very hard thing to explain and i think we have

013to do a better job explaining this because i think when people are out there wondering answering lots of questions even for board or staff members i think it's necessary i think just to add a point of clarity we still do and have invited principals to be a part of that building design process which is one small part but one part of the lion's share of that whole area of purview which is getting that input i can tell you that as a person who participated in that process how helpful it was to have it and i think specifically as you mentioned having people who worked in that exact footprint of building was so helpful as well the challenge of course the part that we certainly wouldn't be bringing a person in just to provide that design

014level that's just one small piece that they would check the part that i think is really instrumental for us as a district that is we're just dependent on it really goes more to the heart of what ms giovannelli was saying which is an understanding that just because there's numbers student numbers associated to a room through the other fish this is what the student stations that this site carries that in practice when you're actually putting students in a building that is so important and examples of that being done improperly would be an example of i have 10 teachers in a cart and another school that has a similar percent capacity yet has no teachers in the cart so on paper to the state they look like they are the same and they're both a certain amount

015over but in reality in a practical program delivery one is absolutely struggling and the teachers don't get any type of appropriate professional experience and the others they didn't even have an open rooms it's simply in the numbers and so that's why having people who truly have administered a program in a school adds such a value not just during the facility construction time which you bring up which is also very important but during that daily capacity and enrollment where they really understand it fundamentally that's why so much of the school-based planning when you really go through the job description read it about half of it really has that very much a specific to school foot concept and that's all these tasks as it relates to school-based planning as opposed to municipal planning so my last question

016with this is if is the individual that we would be approving tomorrow going to be over all of planning growth and capacity that yes they will be over the planning department which manages our growth management and our educational facility planning yes so are they are we actually switching this person for the other person that was in the position correct the current director will be become the coordinator within the department so they are at the top of the in planning growth and development correct okay sounds like to me we're doing a bad trade that we're trading someone who has the wheelhouse at least on paper of being someone who knows about land and everything that goes into it and how much you know the drgrs and all of that but was deficient apparently in what we're

017just now talking about in student numbers and what mrs giovanelli was talking about when i came in for somebody who's really good with the other side of it but not no real experience and so the reason that i and i continue to not support this and i don't support it as i've said several times with the statute not qualified this time let's get it right let's get it a person that knows both sides and knows both sides well and i'm just going to say it for the third or fourth time as i've said it in the one-on-ones nothing against this person i'm sure he would be wonderful in what we're talking about but i want to see somebody who is an expert on both sides of this and not train or or you're going to

018have to revamp the job description and have co-people in one who has the expertise and what we're just now talking about and one who has the expertise in the land deals in the real estate in those kinds of issues and this as a school board member is what i would like to see and again it's because i feel this person is not qualified on both sides and i also feel that it's really an important issue for the school board because individuals let's say that were not trying to think good high level or not totally understanding some things have cost us a lot of money as a board including the school in estero and some other issues that it's it's had a fiscal impact on us on the board those are my two reasons that i'm

019not going to support this and i would just say thank you for sharing your you know your feedback i would say you know with the person and i'm not going to get into talking about the person who is labeled deficient on this one i would say we had a person in the current role who is on paper extraordinarily qualified and was not actually hired for that job initially was actually hired into frederick's job so because the person came from another district and had done all of those things truly did have an understanding of all the aspects that you would look for on paper for that role just to add some clarity the school-based planner is a very small community so if you were to hire let's say a municipal planner someone who looks extraordinarily qualified

020from land use and comp plan the likelihood that they have also done school-based planning is very slim vice versa if you were to hire someone who is a school-based planner you'd literally have to be hiring someone else's school-based planner which in some cases districts smaller than us it may only be a single person who holds that role so you'd have to be recruiting in what is a very very small community our job is to bring forward recommendations of folks who absolutely have the professional diligence to handle not only all the aspects that are there and again memorizing statutes understanding these these pieces that is all something that every job that any leader here has had to do to put it a different coin for a second to give you a comparable analogy when a principal

021goes to a school they haven't had to teach all subjects they haven't had to teach language arts math science social studies certainly it helps them if they have and ese and everything else but what they have to have is enough understanding and diligence to understand all the applicable laws and rules and programs that apply to all those things and then they are accountable as the leader of that school for those services to be provided in every school every single day for all the different students no matter what their wealth of experience was they have to manage a large budget they are not necessarily expected to be an expert in all aspects of it but they certainly must demonstrate the professional competence and diligence to carry out their duties and they're accountable for that in fact

022they're graded as a school to do so what we would recommend coming through and i really applaud frederick's recommendation on this piece is a wonderful opportunity to bring a actual person with tremendous school-based background into a division that has extraordinarily few people who have actually supervised in the school or ever carried out those duties and yet their decisions impact the school in extraordinary ways such as 10 teachers on carts those are the kinds of things that happen in a school when you don't necessarily have an understanding of how the rubber meets the road when the numbers on the page impact students and teachers in the classrooms so with respect afford it to you if you can if you can share with me where you would as because i understand you're vetting the candidate and that's

023your right to say that you feel they're unqualified considering that the people who interviewed this candidate for numerous jobs felt that this person was qualified that the supervisor whose charge it is to be accountable for this area has recommended the person's qualified the hr division has recommended the person is qualified and i am telling you the person is qualified based on all of our professional judgments you are well within your right to disagree but i would just say that is the basis upon which we bring the recommendation forward today for that and all the other pieces that we've explained through multiple meetings at this point with all due respect i was part of charter faculty and a large high school in dallas and i've watched this firsthand we assign here our principles we already know

024principles like some of these large schools a year in advance they have the whole year basically to figure out some of these things to bring in their experts for instance somebody who's going to teach i don't know maybe a specialized computer class what do you need what size room these principles are also the ones that are assigned to run these schools to open these schools they also need to be knowledgeable and if they're not they're not a good choice i'm sorry to say and honestly many of us any of us who've been on the opening side of a school and watched it we know a lot of that stuff as well honestly and we're smart enough to say yeah i know about these classrooms and it's terrible we do not want i mean i've done

025planning of scheduling before it was on the computer sitting down and doing putting teachers in rooms for my department it's painstaking but it's not brain surgery we need somebody in this district who is the expert in both areas and i'm going to stick with that i'm going to say that we you know i'm i don't know this the candidate i don't know the candidate but you know it would be like somebody who didn't know me and amazingly didn't like me but would say betsy bond teaching calculus oh my god she could barely pass algebra 2 in high school you know i mean it's to me it's it is what it is and i hear i've listened to every single thing you have said i've listened to what was recommended but you can only recommend what

026you have interviewed who i should say who you have interviewed we did not go outside did we've been trying to hire planning positions for over two years we have to do better an entirely a huge slate of candidates we've hired and lost i think almost 10 people in that particular area and we lost a bunch in that department why well i think there's a number of reasons you have to ask those candidates we have done that i think i know why we need to do better we haven't done better and i don't want to settle so that's my final word on the topic mr evan elliott okay miss vaughn i mean miss kittens and then mr evan elliott oh it's okay the way i look at it and i've mentioned this before when we're looking

027at filling a position if you have a department that has the turnover that has the the issues that we've had in that department in a corporate world that would be a sit-down daily dis i mean discussion for a day and tearing it all apart and organizational change may be in in line in other words if we put someone here and that didn't work and we moved them here and that didn't work and this is all under the same umbrella of the same department it may just be time to say maybe this isn't working because it's not the right fit for anybody maybe we need to carve it out differently and you know like you were saying maybe it's two positions one that is from you know the outside and i do know of people that

028said to me they applied and didn't get an interview that have experience so i just i just think from a big picture corporate perspective that we need to step back and say we can't continue just to fill the same buckets maybe we need to take a bucket away or add another bucket to it because for some reason this is not flowing like it should just really appreciate again more of that feedback it's really helpful to hear that there's that concern just to reiterate again this is certainly something that's been evolving body over the last couple years i only know a lot because i've had to be involved with that department prior to my role before i had never really worked with that department other than just to look at the capacity numbers that we were

029slated for compared to my school budget and whatnot i will tell you that now having a much more intimate understanding of how it operates this is a vital part of our organization that right now is creating a huge threat for our fall enrollment for our current budget practices for our current staffing we're having to outsource with davis demographics to ask them to to fulfill functions they've never had to do that we've always been able to rely on internal staff to perform without airing all of this in the public meeting it's just very important to know that we would not be bringing this type of urgent recommendation if we did not feel that operationally in order for us to carry out our due function every day that this was not the best fit again from your

030perspective i understand you're not in the daily operational concerns that we are that frederick is accountable for that i as a as the interim superintendent half will have to answer for come fall if we have improperly figured out what what type of growth concerns we're going to have for enrollment and then have to deal with those challenges come august you know these are the things that really keep me the budget department student enrollment all of us here so when we bring recommendations as we have done this one i think for more than a month now we're doing so because we see this operationally in our roles which again we have to carry out daily this is a significant issue to us it is not the type of thing where we are i'm bringing this because

031anything other than that is the only reason why and we tried to communicate that urgency but if we fail to do so then that is that is on us mr nelly so first of all i just want to thank you for identifying that there's a deficiency and this has been an ongoing one apparently and it wasn't addressed by the prior administration and i believe your hands have been tied during this short interim so my apologies for that as well however i do agree with miss vaughn and miss kittens that we probably really need to relook at this job description and making sure that we have the right people in the right seats of the bus because it's affecting us like i'm getting numerous calls where that shouldn't happen when they live you know less than

032two miles from the school so i know there's there's definitely an emergency and it's and it's needed so i will support it i don't know that this is the perfect answer but we do have a new superintendent that hopefully this will be on his radar to further look through i think you're you're limited at this point so i understand where we're at today thank you and i just i'm thinking too though some of the calls that you're probably receiving as as well as we are is regarding student assignment exactly and how they you know intertwine together exactly right that's you know we're all getting those yeah there's a lot case miss morgan back on the no nothing if i may on the comment you just made when i interned in planning and growth department it

033was i mean there's such an intertwining of school choice and i was there working with dominic and it was a constant asking dominic do we have this and then school choice would move forward with what they had to do so which brings forward i mean we'll have davis demographics but are the people that we're hiring able to do those jobs i mean i'm i'm a little confused about it but i just feel like there's specific jobs that have to be done that we need experts or quasi experts in the area to do it and the planning piece that the planning department used to do that data piece is critical to us crumbling to the ground if if they gave the wrong numbers at the wrong time whatever you planned and built was not going to

034work so that's a critical critical piece so and what this is saying so that is so the dominant okay that person without using names is kind of is that had the role of coordinator before correct or not correct yeah so when when you think about now i'm thinking because when you think about that then we just moved another person into that role which was that piece that pulled everything the glue that kept everybody together and now we're putting it on the top person to be that glue well that's a pretty good way to frame it i think i can kind of connect these two thoughts it helps me so basically the department is accountable for all the work right just like a team basketball team five players come together you have to play defense share

035the ball score buckets rebound all those things that's what the planning department does as a department the key is within that department making sure that everyone has a key contribution of of one of the dimensions of that departmental work that has to take place and how do you pull it all together and make sure that there's a professional diligence and a focus on accuracy and i think for me just to speak to about the particular candidate one of the things i thought was most compelling about this recommendation and one of the main reasons i was supportive of this is one of the most detail-oriented diligent folks that we have and very thorough in terms of research and so forth i believe the person had already done this huge body of research about all the pertinent

036statutes those are the kind of things that you just want to leave no stone unturned because you do currently have in that department experts in all the key areas they do have that they actually have people who know a piece of every aspect of the operation has to do whether it's the actual analysis of the facility they have a person who just literally mapped all the facilities down they have a person who monitors the daily attendance i'm sorry the daily student enrollment so that capacity the program capacity and then that residual enrollment that fluctuates throughout the every single day and they have a person in the current person who has all of that understanding of land use zoning everything that's pertinent to that so you already have the pieces what you're trying to do is

037pull together in a way that then can be responsive to the ultimate customer which are our schools that's who it impacts that's who all of the work is for at the end of the day is to make sure students are serving so you want that diligence and thorough engagement so the person is testing for sure bless you and specifically in the area of data this is one of the most data centric processes that we have and that is currently a threat to our success and i know there's people in the audience that are budget they understand they've been dealing with this for months now and it is a critical threat to our system so it's not just in the you know it's in the staffing and where they're allocated it's where the resources that go

038with those schools i mean this is unbelievable any mistake can be absolutely cost us millions of dollars have huge burn for us politically with all of our families i mean there is so much and this is just one small example of people you know being right next to a school not being able to get and that's just a tiny example there's so many more examples i could do and so that's when we were bringing these recommendations for that's why it's so urgent i would not be passionately trying to help advocate for our executive director other than i've walked in his path i know what he's up against i know what he's responsible for and we just want to give him the tools to help him pick which is what we afford to all executives and

039chiefs they are typically allowed to hire the people that they recommend and that's just a normal because they're ultimately accountable for it if they if they make the wrong decision it impacts them it impacts their and i and i'm reminded that one of the first conversations i've had with each of the folks is you are accountable if this is your recommendation understand you will take the you'll pay the penalty when if if the person screws up in any way and that is that is urgent so i've said my piece i think i've done what i can do three things the board pays the penalty too because everything on this where the money is wasted the board the board that's number that's number one number two what i'm hearing is and i've criticized the organizational chart

040several times and asked for revamping and yet it hasn't really occurred it almost sounds like this particular position should be more aligned with student enrollment or and i'm not sure how much of this is you know you've been talking about the vertical alignment but we need that horizontal alignment as well as a matter of fact i'd almost dare to say more more so and thirdly it's not like today this name was brought up and all of a sudden we're all saying or two of us are saying not qualified for these reasons you and others knew this going back over a month ago so all of a sudden now it's become critical and i'm sorry that it sounds like it does but it's the fact that we've delayed this but in the delay there has been

041no remedy it's just well let's just delay it for a while maybe they'll change their mind or what whatever but you have to be proactive and when you have a department the way this department has happened and i'm sorry this goes to the whole picture all the people that resigned the huge mistakes we've made with some of these school well we spent a lot of money for a school where the numbers didn't bear out like in estero we should have been more proactive and i don't care how slim a margin it is we are a huge school district find the people because we can't afford to not have those people with both sides or maybe we need to split the position and have somebody with the current candidate's expertise do this and kind of co-manage

042that's my final and you needn't say anymore because i've listened i've listened to it three times and i still feel very strongly about this and it'll be the word of the seven people on on the board i'm typically in the minorities so i may be in the minority but i'm not backing down to how i feel about this thank you miss vaughn mr juvenile and then we'll move on yes and i'm just going to jump piggyback off that just a little bit because that was one of my questions i wrote down you know is there a plan to hire you know more in this department because it sounds like we this needs to be really reevaluated and addressed because it has cost us money that we can't sit back and act like it didn't because

043of the deficiencies and i mean we had a school that was almost to be a bill that wasn't needed and that's a big deal so and it then it becomes the board's you know the board the board made that mistake you know the board is the one and that's that we get that constantly i hear that's board policy and when there's no such thing as policy that's coming out of the schools and then the board said this and that's not i got a call this weekend that the board could if we if everybody doesn't vote yes to the contract the board could rescind the bonuses that's not true the board never said that the board's never met to see it say that so that's a big deal because that's threatening the employees and that's the

044last thing that we want to do the very last thing we need them they are the heart and soul of this of this business our institution whatever we want to call it because they're the ones that make it happen so you know ms vaughn brought up a really good point about all the resignations this really needs to look at because we can't keep continuing to make these mistakes that's i'll leave it at that as well thank you thank you so can mrs can you just answer that one question that was brought up will there be more is there plans to hire more yes or no so there are currently no other open positions in planning but i can say this is one part of kind of that piece of bringing all those different pieces of

045knowledge and skills that are needed in this department and re-looking at you know similar to what was done in maintenance we looking at the org chart and we're looking at the different seats on the bus and making sure we kind of have people in the right places so this is one step in that department's transformation i hope we don't have to have this conversation again that's my thank you hi as well thank you thank you okay so you're ready for the next one yes please yeah thank you chair thank you mr ross so the next question within that same area was as indicated previously i'm sorry okay please provide it please provide yes please sorry ms getting this was your question please provide an update of staffing numbers and projections to date for the upcoming

046year how are we handling the loss of eight bus drivers before the end of the year again hr is going hr i can speak for them on this one because mr dodig is not able to today and he did not have a designee available for this oh so the response he did provide was that hr will provide those numbers as requested for the staffing numbers and projections for up to date there are as far as the transportation one there are currently bus operator positions budgeted that was for this year 21-22 school year currently of those 729 budgeted positions they have 626 positions filled presently the district has 320 626 positions filled the district has 32 fewer operators today than it had when we started the year in august transportation continues to work with the board

047hr and other community agencies including the tax collector goodwill etc to recruit potential drivers we do offer cdl classes every two weeks to train and certify new drivers and they have a whole slew of other additional strategies that they currently employ in terms of his existing staff members trying to get them to even if they can pick up partial routes and so forth but the answer to the specific question of the eight the loss of any driver forces them to cover the routes with other buses which will then force those buses to run even later than they presently do and and i understand all the initiatives and i applaud them for all the initiatives they're doing and i will continue to say what raises the hair on my arms and keeps me up at night

048is what is it going to look like in the fall and how are we going to do this because we continue to hear that the shortage may get more so i mean again it's like we're in crisis mode i know but the reason i ask this is to kind of see where we are getting out front of this i know we're having job fairs but what is our plan b and c and d if necessary and i can't answer all those but i can tell you the biggest one is change the number of routes that you need exactly part of the reason we talk about proximity and why you brought it up many many times is exactly that reason because that's one of the game changers but there are others that's one that makes a

049lot of sense because of how inefficient our current system is because of our choice system it's not i don't want to blame it on transportation i think it's often easy to say well they're oh they go where you tell them that's exactly right that's the issue and when i got on the board 2018 transportation and all was our biggest issue and we're in 22 and it's still our biggest issue so we've got to get the kids there we know that but in this in you know economic environment are we looking at and i'm not asking you to explain it but we need to be looking at options a b and at least c to get it done we can do better than that we've got a whole alphabet soup for you we've got actually mr

050lloyd just recently presented to our business cabinet a whole menu of additional real major constraints that if we were to change any one of them and just give you a few examples things like arterial routing pulling out of gated communities just a lot of different pieces that you know arterial routing essentially is more working off of like hillsboro for example is a district that does this and essentially it's very it's it's a lot less convenient for the folks are used to that i don't say door-to-door service but now it's essentially pulling them towards major roadways having stops that are located there with more consolidated stuff so more families that would typically do a stop here here and here now you're just going to do one stop here so all of them would have to get

051to that stop on a major well-lit with the sidewalks and infrastructure support it but it's just a big departure from what we've done here in lake county so my one last question on this is and you can add this to the data that they can get us later what is the number of students because there's a program over here that's not over here and we are providing transportation for them where there is a bus going with one or two students miles and miles every day so is that a statute or a policy or a law that we if they want to go over here and it's not over here that we have to let them because if it's a law then we need to look at changing the law so that was our green belt

052project interesting enough there's too many special cases for me to go into all of them but they vary for the different cases and what is the limit for special cases when it bleeds over into the majority not being able to get to school or do what we need to do because we're dealing with so many special cases well there's things such as students with disabilities who have to have a attendant on the bus and i'm not talking about that and i'm not saying you weren't academic i want my child to go over here because this program is what's going to get them the cost and it's blended that's it's such a complicated there's too many layers for me to give you all the answers that but i'm just giving examples some of the most special

053programs we offer and that are only offered at certain schools are those esc programs i mean there's so many there that this is visa there's also students who are homeless that we then have to bust that distance that's part of the mckinney vento act and so there's just there's a whole host of these issues they've looked at different types of vehicles even things that maybe don't require cdl license they've i mean the there's just it's too exhaustive to go into detail here but suffice to say there's a lot to it and they're looking at it let's get the data as to that breakdown that would be that would be very good thank you okay and then miss swan and i just want to remind us we're coming up to the one hour and we've gotten

054through the one so ms vaughn okay it was interesting how miss kittens brought up about transportation being an issue when i ran for school board in 2016 ran unsuccessfully i still nevertheless checked out everything and as i went around to the community and this wasn't like if you're left or right or somewhere in between politically over and over and over again i heard people from all political persuasions the buses we have buses running you know when you have five buses stopping on a street picking up elementary kids to go to five different elementary schools we continue to be and i know most of this started dr savage before you were superintendent we have been a reactive school district rather than proactive we i thought were being very proactive a couple years ago when we first

055engaged davis demographics for their piece on proximity plan we talked about proximity plan when the prior superintendent was here i know one of the phrases that i said because i you know and maybe some of you have seen this i remember my own children back in the days when they were little and we were in texas a new school opened and we were kind of midway between well those kinds of things always bring up angst for the parents you know oh but at some point you have to rip off the band-aid we have already talked about grandfathering and said you know at some point if you have a big family you might be grandfathered into a school for 15 years seriously i mean you know and what was besides the huge academic benefit of proximity

056of ownership of schools of the feeling more community besides that which is so important transportation and here we go and i haven't written my response yet to the board update but i will be doing a detailed response to that summary that we got and i'll just say it now very unhappy with that with the timeline you can't have a four-year timeline because the data changes in that time and you know we're talking about being a little over a hundred drivers short and as somebody said there'll be some that drop out and there'll be some that we get because hopefully the contract will go through and they'll have raises but proximity how much of this could be solved and it's all well and good that mr lloyd and everybody else they're looking at we'll do this

057do that but again reactive not proactive i'm very unhappy for two major reasons that we have not moved forward on proximity and i will have my discussion with you probably and dr bernier and whoever else when i have my responses written down i won't take up the board time but we're just not planning ahead far enough i feel thank you mr thank this morning morgan are you with us or is that miss patricka this is chris patricka okay thank you dr savage okay excellent all right the next item adam share is l2 this is approval to reject itn number n 217404ja exhaust fans repair and replacement the question was when do you anticipate this to go back out for re-bid and when will the board see the new contract i'm joined by ms susan malay

058our executive director in business services hello everyone typically it's a three-month period of time where we issue and negotiate contracts and bring them back before the board about one month of that time the bid is typically on the street so excuse me after the board takes action on this one will go back and regroup and determine what process improvements we need to make and reevaluate the need and make sure we're looking at all of our options for piggybacking issuing bids looking at other bids that have similar work within it miss javanelli okay thank you isn't that good okay thank you miss molly all right dr savage yes so madam chair item l5 this is the approval to renew itn number n187316ln which is the cabinet services the question is where i understand this is a

059renewal normally there is a list of schools for replacement or repairs or the anticipated services exactly for this contract please provide me with last year's expenditures and schools for the day-to-day repairs please explain why only one vendor and i've got it looks like mr ross up here today mr ross yes thank you this one is a little change from previously so last year this one for cabinet bids was approximately 3.2 million dollars and what we've done is we've changed the way we were using utilizing this bid we want we're going to only utilize it for our day-to-day services that are needed and we're going to take the individual total school replacements and bid those out individually giving more competition hopefully i'm getting a better price and those bids once they come in they will likely

060be over 50 000 and they will come back to you on to the board for approval so this is a change in the way we're using this pro contract to only be for the day-to-day needs of cabinet services we do have four schools that we are targeting to bring forward for the fy 23 school year they are allen park elementary school skyline elementary school trafalgar elementary and trafalgar middle and again once those are individually bid out we would bring those back to the board for approval this bid does have this is a renewal and historically the cabinet bid was a little hard to get vendors to apply for i actually did this one when i first came here as director of procurement and we had several vendors respond and say they were indicate that they

061want to and then a smaller number came out to the pre-bid and then a smaller number actually submitted on which would end up being that one i believe so that is the reason why there's only only one vendor on there mr valley so does that mean that only one vendor will get the jobs then in terms of the so for the day-to-day work that's currently on contract yes there's only one that one vendor that's on that contract but when we bid those total these total school replacement of cabinets out they will be bid out to multiple vendors or the bid will be sent out to multiple vendors to respond it's our way of trying to get more competition on those total school replacements that have more dollar value so i mean if and i'm trying

062to refresh my memory on this the last year they we listed the schools that right that's what i thought that's why that's what made me question this because i thought it was different correct so those schools aren't listed and also that dollar amount is much slower because those total school replacements aren't on the on there okay thank you no and you'll be bidding every single one we'll be bending those out and that is our intent is to get more competition in this area yep thanks that's good are there any other questions regarding questions no okay dr savage that's all yours are all the questions yes we did next we have thank you for your questions we have capital capital strategy is next and hi ladies do you want to come up here yeah please updates

063academy awards glad to be with you today thank you thank you we are as well thank you session is over for now i think it's going to be a regular session the regular session is over the special session is over and there'll be another one though in may so they're gonna i think they're gonna bring up the property tax issue insurance yeah the insurance yeah sorry i said property tax yeah yeah insurance insurance which we need which we need and that's gonna come up so we'll get another one too another another invite at the apple if you will but it was a it was a tough session you know every session has its own takes on its own form every everyone i've been at has and this one was one that did likewise and we

064were glad when it ended there were a lot of bills filed there's always a lot of bills filed i mean that's that's normal to see a lot of bills filed and then you note that you've already received your final report about the number of bills that actually were passed and they're still in the process of being evaluated budget still has not been signed we know that the budget was not going to be signed the governor said he would not sign it until we got through this last special session which was very important to him and so consequently right now he still has time so we don't know i mean we know he has a lot of time yeah he has a lot of time exactly so that's still hanging out there and there's some bills

065that are still hanging out there but that being said i will also just comment one thing and i know ashley's going to share with you some of her thoughts in regards to the reports that you have received and that is that education gets a lot of bills filed every year and i don't have the percentage right now off the top of my head i actually was looking for that note off my desk before i came here and i unfortunately couldn't put my hand on it but there's a big percentage of bills that are filed that really do impact education and many years ago when i first got in the legislature i remember my first term and everybody talks about well you know we come there to the legislature as individuals who have careers well some

066who have careers where they have a specialty that they can come and special information that they can come and bring to the table of things that they're interested in are things that they do the thing that's interesting to each and every individual is every one of them has opinions about education because every one of them has been to school so they think that they have or maybe and maybe they do in some terms have a lot of information so consequently they have a lot of things that they feel that they can fix because they know something about that subject matter or they had a child that's in school that too or a grandchild that too or they're still in school yeah which has happened too it just happened so consequently we do see an inordinate

067amount of interest and this year was no exception to that as you each and everyone know there were some the good the bad and the ugly i know miss vaughn and i've had this conversation a little bit at a chamber meeting recently anyway you all have received the reports that ashley puts out for you every week and then of course the final report and any questions that you've had you kind of brought up along the way or we've certainly had some phone calls from folks along the way but with that being said ashley and i would like to share some thoughts with you if she i think she has some thoughts too and then we'll go from there okay thank you i was just gonna go through there's one two three four six bills to

068me that really stood out that have such an impact and on the plus side i'll start with the good news is one of your priorities which was 236 the children with developmental delays increasing that age from five to nine or second grade whichever comes first so that was a priority of the boards and that did get passed and i want to say it got signed into law but let me let me double check that i'll check that and then email you guys so i thought you said it did i think it did but like my brain gets foggy around this there's so much in it yes yes so i'm pretty sure it did but there were some delays with bills because of because i know seven just got signed into law that i'm going to

069talk about but there was no controversy there was no controversy so it'll be right through yeah i don't even think it had a negative vote a negative word negative anything so that was the good news not that these are bad news but we had several controversial bills and i'll start with seven i'll just i'm gonna go in and order numerological order and that was the individual freedom spill the critical race anti-critical race theory bill and that had a lot of debate as you well know and that was just signed into law i want to say this week it's just recent reasoning yes okay it's numbers as your oh seven number seven and that goes into the curriculum with students talking about history talking about in particular the history of african americans and the way that

070teachers are allowed to broach those topics and what they can say and what they shouldn't be saying and i know i'm sure there's questions about this so feel free to jump in but that was again a really controversial bill that i believe had some protests on it did it had quite a few actually yeah that was representative arvilla's real big push and it was really pushed from the house the house did all of the push on it because they really didn't have a companion even in the senate until later in in the process and then that's when that got picked up by the senate and yeah the senate just picked up their bill they just picked up yeah seven and quite a lot of senators were upset about that because it didn't go through their

071proper channels on the senate side but that's what happens when we have legislation that is preferred by leadership so they just kept the house language there was no result yeah several times this year with it happened last year too with legislation that's kind of it seems to be the new trend is that once a bill on either chamber passes whether it's a house or a senate priority and it passes through that chamber what's been happening in the senate is particularly with house bills they'll just take up the house bill what used to happen is they would have their own bill they would pass out their own bill whatever got to the end first once it got through the chambers they would say it already passed the house then they would pick it up on the

072chamber floor and put their bill lay their bill down that's been debated and pick up the house bill they haven't been doing that they've just been basically taking the house's legislation and debating that bill without their own legislation that's been vetted through all of their committees well then it's easier to because they don't have to create their own verbage and then debate both of that so it's already there they just move it forward right so the debate becomes the process right yes which takes away from the debate on the bill right and then the public's not able to talk to individual senators that are on the committee prior to because they haven't had a chance to do that so they're trying to get their points out in the middle of a committee meeting the first

073time the senate's ever picked up or heard the bill that's been that happened last year as i think the first time i've seen that was the first time i'd seen that and then it happened this year too yeah so they kind of just pushed that bill through and before we before we go to another bill i just i just checked while we were talking and in 235 the bill that we were just talking about has been signed by the governor 236 26 230. i thought it was six is it i have seven she said six because it should be an it should be an even number because there's been signed two just so you know okay because it was jones's bill so it should be an even number that's right okay can i ask yes

074ma'am on that last bill there are a lot of words that are what's the word for them undetermined or whatever it can be your perception you say fair to me and i've got a bag of money it's fair for me to have that bag of money and if you're over there hungry and poor fair to you is that you don't have anything to eat right so there are so many words in there that are objective is it subject objective subjective subjective i always mix them up subjective was that even discussed or considered on the floor when they were debated or is that intentional it's intentional in the writing no i know it is but was it by other hotly debated actually in the house by every i believe i'm pretty sure every democrat got up

075and spoke against house bill 7. well you talk about must feel guilt i mean i just anyway i'm not getting into the details but i thought overarchingly there are a plethora of words that are very subjective yes i leave that to our legal community because i was going to say be prepared because this is definitely going to be litigated yes that's where it's going to land yes miss van gaal i have a question any hb7 yeah okay yeah any thoughts about how this is going to be monitored and tick tock video because that's a good one i mean every you know we have professional development throughout the year but when a new school year starts there's a lot of professional development and some of these things are things that we likely have course work on

076that we give presentations on that we help especially new teachers deal with some of these issues so how what are your thoughts on how this will be monitored and i mean is this going to be something that you have a teacher or some other staff member that disagrees that videotape something and sends it to desantis or i mean what that's how is this going to fly as far as the materials go there is language in the bill that department of education they have to come up with a curriculum stories of inspiration so that's i know it's in quotes i'm not quoting i mean stories of inspiration curriculum that they have to develop so to your point about the materials the board of education state board of education sorry that they're required to come up with

077that curriculum so to your question about the materials and teaching teachers what they can say and can't say that is i guess they're looking at curriculum for that now but as far as the monitoring i don't think you can and i do think there's going to be incidences where there's videotaping i mean i'm kind of joking about the tick tock thing but i'm not no i mean it's not being a high school student videotaping making a tick tock and posting it on social media so and that's why i regulate everything that happens in the class in every single classroom on every single day of the school year but look at what happened to disney because they expressed their first amendment rights but i mean what i foresee in this are two things number one again

078training how do we train what do we do if we go over the line in the training and i can see that we i mean so much of this is not educationally sound and secondly what'll they do will they take away funding will they i mean what are probably how does this work well and also let's not forget this as we go through these bills is this is going this is going to be a problem with the 1557. with the don't let's take them both together what are do you have thoughts have you heard people say or maybe mr free bruno has something i mean if they put this in writing you know they're going to be out there monitoring of course and you know that they are going to be flying into probably the

079schools that are already on their radar that ticked them off about mass they might be the first ones but what that's what concerns me and i think we need to know this ahead of time what are they going to do how are they going to do this is bran this is definitely a brand new area that's untested at this point so we know that there's going to be tests of these different laws there's already a case on 1557 that's already pending so we're going to have to monitor from a legal standpoint what's going on in the legal stand you know landscape we also know that this is going to be a right new area of the law for attorneys who are representing parents to be able to test these waters so the only thing we

080can do is to be as proactive as possible make sure that staff is completely informed and understand these new legislative changes that we have our processes in place to minimize the risk as much as possible and then in june we'll be going to the school board attorneys conference where there'll be more discussion to see what our colleagues in our think tank of attorneys are thinking on how this is all going to play out because it's good it's going to be impactful i'm going to tell you it's going to be extremely impactful and we are monitoring that legal landscape and trying to prepare as best we can for this district to be insulated and there are there are more pieces to the puzzle that will be falling into place there too this is this is a

081bill that passed and was signed and after that's the framework there's other pieces that are going to be put in there to your point that it's all and here's another interesting thought about this in bringing up what you're talking about there was a bill filed this year that actually never did even get a hearing which got all of our interest and that was the one about putting video cameras in every school yes and that didn't it didn't get a hearing and didn't get filed in the senate but it got filed in the house and it didn't get a hearing it died but but there are people who are very interested in doing that i'm putting an actual camera in every classroom well there's what's representative fine he calls absolutely our public schools state-run schools or

082government schools state government oh government that's right government or state or government-run schools not they're public schools there are those who feel that would be appropriate every meeting that's what he says every single meeting that's what he says about public schools and he's also the one that had the punitive measure that he put in in regards to the mask issue yes yes yes same person we were the same yeah same person and i know miss fisher has did get signed just wanted to put a plug in to support what kathy was saying as well one of the helpful defenses is by being part of the neola network as well you'll have policies that on their face are responsive to these issues and they have the strength of numbers that other districts that becomes a standard

083practice but then it's on us to make sure we have the processes which again are part of that package of new all that show this is how it's being implemented so all these things are helpful not just in general but but especially when the legislation brings new challenges every year all the districts that are part of that network have to face it too well but also what ms vaughn had mentioned how do you train them so this is a bill once is signed in and then the stories so we have to wait for the for them to come up with the stories for us yes when do the stories come out for inspiration what does that look like how do you train them to have those the curriculum for that the inspiration out there i

084don't know i mean doesn't even exist yeah we have no idea so how do we get our teachers ready for the upcoming year even right so this is a lot of discussions with academic services and discussions with legal and academic services to be prepared and the only other thing i would add really quickly before miss fisher is with regards to the videotaping at this point i think staff in the district just need to be just assume that you're always on camera because we're getting cases all the time where students are videotaping teachers and sharing and this is this is something that our hr attorney mr hudak has had to deal with deal with in terms of where does the privacy interest begin for the teacher what's going on in the classroom is this going to

085be admissible i mean these are major legal issues that we're going to have to face there's going to be an avalanche of legal issues that are coming our way for sure yeah mr fisher yeah and along those lines i was going to say you know how does the passage of these different bills into laws and being signed by the governor first of all impact our response to other laws to federal law and that how about first amendment rights with the crt thing i mean it's almost an impossible situation and i think an avalanche is even going to be a calm word for what an understatement for what might happen i would just say to ms fisher's point it's not just federal law there's state law in our regular education code that we have some different

086language that is going to be challenged by some of these new laws so this is going to be impactful across the board not just from federal standpoint with our civil rights cases and our laws and our titles and our codes from federal standpoint but also just in the education code itself which has some language that needs to be identified yeah so i'll ask carol and ashley then with all of the issues in this state was there any discussion about some of those environmental issues homelessness and housing and infrastructure and stuff while we're focusing on crt lgbtq and now really well there are people who do bring those issues up but we you know i'll give you a perfect example of something that i think all of us found impactful as we watch the surf side

087the condo building has been flashed yeah and having lived in a high-rise for several years here in this area that was 40 years old you know it you've got my attention i don't live in that high rise anymore either but but that unfortunately there was absolutely nothing past that had any and there were bills filed but they didn't pass as far as any structural or any type of changes that need to be made to our high rises that are on the coast that are eroded by the sea salt and sea water sea sea air and the salt water so when you see that happen and realize how much of an impact that did have on our state and our home insurance and our home insurance yeah i mean that's huge and that but and that

088wasn't that goes back to that big old debate about the trial bar versus because that's where that one's really hung up in in my opinion anyway i know you're impacted by it even directly yeah directly so yes there there are times when people do discuss those things and they discuss those things during debate with some of this stuff too why can't we discuss these things but unfortunately some of those things have been left to the wayside and these others have been taken forward because for instance representative avila who is who is a really wonderful man i mean he is he's got a great story to tell about his family personally is what happened to them when they immigrated here to florida so i hear what his story is and i say wow what a story

089that and talk about stories he's got inspiration and very inspirational and so i can't fault him because he was bringing forward something he believes very strongly and he has he has great passion for this wasn't a gotcha this wasn't any of that this was something that he felt very strongly about so if we had a champion that came forward for instance on on homelessness or on those types of things it and you and i had this conversation too miss fisher about you need a champion you know when it came to health education had to have a champion finally got a champion who was willing to do that so that's my take on it you have to have a champion go ahead miss games my question is it says if approved by the governor it will

090take effect july 1 22. exactly so is there a statute of limitations for implementation because or are they up there now busily writing the inspirational stories my guess is senate and governor and it's an election year but when we start school again if they have the stories written when is there time to train and to implement and because if they're going to be saying july 1 this has to be in place well what well we just got it so it always and there's always lag time anytime you have a bill that passed i mean whether it's healthcare whatever it is there's always sign into law but that doesn't mean they have to i don't think it has the implementation deadline i mean i can look into that further but i mean it's signed into law

091but it gets handed it gets handed over to people who are very smart who will put all these packages together and i would hope i would hope that these stories of inspiration would be put i mean would be like with the electronic pieces that we have and all of the things that would be a film it would be a face time i don't know what's the word video i have one last question on that because someone asked me this the other day with all of these changes in curriculum and for example with the math books and the math books that we have to change do we pay for that because if we've budgeted for this particular book and it's a different book that comes out who pays for what we do really assume the districts

092yeah the districts are going to pay for it of course but i mean again it would be funding that we receive for for that but if it's you know if you if if this year is supposed to be math books and then next year we have to do math books because there's major changes and next year was supposed to be history books we get a backlog and we get a financial so would they become categoricals or will we get funding for that or i think those are all great questions i don't think that anybody that's sitting here right this second has the answer to all of those questions but they are very good questions representative fine thinks school districts get plenty of money yes he does he said that many times many many times many

093many times yes you repeat that ashley representative fein the chair of the house pre-k through 12 education approach i think he's broward right yes he has said many times that the school districts gets plenty of money at brevard or brevard i know it's one of the bees yeah eden brevard he has but you know he has a battle going on with his school there's a lot more to that story because he's got a battle going on a personal battle going on there with his school board with one school board member in particular he has a child in public school so again back to what we were talking about just a little bit earlier everybody has a story and everybody has a background and everybody brings that background to the table mr arvilia brought that background

094of a courageous story and he made it into this representative fine has his story that he lives every day of his life and he's turning it into what's important to him i need your motion picture yeah the only thing i would add is you know we're talking about the inspirational stories but let's not lose sight of the vastness of this bill yes because you know we're talking about education as well as labor and employment training and training and diversity training equity training this is what this is all part of this discussion so we'll be breaking it down and we'll have some additional discussions but this is a vast bill actually the stories are probably the best part of the bill in a lot of ways i know really in a lot of ways because i

095think those are things that are this is that we should be my personal feeling about that we should yeah we want people's stories to hear about courageous stories but rhonda sanchez's story are we able to say the words diversity and equity anymore and you know in regards to this because or is it saying that no you should not use those terms it doesn't specifically say that okay all right yeah you have to tread cautiously yeah just put it that way right yeah okay mr trico did you want did you have something to add i do can you hear me yes okay so are we also discussing 1557 at the same time well it's it's next it's next on the list next time it's coming okay not yet ashley we'll be bringing that up in a

096moment okay that's where that's where my question lies okay we'll call on you then go ahead okay the next bill of significance is 497 the one where we're going to elect our superintendent any comment on that no we're in big trouble i mean that also passed with flying colors are there other or why did it pass with flying colors the districts that are you know how is the temperature for this out in other districts i don't know about the other districts but there were other members that talked to get it talked against it including representative smith there's there were other members that were concerned that this particular bill was going to trickle into their school districts and they would also be affected by this but representative persons milica and representatives roach we're very adamant that

097this is just a local bill and has no effect and that everybody should be in favor of it because the entire legislative delegation was in favor of it and that's correct and but i will tell you that there was no debate in the senate the senate essentially yeah they didn't they just docked it they did it yeah and it was just passed yeah where they do all their local bills as long as it isn't it isn't what is the worst i'm looking for as long as somebody does it pull up just like your consent agenda it's basically a consent agenda in the senate so if no one pulls a bill off they just pass the whole thing and that's how it passed in the senate and it and it came as a bill that was

098sponsored by senator pasadena and senator rodriguez so you mean twenty democrats voted against it in the house and the house was there was debate there was in the house all by democratic members and there were 21 of them that voted against it how did it pass why did it pass just for the fact that it was local the push that it was local it's a local bill so and there is like okay and that's not a lie i mean that's a bad word that's that's not a misspoken mistruth it is it's specifically drawn to lee county county right so it is a local bill and so for our local members who felt very strongly about it if when anybody would debate against it they would be reminded this is a local bill but it is

099a precedent as you go forward as as a as a board as individuals that's that's where you get an opportunity to have your side heard right now because it's going on referendum the general election and that was another reason it's the referendum piece the referendum piece helped it pass if it had been we're changing this but because it's a referendum they're saying the local people get to make the determination again that's a truism i mean you get to make that decision so that's where the education if you will the education of the electorate becomes a very important issue for individuals truthfully there's a lot of people that do not know the difference of appointed and elected so they think it's one in the same and that's why they don't understand that we have theirs to

100the end of educate that you all will take part in hopefully did it bring any any other districts to thinking about oh maybe we should do this not that i've heard of i you know i haven't heard anybody that's made that comment yeah and not the school board association they don't they're not excited about this either in conversation and you look at where we are in history and how many people have elected superintendents mostly in florida and georgia alabama alabama yeah they're going to and so it's it's frightening it really is so we do have a lot of work to do in educating our community it's an educational challenge yes the next bill that we should probably talk about is 10 48 and that was the i'm sorry ms patricka did you have something to

101say on that one i did yes to sort of piggyback off what miss fisher just said it really is the opposite of progress and i really can't talk about this one without talking about the school board term limits you know what the public didn't hear can you hear me yes yes okay what the what the public didn't hear with regards to the term limits is that term limits don't really apply to our legislators because many of them go for you know go until they're termed out in the house and then they switch over to the senate and they go until they're termed out in the senate and then they recycle into a local elected position such as county commissioner or property appraiser or any of any of those so what we have is we have

102legislators and seats where there's no real specialization and when people try to serve on school boards for a long period of time there is there's a sort of a rejection of that specialization and knowledge by him is implement part part of what we need to think about here is this is yet another opportunity for legislators to recycle into a local elected position those are my comments thank you thank you she's just saying that they just keep on going from the next seat to the next so was there any discussion about excuse me okay was there any discussion about what the impact would be on school boards if we had an elected superintendent i mean because what would be the purpose of a local school board in lee county if we have an elected superintendent that

103was our question i can answer that's so school boards have all the same duties that you actually have you still would have so more than half the districts in florida actually do have an elected superintendent and their boards are still they still carry out the exact same functions the only distinction between ones that have elected verse appointed are the school board makes a determination over whether to hire and fire the superintendent in that appointed position whereas an elected it's the electorate that does it and that's the only distinction the rest of it is passing the budget the same personal and all the things you currently do those are those things the only difference is that one piece but but what you also are missing out is what does that district look like compared to this

104district yeah the size of the district and yeah knowing right pasco is probably the best comparison to size it's not as good the achievement is not as good in the elected superintendent districts yeah and mystery did you have some i do so i agree 100 with dr savage so this will not change the statutory obligations of both the superintendent and the board basically everyone will still have the same responsibility as required in the statute what does change is that the elected superintendent does have a political office which does create a difference in terms of boundaries excuse me and how you work with the school board so in some of the smaller districts and speaking to their their school board attorneys i know that some of them have been very successful some of these superintendents have

105been there for a long time but i also know that there's been some concerns in terms of how will the elected superintendent in their own constitutional office be able to work and deal with a elected school board in their constitutional office with both of you having a fiduciary duty to the public so it becomes a little bit more political so those are it's more practical things that i think will change versus the statutory responsibilities miss kittens well as as i'm reading the first paragraph and it says clearly the superintendent serves as the secretary the executive officer of the school district responsible for general oversight which where i kind of disagree with what you're saying in other words we were always told our job is oversight it's not to do this it's oversight and it is

106going to the superintendent is the chief executive officer who's responsible for the day-to-day management and operations the oversight of the school district from a day-to-day standpoint whereas the board is responsible for governance and policy and again the statute is very clear in terms of who does what even though there's a lot of gray and a lot of overlap in the statute it doesn't make sense miss kittens i mean it yeah i hear what you're saying but i see it being a real controversy in that it states also that the superintendent reports to the board of education and so if there is something that the board whoever that is you know has questions about well you know talk to the state because definitely i don't have to listen definitely to me it's like mrs fisher says

107it makes the board literally you know lame duck definitely giving direction to the superintendent to do certain tasks and if the superintendent decides not to it's going to make the board and he's going to put the board in a very difficult situation because exactly the only person that can remove an elected official is the governor there's the governor and i just honestly i just see the the position of the board being diminished and men you know a whole lot but not only that too because i look at it and somebody actually was speaking on this the other day how one somebody who was running who was the superintendent elected was asking for donations from every single employee 50 from each employee to keep their position as well as where do you want your child to

108go to school where do you want your child to go to school at and because it becomes a it's political it's everything well yeah it's a political fundraiser continuous right dr savage i just wanted to respond one bless you one one thing so the everything every time the board takes action and votes that would those types of things still occur so you know the only reason i know i had never met elected superintendent until i went to tallahassee had a chance to meet there and then a number of elected superintendents when i worked in tallahassee then additionally pasco county superintendent who's the largest elected superintendent in the country kurt browning so i had the chance to talk to him as well so one of the things that they explained because i was just curious when

109i was in tallahassee how does that even work you know because i had never was not familiar with that other than my graduate courses what they said is essentially it is you're trying to earn their support because the board still has to vote so for example if you don't get if it's a seven member board and you don't get four votes on particular items you're stuck and so they don't just because they are the just because the board can't hire or fire them does not mean that the board in any way is limited in their purview in terms of adopting all the things that you will vote on tomorrow night and all the things you have on any given board meeting those votes still have to carry and that's just the nature of it so

110i just i'm just from my strange vantage point that i've had to work across that i just wanted to contribute to with your questions i'm wondering if the language of this for lee county is very close to the language from other counties is there something that's kind of standardized and you just plug in your county do you happen to know i have no idea isn't this the same language that they had when they switched it over is it or am i mistaken whatever that year was well yeah it's referenced but you're talking about a cookie cutter for the state i mean they're not that i am aware of i mean i okay i don't see that there's any huge movement out there to go one way or the other i think this was something that

111came up during conversations that the representative had with other folks okay and i guess kind of a legal question this doesn't have any specific qualifications here you know i know at least some like the us congress has presidency has age certain age and that sort of thing so technically somebody 18 years old could be running yes for this that was my other question because we've already talked about the lack of any kind of language on qualifications it makes me wonder if some of the other counties in this state have that in theirs and anyway that's so when you're that's that's why i'm asked asking if any of them have specifications on on this office but steve and ellie i know you had a question did you have your hand up or was that just well

112i was just looking at the pasco county he apparently was the pasco county supervisor of elections for 27 years prior to being the superintendent the superintendent i guess there's no term limits on superintendents right well is there that's not india positions like that yes he replaced representative former representative heather fiorentino was a superintendent they had a really contentious race between the two of them and the only reason i know about that is because representative then representative fiorentino and i served together and she ran for the seat and held that seat for a while but you know there was controversies that came up as happens and then he decided that he was going to run against her and they had a battle but he won i heard he's very well liked though oh yes he is

113absent yeah yeah he yeah he's he's another one recycling been around for a while yeah so he but he is well respected i mean it's but yeah but mr priebunna did you have anything just to answer miss vaughn's question in terms of qualifications and necessities to run for the office that's governed by article 6 section 4 of the florida constitution which is very limited for anybody who's running for office in the state of florida basically that the person could not have been convicted of a felony or be adjudicated mentally incompetent and in the case of the superintendent that he lives it lives in the area and lives in the district you have to live in the district so that's pretty much it and then they could be 18. but it could be 18 it could

114be and we couldn't add qualifications because this is by the florida state constitution right so we can't that they're running no but some positions you can run and then if you win you have to move congress is that way not for this one yeah i know what you're saying yeah okay so there is no buy to finish up what i'm saying probably most of the other counties have similar kinds of language the only possibility was to add term limits or is that by statute nothing can be added or removed okay unless it goes through the legislative branch so there is no term limits and they do not know at this time if this is follows anybody else's correct okay all right correct i know ashley you have a lot more to go oh no i

115have like three more i just have to leave in 20 minutes because i actually have students i have to pick up you're good they're real kids they're real guilty trust me are they old enough to run for superintendents well i have one that's going to be 14 in four years he could we'll just move him right into bonita no problem 10 48 is the bill that changes i'm sorry which so what this bill does is it changes our fsas and makes them they call them where's that term coordinated screening and progress monitoring tools so instead of doing the big end of the year fsas for ela and math in grades three actually the ela is grades three through ten and the math three through eighth grade they will do three smaller tests throughout the years

116so they're calling them benchmarks right and the last test the third test the end of the test end of the year test is what they're going to use as far as grading the schools and their their scorings like for the children you know if they get a one through a five and then this is my end of the year so it's the last test is the one that's going to be used for high school graduation third grade retention school grades and school improvement ratings nothing's really going away there are people who would argue that's they're yes so i mean i live and breathe the fsas because i have four children only three my youngest doesn't take it yet so the way i look at it is they're just doing smaller bits of that throughout the

117year instead of doing two days of testing like they do now they're going to break it up it's how i look at yeah and that's part of the argument that we heard during the debate right which is which died i just want to know what what testing company is doing it like oh probably yeah you know what i mean you know i mean oh yeah yeah well and interesting enough is the one that the 1048. i hear he's the one that they're going to put in they replace corcoran they just announced that but yeah we had heard that rumor and they just announced that so they are giving a year transition so these the changes start for not is it two thousand i think three twenty four yeah and then that so that first testing

118year they're not using those scores for school grades that'll be there's a transition year of grace a grace period yeah and i said that's a done deal in regards to manny diaz it's a done deal as far as the appointment goes he still has to go through this event he's a senator yeah sitting senator the chances of him not being put in that position that is extremely low there unless something i mean things happen but i don't expect that what can i ask on on 758 that was diaz as well about visiting schools is there something now that legislators which bill missed or not it's 758 on education and it's this was for charter schools though because i think you can't can't any legislator visit school and i think this was drawing in charter citizens

119okay and mr district that's why i didn't really bring up this bill because it was a lot of charter school stuff yeah like the charter school review commission and he's really into charter schools he's a big charter school guy but the one thing that's the oh huge yeah very much but he's a former teacher a former principal he's come up through the ranks so that is something to realize that he knows he knows what he's talking about he's walked the walk he has a certain certainty he does know his stuff strategy and that strategy is more charter but at the same time yeah he's an educator he doesn't know the statute so was there any discussion about funding and the difference in funding charters and there's always a lot of discussion about that there's always

120a lot of debate about that too happens every year though you know it's it's just it's a every year there's going to be a debate because every year it seems it changes a little bit depending on that particular year and who has the passion to carry that forward yeah okay miss fisher and then yes as i as i'm reading this it says then that the bill expands the current authorization for district school board members or charter school governing board members to visit schools under their jurisdiction to specify now that any member of the legislature may visit any public school any public school in his or her legislative district but it but it was real yes and it's including church it includes yes yes but is there anybody i mean this is my take on that

121i don't understand personally don't understand why anybody would have any problem having a legislator visit any any citizen and any parent can visit anywhere yes i can go eat lunch now with my kids unannounced anytime i want just have to go to the front office to tell them i want to eat lunch with my kids surely they would welcome a legislative legislator coming in wanting a tour but but there's been a problem somewhere yes there's us we need a law that's how we get lost unfortunately okay the only thing from a legal standpoint that's really important in this bill is the removal of termination sorry seven seven fifty eight something 58 the charter school bill is the removal of the words for termination of a charter other good cause shown we experience that with collegiate

122so from a legal standpoint this is changing our landscape even further in terms of our ability to have oversight the district's ability to have oversight on charter schools in addition to the bill commission yeah yeah we went through that collier too with charter school okay 1467 that is the bill that creates the term limits and it's also the one that modifies school district requirement for instructional materials allowing parents to get a hold of any instruction materials and i believe it's the library language for media centers that they have to list out all the books in the media center library and i know that and but this is the bill that actually started out too with taking away the salaries yeah this originally got rid of school board yeah and that went away so that went

123away yes sam thank god the term limits was for this time and term limits it was it was a trade-off yeah but in my opinion and maybe i'm going out on a limb on this one but i believe that was just strategy i believe that it was the term limits they wanted all the time and so they put the give a take yeah so it's a game yes it was to me that's how i always took it was just a play like oh well world instead of your salaries we'll just do term limits which is what they wanted because they did this last year correct this language this is new this is not new language yeah right and representative garrison had it last year also now i have a question so what if because this

124is something that i have brought up what if we had did our own referendum in our own and and put our own term limits for to govern our on our own would that would this negate that anyways if we had done that and had that if you have your own twelve or eight years yeah we had already determined what we wanted as a board as a referendum just remember that these are statutory changes so we have these bills and now they're going to actually become law so even if you had let's say that you gave yourself eight year term limit in your policy well when this law comes out it changes it you have to abide by whatever the law is that's what i thought thank you okay the last one is ms patrick did

125you have a question yes if someone could refresh my recollection or changes to well not changes were term limits implemented for our legislators through the constitutional amendment process or were they implemented through the legislative process i hear that's a question i would tell you i believe it was constitutional but i would have to look up that to be positive i mean i'm i'm probably about 80 percent sure of that it was long enough ago that i don't really trust my memory however because it doesn't impact i'm glad carol carol i appreciate that that's my recollection as well and the reason why i bring it up is because this will likely be challenged you can't implement term limits for some constitutional offer officers through the constitution and then expect to get other term limits for other

126constitutional officers through the legislative process i know that there are some school districts that are already looking at bringing suit over this and i wonder whether you've heard the thing i have not heard that before now but i'm not yeah like ashley said i'm not surprised i expected on a lot of these actually so a lot of the things we're talking about today are going to be challenged and i can't answer about the constitutional aspect of it i have to do a little research but i do know that it is codified now in florida statute 1001.35 so we'll double check on the constitution but the term limits is in one thousand one point thirty yeah for legislators yeah yeah no for the school board for the school board yeah it's part of the education code

127now 1001.35 is a statute it's the term of office it okay someday when we have lots and lots and lots of time to talk which is not today we can we can discuss that because i lived that because i was the first class that came in the i was the last class that came in before term limits hit so i saw what happened the next year whenever we ended up in the house of representatives with 70 new members in one year oh yeah a huge class that came in right after but anyway that's for another time the last little on my on my list not on we don't have to be done but is the is 1557 and that's the bill that's prohibiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation gender identity and kindergarten through third and

128didn't you say there was already a suit out about this one or is that a different one no this one equality florida has already filed a suit on this one yes the lgbtq community equality floor yes and obviously there's been political backlash against disney for them coming out against this bill after the fact so i feel like this is going to get talked about for a while in the media and in court so definitely and it's another thing that becomes very difficult whenever to what ms von was talking about earlier about your teachers especially your new teachers coming in about you know how do you answer you know when questions come up how do you answer them go ahead mrs fisher well because i you know when when that came out i said i don't

129think that we are educating on that in k through 3 anyway or k through 5 whatever it is and yeah so you know i just wondered what the climate was in tallahassee and what the discussion was because there have to be some people who are aware of what really happens in schools so many of these things that have been said are out there i mean as a parent of kids i have met my children have never been talked to about sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third in fact i just read the materials for my fifth grader so my twins are in fifth grade they had their health talk friday and the rest of it today and i went online and looked at the materials because i was curious what are you teaching

130them and it was mostly about puberty right about showering and all the things you know and yes that is embarrassing to 10 year old boys and girls yes but it wasn't gender there was nothing about gender identity and that's fifth grade right even my sixth grader they've it's lightly touched upon so i feel like it's more of a political move feel good kind of thing for a particular party than it is really about what's going on because at least as a myself i've never experienced my kindergarten first second or third graders hearing anything about that right and i don't think a teacher would want to talk about that in that grade anyway no most of them wouldn't and i think even in middle and high school that age to my experience has always been handled

131on an individual basis you know if if that did come up and it hasn't been a problem for the last 25 or 30 years and the only debate was awful yeah the concern of mine would be more and i think we talked about this last year as a counselor if i had a student come in and talk to me about sexual orientation or gender where is the line with that the way i see this is they have to talk to the parent about the child's coming in but where is where is the line drawn like they can't go in and confide in another adult who is non-threatening to them that someone that's neutral on this position that's where i see a problem that's how this started there was there was a lawsuit right in that

132regard of a child i don't think the child was a kindergartner no a child who went to a council went to a teacher went to someone to talk to them that person did not share that with the parent the parent then subsequently finds out the parent is livid as probably many of us would be but you know but at the same time that child felt comfortable in talking to that person and you know and right there so there was a lawsuit and there was and then and then we have a bill like this as a long time school counselor so if that ever happened and did my training told me that we would talk to the child and offer to help them talk to the parent i mean and that typically was what happened successfully

133and if they didn't want to then there was no mention but one of the things we would say to kids in middle and high school is you know anything you say here is confidential except if you're going to hurt yourself or someone else or you're or you're in danger you know so there would be that disclaimer in the beginning to begin with yeah miss skittens and then miss dupree bruno on the disney issue was there discussion about the financial impact to the state tax wise about that or that language that language showed up at 5 00 a.m and was debated and off the floor before the middle of the afternoon last week last week yeah i mean literally on thursday he signed it on friday right that was part of the part of part of

134part of the problem but they can bring it back and fix it yes because i mean i have heard that there are definite implications for those those counties and the municipalities yes right that's a lot of concern and there was and that was part of the debate and from a legitimate debate if you will that there wasn't enough time to do the analysis the financial analysis fiscal analysis of how that was going to impact anybody but again it's not something that's going to happen tomorrow and i don't see anybody panicking completely about it yet other than some of the media who are trying to stir that up which is you know that you know which is i understand why because it that first blush makes it look really damning but then whenever you peel the

135onion if you will and you start peeling the onion you realize there's a lot of time between now and when anything really happens and then just next to june right time to fix yeah next yeah 2023. so there's time to fix that mr prieburno i was just going to say with regards to 1557 the other thing that's very at least gives legal pause is this creation of a new cause of action yes and with legal remedies one of them would be an administrative remedy going to the department of education with a commissioner or magistrate reviewing that as well as being able to file for an injunctive relief in circuit court and if the parent wins then their attorney fees that will be paid quantifying what damages would be in this case is something that's going

136to have to be tested from a legal standpoint we just don't know yet but that is one thing that we are definitely aware of and keen that we need to be very careful i can also i just want to share with the board that from the legal department's standpoint on all of these bills specifically 7 15 57 1467 that we are meeting with academic services we are trying to come up with some guidelines and some processes going to be answering some frequently asked questions and providing them with a path forward because you know staff is concerned about this rightfully so sure so we are working on this is very personal it becomes very personal in addition we are going to be you know conferring with our sister districts the legal departments over there especially our

137real counterparts who are larger than us and a little bit smaller than us to kind of see where everybody is so we are working on that as well and we now have neola so neola will be able to give us some guidance as their attorneys are reviewing in depth these different laws that are coming in so i want the board to know that legal is definitely on top of it we know that these laws are there we are working with staff we'll continue to work with staff to make sure that we guide the district as best we can and as i have said on the dais as i say continuously to everybody our legal recommendation will always be to follow whatever the law is as the law changes we will change to make sure that

138we are abiding by whatever these new laws are i know my concern is though i know the college of ed they're having problems with getting recruiting teachers as well as we are having problems so now when we're recruiting house bill seven you know we have house bill you know five fifteen fifty seven so you have to go through all of these that now they have to adhere to all of those as well as worrying about how they're teaching and doing all that but we want you to come and work for us it's just really putting i think it's going to put everybody i don't care what kind of school you're in it's going to have a great impact on this and mr and if i can just say one more thing there was one scenario

139that carol gave us about that one lawsuit for house bill 1557 well here there's another scenario where sometimes you have a teacher that where a student asked to be to have their pronoun and their name changed and the teacher without going through anybody else changes it and then the parent finds out so unfortunately you know i have not heard of an actual lawsuit being filed because of that however i have heard of that fact pattern so there's lots of fact patterns that we have to walk very carefully in this minefield of this new area of law right ah there's a lot a lot to take in specifically the one that actually triggered it could be there's that but that could as a teacher i would have assumed the parent knew well part of that fact

140pattern too is that you know when it was brought the teacher kind of pushed back a little bit so there's a lot of things that we just need to be very very careful with and mindful of right that's all so do we have any other questions for the ladies mr patricka and this might be more for attorney dupree bruno i know that 1557 covers curriculum but i wonder whether you and staff are going to address the issue of wedding photographs on people's desks whether it be in the office or in the classroom so what she's asking is again this the privacy interest and the interconnection of all of these laws from the federal to the state is massive so we literally just had this conversation last week legal and staff with regards to a particular

141scenario whether or not i could put my family picture now on my desk whether or not doing that when they like in preschool in kindergarten you have to do it all about me picture right usually people put a picture of their parents whether they're same sex opposite sex divorce stepmom grandparent and so that was also brought up in the debate what if you have a child that has parents that are of the same gender how is that going to work is that allowed and what happens if you are in a family exactly but i did hear people ask representative roach mr donalds i've heard them ask those questions and they said that it's not what the bill says that you don't have to choose between if it's mother and mother because they used a mother's

142day incident do you have can you do two mothers can you do this does one have to be a come in as an aunt or and a mother or how does that look and they said that does not say that in the bill and that's not what it's for but again it's what miss gins has said it's how that person reads this the verbiage and what our takeaway is for each one of us yes and looking at what because we you know as legal is reviewing these we're looking at the analysis the summary analysis from the house in terms of what specifically what was their intention and it's pretty clear what their intention was so we have to keep that in the back of our mind as well and where this can come in is

143when you do have for example a poster with my family or all about me or we're having a an event at school and parents are invited to come and hear both of my moms coming after that is over i'm in kindergarten or third grade class and somebody raises their hand and asks a question where is that line drawn so i just want the board to know that these are things that we are actively discussing legal and academic services are actively discussing and on may 24th our plan is to prove to present on the equity guide and some of these questions hopefully will be answered ms patricka did that answer your question or i assumed that was the answer but i that specific question has been asked of me and i wanted to make sure that

144it was going to be addressed so thank you no thank you for bringing that up to our attention appreciate that did you have thank you i'll stay that's okay yeah we're just about finished up but thank you ashley thank you miss miss von i kind of have an overarching question on on this and actually i brought it up during the last one on one what is the effect maybe this is more for you of federal legislation because there's some federal legislation that's coming out that's going to be you know it is going to so knowing previous history in this state we've had issues where the current governor at one point even took forever and prior governors in accepting federal aid and argued against it does it look like this is going to be something that's

145on our legal horizon in florida and what position does it put us in as a school district that receives federal funds and grants and all of that when when we have this the contradictions what do we do excellent question excellent question we already there's already federal law that talks about anti-discrimination and how federal funding can be affected if we have discriminatory practices and policies i think about i don't know how long ago we talked about the constitution and declaration of independence and i tried to express at that time how law is vast so we're talking about florida statutes but we have regulations we have agency regulations we have codes we have the federal statute we i mean it's just vast case law all of that encompasses law and we have to really navigate this very

146difficult new terrain with all of these legislations that's coming up and balance that with title ix and title vii and title vi and the other federal laws as well as the department of education's reports and recommendations and requirements as so it's vast so all i can say to the board is that legal knows about it and we are diligently going through this because we know how intricate this is going to be and there's going to be a lot of gray and until some of the courts have had an opportunity to really interpret and give us some guidance it's going to be a lot of gray but we're going to do the best we can to make sure that the district is on the right side of the law but i guess the crux of what

147i'm asking is which one do you go over is there any guideline to which if it's federal well state if there's any that takes precedence the united states supreme court always trumps right that's the supreme court of the land the united states constitution is the supreme court of the land now depending on the fact pattern it depends on the fact pattern because i can't give you a blanket answer as to well federal or always trump it just really depends whether or not this is under federal law jurisdiction so we'll have to as these come out we will go ahead and review and revise and make sure that we are in accordance with all law and thank goodness for neola because that's what neola does it looks at federal state all of these administrative agencies from

148federal and state everything to be able to give us the best guidance and then we take those we tweak it to our district and then present it to the board so we're working on it we know it but do the best we can to make sure we're on the right side of the law but even if they are doing in the policies and they understand all that we still then have to implement all of that which comes from the new policies and i will say this is the superintendent legal can say this needs to be done but if only 50 or 70 or 80 of the schools are doing it consistency it needs to be consistent across the board so do we have any other questions very complicated for sure did you have very complicated

149issues not just one did you have another yes i did so attorney dupree bruno you said it was pretty evident what their intention was with 1557. what was that intention so prior to the parents bill of rights there was an absence well arguably there was an absence in the law in terms of what is the obligation to notify parents about certain things and specifically the legislature is looking at lgbtq gender identity transgender issues that's what they're looking at so they the parents bill of rights came into effect and that gave us some guidance but some felt it was not strong enough so now they have given us this 1557 when you read it i know everybody is concerned about the k-3 what you can teach in the classroom 1557 talks a lot about the responsibility

150of parents to educate their child it talks about the well-being it goes broader we're not just talking about mental health we're talking about well-being emotional physical everything and that the parents are the ultimate decision makers in terms of morality in terms of certain things that are being taught and then we're still discussing in terms of the responsibility from a legal standpoint of the district and district staff to either one disclose we're not i don't want to speak too much because i'm still working with staff we're talking this through may 24th we'll have better answers but part of the bill says that the district has to encourage conversation between parent and student when one of these issues come up they say well-being mental health emotional physical but really what they were looking at as lgbtq issues

151and or encourage and facilitate the discussion so where that you know what is our absolute requirement to do that's something that we're still trying to talk through so i don't know if that answered your question before right well because you know like parents have always had rights right and schools have always worked diligently to get parent involvement not expecting the kind of involvement that we have currently but you know as a longtime school counselor at elementary level i mean 30 years ago we had students who had two moms the kids never asked any questions about it that was just their family i mean it was like not a big deal but i understand that now with the media and social media and all that it is i don't necessarily think that having the two moms

152necessarily is the big deal i think the big deal is when you have a student that goes to school and is relaying information about gender identity and where they fit in and asking for some assistance when does the parent get notified that this is even an issue because they're certain like for example pregnancy we don't we don't really disclose that so if if i broke up with my boyfriend yesterday we don't really disclose that those there are certain things that we just never have had to disclose exactly and so now the question is what's our responsibility in disclosing this to parents so i think that there's an assumption with educators that parents know their children and i understand that we have all different kind of families nowadays it's a lot different but there have been

153times when people have come here and spoken and said you know you didn't tell me that my kid was gay well don't you know this i mean really that's really what i wanted to say but i didn't but i will next time so yeah it is it's a dilemma it is it's really and i think that's going to be i mean legals definitely has his work cut out because you know even in you know the first paragraph as opposed to the second the one the first paragraph is saying that you are must require district personnel to encourage student then the second one says that school district procedures may authorize school district personnel to withhold information and or if they feel that you may be so again it goes back to that human mm-hmm so i

154mean human miss jordan i'm sorry i'm going to share a part of a discussion that legal had with staff just the other day a scenario where you have a student who comes to a counselor and says i'm having these concerns i'm not even concerned but this is where i think that i belong right this is what my gender identity is but i don't want my parents to know about it because my parents know about it my dad's going to kill me now kids say this all the time if i go home with this half my parents are just going to get me they stayed all the time it was not reported this happened years ago was not reported child turns 18 is graduating and then finally does reveal to their parents that this is what

155my where i am kid is an icu for two weeks because dad beat them up so these are the dilemmas that we face because we have to work with our mental health folks who understand and they have their own code of ethics which is very difficult as well as balance the legal responsibility to make sure that the district is navigating this line very very carefully and that's the mandated reporters the exactly and you have reported though would you have reported that if the kid just kind of flip it over i mean again i think all of these situations have to be dealt with individually because different families are different and different kids are different but when there ever was an indication that kids were in danger yes we reported yeah in that definition so one

156good thing is we have two attorneys who are very well-versed in chapter 39 which is the abuse abandonment and neglect statute so that's one thing that we'll be working with staff on as well okay we probably have this conversation all day thank you one last comment if i may yes please i'm wondering whether the board is willing to consider accelerating the legislative platform process so that we can be out in the public discussing our legislative platform items beginning as early as this summer as you all know these relationships with legislators are not to take place just during legislative session and the more support we can get from the community regarding our legislative platform items the better off we are and the way we do it now is in my estimation way too late in the

157year if we could turn around a legislative platform in the next four or six weeks and start to hit the ground running with the public and update them let them know what it is we i think we'll be in better shape for next year okay well i'm going to go thank you miss patrick i'm going to go to ms getting said that i'm going to ask really ask carol what her thought process is on that miss kittens i think we have to be mindful that it's a political and election year and i have said this on other issues you know i'm running for office i'm not willing to get into the legalities of all of this at this point and it is such a legal you know hot button i would not feel comfortable doing

158that and bringing it up sooner than we normally do just put some of us in a you know a really difficult situation and if everyone else then i will not be involved in anything other that smacks of legalities or whatever at this time i just think it's a it's a conflict if you are running for office at this point and i don't i don't think that she's from my understanding if i if i'm wrong miss patrick let me know but you're just talking about like for the new coming for the upcoming next year to start talking about what that looks like for us not on what we have just discussed at this moment ending that's correct and i do believe that we have done a good job of avoiding very controversial issues on our legislative

159platform because generally speaking we're not going to ask for something we know we're not going to get and this is an issue that i brought up when i was running for reelection as well i it's about the timing of the creation and approval of our legislative platform and making sure that we're getting out there and we're talking about it all year instead of talking about it just during legislative sessions okay and then unless gettings and then if carol view will put kind of just i have no opinion okay so i'm gonna ask you anyway my question was if we're talking about moving things up if anything it would be and i don't know if you guys would be ready attorney bruno before the 24th if it's something that we felt was you mentioned that the

16024th of may that we were going to get an update or something from you so the 20 so we've been working on an equity guide right i would call it almost like a civil rights guide for staff and students so on the 24th we're going to be presenting that guide to the board so i'm not sure okay i'm not sure if that's part of no if it's if it was not directly related to this i thought it was something that well is definitely going to be a part of that it's not that's not the guide is not a lgbtq guide it's an equity guide that we'll talk about title seven and six and nine and two and discrimination in general and it's going to be very legal and just very factual very factual okay so

161i if anything i would reiterate that whenever possible to the public that on may 24th you know tune in and see what all the legalities and that we have to follow that's where we're at so real quick dr just wanted to kind of echo the last two comments and what ms patrick kind of stated when i was in tallahassee i work in the doe because we haven't talked about that the doe often has to take a lot of these bills start to figure out how they're going to do it what direction from the state board of education the commissioner to try to help districts understand how to process this as well as the superintendents across the state that was a lot of what the most recent fads was talking about how these things are implemented

162but one piece that i would want to echo that ms patrick really brought up not about anything controversial but just to say timing we are one of the things i learned when i was up there is you got you have to really be working on next session right now by the time you even get the committees in the fall you're already too late it's already it's already there's way too much i don't know that necessarily has to get out and talk about it i don't know if that's always the most effective advocacy if the relationships aren't super strong but i would just say that in terms of clarity around what you want to do and how to be strategic to actually accomplish it there's no time to waste i mean that's something that if you

163had the ground running if you felt like you had a really strong platform right now that you wanted to advocate for theoretically through a much more strategic approach i just think she's right on the money that you'd want to get into that now and i think how you get receptivity on the other side is maybe a little bit more of a complicated conversation than that but carol i didn't know if that would help your experience in this regard or at all either and then miss mr giovannelli and we are 25 minutes over so i apologize start talking about this in it but do the fall because it's in their the legislative session is january february that is too late that is her point and so i understand exactly what she's saying we need to talk

164about it now establish if it's one through five or one through six whatever our most important advocacy is for for tallahassee and this and then and lay them out earlier than later that's really the bottom line that's the advocacy part and i would tell you too that and miss kittens i don't lose sight of the fact it's an election year i can promise you that because that's something that i keep tabs on all the time along with scheduling and scheduling this year is going to be a lot different to ms jim minnelli's comment but let me let me just really really quickly our legislative priorities for fiscal year 22 this fiscal year this session we just went through here here's just the titles of them career and technical education always one early learning exceptional student

165education which we know we had some work on this year teacher certification and retention excuse me my fingers aren't going to open that there we go safety and security facilities transportation comprehensive health innovation school those things are not into my way of thinking controversial issues those are issues that are your platform your platform isn't 1557. right you're working that's fact and i mean yet to be determined because of the lawsuits but that's where that is what we need to look at are these types of things and what changes have happened to these types of things and we do my suggestion we you as a board and as as your superintendent and your new superintendent too need to be looking at is are these things still on our list right are they not our list and

166nothing changes and that's what i'm saying to compare the two but that list that we have if it hasn't gone through that's what we're working on right and that's fine we've already put that out there and they know where we stand but there's updates because we have to tweak it if right is it already in a law now so yeah so this is what they're talking about yes ma'am there have been changes there's been some things enacted that have changed these but my i would suggest to you that yes okay so we will put that on the list to do that and then we will work off of that to see if this is something we still have in our mind and then of course speaking with everyone is there something else that we need

167to add to this or make the stronger the words okay perfect there's anything else i can address she's raising four young children so she's used to heartbroken but you do well yes thank you very much we appreciate it thank you all very much i always look forward to seeing you and appreciate the invitation to be here today and good luck on the rest of your day and tomorrow thank you thank you very much thank you very well does anybody need a five minute break five minute break please and then we will return and thank you for keeping the time thank you kevin thank you good to see you too yeah thank you say 2 30 2 35 we'll start back stay safe oh yes yes good to see you all right call anytime thank you

168are we on break did you see this talk talk about speak of the devil oh i'm glad to be here today it's always nice to have a chance to have some dialogue because i'm right now i could really use some coffee i'm not gonna make it try to hydrate through it 12 11 or 12 12 this came in teacher training press inventory like check are we not on a break we are on break it's it's like speaking of demo there it is already and okay thank you if i got under there ladies we are and gentlemen members of the public we are back from our five and a half minute break the time now is 2 38 and the next item on the agenda is the superintendent's contracts dr bernier's superintendent and consulting contracts and

169this was a question that had came up at another meeting so we have three contracts that we are speaking on dr savage 621 dr bernier of 322. the two specific points notice in employment subsection 8 administrative administrative pay grade as before for a minimum of one year b is 9 a 9 a 30 days notice before the desire termination which is something that we would have to also look at because of the fact if we were the topic of conversation was would we consider or would actually not just us dr savage and dr bernier consider a change of date from may 16th to may 9th and that was brought before us by a board member miss patricka and so in that miss dupree bruno was asked to go back from the board to go back

170and have conversation which she has had that conversation so today we both will be speaking on this and having the conversation on where do we want to go earlier today mr pre-bruno had sent the what the costs would be affiliated with these changes so you all have that and she has spoken to both of them and from my understanding mr prieberno they both would be willing to change or have the contracts amended so let me go ahead and give a report to the board on that i did have an opportunity to have multiple conversations with both dr savage as well as dr bernier with regards to whether or not one would be in agreement to terminate his contract sooner than what he was noticed to terminate that would be dr savage and then the other

171to come in earlier than what his contract depicted him for him to to do in my conversations with both it would appear that they are amenable to do that but the earliest date that they could do that would be may 9th which would be a week prior to when dr bernier would be starting because his start date would be may 16th and then taken a week away from dr savage now dr bernier has a consultant contract from april 15 through may 15th for 15 000. he would requested that full payment from that consultant contract be be adhered to dr savage has two clauses in his contract from the june 21 contract that i think is needs to be carefully considered by the board the first is that under subsection 8 as part of being an

172interim superintendent where he was removed from his chief position to become the interim superintendent and all of the risk that is associated with being an interim superintendent as you never know how long that's going to last he was guaranteed a one-year minimum one-year position at the same equivalent administrative pay grade that he was at before so another chief position if you will for at least a year a minimum of one year in addition his contract required a 30-day notice so if the board wanted to terminate his contract they needed to provide him with a 30-day notice and that's reasonable because people have to make plans and you know figure out what their next steps will be now the board did adhere to the 30-day notice at the last meeting so dr savage has the 30

173days with the anticipation that the termination would actually occur upon the swearing-in of dr bernier which is scheduled was scheduled for may 16th so that gave him his 30 days now the board is if the board desires wants to take away a week from that notice now the second thing is when you're planning out your life obviously you're counting what your financial obligations are so there would be a reduction in salary for dr savage if he were to go into the chief position earlier than what was allocated pursuant to the termination date so bless you so what we have is bless you for dr bernier to start the one week earlier obviously he would receive his superintendent's salary that would be on may 9th the superintendent the change and that superintendent in terms of the

174gross cost will be six thousand five hundred five dollars fifty cents also add in there as you're stating these the cost we have to remember we're speaking about one week this is it so dr bernier is here already with us he is a consultant so he is here actually working together side by side with dr savage so the two of them are working you know collaboratively making sure that everything is the way we need to do that so i just want you to to have that in your mind as we mr prerno is speaking on these prices or i mean that price prices the cost that's affiliated to this and then at the final the final cost of the difference for the one week miss kittens yeah i was just going to say we're talking

175about spending seven thousand six hundred dollars to change all of this for a week i honestly i cannot support this it's it's one week and like you said they're both here we can reach out and touch both of them if we need to and ask them questions i don't see how we would justify to the taxpayers spending seven thousand dollars that we really don't need to spend now my question is where are we on the position for dr savage because that's the other part okay so contract that position would be savage and dr savage is very speaking about the person who's not here he's definitely here so and he's very much aware of the conversations that have been had and he's himself have had multiple conversations so that position would be would not have anything

176to do with us it would be between dr savage and is that what the contract let me add let me add to that yes so the contract specifically says that dr savage gets a position for a minimum of one year equivalent to the administrative pay grade that he had before which was he was a chief of operations at that time so now what kind of chief that's i think that's up to the superintendent the new superintendent that will be incoming to determine what placement he finds for the interim superintendent in his in his wheelhouse and his cabinet if you will and then that would be when dr bernier is sworn in at that moment that he has sworn in dr savage would then step into that new role so pre that date he should have

177already been having that conversation so let me add to that let me add that to that miss jordan so what i anticipate happening is not at this meeting but at the next action meeting which would be a week prior to dr bernier starting that both dr bernier and dr savage will have settled on whatever this position will be and then at that point we will have an agenda item that basically says that upon the swearing-in of dr bernier dr savage will be taking on this particular position this will come before the board and i guess it will be on may 10th and the board can vote on it at that time i think the only thing that was just a little weak in the whole thing for me and i'm not a legal person would

178have been defining that process a little more definitively because technically we are in a contract with dr savage the new superintendent is not so within the contract that we have with him that we would provide and it you know in the acceptable you know whatever position similar to what he came out of i think it just should have been worded that way because i mean interestingly enough this actually was i was speaking to one of my colleagues from another district who had a similar issue and interestingly enough this has happened in multiple districts where you have this type of negotiation the incoming superintendent really can't change the contractual terms between the board and the interim superintendent that's your contract right you've already said it and i know that but what i'm saying is when we

179signed the contract and signed off on and voted for it we said we will provide you with a position that is equal to what you are leaving correct okay in this situation it's not an issue but legally you could have had you know an adversarial situation where someone coming in says we're going to pay you but you're going to do this over here so somehow has to be still it could be in timbuktu but it still has to be within that same pagar the only thing that you guaranteed was you're going to get a job at the same rate of pay that you had before that was that was the only thing that was guaranteed there's no caveat so he could just be sent anywhere and i'm just saying that gonna have to balance as

180well the superintendent coming in needs to have people that he feels is comfortable to work with so there's there's a little bit of i understand exactly what you're saying because we just some of the school board attorneys just have this conversation in terms of you know the incoming superintendent being able to make those personnel decisions we just had this conversation i think it's a balancing act where the board has guaranteed a position contractually the incoming superintendent has to abide by that contract but to kind of control where he put somebody in that scheme now you're controlling the superintendent's ability to do whatever he feels is necessary as he's coming into the district so fortunately this worked out well i know another district that it may not work out as well but at least for us

181thank goodness we have one thing that actually worked out well in lee county so yeah we have x number of chief positions currently do we have a chief position that would be a logical viable and the other part of that is okay so the people who currently not to get anybody nervous but i just want to know the whole thing people that are currently in chief positions their contracts end in july first the end of june right they haven't been renewed yet and my question is the second part of it is it will dr brunir be able to do any switching if he wanted to for the current chief positions and i can answer those questions for the people who have expiring contracts the answer would be yes because that's what i'm assuming but i

182just want to hear it yes this was very intentional as as you know i mean i think that part of just the timing when we signed this initial agreement there was we know this last three months you know a month six months nine months a year 10 years whatever it ended up being so we had to make it generic enough to now that we are there and we are at that moment you know one of the decisions that i made months ago was that it would be on it would be i think inappropriate for the next superintendent to not have him have the opportunity to move things around i think he's worked in a lot of big districts high performing districts that there may be structural elements that he would want it to represent so

183something that we have been in the process of for quite some time and will not be finalized immediately it'll be something that he has every opportunity to to work on is of course that so it was very intentional not to have any of the upper level reappointments done so that he would have people essentially are reappointed up through june 30th right come june 30th and what we work on right now and have been working on since november december and so forth and earnest really is the budget and that's next year's budget we're working on it now and so some of the positions we have left vacant for example ms stillwell's chief strategic engagement officer that has not been hired chief operations have left that vacant as well it had we because we at least now

184had executives in those seats that in prior we only had one executive now we have an executive over each core area of operations so i did not feel it was necessary to rush and do that these give opportunities for dr bernier not only to hire new people if he were to to want that but also to reposition people accordingly and i think that's part of the learning mission that he's on right now is what's working well and what would you want to maybe want to do in year one but maybe you want to do something different in year two and so what what is he comfortable with right out of the gate and then what does he feel like he absolutely must make changes and it should be empowered to do so in my professional

185opinion as superintendent that is you hire him he is really supposed to hire and identify the people that he is going to rely upon every single day and so while that is not a comfortable position for senior leaders to be in where you don't know necessarily what that will entail and that is somewhat of a stress i think people have been very pleased that he's been so receptive i mean he's he's been calling people he's been meeting with people he's been checking in on folks and just getting a chance to know everyone as well as board members and it's it's very hard to come in in that compressed but that's why he's been doing it he's been very active long before his consulting started learning about our district so just want to reiterate now as

186far as me the because those positions are open there certainly is the unit but he may decide that as part of his budget recommendations let's say he wanted to do something completely different from that maybe like in orange for example they have lots of associate superintendents and things along those lines the budget is somewhat of a fluid piece and i think what he's going to try to do in his conversations with you all is maybe hell you know help frame that whole conversation of what's the nature of the complexity of work that's going to have to take place both now and in the next six months in the next year to really help the organization and i think that isn't so much a question of units as much as it is a body of work

187in terms of leadership development leadership identification recruitment potentially of additional folks that's i can't summarize all of what he's going to say yeah but okay so what i was trying to get with this we talk about this transition and these these contracts and you're guaranteed the chief position it could be either a current chief position but you said it could be and it could be like a position that doesn't exist except the board would have to approve that if it's you know and the other thing that has to do i believe with dr bernier's contract isn't there a 100-day plan and so when when will we see that after he's he's the superintendent once he once he's the superintendent he will unveil it and yet theoretically it could be changing the current organizational chart adding

188maybe a new layer things that would take a while to do right right i'm just running through this to make sure i understand all of these things as as we do the transition and you know the placement of dr savage and whether he's in a placeholder position or whatever but a lot of that depends on what our new superintendent is going to propose to us propose to us as possibly a new organizational pattern correct and that was that was the goal of bringing somebody in as a consultant so that way those things can be tweaked and figured out prior to the hand off yep so it's just the budget we're in the budget season so the natural way for people to shift the most the cleanest way from a budgetary standpoint from a reappointment standpoint

189is that june 30th to july 1st moment and it just happens to line up the problem is will that give him sufficient time that does not preclude him from making shifts other points in the year as well it's just then you're doing it in a budget year that's already underway as opposed to making adjustments from one budget year to the next budget year which is typically how it's carried out but that doesn't mean you can have reorganizations and appointment decisions and movements than throughout the year it won't be though on the day of the handoff no it'll be he's not when he is actually that's that's what i just want to clarify for me for all of us for the okay so the people out there and silently the moment that dr bernier is sworn

190in dr savage will then have a new position and that's where we need to make sure that all of that works hand in hand and as i said they are working very much together in making this happen but i guess at the end of the day we're back here in this conversation because we were asked to have mr pre-bruno go out and have conversations with both of them bring those back and allow us to have this conversation on do we want to really push it a week earlier or just let it lay where it's at and i know ms getting said it's already spoken bless you spoken on her thought but i'm gonna if mr praying bernie will you just go ahead and i'm sorry that i cut in on you finish the end you

191know where the difference of the fees so with dr savage it would be one thousand one hundred and eight dollars and 88 cents so having dr savage leave one week earlier and having dr bernier come one week earlier would be a total cost of seven thousand six hundred and fourteen dollars and thirty eight cents so that's that's nothing's going to change so i mean it's just that one week in this salary miss yes especially i think since the plan was made and we've already announced that dr bernier would be sworn in on may 16th i think we should leave it as it is for for the one week for seven days i think we should just keep it uncomplicated and leave it the way we planned it to begin with so that we look like

192we have our act together and we also follow through with what we said we would do and improve the level of trust from the community and spoken as a true counselor i think thank you for that miss giovannelli and i completely concur okay so that's three because i believe that we have a contract and we need to stick with the contract that we put in place i think it shows integrity and i think that we really need to really work on that so i think this is a start and this was the plan we already have a plan why would we deviate from that i certainly do not think we should pay an additional six hundred dollars that we don't need to need to i mean just stick with the contract and then also too

193he had dr bernier as well as dr savage he has been out there engaging in the community making sure that he understands what the community is about as well as you know coming in here speaking to everyone so i think that i think it's working out very well you know with that and people are very accepting of him would you say that dr savage it has been wonderful having him with taking him everywhere it's just been great to be able to take him around and it's just it's he's he picks up things very very quickly it's a lot of opportunity to just build new relationships and it's just a very it's been a very smooth opportunity to make it seems i will give credit to dr atkins when i was coming in we had a

194little bit of that overlap period but see i already knew a lot of people here there's a lot of people i didn't know yet i've just been i'm very impressed with dr bernier's engagement and it's it's been a fun experience we've had a chance to just get to know each other a little bit more and just having in person person because of course you have phone calls and zoom meetings and things like that but actually having them physically present in our board member one to ones it just it gives him a chance to cap the business cabin he got to speak on some issues i just think it's been a very good experience but that said i think that's my comment was if this was something that he really wanted to start early if that

195was really something that he just wanted to get right to it and forego some of that time period certainly i would defer to to be amenable to those kind of things but i think under the circumstances it sounds like i just that's all i have but but i also want to add too because i'm out there when and i'm sure a lot of my colleagues are out there too when you're out there the relationship and what the community and i think a couple have spoken about the community what they are seeing is they're seeing you there with him as the interim and you make sure you always say that now i'm not sure you still are the superintendent okay so you are saying that and then introducing the incoming so when they see that i

196think that especially out in the community i think that really resonates well with what's going on it's like okay this is going to be a nice relationship so that's just my thought because that's what i see and that's what i hear out there miss miss morgan are you online yet are you there i think that miss roman went to go assist her with that okay miss patricka are you there yes thank you i was not anticipating any kind of financial impact from this at all given the fact that there is a financial impact i agree we should wait the extra week i do have to say that there is no lack of integrity in renegotiating a contract that's already in place there is a significant lack of integrity in breaching a contract but if the

197parties do a contract come together and decide to make a change and that change in our circumstances is made publicly with public input there's no lack of integrity there all of that being said i'm comfortable with leaving the contracts as they are and avoiding a net financial impact on the district those are my comments thank you thank you so the only i know that miss skins i'm going to call you a second i know miss morgan's been trying to to call in so i will we'll give her an opportunity to speak once we get her on miss kittens i just wanted to let you all know that we had discussed in the last meeting about updating the superintendent search website yes i did not go further with that until this meeting today because i had

198no idea and i felt you know like miss fisher was saying why would we put something out have the meeting today and have to re you know retract it so if we are leaving here with a consensus on that then i will have something to say okay and so then i will say going forward what it looks like it will be and we'll make sure you have all that information ms kittens is that may let me get a calendar 16 16. that's right because we just changed it so the so the 16th we have a workshop yes okay that's it so the 16th we have a workshop dr savage would be that would be his last workshop with us and then that evening at five o'clock we would then have the swearing in on the

19916th of dr bernier of may hopefully thank you mrs miss jordan i think let me just make sure that i have these dates right because i thought that the meeting was the 9th and the 10th the 16th would just be a swearing in not a meeting why do i have that on here then okay i'm sorry this is me having a meeting okay so on the 10th at the action meeting was the 24th and 25th if we were going to change this okay so rewind at the action meeting there will be a special agenda item that basically depicts that upon the swearing-in of dr bernier on the 16th dr savage will be in this particular position that's correct it's not on our calendars it will be we because of this conversation we were having they

200were waiting for us to determine what the next step is because of course they have to advertise that is going to take place so then dr savage would be his last meeting would be tuesday may 10th with us at the action meeting so you just love that so on the ninth i'm not even showing a workshop is that correct there's yes something else okay perfect your mic's not yeah you come down here no so may may 9th we have a it's a workshop and then on tuesday one o'clock we have the briefing 5 30 we have a student performance and an action meeting at that meeting that will be dr savage's last meetings then on that following so his last meeting however he's still going to be the superintendent so let me clarify his team

201until the 16th that's just going to be his last action meeting and then he will be the stay with us as the superintendent until the five o'clock hour when we bless dr dr brunier as the new superintendent and then miss morgan hello just went somewhere miss jordan i don't think that miss vaughn had an opportunity to say ditto to what my colleagues have already said and their reasons as well thank you miss vaughn okay miss morgan you're on speaker go ahead thank you hi miss morgan welcome we're in the item that we're on at this moment is the discussion that we were having regarding the superintendent contract and changing it to the ninth versus the 16th thus far the conversation that we've had everyone is in favor including miss patricka who had asked who had

202brought this forward to keeping it as such due to the fact of the cost of the seven seventy six hundred dollars so that's our that's the conversation that we're at right now yeah and i've been i've been following it oh okay and that's fine with me the only thing that i haven't heard because i was trying to establish a connection apparently there's been some decision about what position dr savage will be taking so say that again please will dr savage be taking oh we as far as the position that will be dr brunier they are in conversations on what will be taking place and i know that they i assume that they have been speaking and so i would see now i'm just assuming that but that would be a decision that i was hoping

203it wasn't settled that that option is still open thank you miss morgan what's that last comment the option is still open the option is she was hoping that it was not settled and that you're not just still open yep it's still open so and so is jordan is miss morgan not able to call on the conference line correct okay so i'll go ahead and call her on myself miss morgan is she still there anymore she's still she is just telling the show i'll call him because this is this conversation is over almost over okay so just to reiterate to know what's put on there the 9th and the 10th of may will be dr savage's last official duties as superintendent no no no no that says board meetings it says i mean but i'm yeah

204yes okay yes and that will be the last meetings that he will officiate correct but he on the 16th there at what time fine as soon as he's sworn in so it could be 501 so we don't want to put a time as soon as he is sworn in dr bernier is sworn in then dr savage will take another role he's right i will just say at a five o'clock meeting we're gonna see if if she's on the meeting miss morgan are you on the phone i am okay perfect thank you okay miss kittens it will just be a swearing and it will not be a meeting so it's the well i'm in reception right so the schedule the schedule is swearing in will be five o'clock and miss carl dr carla if i say

205something wrong let me know so at five o'clock is when the swearing-in ceremony will take place here in the boardroom and a reception which will follow yes the reception will follow so it'll be about five i don't know if you need to put that on no i'm not gonna put that i'm just gonna say swearing in event and i'll explain what happens then in a reception to file and just from the miss george if i may just from a legal standpoint it's really important to know that this is not a board meeting right right this is just this one i took out okay and i just called it an event and then pursuant to the contract there's leeway so if you are running 20 minutes or 15 minutes behind that's okay because the contract terms

206say upon the swearing fund on the 16th versus the u.s at noon right we just want to make sure that it doesn't have a specific time not only because of people holding us to you started at 5-0 it's five o'clock and now it's 501. miss fisher did you have anything else for that okay i think miss morgan is waiting miss morgan we can hear you really good now do you have anything to add no i don't thank you thank you so mr free bruno you have heard what everyone's comment is so based on the comments that i've heard i will no longer pursue an amendment to either of the contracts perfect we need to take consensus or anything no i don't think we did we not directing me to do anything at this point so

207it's just the way it we already had scheduled it to be correct yes okay so thank you that was a great conversation yes go ahead miss patricka okay i'm just going to the point of order i apologize for being with today's meeting i was in an fhfa board meeting i will update you all on that tomorrow during my board member comments in addition as is typical for me on a monday i have a four o'clock card stop so i will be jumping off the call at around 3 58 in order to join that four o'clock meeting thank you thank you and thank you we had noted already that you were at the meeting so thank you so much so right now we are we're doing really good on time thank you ladies so we are

208moved on to i'm sorry miss one wasn't mr larosa up for your position position yeah it'll ask her one of four miss i thought it was saturday mr mr mr craig damon is the new executive director of the fhsaa mr larosa was certainly a very very impressive candidate and he gave a fantastic interview we had five very very impressive candidates and i believe the board was blessed in the sense that any one of them that was chosen would have led the association well into the future it just happened that mr craig damon was chosen and the board is thrilled but we are also very grateful to mr larosa and the others who applied for sort of strengthening that poll and giving us a very good choice great thank you ms patricka and i'm sure that

209you'll report on that tomorrow as well so thank you so much ma'am okay so we are moving right along and we are at the good of the order and mr giavannelli i'm going to start with you over there i don't have really anything other than one quick question what couple things i will not be here for the may 16th swearing in so my apologies but i will be probably somewhere in texas by that point hopefully farther on this side of it than that but my daughter graduates that weekend so i will congratulations unfortunately i'm flying out because i want to make sure i make the meetings and then i'm no that's not unfortunate actually so my husband will be driving out when i'm still here so no that's positive but flights are so expensive i'm

210having to ride back with him and that's not what i want to do but i'm just honest but so anyway so i my apologies enjoy the festivities and i'll try to i'll probably wake up from my nap and watch it because i'll be i'm gonna be snoozing as much as i can well he drives back he likes me to be sleeping trust me otherwise i'm talking about that tmi just let me drive so i will not be here and then second real quick for the hearing tomorrow morning i don't see any information there's for that student expulsion hearing or whatever it is and i don't see any information on that to read or docs at all i didn't see anything it says 21 attachments but nothing is attached okay and so i don't think and

211we just got a confirmation from latanya about the swearing-in and all that items are in their local time about what it's on so that's what i wanted to bring up and i think really that was it other than what i couldn't talk about my granddaughter's recital at edison park and stuff like that fabulous the coach was great it was good it was fabulous so in the groundbreaking when that was really good too and i like i don't think i can see it correctly still so i'm gonna i can't roll it okay it is on board docks if you go to board docks i did it is on there i just the whole thing i just looked it up yes it's on there i've tried i've been trying to refresh yourself it has a lock on

212it so refresh yourself you probably have to go into a fashion it says i'm logged in i double checked all that i and i went on twice i think i think part of it is that because these are confidential meetings it's in a separate section in board docs now called hearings and we have to log in no you just log in normally like you would you can't do it through public access you're not gonna be able to see it just maybe why you can't get in oh i see you're saying it's locked i see it but i can't open it yeah same thing i apologize so we'll work on that mr evannellian board we'll we'll find out yeah she's exactly right it tells you a brief synopsis but it does not allow you to because

213there's 21 pdf attachments it's not there no it's not there for me and i it's locked okay i see a little lock there that's why we have to unlock it so i you know but the thing about it is now i mean this is tomorrow at 11 and i haven't read it and if it's 21 pages of something to read that's a lot between now then because i'm busy through this evening so and i was able to read the little paragraph but that's not enough we will present the case as we typically do as well we'll present the facts and so forth that's part of our layout of it as well i think i think what miss givenelli there are i don't know how many documents that are attached to this agenda items for this

214expulsion and they normally like to review all of the reports and the letters and just all of that information it comes up but no matter how you go into it's still locked you can go in the back way it's still locked so she's absolutely correct it's locked i just relogged in yeah we're having trouble with the server though right yeah it's saying authentication is lost so we'll definitely get that and thank you for bringing that to our attention mr nelly did you have that's it thank you thank you so much miss fisher did you have anything for good of the order i have nothing for the following order huh no i'm gonna ask miss kittens except i forgot to ask capital strategies the question about what would be the feasibility of looking at taking the

215you're going to love this okay good give it to me taking the millage rate record recurring to referendum because we need the money for something i would go ahead and send that email to them miss fisher yeah i will yeah and then bring it back from his kittens no i just wanted to make her what meeting are you going to do that miss patricka do you have anything i unfortunately my computer died and so i don't know how to function without my computer but i do not know whether there was an answer and the board member update regarding money owed to us by the county commission for operating shelters during irma superintendent savage if i made through the chair superintendent savage was there an answer provided to that question please i am to my understanding

216yes there was okay well if i can access that information which i hope to be able to do at some point tonight on some computer that's operating i may bring that up for could be order tomorrow or at a minimum in my board member comment thank you that's all i had okay thank you miss kittens okay i was first of all i want to make sure i say this thank you to dr carlin and i believe ms matthews and the staff that was involved in putting the board updates on boardos and thank you so much it is so much easier and and you know you can go back and find things so thank you so much to everyone that was involved in that and miss schaefer oh yes and miss schaefer i know she's just

217gonna tell me no but but i just publicly want to say thank you because that was something that had bothered me for quite some time and i think it's going to be really good in you know looking at we will have at least one new board member we know so two two new board members right so at least we're preparing the way for those to come to find information easily i have a couple of other things but i think i'll bring them up tomorrow i'm going to suggest that you guys i was at charleston park on saturday and i sat down next to a lady they said she's the oldest one in charleston park she's 90 years old and i sat down next to her just to have a conversation and i suggest you go

218on gwen gittins for district five and just watch it i was in tears at the end that i just signed off she went through slavery and all kinds of things and talking about education and i'll bring that up tomorrow but it is a fascinating 20 minutes to watch this 90 year old clear of mind that took us all the way back to when she was a child so it was just fascinating to listen to and about the comparison to education and all that too let me see if there's anything else i will follow up and get this information about the superintendent on the website and i would ask that it would be a banner on there so people can find it easily there were a lot of people that are questions and some someone said

219to me last weekend oh somebody said oh he's not coming and somebody said oh he's already there and you were gone and i don't know where you went but it was so we need to just clarify the whole situation and get it out there again the groundbreaking was awesome and it is a monastery and i tried to teach you all to roll yours but so what anyway and i'll bring up the rest later the questions there was a question i had i'll bring it up tomorrow and at the end of the briefing if we can is that it yeah that's it for now but you sent us the email oh the motion say that again yes and i did work with the attorney about the motion for us to recognize the international day of prayer

220and i sent you guys an email about it and i will send out we work together on the verbiage so i will send that revised verbiage out the premise behind it is that all of us go to the breakfast we do all of these things and we celebrate it so why shouldn't we be able to do that the students and staff at the schools i mean even if it's a you know a moment of silence or something like that during a particular time of the day student-led of course if they want to do that but i just think especially in this time that we need to be unifying over something that and i will bring that and attorney bruno i think i'll send it out this afternoon so everybody can take a look at it's

221short and sweet so and i think that's it thank you okay i have to look for that email miss fun please yeah i actually i have a question for miss kittens maybe it's will be resolved in what miss bruno sends out but is it a day that encompasses world wide religions yes it's not yes it any way that the way it's the verbiage anyway and to whomever you want to pay homage but it is basically a time as i see it of unity that if we had a moment of silence you could be you know speaking from you know whatever document or whatever you believe but a time that we all could agree that we need to find something to unify us yes i'm sorry okay i'm sorry i just found that to add to

222what miss getting said remember that currently there is law in place since last year that in your homeroom class you have a minute of a moment of silence so there's already something that's already in there we also have our statute that discusses students ability to have religious expression which is also codified in one of our policies in addition this is this is national this also is across all particular religions and non-religions if you don't want to pray you can just do a moment of silence and meditate okay yeah it just when i first saw it concerned me because i thought okay we could get criticism from both ends from people who are not right in any particular religion or non have non-religious bent and also from the people who are atheists atheists well atheists and

223but then on the other side that we might get a critique of well the people that are christians reborn christians christians that might be critical that and that the day of prayer is not this wide ecumenical service that it's so yeah i'm gonna be interested in seeing what what the wording is and i don't have a problem personally with it and i just think we have to be really really careful because this is a topic that could easily on both sides and in the middle right but that's why when i brought it up and i worked with the attorney and it had just been done in palm beach i believe and yeah okay and miami-dade and my question was can you check with them to see what they did and all the legalities and i

224believe we've dotted all the eyes and crossed all the teams and no matter what you do you're never going to make all the people happy and then who's the author of that we're not going to say a member of the audience was the author of that which i could see that taking place what do you mean what who's right who's writing this what that motion will be and how it's already written descriptive it is i'm sending it out to you i'm just worried about i don't want somebody from the honest audience saying that they were the ones who put this together is that the truth a member of the audience the audience but is that the truth no that's what i'm saying because i have had them we've heard them say before that they have

225or we've thanked them for doing things before okay okay so i will i will piggyback on what miss getting said this is something that we worked on together that was legally vetted to make sure that we're in compliance because of course we have the establishment clause that mandates separation of church and state however there are areas of the law that does allow legislative bodies to pray prior to meetings and national day of prayer etc and interestingly enough this is actually a federal law so 36 usc section 119 actually creates and the law has been there for a long time but most recently 36 usc 119 mandates that the president of the united states declared the national day of prayer on the first thursday of every month so and it's been constitutionally challenged in 2011 but

226that failed so i think that from a legal standpoint we're probably in good solid ground when you also add the florida statute about students and religious expressions as well as some of the other federal statutes so i think from a legal standpoint we're good to go on this right and as i said i'm not personally against it however considering the current climate i just wanted to be sure that we had you know the eyes dotted and the t's crossed and i believe that we do and otherwise i'll take the fall i would say we don't want anybody to we don't want anybody to take the phone nobody i will say also that the motion with discussion with miss kittens is crafted very carefully to ensure that really abides by the florida statute of 1002.206 which

227is the religious expression in schools so we are very very careful about that it's not a blanket motion i'm sending it as we speak okay and i really don't have anything to add miss morgan no i have nothing thank you thank you and i have nothing that was my concern i just want to make sure that everybody that yes nobody is offended and nobody gets hurt we're thinking about everybody i'm all about prayer but i just want to make sure that everybody is we have it now everybody is where we need to have them miss dupree bruno do you have anything for good of the order i have two things the first thing is miss morgan had sent an email with regards to an incident that happened with our last student advisory committee where we

228had a constituent come and wanted to i think record participate so there's a couple of things to that i was going to send an email but i'd much rather see what the board would like for me to do one when the board originally had some discussions about this campaign could you please speak more clearly into the mic attorney dupree bruno i'm having a great deal of difficulty hearing you thank you yes when the board originally discussed this we went from a board student advisory committee to a district student advisory committee because we were very clear that the law with regards to board advisory committees makes that committee fall under sunshine which means that it is open to the public and we do have public comment during our advisory committees and those are filmed so we

229went to a district advisory committee since that time law has changed in november i believe it was november of 2021 there was a case florida citizens alliance versus collier county school board i did send an email to the board about that when it came out that basically now a lot of different committees that are providing even if it's a superintendent committee but that is providing some type of delegation of responsibility from the board to come back and make a recommendation to the board to vote on is going to be open to sunshine so at this point this advisory committee be it board or district or superintendent is subject to sunshine so public it's open to the public public can come can make comments but so here's what i want to ask from the board there

230may be another way to do this however i will have to explore it where we go through a route of student government which is something that one of our sister districts does and i will have to explore that and see if this is a better alternative for us to have a just kind of like think of your dac where you have your committees at the school level and then all of them get together at the district level something similar to that through your student government and filters up i again i have to review this because i know some districts have it as an advisory committee that's open some districts do it differently it's more of a student club than an advisory committee so i would like to know if the board would like me to

231explore that a little bit and come back with a proposal for the student advisory committee well i think i thought that we had changed it to a council so that they would not have we spoke about that so that they would not have to do that my concern is having we have children's people are dropping their kids off to us and then we open it up to whomever want to walk in there film their children and do whatever i have an issue with that because how do we protect these kids from from that or whatever that may look like and mrs fisher i know you well when we look at the purpose is to give the kids a voice and what they really do is to share their opinions with staff at this point correct

232regarding the code of conduct regarding dress code regarding testing you know food the issue is that is that something i know sunshine so things have changed so much and did that change so the florida citizens alliance came out i'm going to say either october november of 2021 this was a situation where it was about instructional materials it was a staff committee there was nobody else in that committee that was involved and basically the supreme court of florida basically said that those committees have to be open because the recommendation of whatever this committee is doing is going to the superintendent and then the superintendent's bringing it to the board for some type of action so that's one and that's why that actually is codified now in 1467 house bill 1467. so there's the law the legal

233landscape is changing significantly and if you want me to explore this further so i can see what options there are i would be more than happy to do so and to miss jordan's point one of the things that we have to be very concerned about too is these forms that the parents are filling out when the students are participating we i would recommend that legal review those forms and vet those forms to make sure that we're covering everything that we need to cover from a liability standpoint were you finished miss fisher she's not yeah i'm sure all right we've had a lot i just really need some more information i'm going to look at that case and look at and that's passed that's 1467 is very specific to instructional materials florida citizens alliance is the

234one that is giving us the guidance that meetings even if it's amongst staff that are to make a recommendation to the board i know i understand and it's something that the school board attorneys across the state have been discussing and analyzing and deliberating upon so i understand so what she's saying okay i'm sorry i hear what you're saying and i just think that we need more information because the florida citizens alliance brought a case against a school district and then they now we have a bill that's passed and become a law so we have both the case as well as the law the law is very specific to instructional materials but the case has wider implications so but the kids really don't do anything with instructional materials it's the threshold test is this committee doesn't

235matter if it's kids or not kids the threshold test is this committee has this committee been delegated authority to make some recommendations to the superintendent who will bring it to the board for some type of action so the code of conduct is one of those examples where the superintendent is going to bring this to the board for a vote and so anybody who's any committee that's giving some type of recommendation on the code of conduct could be subject to sunshine it could be subject to such a recommendation but i mean they're giving their opinion their input i don't know that they're necessarily officially making a recommendation and i thought that was why we changed the whole thing i agree with you a hundred percent change safer and simpler for the kids that's why we changed

236it that is their voices that's exactly exactly right mrs fisher when we had this discussion that exactly why we changed it but i law is changing all the time so i have two laws that have come out that i need to be mindful of that's why i'm asking if you the board wants to direct me to explore this to find out what options there are to have the same type of we need to protect our kids no matter what miss may i make a suggestion as i'm listening to this and what you're saying about the laws a suggestion came to my mind that if we in some way amended our dac committee the way dac works when everybody comes in they split up into rooms after they after they hear the main thing so how

237would it be to possibly have one of those breakout rooms to be students so in other words it would all be under the umbrella of dak and follow all of you know those things they would do the breakout they would also hear all the things some of them can you know come with their parents or whatever just a thought to make it cleaner and not a separate group they would still have the opportunity to meet together and you know discuss maybe they would have different topics than what the rest of the group is discussing and come back in the end and when the elementary middle and high give their you know dissertation as to what they did they could give an update on what they talked about in their group as well yeah but isn't

238that is a board advisory committee so what what i was right jump in oh mr patrick go ahead may i suggest that we reach consensus to ask the board attorney to please pursue this further and come back to the board with recommendations yes i am yeah can we do we go ahead miss yeah i'm i'm in agreement with that and also in in the meantime to add to whatever miss dupree bruno comes up with if any of us have brainstorms about this or ideas that we too put that in the mix and maybe some of them will overlap or the best thing is to brainstorm it and maybe even wind up putting two things together so i would like to expand just a little bit on what mrs patricka said and direct board attorney bruno

239but include if any of us have ideas on how we might do this like what miss kittens was saying that you submitted and we go from there and how about this miss morgan yes i have a question essentially right now these kids are meeting in what i would call a protected environment correct so anything that removes those protections like having admitting the public to the districts student advisory meetings or district student meetings i would presume would require them parental acknowledgement and consent to their children being filmed they're not filmed in the dark breakouts so that is definitely something that i also based on what miss jordan was saying and just to what miss morgan is saying we need to look at our parental consent form for the student advisory committee dr savage do you have

240something else to add to that well i mean definitely that's a good point the just want to echo that piece about the recordings whether they were consented or not just because if a person shows up at these meetings and starts recording on their phone and you've now recaptured i think that's an important consideration i just i was actually asked just procedurally as a reminder to the board that if we go past four o'clock we'll have to do a ten minute break for this okay we will be yep regarding the consensus that i seek madam chair yes so i would like to ask the board for consensus to ask attorney degree bruno to please seek alternative options for student advisory that are in compliance with the law yet provide appropriate protections and suggest that any board

241members who have ideas regarding same get in touch with the board attorney directly so that she can consider those in her deliberations perfect so can i have a consensus on what miss patricka just mentioned regarding the did you get that miss miss roman i would say hopefully before the next student advisory yeah i would hope that we could have it before then so do i have consensus on moving forward with that and miss miss patrick i know you made the motion and miss morgan an emotion i would like to further ask attorneys to please send the entire board a pdf copy of that case that she was discussing from florida citizens alliance thank you i have already resent the one that i sent last fall thank you okay thank you and again that is not

242a motion it was a consensus to ask mr preety bruno to move forward and get us some information just want to reiterate that and then mr priebeno did you have anything else and the last thing is just a reminder with regards to campaigning i've gotten some questions posed in terms of parameters for campaigning and this goes both for school board members candidates for school board member any candidate that's running for office locally that or even statewide honestly our board policy 2.04 is very clear that we cannot campaign on school board property it's very explicit cannot campaign on school board property so please do not do so any candidate out there please do not campaign on school board property that includes getting petitions signed that includes passing out flyers anything else that's related to campaigning the

243other thing that i wanted to make sure that staff understood that the staff can have stickers supporting a particular candidate on their personal vehicle cannot be on district vehicle and buttons and those kind of things cannot be you can't wear them while you're at work obviously any of those types of campaign discussions and those types of things are not allowed while you are working i hope that clarifies things oh and then the other thing is emails we're getting emails from candidates candidates please remember that you cannot send emails using district email addresses to campaign so i'm going to say the same message tomorrow at the briefing and i'll say it again at the action meeting we did send something to staff a couple weeks ago but we'll continue to remind you so that we're in

244compliance with board policy thank you dr savage thank you madam chair i just have one you have two minutes yes this is just one follow-up the earlier comment that was made relating to getting into the expulsion folder according to ms schaefer basically there was an access issue that she was not really aware of but it has since been corrected and that if you just refresh your accounts you should all have access and that's per purpose fashion shaffer and that was it thank you thank you and this is fabulous look and it is two minutes to spear so i want to thank you very much for today good conversation and as we complete our day this meeting is adjourned and we'll see you tomorrow thank you 11am it was on my phone you