School Board Workshop: April 8, 2025

001Good afternoon everyone. It is Tuesday, April 8th, 2025. This is a schoolboard workshop and the time is 100 p.m. Sergeant-at-Arms, has the lobbying been cleared? Yes. Thank you. Board member persons will be joining us this afternoon via Zoom. There are 13 items on today's agenda. The Alvis school future farmers of America will be joining us. safety accreditation or office of safe schools quarterly report quarter three district advisory committee report status of hurricane repairs construction change order report for February 2025 policy review pre-briefing budget overview fiscal responsibility action plan proposed organizational changes job descriptions public comment and good of the order or other business per board protocol each board member should strive for four minutes for initial comment, two for followup with a total of 10 minutes during discussion. I'm going to try to hold all

002of us accountable to that with such a heavy lift today so that we don't run into problems with our action meeting following this meeting. But the bright shining spot in our day today is here and that is the Alvis School Future Farmers of America. Kimberly Schmidt will be presenting. Welcome Good morning. On behalf of the Alva School and the Alva Middle FFA, we would like to thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to share with you our passion of agriculture in the FFA. The salads presented to you today were a pro product of our Vertigrow. the u chickens from our coupe and love from our children. So without further ado, Mr. Langley, if you'd like to begin. Come on, Mr. Shaker. I appreciate you. in here. We're in fact there's Well, I'm wait I

003don't have a there's this. Sorry, this is not coming up the same way that we would originally had it. So, I'm trying to figure this out. This should be a video. I'm not gonna talk. They're gonna talk. I'm just gonna quit. You should go to the thing to the next slide. Okay. No worries. A little technical difficulty there. All right. Go ahead. I believe in the future of agriculture with a faith born not of words but of deeds. Achievements won by the present and past generations of agriculturalists and the promise of better days through better ways. Even as the better things we now enjoy have come to us from the struggles of former years. Future Farmers of America was founded in 1928 in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1929, the color n colors national blue and

004corn gold were adopted as our official colors. In 1930, the official FFA creed written by EM Tiffany is adopted. Official dress of dark blue shirt, blue or white pants, blue cap, and yellow tie is also established. FFA is during this time limited to males members only. The top left photo is members of members of official judging teams in 1928. The bottom middle one is national sheep judging in 1929. The top right one is EM Tiffany, author of the FFA creed. In 1933, the blue corduroy jacket was established into official dress. In 1935, NFA, New Farmers of America, is founded as a national organization as the Tuski Institute in Alabama. In 1948, the first FFA week was celebrated during the week of George Washington's birthday. The top left picture was the first FFA jackets of 1933.

005The middle picture is NFA in 1935. In the top right picture is FFA honors George Washington as a symbol of leadership and a farmer. His significance in FFA is shown through the National FFA Center once being on his estate. In 1965, almost 30 years of establishment, the F the NFA merges with FFA due to Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1969, FFA opens membership to women, also allowing them to hold office as well as participate in competitive events at the regional and national levels. In 1971, the National FFA Alumni Association was established. The top left picture is NFA and FFA joining organizations while the middle picture is the first national FFA alumni association and the top right picture is women competing and career development events in 1969. In 1973 official dress standards are created. In

0061988, Futures Farmers of America changed its name to National FFA organization to reflect the growing diversity in agriculture. In 2019, the Alba Middle chapter was established. In the top left picture, it shows official dress created for us to look sharp. In the middle picture, it shows that national FFA officer team of 1988. And the top right picture is the 2024 to 2025 Alva Middle officer team. I believe that to live and work on a good farm or to be engaged in other agricultural pursuits is pleasant as well as challenging. For I know the joys and discomfort of agricultural life and hold an inborn fondness for those associations which even in hours of discouragement I cannot deny. Our holing cow Rambler gave birth on school property to a bull calf named River. We are proud to

007announce that she's pregnant again and should have her calf this year. We have a 40 tower vertigo system as well as raised garden beds that have produce growing in them continuously throughout the year. Every year we raise two market hogs that we auction off during our spring fling where we raise funds for activities throughout the year. The top left picture is Rambler who is currently our three-year-old cow who loves attention and any and all snacks available. The middle picture is an example of just a few of our Vertigo towers with the lettuce which will be harvested to feed staff and students. The top right picture is our hogs, Bonnie and Clyde, who will be auctioned off this Friday at our third annual spring flame. I believe in leadership from ourselves and respect from others. I

008believe in my own ability to work efficiently and think clearly with such knowledge and skill as I can secure and the ability of progressive agriculturists to serve our own and the public interest in producing and marketing of our product tutorial. Throughout the year, we attend many leadership events such as cult convention and state convention. We keep the younger generations of students engaged within agriculture by inviting them to our barn for many events throughout the school year. Many members participate in many FFA organized events throughout the school year and beyond. The top left picture shows education stations where middle level students taught elementary students agriculture education. The middle picture is our food science and technology career development event team placed eighth for placed eighth in for middle place eighth in for middle schools. The top right

009corner or picture is at FFA Florida State Convention this past summer. We were able to seat two delegates because our chapter obtained quality chapter status. The leading difference between 4 and FFA 4 extracurricular you do not need to be enrolled in an agriculture class. 5 through 18 year olds are able to be members. Anyone can volunteer to be a leader. FFA intracurricular. You must be enrolled in a agriculture class. 12 through 21 year olds are able to be members. Only the agriculture teacher is able to be the adviser. Both are amazing organizations. I believe in less dependence on begging and more power in bargaining in the life abundant and enough honest wealth to help make it so for others as well as myself and less need for charity and more of it when needed and

010being happy myself and playing square with those whose happiness depends upon me. We are proud to partner with Harry Chapman food bank throughout the school year. Because of this, we are fortunate enough to be able to pack and distribute blessing bags to students who are in need. The produce we grow in our campus garden is donated to our school cafeteria where we fit where we fed our students and staff. We also donate whole turkeys for Thanksgiving to local families. The top left picture shows each Friday we plan meals, pack, and anominously distribute blessing bags to fellow students. The middle shows delicious salads harvested by students, then prepared for our cafeteria staff. The top right picture shows turkeys purchased during the holidays for families in need as part of our community service. I believe that American

011agriculture can and will hold true to the best traditions of our national life and that I can exert an influence in my home and community which will stand solid for my part in that inspiring task. Our barn contains many animals that the students are responsible for to care for throughout the school year, such as pigs, cows, goats, and chickens. Students are also responsible for maintaining the cleanliness of the barn and animal enclosures. Students are taught to how to create and properly preserve products such as butter, and pickles. Students do many public speaking events and team building activities to prepare them for their future. The top left picture shows our chicken coupe where we collect fresh eggs daily. The bottom shows pickles. Students love learning the process of preserving pickles, then tasting the results. Teamwork. Teamwork.

012Mixing cocoa core and media for Vertigo Towers. The top left picture shows picking our crops that we grow in our vertigo. The middle picture shows our beautiful strawberry plants. And the top right picture shows our partnership with Harry Chapen Found Food Bank allows us to help others. The top the top left picture shows middle schoolers teaching elementary students agricultural educations during FFA week. The bottom picture shows when we dressed up students as turkeys for our Thanksgiving FFA meeting. The top right picture shows one of our goats named Mini Bay. She is a Nigerian dwarf goat. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you all so much. board members, do you have any questions, comments? Mr. Fischer, thank you. first off, thank you all of you. I truly appreciate this presentation. I and as well as to principal

013Winfrey as well. Miss Smid, I had opportunity, I think it was about a month and a half ago, I know some of us went on some individual tours of Alva and I got to see Rambler. I can't remember it was Bonnie or Clyde that I got to to pet. He they were having their their best day of their life went out through the gardens and I just want to say I appreciate all of you and part of this for this presentation understanding we've talked about as a board that we're both urban suburban and rural and I think it's important I come from agriculture as a kid and I think it's important we make sure to highlight some of the amazing programs like FFA for example. So agriculture is not going anywhere. In fact, as I

014said, we're looking at if we do a school out in that area that have an agriculture focus to it. I want to I want to let you know that you all still the future and the things that you're doing amazing. So, I really really appreciate this. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Gioanelli. That was awesome. So, I do have I have several questions. some are for the actual superintendent as well. how many other schools has this program? That's a really good question. Are you all aware if there's other schools? Yes. How many? The Vertigo system is actually a partnership with University of Florida. and they we have I believe there was eight that started out we are trying to start a tier program where feeder schools like like our students here that have

015started the program can go out to the other schools and help them establish that program. So, we are trying to fill out other grants to try to get that program started because it is important for the students to be able to know where the food comes from and help the cafeterias with that fresh food at hand. So, we are trying to get that in other areas of the county. But do we have are you we have about eight eight schools that are doing that the Buckingham exceptional school. Okay. They do this and but there are other other they aren't as big as the 40 towers. We kind of we went out there a little far. Island Coast but there there are several other schools and I believe Trfalgar but there's about eight schools now that

016are doing Farm to Fork. Okay, awesome. So did y'all participate in the fair this year? because I you know the fair used to be a big FFA and but I was curious how that was going. I didn't get to go to the fair this year. So yes ma'am several of us took part in the south the a expo okay in southwest Florida and it's part of our SAPE so we do get pins and stuff for taking part in showing animals and raising them. So did you raise an what did you show did you show an animal? I showed a steer and a heer which is a cow and several others show sorry I just wanted to make that clear and several others showed pigs and swine. Awesome. so that so in that leads me to

017ask this question. So if we had a high school in Alva, would you go to that high school if the FFA program fed into and that was a you know a big program in that new brand new school? Raise your hand. Just you raise your hand. That's if you would go. Oh, good. Thank you. that's exciting. So just a little note, my husband was FFA. Now, it he didn't go back to 1969, but he was in the 80s and he does have a jacket. He can't fit into it now, I might add. and if id have thought about it, I'd have wore it today cuz I might have gotten into that jacket at that point. But I just wanted to say I love the jackets and thank you for lunch. And that's all I have.

018But oh, and I don't know if we could get somehow we could get a picture of them if if that could Okay, if somebody would think about that at the end. Thank you, Miss Jordan. I was going to say thank you. I love your salads. The colors are beautiful. That's what I do for a living. So, you can work for me anytime. but I actually wanted to say I was really impressed because I was out there a couple years ago with the commissioner of agriculture came out there, Nikki Freed, and it was not as big. So, when I'm looking at those pictures and seeing what you've accomplished in those couple years, that's amazing. So, thank you all very much. And I thought that they were really trying to move that program over to Riverdale at

019one point in time as well. So that was like a feeder school to your program. But I just really want to thank all of you. All of you just spoke so elegant and just thank you for being here. Thank you so much for inviting us. Any other questions? Mr. Ribble. No, I just want to make a com. I just want to make a comment. I want to thank you for your wonderful gift of your foreign phrase lunch. which I will I'll go enjoy later on. But my oldest granddaughter is part of a program, the FFA in in Aldo, Texas. And then they have a they have a big ranch there. It's you know, everything's big in Texas, of course, but but they're they're mirror a lot of the same things you do, but they raise

020a lot of rabbits, believe it or not, besides the other besides the chickens and cows and everything else, but they got a big rabbit farm out there as well. But thank you very much. It was great, Miss Shaviano. I just wanted to commend you guys on the work that you guys do. Much like Mr. Fiser, I did kind of the farm life out in Golden Gate Estates during elementary and we had goat and pigs and horses and geese and the whole nine. so I know the amount of work that goes into it and the early mornings as well, but I myself never got the green thumb. I pretty much kill everything. So I highly respect the work that you do and what you're able to produce from it. as it's something that I'm trying to

021show my own kids at home to kind of have their own garden and do those things. So I think it's amazing that you guys have that skill and you're excited about it to move forward with that because it is a much needed industry and we greatly appreciate it. So thank you. Thank you Dr. Carlin. Yes. So congratulations to all of you. I just want to piggyback on what our board members have talked about this afternoon. So, as I was sitting here listening to you, first of all, very impressive presentation. You took us through a beautiful history. also just thank you again for the wonderful lunch. that's so nice. We don't always get lunch, so this is very exciting. So, you're spoiling us. Thank you. I do want to point out just a couple of things.

022obviously you're you're very involved in the world of agriculture and thank you for sharing not just your knowledge but also the gifts, the blessings that I heard you talk about with other boys and girls from, you know, that are younger than you, letting them come over, all the blessings in the bags. I mean, that's just very impressive. So, you know, when we talk about at the board table here, we talk about outcomes. We talk a lot about English, English language arts and math and science and social studies. I want to also talk about just becoming great people and that's what we're seeing today. And then also just to put a plug in for literacy. You know, we always talk about ELA as being reading and writing, but I'm going to I'm going to say this

023group did a great job on the other parts of ELA, which are listening and speaking. So, we always think about ELA as just being those two content areas, but it really is reading, writing, speaking, and listening. So, I watched them display all of those today. So, just big thank you and congratulations to Rambler. heard gonna have a baby, another baby coming up soon, right? So give Rambler a hug for us and tell her good luck. Thank you. And I don't want to repeat everything that was up here, but you I echo all the sentiments of my colleagues. I am from a little old town called Label, Florida. So you're neighbor to Alva. So I grew up with many many classmates myself on the FFA and part of 4 and raising animals and what you are

024doing is setting yourself up for huge success. No matter what division that you decide to go in, whether that be farming, whether it be public, anytime that a job interview is going to be so easy for you because you've you've been able to be in front of people and speak. So this all translates later in later in life. farming is vital to not just our area. Florida's always been very agriculturally rich, but also to our entire country and it's always been very important to me to protect our farmers. FFA students like yourself are making a huge difference. So, I want to encourage you to stay on this path. You never know where it's going to lead. You all did such an amazing job. and I'm I'm just I'm hope you're very proud of your work.

025I know Miss Wimprey is. And I was able to visit and Rambler was so he really is he's a very social butterfly. I think that's what you described him as. He was no problem. And I thought I thought I saw a picture of Mr. Persons feeding him a lettuce or kissing something or kissing or something. So he's not online right now, I don't think. But but yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to do this and I encourage you to keep to keep plugging along. So thank you. All right. Have a great day. You're welcome. Thank you again. And madam chair, if I may, we do have somebody to take the picture. We do want a picture. Yes. So if we can do that, if you wouldn't mind coming down into the pit,

026we'll take care of that. Remember your windows. Okay. Yep. Remember your windows. Thank you. All right. Remember your windows. Wait, wait, wait. He's going to get spray. All right, everybody look up here. Up at the ceiling. Just kidding. All right, look right here. All right. Next is safety accreditation presented by Dave Nuland. Vince Darro is going to be B on Zoom, I believe, if we have questions. Cali, a program manager, will is who that is. And Mr. Nulan, I don't know how you're going to follow that, but it's going to be tough. You didn't bring us anything to eat, so No, I apologize. I was prepared. Thank you. Go ahead. But good afternoon, school board members. Good afternoon, Dr. Nice Carlin, superintendent, and our school board attorney, Kathy Depri Bruno. So this is a presentation

027on accreditation which is kala the commission on accreditation for law enforcement agencies. the purpose of this presentation is to talk about campus security accreditation program that we want to bring to our school district of Lee County. this is basically for educational campus security organizations that primary employee. This is our nonsworn security staff that would include our security specialists my staff some of the safety team. at the transportation even even as guardians as well too. this program does focus on the safety and security of students and applies accreditation standards and cries organization to consider more critical issues such as facility risks regulatory reporting technology based security monitoring and preventive patrol and then other issues as far as part of the standards as well. again, as mentioned, Vince Duro, who's our the region program manager, we've been

028working with for accreditation. I just want to check. Mr. Duro, are you on right now? I'm on. Can you hear me? Yes. Gotcha. I'm going to bring you in a second, but I want to introduce Mr. Duro and go over a couple slides. I'm going to bring him in as well to answer questions and talk about campus security. again, Vince started his law enforcement career back in 1978 with Oxford MS Police Department. He returned home, joined the Huntsville, Alabama Police Department in 1982 and continued there for over 31 years. during his tenure with Huntsville, he worked in all areas of agency, retiring as the senior captain of the department. He has worked with accreditation since 1998, serving as the accreditation manager for Huntsville Police Department and as an assessment team leader for Kalia. He is

029also a graduate of the FBI National Academy and lives and works from his home in Huntsville area. Vince joined Kala in June of 2013 and he currently serves as the regional program manager for the southeast and Caribbean regions. Accreditation emerged as a solution to assist in professional development for law enforcement in 197 1979. These are the founding organizations that collectively contribute to the concept and development of accreditation. This is your International Association of Chiefs of Police, your police executive research forum, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the National Sheriff's Association. Some of the accreditations that Kalia does you'll see here is they have law enforcement accreditation, our public safety communication, which are your dispatch centers that are can be accredited. also our public safety trainingmies and today for us we're talking about

030campus our campus security accreditation to bring to the school district of Lee County. The board itself for KLA is composed of 21 commissioners who are appointed by the founding associations. commissioners are appointed for three-year terms and serve without compensation. Each of the founding organizations has one appointment and reach consensus on the others. Commissioners come from a broad range of public safety professionals. And as you can see here, gives you an idea of those that sit on the on the panel for the for Kala. You have your miso chiefs of police, collegic professors, communication directors, university police chiefs, state senators, mayors, city managers, state police superintendent, sheriffs, investigative agency directors, judges, and related business fields. Again, talk about return on investment. You know, as far as being accredited, it establishes a comprehensive process for managing public

031safety agencies. Provides feedback and structured analysis for agencies to make decisions. Helps provide institutionalized best practices for inspection, audits, and reviews, ensures involvement with partners and community, alerts to issues that need attention, and focus on high liability areas. So as far as the costwise, we'll talk about a little bit about that. So we talk about this. Again, this is our nonsworn security personnel that's is focusing on not our not our school resource officers. So we would go in the category from 25 to 199 of full-time employees. So the initial accreditation cost where we can do two two installments is $7,565. After that, there's an annual fee of $3,110 annually. And then every four years, we have our if we were decide to go go this step forward on this process, every four years is a

032reacreditation process where they send assessors to to our site here to do on-site inspection, go through our policies, procedures, and proofs where we'd achieve a reacreditation. the initial accreditation that we would move forward on. We have two years to be accredited either on a basic or advanced standards which I think Mr. Durl will probably go over in a second as well. And now I'm going to let Mr. Durl come in talk a little bit about the campus security accreditation and answer any questions that you may have. Mr. Duro, good morning or good afternoon. our campus program is our newest program and it was started in 2010 and the reason for the campus security program is we have a lot of universities that have sworn law enforcement and we started having some that said well we

033don't have sworn so we don't meet that model can you develop a model that's for nonsworn so Kalia did that in in 2010 with a lot of input from campuses and have continued to this point being our newest, it's our smallest. Now, we have around 1,300 programs that are accredited throughout the country and throughout the four countries that we serve, but the campus security one is our is our newest. currently, right now for the K12, we have several that are in the process, but we have one that's been accredited for a while that you may be familiar with, and it's the Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Pennsylvania that was formed by the Hershey Corporation years ago. and they're kind of our flagship. They're the first ones that went through for a K12 and their their

034response is that it served their their agency and their governing body very well, giving them a kind of a format for for best operations in the security field. we all know that right now liability is high especially in security and law enforcement and we see that the accredited agencies have a much much lower liability rate because of their accredited status and I can answer any questions about the process but what it takes for whatever you need. Board do you have any questions at this time Miss Jordan? Mr. So, Dora, if I if I'm correct, isn't the Hershey the Milton Hershey campus that they live there, correct? That's a campus where you your kids go and they live there. I believe they do. Yeah, it's it was started by the Hershey Corporation for underprivileged kids and

035still still meets that role by giving them a full education. Okay. Yeah. because I was just wondering when you mentioned that school, I knew about them because they did a presentation here a couple years ago, but then how does that fit with because of the fact that they're there on property all the time and then our students are on campus for x amount of hours per day. So, how does that how do we kind of like fit into that equation? Okay. What what our process does is give you the best practices for providing the security services. So a framework it doesn't matter whether there's kids on campus or kids off campus. The security functions are the same. They may be 24 hours. They may may not be. But what we look at is how it's

036managed, how you handle interactions, how you interact with the laws that are required, supervision and maintenance of employees. is hiring, what are your practices? it goes deep. Now, the chief did mention we have two levels of the program as we do on our sworn law enforcement. We have a basic and advanced. and the basic program is really the core standards. A lot of smaller agencies go with the basic and then advanced goes deep into everything including how you handle cash funds, how you interact with other agencies. especially with in Florida where you have the guardians and SRO's, it covers interaction, how you work with the sworn component, how you make sure there's a fine line there that, delineates what the tasks are between each function and thank you for thank you for that. And then

037I just have one more question. Mr. Nulan. is the because I thought I saw something u a bill coming out pertaining to security, campus security and guardians. Unless I dreamt that I read that because I've been reading so much lately. but I know when we're looking at this number of number of full-time employees, 1 to 24, is that does that count every SRO? counts every u security that we have in the schools as well as guardians if we have guardians in those schools for for Kalia for the numbers I show you on the slide let me go back this right here so that pertains to your nonssworn security staff you look at our security security staff we have in the schools we have you know over 150 of those alone that would include anybody that's

038nonsworn even my own my own department you know safety parts or safety positions when the transportation as well. So, anything security related. Thank you for the presentation. I know when we went to Tallahassee, this was kind of one of the areas we were talking about accreditation. So, we would be the first in Florida to go after this accreditation. Is that correct? That is correct. And I believe well first in Florida for sure. I think probably well the largest in the United States. Okay. And then the other topic that was discussed was liability. So is there when we talk about having this accreditation, we look at our insurance and all those pieces. Does that reduce or help reduce cost of insurance because we're taking this additional precaution and step to mitigate risks and liabilities? Do we

039know that? I don't know for sure. I'd have to ask. I mean, I know from my background have being accredited in the past, I know that it does present a lot more opportunities, funding opportunities as well. It does definitely does reduce liability, right? For sure. I've seen things happen that because my old agency was accredited we didn't had there was no concern because we already met those standards that were required based on maybe a national event. We're already doing what was asked. So it does put us kind of a step ahead. Okay. That's all. Thank you, Mr. Fiser. Thank you, Madam Chair. thank you Chief Nulan. Thank you to our superintendent. Thank you to everyone else involved. I know our government relations team was also involved in this. So thank you to them. I really

040I think this is amazing. I'm I'm all on board with this. I know we had talked with numerous people in Tallahassee and they were definitely excited to see us, especially as school district take this on. And I think it really shows that we're trying to be a trends setter in Lee County and that we're reshoing that our commitment to our safety not only as students, teachers, and staff. And I think this really shows that, you know, especially being a leader not only in the state, but the country. So, I want to thank you for really looking into this and dealing with it. Thank you. This is Giovanelli. So, back to the slide what is it? Slide eight. we would fall in the for all the employees that we could get trained. Would we fall in

041that 299 then? Is that where we would fall? The 25 to 199. Yes. Currently right now. Yes. That's where you fall. Oh, so the 25 199. Okay. I was thinking it was we were training more than that. and there would be ongoing training with this or to sustain for the annual continuation. Yeah, the accreditation process is always ongoing. So even though you maybe reach your initial again you have two you have you have two years to reach that. Some agencies reach it faster than two years which we're going to strive to get that done faster obviously but you're always being you're it's ongoing. It never stops. So constantly they may be asking for certain standards or proofs you know give us give us so many files let's make sure you guys are keeping up with

042the requirement and proofs you know with those standards as well so it's ongoing so what would cause us to not keep the credit accreditation what what like I would I would hope that we would be ongoing but what could cause us not to be just maintaining the paying the fees or what would the only thing I can think of that from my background from doing this is if the agency fails to follow through with continuing that process. I mean with this type of accreditation you definitely need support from the top down. It's it's everybody has to really embrace accreditation not just one person but everybody. So I think it's just it's something we always will do. It never stops in my opinion. Thank you. I love it. I think being the leader in this is

043awesome and I think that's the impression we received in Tallahassee as well because we that's what we were talking about it you know students aren't learning if they don't feel safe and so this is just another little piece that allows us to explain to the community that we are serious about safety in our schools. So, I think having this accreditation would be awesome and thank you Chief Nulan for bringing that to our to us. Thank you. Thank you. Any other members? Superintendent. Yes. Thank you very much. I just want to echo the comments from the board and really appreciate your support of this accreditation. you know, I've been very clear our top priority as a district is certainly we absolutely want to increase student achievement, but we all agree that cannot happen unless children feel

044safe and secure. So safety and security will always be my top priority as superintendent. Just really appreciate you Mr. Nulan and Mr. Duro for your comments today. and just look forward to the process. So thank you for your support. Thank you. with no other comments or suggestions, we're going to move on then. Mr. Duro, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me know if I can help in any way. Mr. Nulan, stay put because you are you're delivering the message about Office of Safe Schools, our quarterly report for quarter three, please. So, good afternoon again. This is our third quarter office of safe schools third quarter inspection. Just for the public understands what this is. every u our state safe schools department. We have inspectors that come down unannounced. They go all through

045our school sites to look at different requirements, mandates that we make sure our schools are in compliance with. And I don't we don't know when they're coming, but they'll call me afterward and give us a report basically on how it went. And then we have if there's anything that has to be addressed, we only have up to three days to address anything that may be needs to be corrected. So in this third quarter here, we had a total of 17 schools that were inspected this quarter. I know we had we I talked to all of us oneonone about some of the information that when the inspections again these inspections were overall there was nothing major that came out of the 17 there were six schools that had some minor deficiencies. as you can see there

046was two of these were our charter schools and the other other four were our public schools and most of these were just minor things maybe missing not having a certificate readily available for show proof of training or maybe a minutes to a meeting. So based within that same day these things were corrected. They were put into the system for different reasons but these were all minor deficiencies and again corrected right away. Nothing nothing major at all. Then I'll stand by for any comments. Any comments regarding third quarter report? Okay, seeing none. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Next is the district advisory committee report. Dr. Jennifer Cupid McCoy will be presenting to us this afternoon. I'm not Dr. No, you're not. I'm not nearly as good-looking. but I'm here to talk to you. I'm the

047DAC chairman. I've had the privilege to serve for two years now. This the end of my term. So, it's a two-year term. And then you somebody else gets to step up. We have some good folks in the DACK ready and waiting for me to be gone. So, this my last opportunity to present to you today. And I appreciate Dr. Keven McCoy allowing me to do so. on the agenda, as I understand it, we're just going to go over the last two meetings. On January 29th, we had, excuse me, the last the two meetings from from last quarter. We did have a meeting last week. first one, January 29th, we had a meeting all of our meetings this year have been via Zoom. And we have found those to be the most effective at least during

048my time with the district advisory committee. With the geographic size of the district, as you're all well aware, as you commit to all the areas here, you know, getting parents and teachers to participate is obviously difficult. It's a focus that Dr. Kim McCoy of course has overall for the district but allow but by by having the meetings via Zoom and not here people can take time out of their busy schedules to be a part of it and it's been very successful. on January 29th we had a briefing by Dr. Keep McCoy on DAC meeting format and structure. previously we had breakout rooms where elementary, middle and high schools kind of broke got out for about 30 minutes came back and kind of gave us some input on issues that all of you had asked us

049to review. you know it the results were mixed. one implementing it either in person or online is challenging. You have breakout rooms you obviously have some you know churn you know and it really wasn't the most productive use of the time. And so I don't think it was really a function of the Zoom meetings and I think Dr. Keith McCoy and Miss RDE both did a great job facilitating it just a natural hey we're going to break and then we're going to come back and we're you know it's it was awkward and so we've shifted from that this year and I definitely think that's that's gone well. And then also on January 29th Mr. Cooper provided a presentation on updates to the student code of conduct as you know as all of you are familiar

050with. for the most part that it was a you know it was it was hey cool thanks for the input and no substantive public comments or comments from DAC members were made on February 26 was the next meeting do Dr. Shaker provided feedback on the safe start initiative which I understand you may be talking about later today. feedback was mixed. most were supportive of getting actual plan on improving transportation. understanding that was the goal of the safe start start initiative and in general that was wellreceived. but most were but at the same time people were concerned about start times particularly in high school moving those backwards. obviously some pending changes in Tallahassee notwithstanding you the high school students already start pretty early. Many of them are there very very late. My own two boys are

051in band and during football season they can get to school as early you know they I drop them off at school at 6:30 in the morning and they are there if it's a football game you know we might pick them up at 11:30 or at night. and they're not alone. Anyone who's involved in after school activity you know my kids happen to go to Mariner High. They have a huge ROC program, JOTC, excuse me. and that's obviously all the sports and everything else. They also have an FFA, so shout out to that. you know, these these folks are in school a lot. And so that was that was definitely a lot of the comments were focusing on, you know, high school students spending an awful lot of time in in school, many of whom don't

052actually go home between the end of school and then the start of after school activities due to various reasons. and the challenges presented there. other than that, no public comments were received and no comments were made for the good of the order. we did have one other meeting last week as I mentioned and I think I'll be briefing you all about that later. That's all I have. Thank you and thank you for serving as part of our community. Appreciate that. Dr. Carlin, do you have something you want to add? Yes, ma'am. So, I'm asking our district advisory council to focus on parent engagement in the fourth quarter. so, Dr. Cuben McCoy and her team will guide the DAC through a structured protocol which is also being implemented with our district's parent engagement ad hoc group.

053The feedback gathered will inform the development and refinement of Lee County's parent engagement model. So just thank you in advance for your work. Yes, ma'am. Miss Jordan, thank you for the report and Dr. Carlin, thank you for that because they have already started that initiative. So, I just wanted to that would have been my report, but it's joint joint reports. Thank you, Miss Chanelli. Thank you for that. so you're not doing explain that you've they're not doing the breakout rooms anymore. Explain what you're doing though because how is that working? So ma'am the way that's working is instead of having the breakout rooms where like as you saw last year you know the feedback was great the mechanism were was good. but there was a lot of time lost and what we also saw was

054a lot of people were getting lost in the transition from breakout rooms to and from breakout rooms. what's happening now is we're having the consolidated meeting and then as appropriate given the topic it's a before we switch it to the formal kind of go to the order and public comment there are general comments and more of a dialogue between the presenter and the DAC members at large. I think it's actually more effective because it's allowing that dialogue to happen instead of kind of a blanket for those of you who weren't familiar that DAC was in the breakout rooms would have a jam board where they were posting out. if you're not familiar, it's kind of like a digital post-it note that got stuck up there. now it's it's a two-way conversation. I think it's actually

055produced more effective results. So, thank you for that. And I would I was one of those that would get lost and trying to get back or get kicked kicked off and then you tried you couldn't be in more than one or when you you came in halfway through another, you know, the conversation that's already been ongoing if you jump out of one and the other. It was So, thank you. I'm I'm I love that read the report of that. It's better because that's the whole key. So, thank you. Yes, ma'am. Wasn't going to call you out in being one of the folks having problems and I did it. I can take ownership. So, but yes, thank you so much. Of course, Mr. Ribble. Yeah, I have a question. Good report. I just like to know

056how the attendance been since you're on Zoom. better attendance or the same or so for my entire time as chairman and I've only moved to the district three years ago when I was part that year prior the attendance has been reasonably strong. I think about 100 averages anywhere from 80 to 100 folks dialing in which all things considered I think is about as good as we can expect when you think of how the DAC is structured. obviously taking a SAC member which is stat you know it's a statutory requirement and then from that you know th that select group of sack individuals so about 100 schools there might be one or two extras getting 80 to 100 that's you know that's definitely reasonable participation I think our challenges on participation are less related to the

057medium and if anything I think zoom actually is why we see such strong participation but overall I think it's awareness in the schools individual schools and how each school administration handles the sack themselves and then I'm not to call out any school administrators who aren't here to defend themselves and I'm not it's not an indictment on them. It's much of a what is the involvement to Dr. Carlin's point on of parents overall. Mer High which I represent just being able to get parents there is a challenge. and we're all busy. We all have you know I appreciate all of your all's dedication to be here. I know you all have jobs as well. I think I'd my recommendation to anyone who would listen is we should do Zoom or a similar medium for all of

058these sack meetings to encourage maximum possible attendance. Okay. Thanks. Exactly. Jordan, I just want to say I think we at the last meeting there were 68 that had signed in not including staff and everyone else and that Dr. Cubit McCoy did to give everybody homework. So, yes, we're moving forward. Got a QR code. Yes, Mr. Fischer. Yeah. Briefly, I just wanted to thank Mr. Denny for his commitment and service to our parents and community. I know he is dove right into everything. I see him everywhere. I just want to say I appreciate you. Thank you, sir. And Miss Shaviano. Yeah, I second the thank you for the support and joining. And as far as the medium, I think I would agree with the online component being a good source for everyone to log in. I

059know back for the for the PTO and we had a joint stack, we started splitting the meetings where we'd still have in person, but still have an online component for those that couldn't participate. So, we saw a lot I'm going to say a lot more, but traditionally you get five or six people that couldn't make it join in on that on that Zoom call. So, I think having that medium and that opportunity because everyone is juggling a lot of things and if you have more than one kid, you're running around from school to school. so, I think it is part of the communication and how we're getting the information out there for our parents to actually engage. And I think that's an opportunity for all of our schools to do better. whether it's through their

060newsletters or their social media, sending information home, text messages, whatever to get that involvement because to your point, 80 to 100 is a good turnout, but when you think about the size of our school and our districts and how many parents we have, it's a small number and we want to make sure everyone's voices is heard. So, I would say that's an opportunity for our district to take up to do a little bit better of getting out there and trying to get more parents in. But, thank you so much for your support. Yes, ma'am. so this is maybe a question for the superintendent to and staff. I know that in the private sector, you know, PTL meetings take place and I'm curious because those PTL meetings can, if a school is requiring I guess community

061service hours towards their school, the PTL can count as an hour. So for our students who are, let's say, Bright Futures, ACE, they're going after those community service hours. Could that be potentially an incentive for students to I don't know who would ask I don't know who just want to make sure that could be something students could take advantage of to add them to the mix of sack deck and we can have that conversation with staff. Absolutely. Okay. All right. Yes, sir. Don't know the all the rules. Sorry. I have Robert's rules somewhere. I don't not memorized. student participation generally what I've seen now granted we don't see it online as much and it's not the medium for that but at the schools that I've had the pleasure of being at the students are there

062they're briefing it's really just and the teachers are there it's it's a challenge of getting parents there right and so my so what I'd like so what would be great is if our students that were on stack and attending these communicated to their parents to attend the DAC on their students behalf I don't know I feel like when students get their parents buy in, they're a little more apt to step up to the plate. It's just a thought, but thank you so much. Thank you, ma'am. Board, next up is status of hurricane repairs. I'm not sure who's going to Thank you. Mr. Stevens is going to present today. Thank you. What's happening? Gentlemen, feel free to move those bags and make yourself comfortable up there. Thanks. Take one. Yeah, there's three. Good. Ready. Good afternoon,

063Madam Chair, members of the board, Dr. Carlin, Miss Dri Bruno. my name is for the record is Larry Stevens. I'm the chief operations officer for the school district. To my right I have Joseph Mscali who's with Imperium Consulting. To his right is David Griffus. He's a man director with Accenture, one of our partner agencies. And to David's right is Warren Wilson, the director of risk management. And to his right is Barbara Sadin. She's the director of maintenance. Today we would like to present an update on Hurricane Ian repairs. And of course following the presentation we'll have an opportunity to entertain your questions as well. Can everybody hear me? Okay. Thanks. I am Warren Wilson. I'm your risk management director. today we'll be covering the items on the agenda to bring you up to speed on

064not just the impact of but more importantly the recovery and progress we've made since Hurricane Ian and the impact of Hurricane Meltton. Ly Stevens has already introduced the folks that are here on the panel. I want to thank you all for inviting us here today. I want to mention that with regard to these huge events, it takes an incredible amount of resources to be able to recover. And I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone from our governor who was instrumental in providing legislative relief of $55 million to to our district our department of education, Florida Department of Emergency Management, FEMA, our board of county commissioners, our EOC, all the way down to our individual departments within our district as well as the locations, our school locations. we cannot do this kind of work

065and produce this kind of recovery without having all of the support of these various members. it really is a team effort to be able to to implement this kind of recovery and also to to find the resources necessary to be able to to pay for that recovery. So I wanted to make sure that those folks were recognized. Well, as you can see, for most of us in our lifetimes, we have seen an incredible increase in the number of storms, the frequency of storms, and the intensity of storms. There was a huge gap between 1960 and 2004 when we suddenly started seeing storms coming back to back years and seasons and not being spared for very long before we have the next storm as we've all experienced here in Lake County. it's seriously impacted our district.

066but we are resilient and we have learned from Hurricane Irma and applied that to Hurricane Ian. We learned from Ian and applied that to Milton and we keep getting better and better at this. I wish we didn't have to, but we are. Now, I'm going to turn things over to Joe Mscali. He's director of the Imperium Group. He's going to update us on all things Hurricane Ian. Good afternoon, everybody. It's a pleasure to be with you all again. it's been a while since we've presented to the board. I believe we presented about a little over a year ago. So excited to share the news in terms of where we are from a financial component and Dr. Carlin, pleasure to see you in that seat. It's been a while since we've last spoke, but hope all

067is well. so this next slide, please. this slide may be familiar to some of the folks already on the board. for the newer folks, happy to kind of walk through in detail. I do want to be mindful of the time that we have allocated. So, if there are any questions, happy to address those as part of the Q&A segment of this presentation. what you see in front of you is a bar chart that outlines the projected funding sources associated with the district's recovery from Hurricane Ian. the totality of the impacts that we've quantified as of today is just shy of $284 million. what you'll see here is the projection of the various sources of funding that are included in that total estimate just so we can see exactly where we're going to be seeking reimbursement

068from as well as some elected ch decisions by the district to make investments as part of its resiliency planning going forward. so just kind of walking through the layers we do have some investment from the district. this pertains specifically to the new build of Hector Kafarata Elementary School and the expansion from a K through 5 through a K through8 program. we have received capital appropriations from the Department of Education. we've received reimbursement from Lee County for the shelter services that the district provided immediately following the event. and slightly before the event as well. we then have our public assistance layer which is really broken out between state funding and FEMA funding and then insurance which right now we have a policy limit of $75 million and that's specific to the event of Ian as well

069as NFIP coverage. So facilities that were funded from flood damages from NFIP. So the totality of these funding streams, if you go to the next slide, you'll see specifically what what's been committed from these various sources as well as what we've received. I'll call just the board's attention to the green boxes all the way to the right. so a combination of various sources, insurance, FEMA, shelter reimbursements, capital appropriations from DOE, and as, Warren mentioned, the legislative appropriations program, which was a special program that was developed by the governor's office in response to Hurricane Ian, where we received $55 million, which puts the school district as the largest recipient of funds for that particular program following the event. In total, we've had commitments of just shy of $167 million. the green numbers in the parenthesis, what

070that indicates is simply the increase in commitments since we last updated the board, which again was a little bit over a year ago. so since we've last updated you, we've been able to secure an additional just shy of $30 million of commitments of which how much have we actually received? That's the next section of the slide. in total, we've received just shy of 149 million and an increase of 80.5 million since we've last updated you. what does this mean in terms of the recovery? this actually puts the district in a in a strong financial position in terms of its pursuit for finalizing its repairs and moving forward. where the funds received actually eclipses the funds expended as of to date. keep in mind that work is still ongoing which we'll be getting to the later

071part of this conversation. but in terms of a cash position, the strategy of our team and the district has always been to seek and expedite reimbursement from the variety of sources to put the district in the strongest financial position as it navigates this long recovery. So, currently we're showing a surplus of funds of just shy of $29 million, with additional proceeds forecasted to come to the district in the form of insurance proceeds, which we're estimating to be an additional $18 million, which will close out the remaining capacity on your $75 million policy. Next slide. this is a summary slide really bucketing kind of the three avenues that our team has been focusing on with the district. starting with insurance recovery, we have our FEMA recovery and then other grant funding which is other opportunities that

072are derived from disasters that allow entities such as the district to pursue additional funding for non-damage related capital projects. essentially projects that help fund resiliency measures for the future which I'm going to spend the majority of the time on this slide focusing on. as I mentioned with insurance we are close to the finish line. we are working with our insurance adjuster to finalize the paperwork that he needs to get market approval to initiate the final payments towards that $75 million policy limit. we have since resolved our NFIP claim with the National Flood Insurance Program. so once we finalize the paperwork with the insurance adjuster, get the market approvals that we need from the various carriers that are part of your insurance policy quilt, we will start to see those checks and be able to close

073that out and begin our reconciliation process with FEMA. on the FEMA recovery, we are getting close to having everything finalized with FEMA with respect to project development. there are currently 182 permanent work projects. of which 179 have been submitted to FEMA. The three that remain are projects related to contents that were damaged from the event. the reason for the delay in finalizing of those is simply FEMA's process of approvals and their kind of bureaucratic machine that is delaying them getting the information we need to advance that project. FEMA is starting their validation project process of which we've submitted $187 million of permanent projects. There's emergency categories as well which I can go into if there's questions associated with that. FEMA is starting their review process. They've reviewed and validated 110 million. The delta is simply

074a timing exercise. Our team is working on addressing any questions that come about. we're working very closely with the Accenture team and the district team to make sure that any questions that are asked are responded to. so that is just part of their review and validation process and that is ongoing. we have received some payments from FEMA. as I mentioned, the majority of the funds associated with the public assistance recovery have been advanced through the governor's legislative appropriations program. That's the LAP program for which the district received $55 million for. And the next steps for our team in terms of focus is to ensure that we get FEMA to where they need to be with respect to their validations. Focusing on the largest projects, specifically Hector Kafarata Elementary School. That's a very large project both

075on the replacement component of the facility, but also on the temporary facility where the students are currently housed. and then working on finalizing the insurance reconciliation with them so they can true up their payments that are owed to the district. following finalization with the insurance adjustment team with respect to other grant funding. So this is looking forward opportunities for the district to be more resilient in the future. there are two programs for which the district has received funding from one of the two and is pending its application approval on the second. beginning with the HUD grant, this is the grant that is administered through the county. the district has received $500,000 of an award for a vulnerability assessment. This is funding that's utilized to retain an expert to assess your facilities to figure out ways

076in which we can make resilient capital improvements which can be a source of future capital planning but also potential other grants that are administered through the state for resiliency measures. So, this $500,000 will allow you to assess what initiatives the district may want to undertake in the future. in addition to that, we received a conditional award for $8 million for resiliency capital projects. these projects are primarily going to be the replacement of roofs at shelter campuses to harden those structures to make them safer and more resilient to future events. and the final component of the HUD grant is a cost share offset for the second funding opportunity that I'll be talking about, the 404 hazard mitigation grant program. Typically, that program will be reimbursed at 75% of any dollar spent for an approved project with

077that 25% being an out-ofpocket cost for the district. However, we've been able to receive approval from the county to reimburse the district for that 25% for any approved project. So, functionally, what would otherwise be an out-of- pocket cost will not be an out-of-pocket cost pending approval from the state. So, the 404 hazard mitigation project is a $25 million application to replace nine roof systems with metal standing seam. That's the material that has really proven itself the most resilient in high wind hurricanes and that's evidenced by the minimal damage incurred at campuses that had metal standing steam roof. So all in all in total of other grant funding and investment from other programs that were available after Hurricane Ian, we're targeting just about $40 million of outside investment that will help to improve the resiliency of

078your facilities throughout your district. And with that, I'll turn it over to David to give some further updates on the status of projects. Afternoon everybody. We want to take a moment to give a general update on the damages that were incurred both through Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Milton. as you all are aware, we had over 100 sites that received damages from Hurricane Ian with a smaller portion of the district's schools being impacted by Milton being 15 different sites. Those damages were recorded and have been submitted both to risk management and are also part of any claims that will be going out to FEMA and other resources for reimbursement purposes as we continue to work with Imperium and the school district to make sure you're being compensated in whole for these repair efforts. Specifically, we wanted

079to look at some of the more catastrophic catastrophically damaged campuses. the three most catastrophically damaged campuses being Hector Cafarada which we mentioned earlier Fort Myers Beach Elementary School and the Santael School which the latter two both being impacted by both Ian and Milton. given an update on where those where those buildings are currently. We have an assessment due back to the school district this month for Fort Myers Beach Elementary School, looking at the overall facility as well as the impacts to the community over there. And the Santa school location has been reopened and is currently occupied and housing students at that location. In addition to those catastrophically impacted campuses, we wanted to talk a little bit about the overall impacts of those storms on the district. For Hurricane Ian, we had over 3,000 service requests

080that were being managed both by the maintenance department, the capital construction department, and with those efforts being supplemented by my team Asenture as we continue to manage repair and replacement efforts throughout. of those 3,000 service requests for Hurricane Ian, we are now down to 70 service requests open for that effort. Similarly, for Hurricane Milton, we received 270 service requests for damages experienced after that storm event. And again, through the cooperation of the in the SDLC maintenance and capital construction departments, as well as my team, we were able to bring that down to currently having 57 service requests outstanding for that effort. Also noting that the level of impact from Milton was significantly reduced compared to the levels of impact to IN. And we're projecting that we should be able to complete the Milton repairs in

081alignment with the completion of all the hurricane and repairs scheduled for later this year. This slide is an update on the repair progress through different types of service requests that were received. this is an update to the presentation that was given a little bit over a year ago. at that time we had not received the latest batch of damage assessment reports from FEMA which increased the actual amount of workload that had to be addressed before we could close out this effort. we've since addressed all of those items and are currently showing that across the board we are we're projecting completion in in the coming months where we're at for interior repairs 98% HVAC 94 etc. as seen on the screen. just to give you guys a little bit of background to the data you're seeing.

082For example, roofing repairs were showing as 96% completed. that includes roofing, gutter, and associated work on repairs at over 50 different locations totaling $26 million of repair work. Just so you have a little bit of a sense of the type of efforts that have been gone into each of these different categories throughout the district. Briefly just want to show a couple before and afters both for Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Milton. The type of repairs are extensive and are they vary in the type of work that needed to happen. We're looking at flooring replacements as shown here. athletic impacts as shown at Lexington Middle School. We had a number of roofing replacements throughout the district as we referenced. and also things like exterior sun shades, cabinetry, etc. Getting to what our current status is for remaining

083work. we wanted to look at both the status of roofing repairs throughout the district and then looking at all the other ancillary repairs that remain. for the roofing projects, we are currently projecting completion of all outstanding roofing projects by December of this year. we mentioned a grant earlier that is projected to cover costs for two facilities. those facilities that we are in coordination with that grant are for Ray Pod off and Eastley High School. once we get that finalized we will be able to to stipulate the final closing date for those efforts as well. But again are currently on target to complete all roofing repair efforts this year. Similarly, looking at all of the school locations that have outstanding service requests, you see that we're projecting completion of all service requests in this summer out

084for all of the schools listed here. the only location that we're projecting beyond this summer would be North Fort Myers Academy of the Arts and the Sandable School, which we're projecting for August of this year. In addition to completing all of the work activities at the different sites that are still outstanding, we are working very closely with the maintenance department to make sure there's a transition plan and a closeout plan in place so that we can continue as Warren mentioned to learn from the experience of the of the past hurricanes and better our processes moving forward. some of the items that we're really focusing in on is documentation both prehurricane event and post hurricane event. That includes final punchwalk reports that are being submitted to the district for all work activities completed. That also includes

085compliance final packages being submitted for each school location as well as total closeout packages that we'll again submit for each school location. That will be a repository of information that the district has available to them so that if something comes up in the future or if FEMA has a blatant request that they need to address, the information will be readily available to you guys to to access. Again, speaking to lessons learned, one of the items that Imperium actually helped sparehead and Eentra is also supporting is photo documentation to support some of the FEMA insurance claims. And what we found is ahead of the Hurricane Milton event, we actually did another round of drone photo documentation throughout the district. I believe we were able to capture about 75% of the school locations throughout and it did

086a great job of giving us an opportunity to speak to the specifics of the impacts of the storm event no matter how large or how small or cross. So, we are in the process of of doing the same ahead of this next storm season. Hopefully, knock on everything that we don't get another storm. But, we continue to learn from the experiences of the past and make sure that the school district is in a better position to address those impacts moving forward. And with that, I will turn it over to Barbara who speak to preparedness. Good afternoon, everyone. as we know, storm events impact everyone in the community and we must all work together with planning and preparation efforts here at our district community. Our safety and security department continue to work closely with Lee County

087EOC. They also we also have the operations division which is working with us maintenance and the county on different on the same grants that was discussed earlier on hardening of the roofing systems which again will be applicable to Ray Potter and East County High School. in because we have that close relationship with our electrical contract, sorry, our electrical companies, they are actually continuing to work on public outreach, pole inspections, vegetation management, and improvements to their infrastructures. And as we know, with the power companies, they always prioritize their hospitals first, but then we're also secondary on that list there. and usually around this time of the year, this is when we start to communicate with them and share information which accounts we have which one which sites are our shelters etc. So that is all part

088of this preparation effort for hurricane season. Next slide please. As far as pre-torm preparations go at a more granular level, there's different departments in the district that are working on different items. they're revisiting processes and procedures in order to get ready for the 2025 storm season. in the case of maintenance services, we have been working working diligently on vegetation management throughout this course of the year. when this first school year, the school year started earlier on. We started with contractor services. we were able to utilize our in-house staff to continue work such as tree trimming and they're going to continue doing that work until probably we're we're hoping we don't get targeted with rainy season as critical as usual but we're going to try to push it as far as we can to probably June

089if possible but then at that point that team will have to transition back to mowing services in order to continue the work you know that's that's required during this wet season addition to vegetation management we're also continuing to work on gutter and drainage cleanouts. this year we have worked on nine projects with the funding sources that we have received. that's also very important because when these systems are plugged, there's nowhere for the water to run to. So in our efforts and our department as a preventive maintenance measure, we are continuing to do those cleanouts as necessary. We also have to thank our schools because there are some schools that are also being pro proactive with this effort. some of the building supervisors at those locations are also doing those gutter cleanouts as well in order

090to assist with this joint effort that we have going on. In addition to this work, we also have our in-house staff performing quarterly emergency generator testing. This is a preventive me maintenance measure that is always done on an annual basis. And additionally, we have to thank the different funding sources and our district leaders that have been able to approve funding for window upgrades as well because that we're installing impact braided glass for the different facilities. In addition to this work, we also have construction services helping us with capital roofing upgrade projects which again is also helping strengthen and harden our structures. we did a rough count this morning before coming to this meeting and from the time that Irma happened in 2017 moving forward we have probably exceeded 33% of the total number of roofs

091that we have either done a partial or a full roofing replacement. So again a lot of extensive work has has taken place in order to strengthen our buildings. Next we at this time this will conclude our presentation and this panel will turn it over to the superintendent for comments and board discussion. Yes, thank you very much Miss Sado and just thank you to our team. you know hurricane recovery is truly a team sport. there is no eye in in team truly in this situation. when I think about all of the work that our boots on the ground are doing to to be proactive, as you mentioned, Miss Sado, to our wonderful team who's fighting hard with insurance and other entities to try to recover the dollars that we that we give them so that they

092can re return that favor when hurricanes come our way. So, just and to all of the proactive work, I just wanted to also point out some lessons learned. So, those of you that know me well know I'm a continuous improvement kind of gal and I love when I hear we step back from the chaos and we start to look at what can we do better next time. that's always very impressive to me. So, thank you for that. I'd also be remiss if I didn't just also piggyback on your compliments not only to the staff but also to our partners in recovery from the governor's office to the legislature to the county commission to the Florida Department of Education. It is truly a partnership and we couldn't do it without all of you as well as

093our partners and of course our very supportive board. So just thank you for that. Mr. Griffith, I do have one piece of good news. I've been in consultation with the National Weather Service. They said there are going to be no hurricanes in Southwest Florida this year. So we are done. We're talking like next year, right? Okay. So with that, we look forward to your conversation today. Mr. Ribble. Yes. Great report, good detail. I just have one question. And I think it's a nightmare for everyone, but it looks like we still have $18 million on the table to collect on insurance. How how's that look to get that recovery? we've gotten confirmation from the representative of the insurance carriers that they've agreed to the dollar amount of of the loss that exceeds the 75 million. It's

094just a question now of receiving the proofs of loss and getting those proceeds. We're hopeful that we've set them a deadline of of or the end of our fiscal year. we've set that challenge to them, but yeah, that money is should be on its way. Okay, thank you. Miss Shaviato, do you have something? Well, one, thank you for all the information. like I said, I think anyone that lives here in Florida understands that hurricanes aren't any fun. but I had a couple questions. So, the 18 million that was mentioned, is that strictly for Ian recovery or does that have to do with Milton as well? That's strictly Ian recovery. It's the balance of the $75 million named wind policy. So, do we have a number for Milton as far as what that looks like spent

095and out something similar to this? I can get those figures for you, but I can tell you that we've already recovered from our NFIP policies, flood policies. and it's a quarter of a million for the Santa Bell School and over $400,000 for Fort Myers Beach Elementary School. And I've applied for FEMA recovery for u and that application's pending for FEMA recovery for what's not covered by insurance. Okay. And then the other piece I was able to join the ad hoc call for Fort Myers Beach and I know Mr. Griffith and Stevens you guys were on the call. So I just kind of wanted to there was two things that popped out to me. Hector Cafetta obviously being the one school here in you know inland and Cape Coral that was damaged since Ian right and

096we're always like you know the Fort Myers Beach school but I forget that I drive past Hector Cafaretta and the damage and it looking like it was a empty rundown building and those kids haven't been in that school for 840 days they're in portables right so we forget about that school so thank you for that but for Fort Meyers Beach if maybe we can provide a little bit of insight again onto that ad hoc committee and kind the conversations that are happening and what's coming up with that as well. I can take that. Sure. so we've engaged a specialty consultant to perform a facility assessment of the Fort Meyer Beach Fort Myers Beach Elementary School location, including looking at a little more detail to the structural assessment that we previously received, but also more importantly

097looking at the community impacts both on the island and for Lee County as a whole. I'll actually be meeting them on site tomorrow morning. We'll we have an aggressive schedule for the next two and a half weeks because we need to get you guys a fully vetted report back by the 25th of this month is what we've promised back to Mr. Stevens and the rest of the group. in addition to that we are continuing to work with the architectural and structural engineer who provided the previous assessment to make sure that we have details on the five different options that were presented at the ad hoc meeting. we're going to provide you guys with updated cost estimates on all of those five options at on the 25th as well so that you have pertinent information ready

098to make a decision at that time. Perfect. And then the one other thing I know there's been options and discussion so I know those meetings are happening. So just thank you for the transparency on that and I know I'm going to be visiting next week the Fort Myers Speed School. I think it's on my agenda to do the tour as well. So just thank you for that update and working hard to get our money back. So thank you. If I may, Mr. Chaviano, in addition to what Mr. Griffith advised, we did visit the modular units on the fort that the city of Fort Maris Beach are using currently just to kind of get a first glance at them to determine if they're economically and feasible to utilize and also do they meet SRF requirements and

099we're in the U we're trying to now move forward in that particular assessment and so what we'll use is utilize that information as well as the information that Mr. Griffiths and his team are going to provide. At this point, we were also advised by the city that we they have to move those units by August 1st, but there's a cost associated with it because they have a standing lease for another year to a year and a half. We were not able to discuss costs of utilizing those units. Before we engage in that conversation, we really want to determine through the construction team and maintenance teams and our partners if we are able to use those units and we will provide the board Dr. Colin and I'm sure she'll share it with you all once we

100provide that information. Yeah. So, that was that was brought up by the vice mayor as a suggestion. So, I'm glad we're looking into that and doing that piece. But, thank you for the update and thank you for your hard work on that. Appreciate it. Miss Gio and Ellie then Mr. Fischer, thank you. quick question regarding the drone imagery imaging, right? Okay. I actually thought that was awesome because during Irma we did not have the prior pictures and the you know so that's how we have imperium and thank you for that because you're worth your weight in gold. and I want to really stress that because it's the key to getting reimbursed as much as possible. so my question regarding the drone is that service was that done by Imperium or it was it who did

101that like or the other company what was the other AC acuent or Asent did you I mean like how did that who initiated that? So, it's been a group effort to date. So, for Hurricane Ian, I know Imperium spearheaded that effort. ahead of Hurricane Milton, we both had teams out here ready to support because we were expecting the storm to be much more impactful than thankfully it ended up being. So, we actually had multiple drone pilots from both companies here ahead of Milton. And then we have a change order that we're negotiating with the district right now to do another set of reviews ahead of this next hurricane season. And I believe that one's going to be spearheaded by Asenture, but it's a group effort. We're I wonder we're both available. We don't need to

102both be doing it, but we're we're a team effort here. Well, no, I just want to thank you for that because that was the one thing that stood out for me because having lived through Arma and then Ian and we were doing things a lot better with Ian, but Arma was honestly a huge failure. and so I am excited just seeing that just that bit of change. I know we're heading in the right direction. is just I want to thank you gentlemen for that because when I saw that I was like oh I just wanted to jump up and down because that you know that it's just key. I mean how do you prove if something wasn't you know if it was affected by a hurricane without pictures and before and after is key. So

103thank you Mr. Fiser. yeah just briefly obviously thank you everyone for your hard work. I appreciate it. since we've met last time we've had essentially two hurricanes. So, I'm going to ask through the chair to Superintendent Carlin as well as Chief Stevens. Mr. Deno had mentioned this was seeing if we get a little bit more in depth in the future just talking about what some of our harding measures are for our schools and our sites. I'll be happy to do that. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. we are going to move on to our construction change order report of February 2025. This will be presented by Scott Rickenbacher and Melissa Rivera. We are Good afternoon board members. Superintendent Carlin Esquire to play Bruno. This

104is your February 2025 capital change order report required by statute. As you will notice on the very first page today, we're going to report on direct material purchases, change orders in the amount of $1.2 $2 million a return on tax savings back into the district of $76,000. Non-direct material purchases, we have change orders an amount of $7.6 million. That is a $7.6 million capital return back to the district coffers to be repurposed for other capital program and zero contingency adjustments to report. The secondary backup page, we have one direct material purchase. As I mentioned, we have 10 regular change orders. Four are returns, one is an ad, and five are extensions of time only with zero dollars for projects. And we have no contingency u contingency adjustments to report this month. Are there any questions?

105Any questions, board members? Miss Jordan, the flat roof on Fort Meyers, how does that those dollars reflect that small fire that they had on that roof? It that's covered by the contractor. Now, realize it was it's not uncommon to have those fires in the parapit. They use torches. There's sometimes wood blocking in those parapits and unfortunately things can get hot and smolder. I'm not saying it's an event we appreciate h o occurring, but they do occur. we have currently extended our fire watches to four hours. That's not the norm. It's typically 1 hour. so we've taken action following that particular incident to ensure with temperature guns and the additional four. Now, we pay for the 4 hours of firewatch. So, to protect our investments and to ensure that doesn't happen again, we've made changes. that

106tax money is actually where we buy the materials. So when we get into a contract with a vendor, we do a deductive change order. The deductive change order means we now invoice and purchase the materials. They manage the materials, we purchase it, and hence we are tax exempt in the $76,000 is that tax exemption you're seeing coming back to the district out of the contract that we engaged in. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? All right. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. next is our policy review pre-briefing presented by Kathy Dupe, Bruno, and Benny Brophy. And if staff could just check to see if Mr. Persons has joined us yet through Zoom. Thank you. Good afternoon board members. Dr. Carlin, this is your policy review. You've had an opportunity to review the

107policies. Are there any questions or concerns? Board members, any comments, questions, or concerns regarding the policies? I just had one. It's not really a question. It's something I wanted to bring up during this time we were talking about our policies. where would it be? I saw it earlier. It was the travel and expenses. I just can't I don't know what what grouping that would be. Thank you. There it is. Would you mind reminding me if there were any changes in this or was this an additional something that we added or what was the change prior to this? This was just a clarification from Niola. Okay. I don't really have a question regarding policy necessarily, but I wanted to start conversations maybe in our one-on-one about the amount of traveling that the that we are doing

108out of county. what budget that's coming out of, how much money there is being spent traveling, if we could have those conversations. Be happy to have that conversation with you. Yes, that's all. Okay. So, thank you. Madame Chair, these policies will come to you again in a first reading in May. So, just remember that because we're going to go ahead and start the formal rule making process. And just for the members of the public, because we do go fast with policies that they know that we have in-depth one-on- ones with each board members about the policies. Thank you, board and Dr. Cron. Thank you. I just want to make sure with my colleagues that it's okay to pursue or would you rather take a break after the budget overview before? I just want us to

109be aware of time. Is it okay to go after? Okay. All right. Next is our budget overview. this will be presented by Dr. D Amy Desimmore and Kelly Lecter this afternoon. Welcome break down. Mhm. Hey. Okay, we're on point now. All right. Good afternoon, Dr. Carlin and members of the board. we have a continued update for you. We've been visiting every month since the calendar year started related to budget and our progress throughout the year. We've got a little bit more to share with you today. So, I'm going to turn it over to Mrs. Lecher, who will take us through where we are right now in terms of the timeline, some information related to school allocation and some information related to what we've gotten from the state thus far related to our current budgets and

110then also what we are anticipating in FY26. Thank you. So, I'm going to start with the current budget. we have received the third calculation of the Florida Education Finance Program. It took a while to get here, but it finally came. with that, we seen an increase in our FTE of 992 and an increase in our weighted FTE of 1,853. while that generated an increase overall, there was a proration at the state level of 7 almost 7.9 million. and they did the state did do an enrollment stabilization and gave us an additional 4 point just about 4.3 million back to keep the weighted or the per FTE cost the same at 9,241 but we ended up with a overall pration of 2,816. When you broke that break that down, our total funding increase in the FFP

111this time was 9,170792. Of that, the family empowerment scholarship increased 11,97,172. So, district traditional schools and charter schools saw a loss of 1,926380. I want to refer you to the spreadsheet of the FTE breakdown. I want to keep sharing this one with you. So I know that's been a question on our breakdown between the traditional schools, charter schools, and family empowerment scholarships. So in the 2024 com, it's very hard to see up there. I'm sure it's you also have it with you. as you can see that increase over last year for our district traditional schools is 1,6176.65. Our charter schools increased over last year 446.26 FTE and the scholarships grew 3,251.75. The next column shows the governor's budget. If you remember when I went over the governor's budget with you last month, I told you

112I thought that their enrollment projections were low, I was right. So, our enrollment projections that we have agreed to with the state at this point has Lee County growing to 111,917.43 for next year, which is an overall growth of 3,374. of that the district traditional schools were looking at probably about 914 student growth. The charter schools were right around 446 and the scholarships growing about 2013. Now these are all projections. They'll change between but this is just the way it was laid out right now. want to go before before Kelly moves on. do just want to reer reiterate what she was communicating with the third calculation in that in the original formula that was given to us in the FEFP in July right when we when everything was finalized in the original formula had the

113state continued to use that original formula we would have received some more money but because those funds weren't there at the state level we did get a proration or that is they cut down right the amount of money that the district was to receive by about in this slide about well a total of $7.8 8 million but because we had seen a small pration in July a total in this calculation of about $7 million. However, what the state did do in that proration calculation was because we had been figured to receive $9,241 per FTE in the original calculation we were able to maintain right in the new calculation at 9,241. Had the parration not happened, we would have had more funds than $9,241 per FT. It would have been higher, but that was how the

114calculation was done in this current calculation for October because of lots of factors around the state, including the amount of FTE that materialized around the state and the funding available in those education funds for this latest recalculation of the FEFP. So, I just wanted to make sure to reiterate that and stop if there were any clarifications or questions that anybody had related to that. so, now I want to go to our school allocations. At our last meeting, we touched on the school allocations. We went through what the process was, what the schools saw. now that we have provided them, I wanted to go over what we have done. So, we have finished our school by school pro projections. We compared them to the batch or the lottery that ran. we sent that information out prior

115to the release of the lottery information and the DRAs to the schools for them to review it to make sure that they were in agreement with the numbers that we had put together for them. We got some feedback, made some adjustments based on some principal discussions and then we went forward with that. We worked with the regional assistant superintendent and the different program areas to make sure that the schools were aware of what resources were needed for within those areas. we re we provided all of the schools allocations on March 31st, which included their D district resource allocation, their title one allocations, their IDEA allocations, and ESOL allocations. We then met with the principles last week at their principal's managorial meeting. We had open labs with them and went over with them their files. we

116if there was some issues or concerns, we addressed them at that meeting and worked through some things with them at that meeting, which I thought at least the feedback we got was that it was very helpful and they enjoyed that time to look through their files and have us there to work with them. I want to talk about then what does what does the school allocations mean? So we provided to the schools just through the district resource allocation about 633.6 6 million. That's an increase this year over the current year of about $26 million to our schools. That's not the only funding our schools receive. some of the other things that they get is they get some money from the educational enrichment or as we used to know it as the SAI or supplemental academic

117instruction. About 19.7 million of that was allocated to our schools. They get funds for equipment. So that as the school ages, things need to be replaced. We give them equipment funds. We have some things we call above formulas that we allocate to some of our schools. So our arts, we allocated an additional 1.7 million to our art schools. Our non high school IB programs, we allocated another 140,000. International centers, we allocated an additional 420,000. and our comprehensive high schools, we allocated another 327,000. These are just pieces. There are still other pieces that the schools get as well. These are just some of the big ones I wanted to point out as we went through this. So, of course, the work never ends. So, moving forward, we're going to continually working with our regional assistant superintendents

118and our principles on any issues and concerns that they have. We will continue to watch the school's enrollments over the summer to see if we need to make any adjustments based on some actual enrollments that are going up or maybe going down. on day 10, we will adjust the schools based on the kids that actually show up. So throughout the summer, we'll have students who enroll but never really actually show up at school. And so this kind of aligns us with the ones that really do show up at the school. And then we'll adjust again in October based on the actual students FTE and a projected February based on history that they've had. So if they normally grow in the second part of the year, we'll adjust them a little bit higher so that they

119can account for that growth that they would normally see. And if they usually lose, we'll be dropping them down a little bit based on that so that they can equal out for the year much like that is done with the district when we receive our allocations from the state. Then in April, during April, we are getting information from the legisl legislative process and we'll be we're reviewing those items for budget impact. on May 2nd, the legislative session ends and we should be getting our first Florida education finance program calculation. At that time in June, we'll be providing the preliminary budget to you all. we will again throughout the summer keep looking at those enrollments. in July we should receive our second calculation from the state and this one is with our final millage amounts from

120the state. The taxual information will come to us and give us our final millage rates that you all will have to levy. We will be advertising the budget based on the trim requirements. We will be presenting the tentative budget to you and then holding a tentative budget hearing in July. and again keep looking at those enrollments and then in August our students will come back to school. As I said before, we'll be making those adjustments at day 10. We'll be finalizing the budget in August and then in September we'll meet with you again to have the final public hearing and then we will provide all of the documentations to the Department of Revenue and the Department of State Department of Education based on those final the final public hearing. And so we stand ready for

121superintendent's comments. Any questions from the board? Thank you very much Dr. Desmormith Sletcher for always doing a great job and being very in-depth in your presentations and helping to enlighten us about the budget. so that's fantastic. Also want to thank you for your customer service providing those labs for principles and for other administrators to work through those issues in budgets and for being just available to them. So that's a really big deal. so thank you for that. I do want to highlight for the board as we started talking about the third calculation wanted to just highlight the family empowerment scholarships increased $11 million just over $1 million and while we are a choice district and we have been a choice district for for many many years I wanted to make a note that fees is

122having an impact on our district budget and it's why when you hear me speak so passionately about wanting to move toward number one in the state of Florida again it's not about at a girl or great job our team. It's more about what it represents for children. Parents have choices. We want to make sure we are the number one choice for our parents with our traditional schools. So, I turn it over to you for your conversation and your discussion. Thank you, Dr. Carlin. Any board member comments or questions? Miss Jordan, thank you for the presentation. Could you please tell me what the what is considered the international centers? I was trying to think of the schools. What what is that? So in we have I think it's three of our high schools are called our

123international centers and they run a special program for our Esau student population at the high school level. the high school is the hardest to when you get those ESOL students in those ELLL students at that level. and so they have these international centers that really help the students with through the classes and really like a hands-on one-on-one type of a situation, helping them make it through the program so that they have success and can graduate. Thank you. I was like, what does that mean? And then my other question is I was speaking to someone the other day and on the state site it says indirect per pupil funding. What is that we're receiving on the state site? Yes. On the state site where if you can the Florida state on the Florida site the FDOE

124and it says indirect per pupil funding. unsure if you can maybe give us a copy or show us or send us a link of what it is that you're looking at, we'll be able to answer that question better. Thank you. I mean, there is a such thing as indirect funds that we receive through the grants, but I'm not sure if that's what they're referring to in this particular thing that you're looking at. I'll send it to you. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments, Miss Giovanelli? Mine is kind of related a little bit. when we were in Tallahassee, I can't remember, maybe somebody can refresh remember who it was. the legislature was talking about unintentional consequences because when they the law I think it's how is it 1557 when the money follows a student technically they

125said they had as unintentional consequences and they were trying to they were looking at correcting that at this session. are y'all aware of that at all? That was something they talked about. Do y'all remember somebody said it receiving the funds? Is that her talking about? I heard it. Miss Ganelli, I can help with that. I think if Yes. Thank you. So, what had occurred, there were some conversations at the state level that when parents receive the dollars, if the children come back to our school system, how is that being tracked? And so, in order to have those dollars truly follow the children to come back, so there are some logist logistical issues and they are still working through that with the Florida Department of Education. Yes. More to come on that and I think that

126does impact our budget and that's really what I'm trying to bring up is the fact that so and my point to that is Tallahassee is working on it I guess is really and they've recognized that issue and I think it's important to note that because they called it unintentional consequences. They really did not realize that. And then so speaking of unintentional consequences, this may be a question for the superintendent, but I'm but it does impact budget, I would I would suspect or may not. with the new immigration laws, have we seen a decrease in our enrollment that would impact our budget? And do we anticipate that for the if we haven't yet, do we anticipate any of that for the 26 2026 year to impact our budget? Thank you. I Dr. Colin, did you want

127to respond or did you want me to go in because I'm happy to you can you can take a shot at it and then I'll follow up with anything else. Thank you. so within any budget cycle we do and we do have to take into account in the budget what happens if we don't reach the FTE that we project to receive or that we're being paid on. so we will in every budget and next year will be no different. Always set aside some type of reserve and in the budget book and on your reserve page it's noted as a reserve for FTE shortfall and which will set aside an amount that we anticipate if we don't reach our FTE projection of course the state calculation will come back right for some money that we didn't

128earn. And so we will anticipate that in next year's budget just like we have done in in budgets before this. the specific situation that you're referring to may have some impact on what we set aside as our FTE shortfall. the district does have its eye on that and is monitoring things like absences and our FTE reporting to see whether we see some trend there or not. But we will plan for that in any other circumstances inside of our reserve for FT shortfall. Thank you very much. Any other comments, questions? Okay, seeing none, thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you. I'm up here with two. So, it is 2:57. I'm going to call a brief recess. we will come back at 3:10. Okay. Thank you. and psychologists. Oh yeah. Yep. They work with our

129children. Good afternoon. Thank you. we are going to go ahead and resume the meeting and it is my understanding that Mr. Persons is now joining us via Zoom. We are going to have Oh, okay. fiscal responsibility action plan by Miss Dr. Amy Desimore and Miss Sarah Cox. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Good afternoon. Excuse me, Madam Chair. If we could just note the time of the reconvening, please. The time is 3:10 p.m. Okay, great. All right. Good afternoon, Dr. Carla and members of the board. we are here today to discuss our updates on the fiscal responsibility action plan. As we all know, the superintendent outlined various priorities and fiscal responsibility was one of those. there are action plans that each of us were asked to compile for each of those priorities and so

130we wanted to share a little bit of information related to the fiscal responsibility action plan as we have formulated it so far. So first we wanted to make sure that we were on the same page with everyone with community as we discuss fiscal responsibility to really talk about what the definition of that is. And when we talked about that, we really formulated about seven basic tenants that were that were surrounding fiscal responsibility. Of course, we want to make sure that we manage our finances to align with our priorities of it. It only makes sense that those things that we outlined as being most important are those things that we want to make sure that we put resource behind both financial resource, people resource, and all other kind of resource behind those priorities that we set.

131Second, we want to make sure that we balance our spending with our income. Now, of course, we know that as a rule and as a state statute, we must do that. We cannot necessarily operate in the deficit. Our revenues have to equal our expenses. and so, just balancing our spending, of course, with our income is a basic tenant of fiscal responsibility in our definition. We want to avoid excessive debt. That doesn't mean that debt isn't necessary at certain points in time, but certainly there's a balance to it. So, we want to make sure that as a as a district throughout time that we avoid the excessive acclamation of debt. We need to effectively plan for both the short and the long term. sometimes it is might be difficult to do both seeing as how is

132our funding model from the state and how things may shift and change from year to year. But still we do have to make an effort to plan for both the short and the long term in anticipating those things that may come in the future. We want to make sure that we strengthen revenue streams. When we talk about fiscal responsibility or balancing a budget, there really are two sides of that. There's revenue and then there's the expenditure side. we spend much time talking about the expenditure side of it. making sure that we are reducing or that we're being responsible where we can as far as the expenditures, but we also also can talk about the revenue side of it and how we can strengthen our revenue streams and in some cases be able to maybe pursue

133revenue that we wouldn't necessarily have. And so strengthening revenue streams is a tenant of that. we want to be accountable for and transparent about our fiscal decisions and our fiscal information. And so we have of course some things later on in the presentation that will speak to our action steps related to that and then also a focus on efficiency and effectiveness. So those are the seven tenants that we wanted to utilize to really identify or define what fiscal responsibility means. And we have on here that fiscal responsibility is a mindset because it really absolutely is. It's not something that you do, it's something really that you are. And so we are moving towards being that at all times within the school district. And that is not just the responsibility of everybody in the business services

134division but it's the responsibility of anybody who has purview over resource over human resource over fiscal resource over any type of resource that we use to get our job done in the school district of Lee County. And really in some way shape or form that is everybody. That is that is all of us. So, those are the tenants of fiscal responsibility that we wanted to lay out and you will hear us refer back to those tenants as we talk about our action plan and our action steps throughout the way. And why is it important? Well, first of all, we all know that's 100,000 students that are relying on us to be fiscally responsible and to be able to provide the things that are going to help the district meet its vision and its mission. So

135if we're going to ensure that every student achieves his or her highest personal potential, then we have to utilize our resources effectively to do that. In summary, the action plans and there are many action plan steps that go along with each of these major initiatives, but we wanted to ensure that we at least outline the major initiatives that we have within our fiscal responsibility action plan at this time. There are six major initiatives that we identify and then the appropriate or the aligning t fiscal responsibility tenants we have next to them. So, we're going to go through each of these six in a little bit more detail. First, we want to ensure that everyone is knowledgeable of their current budget and that we analyze what our current spending is. There are many action plan steps

136beneath this. But generally what's happening now is that we're meeting with each division and department to review the budgets line by line including special projects and positions and analyzing the current expenditures on those and that's taking place now in we'll also meet with schools to review budgets line by line as well including positions as you just heard in the last presentation Kelly tell us that the school allocations are the largest thing really that we have in the budget. So, we must analyze those. The timeline for that though is really coming up in October of 2025. So, next school year. We really wanted to start the process here at the department level and that is is what we're doing. And really it's just the analysis of those so that schools, departments, division heads, everyone are more

137knowledgeable or as knowledgeable as we all can be about current budgets, how spending is going and different ways, methods and means to analyze spending within each of those so that we can be as efficient as po as we possibly can. So that really is the goal behind that particular actions fiscal action plan and there are many steps underneath that. Second, we want to make sure to maximize the use of current funds and so part one of our major action plans and there are many steps beneath this is that we develop a process to analyze that return on investment and what imp what the impact is of programs and special projects that we are placing within the budget. We have had some conversation with the board already about some methods and means used to do that

138such as glimpse that we had a presentation on not too long ago. That was one of the ways that the district was considering approaching and one way to approach an analysis of of a return on investment and there could be other ways to do that. And then also we want to you know develop the process to utilize that information so that it is something that we are going on that we are doing on an ongoing basis. So it becomes really as Dr. Carlo mentioned earlier a continuous improvement process. It's not something that's a oneanddone. It's something that's incorporated into the process of creating the budget and then analyzing the use of the funds and the return on that expenditure. The next step is developing a comprehensive budget with stakeholder input and buyin. There are many

139different steps to this inside of this, but generally what we're talking about here is analyzing the way that we put the budget together, who we involve, how the communication works, and how we effectively prioritize the things that we will fund in any given year. So, one of the steps here we have is to centralize the grant allocations in the budget process. So that way we can better align our budget decisions and our budget funding sources with our with the district's priorities. So more centralization of that. We will also we are also in the process now of creating a new prioritization process for budget requests so that we can more more generally or more not not subjectively more objectively that's the word I was looking for more objectively assess the requests align them to the budget

140based on the prioritization process and then always analyzing our district level budgeting processes to make sure that we are as efficient as and effective as possible. again, there are many steps underneath this, but this is just generally the action plan within the whole fiscal responsibility plan that just kind of outlines from a fiscal standpoint what we are trying to do or outline for both the board and for the public and ourselves in terms of the next steps to be taken. Another one of our action steps is to maximize current revenues. as you know, we have limited control over our revenues. The state pretty much assigns us the funding through FFP. And then there's some other things that we can do. So, trying to maximize our availability and what we do have or can generate is

141important in strengthening those revenue streams. So first here you will see improving our FTE reporting process by identifying areas of weakness and putting internal controls in place around those weaknesses. Given that FTE is our main funding stream, those students being present in our schools, taking count of them during the FTE surveys, and that being what drives our money through the FEFP, which is our primary revenue source in the general fund, it's extremely important that we are ensuring that entire process is happening accurately. And that involves many many it's it's an organizationwide effort. We have a team here at the district level made up of staff from academic services, student data systems and our budget team that are meeting bi-weekly to constantly evaluate processes, make improvements, put process documents in place for our schools and work

142with various school level staff to make sure that the information going into the focus system is accurate to make sure we're maximizing the funds we're receiving from the state related to the FEFP. secondly on here is process improvement or new processes to increase funds generated in current revenue sources. A couple of examples of that is Medicaid is a big one. That's a federal revenue stream into the general fund in which we get reimbursed for services provided to students. Those services include things such as speech and language pathology, OTP, but it gets very expansive and we can start generating money in areas like transportation, social work, mental health services. And so that's another joint effort with our finance team and the student services team to put some processes in place to make sure we're maximizing that

143revenue. Some more lowhanging fruit that we're looking at, one that we've heard a lot about recently is the speed zone infractions. That's something that the city of Cape Coral and city of Santael has already implemented and we anticipate receiving revenue from that stream fairly soon as those speed zones went into effect in the last week or so. the district will will receive 10 or $12 per ticket from that. so kind of not sure how much revenue that will generate, but what revenue does get generated from that stream will be specifically used for safety and security, transportation, and improving student walkways. That is outlined in statute, and we must use that money for those services. And then lastly is, you know, with the growth of private school scholarships, last year the state implemented a law that

144allows us to capture costs that we are providing to those students. So for example, we could have a private school student enroll in a virtual course and we would be able to charge them for enrolling in a district course. So this is a joint effort between the business services team IT and academic services. It would require us becoming a vendor on the stepup for students marketplace identifying what kind of services we would want to offer what the cost of those services are and then just maintaining that through their website. So, another lowhanging fruit that we're trying to address to generate additional dollars for our kids. Next, we have develop a culture that continues to focus on fiscal responsibility and continuous improvement. As we mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, fiscal responsibility is a mindset

145and it's something we have to continuously talk about and reinforce with all levels of our organization. So, one step that we will take beginning in October of 2025 is a quarter re review of the budgets with our individual departments, and that's basically to monitor spend rates and analyze their expenditures. This is in no way a judgment of of what they're doing or, you know, as of quarter 1, we expect that they would spend 25% of their budget because sometimes that's just not how the budget plays out, right? but it is just making sure they are spending the money. what they requested through their budgets is what they needed and is there a time that we re-evaluate and say okay you know this thing that I requested isn't going to happen and we have an opportunity

146to pull that money back to reinvest in some other priorities. an initiative that has been ongoing for quite a few years and particularly with the new DRRA process is collaborating with school leadership, principal leads and the regional associate super superintendents on school budget, training them, master schedule efficiency and identifying allowable and unallowable expenditures for our schools. there's a lot of work that goes into the district resource allocation process. So ensuring we have good methodologies behind how we're allocating, constantly trying to improve on that process with our school leadership and our district academic leadership. And anyone who's worked in a school, you know, master schedule efficiency is a prime driver of allocating resources effectively. So trying to make sure our schools are doing that effectively. it's it's an art. If you've ever seen it, it's a

147very fine art. so making sure that they're able to not only you know have an efficient master schedule but the efficient resources to make that work as well. And then lastly for this step is reviewing processes and practices related to personnel expenditures. This is a large task that has been ongoing as well. A lot of this work is occurring through the Evergreen compensation study. and that work continues to go on. We're currently in phase two. It's through the work that we do every year with our bargaining units. and then this is a joint effort with our HR division, specifically compensation and labor relations. Lastly, as part of our plan is increasing public knowledge and trust regarding our budget and finances. If you saw on one of the earlier slides, our budget is comprised of almost

148937 million of local taxpayer dollars. So, we owe it to them to have their trust and make sure they are aware of anything that they want to be aware of related to our budget. The first meeting we had with our community business leaders was in February and really just trying to gauge an understanding of their perception and get their input on how we may be able to do things better from their lens. they have a wide variety of expertise and maybe there's things that they could share with us that maybe we don't think of to help gain public trust and just improve our finances overall. secondly, develop a comprehensive communication plan for sharing information with district stakeholders. This includes internal and external stakeholders. we kick this off next week and it's really going to be

149about who who we want to target, right? Each target audience would have a different level of communication that they would expect from us. teachers may want to hear one thing whereas the public community wants to hear something different. So trying to understand what it is that those different groups want to hear. Making sure they have access to the information and the information that we are sharing with them is pertinent and adequate. And then lastly is a monthly business update to the board. This is something we hope to have to you in the coming months. And this is an update that would share to you where where we are with the district finances. It will include things such as year-to- date revenues and expenditures cash and reserves and investments potentially highlighting some special funding that comes

150in a particular month. and just to kind of keep you in the loop of where we are from a business standpoint. So key tech takeaways from our presentation, collaboration on fiscal decisions is important. We can't, you know, run this business without collaborating and communicating and understanding the budget together as a whole. We all may not know the fine details of it, but overall we need to be responsible and collaborate and making sure we're we're making the best decisions. It is a shared leadership and accountability on the budget is critical. We have to question each other on things that we may find unreasonable and that's through some of the collaboration with the divisions and as you saw sharing the department budgets at a cabinet level. So there's that interdep departmental knowledge of what is going on

151around the organization ensuring we're not duplicating any efforts. data analysis. The return on investment will help us analyze spending and that tool of just generally being able to analyze upfront. We have to identify you know what our expected return on investment is and then being able to analyze that after the fact of did we get the outcome that we anticipated. again maximizing current revenue. We have a couple that we're tackling currently and continue to explore new new ideas related to that. And lastly, and most importantly, enhance transparency and communication with our internal and external stakeholders. So, with that, we'll open it up to superintendent comments and board discussion. Thank you very much, Dr. Desmores, Miss Cox. As always, a very thorough presentation. Really appreciate that. as Dr. Desmores and Miss Cox shared, we are keeping

152our eye on the ball. this is what we do each and every cabinet meeting. We go through, we make sure we take one of the priorities. We start to dive into those action plans. We look at company metrics and we make sure that we are continuing to move forward. We are laser light focused in cabinet on moving these these buckets of work forward. as Dr. Desmore also shared, fiscal responsibility is truly a mindset. I love that. I think that the first time I heard you say that, it was absolutely true. And that really is the mindset I know of our board. look at each and every dollar that we spend because those taxpayer dollars are precious and we want to make sure we take good care of them and we're good stewards of that. I

153also want to commend our central office team many of who are in the whom are in the in the audience as well as working back at their desks. we have tried to set the example as the central office team. We are not going to schools and saying you know we're going to take your resources. As a matter of fact, what we're trying to do is to save a little bit of money down here to the tune so far of just shy of $17 million that we are then able to reallocate toward our priorities which includes not limited to but which includes teacher compensation. So that is very very important. So today we look forward to your conversation and your questions. Thank you Dr. Carlin. Board members, any comments or questions? Mr. Ribble? I don't have

154any questions. I thought it was an excellent presentation and I think it teased up very nicely the next discussion we're going to have with the job descriptions and our new alignment that we're going to do here in the district office. So, excellent job and I can't wait to hear some followup on a monthly basis going back to do Dr. Savage and his his measurements that he puts in place with the data analysis. I'll look forward to those reports. Thank you, Mr. Fiser. Thank you. thank you everyone for your hard work. It's appreciate as well as for Superintendent Carlin for really coming in here and and setting that tone. We appreciate it. Miss Cox, thank you for bringing up the step-up program. I think that could be a real gamecher in this district. So, a question

155I kind of want to follow up as we look forward to the future of fiscal transparency. One of the thing we've talked about is really for both the board and the public really trying to expand upon access to certain areas of budget. One of the model districts we had talked about was Penllis, for example. they have a model a dynamic website that has a fiscal transparency section. In fact, you can drill down on each school within the district, go through much of the data from finances, demographic, all that stuff. So, hopefully towards the future, I'd like to be able to get to some point like that. So, thank you, Miss Gioanelli. Thank you. Excellent presentation. And I don't think in my eight years that we've actually had a PowerPoint that was regarding physical responsibility truly

156one. So, I'm very excited about that because with that becomes accountability and transparency and I love the mindset idea because it's going to be key for our stakeholders to have buy in and that's really important and that communication is also very important from everyone starting top down to understand the why. And so I think that's really key because with that the why with the to for I want people to feel comfortable that they're able to come forward and feel like and they understand the why and so for this to be successful. we really all have to have all by a stakeholder buy in and I thank you for that part of it and I think at the end of the day it will the results will be public trust and as well with the results

157of increased student achievement and that is the endgame at the end of the day and I just want to welcome back Mrs. Cox because you were missed so welcome welcome welcome back and welcome home. Thank you, Miss Jordan. Thank you for the presentation. I love their how positive they are, but I do have questions. I know that in looking at this, I still have yet to see where the 5% has been taken from in each department. I've asked for it numerous times. I have sent an email regarding it and this is a I receive a presentation. It still doesn't show me where the where the funds are coming where it now it leads to transparency and trust for not just stakeholders for board members as well. We need to be able to have that. And

158not only should we have it, it is our statuto statutory duty to have that. So I'm going to kindly request that again to be able to through the chair to the superintendent that I have that I am able to get that information so I can look at that as well. Thank you Miss Jordan for the comment and I have conveyed that to our folks in finance and they are pulling that together. As a matter of fact, as recently as the last week or two they've been sitting down and pulling all of that information together. So if it was very simple to do to just say these five things are coming out but we have a very large organization 52 departments and so we have heard you. We are working on that request and my apologies

159that it isn't able it's not something we can just turn over in one day. It does require our team working very diligently and I assure you they are working diligently to pull that together. So, thank you. And I appreciate that. And I know we I not I've not been asking for it in a day I've been asking it for quite some time. And as quick as it took to take the 5% out of these departments, it should not take that long to be able to share that information. But I also and when I'm looking at they're talking about the in the inter department knowledge. We're we definitely need to have that. But when we go into our next segue into the job descriptions, it looks like we are taking away that important knowledge that we

160need to have as far as the Medicaid. You mentioned Medicaid. How do we get the Medicaid dollars? Isn't it certain people that have to request that? Not just anyone here. It has to be what? A licensed a licensed staff member that can request those those dollars from for us. I don't think we just anybody can request those dollars. Well, when you when you say request the dollars, I mean there are certain there are certain activities that need to be performed correct activities have to be performed by the appropriate certified staff in order to do that. and then there's a a process, an administrative process after that where administratively we as long as we pull that information together and submit it to the appropriate authorities, we can request that reimbursement, but the services have to be

161performed by the appropriate people if I'm answering your question. Yes. So, those people, we have to make sure that we keep them on staff in order to have all of this take place. the return on investment, just everything that has been said. I appreciate it. I understand it. I am all for one team. Let's let's get this work together. But I think we have to really think about the people that are in these positions that do the work to get us the Medicaid in order for us to receive that, that we have to make sure that we keep them on staff to do such things, otherwise we're going to lose that those funds. and then the district business meeting who who are the business leaders if I may ask through the chair who are where

162do we get those from? Yes. So I've assembled a superintendent's executive round table comprised of business leaders from throughout the county. So if you have ideas for people to be on there certainly but they're an advisory to me as the superintendent. Yes ma'am. Okay. So it's an advisory committee. Okay. Let me just clarify as an advisory, not an official board advisory. This is an ad like an ad hoc type of committee comprised of business leaders. You may be familiar with that. We've done that in the past in our school district. And I think that's that's it for right now because the rest will be with the other I just want to make sure because I know when we just talked about the funds and we just on the next slide we're going to see where

163we spent 300 300,000 300 3,200 68 and $340,000. So, I just want to We can't say we're doing one thing if we're showing something different. So, thank you. Thank you, Miss Jordan. I'm going to check and see if Mr. Persons has anything. Well, yes. Can y'all hear me? Okay, we can. All right. first I again would like to thank the staff. The phrase I heard that makes me sort of excited is line by line. And I think that's been lacking, at least from our viewpoint. I agree with Miss Jordan. The more information we have, the better. And I'm sure the public also agrees with that. So long with Mr. Fischer's suggestion that we end up putting this online in the future would be just awesome. I know if other districts can do it, we can

164do it. So I'm excited. I feel that the budget is going to be probably the sharpest it's been since I've been on the board. This will be my third budget and just all excited about it. So, thank you, Miss Shaviano. yeah, so a few things to piggy back and when we're talking about having the budget on the website, I think that was one of the bigger things during the campaign, having to understand our budget. so to be able to work in that direction and be able to put this online for that view to drill in, I think helps answer a lot of questions when you can find it yourself on the website versus having to pinpoint all 52 departments. but the one number that popped out to me was the 937 almost million dollars that

165we have from our taxpayers. And I think that's the purpose of this conversation, right? these cuts are being done or these adjustments to our org at the district level is happening to move those funds underneath our district at our schools to help impact and drive up student achievement. So, again looking forward to what's going to be presented and the changes that are to come. again, I think there was a lot of conversation in the past that were topheavy. So, it's nice to see that we're working to write the ship and make sure that we are spending these taxpayer dollars the best that we can as if they were our own budget at home because there's things like Miss Dr. Carlin said, there's wants and there's needs, right? do we want to have it or do

166we need to have it? and you know how this plays out and how this comes down. You know, it's it's also working towards creating successes and driving up that knowledge in our district as we continue to grow because we've grown every year and as you saw even our projections prior our enrollment continues to grow. People love Florida. We just can't build our schools fast enough. and in order to make sure that we have the funds and we're able to do the things, these are the hard things that need to happen in our budget to move that money and to do the right thing with the money. So, I'm excited to see what this looks like and it being available to the public as again campaigning and trying to go through the budget book was not

167fun. so to be able to see it online and have access where everyone kind of have access at 2 in the morning when you feel like looking, I think is great. So, I'm excited. Thank you. Thank you. I don't have anything really to add as it was all touched on, but Miss Giovanelli, you're you were spot on that it has been a very cloudy situation and when I was on the campaign trail myself, I heard about budget almost as much as student achievement. So, it's a very important topic. I think it's incredibly important that we are transparent like you were talking about with our taxpayer dollars. And I love Mr. Fischer's idea about, you know, like a one-stop shop only for this topic right here for the public to view in on. So, thank you

168so much for the presentation. It's always thorough. I really enjoy every time you come, I learn something new. So, thank you very much. And I'm going to walk away with that same mindset of it's it's not an action. It's actually who we are. We're we're either frugal or we aren't. And so I appreciate that. Thank you. All right. Moving on, next is our proposed organizational change with Dr. Ken Savage presenting to us this afternoon. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Madame Chair, board members, Superintendent Carlin, and Attorney Dewo. it's a pleasure to be here with you today to go over the proposed organizational changes and to receive your feedback. First, we're going to start with the agenda for today, which is to start with the compelling why. Why would we be recommending some of these

169moves today? so to do that, we're going to unpack our current state as well as our recent performance. Second step that we're going to do is then try to really clarify the desired state. Where are we trying to get and how do we attempt to get there through that structure as a foundational support system? And then last but not least, we'll have an opportunity for board feedback, questions, and discussions. So, let's start with the present state, which, we're not going to go into great detail because as you all are well aware, you've adopted our current organizational structures over the past few years. it represents a pretty traditional hierarchical structure. one thing that sometimes is a matter of, really judgment in terms of different superintendent and district leadership is what level do you begin your top

170level org chart? So what you'll find as you look at other or organizational charts throughout the state, some cases they will start at really at the chief level. Others will they'll just have the superintendent, the board, the chief level at a very very high level. Others will go all the way down to as we do and many others do down to the director level. The reason why some of the larger organizations choose not to do that is because the amount of directors, the size and scale of those organizations become so large that it would look unwieldy. It would be difficult to navigate. And so our traditional structure as we move up in size as a district starts to get to that balancing act of at what point do you continue to operate down to that

171level of director. But for the sake of what we're going to be putting forward as a draft, we have maintained that structure so that you get really an applesto apples director and above comparison as we have done historically here in this district. But to before we dig into what's proposed, I want to kind of give you kind of a data visualization. Now I want you to understand that none of this data is new. All this data is already on our website. It has been for quite some time. Every year when we put forward our budget book, it's there. But again, as some of our board members have contemplated, the budget book, digging into it, sometimes it fails to tell a story. So, one of my special ways to try to help lead has to try

172to take numbers that can be intimidating and put them into data visuals so that you can see them. It becomes a little easier to experience numbers when you see them, especially when relayed over time. So what you have here in the orange line graph is our enrollment trend as as told to you through our budget books starting with the 2009200 year all the way through the 2425 adopted budget of the current year. That gives you the student totals of how we've grown over the last 15 years. What you also have then below is a green column graph. And that green column GL graph which corresponds to the vertical axis to the right tells you the administrative positions that we have in the district over that same time period. So you can see them visually represented.

173What you then also can see are these little boxes with percentages. Those percentages show you a yearover-year growth of the administrative units. So let's go all the way to the far left. The first year that we have in this was 2010 moving into 2011. And what you notice is that the administrative positions only increased.3%. So less than one so about onethird of 1% growth in change in spite of the fact that you saw that orange line graph move up considerably. It's a pretty big jump in students. Then what you saw the following year in in 2012 is not only that line of students kept going up as we have seen exist time and time again throughout our district. Meanwhile, you notice the administrative positions increased 6% in that year-over-year. The following year 0.9%. So for

174those first four those first four years that you see the administrative unit never increased more than 1%. Never more than 1% change in the year in spite of the significant growth in students. What I've highlighted for you in red, the boxes in the red are the highest five years of increased percentage year-over-year change in administrative units. And again, this is all administrators in the district. Comes directly out of the budget books for those years. Starting in 2016, the biggest jump that we ever had was a 3.8% increase in administrative units from the prior year. Then two years later in 2018, a 4.3% jump in administrative units in a year where the students really didn't go up quite as much. Then you see a few years later in 2021, a 5.3% increase in administrative units. Now,

175when it gets to these higher percentage, you can actually start to see the visual change in the green columns graphs until you get all the way to 2023, which was the single largest increase administrative units that we've ever experienced since we started looking at this going back in our budget books. So, that's a double-digit increase administrative units. And sure, it's true that students increased during that same time period, but what a story that tells when you see the massive increase in administration during that time period. Second year, still increased a 3.8 8 percentage jump. So you notice at this point the green column graph has surpassed the orange graph there. As in the past you could see it was always slightly under but in in those particular years it actually started to to go above

176that group. Meanwhile, from a performance standpoint, we have our overall district performance during that same time period, 29200. We were tied for third all the way to the highest ranking we ever had in the Big 10, which was second place out of the Big 10 districts as measured by our state accountability in the 2010 2011 school year. Since then, you can see has that performance ranking has gone down, not all at once, but gradually over time. Meanwhile, you see the orange raw count of administrative units. again, this goes across administrative positions. You can see where it started back in 910 all the way through 23 24. So, in a way, it kind of gives you a big X. And so, if our theory of action was increasing administration should also increase performance, clearly that theory

177did not hold up. So to to capsulate that in a nutshell back in 2010 2011, we were an A district. We were higher than Kier County. We were number two in the Big 10. We had roughly 82,000 students. We had over 5,000 teachers at that time. We had 87.39 at principal position FTE. At that time we had just under 41 administrative coordinators which are almost exclusively at the central office. We also had 30 director or executive director positions. Again, central office positions. Fast forward, we've increased 33% in that student count. Now, I'll you'll know as your earlier budget presentation, a lot of those aren't even students in our schools. Those numbers. So, that number is somewhat exaggerated because quite frankly, a lot of those are also that reflects students in the empowerment fund who are

178not students that we have to administer to that we have direct responsibility for. Both numbers include charter students and so forth. Meanwhile, our instructional positions have gone up 23%. Our principal positions actually gone up 1%. Not even a full unit. Meanwhile, our district coordinator positions have more than doubled, 111% increase from what were 40.79 all the way up to 86.05. Our administrators in the director and executive position have gone up almost double as well 59.5 for a nearly 100% increase 98%. So while our students have gone up 33% and that's again not fully true because some of those are actually FTE related to empowerment our teachers have gone up a quarter percentage you know 23%. Our central office administration, our school administration in terms of principles only because APs and athletic have increased but principles

179have hardly increased at all. But meanwhile, central office has more than doubled in terms of administration. Now, why am I sharing this data? This isn't new data as I said, but it's not data that folks talk about. And certainly in the context of performance, it's important that we take an unflinching view because over 15 years, this has been the trend. We've seen the students increase. We've seen the teachers and our attempt to try to keep up with it. We've also seen a significant increase in the central office. This information shares some of that information transparently for you. Meanwhile, these are our instructional positions. And you can see that same graphic that I set up with the administrator positions, when you look at the instructional positions, we have a big gap there. And unfortunately, even if

180we had more instructional positions during that student enrollment piece, we know that they're vacant, many of them right now. So it wouldn't do any good to add another 100 teaching positions because we don't have the ones that we have. And that's again a problem that this administration has got to fix. So what's our recommended desired state? We expect that we should we should expect as a district to become an A district again. There are over 22 in our state. We would like to be among them. We used to be number two. We've never been number one. Presently we're ninth place. So we have a long way to go. But we'd like to be first place in the Big 10. And that is our expectation. We don't start out to say we'd like to be eighth.

181We don't like to be ninth. We'd like to be first. That is the expectation of what we would like to be. And we'd like our leadership and action to drive towards that type of outcome. One thing that we've heard a lot of over time is excuses. We've talked about our changing demographics. We've talked about some of the challenges that we have and those are real, you know, but I'm going to give you a brief moment where I'm going to take you a quick story. When I was asked to become the principal at James Stevens Elementary, they were for seven consecutive years the lowest or second lowest performing school in the district for seven consecutive years. When I came in there, I came in with some of the most talented people that I knew, some of

182the best teachers, one of the very best administrators. There was a total of eight folks who who came to the school and tried to help do the very best they could to bring the highest caliber of instruction to those those students. They onboarded at that time the lowest achieving students in the entire district walking in the door. They were singledigit math proficient when we got there. Singledigit. There was no other district. In fact, they had the second lowest gains in the entire state of Florida the year before we got there. I say that to say they were our kids, our community. You could not have found a more deserving group of students and families and community that needed the best that we had in the district to offer. And the people that decided to join

183that journey were the very best people I knew. And what did they do? It wasn't me teaching those students. It wasn't me doing all that hard work. It was those people working with those kids every single day. And what did they do in achievement? They outperformed half of the schools in Lee County, the elementary schools in Lee County. Now, we had a longer day. Again, that was our different thinking. That was an ask for forgiveness, not permission. that was we had really high-c caliber people teaching these people, teaching our kids and what did they do? They blew it out of the water. These students who had a lot of the challenges that we hear about from our teachers that we hear in our community about well these poor kids and think about what has what

184they come to school with. It wasn't a shortage of love in that building, but there was a shortage of understanding of how to move the needle in a way that is expected. And as a result, after that year, not only did we outachieve half, including including one of my nephews schools, which was much more affluent, outachchieved half of the schools, including theirs. If we could do it at James Stevens with students who people believed could not learn to level in a single year, it could be done. It took away the excuses. We cannot live in our problems is what our superintendent says to us all the time. don't bring me these problems. Let's get to solutions. Let's get the problem solved. The reason I bring up that school as an example because you could not

185have picked a more low achieving school, a higher poverty school, if we wanted to make all the excuses in the world about what could or couldn't happen in that school. We could have, but the difference was superior teaching, superior systems of instruction that were put into place for those students with the highest caliber people is what moved the difference. Now, it's a lot harder when you talk about a scale of our size. But what we need to ensure is that we have that proper leadership in all of our schools, that we have the top tier talent in terms of teaching and support systems for those students. That is what we are after. We are trying to drive that piece. It is not fun to be the administration that inherits a doubling of central office with

186a dramatic decline from second to 9th over these last 15 years. It is not a privilege for us to have to basically get hateful stairs as we walk around shining a light on the facts of the doubling of that administration. It's not pleasant, but it is the truth and we have to own our results and we have to do something about it. So, we need to balance our support. We can't talk about supporting our schools. We have to put resources into our schools. You've seen that commitment with this most recent budget year. Higher value driven into the schools in that. We still need a great central office. There are incredible people out there doing incredible work. We are not trying to diminish that and we are not trying to get rid of that. But we

187have to take a view of understanding that we have to create accountability for ourselves in that process. That's why at the bottom you'll see we need an organizational structure that supports high performance and true accountability. Our schools are graded. Our principles have to walk into a letter grade. Our teachers have to go into schools where a letter grade does not define them. And yet that is the reputation they carry with us. Our departments don't get a letter grade. Our departments don't have clear state accountability measures that allow them to get ratings. They're not they don't show up on community boards that talk about what schools are great or not. We have to create that accountability through performance, through transparency, and through support. So, to give you a nutshell, you have a print out copy of

188your draft because I'm sure you can't read it on the screen. You have a legalized piece of paper that you have accordingly. We're going to go piece by piece and I'll try to be brisk about this because we've obviously gone through some of these ideas. but we wanted to also do a little bit for our public as well for anyone who would tune into this. Part of the sensitivity of why we have to provide you the frontload information is because when most of your budget lives in people and you talk about structure, you're talking about people. And that's a challenge because if you start to have judgments about different departments and consolidations, you're really triggering people on a very emotional level, which is to be expected. That's why we do it in such a manner

189as this so that we tried to meet with impacted staff, all of them, ahead of time, so that they would know that we're going to be contemplating this with the board today about this recommendation. That said, we're going to go ahead and start at the very top where we have our public and the superintendent and school board. Then we're going to drill drill a level down from that to the deputy superintendent. That's my position. That's the position I'm currently in. We consolidated a prior chief of staff executive position and a deputy superintendent that I could serve in both functions. And then what we did is downgraded in our recommendation instead of serving as a still an executive officer level of chief chief of staff. We recommended that move down to what we're calling a deputy

190chief of staff, which is a senior principal and assignment senior director level position. So, it's a significant drop down from the executive level. However, we still think that it supports our day-to-day function the way that we would like. Shifting to the right, the structure that we're recommending with the school board is that the school board retain a board auditor and a board auditor. I'm sorry, a board a board attorney and a board auditor as well as the two advisory committees, the audit committee and the district advisory committee. to spend a minute to talk about the board attorney. the contemplation here is that the board attorney retain the general counsel label and so forth. But to give you we're going to shift off of this for a second just to pull up real quickly. just a

191sample of what we are recommending in terms of the legal structure just as a for example. we want this to be one legal team. Under no circumstances do we want this to be two separate teams because the superintendent and the board are one team. The superintendent though elected by the voters is the secretary for the board. So while while she does not you cannot hire or fire her, the public can do that. She cannot do her job without you and you cannot do your job without her. Her job is to make recommendations and your job is to decide whether or not you find that compelling, whether you have the information you need and to vote accordingly. So presently our board attorney acts as both the board attorney and general counsel providing legal advisement to both

192the superintendent and schoolboard. Yet on the present structure the board attorney/general counsel is evaluated solely by the board is hired and fired solely by the board. But if you would have conversations with the board attorneys, I'm sure you have, she would reflect back to you that roughly 80 to 90% of her work and more more than that percentage of work is really serving out that day-to-day administrative operational function that really is the lion share of the organization. It supports the almost 13,000 employees and certainly the office central office. So what the superintendent is requesting as part of the structure is a similar structure to what we find at other districts of of our size near this portion. So for example we are the eighth of the largest 10 as you saw earlier in the budget.

193The 10th out of 10 is Pasco which is also an elected system. In that system there the the general counsel reports directly to the superintendent and the board has their board attorney in and that's in in Pasco in Penllis which is the ninth again. So we're all in the same range here. Penllis, they do have a board attorney and they have a chief staff attorney for the superintendent on in Pulk, which is now the seventh largest right right on the other side of us. They have a staff attorney that reports as superintendent and they have a board attorney. Although right now, I believe in Pulk, they are going through a search process to fulfill a general counsel. So, that remains to be seen how that works with that staff attorney that presently reports to superintendent.

194I say it to say one of the comparisons you'll often hear is well all the biggest districts in the state do have you know a general counsel or a model like what we currently employ and of course like Ker County even smaller districts did in the past Ker County had that as well of course they moved away from that model they have now shifted when they had a change in board governance and the big issue I just would surface to the board in those largest districts those are all appointed systems we are an elected system as Pasco is and so certainly in the ones that are appointed systems in our same size or very roughly approximating that size. This is not a foreign structure. So I want to surface for the board that this is

195really not a legal question. This is really a preference question of what is the board's preference and that is fully empowered for you to decide as the superintendent is due to make recommendations. Her recommendation is as such that she have a chief staff attorney that act as her lead counsel for advising these operational day-to-day matters. As a result of that, we would maintain exactly what we have in terms of our current office of legal services staff with the exception that two staff attorneys that two of what we call presently our assistant board attorneys would migrate as staff attorneys and that the other that our board attorney general counsel would retain an at one of the attorneys as a assistant board attorney and add the general counsel so that if she were unable to be at

196the deis it would be a clear opportunity for that person to represent that interest. Secondarily to that, there are rare occasions where the school board and the superintendent sometimes have to be represented differently. They are very few and far between of those occurrences. But when that happens, there is then a structure to support both those service services. So neither side would have to go to outside counsel to do so unless a group was conflicted accordingly. Again, this isn't a legal rendering. This is strictly structural recommendation coming before you today. And this is just one example. We're not going to get into the weeds on all these other areas, but we wanted to give you an idea of why what what was occurring below this level. so that said, we'll have a chance to talk more

197about that. Let's go back to the organizational structure for a minute and kind of work our way through this piece. So, moving down to the left, the superintendent's executive services. And this is again the division that reports essentially directly to the superintendent and supports the superintendent's day-to-day function. that would have that chief staff attorney that I just spoke about as well as the deputy chief of staff which we presently have the person who who serves in that same type of functionality today which is a person who's on assignment. you you would recognize that person pretty clearly who typically executes that day-to-day functioning. Underneath that area we would have a director of government relations which is the same position we have at present as well as a modified change our director of communications marketing public relations.

198The shift in this particular position really is to try to have more of an emphasis on engagement, marketing, and public relations. one of the number one areas of the board highlighted as an opportunity for us to continue to be better, and it's not inconsistent with many organizations around the country is the opportunity to better engage and better communicate. Not just telling our story, but engaging with our folks in a in a more productive way. in all different stakeholder groups, whether that's parents, whether that's students, whether that's our employees, whether that's internally within the central office, you name it. Communication is the number one challenge that came through that. And we wanted to make sure that the job description reflected that renewed emphasis on also really making sure that the district brand as we compete for

199those very limited budgetary dollars as you see as the dollars are continuing to be in an open marketplace. We want to be positioned not only to have the performance on our hand but to share that performance widely and broadly and engage consistently. As you move to the right in the strategy division, this is really what currently exists as our chief strategy officer. Some districts have also in addition to that a chief performance officer. We're trying to be efficient and have both of those functions folded under strategy. So that's where our executive director of organizational performance analytics comes in. This really is a chief performance officer which is all about setting goals and measured accountability for all of our different leadership areas. So right now our state defines our school accountability, but it doesn't tell us

200how to define the effectiveness of the central office. So we have to invite that accountability for ourselves. It shouldn't take a deputy superintendent sharing with the board and the public the trends of our student enrollment, our administrative units for that to be a complete surprise to everyone other than conversations. That's the type of transparency we want across the entire organization in our operational performance areas. We want to help our chiefs and executives do that and that's why it's so important to make an explicit function of the organization to become a performance-based organization means you have to have performance as a key aspect of your leadership team. Secondly, we've consolidated a two director positions that are presently continuous improvement into one director of strategic planning and portfolio management in this recommendation. Again, that's two functional jobs

201that do this work, but we are consolidating. As you'll notice, that is the number one way that we've done this work is a consolidation. We've attempted to take two areas that are related and bring them together so they can operate more synergistically and collaboratively together as opposed to separate silos that have existed and then sometimes work against each other instead of in perfect concert. We've also recommended the consolidation of our director of risk management and internal compliance. And so these are two present functions. One that manages risk and one that closes loops from existing audits. We see those two things as related. and you'll notice this with your board auditor. Your current board auditor is RSM. RSM begins their process every year by conducting a risk assessment. Risk is what drives audits. It's what you

202as board members are hearing even anecdotally. Risk is what drives our work at that level. And so, we have to have an operational function that is managing risk. we have really competent staff doing that work, but we also have to close those loops. It shouldn't take an auditor general or an RSM internal auditor to tell us that we have an a thing to close or a board meeting that this has been an open finding for four years. We have to have an embedded way of closing those loops all the time. That is critical work. And again, it falls outside of all the different operational areas. It could be financial, it could be operational, it could be security risk, it could be information risk. So, it's more global. That's why it's shifted under strategy. And last

203but not least, we have our senior director of school transformation sustainability. Presently, we have a director of turnaround. Turnaround is a reactive approach to school success. That says we wait for a DRF to do something about it. That is an ineffective posture as a school district. Our goal and the goal of that position would be to ensure that there are no DRF schools. That is their accountability. Their goal is to find all those schools that we know are already at risk of being a DRF based on the criteria we all we now can consent can detect and make sure that we are putting those safeguards in place to keep them from ever being a DRF as well as if if unfortunately you do have a DRF that is a really an organizational failure of ours

204that we have to own. That person holds that responsibility. Moving to the right we have our division of student learning and school performance. This is led by our four associate regional superintendents, each with an assigned region. And that was a shift we made about a year ago during this time to ensure that we had better alignment K through 12 and that we are not looking at just levels and individual schools, but really looking up and down those levels vertically to ensure our families are getting a consistent level of support throughout and our school principles are learning to work across those levels more thoughtfully. Additionally, we've migrated the school principles for special centers over to that area. While those support the entire central apparatus, we do have each regional will take on different areas of risk

205there based on on their ability to add value in those schools as well. Moving to the right, we have our academic and student services division. Again, that's led by our chief academic officer. You'll notice the first big shift that we have here in that division is instead of having an executive director only only student services, that is now more global. That executive director is over academic and student services. What used to be called academic services as a division is now academic and student services because it's important that both sides come together to support student learning. It isn't just how we support instruction at the top and teachers and resources. It's how we support students from the bottom up via individual education plans via all the support services that we offer. whether it's second language learners,

206whether it's students in MTSS services, students with with Phil physical health impairments, whether they have 504s, all the things we do to try to meet students where they are and help them attain the level of success they need. Below that, you have our four regional directors which presently only support student services. Our recommendation is they support both academic and student services. Again, seamless integrating those responsibilities to do that. Below that we have a senior director of student services. So what used to fall as just an executive director under student services that is now a senior director to try to pull that consolidated expertise forward because what we recognize is student services is a huge lift in our district. There are many needs. There are many specialized supports and they deserve the level of professional support

207that they need and leadership. And that senior director would allow for that piece to occur at the director of exceptional student education. Again, a mammoth charge, very very challenging area, but that has remained unchanged in this in this respect. However, how it integrates within the student services is certainly a byproduct of that leadership. The second piece above that, the last director position that we have there is a director of physical and mental health services. So, what this does is it takes the four educational mental health related fields and it brings them together. So, right now there is a director over three of those particular areas. There's a director of our school counseling. There's a director of our school psychologists. There's also a director over our nursing program. So, what this does is it pulls all

208those areas together under that umbrella, which is a comprehensive mental health support model, which had which honors all of those different dimensions of mental health which fall under all of those areas. And again that's that's aligned to a comprehensive mental health support model which again is huge for schools because if you were to ask anyone those fields they understand that for a student they have to be supported in all those different dimensions and families as well. That doesn't mean that those individual responsibilities disappear. So just because at the highest level of the organization you see a leaner top level organizational chart in in in totality what this will represent at the top scale is we're moving from 69 director or above positions to 50. That is a massive contraction. As you've heard so far we've

209combined a number of director roles with that combination. Those bodies of work are still preserved within the organization. They simply aren't elevated as in distinct silos. They are in organized areas of work to define that is a body of work that should not ever be in competition with itself. It should absolutely be aligned and unified so that they are truly putting students at the forefront and that is the expectation of leadership in those roles below those roles. So, so what happens to those 60 from 69 to 50? What happens? Well, you as board members in your executive content had backup material. What we wanted you to have in that backup material was as Deb as as Miss Jordan rather said, we want you to have the devil in the details about how we got to

210those numbers. When I say 69 to 50, how what does that actually look like? So we actually went below the level of director to show you all the way down to staff level roles of that entire unit adjustment because while this is a huge change in in a lot of people obviously we didn't we didn't create the central office size the way it is today but the net total difference in people is six people. That doesn't mean that all people have jobs. That's part of the unfortunate news we had to say. We had to let people know that they all have jobs through the end of this year. But we had to communicate to impacted employees, folks, we're going to be contemplating something that means you may have to apply for a different job. You

211may have to apply for a job that is a lower title than what you had before or we may be recommending your transfer into that job. We told them directly because we wanted them to have that understanding. At the same time, there are fewer positions than people. You can't do a cut of this magnitude and not impact people. But we minimized it to the extent that it was six total positions less. So what does that tell you? If that if if there's 19 directors or above that are gone, what we're actually doing when you rightsize is starting to build up a class. And so let me give you an example. In schools, in schools, there are far more assistant principles than there are principles. Why? Because that's the way the division of of leadership works

212out in a school. It's an opportunity for your best assistant principles to then be eventually become principles. You have assistant principal curriculum. They have specialized areas of focus. Here at the central office, what we had, unfortunately, was a significant number of directors and a significant number of coordinators. But often the folks serving in coordinator roles, many of them didn't hire people, didn't fire people. Some of them still don't hire, fire, supervise in any way, even though they made as much money as our assistant principles who had to do all those things. They had to frisk, they had to write, they had to write people up, they had to hire people, fire people, all those things that go into it. So again, there was an imbalance there between coordinators and assistant and assistant principles. We tried

213to rectify that with our salary adjustments. Furthermore, in this model, what we're doing is building a class of assistant directors. For us, it's about really building up that class because we have a very small pool of assistant directors presently. What we're essentially doing is building up that leadership class so that essentially we have a more lean pipeline that isn't a giant pipeline at the top, but really an opportunity for folks to progress their organization. So the structure as we articulated this in this vision is people have lots of different administrative roles such as supervisory roles but for us it's about going from coordinators to senior coordinators and again that's not based on seniority that's based on role complexity up to assistant directors which again now become what we think of today as directors which are

214supervising one functional area of work for us assistant directors become that new central management side level of leadership and then directors have to start pulling together multiple related areas Why is that so important? To see more globally. It isn't just about being the subject area expert as they are today. It's about absolutely being the person to see how one side fits the other. Because a superintendent, that is her everyday job. She can't take one side. She has to look at all sides. You build that capacity by expecting chiefs, executives, and now directors to also start to be able to see across those areas, not advocating for their budget in isolation of all the other directors. We can't. We give to one. or taking from someone else. That's how a budget works. If I give to

215you, I'm taking from somewhere else. The question is, do the do people recognize that? This helps folks be brought into that level of leadership and responsibility. Meanwhile, assistant directors are really upgraded for us as a level of being that functional expert. They get to take the ownership of that specialized body of work and truly be that absolute expert in that field. They build managerial competence and so forth. Moving on to the next level. Our division of school choice administration is led by our associate superintendent and again that is h that is flanked by an executive director for school choice administration as well as a director for adult career applied and curriculum education and an arts athletics activities and administration director. The other directors the early childhood learning and the technical colleges remain unchanged. we actually

216made a year ago the transition to allow for our director of arts, athletics, activities and administration to pull together. But I want to give you a little more detail on the administration side of this. One of the challenges we have in our central office is our principles have to interact with us and we are massive as you heard today 52 departments. That's a lot of departments for a principal to try to figure out how to engage with. So part of what we're expecting in this administration side is to help help the interface with all the divisions that move to the right of this particular area. So it's done visually so that the rest of these areas which all are very important in running a successful business and running a successful school administration becomes that opportunity

217to have better advocacy for better managerial to tools to support that. as well as we're also absorbing in this the current student enrollment area under the executive director school choice administration. So instead of that being led by a director as it is presently that gets absorbed under the school choice administration. So we rebrand student enrollment as school choice. because again in school choice it isn't just enrolling in our schools. It's about a great relationship with our charter schools, with our virtual school, with our private schools, with homeschool education, all the different choice options that exist. We want to brand and our state actually labels it accordingly. So we're really mirroring what the state has already done to lead the way. Moving into human resources, instead of having two executive directors, we're moving down to one.

218And we have three distinct areas. A senior director of employee relations and professional standards that include such thing as labor relations, our bargaining and negotiations, as well as compensation, as well as professional standards. The director of talent management really encompasses three different areas. talent acquisition, HR field operations and HR operations all coming under one particular area in addition to that man management function. And last but not least a somewhat new evolved body work for us working with the HR team was a director of leadership engagement retention. One of the number one challenges we have is to retain our staff. We can recruit and recruit and recruit but if we cannot retain that is a problem. Well part of how you retain is developing them. How do we lead them? Do we create a culture where

219people want to work? Do we develop our folks? Those two things are critical in retention. So that's a body of work that we look forward to talking more about in the future. In the business services, this is a significant change as well. Moving to the one executive director is the same. We would instead compress our senior director over business services support which would include the current functions of payroll, procurement, and financial accounting and property records. All that gets brought under that umbrella of business services support a consolidated function and a lot of that works support our bookkeepers. It also supports our business operation accordingly. Last but not least in business services a director of budget and grants and this really goes into how we allocate funds. you heard a little bit in the budget presentation

220before. You know how are we securing new revenues? How are we maximizing those grant funded revenues and being as assertive as we can to get more revenue to this district as well as how budget really is the plan for how we spend all that money. So pulling that together as we move into the information systems division big change was the executive director for IT operations. This consolidates a lot of our tech operations. So when you think of the physical hardware, the networking and all the basic foundational aspects that allow your technology to function or not where you we have two directors coming together is under our senior director for enterprise data systems. Presently that's a director of business systems, business data systems and student data systems. This is consolidated under the enterprise data systems. So

221it's all of our applications. So when you think of all the different computer applications that you run and all the reporting that gets issued out of those pieces, all of that function to support the actual functional use of the technology occurs through there. And then last but not least, the director of business intelligence, which again a year ago was a key new piece as we talk about information. There is no point in having information if it doesn't yield insight. Do teachers have the information they need to do their job? Do principles have information that they need to do their job? Do people here at the central office have the information they need to do their job? Do leaders have access to information that tell us accurately how are we doing in real time or as

222close to real time? Insights. Insights are the point of having information systems and we've not had that level of ex expectancy. It was strictly good enough to have technology and to have them running. There was no there was no structure to exist to ensure that we had that insight. that's something that we've pulled in from the private sector as well as through some school systems that are leading the way with business intelligence. Moving into safety, security, and fleet operations, we split operations into two different functional areas. We have our security, which is obviously huge and a top priority to our superintendent, to this board. People cannot learn if they are not safe. Employees cannot work if they are not safe. So, safety will always be her top priority, even before student learning. that is housed

223by our executive director safety, security, emergency management who also supports us through storms as Mr. Nuland did living over at the emergency operations center and the board actually has a person recommended I believe on the agenda tonight at the action meeting. The executive director for transportation logistical services deals with all the operational aspects related to transportation in our district. So that's both the white fleet, the yellow fleet and all the vehicular movement that we have from a logistical support standpoint. That is that side of the operations house. And then last but not least in our facility operations division, we are recommending the consolidation of the planning department which is a very small department into the maintenance department to a capital planning and facility maintenance. What we're trying to do here is to ensure that there

224is better alignment and data driving these decisions. Facilities are obviously a huge cost for us both to build them as well as to maintain them. What we want to ensure is that we are always looking ahead and that we are constantly talking about the schools that may be ending their useful life. Schools like Cypress middle that it's getting rebuilt as we speak. We want to be as proactive as possible so that we aren't waiting and then spending a lot of money because things are now falling apart or Riverdale where the plumbing had rotted inside the pipes and it adds a significant expense as you go to redo some of that work. and then we also have capital construction which again is all those major facility construction projects but it's not just building new schools. It's

225also any of the major complex builds that we have. And last but not least, food nutrition services. we're recommending that migration over to our facility operations here as well. and we've we've kind of looked at different places for this. but for us right now that is our recommendation to migrate that over here out of business services. we really want the customer service to drive that experience. We also recognize it is truly an operational function and we want to make sure that it's being run like a business as well. But we also want to make sure that it's not just financial only. It absolutely must also be driven by the customer. if kids throw half their food into the garbage, then what are we actually paying for? That said, that was the entire org chart that

226we're recommending for you. I stand ready to answer any questions you may have about any of these functions. Thank you, Dr. Savage. and I want to say a very special thank you to both you and our superintendent's cabinet for your excellent work on this organizational chart, which I call the rightsized chart. On the campaign trail, I will share with you that like Mrs. Fleming said before, you hear as much about budget and the bloat in our central office as you hear about student achievement and other items. it was something that I encountered for the entirety of the 13 months that I ran for superintendent. I will share with you that you all run too so you hear it in the community. there is a strong desire for more dollars to go into the classrooms. There

227is a strong desire to retain high-quality teachers and as we've talked about before on this dis when we have surrounding counties that pay more to their teachers than we do, we continue to lose teachers both south, north, and now we're starting to lose them to the east. So, I am absolutely committed to reallocating dollars. We'll save over a million dollars with the work chart that Dr. Savage just described that our team has been working on for the last several months. We will pair that with the $15.9 million in reductions and I promise we will get that to you as soon as possible. I know Miss Dr. Desmores is working very rapidly with our team to get that. So we'll have a pot of about $17 million. You pair that with the $3 million that Dr.

228Savage saved and we're looking at $20 million over the last year. So that's significant savings and we are committed, this is round one, we are committed to continuing to look at ways to reduce, not only reduce the bureaucracy at this district office, but to embed a succession plan, which is something that has been desperately needed. I was in schools for 22 years prior to my employment as the superintendent. There was a natural succession plan there. Principal and then assistant principal or assistant principles that is readily apparent as we walk departments. Sometimes you see an assistant director. Most times you don't. And so what really becomes difficult in that situation is if somebody chooses to relocate or retire. I did that in June of 23. Who steps in behind that person? Right now we do not

229have a succession plan. We were told years ago we had one. Every time I would request it, we never produced one. So here's our attempt to do that. we present this organizational chart to you as the organizational structure that is necessary for me to achieve the goals that you are going to hold me accountable for. It is very natural for an incoming CEO to develop an organizational chart that meets the needs of that particular CEO. Very common in the business world, very common in school districts across this nation. So that is what I'm requesting of you as a board is for us to have some thoughtful conversation about the needs. I think Dr. Savage did an extraordinary job sharing the rationale behind it. I know in the community, and I've received several calls since we've

230we've been talking about this from people that I've worked with over the 32 years I worked here, that oh my goodness, we're getting rid of all of the staff. There's going to be no staff left down here. Nobody's going to be able to do the jobs that are necessary. And as Dr. Savage indicated, we're bringing forward the directors and above board members. You have a worksheet that shows what we call under the directors, under the hood. So you can see the assistant directors, the de the coordinators, the senior coordinators. So in many instances while we have consolidated work at the director level and above, we've also provided assistant directors underneath the work to support it. So I would encourage you to do that. I look forward to your comments. I look forward to your questions.

231And please know that this comes from a place of not emotion, not personalities, not I don't care about people. I was in this district for 32 years. I have developed a tremendous number of relationships, not only in the schools, but also here at the central office. But it is not time to make decisions based on emotion. It is time to make decisions based on what is right for our students. We have to reallocate dollars. We have to get leaner. We have to make sure that we are using taxpayer dollars most efficiently. And this is the organizational chart in my professional opinion and my expertise that I've developed as a leader over 28 years in the school district that will meet the needs of our district, will meet the needs of our children. And I can

232assure you we will have more students graduating, more students proficient, and we will have higher levels of performance because again we are focusing on being a performancedriven organization. So, I look forward to your comments and your questions. Thank you, Dr. Carlin. Comments and questions, board members. Yeah, I just want to I'd like to have one one piece of this clarified. Looking at the legal team, one legal team, and I see it, we have the superintendent, the chief staff attorney. We have re reporting under that person we have two staff attorneys and then to the right of it we have office of legal services staff. Where does that block in the middle here where there's no line connecting either left or right? Yes. So I would like to address that. So we do not anticipate movement

233of that staff that will be pulled staff. So our expectation would be that they stay where they are on the way below organizational chart because they will not they wouldn't appear their support staff their coordinators their other folks parillegals but the idea would be they would not relocate they would stay right where they are but the idea would be it would be pulled staff so everybody would have access. Okay. Then I'd like to make another comment. I've been through a bunch of these right sizings in the corporate world with my previous 35 years and also in my university role post retirement and I think you folks have put a an excellent plan together. I think you did a good job of of finding like talent like titles and combining those so instead of having two

234positions you have one. And I support the plan that as it's verbalized. I just want to put it out there. I think you did a good job with this and I think we need to continue the dialogue with the people that have changed positions because we don't want to lose the morale of the folks. So there has to be a dialogue. We have to have open conversation with folks as they transition and support the people in new positions. That's my comments. Thank you. I'm just going to check and see if Mr. Persons would like to comment at this time. Can you hear me? We can. Okay. Overall, I like the new organization chart. it's not my expertise as as far as all the different departments. I mean, I know what they are and everything, but

235educators who work with this know what's needed and what's not needed, but the legal department troubles me. it's our job as the board to be responsible for all the lawsuits which can come from any department and that's a tremendous amount of risk and I just feel that should stay under the general counsel. I expect just like the lower pool to everybody to work together. It would be my expectation all the attorneys work together with the staff attorney and our board attorney, but I don't feel comfortable splitting up a team that's doing very well into two and two and moving around that way. So now I will say in the future if there does become problems I' I'd be one of the first ones to say we need to address this one way or the other.

236But as it is right now, I'd like to see the legal team remain the same. Other than that, I'm fine with the organizational chart. That's my opinion. Thank you. Any other comments, Miss Jordan? Well, I have a few so you can stop me whenever. with regarding the legal team, I am with Mr. Persons on that. We lived through the divide and when that when we first brought this together, I will say I was one of those who thought that was like the craziest thing to do is to bring it together. But over the years and seeing where we have come and what we've, you know, made sure that we were proactive. I just I can't see us going backwards. So to me, and then there is also case law that states that if if and

237that was with the elected appointed, it doesn't matter what superintendent, if there was ever a need for them to have their an attorney, if there was a disagreement, they would always have that opportunity. So that has always been there, it is there. So I would definitely I think that we need to remain in the office of legal services that we have at this moment. That is my voice on that one. But I also have some things about the organizational chart. Dr. Savage. I My question is when we're pulling away the Let me get my notes because I wrote notes and this is coming to new job descriptions as well. But we're pulling out the the physical and I don't even know what that means. If it's to me when I read I thought it was

238like PE physical and mental health services. My question is we keep speaking about safety. We keep speaking about what our kids need, our outcomes and student services and making sure that we are implementing all that. But when I look at this and I see the people, well, okay, not the people. We're not going to say people, we're going to say units that we've pulled out because I know you love that word unit that we've pulled out. They directly affect our students and they are specialized people in those fields which we need them in order to get have interns here from the colleges. is if we don't have those specialized people with those license and those degrees, we cannot get interns from the colleges here to help with our with our mental health and those aspects.

239We cannot get there's just so many things that we would be missing if we don't have them. So, I do have a problem with that. And not only that, who supervises who's supervising all of our psychologists and everything? We need those people to in order to be there for them. And who orders the testing? Because we need in order for our tests for our children that we have to have, we have to have these people who have their license there working. So where does that fit in? Are we going to find that one person who has all of those and can take care of the nurses who is a it's a specialist as well, you know, that has all that information for them, has the psychology, has the I'm just really concerned about the mental

240I'm concerned about the kids when we pull this all together and the outcomes. What's going to happen to them? Yeah. You know, and the support into the schools for this. It's it's a great question. u Miss Jordan. So, so the comprehensive school model basically addresses four different of the educational mental health related fields. One is you think of traditional school counseling. So, school counselors and how they support that. Another is school social work and how that is again one of the mental health related fields. Another is school psychologists which do a significant level of work as well. included then also is you know even though it's it doesn't sound like mental health it's that physical health. That's part of the reason for the naming was the physiological health. So our nursing program and so forth

241all those are part of that comprehensive model and the key in that piece is that none of that work goes away. So as you were mentioning that you know we don't want to go away from those things. Neither would we certainly we don't they all live technically right now under our student service umbrella which is led by an executive director for student services. So all those areas presently do exist intact. Now, in some cases, they lump certain areas together and others are not. I would say that from a model standpoint, they're all related services. So, they're all critical, but they are all, as you mentioned, specialized fields. We're not in any way saying that they we don't maintain that integrity of their specialized field and the support they need. What's different really, the only thing

242that's changing is job titles. in that case the works the work remains the same as we change a title to say that what was a director of this is now equivalent to under assistant director. So it's really a more of an organizational philosophy around what constitutes a director job. So if a director has let's say no direct reports they don't have to submit really a budget someone else is doing that piece. Meanwhile another director supervises hundreds of direct staff has to support that piece right those directors play out like very different jobs. Maybe one works with one small segment of of folks and one really has to has to support the entirety of the organization. That's really what we're we're doing when we're talking about these different titles is really making sure that when there's

243some parity among these titles in terms of level of responsibility, scope of influence, and so forth. What we're not doing is saying that specialized bodies of work, they're just they no longer exist. They may just exist under a different level of leadership than what historically here we may have been used to. So for example, over the last 15 years as we doubled our directors, right? And that's what we did. We doubled our directors and executive directors. We did not have directors over some of these areas that we talked about many others. They emerged. Why they emerged? Because there was a need, a body of work. What we're what we're not doing is moving away from that. The bodies of work exist. Now maybe in some cases they are they're multiple two bodies of work. So

244as the example I mentioned the comprehensive school model kind of helps to highlight that these are related fields and in fact they are complimentary. They work together and so all we're asking in this particular piece is that at the leadership level those things are seen as a synergistic positive effect as opposed to a separate silo that may be looked at to in a competition of scarce resources. and that's kind of the challenge we had even with ESSER funding and so forth was some groups getting some funds and others not getting funds and making sure that all groups get funds and have clear measures of accountability so their work volume is being properly assessed so that when you're responsible for all those things as it is currently in student services all those things then have to

245be balanced. It's not to devalue the quality of what is being done. It's strictly to say that the level of leadership in that particular role is inconsistent with the type of title and responsibility we're putting forward as a recommendation. I hope that helps answer your question. I I hear you and I we've had this conversation numerous times. I still don't believe in it because and that's my personal and that is because of the fact that when I look at the three you that they are omitted or minus so they're gone. Okay. Again, they may not necessarily have five or six people under them, but they supervise. So, where is the supervision coming from to supervise all these psychologists? And what we have one per 600, 600 students or 500 somewhere 5 to 600 students. And

246I guess there was a Senate bill that's coming out, a House and Senate bill that's going to be requiring us to have more. We don't even have those people. So, we're going to have to get more psychologists. And if they can't if people can't trust us as a district to come in, I think that's or know that somebody's going to be supervising them. How do we how do we fix that? How do we fix that? Yeah. Miss Jordan, may I may I interject because I hear where you're going. So, I'm not hearing Dr. Savage say that there will not be a supervisor. There will be a director of physical and mental health. There will be an assistant director of physical and mental health. and there will be a senior coordinator of physical and mental health.

247So those jobs will be filled with those folks that have the requisite skills to supervise to supervise and buy the testing and everything that is necessary the district cannot buy it. Correct. Correct. That's that's exactly right. So they will be they will be in that in that scope of work but we will not have instead of having three directors one director for physical health or nursing one director for counseling one director for social workers and psychologists will have one director over all of that work because the remember we're consolidating the bodies of work and then supporting that underneath will be an assistant director for physical mental health and a senior coordinator. So then we're assuming that the underlying people will be the ones with the license to carry the one that will be over them

248is what it sounds like it's taking place. Correct. There will be the requirements to fulfill the nature of all of that body of work. So I don't want you to think there's not supervisors because the director is a supervisor, the assistant director is a supervisor, and the senior coordinator is a is an a supervisor just at different levels of the organization. Okay, because when I mean I've been studying this for a whole over a week now and to me it's like when I'm looking at this and I see all the negative you know even trying to make it you know cross trainin let's see what we can work how we can work this I'm still looking at these three in units and saying that these units are the ones who carry on you know down

249to the district and support in even within our schools. So if we don't have those people and that person who's in charge does not have that qualification and we're assuming that all the underlying people because they're a great leader, they're going to carry them and lift them up. So let me give another example. Let's get out of this body of work and let's talk about budget or let's talk about planning and maintenance. So we're going to have one director of planning and maintenance with a supporting administrator underneath that. So, it doesn't mean that when you hire for a planning slashmaintenance director, you're right, you may not get all of the qualifications because it's hard to be a great planner and also a great maintenance. You know, I'm I'm not a I'm not a trades person,

250but I'm a leader. I'm able to establish vision for the for the organization in these two buckets of work. I'm able to supervise. I'm able to provide the things that are needed. And then there may be a content expert underneath who complements what my skills are. So if I'm a planner but not a maintenance person, that assistant could provide that support. If I'm a maintenance person but not a planner, then the vice the reciprocal is true. So I know what you're talking about. I see where your line of questioning is. I just want to I want to encourage you to think about the directorship is being reconceptualized as not over one body of work anymore. that is virtually gone. It's now a director over multiple buckets of work in a consolidated manner with assistant directors

251andor coordinators, senior coordinators under them which can be filled by those content folks you're talking about. And I did notice that we currently have seven chiefs. So the chiefs are still the same amount. The old one and the new one is the same amount of chiefs. So we didn't lose any money up there. So we lost the money underneath of them when we start pulling units to make this the cuts that is needed to right size. We left them at the at the same amount of people and then we went down and started pulling all of those and added more assistant assistant assistance to to do the heavy the heavy lift. I can I can answer that. So on the the backup documentation you have shows that all position levels were involved and now they

252get traded around. What you see represented visually is these are the distinct divisional areas that we've identified require chief leadership or associate superintendent level. So in each case we've tried to have a person for one body of work that really is that chief level of work and each one represents a distinct organizational component whether it's the overall strategy and performance whether it's the accountability for student learning and school performance of the totality of school supervision whether it's all the academic and student services whether it's all the administration all the basically the nonacademic functions of running a school whether it's the human resource side of the organization whether it's the financial side of the organization the information side of our organization or the two different operational sides which include safety, security, transportation, facilities of all those

253fees and food nutrition services. Those chiefs represent that the only trade that you could say really that came out of that was the recommendation for the chief staff attorney was we repurposed the chief of staff. So, yes, it's true that the numbers didn't go down, but that's because it was repurposed to do that so that the superintendent could actually have legal services that she supervises that she could evaluate that she could hire fire if it was insufficient for the lion share of that piece. That's the only area where she felt as she looked through all the different areas that right now she didn't necessarily have the ability to because she's accountable for all of it. And so we the team are accountable for that piece. beyond the chiefs then you have one executive for most

254of those operational areas which is that number two again we talked about succession. Then we move into combinations of directors senior directors which comprise the rest of what's on the org chart. A net total change of 69 down to 50. And we've gone through this consolidations. Again as we said we're not this is the body of work of where we are today. You know this is not the end of this work. this mindset of fiscal responsibility. We'll continue to look for efficiency every year. However, we did we doubled our administrative size over the last 15 years. So, I'm just trying to be respectful. At the same time, we had school psychologists 15 years ago. We had school nursing 15 years ago. For years, we had a coordinator that was over our entire nursing program. Disrespectful.

255The our times have changed on what the needs are of our students and for mental health or any of that. And we understand that for 15 years ago and I'm going to apologize to all of you up here because I sent an email to you letting you know that this was to me I did not feel that we would have enough time to speak about this. So I just want to apologize if I am going longer than I should but I did make you aware of that. So, but you have to understand that 15 years now and 15 15 years ago and today is two totally different things and we see that by our Baker act and everything else that takes place here. And then do you want me to stop now? Do you mind

256if I just ask if anyone else would like to comment at this time? Mr. Persons, would you like to add in anything? No, I'm good for right now. Thank you. Okay, proceed. Miss Toron, thank you. And so I just I really just have to and I have shared this with you, but I wanted to make sure that it is publicly known that I have a problem with the especially the mental health and our student because to me that comes out of student safety and where our kids need what our kids need. So to me, I'm always going to fight for those people to make sure our kids are safe. And the other is my on this the deputy super the deputy chief of staff. when Dr. Carlin oh when you first came in you said

257we would not have one a chief of staff but now we have a deputy chief of staff that's listed on here. So I just wanted to bring that up as well. and I I don't agree with this. So, and that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments, Miss Giovanelli? Okay. I'm going to piggyback a little bit off of U, Miss Jordan because I did receive some emails regarding the social workers and I know that is one that's a really big so mental health is a really is a big issue. So I agree with her. I don't want to weak weaken our social workers our social work department. Let's and I'm gonna I'm gonna trust in the process somewhat myself that if that department start is weak gets weak and I

258think the governor is going to put more resources there because that's one of the things we've been lobbying for is to help our social workers. So, I don't think that work is going to stop, but I think we could relook at this and revisit this if this is not working. and that would be my thoughts on it at this time. because they have a that department has a lot of concerns. I think they work very hard and they're invaluable and we don't want them to think that they aren't. so I just I know you've worked very hard with Dr. Dr. Carlin regarding the structure in this organization and trying to be physically responsible is really important and I know that's the that's the goal. so I'm going to I've got several questions and I'm going

259to forward those to you coming from that department. Actually, I forwarded some of them this morning coming from that department because and I would hope that communication can go back out to them to help them feel comfortable that they know they're still very valuable to our the school system because that's really important for me. Now, I want to talk about I will also like I said I will trust in the process of the structure. Am I on? Okay. I am but the legal the legal organizational chart the concerns me and I'm going to go by the fact that my decision is really based on experience and fat. I lived through what you're proposing to go back to and it was probably one of the worst times in my life personally because I questioned the administration

260on things that lo and behold an $80,000 investigation later became the truth came out and I had and I don't want to make this about me because it's not but there was false ethics complaints done on numerous board members. They prior administration and an staff attorney used a whistleblower weaponizing whistleblower protection which when in fact was not that as well as other employees you weaponized whistleblower protection when in fact they weren't whistleblowers. It was just to stop the process of the things that they were doing which were not in the best interests of students. I want the superintendent to feel comfortable and her needing what she needs to be successful. So, you know, the history in the past, we've come a long way as Miss Jordan mentioned, and I think that's really important. But I'll

261just bring up a couple other things. Like the county commissioners, they don't have a separate legal department separate from their from their their county manager. Neither does the clerk courts. Neither does the city council. They are unified. I want to be that one vision, one team. If we separate this out, we won't be that. We will be us versus them because that's the way it was back. And I can't I'm sorry, but I lived it. I can't go back to some of that. We have come a long way. And I see h how things are so much better. The culture is a constant ongoing process and we're not there yet either. I want people to feel comfortable when they don't like something that they can say something and we can respect that conversation and dialogue.

262This world today, no one respects what people say or takes value in who's saying it and what they're saying, whether they agree or not. And I think that this is very important. That's why I don't want to discredit anything the superintendent and you have worked very hard at, but I'll go back to I lived it and the experience was not what was best for the district. It was as y'all many know they witnessed it. It was it's if you don't if you don't know, go back and watch the videos cuz they're not even fun to watch and revisit. But it's it's the facts. I do have a proposition though because I believe that if you don't like something, you come with a solution. I don't always do that, but I'm trying to today. Palm Beach

263County has an inspector general. It's one department and everything rolls underneath that. That is an option that we could do that would put everybody together and that could that I believe would be the best structure for a legal team and everything roll underneath that because at the end of the day it is about as a board member it's about oversight and budget And I think with the having another separate legal team, now you have two law offices, two that impacts the budget. And is that really truly going to be fiscal responsible? Is it? I that's why I can't support it. I will support everything else, but I won't support changing going backwards on the legal team. Thank you, Mr. Fischer. Thank you. this is been very interesting discussion and we've all put a lot of

264thought into this. So Dr. Savage so we talk about one realm indicating that you know people thought a million people are leaving with a change of six net positions. What do you expect to happen out of this and what do you see in the future? Yeah. it's a great question. first, I just want to reiterate, I just really appreciate the board's, conversation today and just some of the feedback that we received. you know, I I think we wanted you to have that backup documentation so you'd see kind of the transparency of the net effect, right? So, while we've talked about 16, I'm sorry, 19 less director of positions. The total net position change was -6, right? So, that's six less positions than you presently have. it's about a million dollars. So, it's not a tremendous

265financial savings. That's not really the point of that piece. The point is to really set a foundation around if you're going to rightsize your district. Then you can't afford to have a extraordinarily topheavy type of organization. It's bureaucratic. Obviously, it's given us the reputation we have, not just out in the community, but even among our schools. There's so many departments they can't keep track of all of them, right? one thing I also just want to highlight on here is just the board attorney piece that was mentioned. you know, Miss Juvenile, I was there with you. you know so I was I was working that side I will also say just to give voice to this I don't know that was always structurally induced I would say that you also had a superintendent who didn't meet

266with you didn't have board member one-on ones we didn't meet with you so you were kind of iced out there so I think that was a little bit different the watermarking didn't occur from the legal structure that was the director of professional standards working with HR at the time so I think for a lot of the things you cited and you know I want to be factual on it most all of those things weren't really the legal side the structure what we're we've talked about today is strictly a structure that's reflected in again the districts that are around us. It's not in our mind, you know, it wasn't going backwards. It was this idea of we are actually trying to align with all the districts of similar size, which again puts us very much in

267line with Pasco, very much in line with Penllis, very much in line with Pulk. Those are the districts that are closest to us in size. All of them do have legal services with the superintendent as at least a function of that. Now, in terms of feedback, we do we would love some more feedback from the board specifically on that because we've heard individual board member sentiment, but I think I wasn't clear if that really meant the chief staff attorney. Was that something the board was willing to support? And the reason I say that is because one of the costs you talked about, and this goes back to Mr. Fischer's comment, was we repurposed the chief of staff to fund that chief of staff attorney that was done to try to be fiscally responsible so that

268you we were not adding any additional costs. we're taking. I will tell you, I do two jobs right now. I do and I recognize that. But this was so important that the superintendent have legal counsel at all times so that we don't have to call a recess and get on the phone and call an attorney who doesn't work here if there's something that comes forward from a legal standpoint that's there. That's what's motivating this, the opportunity to make sure that at all times this district, which has financial management, which has operational management, HR management, has legal management. And so while I understand the concern from the board table that you know the board of attorney works for you there's no problem here as I mentioned there's no evaluation there's no hiring firing there's no ability

269for the superintendent really to advocate at all on the quality of the legal services which is 90% of the legal job is not governance it's not policy it's it's really day-to-day legal support and so I just want to advocate properly for that to be more direct on the rest of the answers I stated our goals we want to be the first place district in our in our state of the Big 10. We want to be an A district, which has eluded us. We want to be one of those 22 districts that are an A district. That is the performance we're after. We want, as I mentioned on the other slide, clear accountability for every division in this district. So, it isn't unclear to anyone, not just the superintendent who's accountable for all of it, but

270for every division, for every school, the same clarity schools have. We want every area in this organization to understand exactly how they are accountable. That is what we are after. That is a huge body of work. That is our goal. And so this structure sets us on that on that tone of trying to create clear accountability and performance for the entire organization and clear accountability for chiefs, executives, directors, and everyone else. Dr. Savage, I appreciate that. I'm going to talk in in broad terms about the organization chart separating out the legal team. you asked us a little less than a year ago. this is really part two. and you asked us to trust you but to verify in regards to your academic structure changes and I believe we'll see in a couple years that especially

271the change with the regional associate superintendent I think that will be a smashing success and as I said I think that will be one of the major major things that I appreciate that you were able to accomplish that I hear day in and day out and I look forward to seeing the data over the next couple years that will support that. I trust you in that and what I see with this is again is continuing on second part of that is really doing what is best for the district. I appreciate that and individually I will give that trust but we will verify with superintendent Carlin and yourself that I believe this structure will work in that way and will support the success. I would have I would argue that I would ask you guys to

272continue to look what further revisions could be made that in the future because we really need to make sure we're out there supporting the schools. It's nothing about the people. We have some amazing people, but when it comes down to who is in direct contact with those kids daily and that is what our goal needs to be. We have many talented professionals. I appreciate them. But I would ask you to continue pushing on that both of you. I think it's fantastic and I said just even the just over these past school years of watching the change in academic services and how they've stepped it up and how they're communicating with the principles along with the regional associates, I think it's been fantastic and I'm looking forward to seeing, you know, as I said, the results

273as we look back in future years. So, legal department I share the, distinct pleasure of not only having being a board member but as an attorney. So, this one I have to put two hats on. So, under two superintendents prior, when I first came in here, I made it known that I believed it would be in the superintendent's best interest, it's nothing I haven't said to legal counsel before, to have their own attorney. there has been situations, including last year, that about a year ago in fact, that was prudent. you being constitutional officer, I don't feel it would be good in our purview to deny you having your own attorney. I do agree with what the others are saying though. I'm not willing to take that leap to go anything beyond that at the moment.

274So I'm open to seeing how things go down the line, but I'd like to see how that first works first. So I as I said, I appreciate our legal team and as I said, I'll go that first step on it, but I want to see where we go with that. So, I know where you're coming from. You're trying to do what is in the best interest of school districts. I'm looking at from the board's standpoint. So, but I want to thank you both and everyone for your hard work. Thank you, Miss Giovenelli. I have to correct you with all due respect, Dr. Savage, because the prior chief staff attorney was involved in my false ethics complaint and said I violated policy when in fact I did not. So, that was critical and that's what he

275in that's what he testified in my investigation which I gave you a copy of to give to the superintendent a couple weeks ago. So, he was involved with things that weren't that was against the actually against the law because he's not supposed to investigate and board members. So, and then I do have a question regarding the legal team structure. Do we have five attorneys at this time? Would you be would what was she wanting to move over or hire a new at hire her own hire another attorney? That's really my question. Yes, this was no additional addition other than hiring a chief staff attorney, which was a repurposing of the chief of staff position into that from an executive officer level to that. the board attorney general counsel presently has three assistant board attorneys. One

276that's deployed predominantly in academic services, one that's predominantly deployed in HR and one that is deployed across the operation which is supports all the business services as well as the other operational functions. Thank you. also there's an attorney general opinion out there that recommends the way we have it presently and that's the other reason why I will lean towards the attorney general opinion and that's the recommendation from the attorney general and that's all standing strong on as well. Thank you, Mr. Rebel. Yeah, I don't want to belver this, but I do want to make a point. I want to support what Sam said earlier, what Mr. Fischer said about the four regional superintendents. I thought that was a great move and I based that on how corporations work and that's my experience when I ran

277for this position. I wanted to bring the business acumen into this. Now we have different customer rather than somebody that receives a package in this business. We have the students. They're the internal customer. So that's the person we need to serve. But in corporate America, you don't have a CEO. You don't have an attorney for the CEO. You have one general counsel, one team of litigators that cover the whole operation. Now, out of that pack of litigators, is there a person signed to work with that CEO? Absolutely. But the umbrella falls under one general counsel, and that's the concept I like to see in place here. in this case, our superintendent wants to have have a person that she can work with. I have no problem with that. I just have a problem with the

278umbrella. The way the way I look I've been around the district now for five years working on different committees and I've worked with the president chief general counsel and I think she does an excellent job and I totally support her and I support that concept. Those are my comments. Thank you Mrs. Shaviano. Yeah, I'm not going to beat the dead horse on that. I'll go back. if you can go to slide five for me. Yes, ma'am. Please. Yep. I think it's slide five. Mine weren't numbered. Thank you. so when we're talking about the reorg and the structure and the and the top heavy bureaucracy and all the things. I like numbers in the black and white. So looking at 2022 when you look at our admin structure top position that's when you kind of saw

279the shift after 23 24 25 then when you go to slide seven and you're going to our instructional staff it flipped right so for me I'm sorry next one there you go so for me you know when we talk about our student achievement we talking about supporting the boots on the grounds the ones in the classrooms doing the work. That's a miss. And right sizing the ship, doing that or change, working toward improving this model of putting the money back to where it needs to be in the schools and in the classrooms. That's where I stand with this org chart and this structure. So, I fully support where these changes are as far as the condensing and all those ends. On the legal piece, I support and I'm in line with Mr. Fischer's recommendation where

280if the superintendent is inclined to, you know, want that chief of staff attorney on her side, I understand and I can see where even at the best and it's nothing against with our board attorney to have to hover both sides is is difficult for me when you're trying you can't answer to two masses, but you can't fully support one or the other. So, where it comes to that chief staff attorney, I understand the need and the intent for the superintendent and you know, to Mr. Fischer's point to see how that works thereafter. It's fine. I think that the people that we have on this team do an amazing job. from what I've seen in my interactions with them you know in my limited ability from you know since November they're very engaged but they do

281do the operations. They are working in the operations piece of the school. So that's that's my piece where they are doing the operational work that falls under their superintendent. so again, I support with that chief of staff attorney. as far as the rest of the umbrella and the structure, I guess if we that has to go down the line, that's fine. But again, supporting that or chart and that chief of staff attorney, that's where I sit. Thank you. I'll just be as quickly as I can. so when I was looking at I've had a couple of, you know, days to let this all marinate also. And what I keep thinking is not so much about I mean it's very important who answers to who but I put my teacher hat back on and I was

282an educator in this district in 2010. and I have seen exactly what this chart is displaying. but I've seen it in real time not just on numbers. teachers leaving the district, morale going, I mean morale at a significant low of all time. which impacts our students. When we have unhappy teachers, we have unhappy students. we have been very topheavy. Unfortunately, the last three years it's been I mean that blew my mind. but like Miss Shaviano pointed when you go to the next slide, slide seven. So, we've gone up in students, but it's like all we talk about is how important students are and that's the reason why we're here. That doesn't display that mindset on that on that chart. And then if you go to it must be slides eight 10 maybe they're they're not

283numbered. I mean, we all want to be number one. I I'm not settling for second best. I hear all the time about, well, this was good and this was working. Good's not my benchmark. Why aren't we settling for great? Because I'm not settling for good. And we I am just of the mindset we cannot continue to do the same thing. There's a name for that and expecting different results. And that is what this chart is saying we have been doing. I'm just going to put on the record a couple of things about the org chart. I completely support it. The only thing I'm a little concerned about is underneath the associate superintendent, the director of arts, athletics, activities, and administration. I'm a I'm just a little concerned that is a huge lift for one person.

284So, we have such amazing athletes. So, we have a lot of those activities going on in the district and a lot of employees and volunteers that fall underneath that. We also have amazing arts and m and m, you know, musicians and we have all these events, all these teachers and all these students and volunteers that help run, you know, marching band days take 20 volunteer adults to run, you know, so that I'm just a little concerned about that being one person's job. but you spoke about a succession plan and and and I know that you're going to work on something like that. So that way maybe that does divide in two eventually because it sounds to me like this is a living breathing document. That's kind of why I need I'm trusting both of you

285know you I'm trusting the team that this is going to benefit our students. Miss Jordan's right, our mental and physical health of our students falls under the safety umbrella regarding that piece you spoke about earlier. to me, as a board member, it's my job to continue to hold the superintendent and her staff's feet to the fire when it comes to this piece. I am not an expert in the in the mental and emotional health of students. So, but I know that we have them. So, that part I'm trusting. And, you know, I actually I do agree with Mr. Fischer about the, one legal team. I think it's important that our superintendent have someone she can trust, he or she, because, let's face it, this is an elected position and this won't always be the same

286people up here. Same thing with the board. So, I'm kind of thinking about into the future, not the right here and now. because I trust this board and I think we work very well together, but I'm thinking about the future if something were to change here and and down on the other end. So, I completely support the chief of staff for the chief of staff attorney for the superintendent. I agree with Mr. Fischer. Maybe we, you know, we see how this plays out. and I just really appreciate the heavy lift on this because this is no light work and I know this went well past well past the working hours here at the district. So I think you should be very proud of this. I think we're this is a great start and those are

287my comments. Anyone else? Okay. All right. Thank you, Dr. Savage. Next up is going to be job descriptions with Susette Rivera. She will be presenting that to us. I just want to note it is 5:16 p.m. and we still have public comment. I'll stay in case of substantive. I'll be right just if you want to say something. Good afternoon everyone. so we had for you several job descriptions for your review. So right now we're here to answer any questions that you may have at this time. Dr. Carlin, do you have anything at this time? I do not. We just look forward to your conversation and your questions. Okay, board members, Mr. Persons, I'll ask you first. Would you like to weigh in on the job descriptions? no, not at this time. I'm I'm fine. Okay.

288Thank you. Anyone else, Miss Jordan? Well, again, it's the director of physical and mental health. So, we've already spoke about that kind of with the with the organizational chart. I still have concerns regarding these job descriptions, and I want to make sure that and I'm sure we all understand this. Once we approve these job descriptions, they can hire anybody can be hired at the minimum the minimum qualifications. And I wish that we would increase our minimum qualifications because if you look at some of these and I think that and I'm not sure if I am correct on that the senior coordinator for physical and mental health I don't know if the if the bachelor's is what they need in order to supervise or if they have to have a master's. So that would be a

289question because I believe they have to have a master's degree in order to supervise anyone in those fields. And that's the same with the assistant director for the physical and mental health services as well. And they also that's what they need as well is a bachelor's degree. And I know there's the we have the HIPPA and everything else that we have to be concerned about. And that again is something that is not in here anywhere in these job descriptions. And I'll take a stab at it first and then then Mr. River can add in anything that I may be omitting. So I pulled up so I could see director assistant director senior coordinator of mental health and physical physical mental health related services. Again, the structure as we kind of talked about earlier is that

290the director is ultimately the one responsible for pulling all that together. The minimum qualifications provides for that flexibility for that director. Bless you. that for whoever it is that as they assess their skill set, knowing that these represent a lot of diverse varied areas within those fields that each one of them is a specialized area, but the leader has to be the one to pull it all together and ultimately provides a strategic direction for that area. those other folks whether it's in the senior coordinator or the assistant director really become a part of that team. It's really a leadership team to support the function of that entire department which pulls together all those different areas under that comprehensive school mental health model. So that said, let's say that you hired a person who was an

291expert in school psychology as the director. They would already have that really strong skill set. So they may decide to in the totality of offerings to have a qualified person at the senior coordinator level to help facilitate expertise related to nursing as we did in this district for many years. again I remember the person who did it was at a coordinator level and that happened and then maybe the assistant director becomes someone who features more of a school counseling and social work background. It really depends. But again similar in our schools when we lead schools we all have different strengths. We all bring different expertise. Dr. Carl, myself, we're good at different things. You make sure that your team is really the one responsible for that work. The minimum qualifications are just that. They are

292minimums. What we have found is we've had folks come from non-traditional candidate pools from different areas and they end up becoming some incredible highc caliber people. They didn't necessarily come through the field of education. And so it really allows for that minimum qualification, but at the end of the day, the superintendent is accountable for all the results that we get in this particular area. That's that is her accountability. So every recommendation she brings forward to you whether they meet the minimum calls or not, she brings forward candidates who sometimes don't and then it requires the board to vote accordingly, she's still accountable for the results no matter what. so I just want to kind of surface that just generalized piece that the job description gives you. It helps applicants understand what we're looking for from

293a qualifications. It helps HR get that initial screening so that we aren't having unqualified people who don't meet those. but at the same time it also depending on the screening procedure utilized helps to enhance for people who who far exceed those to elevate those candidates but ultimately becomes a function of that hiring process. M anything you want to add? Nothing can add now. So we would not want to put anything in there. We would not want to put anything in these job descript and again I understand that she's that the superintendent is accountable. However, we as the board are accountable for creating these and approving these because then it's on us for because we have done that and we said, "Okay, yes, we all agree with this. These are wonderful. Here you go. Now, we'll

294hold you accountable." So, with that, there's nothing in here about the like the Medicaid. There's nothing in here about any of those that would pertain to any of these jobs. Do we just leave that blank and assume that everybody knows that? U are you had a specific concern about Medicaid. It's my understanding. Well, Medicaid is another part of this, right? I'll just go ahead and pull the director first. I I actually Googled a lot of these. yeah, again it's a very I mean obviously the area represents the entirety of educational mental health related field as well as our physical health side of this physiological health. It it you could not it's hard to pick a more complex body of work. It's substantial. I mean, you could pick just one of them. The physical health related

295to nursing, that in of itself would be substantial. no one's diminishing any of that. What we're saying essentially is this is designed to communicate to your prospective employees what is this job? What are the what are the credentials looking for? Then in those interview questions, they're developed really to try to ascertain what's is it have the requisite level of knowledge that I want to put a recommendation forward to this board. And that's essentially what what this represents. It's it should describe the body of work. it's not always going to get to a level of granularity. That's a matter of again style. I hate to say that. You know, I've looked at a lot of different school district job descriptions. Some go very light and they just are very essentialist. They're one page. Others are very

296robust and have four to six pages that spell out much more detail. It really is a stylistic preference. The the difference here is the body of work. I think it's pretty clear to you, clear to us. and that's really essentially what to the hiring manager would have to also be very clear. Please add any money. My the next one is the director of budget and grants. In that job description, the summary and the minimum qualifications, it says nothing about understanding or knowing anything about grants. It does and minimal. It does and minimal. Yes. In item two, it does say eight years of full-time progressively experienced both in budgeting, finance, grants. I apologize. Forget see I made a mistake. I can say that. Oh, and who do they respond? Who do they answer to? Who's the

297design who's a designated person for them for the director of budget and grants? Yes. that is the really a discretion of the CFO. So, that's one of it's a great question just in general for all the board members. The executive director positions that come forward, those report to the C to their their respective chiefs. they have the discretion of whether they'd want to assign them over a particular area like for example right now in business services they don't they don't compartmentalize a director under an executive that allows that executive a more global function however in some cases they may choose to do that's a matter of the discretion of the chief of how they want to organize their body of work and that could be sometimes functionally based on the expertise and the example I'll

298give you is a student services area that you've articulated depending on the expertise of the individuals in those various leadership roles they may very want they may very want to segregate a area of responsibility much in the present silo nature of the way we organize or they may want more global understanding to say no I you may have that expertise but ultimately you're going to be a consultative expert to that person you're not going to supervise those people you'll provide that kind of expertise it really it depends on on ultimately who serves in those functions and how they want to organize it and that's no different to be honest of any of our schools or departments presently thank you and the assistant director human resource operations Why would we take down the minimum qualifications from

2998 years to 6 years? That would go in line more with our other assistant directors. That's specifically why we did that one that way. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I do know that we need to get to public comment and I don't know if we want to maybe Well, this is something this is the problem that we have with these job descriptions. They're on our agenda for tonight for us to vote on. So I will be pulling them because I will not be able to vote on these because we do not have adequate time to to speak about it because of the time constraint and this is what happens when we pulled one meeting together. So I thank you so much but I do want to hear what everybody

300has to say. Okay. So just note that this item will be pulled. I know that traditionally we try to email each other but I just want to note that. But let's go ahead and move on to public comment. And just for the timing situation because it's 5:26 and we do have a student performance tonight. So they usually start kind of filing in around 5:30. So we can go ahead and start with the public comment and hopefully the kids will have enough time to set up but we may be running a little bit behind. They won't be able to set up exactly at 5:30. So let me go very quickly. Thank you madam chair. Okay. school board policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this

301meeting's agenda. If you completed a public comment card, please provide it to staff. Public comment will be held at the podium in the center aisle and front. Please be advised that the board will not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers. Abuse of language defined as swearing, use of profanity, or name calling is prohibited. Speakers who fail to follow proper decor in the chambers will be ruled out of order. Any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone per board policy 0169.1 and may be removed from the chambers. There will be one warning. Per board policy 0169.1. The time per speaker is 3 minutes. If there are 20 or less, you will find a countdown on the big screens in the front of the room. Once your time is

302elapsed, the microphone will automatically shut off. Please state your name when you approach the microphone. I will call you five speakers at a time. U Madame Chair, there are eight individuals that would like to address the board. Proceed. Will the following individuals please line up? And just to make sure there's nobody else in the audience that would like to address that didn't fill out a public comment card. Okay. If you could Okay. I will call Christy Ricor, Robin Clark, Monica Papaardo, Camila Freed, and Emma Brulard. And if you can please step to the microphone, Miss Ror, just one at a time. If you can the Yeah, if you can stay back there and we just have one speaker at a time at the podium, please. good afternoon for I guess evening as it is. and

303let's wait for the clock to come on so you can get your full 3 minutes. Okay, there you go. Okay. good afternoon. My name is Christy Por. This is my 26th year with the school district and it is the first time my colleagues and I have ever felt inclined to discuss district changes with the board. we are worried about the potential changes that student services will harm our children. Florida defines your student services as your school counselors, your school social workers, your school nurses, and your school psychologists. Our county organizes school counselors as schoolbased staff. They report to and are evaluated by school principles. But we have always organized our school social workers, nurses, and psychologists as district staff. Psychologists are obligated to serve all children, whether they are enrolled in public school, charter school,

304private school, or homeschooled. All families in Lee County are entitled to all of our services, not just our mental health services. We are the link between all of the students in all of the programs in all of the schools across the county. We are highly educated and specific in our roles and we serve and must have district supervisors who understand and can evaluate us as practitioners. Currently, those roles are filled by Wally Cologne who is the director of your school nurses and Amy Clark who is the director of your social workers and your school psychologists. Amy and Wall-E have both been recognized by state and national organizations for excellence in their respective fields. Best practice requires that our direct supervisor be a psychologist. Someone outside of our area of expertise cannot know if we've chosen

305the correct instruments to give, if we've scored those instruments correctly, if we've properly interpreted them, and then appropriately convey that information to parents and staff. Only another school psychologist has the skill set to accurately evaluate our performance and ensure our students and families are served ethically. This is one of the This is also one of the first questions potential recruits will ask. Research consistently shows professional supervision improves job satisfaction, professional growth, and staff retention, particularly in high demand roles such as ours. Lee County is already the worst performing large district in the state in terms of studentto psychologist ratio with ours being one psychologist per 2600 students. The recommended ratio is 1 to 500. If we lose Amy, we lose staff and we see the ratios improvement in the recent years evaporate. Other school districts

306upon seeing this dramatic and confusing shift in the organizational chart have already contacted and attempted to recruit currently county employees as they view the district's conduct as the perfect opportunity to seize top talent. Thank you. My colleagues will continue our thoughts. Do I start now? Good afternoon. I'm Robin Clark, a school psychologist with Lee County for 17 years with no relation to Amy Clark. before Amy joined the district in 2018, the universities in the state would not allow their students to intern in Lee County because of our policies and lack of adequate supervision. School psychology interns already have master's degrees and are earning their specialist degree. They work as full functioning psychologists at significant savings to the district. School psychologists are able to bill Medicaid at the highest rate for virtually all of the services

307that we provide for students. Before Amy's leadership, this was not done to the fullest extent, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of lost dollars as reimbursement to the taxpayer. legally in order for psychologists to continue billing Medicaid for the services that we must we must be supervised by a licensed or certified school psychologist. In the past, when our supervisor was not a psychologist, and because that person did not fundamentally understand us, what we do, and our roles, we were told to test an unethical number of children in a day, to test children out of order, and to not evaluate children who were already out of compliance. We were told to go around or or misinterpret the law and go and ignore our ethical obligations. This resulted in many staff complaints to HR and a founded

308bullying complaint as well. Further, that person ordered tests that were out ofd and inappropriate, wasting about $50,000 and then failed to plan to order a test that had been normatively updated. This was done not out of malice. it was simply because that person did not have a fundamental understanding of the laws, regulations, and ethical practices required to be a school psychologist. If the district moves forward with this plan, our progress will roll back dramatically. It will harm our children, families, and staff through reduced and ineffic inefficient psychological services. To provide the most effective and efficient psychological services to our students, our supervisor also needs to be a colleague of and equivalent to the principles and the ESSE director. There are times when we make decisions and advocate for children, families, and staff where principles may

309disagree. In order to be true advocates for children, we must have the autonomy and protection. We must do right by the students. Thank you. My colleague will continue on with our next concerns. Hello, I'm Monica Papalardo and I've been with the district for 12 years. ESSE and psychological services should work handinand because so many of our decisions are judgment calls. Most of our actions and the decisions we make are not clear-cut and often depend upon the situation, facts, and the data available. At times, we need someone with the breath and depth of knowledge like Amy to help us decide which choice is the most appropriate for the family and reduces liability to the district. Amy is the contact with the state and stays current on new regulations and the intent behind the law. She is

310our link to the Department of Education and colleagues from other departments frequently rely on her for advice to navigate these situations. Our department is respectfully asking the board to consider pulling the changes proposed in student services in order to consult with stakeholders when reworking any structural changes. We specifically request that the proposed role of director of physical and mental health services be rewritten or changed entirely. Currently, the minimum requirement for this position is a master's degree in health services, school counseling, social work, psychology, or a related field. As we've discussed, these roles are highly specialized and require leaders with specific expertise and experience in each area. We urge you to reconsider the structure of these positions as it's unrealistic for one individual to effectively lead across all these areas. This could significantly impact children and

311families and potentially lead to legal consequences for the district. Additionally, we want to highlight that four new directors in student services were created this year. While three existing director positions are being consolidated into one, this approach not only seems ineffective in terms of cost-saving, but more importantly fails to prioritize the best interests of students. If the goal is to not get rid of specialized and highly qualified individuals, then we need to maintain the current student services leadership or pull and rework this plan. The omissions of federal and statemandated service requirements, specialized clinical knowledge, oversight of student evaluations, eligibility determinations, and delivery of related services through IEPs and 504. weakens our program integrity and exposes the district to significant legal and ethical risks. These consequences will have both immediate and long-term effects on students, families, and

312the district's reputation. We appreciate your attention to this matter and your commitment to protecting the health, safety, and rights of our students. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Kamayi Frerieded. I'm a school psychologist with the district, but tonight I am representing my school social worker colleagues. As you know, Amy is not only director of psychological services, but also school social work services. She is a true leader who shares knowledge and has worked to break down silos and foster great efficiency. She's been the driving force behind moving our recordkeeping to focus, making significant strides in improving and simplifying many processes. She's been a valuable asset to the district, always with a singular goal of helping students succeed, which in turn benefits the entire district. On behalf of my colleagues, I would like to share with

313you that Amy is the project manager over the Title 9 grant for students experiencing housing challenges and is the director of project access. Amy has been an advocate for these vulnerable students to ensure they receive the same education success as any other student. Amy has directed her liaison for project access to ensure students who have housing challenges are accurately identified and supportive services are provided to students and parents. Under her direction, Project Access has provided tutoring and engagement to Southward Village students in their community, STEM camp for children in emergency shelter through Human and Veteran Services, and a renters's course through Florida Legal Aid and Affordable Home Ownership Foundation for parents in the community. Amy's leadership is essential in supporting our students and parents who are experiencing housing displacement, disruption, or inadequacy. Thank you. You

314can come on down. Good evening, members of the board. Dr. Carlin. My name is Jorge Parahes. I'm a fourth year school psychologist, bilingual school psychologist, excuse me, for Lee County. my colleagues have mentioned the many achievements and accomplishments that Amy Clark has completed over her years as a director of psychological and social work services. to be quite transparent, this proposed change will open this district to many lawsuits, many settlements that will counteract the savings that this proposal would suggest that we would have. we've dealt as school psychologists, many advocates, many lawyers that dealt with IP supports, MTSS being done with fidelity and these many services that our students need. Amy Clark as again the Florida Association of School Psychologist President has been tremendously helpful and insightful with the recruitment of building this team and continuing

315to build this team to that NAS requirement of the one in 500. one thing that we really talk about is that collaboration and that high performance that Amy Clark provides to this team to the district and just providing not only the help for us as school psychologists, but the principles at our many schools and making sure that not only that these students get these services that they need, but they done in an ethical and legal manner. And without Amy Clark, those supports may be removed and we will be at risk of losing those kind of supports in our schools. despite her being a central office staff member, clearly these fingerprints are within our schools and with our students in our community. so I just ask for you to consider changing this proposed plan to consider

316that Amy Clark's just impact and how she's been doing with our students in our community. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Janine Worthley. I'm a school psychologist and I'm at the end of my third year here in the district. I was going to speak on the accolades of Amy Clark, but my colleagues have all done such a wonderful job. But I did want to point something out to the board. 10 school psychologists have been sitting here since 1:00 this afternoon. That's about 25% of the department. We only have about 40 of us. 25% of us used our personal time and left our professional responsibilities for this afternoon after we learned about this on Friday. This is how committed we are to this. And we understand that if you even lost 25% of us, there's

317no way to make that back. That is an enormous loss for these students of this district. And Miss Jordan, I we all would like to thank you for advocating for them. I would like to ask a simple question. you had stated one of you stated that you were not an expert on mental health. Who did consult with mental health providers when they did this reorganization? Could any of you describe for me the difference in the work that is performed by a school psychologist versus the work that is performed by a mental health counselor? If I asked any of you for 30 seconds to describe what we do, would you be able to do that? We are not the same. We are cousins, but we are definitely not siblings. We have very different roles. And as

318has been mentioned many times, we're specialists. to have someone whose minimum requirement is a bachelor's degree to be a coordinator over the school psychologist when every one of us has a minimum masters in education as well as an education specialist degree. How is a person with a bachelor's level supposed to supervise us and you can only study school psychology at at a graduate level. So somebody with the BA would not even know what a school psychologist does. And I after sitting here for the last four hours, what I have understood is that there is a disconnect between the understanding of what society and the public may think. The word school psychologist and the word mental health counselor, they are not interchangeable at all. And I implore you along with my colleagues, Amy Clark is the

319best person that you have in this role. And if you lose her, you're going to lose some of us. You yourself recognized her accomplishments at the school board in December when she was elected as the president of the Florida Association of School Psychologists. You need to keep her because the students of Lee County deserve her. Thank you for your time. Madam Chair, that concludes public comment. All right. Thank you. Due to time, we are going to move good of the order and other business to tonight's action meeting if that's okay with the board. Excuse me. Yes. I'm being told that there's additional speakers or there's still additional. Okay. I see Paula Porter on my list. Okay. So, let's get the additional speakers. So, that will be Paula Porter, Marge Cox, and is there an Emma

320Broliard as well? Dr. Paula Porter, Lehi Acres. I'm doing something a little different tonight than I normally do when I address the board. I am here basically to acknowledge the positive efforts of a former colleague of mine, Leashiba Travis McCarter, who has helped graduating seniors at Cape Coral High School receive $15 million in scholarships and grants this year. at the town hall meeting that we had at Cape Coral High School earlier this year. the principal and I talked about that and he showed me the wall of seniors that they got their pictures put up there when they received their scholarships and grants. I want to stress that this is a wonderful achievement. Last year she got $12 million in helping the students. This year she's got the 15 million. And you just imagine the benefit

321that this is going to give these students when they graduate college and they're not going to have the financial crutch of student loans. I think that this shows that the school counselors are very important to our students and they should be acknowledged as well. Thank you. Hello, I'm Marge Cox from Bonita Springs. I'm a retired media specialist and I promised to talk fast tonight because I know you've got another meeting coming. I gave a packet to the secretary so that you could see the items that I want to speak to. I know you're working to improve Lee County test scores and student achievement. I've included data about one way to increase the chances of that happening. If you'll add certified library media specialist to your school libraries and improve your library programming, the data that

322is listed there and I've sent it to you as an email as well so that you can quickly click on the links. There is data not just opinion but hard data that shows the difference library media specialist, trained library media specialist. I would say specifically with masters of library science are your best bet can make in your libraries and will improve your student achievement. They've done it again and again. The ones that are listed here are from 2024, 2023. it goes back to 2013. It is not new data. It gets replicated again and again as it shows the difference they can make in your school libraries. They will make a difference for your student achievement because they will help students to not only be better readers but also to be discerning and understanding the ton

323of information that's coming across in our lives today. They will help the staff because they're going to be able to provide inservice. So that provides another link. They will help in terms of the collections and the programming that's appropriate and available to them. in 2016, the American Association of School Librarians awarded the National School Library Program of the Year Award to Veterans Memorial and Naples. I was the media specialist at that time. We also received two Florida Power Library Awards. Libraries can make an amazing difference. Wellstaffed libraries can make amazing difference for your students and staff. As you're looking at ways to make a difference for student achievement, please consider the data that's included here. Thank you. Is Emma Broliard here? Emma Broliard. Okay. Thank you. Now, Madam Chair. Oh, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Fischer. Go

324ahead. Yes. I just wanted to make sure as we're in time constraints right now, board, please be ready to be seated at 6, but at that point, unless there's an objection, I'm going to take a recess so we don't short change the time of our student performance. Thank you. Thank you. today we are going to have a student performance shortly following the close of this meeting. At this point, having no other business to come before this body and seeing no objection, this meeting is adjourned and the time is 5:49 with them.