001Good afternoon everyone. It's Monday, December 1st, 2025. This is a school board workshop and the time is exactly 1:00. Sergeant-at-arms, has the front lobby been attended to? Yes. Thank you, Chief. There are 13 items on the agenda today. RSM update, investment returns and investment strategy, school name change for NNNL, construction change orders for October 2025, safety update, job descriptions, exceptional student education, ESC audit responses, legislative priorities, district strategic priorities, academic updates, high school transportation optimization, and student enrollment plan, public comment and good of the order and other business for board pro protocol. Each board member should strive for four minutes for their initial comment and two minutes for followup totaling 10 minutes in duration. Agenda items. We'll begin with the RSM update presented by Matthew Blunwell and Weiss Campbell. It's not Okay, good afternoon everyone.
002Hopefully everyone had a wonderful holiday. Matt was not able to make it today. He had a conflict. So you're stuck with me Weiss Campbell and our lead auditor here is Jack Hughes. He's the one who delivers most of the audits that you that you receive here at at Lee Schools. So happy to be here again. excited to walk you through and provide a quick update on the status of our internal audit plan. Oops, I might have clicked the wrong one. One second. RSM audit update. Ah, see. Thank you. Looks like these are the same. Try number seven. Is that it? It's the one I clicked. Not seeing it on here. Looks like the one that we provided is not here. Well, regardless, happy happy to speak to it. It's simply a reflection of the monthly
003dashboard that we provide. so I'm I'm prepared to speak to each item that's listed on that slide. It was a one slide deck. Any ways a few quite a few audits that are ongoing at the moment. I'll briefly kind of walk through the status of each audit, give you an idea of what our accomplishments have been so far as well as next steps and of course leave some time to answer any questions you might have as it relates to those audits. The first audit that we are actually actively performing right now is our contract administration audit. So we kicked off that audit on October 24th. So we have since been able to request a listing of the district contracts that have been put in place as well as a listing of vendor spend for the
004prior fiscal year. Utilizing those data sets, we'll be able to select the sample a sample of contracts that we will eventually be detail testing against. a big part of that process will be coordinating with management to make sure that we're identifying contracts that are inherently high risk. So not just material contracts, but contracts maybe that have service level agreements or any other complex provisions that management believes would be valuable for us to take a look at. So that of course any any any contracts we select and audit ultimately we want to add value. So that's the next part of that audit. Once we select those contracts, we'll be able to expedite our testing pretty quickly and hopefully our plan for our contract administration audit is to deliver those results in February. Overall, as just as
005a reminder again, it's a this audit we have performed in the past at a much higher level, specifically looking at district-wide processes for how contracts are managed. This specific audit is contract specific. So, we expect we expect to select up to five contracts. So, it'll depend on the complexity and the nature of those contracts as to how many specifically we will be testing against. I'll pause before going to the next item. Any questions as it relates to contract administration? Questions? Looks like none. Sorry. Perfect. Thank you. The second item that we'll be kicking off here shortly on December 8th is our IT sensitive data protection audit. So, this is a very a very valuable audit to be performed by many school districts. A very common audit that's performed. It's an audit we haven't had the
006opportunity to perform yet at the district. just for your benefit the primary objective of that audit is to assess how the district is managing access encryption and monitoring of sensitive data that exists within the district. So specifically we'll be looking at focus that the student information system and peopleoft the ERP system and how sensitive data is managed within those systems. we'll look at standards controls how technology is employed and designed to protect that sensitive information both for students and employees within those systems. So, pretty pretty complex project. Working with Dwayne's team to get that kicked off, like I said, on the 8th. And then ultimately our goal is to have that delivered along with contract administration sometime in February, depending on on schedules. Any questions on that audit? Questions? Debbie, can you what you're speaking
007on right now? These are the ones that we had decided that you were going to study and come back to us with because I know that there was one that they're going to speak about later this afternoon and that's not on here at all as far as the followup or maybe it is. I'll just wait for the followup. Yes. Yeah. So, these are the fiscical year 26 internal audit plans that were approved by the board. So, these are the specific projects now that we have on the screen here. these five were approved. So, follow-up is an ongoing process. it's the last item I was going to speak to, but I'm happy to speak to it now. That's an ongoing process. We've developed some great contacts within the district with Dr. Cubin McCoy's team to help
008us expedite our follow-up testing to make sure that as we report on that now on a quarterly basis through the audit committee, but ultimately to the board that we're able to demonstrate some better progress on those open items. So, I believe you're going to get some of the updates today on how some of those items are progressing, which is wonderful. our team will be coming in on the back end just to validate that management's assertions are actually taking place and we'll do detailed testing to make sure that they're effective in mitigating the underlying risk we identified originally. Great. Thank you. That's what I want to hear. Yeah, Mr. Campbell, I have one question. These targeted report dates, are they realistic? Like the first two are for February, it's already December. Can you achieve those those
009targets? So, those target dates are dependent on receiving documentation within the time frames that we have with our process owners. So there certainly could they move? Absolutely. That is our ideal timing. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Perfect. The third item that you'll see here on the slide is budgeting. So this is an audit that we are actually in the process of scheduling. We have estimated a kickoff date in January. of course budgeting is you know there it will require a number of different individuals within the district and we want to be cognizant of everyone's time and the timing of that audit and kicking it off. So, we're coordinating now with with district representatives just to make sure we can get all the right parties involved and get that project kicked off. just for
010everyone's benefit, again, the objective of that audit will be to look at the internal controls within the budgeting process. So, specifically over budget development, monitoring, reporting, and budget modifications. hopefully by the end of that audit, we can provide some recommendations on ways that those specific subprocesses could be improved as it relates to internal controls. And of course, it'll be an educational opportunity as to what the current process is for the public through the internal audit report that's ultimately delivered. Any questions on that project? Just a comment. I think you just gave the explanation of what budgeting is and what you're looking at. And I think so for others who are looking at this when we're seeing that you just helped us understand what that budget's going to be, budgeting is. And that would be helpful
011if we could get that same for the, you know, the other ones going forward. So that way when we're looking at this, we're understanding because we don't, I mean, I guess we're supposed to remember all this, but I sure as heck cannot. I don't know about my colleagues, but it's just nice to have that u information so that way when you're speaking on it, we have an understanding of what you're referring to. So, thank you. Absolutely. Yes. Agreed. Any other questions? Okay, wonderful. The last item I haven't spoken to yet is the fiscal year 27 risk assessment. that target report date is June of 2026. So we expect to start that process and in many ways we have already started that process just with our ongoing monitoring and review of board workshops and meetings and
012and budget documents that are available. But in terms of interviews that we'll have certainly with board with board members as well as relevant members of management we expect to have those interviews scheduled for May. So our intention is to to deliver that risk assessment in June and that will give the board enough time to determine which areas should be considered for the next audit plan for next fiscal year so that we can hit the ground running around the time that school starts. So just trying to give you an idea of of that item. And then lastly, like I spoke to earlier, we have follow-up testing, which again is an ongoing process that we will be be providing a quarterly update now to the to the audit committee on the status of all open audit items.
013Any questions? Questions? Yeah, Lisa, how many open items do we still have? here, give me one. I believe the number is 41 across 10 projects dating back to 2021 is the oldest open item. Any other questions? Thank you. Mr. Persons, now y'all are going to be meeting with us more on a regular basis, one-on-one, which is excellent. will our input in that go into our what maybe risk assessment will be for 27, I would assume? AB: Absolutely. So, thank you for bringing that up. One of our goals is going to be to try to set up more updates individually with board members to make sure we're just getting your feedback timely as we progress through the internal audit plan. So, you'll see time on your calendars. Certainly, our we're we're coordinating time, I believe, in
014January. So, you should see that on your calendars. During those conversations, we will certainly look for feedback on any risks that you're aware of that we should be considering. so that we're not waiting until May or June to consider those. but we will schedule separate interviews, like I said, in May as well, just to supplement our understanding of where risk may exist within the district. Correct. From your perspective. Thank you, Mr. Rubble. May I add one request? would it also be possible to include the superintendent with those one-on- ones so we could have those more regular times to meet? Thank you. Absolutely. Good idea. Thank you. appreciate you be willing to give us your time. Thank you. Okay. Is that it, Mr. Gamble? Sorry. Oh, sorry. Thank you. So, the one ones that's included in
015your scope of work, correct? Correct. That's no nothing additional there. Thank you. Okay. Appreciate your time. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Okay, next we'll move on to the investment returns and investment strategy presented by Sarah Cox, Danielle Jansen, and John Grady. Good afternoon board members, superintendent Dr. Carlin and attorney Kathy Depri Bruno. the team here is excited to join you today to go over our investment portfolio as well as some of our investment strategies. So with that, I will turn it over to Danielle Jensen to introduce John with Public Trust. Good afternoon. Today we have a presentation with Public Trust Adviserss, who has been the district's financial adviser since 2015. Public Trust Advisor specializes in managing and servicing the investment needs of local governments nationwide. Public Trust has more than 102 billion in assets
016under management and more than 15 billion in the state of Florida. The district's team is led by John Grady who is the managing director and partner of investment advisory services division. John has more than 25 years of government investment management and public finance experience serving as an investment advisor for fixed income assets for numerous public entities across the United States. We are very pleased to have him present our FY25 investment report and provide a current economic update. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. board members who burnt to Carlin, John Grady with public trust advisors. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and present the annual update and review of your investment program. As we normally do, I'll spend just a few minutes discussing a few economic indicators, tie that into interest rates, and then tie
017that back into your investment program for the fiscal year ended June 30th. Of course during my comments, please ask me questions or share your thoughts whether through the economic aspect or through the investment review. I know there are a couple of slides where we have questions but please don't hesitate to ask during the presentation. So with the economic update, we'll start with the biggest economic indicator and that's GDP, the growth of our economy. and unfortunately we don't have thirdarter GDP released yet as a result of the government shutdown. You're likely all aware that a number of the economic indicators that we normally receive either monthly or quarterly have been delayed. but I can speak to at least through June quarter, which is actually what we're speaking to on your investment program through your fiscal year
018end June 30th. and as we can see from our chart on the far right side, the most recently reported GDP ended June was 3.8% economic growth on an annualized basis. that was a healthy return healthy growth pardon me and it was higher than what was expected which was closer to 3% or even slightly less and it was a rebound from the first quarter GDP where we actually saw a contraction in our economy in that first quarter of around 6/10 of a percent. interestingly when we look at the first quarter and compare that to the second quarter we see a contraction and then 3.8% 8% which was actually the highest annualized growth we had seen since 2023. But really a lot of that played into two components of GDP as you're likely aware. One is net
019import net exports pardon me which is the amount we import and the amount we export. and the other is the investment in our domestic economy. Then the third one would be of course consumer spending. While consumer spending is the largest part of our GDP, how much we as consumers spend each quarter, the bigger the bigger components or that impacted GDP for the first and second quarter were imports and domestic spending by businesses. And we can see in that green bar on the far right, which is the net imports and exports, it was a contraction of around 4.7% in the first quarter, rebounded to a positive of 4.8% 8% in the second quarter. That's the net import export. and then consumer spend, pardon me, business spending in the gray bar was positive in the first quarter
020and then negative in the second quarter. So they essentially reversed. And why is that? It had everything to do with tariffs and companies spending a lot of money both here domestically as well as offshore to import primarily products and plant equipment items prior to any tariffs taking place. So tariffs were the big conversation of the first quarter. They started to ease as we got into the second quarter. Although, as you all know, there's still some uncertainty with some of these trade deals. Some have been put in place while others have have not, including China, our largest trading partner. So, good news is we had positive GDP for that second quarter, 3.8%. The current forecast for the third quarter right now is right around 3%. that is expected to be released later this month. I think
021December 23rd is the is the most recent date for the release of the third quarter GDP. Consumer spending did pick up in that second quarter and continues to to trend at a healthy pace at least as we look at some of the more recent earnings but also as we look at debt levels and that's something that has been a big topic of conversation not just federal debt but also consumer debt but the debt that the consumer has taken on has helped to continue economic growth from the consumer's perspective increasing and adding almost 1.7% to GDP in that second quarter. as we shift from GDP to jobs and inflation. And that will tie into our conversation on the Fed. Of course, the Fed's two primary mandates are stable monetary policy or low inflation and a healthy
022labor force. And as we look at the jobs market, we're going to go back a few months, but it really was a big topic of conversation back into August. As you might recall, we had jobs for July that came in much lower than expected. But the bigger news back in early August was the fact that there were job revisions for May and June that were significantly revised downward. In fact, the initial jobs reported for May and June were close to 280 thou 286,000. they were revised downward by 280,000. So think of that there initially reported at 286,000 jobs for those two months. The revised number was 6,000 jobs. so there became a debate on how accurate the information is and how healthy the labor markets are. and so there's no doubt there seems to be
023some cooling in the labor markets. We did more recently when they released the September jobs report had a healthy job number of 119,000 jobs that were created at least from the initial report for September. And that did help boost the markets and boost sort of the feeling of our labor markets. that's in the top chart where you see a lot of those the orange, blue, and gray bars. The gray bars represent the adjustments to those initial job report readings on a monthly basis. and so again, that was a big topic of conversation that's somewhat died down, but there still is now a somewhat of a debate and maybe just more of a conversation on how often some of these data points will be released just to hopefully obtain some more accurate information. the other comment
024on the labor force is that unemployment and that more most recent reading is actually 4.4%. So slightly higher than what we've seen in recent months. I think the economy and economists in particular really enjoyed seeing sub 4% unemployment rates. And while we've seen unemployment trend up from around 3.4% to now 4.4%, 4% it is still on historical average lower than 10 20 year 30-year averages which are closer to 5%. So from an unemployment perspective that rate's still relatively low. I'll caveat that with the labor force participation rate which you might hear about sometimes which measures the percent of the working age population that is actually working andor looking for employment. And that number is more recently right around 62.3%. It's been around that same percentage for a number of months. The reason I point that
025out is because historically, if we go back really 10, 15, 20 years, that number was closer to 67%. And so, while 63 to 67 may not seem like a huge difference, every percent represent represents around 2.7 million individuals. And so, if you look at that, that's potentially 10 to 15 million working age individuals that are not working or seeking work at at this moment. now we do have a slightly different economy when it comes to what they call gig jobs with Door Dash, Uber Eatats and other of jobs like that are not counted. But that said, even I think if you include those, there are a number of individuals that for one reason or another have decided not to seek employment at the time and resulting in a much lower than what I think many
026economists would like to see of a labor force participation rate. So some mixed news on on the labor markets. the job growth pleasant surprise in September, but the labor markets seem to be cooling. Unemployment low from a historical average, but we have seen that trend a little higher. So, we'll see how that plays out going in to the fourth quarter or as we're in the fourth quarter of 2025 and into 2026. Shifting from the labor markets to inflation. So inflation actually earlier this year had actually declined both from the se from the overall and the core and core just takes out food and energy which are generally thought to be more volatile. So they see to find a more stable CPI figure which you'd see that gray line is not as volatile as the blue
027which is the overall CPI in our chart. The most recent reading release was 3%. That's actually a bit higher than what we saw back in April CPI was as low as 2.3%. You might recall the Fed's target, inflation is right around 2%. So, unfortunately, it's not working towards that target. It's actually moving away from that target. and so inflation, again, continues to trend a little bit higher than I think what the Fed would like to see. A couple of comments there just as we think about CPI and how we spend our money. So, food inflation for that most recent reading was around 3.1%. And we've seen that now for several months. food away from home is actually closer to 4%. And I mentioned that because I think as a society we tend to not everyone
028but a lot of us tend to eat out a little more than maybe we should. And so the cost of eating out has certainly been a lot higher than than eating at home. I have two teenagers and I know how much it costs to go to Chick-fil-A or one of these other places. So those prices have certainly gone up. The other thing comment I'll make is if and you've likely seen this more recently, beef prices have gone up by almost 15% year-over-year. 14.7% to be exact. Chicken on the other hand is up by about 1.5%. So if we look at CPI, the way that basket of goods works is it uses a substitution effect. And so what that does is it assumes that we as consumers will shift our buying habits. we'll use this example
029from steak to chicken because of the price increase the difference in the price increase which may or may not be true. and so when we see inflation that's where you see a lot of the debate on is it really 3%. Is it higher is it lower most would argue maybe it's a little higher right now. but that's a big reason is due to that substit substitution effect in the CPI. the a couple of other comments, coffee is up almost 19 19%, a lot of us drink coffee and electricity is up 5%. so those are some items that we generally use not daily certainly monthly and those prices continue to go up more than what we see as the rate of inflation. When we talk about jobs, so maybe a slowing weakening job market. In that
030scenario, generally you would the Fed would like to potentially lower that rate to fuel more economic growth through easier money, so to speak. On the other hand, when inflation goes up, the Fed generally wants to rate hold steady or potentially raise rates to slow down that rate of inflation in the future. So if we look at these two primary indicators the Fed uses, they're certainly in a difficult situation where a weak a weakening labor force potentially and yet higher than they would like to see inflation. and so when we look at that, that's where the Fed's challenges have certainly have been and I think more so now than even they were than they were earlier in the year. So think speaking of that on our next slide, we're this is the federal funds rate expectation
031and we're going to tie this into interest rates in your portfolio earnings. so on the left hand side this is the market's expectation of rate hikes or rate cuts in future Fed meetings. If we look in the yellow box on the left, the next meeting of course is next week on December 10th. And just a couple of weeks ago on nove November the 10th the expectation of a rate cut was around 61.6% 62% that's what those yellow numbers represent. That number today is actually over one over a 100red. So between the early weeks of November and today, the market has shifted their sentiment from maybe a 50/50 rate cut to now fully expecting another rate cut here next week. That does not mean that's what will happen. It's just simply what the market is forecasting
032as of this morning. and as we go down the chart on the left and then even on the right inside the orange box, the implied rate, if we look out over the next several months and into the next calendar year, the expectation by the markets is that the Fed will cut that rate from the current 4% level potentially down to 3%. Now, when we talk about this particular chart, I do like to use caution because rarely is it exact. it generally is either overstated or understated. So that I don't want there to be the impression from the board that it's we're going to be at 3% next December. it just depends on how the economy plays out. It could be potentially higher or lower again depending on those factors. When we talk about your investment
033program in a moment, we don't make those decisions based on a chart like this. By the way, we you have a disciplined investment program with your team that we work closely with. and we'll talk a bit about that here in just a moment. But I want to give you an idea that right now the market is expecting further rate cuts in that overnight rate. As a reminder, just over a year ago it was 5 a.5%. It was the highest level for overnight rates in over 20 years. now it's at 4% and potentially likely going a bit lower here in the next few months. And when we think of that overnight rate on this next chart, just wanted to highlight inside these green in that the dark blue line is that federal funds rate going back
03420 years. and inside those green boxes is when the Fed actually lowered that rate to 0%. You recall they did that back in 2009, 2008, 2009 due to the global financial crisis, kept the rate there for 7 years and then more recently they lowered the rate during the pandemic and the COVID from 2020 to 2022 for another two full years. So if we think about that over the last 20 years, nine years approximately, that overnight rate, which is currently 4%, was at 0 to 25 basis points. So we've enjoyed some very healthy returns in your short-term balances certainly over the last couple of years, but wanted to give us some historical perspective. Even as rates have come down in the last 12 months or so and potentially going down a little further, they're still much
035higher than they've been overall on an average basis over the last 20 years or so. So hopefully the Fed can manage this challenge that they face and not have to decrease that rate too low. It certainly punishes savers when they do that. so when we think about that, that's the overnight rate. So that's going to govern invest the investment earnings on your liquidity funds, which we'll talk about in a moment. I wanted to share with you what the yield curve looks like for US treasuries. your portfolio, you're allowed to invest out as far as five years. That's very standard for school districts, public t public tax dollars in general. and so if we look at these rates, this is comparing October to October last year to this year, rates have come down a bit. but
036the important thing to notice from the short end, that's due to the Fed cutting that overnight rate. And as we go from left to right, we've seen some slightly lower rates due to likely just due to earlier on with the tariff discussion and potentially slower economic growth due to these higher prices that we're facing as consumers. the shape of the yield curve for these US treasuries is very similar. we call it inverted really overnight to the one-year and then somewhat flat, meaning you're not being paid a lot more to invest out longer right now. But by using a diversified investment program, you're protecting yourself from any significant declines in overnight rates. So wanted to share with you what that looks like year-over-year. And if you look at this chart, it looks like really not much
037has happened over the last 12 months. But if we take a look at our last economic slide, we can see that's quite not the case. We've seen a lot of volatility certainly in the last few years. This chart takes us back two years. And if we go back two years, we've recall where these rates 2-year 5-year Treasury rates were closer to 5%. We saw those drift down in 2023 and drift back up and down. A lot of what you see in the volatility has everything to do with economic growth expectations. and so if we go from left to right, recall that last fall when we were here, we were actually seeing rates move back higher, closer to that 4 and a.5% range. and then into 2025, the discussion of tariffs, you can see we've pretty
038much seen rates trend lower, some volatility, but lower and again likely just due to the thought that we'll have slower economic growth in 26 and potentially 27 due to the pressure of prices on the consumer. so as we look at that right now we're again around that 3 and a half% range for treasuries in the short space. and we'll talk about let me pause there and then we'll tie this discussion interest rates and your earnings into your overall investment program. So let me pause for any questions from the board. questions Mr. Grady. Okay. Thank you Mr. Chairman board members. so just a few minutes on our investment strategy. so the district again has has a pretty balanced strategy. You actually utilize two investment portfolios where you lad we help ladder out securities for you between
0391 to 3 years and 1 to 5 years. The first slide what we're looking at here is your investment portfolio that utilizes securities primarily between 1 to three years which is aptly named the 1 to threeyear investment portfolio. The average maturity of the portfolio is right around 1.8 years. and during this last 12 months ended your fiscal year end of June 30th, we reinvested just under half of the portfolio. So just as a take a moment for your 1 to three and 1 to 5year portfolio, these are by design disciplined strategies to maintain a certain average maturity. and so we're not again utili we're not trying to time the market by any means. we're utilizing this strategy and taking a disciplined approach. and these are based on your cash flow needs, the district's investment policy,
040and your risk tolerances. and so with that, having reinvested over the last 12 months into June 30th, the average book yield or income yield for the portfolio was around 3.9%. So this portfolio as well as your 1 to 5year portfolio are actually going protect you against a declining interest rate environment. So where we've had the benefit of higher rates in the last couple of years, that's done very well for your liquidity program. these portfolios are helping to protect against lower rates by utilizing these port these investments out in this case between 1 to three and then in the next portfolio will show between 1 to 5 years. It's a very highly rated investment portfolio. It primarily uses treasuries in fact over 93%. And then in this portfolio we have a smaller allocation to corporate notes
041that are rated A or better and that's in again in compliance with your investment portfolio on your 1 to 5year portfolio. on this next slide. So ve very similar but this portfolio actually complements the 1 to threeyear portfolio by utilizing some securities out in the 3 to 5year area. Again heavily weighted towards US treasuries for safety also utilizing some highly highly rated corporate notes and municipal bonds as well. Again all permitted by your investment policy. this portfolio instead of having majority almost all in the one to threeyear we balance that around 43% between the 1 to three years and then 43% in the 3 to 5year area. And then you can see on the far left side those two small allocations to 0 to three and 3 to 6 months port 14% of the portfolio.
042those are generally reinvested out again to maintain that duration target for this portfolio of just around 2 and 1/2 years. I didn't mention that but just for for the benefit of the board even as we've seen interest rates decline over the period these portfolios have both seen significant increases in net income and again that is due to preserving those book yields or income opportunities in these portfolios and lading out utilizing those long slightly longer term investments. but both of these portfolios have seen significant increases. for reference the 1 to threeyear portfolio more than doubled to 2 million in net income and the 1 to 5year actually 3 to four times higher close to 1.8 million versus 829 and 382,000. So net income significantly improved due to the district's decision to utilize these longerterm strategies and
043lock in some of those higher yields that we saw in 23 and 24. And then my last slide prior to taking any other questions from the board is to show you an aggregate investment picture for for the district's investment program. If we look at your overall assets, a majority of your assets are in liquidity investments. And that is a trend that you've historically held. And that's due to by design to for your needs for liquidity through your fiscal year and within really the 1 to two to threeyear fiscal year and then using the 1 to three and 1 to 5year portfolios to balance that out. So as we look on the left hand side, you can see the allocations to to cash small allocation to cash that's generally for very short-term needs and then utilizing
044the local government investment pool and intergovernmental investment funds. those are daily liquidity investments that again you can receive those funds the same day by putting in the request and then balancing that out with some treasuries and smaller allocations of corporate notes and municipal bonds that I mentioned. As we look to the right hand side, you can see the first few rows. Those are your local government investment pools and intergovernmental investment pools which are very similar and they operate the exact same way. And then as you look down the column you can see treasury notes and then those corporates and municipal bonds that we referred to. Then lastly on the far right hand side you can see compliance with your investment program with the investment policy statement as well as with the state statute 218 that
045governs the investments for public funds here in the state of Florida. A lot of information but let me pause any questions from the board with regard to either again the economic update earlier or your investment program that we can address. Board questions superintendent. Yeah just first of all I just thank you Mr. Grady very much for helping us strategize with our funds here in the district. you know, we're always looking for ways to maximize the taxpayer dollars and just really appreciate your strategic thinking around that. And just to let the board know, we all stand by ready for your questions and your comments. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, questions to the board. I'll just make a comment. Very impressive portfolio. It's interesting to see how this is heavily invested and the good return we're getting
046on our funds. So, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Any other comments? Okay. Thank you very much. May I just say it is a great pleasure to work with Miss Cox and Miss Jensen and the team and to be a partner with the board and Miss Jensen mentioned our term our tenure here. we've been grateful to have that partnership over time. So, wanted to say thank you for that. Thank you and wish you all very happy holidays. Thank you. Thank you. Same to you. Okay. Next, we have the school name change for NNN and L presented by Rob Spiker, Milgross Sour, and Samantha Hutchinson. This is savage from four dogs. that was done. We'll get it back open. Sorry. Is that right? That should be dry. I think right there. Yeah, just close it from there. That's
047it. But I had it open as a No. Okay. I saved it as a download. There we go. Sorry for the delay. Everything's working now. Good afternoon, board members. Dr. Carlin, attorney Kathy Dupribrto. We're pleased to be back with a recommendation for you for the names of both elementary L and high school NN. with me, I have the ad hoc committee chairs for the school naming process. Miller Gross Sourers, the assistant principal at Lemuil Middle School, and Samantha Hutcherson. She's an assistant principal at Northport Myers High School. appreciate you both being here to help. Just as a quick recap of the scope and purpose of our work, Elementary L that we're naming, this opens up in a temporary campus in August of 2026. The school itself is to be constructed on State Road 82, opening
048up to students two years later in August 20 of 28. High School NN just starting construction on Tuahoo Road in Alba. It opens up in to 2,000 students in August of 2027. We followed schoolboard policy 7250. So, we formed ad hoc committees to assist with the naming of both of these schools. We solicited naming suggestions from students, staff, parents, and the community in October, which the committees then reviewed, and we presented finalists to you for further consideration on November the 4th. The ranking window for those names was open and closed in November 19th with the committee's reconvening then to review the results and develop recommendations that we're bringing to you today. I'm going to turn it over first to Billy Sour to discuss the Elementary L recommendation. Can you hear me? Okay. Got it. Okay.
049So, good afternoon school board and Dr. Carlin. our committee met virtually on November 20th to discuss the final vote and community's naming of the newest elementary school in Lake County. Our finalists included the names Green Meadow Elementary, Bright Elementary, and Lucky Lee Elementary. We received 2,300 votes for and we found that to be really great response from the community. overwhelmingly Green Meadow Elementary was the number one choice with 1,260 votes or 58% of actual respondents. Our committee discussed some of the observations regarding the vote in interesting results specifically with Lucky Lee. some on our committee, one or two people felt that Lucky Lee might have had more votes. We did discuss potentially putting that as a recommendation, but we opted to go with what the community wanted. overwhelmingly they chose that 54% Green Meadow Elementary.
050That's why that was our rationale. We went with Green Meadow Elementary as the top vote getter and it also exemplified the foliage in the area, the nature and all of the different like green spaces you find around Lehi. So that is the reason that we went ahead and went with this vote. On a personal note, I want to just take a moment and just thank Mr. Sper, Dr. Carlin, the school board, and all the folks on our committee were really, really engaged and really enjoyed this experience. So, thank you so much. Our committee too met to discuss high school NNN with these recommended finalist names. Alva Heritage High School, Alba High School, Franklin Man High School, Peter Nelson High School, and the Alba High School. As the ranking results came in, Alva High School had
051a majority of the results with,293 out of almost 3,000 survey results. The recommended name is Alva High School. As the committee met, our gracious host at the Alva School, Stacia Winfrey, wrote a beautiful rationale for the decision to name high school NN Alva High School. The name Alva hold already holds deep significance within the local community, making it recognizable and a meaningful choice. By selecting a name that residents immediately identify with, the school strengthens its connection to the community it serves, the Alba community. A name like Alba High School reinforces the identity and culture of the land, serving as a symbol of shared experiences, values, and history. This helps build a strong sense of unity and pride among students, families, staff, and community members. Using the name Alva also helps students feel more connected to
052their heritage and local traditions, reminding them that they are part of something larger than themselves, a community with deep roots in the land and a story worth honoring. This connection fosters belonging, motivation, and school spirit. The name further creates a natural continuum from the Alva school K to8 where many students have already formed meaningful memories and relationships. Additionally, the selection of Alva High School is backed by meaningful community input, most notably Alva Incorporated, a respected local organization, which has expressed support for the name, demonstrating that key stakeholders recognize its value, relevance, and appropriateness for the new high school. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the school board members, Superintendent Dr. Cardlin, and board attorney. I am privileged to sit in front of you as the high school chair, and thank you. It was
053an honor to work with the district colleagues and community members to name the school that holds significant space and history of our future. And my thank you as well to Sam Millie. Couldn't have done this process without you. Your work, your efficient meetings was greatly appreciated to get this done and impressive to watch. I thank our ad hoc committee members as well. It doesn't happen without you that helped join these ladies and join these committees and go through the results. So, we appreciate your part of the process. You can always say you had a part in naming the schools. So just a quick recap, those are the recommendations. Green Meadow Elementary School for elementary L Alva High School for high school NN. Both these are on the agenda for approval tonight. And at that point,
054I'll turn it back over to Dr. Collard. If there's any questions or comments from the board or superintendent. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And I want to just have a special thank you to our two administrators. you know, you have day jobs and we certainly appreciate when you step up and do that little extra and so just thank you for leading the ad hoc committees and making sure that they stayed on track and kept moving toward progress. We're so excited now to have a proposal around a school name that has been selected obviously based on the data. so we appreciate all of your hard work and we stand by ready for your questions. Thank you. Okay, questions, comments from the board. Mr. Jordan, could you just for clarification, I really think this is amazing
055the number of people who voted that was very I mean as far as I have been here that I think this is the most that we've had. So, thank you for that. And then I guess my I just wanted to Did you say Alva, Inc. supported this? That's what I thought I heard, but I just wanted to make sure. We had a committee member on my committee who was from the Incorporated and they supported this name. Okay. No, thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Yeah, Mr. Chair, thank you. thank you both, actually three of you for your hard work with this. elementary L I think we talked about a little bit last time. I think Green Meadow is a good one potentially as we'll have another at some point in the future middle school that
056could obviously if we want to go that direction keep with a similar naming structure. you'd mentioned also as well for Alba High School. I appreciate hearing that Principal Winfrey had input on that. She is a fantastic representative of that community. So, thank you. I just have a quick question. I have to ask and maybe just for clarification, but who's Peter Nelson? You want to tackle that one? Peter Peter Nelson was actually the founder of Alba. he was a boat captain that came down and discovered Alva, named it after a flower, a Danish flower. so that's when looking at the history of Alba, that is a recommendation that came from community recommendations and then the ad hoc committee discussed and we did have a short explanation on the ranking on the when you could choose you
057at least had a short idea of what who he was and why his name was there. Thank you. so my other real quick question to elementary L can the location of that school on on 82. Can you just clarify for the for the community the where that actually lo the actual location is? Absolut. Okay. absolutely. I actually drove out there when I found out I was going to be the chair for the committee to get a gauge as to what it looked like and where it was going to be. it is literally across the street from in Caddy Corner to Sunshine and 82 there's like a gas station on the corner and then directly across the street is Green Meadow Road coincidentally and that is where the school is eventually going to sit and so
058it is actually if you think about it the branding with the Green Meadow part is on point with the community votes because everything around it is full of this lush foliage just green space everywhere. There's just one little road that leads to a community in the back. But yes, it's it's literally caddy corner to sunshine in 82. Great. Thank you for that. I just and I love hearing your passion about it. So, thank you for your work on that. Thank you, Miss Persons. When do they and who does it decide on like the mascot for the school and school colors and those kind of issues or not issues but those kind of that's work that's done by the principles. principles are on your agenda tonight. I've heard from both of them actually already interested in
059getting that process started. So the communications department will be there to offer them support and anything they need in terms of community outreach. But that process will get started by the principles as soon as they're ready. Okay. Anyone else? Board members. Okay. Thank you very much. Great presentation. Thank you. And great history lesson by the way. Yeah. Okay. Next, we have the construction change orders reports for October 2025 presented by Scott Ricker and Melissa Riviera. All right. Ready to go. Good afternoon, board member. Superintendent Carlin, Esquire Deu, Bruno, and the squad. this is your October change order report is required by statute. Front cover sheet, direct material purchases. We spent $2.5 million buying materials for the tax savings, which returned $142,977 back to the district. We had non-direct regular purchase orders zero this month reporting
060contingency and adjustments in the amount of $427,621 and some change. The backup secondary sheet you will find that we had six direct material purchases, one change order which was a time extension only and three contingency adjustments. The projects that we are buying out receiving the DMP savings are obviously Caparetta Beayshore K8 School and Cypress Lake Middle School. And again for a total of $142,977 return. And the contingency adjustments were for three projects, Riverdale High School, Cypress Lake Middle, and Astero High School. And these were equated to 427,621. Riverdale with some ancillary sidewalks and requests from the school to make the movement throughout the campus a little bit easier. Cypress Lake Middle was for utilities from Lee County to bring into the project rebuild and Astero High School. We had several changes in the location of
061the ROC tower requiring a time extension but also some additional surveying costs that we had done survey three times so this was a third time was a charm. So that is the report. if you have any questions. That's Carly. All set members. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks. Have a great Debbie has Miss Jordan. If I I know I keep asking this question and this is from a year ago. The fencing still for Diplomat. I see that we're doing more things at Riverdale. And nothing against Riverdale, but we told the people at Diplomat and Diplomat Elementary that we were putting fences up and they are still not there. And we're halfway through the school year again. So I just please keep that on your radar. And I know that we're waiting for I'm not sure.
062Yeah, God or whoever to make it happen, but we need to that's underway. The fence has been acquired. Maintenance is running those programs. I know they're waiting for those surveys. I can ask our staff and operations to get an answer to you for that when they anticipate diplomat to start. I'd appreciate it because I hear about all the time probably Miss Chevan who does as well. Thank you. We'll pass a word. Thank you. Have a great holiday. Bye. Thank you, Mr. Rickenberger. I just have one quick question. I'm sorry. I visited a school that is in need of serious renovation in the I'd say the athletic facilities and part of the classroom. It's a historical kind of landmark at this point. I know that part of the building is historical. If a school is proposing
063something or they've they're proposed like they've put together a plan, how what is the process if a principal takes that on and then presents it to your department? What are the steps or how does that can you just lay that out for me just so I understand your process? We have two processes. One is obviously the capital plan which you guys approve and it gets updated from time to time usually yearly. So that's our large big investments, our student seats. Then we also have the facility modification program which just rolled out. operations put that out this year. I believe it just closed. We've scored. We had a whole team from all departments that scored and we now will be voting which there will be a portion of time for principles to be able to present
064their case and advocate for those changes. So if you're looking for some a principal who wanted to do some modifications to a campus, the facility modification would be the best vehicle. Now, if you're talking a large similar to like Beayshore K8 where we did the gymnasium and the classroom, that would be a larger capital project, that is something I would think that the superintendent and the cabinet with planning and operations would come up with that type of scenario and then ultimately once the board approves the funding and the movement of that project, then it comes from my department to implement. Thank you. And I just like to maybe bring that up in my one-on- ones about a particular site that I think it's time for more than just band-aids to be put on an issue.
065Be happy to talk with you about All right. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else from the board? Okay. Thank you very much. Great presentation. All right. Next, we have a safety update presented by Dave Nuland. Didn't mean to close you out. Okay. Good afternoon board members, superintendent Dr. Denise Carlin and our board of attorney Kathy Dri Bruno Bruino. I'm here today to talk about bus patrol. I want to give give an overview. obviously we've started our campaign back in November 5th. for coming close to our issuing citations where the citation started on December 8th. So I want to give an overview and answer any questions that you may have about the program itself and initiation of it. So again we want to make sure that overview of our morning campaign they're done with the public
066and citations will start on December 8th. This video here you see just gives an overview what the cameras will capture. Again, as you can see, it covers both sides, but just gives everybody an over idea how the camera and the technology works on bus patrol when it stops at a location. again, for both sides of the bus to capture for we have all of our 600 plus buses will be equipped. we do get weekly updates on the installation progress as well as working with bus patrol and our other partner Lee County Sheriff's Office. again, as I mentioned before, the warning period did begin on Wednesday, November 5th, and the enforcement starts with the citations being issued on December 8th, next week. again, all technology being installed as we as we go forward with all of
067our buses. This here alone gives you an idea too also on how violators can be captured with the technology. As a reminder, this is still reviewed by law enforcement from their expertise to validate if this is a true violation or not. So, it just gives you some ideas again what what has been observed. This is not here locally, but just gives you an idea what the camera can capture. So f first of all for the far as the implementation and timeline to give everybody an idea the process starts with you know we've done working with bus patrol and lee county sheriff's office we have forms are submitted to the Florida highway patrol motor vehicles program for bus patrol to serve as the ecitation vendor as well as a uniform citation structure testing as well takes
068a place for that system working with clerk of courts We've continued our community education engagement program to educate the public, work with our kids for bus safety. again as I mentioned before the installation of our school transportation team work with all our buses getting all the technology equipped our invoicing building and reconciliation with the billing and then the finalizing the hearing process with DOA including video hearings administrative law judges payments and overall procedures of how that takes place if somebody was to go to contest a citation through court proceedings. So, how does this work? As you can see here, when there's a legal something passed that captures by the camera, it's again viewed by law enforcement. So, if so, basically what happens this program, if approved, a notice of violation is issued to the registered
069owner with a link to the video. If no action is taken after 60 days, this can turn into a uniform traffic citation. the driver and we have found out a lot of the drivers that do this that have had a violation over 90% or up to 90% for the of the first time violators are not repeat offenders. So that's our goal here is educate the public. We don't want them to be in violation. We want to educate them not to do this to pay attention. Again, this is about kids safety. So we've gone through our public awareness program. there also, as you can see, we put a lot of education out there. We want to educate the public about how does you know bus stops the location how does that work when do you stop
070and not stop an intersection talk about raised medians two lane four lane highways how does that work that's very important also even fact during bus safety week bus patrol came to treeine elementary did a teaching kids safety talked about just bus safety tips and tricks things about walking to the bus stop just certain things we want to bring awareness to our children about being safe every day walking to the bus stop going to the bus and also this includes parents as well. So a little about the notice of violation. This is falls under statute 316.173 subsection 4. after a violation is issued within 30 days all evidence is submitted to our law enforcement which is Lee County Sheriff's Office. Within 30 days after that, Lee County Sheriff's Office must review it. If a violation is
071in place, then a notice of violation is issued to certified mail. After receiving the violation, the register owner has third 60 days to request administrative hearing. The hearing is then scheduled within 120 days. If upheld, 30 days is required to pay the fine. The second option, you can submit an affidavit to show if you're another maybe another driver was driving the vehicle, maybe the vehicle was stolen. So, they have that option as well. And again, the third option would be to pay the fine within 60 days or if no action is taken, that also would be required. Again, slide 10, this is really talking about the safety of our children. That's the main thing. And we want to make sure we educate our our public our staff, our kids just about every day bus safety,
072walking to the bus stop, going to the bus bring that awareness to the public to please pay attention when driving in the morning, driving in the afternoon, look watching for the buses, when the buses stop, just to please stop. So I want to bring this to your just to your attention as this comes forward next week. And then obviously we have our pay structure. So the sometimes questions may be asked, what's the what's the fine look like? The fine is 225. If it's a true violation, if it does go to a hearing is 270, that extra cost does cover the cost for the DOA hearing and then a part goes to bus patrol and then obviously a part goes to Lee County Sheriff's Office for their part in having to validate every citation, holding the
073court hearings as well as part of that process. So I'll stand by for any questions or discussion but again this is really I think important just to bring this all the information forward in case any questions come up from the public. Thank you Mr. Nulan very much for this informative presentation and our board members have been briefed on bus patrol. We've talked about this. So now it is go time starting on Monday. So we just stand by for your questions and your comments. Thank you. Questioning comments for the board. Miss persons, just for public's knowledge, how many violations approximately per day are we averaging? I mean, they're only getting are they getting warnings now? Yeah, the first 30 days, which are still that 30-day period of warnings, which is the education period, that's the campaign,
074which started November 5th and goes to starting citations on December 8th. So, we do, yeah, they are getting citations, but there's warnings only. Again, this is just to educate the public, let them know these are out there. The cameras are on the buses. Just remind you to please pay attention and stop. About how many per day are we issuing? it varies. It can be up to I have to look at the numbers, but I think per week we're getting about average on the average per week about 1,500 per week, right? On average. Well, that's a lot. So, we're we're hoping obviously again the goal is we want to reduce these, really educate the public. You are nicer than I would be. I wouldn't be giving warnings. and again the violation that they're issued doesn't carry
075any points just a fine to start with. Is that correct? That is correct. But if they don't pay and it goes to a UTC uniform traffic citation then they get points if they're found guilty or Yeah. It can go to a uniform traffic citation after they don't respond within after 60 days. Correct. All right. That's all I had. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. can you please, you had said that the camera are the cameras on one side or two sides? Cameras are on on both sides. Oh, they are. Okay. Because I know I had a community was asking me the cars that are turning in to the community when the bus is here, but they're turning in. Would they be ticketed? So instead of being behind the bus, they're turning right into the community
076versus waiting for the bus to move because there is that little turn lane. So that was a question that's been asked multiple times. Will they then get a ticket? So I want to make sure I understand your question. So the bus is stopped in front of a gated area. Somebody behind me and they're turning into the community with the light with the sign out. I said they could not they should not be moving. That's correct. Am I correct? That is correct. Yes, they should not be moving. Yes, they cannot go in a turn lane. It's right there where the bus is stopped because obviously when those if you think about it, the kids are exiting out of the right side of the bus where that turn lane is. No. Okay. I just to make sure
077I gave that right information. Okay. Thank you. First of all, thank you. I've had so many people in the community come to me. They are very excited about this and they recognize that the safety is so important for children and in fact they've taken it so far to ask me when our cameras going to be in the classroom. They want that too. so there I can't wait to see the outcome and the impact this has on the community as well as our the safety of our students. so I just want to say thank you and I'm excited for this. But I'm the parents are ecstatic and even people in the community that don't not have children, they are excited about it. So, and they want to see they are all saying to me, why can't
078we have the cameras in the classroom for the safety of the teacher as well as the students? So, that's a question that I will leave to the superintendent. Thank you. But I do want to think it's important. I was surprised by the data that shows first time violators over 90% or up to 90% there's no repeat offenders. I think and I think that's very impressive to say they've that's what we want to not do it again or not do it at all but it's not to continue happening. Okay. Any other comments? Yeah, I just want to make Go ahead, Miss Fischer was Miss Just want to make sure Mr. Juvenelli was done. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. thank you for doing this, Chief. And just to reiterate off what Mr. Pson said, we're required to
079have the warning period first. That is that is correct. Just cuz that's gotten the community. They're wondering why are we not by law we're required to do that. Yeah, we must do the 30-day warning period first. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure the public was aware of that. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. Yeah. I just have one comment, Chief. I thank you for an excellent presentation. I was just shocked by the number of folks that have violated this already. I mean, the potential of having somebody hit or injured is it's it's really up there when you have people that just aren't paying attention. So, great job. Thank you. Okay. All right. Next, we have the job description review by presented by Dr. Shana Johnson. Dr. Johnson. All right. Good afternoon, Chair Ribble,
080Superintendent Carlin, board members, and Kathy Dwayo. We have four job descriptions today, and we have discussed them previously. Is there any further discussion that we need to have any Mr. Fischer? Thank you, Mr. Chair. thank you, Dr. Johnson. fantastic job on the teacher apprentice description program. Could you just give like a 10 20 second overview for what that is? Sure. So, this is in collaboration with Florida GF Coast University and it's an apprenticeship program where the person has to have a an associates degree and has been accepted into FGCU's College of Education already. it is a they have a certification an apprenticeship certification from the Florida Department of Education. but they are not the teacher of record and they have a mentor that works handinhand with them. So it's on the job training really great
081program. We were very lucky to have been selected for this programs by FGCU and the state. So we are anticipating this to begin in January. Thank you. I appreciate that. I just wanted that highlighted to the public. I appreciate all your hard work. Thank you. Okay. Hey, any other comments or questions? Seeing none, thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Next, we have the exceptional student education, the ESSE audit response presented by Dr. Nathan Shaker and Dr. Colleen Tim and Rachel Gold. Just going to click through this quickly to make sure we're on the right. Looks like a good one. Good after Good afternoon, school board. Good afternoon, Dr. Carlin. Kathy, Miss Dewi Bruno. today we welcome you to our presentation on the RSM audit response for exceptional student education. I am Nathan Shaker,
082chief academic officer, and I'm joined by Rachel Gould, senior director of exceptional student education. this presentation is going to detail our response and implementation efforts as of December 2025. the focus of our discussion today is on ensuring excellence in exceptional student education through specific efforts in dashboard and program development and implementation. We will review the audits two primary observations and detail the specific steps we have taken to address them and build a more robust and comprehensive system. Good afternoon. The first observation from the RSM audit highlighted a need for enhancement in our monitoring framework for ESC accommodation delivery. To address these challenges, the district was advised to potentially develop a centralized dashboard. This dashboard would be crucial for integrating data from IEPs, provider logs, and attendance systems. The ultimate goal of this centralization is to
083enable real-time tracking of accommodations. To demonstrate excellence and action and ensure fidelity and implementation, we executed four key steps. First, a centralized system was created in focus. This was followed by providing multiple trainings for teachers and administrators. We also conducted a revision of process based on feedback which ultimately allowed the centralized system to be fully implemented in focus. This slide provides a look at the focus system which now serves as our centralized platform. In the top table you can see how pier automatically updates each students classroom accommodation when an IEP is completed. The lower section which is new displays the mechanism for certifying that ESC classroom accommodations have been provided on a weekly basis. Specifically within focus we have clarified the focus statements required for certification. Teachers verify compliance using clear language such as I
084certify I have provided the students pure classroom accommodations during lessons this week for all the days the student was present and have documentation. There is also a statement available for documentation when an alternate educator provides the accommodations such as a guest teacher. To ensure accuracy, we utilize the focus SharePoint site which which hosts written explicit instructions and modeled instructions in video format. The screenshot on the right shows a teacher navigation menu detailing various options like entering ESSE services and accessing the classroom accommodation report. One crit critical component of implementation was incorporating feedback. In direct response to teacher and administrator input, we successfully enhance process efficiency and updated the verbiage for greater clarity. As this is a new process, we continue to monitor and update when new questions or issues arise. The visual visual represented represents
085a principal report which serves as the primary tool for monitoring ESC implementation. This weekly accommodations report allows administrators to view student data including the teacher grade and course and easily track which accommodations have been implemented on a weekly basis as indicated by the Y or N flags across the columns. RSM audit observation number two recommended that the district enhance its oversight of exceptional student education service delivery by implementing a centralized framework for documentation monitoring and performance management. Specifically, this included three recommendations. One, develop and disseminate standardized procedures for documenting ESC services and accommodations. Two, adopt a consistent format or digital platform for recording service delivery and accommodation implementation to promote completeness, accuracy, and accessibility across the district. And three, train staff on documentation protocols, compliance expectation, and any new systems to support consistent and accurate
086recordkeeping. We have strengthened oversight and alignment within ESSE leadership across the district. The district ESSE department develops the process, the SOP or standard operating procedure and the focus tools. Regional directors support ESSE services in schools working with principles and assistant principles to provide training and capacity building and monitoring implementation and audits. The regional quarter co coordinators serve as the primary bridge overseeing staffing specialists, leading trainings and working with teachers and continuing sample audits to ensure fidelity and accountability. to ensure accountability and action, we are conducting quarterly audits. Coordinators conduct a sampling audit of 10 schools per quarter. We learned through the process and after the initial audit we identified the need for adjustment to ensure accuracy of the information gathered. We are committed to training our outreach training for our teachers. We are excited to
087announce our summer summit focused on ESC excellence taking a place June 3rd through June through the 5th 2026. Our regional teams also remain available to work directly with administrators and teachers to ensure successful highquality and impactful support for every student. To address the need for standardized procedures, we had developed a handbook focused on the ESSE processes and procedures. This will serve as a guide to consistent and high quality practice. This handbook shown here with its table of contents provides essential information for teachers and administrators covering the code of conduct behavior matrix and offering extensive details on focus reporting and documentation for teachers including links to training materials and documentation procedures. The cumulative impact of these changes for parents and students is significant. Students will experience the same process in every school and there will be
088clearer documentation making it easier to show accommodations are being provided. We will have better trained staff and clear guidance in one place. Essentially, our combination of standardized procedures plus school level support will result in fewer missed accommodations and clearer communication with families. We have received feedback from many of our teachers and like anything new, it was met with hesitation. But once the teacher started using the new system, it has proven to be an effective way to document student accommodations. This change offered principles a vital opportunity to train staff, ensuring the consistent delivery of essential student services. Moving forward, our priority is continuing our ESC, our commitment to ESSE excellence. We view these efforts not as an end point, but as the foundation for ongoing improvement. Our follow-up our follow-up strategy centers on four key actions.
089We're focusing on refining the process by updating the new system based on teacher and administrative input. We will monitor reports and provide supporting training for teachers and assistant principles. We're creating a standard operating procedure to ensure everyone follows the same procedures. And finally, we will maintain an FAQ to keep a running record of questions, concerns, and updates for all staff. To that end, I would say thank you for your time. we now welcome any questions or feedback regarding the district's response to the RSM audit observations and the implementation of our new ESC service deliveries. So first of all just thank you to Dr. Shaker and Miss Gold for providing this up very important update and like the board when this feedback came back from our auditor it raised a lot of concerns for me and
090I'm sure it did for you as well. It was obviously our students are our number one customers and we want to make sure that while we are providing those accommodations that we're actually documenting it and so I'll just go back to my teaching days. I will tell you I would have killed for a system like this to tell you how many hours I spent documenting accommodations because it all had to be done manually. I had to review IEPs, had to go through and and write those actually into the plan. And now with the advent of technology, how fantastic that you can go through, review the accommodations. They're already listed for you and then just document that those have been provided. So what I would have done to have had this in the 1990s with all
091the hours that I spent documenting those. But having said that, more important than the documentation is the actual provision of those. And we want to make sure that we're doing both certainly, but very very important. And so just thank you all for your leadership because the documentation is important. No question about it. But providing those accommodations and making sure that they are being done with fidelity is extremely important. we've all worked with students that learn in a wide variety of ways and to ensure that they are able to access that instruction is super important. So just thank you for acting proactively in this re in this space. This is a huge undertaking. The amount of time I know that you've put into this is extraordinary. this is not just a you know turn of the
092key and then and then here comes the process. This has been long hours and we just want to also say thank you to our schools, our principles, assistant principles, our staffing specialists and other folks that are boots on the ground, our regional teams out there walking classrooms and making sure they're available to help support our teachers. And just one other thing I would remind our board when I was first a principal I was hiring about 90% of folks that were coming from a college of education like me we had had numerous classes on accommodations for children special education in the class in the classroom you name it I had it going through USF now the challenge facing our principles and our schools are they are career changers they're like my two sons who came out
093of not a college of educ ation. They came from a college of business and another one from law school. getting them trained and ready to be a teacher is no small feat and this is one additional part of that. So again, just huge appreciation for the work and thank you for the summit this summer. We're really excited about that. That's again another proactive step to make sure all of our teachers are trained in this in this process. So thank you. We stand by for your questions and your comments. Board members questions. Miss Fleming. Thank you. And I'm so glad you brought that up because while the documentation and this is seems to be so much more seamless than the hours spent with a clipboard and than putting it on all the forms and then carving
094copies. That's where I came from because then you put one in one box and another box. But that is great. But you are so right Dr. Carlin about it's you know to write it down to document is one thing but it's all about the follow through. And there are all types of there are all types of skills and needs under the ESC umbrella. I think sometimes we hone in on like the big highlighted ones, but there are so many, you know. but my question, a couple of questions about the summer summit. So, first of all, could the advanced interns be able to participate in that? could they also earn CEUs towards they're eventually going to need those? Right? And you know, it's so overwhelming whenever you're a brand new teacher to have to, oh my
095gosh, I just got out of school. Now I got to go do more school to keep my CEUs within a certain amount of years. So that's just an idea. Maybe we could explore that new position being able to take advantage of that. And then do we extend this to our guest teachers who are definitely the guest teachers that are maybe taking on somebody's maternity leave or you know a Christmas through the end of year. Are they able to participate in this summer summit to move into the next fall? Just wondering. I think a lot more information about the summer summit's going to come out to y'all. Definitely by the end of the week I can have a pretty good update in the weekly board update. But we do have a a proposed kind of funding
096source for it and that'll drive a little bit of of who our primary audiences and who we're pulling in for it. But we definitely want to have representation from every school and a team from every school and then any capacity or space we have beyond that and those would be the first invitees our interns as well as our cooperating teachers or our substitute teachers. Yeah. So many of our guest teachers when they take on that extended substitute position or guest teacher position, they are, you know, those children are their children for the remainder of their visit at that school. So, you know, you just wouldn't want someone's needs or accommodations to fall through the cracks just because it's a it's sort of they just don't know what they don't haven't been trained on. So, it
097was just curious. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it, Alex. Thank you. thank you, Miss Blooming, that you great point because the long-term subs are there doing the work and for to make it easier on our teachers that aren't there for that, you know, and they're filling in for that for that teacher for the long-term subs, I think is that's a great point. So, thank you. my only question, first of all, this is long overdue and oh my goodness, thank you because, I think if we can make this work easier for our teachers, they'll feel like they're valued more. So, I look forward to the outcome and the data to this and the results. But my only question really now is how are we communicating that we're doing our part and our job on our side?
098How are we communicating that to the parent of that student? I didn't see that in here like so how is that information getting back to them? And we have ESC advisory meetings and we will presenting this to the to that in that next meeting. Okay. To our parents. Okay. But you're saying you it would just be in a meeting. I don't understand. right. Well, right now we are presenting in our ESC advisory meeting. we certainly could present it perhaps at DAC. So, so what my point is once like the teacher, you know, gives a service and they're going through and they check that pro that service, how how does a parent know that service was given to that student that day? Like I would assume that's how this is going to be effective. C can
099I was going to jump in if I could. So, gosh, there's there's so much to talk about in the world of like ESD and how you communicate. First of all, parents are involved in the development of an IEP and at those meetings that there's a lot of information that's shared in terms of what are the strategies we're going to employ to help your child to become more and more successful. Then there are also progress reports that are provided to parents of ESC students that provides for them. Here are the accommodations. Here are the things we're doing and here's how the child is making progress or not. there's a wide variety of communication platforms. Dr. Shaker, you may have more you wanted to add, but I know those just popped into my head right off the
100bat. There's a lot of communication that goes back with parents in terms of combinations and progress, which to me that's the most important thing again is you can do strategies and child a child is not successful, but we want to make sure that we're reporting progress on how the child is doing. So, please go ahead. And let me interject for a second because I get a lot of complaints that my child is not receiving services. How did they know? Like this to me would be once they received a service and the teachers documenting that they would automatically get an update or an email saying I feel like this is the because that's a day that's a daily progress report because what we find out is we say one thing, the student and parent are saying
101another and somewhere in the middle it happened or it didn't happen. And so I would like to know like that's a check box that the teacher did something and that something go to the parent saying hey this is what h you know because at the end of the day if the progress doesn't happen then we're the blame not the student because they're going to say we didn't give them the service but yes on this date we did and so how do we you know it's almost like a ca because we can't guarantee the progress if like Dr. Carlin mentions the progress doesn't happen, then there's more that needs to happen. And I hear it so often. I've requested an IEP plan and meeting and they never get the meeting. The meeting goes months and months
102and months, six months, a year, and they haven't had a meeting and they've been requesting it constantly. So like, how do we avoid all of that? Thank you. I have a suggestion for that. Is it pos I know there's a lot of things we do in real time. Is it possible the website could be updated that the parent can click on there at any given time and see where their child fits in along the way along the process? To me, that would be the make make the most sense. I know we already do that in some other activities that we do. I think being a new system, we want to tighten up the accuracy of it and make sure it's operating on the back end as we expect it to. Get our teachers into the
103routine of weekly. right now they're they're documenting the application or the offering of the accommodations. So parents wouldn't be able to see it on a day-to-day basis, but they would be able to check in on a on a weekly basis. when we when we're confident that all of our teachers are confident with it, that our schools are confident with it, that our principles are really monitoring it appropriately because they have that ability. That can be something definitely to explore in in the next phase as opening up the focus parent portal side of it because the focus is a two-sided program that we have. Our parents can see into their to their student grade books to teacher information through focus. So you have a very exciting process. I like to sit in on this on those
104two days of training. Is it going to be here in the district office the summit or do don't we have that picked out yet? I think we have we have some pretty great prospects and we are excited to talk to the board about some of the opportunities that we want to provide. We'll share a little bit about it during our academic updates. I'm just hesitant to put the cart too far ahead of the course. We're just we're letting it understandable. Understandable. Any other comments from the board? Miss Jordan. Thank you both Mr. Ganelli and Miss Fleming because both of those were all my questions. I guess my one thing is and I was going to say the focus thing would be great because I know my kids are always looking at the focus to see
105what my grandkids are doing like they're on it all the time. So, I think if once we can do that, that would be great. But then I know you had said to Miss Fleming when she had asked about other people going to that summit. Well, we have to we have a primary audience. Who is that audience? We have to train every teacher, every guest teacher, everyone, especially high school, they may have seven teachers. One child may have seven teachers. So, they all have to know what their IEP is or their EP. And then we need to make sure that every one of them are trained. So, who owns that? Who owns that training of the guest teachers as Miss Fleming said, because we need to make sure that they understand that's being documented. That's the
106purpose of this. every teacher that would have them, even if it is a student teacher, they're going to have to know this. Who is going to be the trainer of these? And if we're saying the summer summit, and this is all great and looking at it, pictures are great, but now putting it to use is another thing, but waiting till summer to do this training. Are we training these people? Are we training them now? Are we waiting till summer? I know that was a lot. No. And I think the part of the presentation we wanted to share about the current state of support is really the structuring that has been set up terms of the regional ESSE coordinators being led by a regional director. They're working directly with the staffing specialists as well as the
107department heads at the school. So there's a lot of day in and dayout work that's happening. I think we see the need for we call it a good standard setting when it comes to our ESC practices. the summer is our greatest opportunity to reach the largest number in the most efficient manner. and if we can train a thousand with the expectation that those thousand take it back to the other five, I think that would really be our goal. Okay. And then as Miss Ganelli says, I'm constantly hearing from parents the same thing. You know, my child has not been given their accommodations. I've asked for meetings. I've sat in meetings and I'm told that we cannot do their what their accommodation their action plan we cannot work with that action plan you have to do
108our action plan. So even though the parent is trying to to give some insight on who their child is that's still not taking place because of supposedly funding is what I was told that they are told. So I asked them to reach out to the appropriate people to find out. But again, they said this happens time and time again. And then also the advisory meeting, the ESC advisory meeting, there's very few people that attend that meeting. I've attended those meetings. So, and what Mr. Chief said again, we need to try to put these words out. I don't know how we disseminate that information, but it is good information and it's showing that we are definitely trying to make sure that every child is receiving their accommodation and we just need to make sure that we
109are feeding that out there to the public and to the to the parents and guardians. Dr. Carlin, Mr. Rubble, may Okay. first of all, I wanted first of all, thank you for your comments. So, Miss Jordan, if you'll refer to slide 11, I think that may, help to, I guess, provide some some more information around, training. So, when we talk about waiting till the summer, please be assured our team is not waiting till the summer. please take a look at slide 11, which talks about the ESC department and the types of activities they're engaged in, the regional team. So we have a regional associate superintendent and they have a team with them. They are boots on the ground. We also have staffing specialists, ES department heads, ES leaders, and other school staff that are out
110there providing support beyond that for our newer teachers and folks that are new to the profession. They also have team leaders, mentors, those folks to help them get a good start. So I just didn't want the board to walk away and think we're just looking at summer training. This is embedded happening each and every day in grade level meetings in professional learning communities which we call PLC's and in other opportunities when school staff meet to be able to deploy how do you do an accommodation right so I think that's super important because I thought you asked a really good question but again we will never wait until the summer the other piece I just want to hit home around is you know we have gosh 6,000 teachers plus we have many many guest teachers plus.
111And so one of the effective ways that we have found best practices in education especially when you have a you know the eighth largest school district in Florida and the 27th largest district in the nation is we have to look at effective models of delivering professional development. This is one it's called job embedded professional development which is very important. And then the second piece is and it's a model we've used for years. It's called train the trainer. So, as opposed to bringing, you know, potentially 10,000 people to a school in the summer to get trained, which would be teachers, interns, guest teachers, and others, instead of bringing them all forward, which sometimes is not the most effective way to to learn an instructional practice. Many times what we found is we get like our high
112performing teachers and our others that have been doing this for a while, they get some additional training. Maybe we send a team from a school. Maybe it's a mixed team of like people that have had a lot of experience. Some people that might be mid-career and then they go back as a team and during the summer when they have their professional development at their school, they will come back and provide that. You know, again, I led schools for 18 years. It was a very very successful model because my teachers would come back and train my teachers. So, they already had the respect of the team. they had they knew they were good teachers and so when they went to that training they're like h you know Miss Jordan and Mr. Ribble, you know, I know
113that they're good teachers. They would come back and train me and then I could also follow up with you. So, if you did a training with me as part of your FA our faculty, if I had follow-up questions, I knew where your classrooms were. So, I could come back and see you and say, "Hey, I had some questions about that." So, just wanted you to know there's many instructional models and training models for adult learning, and it starts with like right now. Okay. And thank you for that. I did I did see I did read page 11, but when that comment was made, I was like that just took me right off of page 11 because I'm like who are the chosen ones to be when we have so many and everyone touches the kids.
114So we need to make sure that everybody is trained. But that makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments? Miss Persons, when we have these audits and they find they have findings is what they call them. You know, I look at that as you got caught, something's wrong. I look at as an opportunity to get better. And this district really does seem to be embracing that all the time. And it's not in ESC. I mean, it's in every single department we have it. Their job is to find findings. They can't find them. I don't want to hire them. Okay? Because we want to keep getting better all the time. So, I'm proud that of the way y'all are embracing this and planning it out and I'm sure it's just going to get better
115and better. I want to thank you for your effort. Mr. Chanelli, thank you, Mr. Persons. I actually want to comment on that cuz I've been here a little a little a little little while and in my tenure on the school board, they have reorganized the ESD department. I lost count. I think it's more than five times on my left hand. And so I think that's important to note. it took an audit to get make changes and to direct that. also probably took a new superintendent but we won't go down that road but I think that guidance is important and but that I just want to acknowledge that because otherwise for years nothing there was no the only thing changed in these department was administration not the effectiveness in the schools and nothing in the classrooms
116nothing in the in for the students it in fact it I believe it went from bad to worse if that's at all possible. So I know that we are we're in the right heading in the right direction and that's my point I want to make is and just thank you for this. Thank you. Okay, we beat that one up enough I think. Any any other comments? All right, thank you very much. Great presentation. I look forward to updates future updates on this initiative. Next we have the legislative priorities presented by Chrissy Hulahan and Luke Stuminger. Good afternoon, Superintendent Carlin and members of the board. We are here today to present the school board of Lee County's 2026 legislative priorities. These priorities reflect the ongoing needs of the district, the collaborative work among district leadership, and
117the policy environment heading into session. We've organized these priorities into four main categories: safety, administrative efficiency, student achievement, and career and technical education. We'll begin with safety, our district's top priority. First, we are supporting additional funding to the safe schools allocation to strengthen school safety efforts across all campuses. This will assist our district with the increase of both security infrastructure and security personnel. Second, we are requesting $2.5 million in state appropriations to address two critical needs for this district. First, this project will modernize the school district of Lee County student transportation system by implementing a fully integrated system that incorporates real-time GPS and GIS data, enabling precise routing, live bus tracking, and streamlined operational adjustments. Second, the district will purchase additional opengate weapons detection systems and parts. Opengate has strengthened our campus security and this
118funding will allow us to maintain our current reliable coverage at all entry points and after school events as well. Finally, we are supporting an increase to the mental health allocation funding to expand student services, grow care teams, and enhance crisis response capacity, particularly through additional licensed mental health care professionals and mobile crisis support. And next is administrative efficiency, an area where targeted legislative changes could significantly reduce costs and streamline district operations. We are asking the legislature to promote policies that cut red tape, allowing the district to innovate and operate more efficiently. We are also recommending a small but important change to chapter 120 rulemaking requirements. While schoolboards can now post meeting notices on the websites, rulemaking notices must still be published in newspapers or on the county website. However, Lee County site cannot accommodate these
119notices at this time, forcing the district to use newspapers, resulting in significant costs and operational delays. We are recommending a statutory update that would allow the board to post rulemaking notices on the district website, improving transparency, reducing delays, and generating substantial taxpayer savings. Another priority is greater flexibility in teacher certification timelines, particularly for educators who temporarily leave the profession. Restoring and expanding re-entry pathways supports retention, broadens our recruitment pool, and allows teachers to maintain their certification without having to go through administrative hurdles. And finally, we recommend expanding the definition of educational emergencies under Florida statute, which would give districts more flexibility in addressing workforce needs and student demand during rapidly changing circumstances. The goal in this section is simple. Streamline where possible so resources can be directed to classrooms and students. Our third category is
120student achievement. We are continuing to support an increase in the per student funding level. We also support providing all K through2 institutions the same flexibility to develop and expand blended or hybrid learning opportunities. This allows our district to continue innovating education opportunities for families and provide additional learning pathways for students. We are continuing the conversations and pushing the recommendation that all prek prek12 program sorry pre-k programs be included in the DOE's fish calculations giving us accurate student counts and ensuring appropriate funding support for early learners. And finally, we're supporting pathways for high growth districts like Lee County to meet enrollment and workforce pressures by aligning resources with demonstrated with demonstrated needs. The common thread here is making sure funding and policy keep pace with the student needs and local realities. Take a minute. And our
121last category is career and technical education. An area of growing importance both statewide and within Lee County. This session, we are requesting $374,000 to update facilities and provide critical training tools at the Southwest Florida Public Service Academy, ensuring our public safety training pipeline remains strong and aligned with local workforce demands. Additionally, we support funding technical colleges at a minimum of 90% based on the workforce development funding through the Florida General Appropriations Act, which helps sustain program quality and accessibility. And we are also supporting continued capital investment in workforce development programs, the state's capitalization incentive grant, promoting high demand program expansion. Each of these priorities strengthens workforce readiness and supports the broader economic needs of our region. That concludes our presentation of the 2026 legislative priorities. We appreciate the board's direction and partnership as we prepare
122for session. Our government relations team will continue coordinating with district leadership and working closely with our legislative delegation. We're happy to answer any questions at this time. Well, thank you very much for the presentation. We appreciate it and we look forward to the board's comments and questions regarding the legislative priorities. Board member comments, questions, any I'd just like to make a comment. I thought you folks did an excellent job putting our packet together and our talking points together so we really can understand what the ask is going to be. I think without a doubt the last time we went up there, we came back with some some funds that the public doesn't realize. I really need to take a look at at what we got for our money, our investment in you two folks. So,
123we're really paying getting paid back in big dividends and there's a lot of money out there that we can capture in processes that are going to make a better district for everybody here. So, I appreciate your help with that. M. Fischer, did you have a comment? No. no. But real quick, I also want to highlight also well the focus on policy. I think that's just as important in funds and I appreciate all our government relations team does. Thank you. persons. I just want to say how important you all are with everything that's going to be going on in Tallahassee with will there be sales tax, will there be property tax, how are we going to get any thing, you know, and what's covered, what's not going to be just to try to keep updated. It's
124going to be difficult. So, I counting on y'all to keep us informed. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments? Muanelli, thank you for this. I just have one question. When do we when will we get any updates from what with DC like when will that happen? So that is coming. We can talk about that right after this board meeting. We are actually hoping to set up one-on-one briefings with you guys on that as well. Thank you. Since the government just reopened. That it. Okay. Thank you very much. Next we have the district strategic priorities including academic updates presented by Dr. Nathan Shaker, Sherez Trent, Cheryl Neely, Angela Nater, and Chuck Valardi. Are you my favorite color? Thank you. Sh. Good afternoon, board. Superintendent Dr. Carlin and Kathy Dupri Bruno. My name is Chuck Flardy, West Regional
125Associate Superintendent. lesson learned today. We put out our stuff early and someone took it away. So, we'll have to let people know next time. Dr. Carlin, our A was gone and the rope before you was gone as well, but we got it back for everybody. Today, board members, we're going to have you rise and climb with us. So, I'm going to ask you that you take your hooks that you have in your hand and attach it to the rope as a symbolic measure. And you may keep that hook at the end of today's presentation as well. Today we share with you a shared purpose and a shared commitment to help every child in our district rise, climb, and reach heights they may not yet imagine. As we begin this discussion, you'll see a simple rope
126before you. It may look ordinary, but today it repres represents something powerful. Each of you has a clip that represents your part of the rope. Feel free to clip it on if you haven't done so. and our wildly important goal of being an A school district is part of our team of academic services and school performance. Dr. Carlin is at the top of the A mountain cheering us on. She has the A in front of her and helping us to climb your clip at the end as a reminder. You may keep it. A rope is made of many strands. Individually, each strand can break, but woven together layer by layer, it becomes strong enough to lift, to support, to guide, and even to catch someone when they fall. This rope is all of us. It's
127our teachers who pour their energy and hearts into every lesson. It's our staff who creates the safe, steady foundation our students depend on. It's our families who trust us with their most precious people. It's our students, every single one of them, who bring their dreams, their challenges, and their incredible potential. And this year, it is also our entire district office, rising and climbing together to be the heartbeat for our schools. Just as the heart sends life to every part of the bo body, our leadership, our vision, and our unity must send strength, support, and purpose out to every school. Our beat is steady, strong, and consistent. It must echo in every classroom, every hallway, every bus route, every team, every office, and every student's experience in our district. When we say rise and climb, we
128aren't simply referring to academic success. We are talking about the journey, the courage to try, the persistence to continue, and the belief that together we can reach even higher. Climbing isn't always easy. The path can be steep. There are days when a foothold slips. There are moments when we look up and think, "How much farther?" But the rope reminds us that no one climbs alone. When a child is struggling, we tighten our grip. When a school needs support, we all pull together. When a teacher needs encouragement, we anchor the rope. When a family faces challenges, we wrap around them. And through it all, we stand united, setting the rhythm, keeping the pace, ensuring that our shared harpy carries strength and hope to every school that we serve. Our promise this year is clear. To lift
129every student academically, socially, and emotionally. To serve as a steady pulse that brings energy, clarity, and compassion throughout the district. To create spaces where perseverance is celebrated, growth is expected, and potential is unlocked. To rise and climb, not separately, but as one team along with our parents and the community. Our students are climbing toward their own greatness. And our job together is to secure the rope, guide each step, and celebrate every ascent. So today, we rise, we climb, we step into our role as the heartbeat of this district, sending our strength, our hope, and our belief outward until it reaches every child in every classroom. Board members, we ask that you're going to rise and climb with us with courage. Let our heartbeat echo across every school. I'm now going to turn this presentation over
130to Cheryl Neie, our regional associate superintendent of the south. All right. As you know, Dr. Colin has made it very clear that our goal, our wildly important goal is to become an a district. We're going to go through the following points. as we take you through this afternoon, each year it's important to review baseline data to predict how students will perform on our end ofear assessments in English language arts, math, science, and social studies. These subjects pay play a vital role in how our school grades and district grade is determined. baseline data is collected in October and September through the fast progress monitoring one assessments for both English language arts and math for grades 3 through 10. In addition to that, our district has developed quarterly comprehensives and benchmark readiness assessments to monitor in our
131algebra 1, geometry, science, civics and US history courses. In the data you see displayed, this represents our PM1 forecast along with a comparison to our wildly important goal of becoming an A district. We have outlined our overall district grade and progress in our focus areas for this year. Those focuses are in third grade ELA, high school algebra and geometry, and eighth grade science. These three areas were selected because they show potential for growth. As you can see, our forecasted baseline for each of the these areas reveals a gap between six and 7% to reach our goal. It is important to note as you look at the high school algebra and geometry data that approximately 48% of our incoming 9th grade students have already successfully completed their algebra and/or geometry requirements. and it will not be
132represented in the high school algebra or geometry data above. Our schools are currently preparing for progress monitoring too, which will provide us another snapshot in time. This will help our schools make necessary adjustments and offer enrichment opportunities to ensure that every student is prepared for May's progress monitoring three, which ultimately determines student progress, district, and school grades for this year. I'll now turn it over to Dr. Shaker who's going to discuss our progress on our initiatives. Thank you. Building on our current status, I want to highlight the specific action plans we have in motion in to close these gaps. We're executing on four strategic levers to drive performance. First, we are focused on data literacy and strategic planning. We're moving beyond just collecting data to ensuring every school has the skills to use that data
133for real-time decision-making. Secondly, we have implemented benchmark aligned coaching visits. This ensures that instruction happening in our classrooms is not just active but rigorous and directly aligned to the state standards our students must master. Third, we are committed to strategic training and programmatic adjustments. We are not waiting for the end of the year to course correct. We are adapting our professional learning and curriculum resources in real time based on the needs we see. And finally, we have refined our regional support team structures. We are repurposing central office staff to provide direct on the ground support to our schools, ensuring resources are deployed where they are needed most. To dive deeper into our first initiative regarding strategic planning, I will hand it off to Mr. Chuck Bardy. Why did we do strategic planning? It clarifies the
134vision and purpose and mission at every school. It improves decision making for our principles. It enhances accountability across our school district. Promotes collaboration between the district office and our schools. It drives continuous improvement. And it boosts student achievement. If you've ever been in a school, you know that you can get caught in the whirlwind of all the things that happen with discipline, with parents coming in, events happening, evacuations. We really want to keep our principles focused on that school goal. And therefore, we wanted to make sure that they had a plan in place. and it's our job to make sure we're visiting often to support their goals. Excellent. Following in the 4DX model that is becoming a benchmark for our district, academic services has established four wildly important goals to support our district-wide mission of
135becoming an a district. We've established specific targets across the three departments to create an environment for academic success. First, in curriculum instruction and assessment, the regional teams are focused on specific teacher support. Our goal is to have 139 of our GAPS or new teachers actively engaged in a coaching event or cycle with the regional team. This goal was based on previous performance and current scheduling into third grade ELA, 8th grade science, and high school and middle school algebra and geometry. The curriculum team is targeting 100 teachers to receive coaching and tools that specifically promote collaboration in the classroom. Our focus for the year is on a specific model called building thinking classrooms that emphasizes the use of small teams, vertical work surfaces such as whiteboards, and communication among students. Our physical and mental health team
136is targeting attendance, specifically chronic absenteeism. We are aiming for a 100% of eligible students to have a CST, a child study team review meeting in process. These CST meetings are comprehensive early intervention points that bring together social workers, nurses, LMHPS, and school admin and teachers. CSTs are held when a student hits five absences in a 30-day period. Their purpose is first and foremost to determine if a pattern of non-attendance exists, and if so, why and what can be done to support it. Finally, in ESSE, we have a goal of 90% for students with disabilities having their accommodations certified in focus. I want to clarify that this 90% target represents a current limitation in our reporting tool rather than a gap in service. Currently, certain specialized accommodations such as those provided by contractors are not readily
137documented and focused. We're working to integrate this into the system in the coming months and our goal will change to reflect that. To achieve this wildly important goal, we are piloting several innovative programs designed to address specific academic needs and accelerate learning. these master scheduling pilots represented above target strategic shifts in our instructional delivery because we know that how we organize the time in our schools is the most one of the most powerful levers we have in improving learning. in four of our middle schools, we've implemented a law studies course as an opportunity to provide a second year of instruction in support of civics. all of our high schools have imple implemented an integrative integrated science course which is providing an additional year of instruction for biology towards biology. has a rene they've done this
138before, but it has a renewed focus on mastering essential biology vocabulary. six of our high schools have also implemented a double blocked math program. We are piloting a double block math schedule, a motto proven effective in other high achieving districts to provide students with more time for rigorous instruction and support. But as of now, even the best programs are only as effective as the people we have implementing them in our schools. We're fortunate to say that we have the best principles and teachers in Florida. Our core philosophy has always been people over programs. But the principle does not mean we neglect the importance of providing our staff with worldclass tools and support systems. We invest first and foremost in the people who do the work every day. A practical example of this is the expansion
139of the science log books in grades 3 through 5, which provides a physical tool to enhance organizational skills and communication in our elementary schools. They're paperbased and are key to our consistent positive performance in fifth grade science. By expanding them to third and fourth grade, we're tripling their impact. We've also purchased magnetic comprehension for all of our third through fifth graders, which is a textbased companion tool to Ready. It was previously purchased individually by just over 50% of our schools for their students. So by bulk purchasing and reducing cost in other places, we were able to purchase it centrally with no additional cost to the district. For our algebra and geometry students, we've purchased EDIA. It's our first big dive into AI instructional tools. It uses a generative generative AI engine to respond to student
140trends, errors, and questions, guiding them through solutions to common problems. The engine actually learns the students common errors and behaviors and provides assistance in a personalized manner. We're also placing a major emphasis on Lee Schools unplugged as well as our building thinking classrooms framework. This initiative represents a cultural shift to rebalance our use of technology by training and promoting collaborative instruction. We are empowering teachers to remain the primary drivers of instruction, fostering environments where students collaborate and think deeply with and without screens. Mr. Bardi had mentioned Rise and Climb. It is our one of our very large district initiatives this year. Rise and Climb is our academic services program focused on improving instructional practices to raise the district's overall grade. The program emphasizes tier one core daily instruction and aligns practices with academic benchmarks to
141close achievement gaps. The initiative builds awareness, desire, knowledge, and ability among every tier of school-based leadership, principles, assistant principles, and coaches, and is anchored by a semester trail map of professional learning sessions that we call camps. Through rise and climb, we are accomplishing three significant goals. We're building administrator and teacher capacity and benchmark alignment by enhancing expertise in instructional planning and delivery that is directly aligned to academic benchmarks as well as identified areas of student need. Secondly, we are modeling a consistent instructional method that promotes collaboration. We're providing a clear and replicable model for instruction that can be implemented effectively in every school building. Finally, we are establishing transparent progress measures by sharing clear and accessible data that highlights how teachers and grade levels are performing on individual benchmarks. We're then providing cle key planning
142and observation tools for upcoming instruction. This visual is more than just a timeline. It's our strategic trail map for the year. We're not just hoping for better results. We are methodically climbing toward them camp by camp. We started at base camp in September where we aligned on Florida's formula for success and set our expectations for the year. Since then, we have moved through two critical phases of the professional learning. Camp one in October focused on planning for tier one instruction, ensuring that every lesson is explicitly designed to meet the depth of our standards. Camp 2 in November shifted our focus to responding to errors, giving our leaders and teachers the tools to identify misconceptions in real time and correct them immediately. Now, as we approach camps in 2026, our climb gets steeper and more targeted.
143Our upcoming focus will be on personalized instruction and corrective feedback. We're moving from planning the lesson to customizing the learning for every student in the room. To the right you see our compass for this journey. Benchmark aligned student tasks. This is the non-negotiable. Every camp, every training, and every coach visit is designed to ensure that the tasks our students are doing every day represent the learning needs of the benchmarks that they will be asked to respond to. This is just one more insight into our learner summit. It's also the peak of our climb where we got our title summit comes from the top of our mountain. our FY26 learners summits the peak of our climb is going to represent a strategic and unified effort to elevate instructional capacity across our district. The event is the
144climax of our initiative and represents a comprehensive professional development event meticulously designed to enhance ped pedagogical skills and refine instructional practices. The summit will provide training in four distinct yet complimentary areas. ESSE, student behavior, planning and preparation and data literacy. There will be three days of training resulting in 20 hours of ESSE service of ESSE service credit. This provides training and there will be intensive workshops designed to equip our educators with the skills, strategies, and actionable plans necessary to foster profound and lasting student success. also important to the to our initiatives this year is how how do we actually support our strategy? We do it through an organized regional support structure designed to foster collaboration and share expertise directly where it matters in our schools. As you can see from the data for the east
145region here, we are tracking the engagement of our central office academic coaches very closely. This isn't just about activity, it's about impact. These reports are provided weekly in our board docs weekly board update on a rotating basis by region. As the data migrates to its own dashboard in 2026, we'll be able to share it with you in real time. Our regional directors are leading these engagements to ensure that our coaches and teachers are not working in isolation, but are coming together in true professional learning communities. This collaborative engine is what drives school transformation. We've also refined our appro our approach to school transformation. Under the leadership of our senior director of school transformation, we have strategically allocated four of our district coaches to focus specifically on our most vulnerable schools. Our goal is twofold. To
146move move schools out of state oversight and just as importantly to prevent others from ever entering it. With currently only one school in BSI status, the team is now able to pivot to a proactive stance. They are focusing intensively on risk level four schools to prevent any decline in performance. This shift from reactive intervention to proactive support has created a strong forward-leaning footing for our district for our district's future. As a regional superintendent, this makes my heart happy when I visit schools. I get to go out and see the kids in action and walk the schools with the principles. This is some pictures of our teachers working together as a region and all of our regions are doing this. So we had all of our algebra teachers from high school get together and plan together.
147I had already planned in my mind that I wanted them to do that a few times this year. I didn't have to say that. They asked can we do this again? Because we provided this time during the day for them to be able to do that together and work together with our senior teachers and new teachers. It's really made a difference. there are more days coming up in January for these teachers and we did the same with geometry and also middle school science as well. Through these initiatives, many of our schools are well on their way to exceeding their overall end of the year expectations. These schools are spotlighted because their PM1 data from quarter 1 has them meeting or exceeding their target at this time. Keep up that great work. There are two key
148challenges that still require our ongoing oversight and divisional support. These have in the past impacted our performance. We've consistently heard from Dr. Carlin that student success depends on two main factors. Access to a high-quality teacher and increased instructional time. As shown on the data screen before you, our collaboration with human resources is yielding results as we currently have 200 fewer vacancies than at this time last year. This reduction contributes to our students greater success and access to high-quality teachers. The second challenge is increasing available instructional time. While we have made some adjustments to the bell schedule to provide additional time, addressing the issue of chronic student absenteeism is another way to enhance that time. We will continue to track and we're currently on track to achieve significant reductions in this area, which means more students
149in school, resulting in more time for education. We will continue to recognize the hard work of our schools, our support staff, and our social social workers as we prior prioritize student access to highquality teachers and more time in school. In summary, our strategy to close these performance gaps relies on four pillars that are already active. data literacy for smarter decisions, benchmark aligned coaching for high rigor and accuracy, agile training for real-time course correction, and redeployed support teams for direct student assistance. We believe this constitutes a powerful holistic response to our current challenges. We are currently executing, changing, and getting stronger, and we appreciate your support. Thank you very much. And at this time we open up our presentation to superintendent comments and board discussion. Thank you to our chief academic officer Dr. Shaker and to
150our regional associate superintendent two of which are represented on the dis today. I just really appreciate all of your work. obviously it's the curriculum instruction and assessment that cycle that's going to help us see how things are going and then be able to make those real-time adjustments. I just want to thank you for your unwavering support of our schools. I know that the work is is big. we have done a lot of work in this first year to put some of those foundational pieces in place like we talked about school safety. Like we're doing a pretty good job, knock on wood, with that. Getting our teacher vacancies filled. we're doing a much better job. We're not at 100%. So, I'm not going to stop saying that until we get to 100%. Dr. Johnston and Miss
151Velasquez have promised me we're getting to 100%. You're going to hear a lot of bells ringing here very soon. So, we are we are committed to doing that, expanding our instructional day at the high school as well as building in those additional minutes whenever possible at elementary and middle. So, all of that setting the foundation for the work that you're seeing now, which is a continuation of improving our curriculum and our instructional model and also our assessment model. making sure that teachers, especially our new teachers and those that struggle, have the support that they need. Like we said before, not waiting until the summer to do it, but making sure it's job embedded in their professional learning communities. I want to thank our principles, our school leaders, and our teachers for all of your work
152at the school level, making sure that this is the priority. So, safety and the foundational pieces last year. Now, we're ready to see that needle move. And yes, I will go to my grave saying this district will be an A district. there is no doubt about it. We are moving forward and I just appreciate your leadership and the leadership at our schools and making that happen. So thank you. We look forward to your questions and your comments. Board member questions, comments. I have a question. I'm taking a look at this last slide you had with teacher vacancies. We know we hit a hit a home run on that one. I mean, corporations wish wish they could have reduced the turnover and and job openings that you folks have done in HR here, but the absenteeism,
153we've only moved that two two points. What are some of the things that we need to do to fix that? Because that 21% absenteeism to Dr. Carlin's point about, you know, instruction time, they're not going to get instruction time if they're not in the classroom. Can you fill us in on what some of the things we could do to to fix that number or enhance it? Yeah, I know with our with our department, with the with our student services department, it's all about early intervention. It's about catching it quickly and engaging parents. So, that 30-day window and tracking anybody who gets more than five absences within that 30-day window, calling calling a meeting together, instituting a parental intervention, and then ultimately escalating it to to higher higher levels. We can escalate it to the court
154system, we can escalate it to turn is really our primary approach. Early intervention is what we're going after this year. From there, communications campaigns, getting the word out to parents the significance of students attending is going to be key. we heard from our student rep at last month's meeting, that she really felt that, there needed to be that kids sometimes were frustrated, that students were sometimes frustrated, that they felt like, their their parents needed to know how important it was that they were at school, that they all they almost felt a sense of reflection. So, increasing the communications campaign is key, too, but early intervention is going to be one of our primary strategies. Yeah, thank you for that. The I think all the board members are going up the FSBA the next couple of
155days. This might be a good exercise when we get with our peers around the state of Florida that are at that meeting to find out best practices. You know, what are they doing to to make some of these numbers better? Dr. Carly? Yeah, I'll say I'll I'll chime in. regarding chronic absenteeism, I think there were a lot of u byproducts of the co shutdown and I think one of the things that we've seen is when children were staying home, sometimes families got used to them being home, sometimes children got used to being home and so what we're trying to do, another another strategy is really making our classrooms engaging, inviting. We talked about Lee unplugged. You know, sometimes coming to school and saying, "Okay, another day where I'm going to sit on a on a
156Chromebook and pound out my work," might not be the most engaging approach. Certainly, we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But if I knew I had to come to school all day and sit on a Chromebook, that might not be the most engaging opportunity. And so, again, credit to Dr. Shaker and to the team of looking at more opportunities to get that back in balance, right? So when I went through my university system, we learned about a balanced approach. You had some time with the teacher, you had time in small group, and you had time with computer assisted instruction. So that was a nice rotation. so getting back to kind of more to center in terms of how we instruct children and making those classrooms as engaging and as warm as
157they can possibly be so that the children run to the classroom, not away. And we just want to again thank our teachers because they're working hard every day to make those classrooms inviting and engaging. Mr. Ribble, may I comment on that as well? Yes, sir. One of the other things we're working on is making sure that everyone in that schoolhouse knows who those kids are. The kids that come to school tend to be the ones that are involved in sports, in the arts programs, and JOTC. So, if we can find a way to make those kids want to come to school for some of our specialized programs, we're also making sure that our school staff, our counselors are trying to reel them in because those are the things that makes kids want to come to
158school. Yeah, great point. Any other, Miss Jordan? I was going to say the chronic absentees that is in all 67 districts because that was a big conversation about how do we get that in. I will say I love this presentation. And it is just really I'm ready to rise with you all to do whatever we need to do. But can and I love the backwards design because you have to know where your results are going to be. So going backwards is just great. You know where you need to end up at. But when on slide 13, the visits, how is that determined? Because I see some have six and some have 27 plus. Is that or is this just Yeah, I can speak to it. Good. Was that good? Yeah. Do you see what I'm
159saying? It Yeah. Oh, please. No, I think each region really looks at what their prior year data was. and those regional teams really begin to isolate where the needs are most because obviously with four or five personnel, you can't get to all 20 schools in a region. So, it's really important for each one of those regional teams to really make sure that they're spending most of their time in their schools that have the areas in which they need the most support. And you may see that there are times that they might be 23 in one school and two or three in another. but that would be purposeful. Okay. Thank you for that. And then I thought that and then if you could maybe offline some time can show me this idia because when I'm hearing
160that it learns like the child's behavior. I need to use that to learn my grandkids behavior. Just saying. So I would really love the if you could do like a one-on-one with me if that's okay with the superintendent to do that because I really would like to to learn that. And then the double block math. How is that? it's at that's in six high schools. Who would be those ch or how are those children students picked to be in those double? Cuz I know my granddaughter had it one time and it was like mind-blowing that they had it two times in a row. The best model that we're we're seeing is actually when there is a core algebra teacher that they go to every day and then there's almost what we would consider an intervention
161teacher, a different teacher altogether versus the classes being double blocked together. So again, these are some of the kind of pilot models we're running. we are borrowing from, you know, the one of the most one of the highest achieving districts that we talk about all the time. They have a pretty good model of double blocked algebra with two separate teachers. we anticipate there's going to be good outcomes and from there we would give our schools kind of enough lead time in order to staff appropriately for next year because it will require the hire will require hiring additional math teachers. No, thank you. I appreciate that because I know my grandson was just talking about it having math and intervention math. So that just ties right into this. So thank you so much. Appreciate it and
162I love it. Okay. Any other comments board members? Miss Fischer. Thank you, Mr. Chair. thank you and the team for their hard work. Could you go to slide number four, please? is one we've always highlighted over the years, especially as high school algebra and geometry and always the number for that. Could you maybe explain a little bit and I got a great explanation when I was on a school visit with Dr. Carlin in fact perhaps why that tends to trend lower in relation to when students actually take algebra and geometry. So, sure. we currently have a model of a school grading system in which students that are advanced in math courses, if they show that they're trending as a seventh grader, as a level three or higher when they get to 8th grade, the accelerated
163model is that they're going to take an algebra andor a geometry course. And in doing so, that creates a system in which you're going to have the majority of your students or close to it sitting in an advanced course prior to getting into high school. And so you'll have what's called a middle school algebra and geometry result. And then you're going to have a high school algebra and geometry result. In this case, these are the 52% of the students that are remaining that haven't taken algebra or geometry as of yet. And so you'll see that trend a little bit lower because oftentimes the students have struggled historically in their math courses. And so it requires opportunities such as the pilot that we talked about or uses of programs like EDIA to help the students really
164process through their learning and their understanding. And so you may see that trends a little bit lower. Thank you, Miss Neie. another thing I wanted to highlight, and actually kind of goes back to a little bit with, what Mr. Ribble said when I was going through this presentation in preparation through it, I circled to myself, not invented in Lee County. So, I truly appreciate that and I saw about best standards. I know that's something especially Dr. Carlin has really been talking about, you know, seeing where things work in other places. And I really appreciate, you know, like we talked about a little bit, you know, whether it's FSBA or looking how other districts do things and I appreciate you guys taking part into that. I don't know if that's always been the case in prior
165times, but I really appreciate that outlook into things. So, the other thing I want to highlight as well, as we talk about being an A district, but I also think it's amazing the work behind the scenes is it's not smoking mirrors that we're really truly working on achievement for the children. It's not just trying to get to an A. It's making sure we bring each and every kid there, and I want to make sure the public is that's being highlighted to the public. I know that's something that is super important to this board and the superintendent. So, last thing, just to Mr. Ribble real quick. You talked about absentee. I will say the communications as a parent this year has been great with kids being absent. My kid was absent. We got you know for
166being sick a lot of feedback on that and when they reach certain goals of hey you've been absent for x long that is being followed up on. So I think that's fantastic. So thank you everyone. Any other missing? Yeah I just I kind of want to piggy back off what Mr. Fischer said because as we were talking about, you know, best practices a couple of maybe it was last year, the year before, a certain high school principal that we all went and sat in and the culture that he created within his school. I mean, teachers never wanted to leave, kids never wanted to be absent. you know, and I think that's where it really stems from is, you know, all of our schools as a big fleet and every every ship has a captain and
167it really does come from the leadership of each school and what kind of culture that they are going to create at their own schools and I think our principles for the most part are doing a great job. you know, I'm always, you know, why be good when we can be great mentality. So I think that there's some room for growth there in certain areas when I love slide what is this slide 10 because for years even as an educator you know what do we do with assessments and kids want to know that why am I taking this test what am I doing what is happening with the data and I think whenever students and parents know the why behind the what then they are more apt to understand why they're going through this process so
168thank you for taking next steps to actually not just put a score on a paper but actually put a formula to okay here's where we're at now here's where we're going just like the Mount Everest climb on the following slide. So I thank you very much for that and I want to continue obviously I love the Lee schools unplugged. I talk about that all the time that balance between classical education and technology. We need we need technology. That's the way the world's going. But nothing gets a child more engaged than something that's hands-on. And I think when you talk about absenteeism, a lot of these high nothing also nothing drives me more nuts than hearing my son come home and say, "What did you do today?" Nothing. You did something. Well, we had something on
169a Chromebook. Okay. and so but those conversations that we have at the dinner table that are exciting are those hands-on traditional going back to paper pencil learning and there is really truly something to be said even all the way up to a 19-year-old. So I appreciate the effort and I can't wait to see where this is going. Thank you. Okay, thank you for the comment. Anything else? Any any other comments? Okay, thank you very much. Next, we have the high school transportation organization and student enrollment plan presented by Dr. Kenneth Savage, Dr. Adam Malloy, and Samantha Fields. Good afternoon board members. Dr. Carlin, attorney Bruno. we're here today happy to close out today's meeting with the high school transportation optimization. this is an important body of work that we have referenced in the last few
170board meetings both in November and October. as an opportunity for us to strategically look at you know we've already done elementary proximity, middle school proximity for high school this time around. One of the challenges that just to set the stage we have students who have to get on the bus in the in the morning time in some cases before 4:00 in the morning in order to catch their their bus ride for two hours to get to their high school. that is of course a concern. while we're thrilled that some of the families make that choice, we recognize that causes a real challenge from us from a choice and transportation standpoint because while they can get up really really early to get on on the school bus, that's also a very limited resource that we then
171expend in that effort. And the challenge that you have at the second half of the day when we talk about on-time pickup to schools and taking students home on time is that they can't arrive during the middle of the high school day to pick up that high school student to begin their trek home. and because they can't do that because they have to stay for the entire school day. That then makes them pretty much guarantees that bus will be late for the elementary schools which will then be late for the middle schools. And so when we talk about it's great that we got our students to school and we've seen great numbers getting our students to school on time in the morning. The challenge as we get to the second part of the day is
172directly connected to this high school situation. And so what we wanted to do for this year was to really see what we could do. While we don't we didn't want to do a complete boundary change and disrupt you know the thousands and thousands and thousands of students who've already selected their schools and choice patterns that we've done. we did look to see what could we do in a in a modest way to make a huge impact on transportation for our families but also try not to disrupt as many students as possible and the choices they've made from a transport of choice standpoint. So today we're going to go through those things. but before I do that I just want to credit the two leaders to my left here Samantha Fields and Dr. Mallaloy who have
173been just tremendous in this work in a very condensed period of time to have to work through some of these really important things related to our student assignment plan as well as our current boundaries and looking at that work and today that'll be the front part of our presentation. During the latter part of our presentation Dr. Mallaloy will also talk about our middle school proximity work update some revisions to that work as well. but with without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to my two colleagues. Thank you, Dr. Savage. in terms of the system and the project goal, our overarching goal is to improve the efficiency and long-term sustainability of high school transportation while preserving meaningful family choice. you can see under the current system that families can select from an average of
1744.1 high schools. our transportation zones are expansive, covering approximately 287 square miles in the east, 282 square miles in the south, and 169 square miles in the west zone. As a result of this wide geographic footprint, the average high school bus ride exceeds 90 minutes. This context underscores the need for strategic adjustments that improve efficiency while maintaining access for families. This slide shows the current high school subzone structure. Because of specialized programming offered at the high school level, these zones cover significantly larger geographic footprints than our elementary and middle school zones. Our technical review focused on how can we take a more strategic approach to the transportation responsibilities embedded in this system with the goal of improving efficiency while preserving access to specialized programs. This slide outlines the current high school choices available within each
175sub zone along with the total square mileage for which the district provides transportation. It is important to note that access to special programming extends transportation eligibility across the full geographic footprint of these larger zones, significantly increasing the area the district must cover. The next several slides will illustrate the systemwide challenges associated with high school transportation. Each green dot on the map represents a student attending one of our high schools. This slide shows the residential distribution of students attending Lehigh Senior High School. I want to draw your attention to the significant concentration of students residing in east subzones 2 and three. This pattern directly informs the recommendation we will present at the conclusion of this section. This slide shows where students attending Fort Myers High high school reside. You can see a strong concentration of students
176living in south subzones 1 and two. There is also a smaller number of students residing in south sub zone 3. This group extends transportation eligibility across the full south zone and contributes to the broader geographic footprint we currently serve. This slide illustrates the residential locations of students attending Island Coast High School. during this analysis, special consideration was given to schools like Island Coast that draw students from multiple sub zones and offer specialized programming such as the new collegiate academy which further expands their transportation footprint and complexity. Slide 10 highlights the first of our four approaches sorry slide 10 highlights the first of of four approaches our team developed to improve transportation efficiency at the high school level. This one model represents the most severe option in terms of student displacement. Under this approach, boundaries would
177be redrawn so that each student is assigned to a single high school based strictly on their residential address. Implementing this model would result in significant disruption. More than 50% of all high school students would be reassigned. Slide nine presents a more moderate yet still disruptive approach that would limit transportation to the existing sub zones within our current system. Under this model, more than 10,000 students or approximately 35.3% of all high school students would be displaced. In addition to the magnitude of displacement, this option also presents capacity challenges within several subzones, making implementation difficult. In this approach, our team evaluated a mile radius model by running simulations for Fort Myers High School using both the 10 mile as the crow flies radius and a 10-mi driving distance. While the radius could be reduced, the 10-mi model
178did not generate meaningful improvements in transportation efficiency. In several cases, it actually extended routing beyond current subzones in their associated choice patterns, creating additional operational challenges within the structure of our current system. This approach, the 3113 elimination, targets the most extreme transportation routes by removing transportation between subzones 3 and one. This model results in comparatively minimal disruption, displacing approximately 4.3% of high school students. It maintains the existing subzone and adjacent subzone framework, allowing students in sub zone 2 to continue accessing subzones 1 through three. As a result, it preserves a larger geographic footprint while significantly reducing the longest and least efficient routes. This approach also serves as the foundation for our final recommendation which will include school specific modifications to further improve efficiency while minimizing disruption. Slide 12 provides an overview of the displacement associated
179with each approach. This metric is critical for understanding how each model would affect current high school students and helps inform the feasibility and impact of potential system changes. The strategic transportation threshold recommendation is a modified strategic approach that builds on the 3113 elimination concept while increasing efficiency and reducing disruption. This model introduces an attendance-based threshold to guide transportation eligibility within our current subzones. Under this approach, if 90% or more of a high school's enrollment resides within two subzones, those two subzones, excluding barrier islands, would become the exclusive transportation zones. If no school meets this 90% threshold in two subzones, then transportation would be provided to the three subzones with the highest enrollment. This method preserves family choice within a more focused geographic footprint, reduces the length and complexity of routes, and minimizes student displacement compared
180to other approaches. Slide 14 displays the attendance matrix showing where high school students reside by sub zone organized by the school they attend. This data set served as the foundation for developing the strategic transportation threshold introduced in the previous slide. Using this matrix, our team identified which high schools have more than 90% of their students residing within two subzones and which schools do not, allowing us to apply the recommended model consistently across the system. The next three slides illustrate how the strategic transportation threshold applies across each geographic zone, identifying which transportation zones would remain active for each high school. In the east zone, most schools meet the 90% threshold within two sub zones. Only Dumbar High School and Riverdale High School do not meet this threshold. For these schools, transportation would be provided to students
181residing in the next highest attendance sub zone, consistent with the recommended model. In the south zone, most high schools meet the 90% threshold within two sub zones. Southport Meers High School is the only exception. because it does not meet the threshold. Transportation would be provided to students residing in subzones one, two, and three, the three sub zones with the highest attendance for that school. The west zone is the smallest of our geographic choice zones at approximately 169 square miles, over a 100 square miles smaller than both the east and the south zones. Within this zone, three high schools, Island Coast, North Fort Myers, and Mariner, would continue to receive transportation across all three sub zones. The only schools with transportation changes under the threshold model are Cape Coral High School and Ida Baker High School.
182Under the recommended strategic transportation threshold, access to choice and special programs remains unchanged. Students may continue to apply for and attend any eligible program. The only change relates to which students receive transportation. For example, a student living in South Subzone 3 may still apply to and attend the IB program at Fort Myers High School. However, transportation would only be provided to students residing in South Subzones 1 and two. This approach maintains program access while aligning transport while aligning transportation services with a more efficient geographic footprint. Our recommended action is to implement a strategic transportation threshold that aligns transportation services with actual enrollment patterns while maintaining access to choice. This model uses a 90% attendance threshold to determine which subzones are eligible for transportation. Again, to reiterate, if 90% or more of a high school's enrollment
183resides within two subzones, transportation will be limited to those two subzones. If a school does not meet the 90% threshold within two subzones, transportation will be provided to the three sub zones with the highest percentage of enrolled students. To support a smooth transition, we will launch a comprehensive communication campaign. This effort will identify and notify students who would no longer receive transportation based on their subzone of residence and students participating in open enrollment who previously could have selected a school with transportation access. that would change under the strategic transportation threshold. This targeted outreach will ensure families have clear, timely information ahead of open enrollment and can make informed decisions based on the updated transportation framework. We have our next steps here, some of which I went over our internal engagement reviewing and validating with with
184cabinet and school principles. our board presentation today, system updates, completing internal system modifications and updates within focus, our communications campaign, which I went over, notifying families of approved changes, and providing clear information on continuation options, and then open enrollment, launch open enrollment, incorporating the newly approved exclusive transportation zones. While we take a little pause there for a minute because this covers the first half of the presentation related to the high school. we wanted to have an opportunity to have the superintendent make any comment as well as receive any board member questions and discussion. Thank you Dr. Savage and team. We really appreciate it. So, as we continue as a district to examine all of our processes, all of our procedures, and all of our points of celebration, as well as points of pain, I'll be
185really transparent with you and say that, you know, we continue to look at transportation ways that we can can enhance our transportation program while meeting the requirement to educate our children and to get them to school in a timely fashion without having to get on the bus at some unreasonable hour. So, we've asked our team to take a deep dive into transportation. today you're seeing the results of some of that work. The work does continue and will continue throughout my tenure as superintendent because there is opportunity within our transportation system. We believe that this is in the best interest of our school district. it is it does support our goal of being an a district, but most importantly making sure that children are well cared for and not at the bus on the bus at
186unreasonable hours. So we look forward to your conversation and any questions you may have regarding this part of the presentation. Great Miss Fischer. Thank you sir. thank you team. I know this is not an easy one especially high schools obviously have more variety than our elementary and middle schools when it comes to programming. So question I have so for example we'll say zone W3. So both for Mariner and North Fort Myers it does not meet the current threshold of 90%. So it continues W1, W2, W3. So in theory, next year, the year after, if you know the if the population is met in W1, W2, then W3 would go away. Correct. For transportation purposes. Yeah, I would say at this time, this is for this year only. This is reflected within your student assignment plan
187for this year. Every year the board has the opportunity to adopt the new student assignment plan. and so these this decision really was exclusively for this year as an attempt to whittle down that aspect of it to to say that this would be something that we would anticipate next year at this time the same type of approach. I would say at this time that's not necessarily what we're we're we're recommending today. the main reason for that is because we've we've talked about with our demographer and so forth analyzing a similar level of boundary work of what we've done with the elementary and the middle as well as re-evaluating some of the different program access options for this time of this year. We're really exclusively looking at the services and the programs to try to minimize
188the negative impact of that. to try to really help improve the overall efficiency of the transportation due to that aspect but not to tie us into any kind of binding longer term arrangement beyond this year for enrollment. Thank you Dr. Savage. That's a good strategy. I have another question following up on that. I think in in the future as I see obviously transportation with this especially some of the routes you've illustrated throughout the last little bit programming for the most part at least we have you know Cambridge and IB throughout the entire district so that shouldn't be as big a deal. However, for example you know Cypress or North Fort Myers High School for example have the arts program. You know for example W3 wouldn't have an arts. So that's something I think programming wise
189need to you know be prepared in the future at some point for that. yes, and it's a really excellent point to bring up, member Fischer, is essentially that's one of the biggest challenges we had with this work. is that we have arts programs which are not just it's not just staffing, it's also facility. the the rooms are designed specifically to serve those programs. You also see this with a comprehensive high schools that are designed with very specific things such as automotive bays and whatnot. Those are programs that would be very costly to replicate and to to create them in other schools. Whereas advanced programs, which you mentioned, have a they have sometimes costs as well related to materials, certifications, training for those teachers, but they're far less costly than some of those specific programs that
190require materials and actual facility modifications in order to be able to deliver those programs effectively. so that is a huge part of it and we don't want to change that. That's why we're not cutting any access. there's no recommended change at this time in terms of programmatic access to families related to choosing those programs. The only thing that we're recommending at this time is strictly to look at some of the transportation offerings that we are offering in that case of of buses that we are providing to be able to bus students to those programs. Thank you for explaining that Dr. Savage. Okay. Any other board comments? Mr. persons. Would you expect to see more students trying to stay in the same school but driving themselves? Possibly. it seems to me like there's actually less students
191driving to school now than in in the past. So, I was just wondering how that would work out. That's a it's another great point. basically one of the things we've noticed this year that's added to our challenge as we migrated to the proximity work was we experienced an increased wrership in high schools. so it really speaks to that exact point became one of the challenges because it appears based on the data that there are more high school students dependent on that type of transportation. then that's all the more reason why we're recommending one of the more conservative options and less disruptive options to try to mitigate whatever negative impact we can on families. so that was a very it was a really important point as we consider that as well. while we certainly we do
192encourage families who are disrupted through this recommendation available car pooling lots of other options that may may be available to them. that's also why we wanted to give them time. because what this allows families to do is it gives them about four months of notice. and so while we know that families if they are impacted and are unable to figure out a workable way whether it's you know driving with a parent, whether it's driving with other students, whether it's whatever type of car pooling arrangement they can make, if they are reliant on transportation and cannot make those other arrangements, they would have the ability to still enter into the lottery procedures. That was why it was so important that this was done prior to opening up the lottery and enrollment. so families if they are
193in that dependent opportunity, they still would have the opportunity to choose another school or they could receive transportation knowing full well what that is. But another really good point. Any other board comments? M. Yeah. And then looking at this, I feel that you're going to have a lot more families where they're not really going to have a choice because can they drive their kids to school? Can they pick up their kids? And is it certain areas that are going to be more affected than other areas in in regards to being able to provide transportation? and do they go to work or they don't provide and their kids have to go to wherever they really don't want their child to be at because or have the as Mr. Fischer said, you know, other schools where you
194know the art school or automotive or whatever that may be because they cannot get their child there. So now we're not going to be able to offer that to them. And I don't and I and I know our sister and counties they provide busing to all their children and then some. So how do they do that if we cannot provide that? And when I'm saying they provide it, they provide all of it. but yet we cannot provide especially for high schools when these kids are already in like the 10th grade, 11th grade, and now we're going to say, "Yep, you're not in the 10 miles because the way the crows fly, which we know our children do not fly yet. I haven't seen that." And I know that's how we do the mapping of distance,
195but I just this is a hard cell. I mean, I that's just my personal opinion, but I'm when I'm looking at the numbers, there's certain schools that are going to be more affected than others and certain areas of the community at large that are going to be affected more than others. I think Amber Jordan, you're speaking to one of the points that we really strongly looked at in developing this approach was we were really trying to be sensitive to exactly what you're speaking of. And so when you actually look at all the numbers together, first off, just as just to make sure it's very clear for everyone, the board members as well as the public, you know, we provide vastly more transportation than any other district in Florida in terms of the programmatic access that
196we offer, in terms of the choices we provide, transported choice. There is really no district in Florida that even comes remotely close to the offerings that we do. and that's very unique to the character of Lee County and what we've done. And so what we're not espousing is that we should eliminate that completely. That's something that our families have become accustomed to. and we love to do that. So I just want to make sure that's very clear. We provide far more transportation, transported choice, the offerings. Many districts in Florida and really most of the country, they will offer one bus for one school, one school of enrollment, and then they offer potentially magnetized programming, specific magnet programming, and then specific transportation for magnet offerings, which is vastly less than what we do at this stage
197where we allow folks to choose multiple schools that we provide transportation for. So, I just want to make sure that's very clear to everyone period that is just a that is a it's not even comparable basically between us and others. However, that magnetized choice is something we still did consider as part of this work and that's why we wanted to we wanted to demonstrate to the group that there's very few students that are actually impacted by this. it's less than 5% of our students that are impacted because of this work and because of the more precise way we went about this. So it's actually a much smaller number than any of the other methods which which represent much more consistent types of options of what you'd find elsewhere in the state. So I think under
198the concerns that we have here, we've actually come up with a pretty strong way to approach this work without disrupting as many students. At the same time, we are allowing families to remain where they are. We're strictly saying we cannot afford to provide a bus for all students to go wherever they are, particularly for two-hour plus bus rides or to get on the bus at 3:45 in the morning. Those are things that we have to be able to draw the line somewhere. And so that's where we're drawing that line at this time, at least in the recommendation we're making to the board. Yeah. I just want to weigh in here because this thing gets talked about long before I got on the board. I lived in five different states and Dr. Savage, you're exactly right.
199this school district has more opportunities for folks. most most states have a high school and they're all they're all all the same. you if you want to go to take a specialty, you got to enroll in a in a in a college type program that's above and beyond what the task of the school is. So I guess in essence, you can't have it both ways. If you want your child to go someplace that offers a specialty at maybe North Fort Myers and you live in Bonita Springs, then you got a decision to make and meth the child drives themselves or gets some type of transportation or maybe they don't roll in that in that course. I just think it's a double-edged sword. It's not an easy decision and I know the logistics of moving product
200around. We're we're we're moving human beings around and it's not an easy easy decision. If it was a package, we just pick it up at 2:00 in the morning and it'd ride all day and it doesn't say anything. But human beings are a little different and it's a real challenge. I know putting these runs together is really a challenge. and this GPS that we're going to chase, this new technology that we're going to chase out of the Tallahassee will give us some relief as we get that technology in place. But it's it's work in progress and I think we made some good gains and we have to be patient and we have somebody call us up and complain to us. We got to be a doll enough to tell them the other side of the
201apple the other side of the story because it's not a cookie cutter approach to to get your student in every each and every school each and every opportunity. Any other comments le Thank you. so I have a scenario. So, let's say a family decides their freshman's going to go to the school that's right down the street from where they live, but their 11th grade year they decide they want to be in drama and they're going to and they want to go to another school that's not in their zone. is that op is and that is that going to be an easy option as long as the seats available obviously, but that would be I think that would be a concern that parents would have is if they wanted to change and they're going to provide
202their own transportation because now in 11th grade guess what Johnny got a new car for his birthday so he's driving himself. So is it I just want to make sure that avenue is going to be easily accessible and available instead of cuz I know when people have tried to change schools you know we have schools that are you know over already overloaded so there wouldn't be allowed there because they have a seat there was no you know as long as availability they were able to go that's the question I guess I just want to make that clear so to speak on that yes so absolutely that option still would be available just as it is now so there's no change to options especially through 11th grade. So like we had talked about so they have
203until second semester of their 11th grade year to be able to make a change. So they still will have that option if they do choose to go to a different school and even if it's out of zone like you had said there still is a waiver option and depending on capacity and availability that is still optional. Yep. Right. So, I mean that I think that's what they most of the time I don't think people want to change once they're established, but if there's that opportunity for let's just say somebody wants to go to, you know, the fire at the south and they're they live in the Cape, but they want to drive that because that's a stepping stone to the fire academy. So, they chose to do that their 11th grade year. Then that would
204be an opportunity to continue that and do that. And but you're telling me that let's say if they're if it's closer to their end of their 11th grade year, they won't be able to do that for their senior year at all. Correct. Currently how it's written in the student enrollment plan. That's correct. Yes. Okay. I we might want to have to think about that a little bit because I would never want to stop someone from going to South for that fire academy because I see too many graduate from there and that is their plan and their path and that opportunity is not everywhere. So, thank you. Yeah, please. Any other comments? Yes, I guess I'm finished. Go ahead. Thank you. Dumbar, going back to Dumbar. So, you have Dumbar. Dumbar is considered in the east
205zone. However, it is in the city of Fort Meyers. So, you're downtown Fort Meyers, but yet we are having there's 341 that are in the zone one and the rest of that out is out in East Lee. So where would those but we're going to provide that transportation all the way from East Lee all the way to Dumbar. Well you are because there's the two that are highlighted already east one and two and they're highlighted green. So they would be Yeah. So Miss Jordan to that point for for Dumbar which is very geographically unique in that it straddles that south and east high school zone. we selected the three highest sub zones because it didn't meet the 90%. So it was E1, E2 and south subzone 1. So we did we did we did consolidate
206it geographically around Dumbar. and so east subzone 3 would not have transport transportation access. They could still apply to the special program. but Dumbar was one of six schools that will still receive three subzone transportation access. Okay. So now we're and I'm just going to go there with this. So we have when you count those students up from those three sub zones and you don't have transportation to get to Dumbar now we have open seats and now are we going to worry about the other people coming in to take to take some of those classrooms actually so this is where the and that data table that we listed on on the particular slide deck here really is a helpful piece here. So on slide 16 and the board members received the last board weekly as
207well as as an attachment here. This matrix is probably your good north star to really understand the implications of this. So just to kind of use this as a case in point. If you were to look at the east zone right now, you'll notice that a number of the students that live in east zone one, which is the east zone that is a closest to downtown Fort Myers, that presently 131 of those students attend Gateway, 116 of those students attend Lehigh Senior, and 387 of those students attend Riverdale. Okay? In addition to 655 that presently attend Dunar High School. So in this particular model, Gateway and Lehi Senior would no longer receive that because it is not one of their top their highest numbers come from E2 and E3, which would mean that would open
208up an additional 200 plus students that could select Dunar if they wanted to continue to receive that transportation. So it actually opens up the door for increased enrollment for for Dunar as well as presently that south zone one which is the closest zone to Dunar and again I think highlights it really is an opportunity to fix the issue that you just cited which was how do the students who live right around the school potentially disqualify for transportation. Well this also fixes that issue as well so that it's pretty clear that students could receive transportation in south zone 1 as well as E1 and E2. So, it really allows for more students right there to receive transportation right around Dunar. and that allows for that. So, so we really did try to take that in account
209as well. And just for the board's context, I wanted to give you an idea about displacement numbers. So, elementary proximity, we displaced about 11,000 elementary school kids. for middle school, we displaced about 7,000 middle school kids with the boundary redesign. So that's about 20,000 kids in those two big system changes. For this high school strategic transportation threshold, it's less than 900 students that would be impacted or about 2% of your high school population. so the displacement is much different than the two contrasting system changes while it still reduces greatly our geographic footprint for nine of our high schools. Thank you. Well, okay. Any other comments? I got one. Go ahead, please. This would also correct students that live close to the your proximity to the school, open up seats for them because sometimes they lose
210seats to the school that's closest to them from a student that lives in like a much farther away. They've taken that seat. So, we're going to give pre preference, right, to those that are in that live the closest to that specific school for opportunity for them first, right? So, we're not recommending any changes right now in the lottery and in the draw for how they can get to those schools. What we are saying is from a transportation standpoint, we're not providing transportation to these outer zones that are then doing that. So, in a roundabout way, it could address your issue. but but I would say in this case our primary goal was to disrupt students and families as minimal as possible but still make a huge benefit for what we're currently doing from a high
211school transportation standpoint. That was the balancing act. That's what we're trying to accomplish. We're not going to be able to fix all of the things that we wanted to fix because just the time it takes to do it and the work that it takes. We anticipate this work continuing as we work through this year to try to enhance it even more. But for where we are today, we think it represents a meaningful step that is least disruptive but still provides significant programmatic access in a way that far exceeds what other districts do for for their high school offerings. Can I add one thing? So can and this is something for the superintendent really probably. So, I know I've gone on other school districts websites and when they're they I guess most of their enrollment is
212probably done online and when you put put in the address of where you live, you're you get a drop-own box and you actually it puts you in the school you really it get whether you it tells you that's the school you're entitled to go to basically or told to go to. But I mean would we be able to do something like that is my question where if it was three high schools they would see that there's opportunity that's the their three schools. It kind of gives a perspective for people versus them thinking they can go to any school in Lee County because that's really the perception that's out there right now. You can pick any school, if you get in, you're you're golden. And I think that it's I think this is a cultural change
213as well for us. it is we definitely looked at that as well. that was something we talked about because it is the capability is certainly there to be able to create a drop down effect and things of that nature. And that is again to be consistent with what other districts do. you typically where you move, you type your address, here's your school, and that is what most districts in Florida and across the country do. This is where your address, this is your school, and then if you want to apply for a special program, a magnet offering, that's where you get into those other things. but yes, from a normal zoned piece, that is what most people who move here are anticipating and they're very surprised when they have a lottery card that allows them to
214pick multiple options and find out that we'll provide transportation to most of those options as well. so again do appreciate that and certainly as we move forward in the future and the future work that is something we are looking at as well. There wasn't sufficient time from the technology that supports that type of approach to build that model into the current situation. This is working within the given constraints that we had. This was we felt our best recommendation at this time. but certainly we do want to make it as easy as possible in the future. So thank you for highlighting that talking point as well. Thank you. and I I still want to go back to proximity and someone living within that proximity of that school and that having that preference because I sell real
215estate and pe you know and they say they want to buy a house in Tangle Wood because they want to go to that school and I go oh you may not get that school because I know that school's pretty full. So that opportunity makes it very difficult for realators to even have say you buy a home and you're going to go to you're going to be able to go to school with within that home. I would love to be able to say because no one understands that just because you bought in Tanglewood you're not going to get to go to Tangle. They don't believe me and they don't understand that why can't I bought right I can walk to it and you can't go to it. So, I mean, I just think that a preference
216is really important because also I remember a principal telling me because that one of their students by the time they get to school, they've been on a bus for two hours and they pass 17 elementary schools. By the time he gets there, that child's done for the day. He's like and they have to reel him back in. It's so much more work for that teacher and the principal and everybody has to sew into that child. So, and I said, "Why in the world would a parent do that?" Well, kind of their answer to me was a parent didn't do anything, didn't sign their child to any school, and that's where they wound up. Well, that's on us then. That's that's where I say that's bad on us because now we're feeling to me we're failing
217that child because that's not what's best for a child to be on a bus for two hours and then him get off of the bus and need to he needs to run around the bus about 20 times before he gets in the schoolhouse because he needs to work off that energy. So, I mean, I just think we need to think of the ch the child and I think we have to have I think there should be a preference and I know that might be more work and my apologies because I see the lot of work you put into this and this is great, but I think there should be a preference if you live near a school to have the opportunity to go to school, your neighborhood school first over someone that's going to drive
218going to drive their parents going to drive them there and get them in there. So just to speak on that. So for the lottery process, so lottery again would not just is high level in itself, but it so it is a priority within the lottery process. So close proximity meaning less than two miles. So they're not eligible for a bus that would be their closest proximity school. That is considered a higher preference or a higher ranking within the lottery system. So that doesn't mean that 100% of those you know families that are residing closest to that school will get in but it is a preference within the lottery. So that still means that there would need to be other seats available for other students outside of that you know within the under two miles. also
219with that would be like sibling preference as well. So, as long as they're linked within their focus portal, then that is also considered a preference as well within the lottery system. So, that is something that we are already do prioritize within the student enrollment plan. But like like you said, there still will be unfortunately some families that within the lottery that did not get that and they do reside within two miles. but it is already a preference. yeah, Go ahead. Sorry, I'm sorry. My just concern is if that we sometimes we have parents that aren't parenting or they're they're not around. So, we have to be a little bit ahead of it and think of think out of the box a little bit and and think about the child and get them in the school
220that's closest and it's going to be the easiest accessible for them whether their parent did or not. Maybe their parents not, you know, they are being raised by the grandparent who's can't navigate the system. I just I my that is my concern. I just think we think I think we need to think about the child. Absolutely. So that is a part of the communication campaign as well where we want to make sure that we're you know getting the word out as much as possible as soon as possible. So that has already you know gone out January is a part of the campaign for student enrollment. So just trying to get the message out that families do have choice and that will open up January 20th and they have a full month like you said. So
221then that does give them the opportunity to be able to get in and complete the choice application if they would like. so that we don't have to do it on their behalf. Thank you. Mr. Tro, one final question. What if this is put into place? What happens when NN comes on? Now, we're going to move all these children again. Well, I it wouldn't necessarily require a move, but we would take a look at the subzones, the sub zone in which high school NN would be going in, which would be east sub zone 3 and east subzone 2. So that primarily a large concentration of those students would be residing in those sub zones. So it wouldn't be as disruptive and certainly our new plan schools did was a big part of our team's work with
222high school transportation. Does that answer your question? Okay. Any other comments or questions? Okay, moving along. All right. Thank you. Our second topic is the proposed boundary adjustments for middle school zones AA and CC. these changes are designed to more evenly distribute students across the two zones and to accommodate the opening of the new Hector A. Caffarata Junior K8 and its added capacity. this proposal supports long-term enrollment balance while ensuring a smooth transition as the new school comes online. With the implementation of the new elementary and middle school proximity plans, it became necessary to take a closer look on how each zone was performing. to support this work, the zone steering committee was established internally to review and evaluate existing attendance boundaries and choice zones. the committee's charge is to promote balanced enrollment and ensure
223the most effective use of both current and planned school facilities across the district. Our team developed a structured methodology to guide the review of attendance zones. The process focused on three key conditions. Zones where all schools were operating below 80% of building capacity, zones where all schools were operating above 100% of of capacity, and zones affected by the addition of a new school. This framework ensured a consistent data-driven approach to identifying zones in need of adjustment. Among all elementary and middle school choice zones, middle school zones AA and CC emerged as the areas requiring focus review. In zone AA, both Mariner and Challenger middle schools were operating below the 80% capacity threshold. In contrast, all middle school zone CC schools, Kousa, Diplomat, and North Fort Myers Academy were operating above 100% capacity. This imbalance signaled
224the need for targeted zone adjustments to better align enrollment with available capacity. The opening of the new Hector A. Cafarata Junior K8 in fall of 2026 introduces additional middle school capacity, roughly 679 at the middle school level within zone AA. This increased capacity combined with current utilization patterns necessit necessitated a strategic redesign of the AA and CC middle school zones. The goal of this redesign is to balance enrollment across both zones while fully leveraging the new seats coming online at Hector A. Cafarata Jr. K8. Slide 27 displays the existing AA and CC middle school zones, including current resident student counts and available capacity if no boundary adjustments are made. As shown, zone AA faces a deficit of more than a thousand middle school students, while zone CC is projected to experience continued capacity pressure. Without
225changes, both zones will remain significantly out of balance as enrollment grows. Slide 28 illustrates the proposed zone adjustments for middle school zones AA and CC. Our team intentionally shifted the zone east to rebalance enrollment by capturing additional residential areas or study areas for zone AA. The resident student count shown here reflect the impact of the proposed change along with the additional capacity provided by the new Hector A. Caparata by reallocating a portion of zone CC into zone AA. The proposed zone realignment will will more evenly distribute students between the two zones and better positions the district to accommodate both current capacity and projected enrollment growth. The proposed zone adjustment is projected to shift approximately 775 to 861 additional students into zone AA over the next 10 years. In the immediate term, 813 currently enrolled students,
226most of whom attend Diplomat and Kousa Middle Schools, would be directly impacted by the change. To support families through this transition, the proposal includes a continuation option for students who currently attend a C a zone CC school but would reside in zone AA under the new zones. These students may remain at their current school. However, families would be responsible for providing their own transportation. We recommend the following actions for middle school zones AA and CC. Revise the boundaries for zones AA and CC to more effectively balance enrollment and support the opening of the new school. Offer a continuation option for current students who would be reassigned under the new boundaries. These students may remain at their existing school. However, families would have to wave district transportation eligibility. Provide transportation for displaced students who now choose
227to attend a middle school within zone AA. Challenger, Mariner, or Hector. These recommendations promote long-term enrollment balance, maximize available capacity, and ensure families experience a smooth transition. All right. So, we just want to review again in summary. So, these are just what we consider to be minor changes of the student enrollment plan. So, as far as the verbiage, there isn't a lot of changes there. We just are including the high school strategic transportation threshold and we are including the table that would show families which subzones are included per school that will be providing transportation based on the subzone attendance. And then we also will include the revision to the middle school boundaries for zone AA and CC. but again that would not change the parental options for the families. they the schools will still be
228available for them to choose. It will just change the transportation with within AA and CCC, but we do have the option for them to remain at their current school without transportation. We can we'll now open it up for any comments or questions at this time. Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation. We stand ready to answer any questions you may have, board members, as well as any concerns or any additional questions or concerns. Go ahead. You're up. Miss you. Mine's not a concern. It's just a I think you're going to always have to re-evaluate as we build new schools. You're going to have to re-evaluate all the zones. I don't think that I think this is an ongoing, you know, issue. I say issue, but ongoing job for a very long time, Mr. Mallaloy.
229So, I mean, because I just we see it and we know it and we have schools where building the heat zone is going to change quite a bit in the next few years. So I think this is just an ongoing I think tweaking it you know it's going to be a constant thing. Thank you. Exactly. Exactly. Any other Mr. Persons to the earlier point of proximity when you open these new schools that's going to open up seats. The problem we have with proximity right now guaranteeing it is some of the schools are just overcrowded. So the people that live close to them, that's why we're using a lottery. You know, I think it'll be a lot easier once we get a couple more schools open like the middle like Hector Caparada and I guess I
230should still call it NNN until tonight. Hopefully we vote on a name. But those will open up seats at these schools and people that live close by should be able to attend the one they want to. So I think that'll really take care of a problem there. Okay. Any other comments? Yeah, M. Jordan, I just have a question, please. who is the zoning steering committee? Who who is that? Yeah, so we just we formed it with internal department leads from a from inside the district to really get going. Like Miss Jvenelli mentioned, this was not a committee that had any standing until elementary and middle school proximity went into effect because we technically really didn't have any defined boundaries. So having to actually take a step forward here. This is a step in the right
231direction. Soon we will incorporate principles and community members to to kind of take a look at the study areas and the impacted zones. this is just a step in that right direction. because we do have new schools coming online. we do have other zones that are close to the criteria. but for the next for the next six or seven years, I believe we have a new school opening almost every year. So, these are considerations to make sure that there are enough student that there is enough student generation to fill and this is something that other school districts across Florida whenever they open a new school they do have to make boundary adjustments each year. So, we did model the steering committee method methodology and now looking to expand that as it gets bigger and a
232little bit more established each year. Okay. So, this is phase one and then you bring it to the public. Correct. Yeah. our planning department is working with communications really on a multi-platform outreach campaign. and we'll look to continue that each and every year. Okay. Because it seemed like we were getting ready to do this for the upcoming year when they the parents come in and start choosing for their kids. Correct. Is that correct? We are. Yes. For 2627. Okay. So then when do we take it to the public? When do they have an input? Yeah. So right now our timeline we're really focused communication in December, January, and February. this targeted communication will be sent to students affected by the middle school zone changes, those impacted by the high school transportation optimization, and all eighth
233graders transitioning into high school. Key information will be posted on the district and affected school websites. and also a social media campaign with videos and graphics will ensure families are aware of the updates and prepared to make those informed decisions when open enrollment begins at the end of January. Okay, maybe I just misunder mispoke. Not that I and I heard all that part. We're going to let them all know this. When do they have an opportunity to have feedback regarding this when we're we're sending all this out? You know how when we went out and did this the very first time when we did the elementary one, we went out, we had community, we showed pictures, we did all the mapping and all that good stuff. It does not appear that is what's taking place
234this time that we are just going to send them the information so they're aware that this is going to take place and then we're done with it and then they can figure out where they're going to put their child at. Yeah, both elementary and middle were complete system redesigns. whereas whereas this slight adjustment I believe is a revision with within that I do agree that community impact impact is extremely important and I was at every one of the elementary and middle school community engagement events. there was not I would say a lot of technical feedback. It was more can I stay at my school if I don't live in the zone. and I do agree that the community should have feedback as it relates to major system changes. this minor revision in the middle school
235zone slightly moving east. we really would just like to get the targeted communication about the why and then what their options are. Okay. And I'm sorry, not just for the middle school, for high school and middle school. So, thank you. Okay. Any other comments? Okay. Thank you very much. Next, we have public comment. Attorney Bruno, would you please address public comment? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There's no one here for public comment. Okay, hearing none. for the good of the order, let's start with Mr. Fischer. Thank you, Mr. Chair. we're all going to an FSBA meeting upcoming this week and there'll be an FSBA board of directors vote on a couple different things and just wanted to let you know if anyone has any questions, comments, or concerns, let me know before the vote and I
236look forward to seeing everyone else up there. I'll reserve the rest of my comments until tonight. Thank you. Ellie, I have none. Thank you. I'm going to reserve my comments for for this evening. Miss Jordan, I'm just going to give my deck report and then I'll reserve the rest for this evening. the deck met on November 19th. They had a quorum. Karina Vesquez, sorry if I mispronounced it. She is so full of energy and just smiled the whole time. People felt so good about her being there and giving that presentation. She did a presentation on teacher retention project believe and thrive. then they asked the committee to share what additional support or incentives do they believe would be most effective way to help teachers and to retain teachers. So everybody participated in that. It was
237a lot of response on that. So all the responds were going to go back. They were going to be saved and then HR was going to use them as a tool to see how do we better help our teachers and our schools and everything else. but then also during that time with Dak, there was other comments concerns about and they asked that I bring them forward about Kelly services and how they removed the incentives from them. I guess they had teachers incentives and they were removed. So they did ask me to to bring that and share that with the board. And then also the other concern was another topic that came out of Pinewoods was Pinewood's transportation committee. They were concerned about transportation, but they really never got into whatever that concern was is that
238they are on a committee that is transportation and they're sharing that. But they wanted to make sure that everybody on DAC was aware of that. And that was all of DAC. Thank you. Yep. Okay, Mr. Persons, I'll reserve mine for tonight. Mr. Fleving, thank you. I'm going to give my health advisory committee update, and it's a very short one. they did such a great job at explaining the new requirement for EKG for our athletes, which is a requirement in the state of Florida that a student must a student athlete must have an EKG in order to participate in sports from the 9th grade through the 12th. They only have to do it one time. but it is required now. So, the great thing is though that it's that we are ahead of the game. we
239are very ahead of the game because this requirement does not take place until next school year. So they are already performing these clinics where our physicians can come either here or set up appointments with them. The problem is there's approximately, you know, 8,000 students a year that need that they're going to have to have these done. So they're trying to get way ahead of the game. Like I said, once you have your EKG test, you don't have to have it again. But within the and I didn't write the number down, but they already have seen through some of the tests that some students are very high risk for a heart condition. And so I think that's great that we're being proactive and keeping our kids safe on the fields and on the courts. I do
240believe that this is also being extended into like marching band also. and then those tests are usually $20 per screening. I and this is what I just wanted to let the board know because recently legislation has cut the budget that covered that cost. So we don't want any of our students obviously to not be eligible to play sports only because of an affordability situation. So I just wanted to bring that to the superintendent's attention that there may be we may need to look somewhere. I don't know where that would fit in the budget. I know we can find a place, but obviously we wouldn't want a student to not be able to participate because of fiscal reasons. So I do have another topic, but I'm going to hold that off until this evening. Thank you.
241Okay. Thank you, Miss Shivano. I'm going to reserve my time for this evening. Thank you, Dr. Carlin. Yes, sir. I will reserve most of my comments for this evening, but I did want to give the board an update on our November 5th chapters 164 conflict assessment session with Fort Myers Beach with the town. did want to advise you as part of that meeting that the Fort Myers Beach town Mayor Allers had a proposal toward the end of the meeting and I know Mr. Ribble was there representing our board as attorney Dri Bruno Bruno was there, myself and our deputy superintendent Dr. Savage. I know that Miss Jordan was there as well. So you got to hear this already, so my apologies, but I want to make sure the rest of the board knows about it.
242so there were three three components of Mayor Aller's proposal on behalf of the town of Fort Myers Beach. so the first one was leasing the historic school that the town would lease the Fort Myers Beach building as is from the school district for a nominal fee for like a hundred years, something like $1 a year or something like that. the town would then reopen and operate the existing building as a municipal charter. So I wanted to let you know that was the second component of the proposal. And then third was a in addition to the lease, the mayor asked the school district to provide the town with $12 million to be used to build a new modern elementary school facility nearby which would also be operated as a municipal charter and then thereafter the historical
243building would be used for for something like a museum or something like that. So, I had the opportunity to to review that, provided a letter to the town of Fort Myers Beach, the following week and basically represented that pending board discussion certainly, but this would would be what the district could offer as a counter. the district is prepared to explore conveying the historic building to the town outright rather than a long-term lease provide the property could be subdivided with the district retaining the remainder of the land. So that was one. The second, the district is also willing to assist with the charter conversion process as the town expressed an interest perhaps in opening a charter. So that was the second counter. And then the third was the district, you know, just a note that we
244cannot provide $12 million in a contribution because those funds indicated in the FEMA August 2025 obligation letter related to Hurricane Ian will be primarily credited to the lap loan that we've all talked about. any other funds, you know, would be reviewed per section 428 of the Stafford Act for ongoing Ian related matters and repairs. couple of other pieces of information. one, we know that the attorneys for both parties, both the beach, as well as our attorney, Dupri Bruno, they've been in communication since the meeting on November 5th. That's been happening attorney to attorney, as you would expect. negotiations occur between the attorneys. Staff for both parties have been in communications since the meeting. the deputy superintendent has coordinated with district operations staff to facilitate a building walkthrough at Fort Myers Beach Elementary as requested by
245the town and that was conducted on November 24th. So just wanted you to know that they did request to go to the building and we did grant that. And then finally the Fort Myers Beachtown mayor has reached out to coordinate a meeting with our deputy superintendent with our staff to discuss next steps and Dr. Savage has indeed scheduled a staff to staff meeting with Fort Myers Beach on December 10th. So, just a little update on where we stand so that you're up to date and up to speed. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Attorney Brie Verno, do you have any comments? I do not. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Okay. Today, we have a student performance at 5:45 followed by the school board action meeting at 6:00. At this point, having no other business to come before
246this body and seeing no objection, this meeting is adjourned and the time is 4:29. Thank you.