School Board Workshop: February 10, 2026

001Good afternoon, chairman, board, and superintendent. as we pull up the presentation, we will start bringing the, semi scratch food items up to you all for sampling, and I will turn it over to Candy Messenger, the director of food and nutrition services to brief you all on the progress we've made in this area. Good afternoon, board superintendent and attorney Dodig. School year 2026 is a rebuilding year for food and nutrition services program. Our focus is on improving meal quality, increasing student satisfaction, and strengthening program sustainability. Reintroducing semi-scratch meals is a key strategy supporting these goals. Semi-scratch meals allows us to serve fresher, higher quality food while maintaining operational efficiency. These meals are more appealing to students which increases participation and ensures driver of both student nutrition and finan financial stability for the program. Semi-cratch meals help

002us boost students interest in participate in participation by improving the food quality and appeal. They allow us to meet nutrition standards while offering meals students actually want. This model gives our kitchens flexibility and consistency across the schools and importantly it aligns with the district goals for student satisfaction and efficient operations. Come on people. I was waiting for the food to start. The first entree that you will be sampling today is the meatball sub that was t tested districtwide during National School Lunch Week in October of 2025. and received a 90% student approval rating. Feedback was very positive across grade levels. Based on this success, the item has been approved districtwide to roll out beginning it beginning at the end of January. Wait till Yeah. Did you do you need forks? Hey, don't forget the forks,

003folks. Sorry. Probably extra napkins, too. Mhm. Somebody read about it. Yeah. Okay. Yep. So, the next entree that you'll be sampling is an Italian chicken bake. This was tested in North Fort Myers High School in October of 2025 and received our highest approval rating of 98%. Students expressed strong interest in choosing this meal again and it has been approved to to be served districtwide wide across all grade levels at the end of January of 2026. Give them a minute. Soon as they all have Mhm. Okay. The next entree that you'll be sampling is called our wood stu stir fry fry bowl. Easier said than read. the Woodles bowl, it was tested at Idabb Baker High School and Golf Middle School. and received a 95% approval rating. Students engaged engagement was very strong with a positive

004feedback of the flavor. This Woodles bowl allows the students to choose the toppings that can go on it. their protein that we would have available and stir-fried vegetables or other vegetables that would go into this woodles bowl. All right. Ready? Chicken wings were tested at North Fort Myers High School in October of 2025 and achieved a 90% approval rating. Students responded positively to the flavor, particularly the garlic parmesan sauce. Texture feedback led to equipment adjustments using the pizza and combi oven. This item is approved to roll out to all secondary schools. What you'll be te tasting today is the gar garlic parmesan and the buffalo. Mhm. I think there's time for approvals. Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, soup is eating. Yes, sir. Would it be possible to get Dr. Savage some plates we made him eat

005last time, the other stuff? So, I think he might have the opportunity to appreciate this version if that's all right. There is plenty. joking because I had eaten a piece of turkey that was like like memorable thing was the tube of it was it was yeah ration but I ate it back every this is a little better than that I would hope Anybody want to try? There should be. Go ahead and do that and see if there's anybody else to try. Okay. There are plenty of samples. those in the audience that would like to have a sample when we have a minute you can go back to them and they'll be happy to share. Okay, the wings have been passed out. Okay, do the last part. Do my last slide and this is the longest.

006So in closing, these results demonstrate the semiscratch meals positively impact our student satisfaction and participation. Our menu decisions are intentionally datadriven and responsive to student feedback, supporting both longterm program sustainability and a better overall dining experience for our students. As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor the participation trends and operational impacts as these menu items are fully implemented. Ongoing feedback will guide f future menu development as we continue to rebuild and strengthen the food and nutrition service program. I would also like to take a moment to recognize and thank our nutrition food and nutrition service teams both at the district office and at the 86 sitebased teams who serve our students every day. As of Friday, February 6th, they have served 9.6 million meals across the district. Wow. Representing a 5% increase

007compared to this time last year. This growth reflects their their dedication, adaptability, and commitment to student success. At this time, I welcome superintendent's comments and board discussion. So, thank you very much. Mr. Nice, Mr. Cook, Miss Bessinger, and your entire team. Thank you very, very much. just a couple of quick comments before we turn it over to the board for their compliments and discussion. I'm sure you feel like I do, like, wow, this is fantastic. I do want to commend you for your move toward the receiving feedback from our students, our customers and moving to semiscratch. I think we would all agree that when we have a choice over packaged processed foods and the ability to move toward more of a scratch menu, I think we can all agree that becomes a more palatable option.

008we also want to make sure that we are serving the highest quality food for the right price with our students and our staff and just really commend you, Mr. Nice, and all of you for your leadership in this area. Again, thank you to the staff for stepping up and providing us with some wonderful lunch. As you know, we have a very busy day today and just really appreciate you all providing us with an opportunity to to sample the food just as you did the students. So, with that, we look forward to the board's comments and discussion. Board comments. Robert, first thank you for addressing this because I'm sort of running on promises made, promises kept and this was something that was brought up when I was running and you know we've been talking about it

009and I know some of us have brought it up during the our terms on here but now we're actually doing something about it. So, thank you. like to ask one more question if I could. Sure. What's for dinner? Thank you, Miss Shiovana. Yeah. So, thank you everyone for serving us our lunch today. I greatly appreciate it. as a mom who packs her lunch traditionally for her kid in the district, I do hear all about our food. so I too am excited to to see all these options rolling out for our kids. because they do deserve a fresh option and it's kind of what I was used to growing up and like pizza Fridays and all of the things that would happen. so I am excited to see and thank you for the hard work and

010making this happen for our kids and delivering on that and hopefully to see some other great menu options as we progress. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all your hard work. I appreciate it. Yes. I would say the very same thing. I know this is a lot of work. You all get up really early in the morning to make sure that our students are fed and I appreciate that. All the way from breakfast to lunch and those of you listening online, a lot of our students, this is the only meal they may get that day, especially a hot meal. I think we're headed in a in a really good direction. I know Mr. Nie isn't satisfied with where we're at right now, but this is a really good start. I was just at

011several schools this week and I asked to go see the lunch. I asked to go through the lunchroom and there are we're still seeing some prepackaged meals obviously. but you know there is a lot of kids choosing salad, a lot of kids choosing the fresh vegetables. I know a lot of our you know I'm a big school garden girl. and while yes, those are the products of what our students are doing, some of our elementary schools just don't have the capacity to be able to do that yet. So thank you for the hard work behind this. I can't wait to see this lead into the future. And yeah, thank you, Mr. Fisher. Yeah, thank you. as I said, thank you for doing this. I know we still have some work to do as as others.

012I have three kids in the district right now and I hear about the food a lot. So, I know they actually tried one of the new items on Friday. So, appreciate that. gonna echo also which Miss Lenford Fleming said that also it's amazing some of these schools will add in I know Trafalgar Middle is one that will add in what they pick out of the garden and they'll make different things as students will for the lunch. So I hope we can keep that with our schools that have gardens and other ones incorporate that. So able to try the items today I appreciate definitely a significant difference since we tried some stuff about a year ago including the blue apple sauce. So that's a little better than that. So, little bit more in the noodles though.

013We need to get there in the noodles, but everything else I appreciate. So, thank you so much for your hard work. Okay, any other comments? Okay, Lisa, thank you so much for our lunch today. I'm excited to see new new items and new opportunities for our students to have to eat. I can't wait to hear that from my granddaughter and my grandson because they'll be telling me. So, just thank you. Again, thank you. Everyone else has already said a lot. I just was curious on some of the items, the meatballs, are those are pork or beef or they mix? And how do we make sure that our children who cannot eat pork? If they because I believe that they were both these are not pork. They're not. So, what I want to say either beef

014or chicken. They're chicken, right? Chicken. Okay. I know. We were looking at what's inside of it. So, okay. Chicken. Okay. So, then we'll advertise it as being chicken when we sell those. It will be noticed on the serving lines. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Great point. I'm not a beef eater, so I didn't eat the beef ball cuz I thought it was beef. So, Armor, you owe me or give back the meatballs. Okay. Thank you very much. Excellent presentation. Mr. Chair, if I could just quickly. Yes. I just wanted to say thank you because I'm sitting up here reaping the benefits of lunch. But I'm going to give you a rating. Meatballs eight. Chicken bake nine. Noodles seven. Wings nine. Wow. Thank you. Wow. Pass these down. Pass these. Pass here. There's a bonus for you.

015Okay. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. And just a reminder, anyone in the audience that would like to try some of what the kids are eating, please do so. Okay. Next, we have the construction change order reports for December 2025, presented by Scott Rickenbacher and Melissa River. Awesome. Good afternoon board members. Dr. Carlin Esquire Dodig welcome. This is your change order report for December 2025 as required by statute. front cover sheet, you can see that we did direct material purchases in the amount of $122,813. We have a return to the district of $6,998. we have non-direct material direct nonirect change orders in the amount of $1,566 and the amount returned to the district was $1,566. And this month in contingency adjustments, we had $89,050. If you go to the secondary backup sheet explaining where

016all the money was purposed, you'll see that we had a beayhore K8 HVAC materials. That was a direct material purchase which we reap reap the rewards of the tax savings. You'll see that we have a east zone portable relocation project. That's where we distributed at five schools portables to to do the student capacity need. and we had a reduction in the contract that was returned for non-use back to the district. We had conting construction contingency adjustments in the amount of 89,000 and that was at a sterile high school, the ROC tower. Some additional gates for the structure for security purposes and also some climbing wall wood and so forth lumber needed there for that function. We had Cypress Lake High School HVAC renovation, 58,000 roughly for some concrete, additional concrete work in the foundation. It

017was not part of the drawings and relocation of duck work. When we got into the building, it didn't quite fit in the opening, so had to be adjusted. And we also had at east zone portable phase two of the east zone portable relocation another $1,640 for cat cable, plenum cable and the doorbell cameras at the portable staging campuses. We have to have the same apparatuses for security. So we now make it outside on the gate so that they can gain entrance. Is there any questions on the report? Questions? Yes. Thank you for putting this together. a real quick question. I was at a specific school this week and we were just talking about some of their maintenance issues. one of them had to do with like underground water plumbing situations. And, I know that when

018you're doing anything with plumbing underground, that can open up Pandora's box of not sure what you're going to find. so my first question is when something is submitted, what is your true like goal timeline to get that problem corrected? And I would follow up. Respectfully, I don't work at the maintenance department and I would I would defer that to the maintenance. I can tell you that many of our schools because of the age, the underground piping as what was witnessed at Riverdale because it was aged has rotting and has to be re redone. That's the reason why I asked because I know it can also damage some of like the actual structure of the buildings. You can have settlement issues with foundation walls, slabs will actually settle. But yes, when you know that you have

019plumbing failures, you have to attack it. You have to attack it quickly and the scope can expand. So you might think it might be a small area and it's and it exacerbates into a much larger condition. And then my second question, hopefully this is also a question that you I'm sure the departments work seamlessly if they need to have communication about certain things, but I was walking through and there were some beautiful cabinets in a particular school and then there were some that were very very old, but they are getting all new cabinets regardless of whether they're necessary or not. Can you just walk me through the steps of what that kind of looks like when a school is up for new cabinets or a school is up for new carpet? how do you determine

020like yes, we've got to do all of it or we don't do any of it? How does that work? Through the chair, if I if I may. Sorry. No, no worries. so our chief operations officer, Mr. Nice, would be happy to answer that question. Thank you. All right, there we go. So, that's actually a challenge that we've recently identified. we are, you know, we have a large backlog of stuff that we want to replace. And all too often what we've noticed is that you know, when we move into the cycle of, okay, it's been 10 years, 15 years, or whatever, prior to going in and doing the work, we are now actually going in and evaluating whether that work is actually valid and still needs to be done. This is a relatively simple but new

021thing that we're doing. So, previously you may have seen unfortunately new cabinets or new carpet replaced simply because it was on the rotation and the supplies came and so that's what we did. But now we are taking a look at it to ensure that we are getting you know for lack of better words the most bang for our buck and actually you know in oftent times situations like that too the principal will will say hey I don't need that but can I have this and it's it's a cost savings and we can use that resource in another location and so that is being worked into our process it is relatively new I would say in the last three months. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Okay anyone else? Any other questions? Okay, thank you very much.

022Appreciate it. Good report. Next, we have the Fort Myers Beach Update presented by Dr. Kenneth Savage and David Griffith from Asenture. Keep your phone position. Good afternoon, chairman board superintendent and attorney Dodig. I just wanted to first off thank you all for having us today. I'm I'm here joined by my colleague in the planning department, Mr. Joel de Guzman as well as I know our technology has failed for our teams is unable to connect to the normal means. So we have our presenting consultant here today available via phone through microphone. So it's the old the old way better than carrier pigeon. but but it is a way to to be able to for them to hear you and for them to be able to communicate since our technology is not working today. and then I'm

023here I'll be advancing the slides as well as Mr. Duzmann if there's anything that falls kind of outside the scope of of the presentation today to try to answer any questions you may have. with that said if I could just acknowledge Mr. David Griffith who is our lead consultant on this if he would be willing to introduce Anna Paulal as well who I know is also joining us via phone. good afternoon everybody. Can everyone hear me through this through this method? Yes, they are giving an affirmative, David. They can hear you. Okay. I'm going to try to hold the phone to my ear because my experience is that works better than speaker phone. happy to be with you guys this afternoon, though I have to admit if I knew that samples of lunch were going

024to be served, I might have had to jump on the plane to be there in person. that being said, we've been working with the school district over the last few months, as you're aware, to evaluate and assess the Fort Myers Beach Elementary School location. Those services have included initial assessments some disaster recovery support post Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Milton a more in-depth facility assessment and then followed by a custody report that the school district has since submitted to the DOE for review and received their response letter. I do want to take this opportunity to introduce Anna Paula. she is the subject matter expert who has been supporting this effort in detail from day one. Her her team is very familiar with the process of a managing a potential custodality effort but also managing alternative solutioning

025for how we identify next steps in action plans like this one. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Anna Paula, who will be presenting on the slide deck that you have in front of you and we'll have Dr. Savage assist us in person. thanks everybody for being here and I second David that the wings look delicious on screen and I would have been there myself as well if I had known. Dr. Dr. Savage, do you have the presentation up? And can we go to pass the cover sheet, please, to slide two? Yes, Anapolla, we are on slide two. Okay, so on that slide, this is I see it on screen. Thank you. On this slide, we're recapping the assessment, the initial facilities assessment that we did that we went with multiple engineers,

026architects, historic architects, cost estimators to review the site. We reviewed all documentation, provide an assessment report followed by a custodia analysis. So, this is a recap of our findings so far. we're calling it a thoughtful path towards a thoughtful path forward for for Myers Beach Elementary. in our analysis, we reviewed the catastrophic storm surges that have hit the school and the issue that the barrier island is well below FEMA base flood elevation and the building itself is well below. Currently, the building is unsafe since it has no floor on the interior and we find it economically unjustifiable and it is statistically inevitable that it will flood again. So, this continued investment that the district has made creates a repetitive loss scenario as you continue to sink money into a building that will continue needing more

027funding to stay open. The modernization costs that we analyzed in the Castalia analysis came out to prove that it's approximately 80% of the replacement cost of the building. If you pay for those motoriization costs, th those repairs would have an a life of about 7 to 10 years before you would have to apply funds again. The per cost student for this school is nearly three times the district average. So our analysis has come out with the result that the funds would be better spent in more resilient higher need schools of the district. Currently the school needs are about 43 it's about 43% utilization and there's no projected growth due to the demographics of the area and the projected demographics of the area. So the district is meeting their needs to the students and to the

028community with safer and more cost-effective capacity and it has projected that we can see the projections that it can meet those needs in the long term as well. The Castelli analysis was done for the rising of the school and the Florida Department of Education has approved it. This school is in the national registry and it does have historic designation and it does allow for raising but with documentation. Because of FEMA funding, it would require a section 106, which is just an analysis to be done, which requires mitigation. It does not require preservation and does not require that the school be capped. Now, the consideration for resing eliminates this ongoing safety concern, the financial burden, as well as the storm recovery risk, which is a given. Now we're going to review this the this analysis for

029the responsible reinvestment and how we can honor the school's site and the history. Now it's important to note on top of the images that you see that the remaining task here at hand is a procedural approval by the board is not technical justification. What we have done so far is that we have met the need for the technical dis just justification with the assessment report done the estimates done the cast analysis and the letter from the DOE. So now we can go to the next slide which is on screen and that's a copy of the letter by the office of the educational facilities. It was provided on January 9th and it formally approves the beach to for the rising. This is not mandated to happen. So the next steps would be board approval for the

030proceed the process to begin I mean not to begin to proceed. So the letter was the first that's why we need to see to the next steps. So it helps for this documentation for you guys to proceed and to consider it. and it does not label the building unsatisfactory. recclassification will be required to proceed if you want to go after any funding like PICO funds or any any other type of funding. So then the next slide the next slide delineates the next steps the next steps would be this is the pathway in the sequencing of events. you need the formal schoolboard approval to proceed. Then we'll go back to the office of educational facilities to request the room condition change and the building the building replacement. That would be to request the change to unsatisfactory

031as it has no no current flooring and it cannot be used as is. It would require this massive injection of funding. Then you could go to the local review which is the Lee County Historic Preservation Board. They cannot stop the demolition or manly be their assessment of it and the town of formyers for certificate of appropriateness. These are procedural pieces but the land is owned by the school district. So you could simply go to the state which is the state historic preservation office or commonly known as shipo and the Florida shipo division of historic resources would review all the documentation steps one and two and then steps one two and three would go to a section 106 consult by the national historic preservation. They would we would have to show how leak county the school

032district approves the office of educational of education approves and how you've gone through all those steps which goes towards mitigation that means that mitigation in this case would mean taking his taking documentation documenting the building is there deciding if a plaque will be left there and all those steps would be left to mitigate that doesn't mean building a new building that does not mean keeping the building it simply means how do you document this process and getting that final step so that you could proceed with the raising of the building. Now the final the final slide that we have to show you today are opportunities for the school board and the town of former meers to provide some collaborative and alternative outcomes. So while demolition can be authorized, you can have alternative commun community solutions.

033Some of those scenarios are scenario one would be some sort of a transfer, a possible transfer. The transfer meaning that could be a sale of the land in the building and some sort of repayment structure to offset the current district's unmet needs. There's the possibility to lease or transfer the building to the town of Hormmyers. There's the possibility of a town reuse or redeveloper memorial of the building itself. All these scenarios remove the long-term operational and the burden that the site is causing in the school district with such low utilization and recurring damage to the structure. Another consideration is the adaptive reuse which would be a non-school use. This would be also done by others not the school district for it to become a community or cultural center, a history museum, environmental or marine research

034facility or adult or continue education. Now the benefits of this collaboration will be keeping the legacy of the building and of the site but without the district operational risk and all these adaptive reuse concepts would meet more of the local needs and the demographic which is a much older demographic for the community. Now with that I wrap up and open up for any questions or comments that you may have. and before Anapala, thank you so much for going through and David as well just to kind of from our standpoint we really appreciate the consultants doing the professional work of what they did to essentially take this very long process and I know that it has been a very long process for a lot of folks but we just wanted to make sure that we had

035publicly acknowledged the receipt of the communication from the department of education the custody report which to be quite frank isn't really telling us any new information. you know this has been something that even a year ago at this time I think a lot of the information that you know was presented today isn't significantly different from that the difference is that simply the state of Florida procedural aspect of acknowledging that through the professional work of the of the folks to kind of compile that information based on the feasibility standards that are designed through the custody process and then they submitted on the schoolboard's behalf for the state to then give their final answer to that. Now for many of you on the board who've been present for quite some time, you recognize that when we have

036done Castaldi reports, they typically have then been followed up with some type of demolition work that occurs. So for example, some of the more recent ones we had, Bonita Elementary for seated their new school construction to increase their capacity to put a two-story structure to meet that student need. the Franklin Park, the new elementary school that was done there required to const the analysis to have that de demolished so that the brand new construction that could be built there could take place. Cypress Lake Middle School, another example of those. so this is not a new thing for the district to do. But what is a little bit newer for us is something like what we are kind of recommending as we move forward. I want to kind of acknowledge that we've had very productive conversation

037with the town of Fort Myers Beach leadership. they have done now more than now that now two specific walkthroughs where they have actually gone to kind of do similar analyses of what we've had to do to assess the site as they look at at that. I know you all are aware from when Mr. Ribble and our prior board attorney Dr. Carlin myself when we were representing the district in kind of the first of kind of a public meeting where we talked about some of those potential opportunities. what we would like to continue to do is now that we have the custoaldi we wanted to acknowledge it but we would like to proceed with the work that we have done in collaboration with the town of Fort Myers Beach leadership. that these are professionals. They are

038folks who understand a lot of the business constraints of of you know what it is to run a school. I think we actually are very unique in the sense the leadership of the town has some very unique insight into the operational challenges of running schools and so forth. They know more than your typical municipal leadership would have. we've enjoyed a lot of productive work with them. Obviously, we know we've had a change in the attorney who was leading our negotiations in that work. but we still continue with the staff to staff work. we're in the process of scheduling a follow-up meeting. We just gave them full disclosure. We were going to be presenting this Castaldi report to to you all in the community today just to make them aware of the fact that was going

039to be coming forward so they weren't going to be surprised by that as well. And again, as I've stated numerous times, as you've heard, if you were to go back through many of the presentations that have been given to this board and to our community, there aren't really any new facts in here. The only new fact that we're sharing is that the state has also evaluated that feasibility piece and they've concluded that piece. What I also want to make sure I drew particular attention to was that, you know, in no way are our hands really tied that we have to demolish the building. that if we were to go down that path as we have with others, there would be number of steps that would have to be done. So, one of the kind of

040the missed things that have been put out there is this will get done and they're going to show up and bulldoze the school. That is just not going to happen. That is not what we have done and that's why we're being transparent and visible with that. That is not our intention. And that's why we just wanted to be very clear that while the analysis certainly says that's the most cost-effective utilization of taxpayer dollars based on the long-term need and the current status of the building that the most cost-effective investment would be to do the rising action. That is not currently what we are recommending because what we are recommending is an attempt to work with our partners at the town of Fort Myers Beach on an amicable solution that will preserve kind of the historical

041needs of that site to honor our community and to work through that process and we'd like to be able to continue that process and we wanted to also verbalize that to this board as well. that said we are here we recognize this is a technical report and there an opportunity for you to get technical guidance as well. and we stand ready to answer any questions you may have as as we presented today. And that's and I'll first defer to the superintendent. Thank you, Dr. Savage, and thank you to our team. I couldn't say it any better myself, Dr. Savage. we continue to have a collaborative approach with our partners at Fort Myers Beach, and we look forward to your conversation today. Thank you. Okay. comments. What is the like monthly cost or yearly cost of

042just maintaining it the way it is right now? How much is that? Because they're, you know, we trying to keep it we could give detailed accounting based on our most current numbers and we can put that in the board weekly as a follow-up, but we did have to submit some of that information within the report. So on Apollo because that's obviously the document that produced this initial analysis. Did you have any any guidance on that? I'm looking it up now to see if I can quickly find that number. I'll let you know. Well, we work to to get the number that was submitted within the report. We can certainly on our staff side, we always have the ability to summarize that type of information for you all as well. because obviously we have the total

043cost. One thing I just will say that's a little bit different this year is because the site has been run over at Heights Elementary is where we've been delivering those services. We would just be want very clear of whatever numbers we share. The current cost of running the site. We've been able to realize a lot of administrative efficiency by by kind of consolidating that staff with the height staff and sharing resources has certainly helped us with that cost savings that we've done very intentionally in partnership with those folks at the building. but we'll be clear to different sorry Dr. On page 21st 20 of the assessment report, it shows the operational cost as a fixed operational cost for the school. the baseline is about $800 to a million dollars. what's costing between staffing, utilities, insurance.

044The with only the 60 to 75 students max, the school gets with an annual funding of 500 to 675, the school can be operating at a deficit between 300 up to half a million dollars. which is what the issue is of it operating costing three times as much as the district average. So for the fiscal year 2024 the per pupil spending in Fort Myers Beach was 27,736 with 16 cents. Whereas in Santael even the barrier island and Pine Island were between 13 and 17,000 but the average of the district being 9,000. Did that answer the question? And if I can add to that, I know there's additional costs that the district is incurring on a monthly basis from their maintenance department with trying to maintain the current condition of the facility to make sure it

045doesn't worsen due to any existing conditions in the space. So those will could be costs that we can coordinate with the maintenance department and get back to the committee accordingly. Okay. Yeah, that's what I was interested in. What is our monthly cost on it? are we carrying insurance on the building? Everything that would sort of go away if if we decided to go forward with raising it. So if you get that to us, I'd appreciate it. Absolutely. Any other comments from board members? M Fischer, thank you. Thank you for the information. So thank you as well. Mr. Persons for asking those questions. I'm kind of going to reiterate what I said about a year ago and we went over. So, I remember the five of us making that decision in the first place to reopen

046that building. it was amazing time period. I remember actually the ribbon cutting. it was it was amazing time period. I remember even visiting the school unfortunately right before it got damaged the second time. So, and my heart truly goes out to Fort Myers Beach, but I'm going to reiterate on my own that the district needs to be done with this building. So, I hope we can work something out with Fort Myers Beach. I know how important it is to their community and what it means to them and I'm excited for that. But as a district plainly, we need to get this off of our books. So, and we need to move on at that standpoint. So, I just wanted to say, you know, I wish Fort Myers Beach the best and I hope we can

047work something out. Thank you. Any other comments? Okay. I'm just going to close with this comment. I think the staff has done a great job negotiating with the town. I'm glad to see the town's here today to hear the presentation and I applaud both sides professionalism trying to get I guess we're very close now to getting this thing resolved and I'd like I'd like Mr. Fisher I'd like to see this thing get resolved so we can all begin our lives in a new and improved direction if you will. So thank you very much. Excellent report. Thank you. Okay. Next we have the district advisory committee report presented by Tyler Tim Tyler the DAC chair. Good afternoon members and Esquire Doge Tony Doge. Thank you. we started our district meeting this year on September 17th. We've

048had four district meetings so far. our wonderful Miss Jordan has been with us all but one and she wasn't able to come with one due to being up Tallahassee working with all you guys to try to better our schools. we started out this year going over our sunshine laws so everybody understands what it is to be a part of the DAC and then we did our elections where I was elected as the chairperson and Chelsea Robinson was elected as our vice chairperson. We then went on to decide on how we would hold our meetings because you guys allow us to either hold it in person or hold it via teams. We decided as a group that holding it as teams, continuing holding as teams was the best choice for us because it allows everybody to

049get on whether they're at home or at work so that we're not all trying to trying to rush to get to here to hold our meetings. we also held in September our choices for our volunteers where we chose our transportation committee members and so that they could help make the decisions with that committee. We then discussed engagement tools. we also discussed out our breakout sessions which we used to do before but due to sunshine laws and several other things going on that we are not able to at the current present time be able to do that. Then we discussed there for good of order we discussed our future topics and engagement methods. Then we get into October where we had a board update by Miss Jordan let us know what's going on. and we talked

050she talked about the roll out of the bus patrol stop arm cameras and told us the revenue we restricted to transportation safety making sure that everybody can take it back to their schools and let als that wonderful program that's putting the safety of our students f first and foremost we then had we discussed our different interaction tools that we have. We also had a presentation on parent engagement and empowerment led by Dr. Cuba McCoy where she emphasized the homeschool partnership where we need to partner with our parents through either teachers or through regular parent or through everybody else so that we can have a strong engagement so that our parents understand that we care about them. We want to be there to help them out. whether it is as teachers, admin or volunteers. Then November

051came around boardman Jordan shared the community outreach efforts and updates regarding the bus patrol safety initiative talking about how we're going to roll it out. we had a presentation on teacher retention. This is where we got introduced to Project Thrive and Project Believe. Two good programs that we're using and hopefully we can reach the 95% retention rate that you guys have set as our goal for this year. It'd be great. I'd love it if my site where I work kept all its teachers or 95% of our teachers lost one or two. That would be great for the morality of our of our students and great for the morality of our staff. one thing that did come out of that was concerns were raised regarding limited support and compensation for long-term substitutes. district staff agreed to

052review the matter with human resources. Discussion also addressed certification support for teachers completing safe or with for teachers completing subject area requirements. So having help with doing our testing for our subject area getting support from you guys. U members were advised on submitting. So we had one member ask about transportation concerns. We advised them that to address that we need to have it go through the proper chain of command. And then our January meeting we just had unfortunately like I said board member Jordan was not able to attend but Dr. Cupid McCoy summarized stakeholder feedback regarding district experiences and vaping concerns identifying themes of health normalizing that we don't need a vape and education needed in adult role modeling. We had a presentation on the student the student code of conduct. this is updated by

053Dr. Tim and Mr. Cooper where they review all the changes coming up talking about the wireless device policies, stakeholder surveys, vaping and some of the changes coming to violations where students are sent to success academy and if they're sent to success academy three or more time three times underneath the same precedence that they could could experience an expulsion from the school district because let's face it, if we have students going there over and over and over again and we've done everything in our power to correct them and to help guide them that they are unfortunately they're not a fit for us and it's a safety concern at that point. close out that meeting. I did inform the b the everybody on deck that Miss Jordan decided to stay with us for another year and we

054really did appreciate that. I thank you all very much. Any questions, concerns? Okay, superintendent, any comments, Mr. Jordan? I just want to thank you for stepping up and being the chair as as well as a teacher in our district. So, thank you for everything that you do. Thank you, ma'am. Appreciate it. Please. Yes, sir. I just want to say thank you too and I hope your wife is doing well. Well, thank you very much. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Excellent report. Okay. Next, we have the 2627 code of conduct for students and the 2627 code of conduct for adult students presented by Dr. Tim and Tammy Scott. Good afternoon. Thank you so much. So, that was a nice leadin for what we're going to talk with you about today. And you have heard

055a little bit about this when we came forward with the student advisory group. But a common theme that you are going to hear is that we are going to take a firmer stance on student conduct in the schools. And we do that because we truly care about their experience in our schools. We want them to achieve the greatest outcomes that they can. and we want it to be a good environment for teaching as well. So, this is all focused around creating a framework that is going to guide us to support teaching and learning as we transition to an a district here in Lee County. So, I want to thank Tammy for her leadership on this project with me. We're going to take you through the slides and again you're going to see that there aren't

056any major shifts in it, but you're going to see us tightening up some things, bringing some clarity to things and really helping this to be a strong framework that can help us no matter what comes up because we can't write a a rule for every behavior that will come forward because there will always be something new. But what we want is a manageable framework that when events happen, when students engage in certain behaviors, we can clearly lay out for students, for parents, for staff, this is what happens to help students get back on track and move forward. All right. So, we will take you through the stakeholder feedback. We engaged in a lot of different meetings and we administered the survey. we had an opportunity to hear again from students, from parents, from community members,

057from our staff and I think it was pretty consistent along with what we're talking about here today is people ultimately want to have clarity and they do want to see that at some point there are consequences that kick in to change behavior and move it toward a positive trajectory. Okay. So every year we'd like to share the information regarding how often the code of conduct is accessed. We want to make sure that our community, our parents, and our students and staff have the ability to access the code of conduct in many different ways. So from our district website, so far first semester this year, we've almost had 71,000 clicks. that is done by almost 35,000 different users. So some of us are clicking on it more than once. and you can see that we have

058greatly improved in the area of our parents completing the beginning of the year forms. Last year it was 61.2% and this year first semester is almost 76%. So also in regards to how often it is clicked on from the focus portal itself first semester we've had from parents 2,000 clicks and from students 2700 clicks or almost 2,800 clicks. So, I could pro venture to say that the code of conduct is definitely something that is sought after and easily accessible. And then the next slide again just real quickly we wanted to show you over the last couple months the many different groups that we have met with to assure you that it has been a comprehensive approach to gathering feedback. So we started our journey back in early December talking with principles and developed a survey

059to give every stakeholder no matter which group we spoke with. So our principles assistant principles, our students, our parents, our community members, our staff members received the same survey and they identify themselves within that survey to help us analyze the data. We are still in that feedback period until the end of this month. this is the first time we get to talk to you as a group. So we are anxious to hear your feedback. But this is the survey that we have provided everybody. So the first question that we did ask in the survey is in regards to the implementation of the wireless communication devices in alignment with our house bill 1105 and our board policy 5136. So we asked has this implementation increased academic instruction? Ultimately that is our goal right wireless communication device

060to increase academic engagement. And if it is not in the survey there is an open-ended dialogue asking what could we do to increase that. The next three questions one deals with safety the other deals with strategy and the last one is expectations and then at the end of the survey there's an open dialogue box for them to add any comments that they wish. Okay. Now we'll get into the proposed updates. The first one addresses lookalike weapons. So if a student makes a 3D gun, for instance, this will give administrators an opportunity to be able to address that in in the same manner as a real weapon. So if it's going to cause fear, creates some kind of disruption, is a threat, then it will follow along in the handbook with the weapons guidance. the next

061one is strengthening expectations for student conduct toward adults. And we are definitely going to ramp up the consequences for students who exert any kind of aggression or verbal physical altercation with staff. We're already seeing that somewhat with our response to do not return wreath from schools. simply something that we're not going to tolerate in the schools. And then the next one is relating to substance issues. So one of the things we talked about is it's always going to be something new. So what we've dealt with in the last few years has been the vapes. So what we have taken is incorporated more specific language to say whether it's tobacco, drugs, vapes or alcohol. If you possess them, it's one set of consequences. If you use any of those things during the school day or during

062a school activity, it's another set of consequences. And if you sell or otherwise disseminate those to students, it's another set of consequences. So creating some clear delineation between the activities around those four items. The next item in is in regards to a statement that we already have listed for 15 offenses where if it's a first offense and the principal has additional considerations that they would reach out to the executive director or the regional director. We would like to expand that to be included in all of the cessor related incidents. those are the ones identified by the Florida Department of Education, Office of Safe Schools, deemed as violent offenses. So, we want to make sure that we open that comment up. The next proposed update would be specific to students who are enrolling into our alternative

063program more than three times in their course of their enrollment here period in Lee County. We want to make sure that our students are here to learn. Success Academy or alternative placement programs are there for a purpose, but if students are continuing to go back to their brickandmortar school and con and committing the same offenses, we need to have some serious conversations. Dr. Tim started this year. we've had some hearings with families in regards to students who have been at Success Academy multiple times or have committed another violent offense at Success Academy where we sit down and we have those real honest serious conversations about where their path is leading. I'm not sure if you want to add anything to I would just say I mean that's probably one of the biggest changes that we're

064going to see. We do have some students who have gone to the success academy more than three times. So then our question is, is it really having the impact that it needs to? So once they are headed in there for the third time, there'll be some last chance agreements. We spell out all the supports. I do want to emphasize that the code of conduct is again to support that positive teaching and learning environment. It isn't just a book to be able to throw consequences at students. So ultimately our goal is always to scaffold student learning, but the students have to know that we're very serious about once we put those supports in place, it's expected that they take action to turn their behaviors around. So I think the three strikes rule with the alternative placement

065program is very appropriate. We should never have a student who is breaking the rule so egregiously or so frequently that they're continuously ending up in that setting. if that's the case, we need to take a different approach with those students. So again, that's in in closing, those are the things that have bubbled up through our conversations and our review of the of the book. without a doubt, our goal is to support student success. We want every student to graduate ready for the next level. but we know that we have to take some action as a district to support that positive learning environment. At this time there are no proposed changes for the adult code of conduct and our timeline right now this is our first time in front of you. We will come again in

066front of you in a couple of months. Our feedback period is almost over. So we will bring forward the feedback that we receive from all of our stakeholders and then work on our final publications. Now I would like to throw it over to our superintendent and board. Thank you very much Dr. Tim and Miss Scott for all of your hard work. I know that this represents the best work of many other team members as well. So, just appreciate both of your leadership on this. So, I think I can speak for our board as well as myself that safety and security is always our top priority. It's the most important thing that we do in addition to improving student achievement. A lot of the work that I'm seeing today is reflective of of your commitment as

067well and we just really appreciate that. we want our students in school. There's no doubt about it. But we are not going to tolerate when children continue to come to school and continue to disrupt the classroom. We have a duty to all of our children, all of our children to ensure a safe and secure environment. And I just want to commend this board because I know you share that with me, that concern, and you share the priority of of student safety and security. So just tremendous appreciation to the staff for stepping up and for providing these updates. They are very meaningful. We do know that teacher retention, one of the issues has been excessive opportunities to mis misbehave and we're just not going to allow it. So thank you very much. We look forward to

068your questions and your comments. Okay. Comments of board members. thank you Mr. So thank you for this. I think I know last time we were talking about code of conduct and specifically the parent forms and the student forms and making sure they're clicking. Did we ever get an update as far as again just looking at for 25 and 26 when it says parents or 75% obviously the goal would be every parent sees it and clicks on it and confirms it as well as our students. So can you tell me what that process is for those that don't like where is that followup and engagement to say this needs to be completed? Multiple attempts are made from the principal down to teacher level consistently in the first couple of quarters of the year, the first semester

069to get parents to to enter the portal and all of those things. Sometimes parents are very reluctant to do that or not savvy in technology. there's lots of reasons why we continue to do the outreach in regards to getting those completed. I am proud though that we are at 76%. Great increase from 62% last year. so I think we are definitely on a path of of positive projection in regards to that, but we continue to to seek that out from our parents. So if I may through the chair to the superintendent. So on this question with everything kind of going on the way that it is, what can we do? Obviously through our policy, we establish these, we confirm these, we approve these. What else can we do on the school level to make sure

070all of our parents and students are seeing this and confirming and agreeing to that? Absolutely. And just a clarifying question before I answer your question. so I looked on slide 14. We do have the code of conduct still being printed and distributed. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay. So we do know that the code of conduct is being sent home. Not to every student. There is a select number of codes that are delivered to the schools. Okay, sounds good. For parents who do not have access online. I gotcha. Okay. So, if I have access online, then I do not receive a copy. Correct. And how do we know they have access online? We operate on the parent requesting. Parent requesting. Okay. Yes, ma'am. So, I what I would say, Miss Chaviano, is this is

071really a partnership between our families and our schools. when we make efforts to reach out to parents, the partnership opportunity is for the parent to react reach back out to us. So what I would say to your to your question is would I like to see that at 100%. Yes, I would. We can control what we can control in the school district. We make attempts to reach out. We make phone calls. We try to open it up at open house, curriculum nights, any opportunities that we have. And we still have some parents who do not take that action. So again, a partnership implies two ways. we extend the opportunity out. We do expect our parents to also reciprocate and to respond. So I am heartened by the fact that we do have a much greater

072percentage of our parents but absent them walking us walking into their living room and having them click we are we are really making extraordinary effort. We continue to see improvement. So that's my response. If you have further questions, I'd be happy to entertain them. No, I want to follow up with your comment. I totally agree. I and I think there's a real strong appetite in the community to support what you're doing with code of conduct. The word is on the street out there. I don't care if you go to a chamber meeting. We have the chamber meetings where many of the board members show up. The superintendent's been on a ton of them. Code of conduct always comes out. It's a great discussion. I know the Rotaries are talking about it and other clubs. I'm

073not going to get into political clubs, but there are other clubs that talk about it. I know many of us have been in the company of the sheriff who talks about code of conduct and talks about enforcement and talks about his role with the SRO. So Lee County does have an appetite to make this thing happen and we certainly have the support of it. And I don't only be negative about the code of conduct and the bad actors, but don't forget we have programs like do the right thing from the sheriff's office that rewards good behavior. We do that each and every month here. We have the MVP program that we just kicked off here last month. So there is a lot of positive things that are happening to drive the positive behavior as well.

074Are there any other comments? I had a question on I know when they go to like success academy we're we're talking about three times and what I when I toured there and what I could heard some of them talking about is they're doing really well there because they're away from their peer group the ones that pressure them to do all the things. I don't know what kind of followup we can do when they get back to the school or if changing schools might be the best alternative, not to send them back to the school they came from. I mean, that's what So, they have a different fresh start or something like that. I don't know if that's been looked into, but that sort of weighed a little bit heavy on me when I went there

075and heard that like I sort of like it here, you know? So, thank you for bringing that up. a couple of things to mention. One is our principles go and visit their students prior to them returning back to their brick and mortar and they have conversations and dialogue with them in regards to what supports are needed prior to them returning back. So, that's number one. Number two, we do have a process, a do not return process. Each case is individualized. each case is reviewed. we want to make sure that the best decision is made but we do have some processes in place to ensure that our students are successful. Miss Scott, if I may as well just to tag on to your answer. so I do have a a student who I know pretty well

076that went over to the Success Academy and due to the nature of his offenses, the staff at Success Academy reached out to the current school where the child was slated to go back to and there was a conference and it was agreed that he would transfer to a different school. So I know those, you know, Miss Dr. Restino and that the schools have those types of conversations and I have a personal example of where that happened with the student that I know over there. So but thank you. That's an excellent point. That is correct. So every Friday if we have a student that transfers to another school, we don't just cold transfer them. We h facilitate our office facilitates a meeting between the home school and the new school and we talk about what supports

077have been in place. If there's an MTSS plan, if there's a safety plan, who is the person in their building that student connected with? who in the family did they connect with? Well, all of those pieces, we facilitate those conversations to make sure that dialogue happens long before the student enters a new school. we don't do it the Friday before the Monday they enter. We do it several weeks in advance to allow that opportunity for the new principal to meet the student at success academy to allow the new school to develop that support system or net safety net around the student to ensure their success. And I would just add Dr. nice job I think this year in terms of raising the behavior expectations and really putting some nice supports in place for the transition

078for students. So we have a meeting coming up so we can make sure that we are systematizing those and as that leadership of the school changes that we not only continue what he has done but we position the new leader to take it to the next step. Okay. Mr. Roy, can you thank you for this presentation? does every principal come and meet remedials come? Is that across the board? They come there and they speak to that child. I was there that day that Mr. Person is speaking about and the child, you said it's almost like I'm going to go back and make sure that I come back here. That's why and I know Dr. Cara was there that day as well and it just like sunk in my heart when she said that. It's like,

079oh, you don't want to be here. Yeah. But to this child, it felt like that was the best place for them to be to feel safe, secure, and to to move forward. So when I when you say that the principles all come, do all the principles come and meet? Yeah. Let me let me say this. First of all, I think we really want our students to be back in our traditional high schools because we offer so many rich comprehensive programs to ensure that they're career college life ready. That truly is the best place for those students. So in answer to your question, some of the principles have that meeting back at their school when the student arrives. Some come to the school and I would tell you it's we're probably not at 100% with that

080yet. And that's why I say the meeting coming up with Dr. you know to capture what is what are those best practices that we want to make sure we are going from anything optional if it's been a good practice to required and that transition in and out of the program is something that we want to strengthen because when kids come in we want them to understand you're here we mean business this is what you have to do so they're not getting in trouble while they're there and they're ready to leave we want to make sure that transition happens as well I think we're all just being really more thoughtful about the whole process with students because we don't want to see them come back. We want them to be successful when they get to that

081traditional school and let them have all those wonderful opportunities that are available in our high schools because we do offer amazing programs. Yeah. And I just one more real quick I just want to say thank you for those numbers. Those numbers do look a lot better because for years we've been trying to see how do we get those numbers to look better. And as Dr. Carlin said, we cannot go to the house and push it. But that has always been a question ever since we stopped sending those books home. So, thank you for making One thing I'll add about that. I had two boys go through school and I can tell you I never once opened the code of conduct because I didn't have a reason to. So, some of our parents probably also won't.

082Knock on wood. I didn't have to, but some parents probably don't go to it because they don't have a reason to. Miss Shell, thank you. So, I do have a question regarding data on the habitual offenders that when they're back at success three times, can you get us that information? Because I'm thinking a student would only want to go there once, but sometimes they go back and go back there, you know. So, I think that's a really important, you know, because we all hear from our from students, parents, and teachers. they're not getting the support in the classroom because the habitual offenders are re, you know, disrupting the whole classroom and they're not able to teach those that are still there and being good. So, I appreciate the getting more strict and because we have

083to support our teachers in the classroom. We have to support the children that are there eager to learn and not have the disruption of the of the behavior ones that are causing disruption for the attention because I think there's usually more to that than just disrupting the classroom especially if they're habitual offenders. So I think that you're hitting on something. Also, I love the fact that principles are investing in their students and coming and making it a point to have the conversation with Dr. Restino regarding coming back to their previous school or do they need to go to a new school and and I hope that's also with parents back at the partnership part of it. But I think that's key to the success of the student as well as the teacher in the classroom

084and in the other students learning as well because it all is a domino effect when you don't have the full 100% support including the students that are sitting there. So I think you're really honing in on something there that I think that should be mandatory. the principal and the parents talking to success and making sure that transition is the best place for that student cuz I don't think they should be an habitual offender and I think that's what's going to stop that or at least aid in that hopefully and I think that's it but thank you and I'd love to get the data on the how many habitual offenders because it's really intrigued me. Thank you. And if I can add on that data, when you look at it, I think it's going to be

085important to look at what happened in the past and then this year is a new u base for that for that data because the change has already started this year in the kind of environment that we want over there for students. thank you for the transparency on this presentation especially when we are talking about how much access is being tapped into. I mean, I'm looking here almost double the amount of people were viewing this in 2425. That's almost cut in half. Do you have any idea why? Well, we only have the first semester for this year of almost 71,000 views compared to all of last year 131. So, we have more potentially more views and we're well into the third quarter of the year. So, I feel like that might be just I don't know.

086I guess my perception would be perhaps they're really trusting that the system is working. I just have to give a shout out to to Dr. Verino because success academy is doing very well and that might be part of why these students you're seeing them want to go back. I mean Dr. Restino, he is a gift to our district and and he makes kids feel safe and he makes them feel heard. I wish we could clone him. Yeah. but and Alva High is going to be they're they're so blessed to have an administrator and leader like that opening the school. but Miss G and Ellie, you really touched on what I was going to say and it really does come back to what is they, yes, they are with our schools for six and a half

087hours out of the day, five times a week, but then they go home and then they're home on the weekend and they're home on the holidays and they're home on the summertime. And I just I think this district is really going to win and turn a corner and we are headed this all has to do with becoming an A school. Just because we're not talking about curriculum right now doesn't mean that this doesn't have something to do with us going from a B to an A. And the more we connect with our parents and our families and make ourselves accessible to them. I mean, I've been to multiple schools this week where, you know, the majority of the population we have are our LY children and parents at home aren't speaking English. They want to

088help. They want their kid to succeed. These are first generation graduates in many of their classes, but we have to I think it's it's an all-encompassing and you had said a do like a domino effect earlier. It's an all-encompassing partnership between Yes, there are some students that are making poor choices and I think taking them away from their peer group is a great idea. A fresh start like Mr. Persons was saying, a fresh way to, you know, you've come out of success academy. You've had a principal that really believes in you. Let's partner with that new principal. Here's the history. And I know that's a lot of work for administrators, but by golly, I have enough faith in our administrators that I know that they're willing to do that work. That's the reason why they're

089the head of the ship. That's why we you put them there, Dr. Carlin, along with other with with with former superintendent. but until we decide to close that gap between us and parent, we're we're going to continue to see these things sort of fall the wayside. And I I fully trust in what you're doing and thank you so much for the hard work because this is real data in real time. and I can only see this becoming more and more positive. So, thank you and thank you to again to the administrators that are willing to go that extra mile. So, that's all. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments from the board? Okay. Thank you very much. Great presentation. Next up, we have fleet management presented by Dave Nulan. Huh? See? Well, good afternoon board

090members, superintendent Dr. Denise Carlin and attorney Rob Dodig. with me today for the presentation will be Alvin Sanchez, coordinator with also with transportation. And the purpose of today's presentation is our development, our current process for developing a true fleet management program. So I'm going to go over some of the goals and objectives of what we're trying to achieve with the with the management program. The first thing is our safety and performance, reduce operating cost, and increase sustainability. So what that means is by creating a fleet manager program, we start this project by identifying every single white fleet vehicle that we have in the district, the location, assignment, mileage, current condition, and also gives us an idea of what at what point does that vehicle need to be retired? Meaning does it go to auction? Is

091it should be removed from the roadway? again, we're looking at vehicles now that are based on mileage and value, not just the age of the vehicle with low miles. next one is cost control and reduction. So by identifying what we have in current in our current condition, we as fleet operations eventually can forecast and order vehicles needed for the district versus ordering in various departments or divisions and create a true pull car manager program to ensure proper usage for investment and return. next to streamline the fleet acquisition process, fleet operations will be ordering moving forward moving moving or ordering all vehicles for the district. I want to get to a point we can forecast the future. In other words, what that means is we'll have a placeholder in our budget. We will know ahead of

092time what is needed the following year based on tracking our current white fleet vehicles, the miles, and we can we can anticipate what that'll reach when we can go bring those vehicles to auction. next is the accountability for vehicle use development of a standard operating procedure. our goal right now is developing a again developing a standard operating procedure. this will cover the operation of vehicles, the use, the maintenance for our white fleet. So again that develop that transparency. also looking at operational deficiency or efficiency. This is the accountability and proper use of white fleet. Also properly disposing of vehicles when within the they reach that approximate 5-year mark and we'll discuss that further in the presentation. At what point in time do we look at to dispose of vehicles at the proper time where you

093look at the value of a vehicle versus the repair ratio where becomes more to repair the car than what it's worth. Now also we want to look at determine the adequate and efficient vehicle type, design and specifications to support the primary need or use of the equipment. We want to ensure that the right vehicles are being ordered for what their need are not just the want but they are being ordered properly and we are being fiscally responsible. We also want to ensure that the support vehicle fleet size numbers reflect the workload needs of the support area. And what that means is we want to attain a proper balance of vehicles for our district and a proper assignment for usage as well. Transparency for leadership in the community. So by developing this fleet management program, by

094developing a standard operating procedure, we'll be doing that by showing our vehicles are what they're used for and how we dispose the vehicles properly. Not that we don't dispose of them properly now, but we want to dispose them at the right time where we can bring them to auction and bring revenue back to our district to purchase further vehicles. The standardization across departments, as stated before, we want to establish a procedure that is districtwide for fleet management program and to include a pool car program as well that goes with that. So, we want to make sure that our vehicles are being properly used and driven. We want to make sure we get to that point where we can auction vehicles based on the mileage. We don't have a vehicle that when you have a vehicle

095has low miles and you're getting rid of it, that's that's not a great investment. the long-term strategic planning goal is to mention as once you mentioned before is to get to a point in the white fleet that we are possession that we require the vehicles but also that they being disposed of properly. There's no waste but also we can reduce labor hours by working on those vehicles. we can reduce overtime. those vehicles that have maybe outdated parts, a lot of vehicles we have now, we've identified, they may not have parts for those vehicles available anymore. So, we want to make sure we get those rid of those vehicles at the right time and also again bringing those to auction to bring revenue back to our district. So, just gives you an idea, I won't go

096over every number, but just to give you an idea on on ve on vehicles. We have district-owned vehicles. Out of that, we have five fleet mechanics that work on white fleet. That's 86 to1 ratio. And then looking ahead at future schools as well. So it just gives you an idea overall of how our district included and what get idea of all the vehicles where they may have to go to respond to. So again give everybody an idea how large we really are. U our fleet analysis. So, how old is the current fleet? So, once we've identified the fleet, we've we they made a great job on going out to every single location identifying our vehicles. Our average life of our vehicles is about 15 years of age. That's our average life lifetime. what is the

097financial impact for maintaining a vehicle over 5 years old? So, if you look at the average cost, that's about $9,500 to repair that vehicle. What does that does not include though is labor cost. How much time we're spending working on those vehicles that maybe should be disposed of. could create overtime and also maybe send off some vehicles to maybe specialy locations or garages maybe don't have the parts for as well. how often are the vehicles utilized? Most departments use vehicles every day but what we have to do is find that balance that once we know where vehicles are not being driven certain ones. As I mentioned before, it's really important to create a true pool car system so all the vehicles are driven evenly every day and not just sitting there. It's very important. sort

098of under underutilized again same thing that's part of that pool car program I mentioned. And what is the expense on maintenance for vehicles because of a long-term long-term sitting there? We have found the expense can be it can be excessive if if a vehicle is sitting there for several reasons. It costs again for parts. the car is being worked on more often because it's not being driven. It can be beyond its repair date based on over 13 years of age. So all these things we're looking at moving forward. So if you look at this chart, this gives you an idea. Right now, as I mentioned, we have 395 vehicles right now at white fleet. This is not part of yellow fleet. This we have in possession. out of that 183 of those vehicles are over

09913 years old. So on average, most of the time 13 years old or older vehicles they no longer make parts for. So we recently got rid of a whole bunch of vehicles as we went through this. The ones that we know we that the parts aren't available. Why keep them? So we've been trying to clean up the white fleet by doing this. This is gives you another picture based on each department or division between transportation, food services, construction services, maintenance. And what you'll see is the average years, but then those in red, what you see in every category are those that are over it service life. So that gives you an idea what we're looking at. We look at vehicles that are beyond how long we want to keep them for. Now these are these

100are pictures we have before these p a lot of these cars have been disposed of. This gives you an idea of some of the vehicles as we went to each area and located them of the condition. But again I think recently we probably disposed of over 48 cars as well that were past its lifetime. And with that I'll pass it on to Alvin. Is this Hello. How's it going? in our internal review, what I did was I hit the ground running and I said, "This is a major undertaking. This is something that's never been done in the district." So, we did an internal review within the department with the white fleet. What I noticed was that the age of these vehicles increased our labor hours, which means that we have to do more overtime because

101typically the repairs can't be done in a normal 8 hour day. So the guys are typically doing it after their shift or on the weekend to get these vehicles back up and running. we also had RSM audit done with our data within Peopleoft. So I worked with the IT team to correct a lot of those findings so that we have accurate reporting on our white fleet who's a custodian where it belongs and how many vehicles we have. we also noticed that the replacement of legacy parts legacy models are difficult to procure or have been discontinued. the shift towards electronically intensive vehicle systems requires enhanced diagnostic tools and facility improvements. This means that our mechanics are turning into text now and we want to move. We don't want to go that route which is going to

102be an increase in cost. the translation 100% of the white fleet repair falls on the transportation budget on the transportation budget. is also something that we found. just to give you a example of internally what it looks like. our fleet depreciation value is very high while residual value is very low based on our fleet age. I gave an example of a Ford E250 cargo van purchased in 2015, which we currently have in our fleet, which they would have purchased at $28,956. The current value of that vehicle right now today is $5,397. Well, a engine to replace in that vehicle is 300 $3,247 with a 2-year warranty. And a transmission is $2,300. As you can see here below, that cost is more than what the vehicle is worth. And we have a lot of of vehicles

103like this in this state. I also gave you another image here just to see what that looks like. and also here's the it's better to to sell that vehicle in that fiveyear average because that's when you get the most value for the vehicle. we've we haven't been doing that historically, so we haven't been seeing a return on our investment. we do that with our yellow fleet, and as you can see, we're able to turn over our yellow fleet pretty often and have nice new buses because we have a plan like that implemented with our yellow fleet. some of the issues that we see is the white fleet reliability has been an issue due to the mileage, age, condition of the current vehicles. Replacement parts in many cases are only available at salvage locations due to

104the age and diversity of our current fleet. Due to the longevity of current vehicles, service is taking an extended time causing unreal reasonable hours of labor which reduce productivity and labor for our employees. also at the last piece, CO 19 is still affecting our the parts in the automotive industry as we all know. some of our recommendations Dave spoke about earlier. We want to be able to forecast and project our annual fleet needs by having conversations with our departments. we also want to build a replacement plan that leverages a vehicle's warranty and residual value to put money back in the replacement plan. yeah. And then as far as going over the executive summary, I'll touch on some of the stuff that we're trying to look at. Now, right now, the big thing is to increase

105the residual value of vehicles at the end of their life cycle. I mentioned that before is getting rid of vehicles at this at the right time. So, you get that point of that value of vehicle versus the repair value, maybe 75% or as Al mentioned that 5year mark. That's the time you want to start looking at getting rid of vehicles where we're getting money back, bringing money back to the district. It's the right time. And plus, we're not putting parts into a vehicle where it's worth more than what the vehicle is actually worth in itself. We want to reduce general operating fund dollars by reducing maintenance cost of vehicles and extending warranties. So again, same thing by knowing that vehicles have to get rid of the at the right moment in time. That means less

106repairs being brought to the garage less labor hours because those cars are being rid of when we should be getting rid of them. We want to increase reliability of equipment ensuring less downtime for skilled labor. We also want to create a level of accountability for the procurement and assignment of vehicles. I mentioned before that's part of our program we're developing for our fleet management program. And we also want to create a level of authorization that will help control overall cost to the district. And one thing I'll mention as well too that's not on here is as most you know most of the vehicles we order are from Ford. However, moving forward and we have to look at other possibilities what else we can do be creative. But right now Ford is not making sedans anymore.

107So now we have to look at where else can we go? Those that are in need of sedans, we have to look at where else can we go and depending on where we go, it may create needs for our mechanics to be trained on those on those type of areas as well. But it also could be also more efficiency as well too. So there's some things are work we're looking at moving forward in the future. And we also found out that they're no longer making midsize SUVs. So, they're out of the sedan and midsize SUVs, which means we're as some point we're going to have to look for other options. And then we'll stand by for any questions or comments. Thank you very much and appreciate both of you and all of you actually, including

108Mr. McKenna who's is back in the saddle today, so we welcome him back as well. thank you very much for your work. I know that this has been something that Mr. Nuland has talked about for several years prior to my 32 years in the district. I remember him speaking about this pretty close to when he first started with us and just really appreciate the extensive review of our white fleet and the analysis that has occurred and we're excited about this work and look forward to the board's comments and questions. Thank you, Miss Fle. Yes, thank you. This is long overdue. I have a couple of questions actually. I'm sorry if I missed that you touched on it, but do you have any idea how many former students of Lee County School District you may have

109working our maintenance and parts department to work on these vehicles in house? Yeah. Yes. So, we partner with FMTC and we actually run all our department of DE cars through them. So, all of our driver ed cars go through FMTC. We also go out there and we talk to the students there to get them to come work with the district. Right now in our south we have about four students working with us that we recruited over from FMTC. So there is a partnership where we work with you know the tech schools to get those students to come and work for for us. Okay. So my second question would be and if they're certified I because I know our students at let's say South Fort Myers High School has an amazing mechanics and parts department and

110if so if they are certified on a Ford product you know like you have to be certified on a Mercedes product or you have to be certified per product. can they work on those vehicles to work on certification or is that outside of our would that be a liability issue? I guess I should say we'd have to do further research on that. You said let's be creative. So, so we so we have been exploring that which is why we worked with the FMTC to do our DE car. We realized that with the mechanics we had it was just going to be too much. and on on the DE cars it's just normal routine oil change, filter change, wiper changes. So we don't give them extensive like very high level jobs. It's things that wouldn't cause

111a risk to the district. Okay. but that is something that we can explore cuz I mean any anywhere where we're saving we're being fiscally responsible with services but our students can provide those services. I mean you know it's a it does come out in the wash somewhere you know. and then my last question it's more of a challenge. I'm pretty familiar with car auctions and so, if I would love to see some way somehow, whether it's through a 5013C, some some sort of a partnership with maybe an organization that could take our vehicles that we know are in good repair, they're in good shape, but, you know, obviously the audit is saying we at some point in time you've got a lifetime on these vehicles and let's try to I guess maybe sell them at

112an incredibly affordable cost to our own students who need vehicles who cannot afford them whose parents cannot afford to buy them vehicle but they need one for work they need one to get to class they need one to get to school so that's really a challenge that I thought about while I was reading this over the weekend and if there was a way we could partner with someone that to provide these auction vehicles to our own students who need them. They can't afford them. I don't know. I'm just throwing it out there. Trying to be creative. Okay. Thank you. That's okay. Melissa. Okay. You just opened up a whole can of worms on that one because then I thought, what about what about teachers that need cars that I mean I would rather I mean,

113no offense, but we give bus rides to students. So, I would like to have make sure a teacher gets to work. So, because that can be a challenge for somebody, especially some that are driving from the east, from the west zone to the east zone. So, I love your idea. I think that could be explored a little more. I was actually one of the one of my notes that I wrote down a few minutes ago was have we ever gone back to Sam Galloway and renegotiated like our when we have these that are five years and older or whatever you know sell them back and maybe get you know give them five old ones or three old ones and get a new new one. I don't know is there some kind of way to negotiate

114that to to our advantage as well because we do spend a lot at with Ford. I know that for a fact. So I think that would be really important if we can you know leverage anything that we can. But one of the one of my other notes was like we have some vehicles that are donated to us and through different I'm think I'm going to say grants maybe then do is that responsibility for us to maintain them or does that responsibility go fall under the grant? Yeah, when when we retain those vehicles that falls on the district to to make sure that though we upkeep with them. We just had a fire truck donated to us so we maintain those though. Cool. they try to get back to the Ford, they wouldn't do it, right?

115So, that's good to know. I was just curious exactly how that works. because at what point when those vehicles are donated, then what you know, that's still value. do we you know, and so the auctions are open to the public. we'd have to look at state statutes and policies cuz there are things out there that we got to abide by in looking at all of this and I do have all supporting documentation if you guys want to review. So if we do want to go that route, we just need to get with legal and just make sure we're following all you know dotting our eyes and crossing our tees. Yeah. So my suggestion to staff is as we're brainstorming some ideas, we just make a note of those and then we will commit to get

116back to you as board members to let you know what the feasibility of those ideas are. We appreciate it. Keep them coming. That sounds pretty romantic giving a deal to our teachers and whatever. And I don't want to rain on a parade, but these are not class one vehicles. These are dinosaurs with 150,000 miles. The reason we want to get rid of them because the engine's going to be $3,200 and the transmission is going to be $2,300. So, do we want a teacher or an employee or a student that's limit living on a minimum wage taking off a dinosaur and a thing breaks down, they can't repair it? That's not going to be good for morale. So, I caution you. I caution that idea. Not that it's not a good one, but I just don't

117know if it's feasible for the folks that we have. Sorry, Mr. W wasn't finished. Oh, go ahead. you're well and that's why well that's why I mentioned that here selling back I like your I like your lease back there's a lot of companies that do lease back a lot of police departments do lease back they lease the cruisers 5 years later they take them back and on and on but that's a whole different animal and so we did we did explore that option too but it is very expensive and at this time that's not a good option for the school district I could see but it is something we looked into so in the data that you g gave us and thank you very much for the presentation Is there any way that you could

118give us a breakdown of like how many vehicles are at the district? How many are at x amount of school, you know, at each school like, you know, the breakdown of the like you've got 15 high schools. Well, there three cars that they, you know, use, you know, how does that like how what's the breakdown is really what I'm asking. Yeah, we can get that information for you. And that's it. I'm good. That's it. Yes. Any other comments? Not yet. Okay. I just have one. You did a great job talking about the white fleet, which is a very, very vulnerable fleet. As you know, those cars are not built like our school buses are, but I would like to put a thought in your head talking about the yellow fleet. Just real quickly, is we

119need to take a look at alternative fuel. There's a lot of districts that are going with natural gas. There's a lot lot of major trucking companies now are taking their tractor trailer fleet and making it a natural gas. And when you folks are up in DC, you probably want to check on the grants that are available. So when you set this up out of some of your facilities, you don't have to pay for the all the apparatus that's needed to pump the natural gas. But there's a lot I know Techo's been out talking about it. I was at a presentation here last month when they put their dog and pony show on about what they're doing with natural gas in Lee County. Any other comments? Okay. Thank you very much. Great job. Thank you. Okay.

120Next, we have the operations reorganization presented by Donald Nice. Good afternoon again, Chairman Parsons, members of the board, Superintendent Carland, and board attendant board attorney Dodig. I missed you last time. Apologies for that. All right, I think we're ready to get started. today I want to talk to you talk you through a plan centered on one big idea. Our schools deserve timely, reliable, highquality operational support every single day. Mr. Nice, if you could speak into the microphone a little closer. Thank you very much. Apologies. Back to the big idea. Our schools deserve timely, reliable, highquality operational support every single day. The structure we've relied on for years was built for a different time. Our teams work incredibly hard, but the demands on our system have changed. The plan I'm presenting is costneutral, aligned with what

121our schools need, and position us to deliver at a level that matches today's expectations. The moment we're in, operations is the engine room of the district. We manage over 500 million in budgets and over 950 employees across every department that keeps the schools running. But the challenge is this. The work has outgrown the structure. Our buildings are aging. Instructional needs have shifted and project complexity has increased. This mismatch leads to delays, inconsistent communication, and these must be addressed. The structural gap is that we have two strong arms, maintenance and construction. But midscale projects fall right in the middle. They're too big for maintenance, but not large enough to be assigned to the con to construction due to the scope of their work and size of their staff. So no single department owns them end to

122end. When that happens, timelines stretch, priorities shift, communications breakdown, and schools feel that immediately. The impact is that the principles don't get predictable timelines for these types of projects. Small issues linger and become bigger issues. Work is often rep prioritized based on capacity rather than urgency. This impacts climate, safety, teacher morale, and student learning. Schools need a system that is predictable and responsive, and students, educators, and staff deserve our best efforts every day. This matters now because midscale projects are increasing fast. Aging facilities, enrollment shifts, and new instructional needs all add complexity, and storm season has exposed gaps in our response capacity. Without structural change, delays grow, costs rise, and deferred maintenance deepens. Our strategic solution is that we're going to modernize the operational leadership team and create a new programs and project management department.

123This will create ownership, predictable timelines, strong planning, better storm response, and a clear point of contact for schools. This is the structural solution that operations has been missing for a very long time. This organization chart gives you an idea of what the new leadership structure will look like. Existing positions are in orange and new positions are in blue. We are adding four key roles. the deputy chief of school operations, chief of staff, budget analyst, and director of programs and projects. Together, they create the leadership foundation needed for an operation this size. This slide gives you a look at the new department and the positions it will consist of. Again, existing positions are in orange and the new positions are in blue. This department will own all midscale work. It includes leadership, coordinators, project managers, and

124integrated support all aligned under one roof. This will reduce confusion and streamline workflows for operational leadership. The deputy chief of staff, correction, the deputy chief, the chief of staff and budget analyst positions will strengthen internal controls, alignments, and work follow through to completion. Specifically for the deputy chief of school operations, this role builds a formal bridge between operations and campuses. It ensures decisions reflect school needs, not assumptions, and then translated into action. We are considering this a big win for principles and for schools. For the chief of staff, this ensures unity across all departments. It monitors progress, drives deadlines and followthrough, and aligns almost 10,000 employees towards accomplishing operational goals daily. The financial anal analyst will ensure responsible stewardship through real-time monitoring and long range planning and will synthesize data across multiple departments, making it

125more efficient while also strengthening transparency and supporting audits. We also plan to establish an execution arm. We'll do this through contract project management vendors to serve as our field-based execution arm. They maintain momentum and ensure professional coordination and project execution. This model scales up during storms or increased workload and scales down during slower periods. It ensures capacity without overspending. The benefits to the school and the district is that we'll deliver faster timelines, clearer communications, reduce deferred maintenance, have better alignment, and use resources more efficiently. This is an investment in our long-term district stability at zero cost. The case for change. Our current structure was built for a different time. This proposal fills gaps, supports schools directly, and prepares us for future needs. It also ensures highquality support for every school. And we believe the time

126to do this is now. That's all I have for today. Pending any questions, I'll turn it back over to the superintendent and board for discussion. Thank you very much, Mr. Nice. And as we've discussed with the board in our one-on- ons, it has been a practice of this district to provide a new chief the opportunity to come in to assess the current staff to see what is working and what is not and to be able to have that opportunity to restructure based on the needs of the organization. Mr. Nice joined us on July 1st of this year of this school year. and he has had a semester to walk around to talk with his staff to discuss the matters with the schools to speak with numerous principles. we have spoken in our one-on- ones about

127some of the pain points of operations and received I have personally received I'm sure many of you have received feedback on the opportunities that await operations particularly as it relates to work orders. This is our chief operations officer's first opportunity to bring forward a reorganization in the way that he believes he needs to be best structured and postured to be able to best support our schools and our district as a whole. So we look forward to your comments and your questions. Thank you. Okay, board members. M Siobhan, thank you and thank you for this. I know what it's been six months now. so traditionally when you take over, I know my experience like your first 90 days is learning the ropes and there's a lot of ropes to learn here. so I know it's been

128a long time coming with everything else you've taken under your belt with the scratch kitchen and everything else. So I appreciate the effort to make the changes needed for efficiency while sticking within the budget that you have and that we approved to make things work best for our district and our schools and our teachers and our students. So, so thank you for this. I know it was thought out. We had, again, as Dr. Carlin mentioned, discussed this in our one-on- ones, and my biggest thing was we're staying within our budget, so I'm happy. but again, the efficiency component, right? I think the big conversation we've had and the words that have been brought up are SOPs. We're creating standard operating procedures. And with an organization this size, those items are critical cuz when Dr. Carlen

129decides to go, you decide to go, things change. We need process and procedure that someone can come behind you and follow and be successful. So, so thank you for this. I look forward to the other changes you bring forward and I appreciate the hard work. So, thank you. Any other comments? Thank you, Chair Ribble. thank you for bringing this up, Chief Nie. we've had some major transformations issue through over this district the last couple years. I mean, I think we've had some major success and changes in academic services, HR, safety, security, and I feel like operations is the final frontier, I guess, is the best way to say it. So, we have good people, but structurally it's been a disaster, at least in my opinion, for the last many years. all of us are out

130in schools and hearing a lot of the feedback like I really appreciate you bring up the structural gap that's something I hear about a lot and stuff that kind of just falls through the middle on that the crack. So I think this is a a great way to change it. I'm looking forward to especially the streamlining of it. I'm not always the biggest supporter of adding to the org chart, but I understand it and I appreciate the way you're trying to fit things in there. I'm excited to see how this works and I'll be supporting this. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, short. I guess I'm going to be that person. we've had quite a conversation yesterday regarding this and I do have a problem with adding the top layers on this structure as we spoke

131yesterday about it. in on page three, and this is no disrespect to you and what you bring. on page three, it was stated that we didn't have enough that were stretched beyond our intended I'm sorry, I should put my glasses back on. that the staff is stretched beyond their intended roles. However, we say this is costneutral and if we don't have the people that are stretched to actually do the work and I believe that we brought them in at another level on page there's another area here where you were bringing like kind of like contract labor in to do those jobs that were not that we didn't have enough staff for. But I just when I look at that and we keep saying that we're putting money into classrooms and then I see all of

132these top layer I just I have a problem with that because all of our directors well a lot of our directors and I know we said that they didn't lose money but a lot of our directors were became assistant directors and perhaps they could have been and this was prior to you I believe that took place. I just I can't get behind this because I look at that and I know that we keep telling staff, teachers, schools that all the money that we're saving that we're putting back in there. The 5% that we, you know, that we took from all the departments, we're putting back in there. Now, we're asking, we're looking at these positions and the U22, U8, U20. That is quite a bit of money that will be going into those positions that

133are not there because these are new positions. So I can't see how that is costneutral when we don't have enough staff to even get the jobs done and we're going to have to hire the people to get them done. Whether we're doing it as contract labor or however that whatever that looks like, we still have to pay those people to get that those jobs done. And I but I do appreciate you putting this together and our conversation. And I did take the liberty to contact the top 10 well the top nine school districts and not one of them use this organ organizational chart. and that's all the even the larger ones than us. They do not use it and they're they're making it happen. But so thank you. Any other comments? Okay. I I do

134have a comment. Thank you. so first of all, thank you Miss Jordan for bringing this forward and just for transparency Mr. Nice. so there was a question about is this indeed saving the district money or costneutral. So I would just like to ask you for the public record how much money does this save the district? This will save us. It's not a lot of money. It's just under $5,000 and we will have in the big scheme of things one less supervisory position. Yeah. So, thank you for that. And that was my other question was when we continue to look at efficiencies and you know, with all due respect, Miss Jordan, I do want to share that this has been one of the largest pain points for our schools. we have hired a chief operating officer

135who has the opportunity to come in and restructure just like we have had other restructures. I know in the past you've approved the HR restructure with Miss Monica Mareno that actually cost an additional $1 million to the school district of Lee County. This is returning $5,000 to the district. So with all due respect, I do feel like we need to be able to provide one of our chiefs. The courtesy just like that has been provided in the past to other chiefs to include Mrs. Monttoarino. So, we are we are absolutely providing our chiefs the opportunity and when they get the opportunity to return dollars to the district. I am so proud of when that happens because in my 32 years in this district, that has not always been the opportunity. we've had chiefs that have

136come and spent additional dollars beyond what they are budgeted. So, I did want to publicly recognize Mr. Nice for actually returning dollars back to the district. And I just heard something very important and that is the fact that there are less upper managers and leaders. is did I understand that properly? Okay. So even though we have structured a little differently, I do want to point out that the number of managers and leaders has actually been reduced by one. Was that what I heard? Okay. Thank you, sir. Okay. Now you're up. Can I? No, hang on. Hang on. She's next. Okay. and then you go to okay then I'm going to get thank you for this I have to say so I've been here a little while and there's been major issues going on in maintenance

137and I commend you for attempting and hopefully being successful I wish you all the success that this does turn this around where we are more efficient and actually effective because I feel like sometimes a lot of our maintenance has been spinning their wheels only to continue spinning wheels and nothing really happens like their little gerbles because they're they work very hard in maintenance and I want to recognize that. I think we have to do something. So, I'm excited about your opportunities here. And one of my things I was going to say and so and you've you've actually reiterated more about it is I just didn't want to have too many chiefs and not enough Indians. And I think that we may still need to hire some more Indians. But I think we you I'm I'm

138excited about this because we like I said, I have to bring up the fact that we have to do something. Maintenance has struggled for years. and nothing ever changed and something has to change to make something better and for the my tenure here nothing has changed in maintenance and in fact the Indians just continued working very hard. So I'm excited about your new org chart and opportunity for everyone in maintenance to feel the relief. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying the $5,000 However, when we hire the contract labor to come in and the other staff, where does that $5,000 go? So, is that incorporated into that 5,000 that's coming back? The plan is to largely use that contract labor for program management and it will eb and flow based upon the budget that we're allotted

139annually. And so, like we have approximately 25 facility modification projects. If we get funding for five, we'll use that labor to to complete those five projects. Additionally, last year, I believe, unfortunately, maintenance wasn't able to execute all of its funding. And so, we got further behind and deferred maintenance. And so, in future years, what I'd like to you do is use that money that we may not be able to use, but still desperately need the maintenance and put that into the contract to catch up on deferred maintenance when we have the budget. The beauty of it is though that on years where we just have to be lean and don't have the funds, we're not carrying the additional staff and payroll. We can downsize to what we need and expand as we need to based

140upon the job and the budgets at hand. All right. Thank you. One thing I'd bring up is that time is money, you know. So if you're able to get projects done in a more timely manner, that saves us money there. That's it's hard to calculate but expenses of everything goes up. Delays cause additional expenses. U it's easier to see in a new construction. You know, it's x amount of dollars, but but for maintenance, it's really the same thing. Absolutely. And like Mr. Rickenbacher said earlier, sometimes a small project can become a big issue later, like we're talking about the pipes underground. So, you know, I support this. Thank you. And I would just like to add there that having this in place I think will help us on our timelines extremely because we'll have dedicated

141individuals that see the oversee the projects from end to end to include the aspects of not just managing the project but paying for the project. And so there's a lot of pieces and components right now that we're just not efficient at. And just like we talked about creating the standard operating procedures, having the organizational structure that's the needed structure in place to make all of this workflow is just going to increase our operational efficiency by significant measures. And I think in the last 6 months, we've already made huge strides, but those huge strides are despite the organization, not because of it. Once we get organized like this, I think I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised at how how good we get in operations. Okay. And I want to just go back and follow

142up on what Mr. Shioano had said earlier about the structure with the SOP. I think he did a great job with this. I know we talked about this what three weeks ago I think when I had my session with you. I was impressed with the Gant chart. I think it's going to add a lot of accountability. Okay. A lot of efficiency to the plan. But most importantly, it's going to give you a good secession planning because all those people are get get to know what this business is all about. So now we're not going to have openings and we're not going to have to go outside the district to hire people. We'll have people building in place and hopefully some of those students that are going to our tech schools I can sign on to

143this. And you have the last word, my friend. Okay. One more thing. how are we going to measure the efficiency that this is that's going to be really key and important for us to be able to see that this is effective. and the other thing I know I wanted to add too was that y'all maintenance needs reliable vehicle vehicles and they've ran only on a handful of vehicles which has made many inefficiencies just that alone just vehicles where they're they're buddying up and going to going to several schools in one car doing multiple jobs. one's waiting or helping the it's not they've not been really effective or efficient. why don't we just fix that with the white fleet? Well, I don't think it's quite fixed. So, I just wanted to bring that up because that's

144really affected a lot of what maintenance has had to deal with in the past. That's just a little example of the ineffective work environment that they've had to deal with. but I want to be able to measure the efficiency. So, that's really important. it's your job to figure that out, but I really would like to see that. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. I would just like to add two things. So, first I couldn't agree with you more about the vehicles, but also I think even that piece goes back to efficiency. So, working with my team as well as working with safety, security, and transportation. I do think that there is a need for more specialized vehicles, but I also think in fairness and an honest self-evaluation, we need to do a better job at utilizing our

145vehicles well. And we don't always do that. That's an area we need to improve and you only get better if you actually identify your root causes and attack them, right? And so that's what we're trying to do with the vehicles. as far as you know effectiveness, I think I think we still have we have to formalize some metrics, but really I think project timelines, project costs, but really even more importantly, I want to focus on outcomes. Are our principles happy? Are our teachers happy? And most importantly, are our children successful and happy? And that's I think our way if not graded of doing our part to be an A district. That will be a great measurement to hear too. So thank you Dr. Carlin and thank you Mr. Nice. I was just reminded of that.

146So remember we've had audit findings in a variety of areas within operations to include maintenance work orders and the timeliness of that. So I will share with you that is one metric that could be used. and there will be there will be others. Thank you. Okay. There any other? Seeing no other hands. Thank you very much. Great presentation. Thank you. And I wish you a lot of luck with your new plan. I'm sure it'll be good. Okay, moving right along. We have job descriptions presented by Dr. Shannon Johnson. Good afternoon board members, Superintendent Dr. Carlin and Attorney Dodic. Before you today are seven job descriptions, five from operations and two from legal as we have discussed previously. Are there any questions? questions hearing none. We had an easy day today. Must have been all that

147training you got in Atlanta this week. Yes. Thank you. Okay, moving right. Boy, that was the quickest ever. Okay, moving right along. We have the budget overview presented by Sarah Cox and Kelly Lecter. Good Afternoon board members, Superintendent Dr. Carlin and Attorney Dodic. Hi. So, we just wanted to kind of catch you all up on the budget. We're going to first talk about where we are right now and then we'll go into next year's budget which we've already started on as I'm sure you're aware of. So, we have had our October FTE survey. We received the third calculation from that and unfortunately we did lose some money as we were all expecting to happen. our unweighted FTE went from 111,725 to 109416. So we were down 239 from our projection. So when you look at

148that, that was a $7.1 million decrease in base funding, our categoricals. thanks to transportation, we did go up $5.6 million, which was a saving grace for us. Thank you, transportation. and then the fees discretionary supplement went we received another 995,000 for that. We had a prior year adjustment of 1.5 million. So our total when you look at the total potential, it shows a $510,000 decrease. However, when you break it down, the family empowerment scholarships increased $6 million, which made the decrease to district schools and charter schools 6.6 million for this year, plus the 1.5 from last year. I also want to point out the academic acceleration. as you all know the API ACE they last year and the years before we generated the FTE based on the BSA and the DCD and this year they

149put it into the categorical and as I suspected we lost $3 million in funding because they put it in that categorical we only generated 15.9 where if they had continued the way previously we would have generated 18.9 in that area. I did want to then show you on the unweighted FTE what this really looks like. So the blue is showing the change from last year to this year whether we the growth and decrease and the orange is showing from the projections because I just wanted to to point out that you know while we went down 2,39 in total that was from a projection not necessarily last year's numbers. when you look at last year's numbers, the school district in our traditional school went down 747 from the previous year. but based on the projection, it's

150more like 1,795. Our charter schools went down 206 from the previous year. And based on projections, they went down 609. And family empowerment scholarships went up 1,990 from last year, which was 96 up from the projection. And so we just kind of wanted to show the differences between that, you know, where it was from last year to projection. So what does that mean to our schools? As you all know, we've had adjustments at our schools. We adjusted at day 10 and then we adjusted again in October based on the October FTE. At day 10, our schools were adjusted $9.2 2 million and then again in October down another 1.3 million. And during these changes, most of the changes were just movement of people into positions funded from other areas. I did try to get an

151actual loss. I'm not sure that we had actual people that lost positions during that move. If so, it was very small. Most of them were just movements within the different areas. All right. So, looking ahead to our fiscal year 27 FTE projections, the state opened up their portal portal at the end of January. And so, they have a fairly sophisticated database in which they provide models to us. and so we can accept one of the various models that they provide to us. You know, their database takes into account all of our trend data. so we accepted one of their models and for our total district that would include charters, our traditional schools as well as the fees scholarship program. we selected the model to increase our FTE to 111,967. that's an increase of 2551.69 unweighted

152FTE. For our district schools alone, that's an increase of 866.33 unweighted FTE. And you may be wondering why, you know, this year we had a decrease of 747 compared to the actual 2425 school year FTEE, why we would go with a growth model. Well, this one year of a decline, we don't take into account and let it affect our long range forecasting. we still want to build in some growth because typically we do see between 1 to 2,000 student growth each year. we may very well not see that next year, but this is an intentional growthbased model that we accepted just in case we do go back to a growth mindset. it's really we would rather have the state allocate those students for us and receive the funding than not. So, it was a very

153intentional strategy that we took to accept that model with growth. And then, of course, we also have charter schools growing 364 despite their decline. And of course our fees scholarship program has been significantly increasing over the last couple of years. So by accepting this growth model, you know, there is some considerations and contingencies that we have to consider. of course that's going to bring some revenue sensitivity. you know, if we do see another decrease in fiscal year 27, it's important that we maintain our FTE shortfall. we frequently monitor our enrollments to prepare for any adjustments to schools at day 10 and the survey 2 adjustment. So just some things to point out that while we did intentionally go with this growth model, we know that there's contingency contingencies that we have to have in place

154in doing so. So now what's next after we've done our projections and what do we do moving forward? we have already been working on much of the pieces working with our school leads to work on their files to see what we you know we're going to do for next year changes but and February we're going to start working with our departments. We have a department meeting set up for February 19th to start the department process with them. And then in March we're going to be reviewing the legislative items for impact. And as you are sure I'm aware, the legislative session is supposed to end on March 13th. And at that point, we should be receiving our first calculation. we will be providing our schools their district resource allocations at the end of March so they

155can plan their year as well. And we'll be reviewing department budgets through the month of March with our executive team and our budget committee. In April, we will be working with the schools while they complete their DRA files and working with departments to finalize all of the budgets for the departments. we were we're hoping that May we can get all the files back from the school. We're going to try and push them to have that done earlier so that we can work on knowing what kind of vacancies we really have and working with our HR team to make sure that schools can advertise vacancies that they really do have once they receive their files and make their changes. But in June, we're going to be presenting the preliminary budget to you all. And as you

156are aware, we're going to be monitoring the schools enrollments throughout the summer. That's going to be a constant thing that we do throughout the summer. in July we will be receiving the second calculation. It's we must receive it by July 19th. That will include the certified taxable value and the millages that we'll get from the state. We'll be advertising the tenative budget. we'll be providing the tenative budget to you all but in August we will actually have our tenative public hearing as opposed to the end of July. We'll be doing it at the beginning of August. and then our students will come back to school in August. We will have our 10day adjustments and we'll be finalizing the budget through the month of August in order to provide you all with a final public hearing

157on in September. And of course, after that is done, we'll be putting our documents together and sending them to the Department of Revenue and to the Department of Education. With that, I will turn it over for any questions or comments. Nothing. Any comments from the board? Mr. Persons, I would think it would be better to overestimate and have money sent to us then be sitting here with a lot more kids than we thought were coming and saying, "Give us more money because that's sort of already been done." And so then you're going into all sorts of contingency funds and everything else. So they claw that money back. Correct. How's that exactly for the so what happens is you know the FFP first and second calculation will be based on our projection and then we have

158our October FTE survey that's when we start getting the result of our actual FTE and our actual revenue that we anticipate from the FFP. So when those FTE surveys occur, our revenue gets adjusted. So that's why you'll see like in our final budget packet and things like that, we have an FTE shortfall specifically for that. It is a fine balance of not grossly overestimating but also avoiding underestimating. So there is a balance to it and we feel the safer bet is to estimate an increase as our history shows. but also be prepared in case that does not happen. I also want to point out it's better statewide if we have some over projection because the state sets its budget on the total enrollment that the districts turn in. And so if you if you were

159to if everybody underp projected or didn't project enough, what happens is that's when the proration kicks in because there's no additional dollars to add in. So you know it's it's better to have that money sitting there at the state instead of getting a proration after it moves around. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments board? Okay. Hearing none. Thank you very much. Great job. Next up, we have government relations federal legislative update by Chrissy Hulahan. Chrissy Good afternoon board members and superintendent Dr. Denise Carlin. Today we will review the key federal developments and district advocacy efforts from the past year. While many of these milestones have been featured in the board weekly updates, this presentation synthesizes that information into a chronological timeline to provide a clear, comprehensive look at our progress and impact. In March,

160we started our engagement with Ballard partners to navigate the president's administration's push to return education to the states. This proactive stance ensured that the district maintained a direct line to federal decision makers during a period of significant jurisdictional uncertainty. On April 8th, a major milestone and win for the district occurred with our federal team in DC and the efforts here at the district. We were able to break through unnecessary bureaucracy by securing a no permit required for the status of the Alva High School from the Army Corps of Engineers. By bypassing this traditional red tape, we accelerated construction and save the district approximately 10 to 15 million in inflationary building costs. In May, representatives from the district traveled to Washington DC to meet with key stakeholders such as members of Congress, congressional staff, agency heads,

161and White House liaison to discuss the impacts of the expected major federal policy shifts. After that trip and the relationships created, district leaders started to serve as a key advisory resource for school safety legislation. Our team's direct feedback ensured that federal language reflects our district's operational realities, cementing our role as a leader in shaping national school safety standards. In late June, the Department of Education placed nearly a $7 billion in federal education funding under a programmatic review to include funding in Title One, Title 2, Title Three, Title 4, adult education basic grants, and adult integrated English literacy and civic engagement grants. During this time, there was a lot of uncertainty. The district leaned on its intelligence. we were able to gather from our partners at Ballard. While other districts immediately responded by cutting programs and

162their district personnel, we held tight based on realtime intelligence from our GC team. During the programmatic review, we received information from our team at the district that there were two multi-year grants that were outside of the review of scope but had not been dispersed. In previous years, that funding had already been dispersed to the district, and at this time, it had not. Due to the first day of school being right around the corner, it was critical that these funds be dispersed. And through the aggressive advocacy from our team in DC, the district secured the release of $4.4 million on July 25th, just two weeks before the first day of school. If that funding had not been released, some of our programs at our schools would have been cut. In fall of 2025, from October 1st

163to November 12th, I'm sure we're all aware that the federal government faced a 43 day government shutdown that paralyzed the administrative offices nationwide. Despite the closure of the federal offices, our team monitored negotiations to ensure we were positioned for immediate action upon reopening. This became critical for the continuation of working through the federal permitting process, budget, and legislative advocacy. This ensured that the district was first in line for administrative offices the moment the government reopened. November became a pivotal month for the education community at the national level. On November 12th, the government reopened after the 43 historic shutdown and Congress passed a small budget that contained continuous resolutions that were good through June January 30th. On November 18th, a memo released by the US Department of Education announced six new agency partnerships to break up

164federal bureaucracy. These new inter agency agreements with four different federal agencies were executed to streamline federal education activities on the legally required programs, reducing administrative burdens, and refocusing programs and activities to better serve students and grantees. These four agencies include Department of Interior, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of State. Due to the constraints and the direction that the federal budget was going in, Ballard has started to work with or yes, Ballard has started to work with our team at the district to target specialized grant funding pools created by these new inter agency models. After the holidays, major efforts to finalize the remaining 2026 appropriations continued an attempt to prevent another federal funding lapse. On January 7th, the US Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health

165and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy released the new federal nutrition guidelines and program reforms, the updated dietary restriction restrictions for Americans through the year of 2030. The updated policy shifts federal programs, including SNAP, Wick, and school meals to prioritize whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and lean proteins while reducing reliance on ultrarocessed foods. The reforms also include targeted efforts to improve access to nutritionist food, nutritionist foods in underserved communities. These key changes will impact procurement policies for federal facilities, school meal programs, and nutritional assistance. The USDA and HHS will work with farmers, food producers, schools, and local governments to support the transition and strengthen supply chains. The agencies committed the agencies are committed to ongoing evaluation, public input, and expanded investment in nutritional research and education. Please note that board

166members were originally notified regarding the make our children healthy again strategy in the board weekly report on September 26. That kind of gave us the path as to what we were to expect in the coming months. okay. And then starting the week of January 20th, 2026, roughly 40 to 50 employees from the education department postse secondary education office were detailed to the department of labor. The goal is to move the day-to-day administrative of post-secondary grants to the Department of Labor systems to ensure education programs are industrydriven and focused on high demand career pathways. There's a continuation of seeing a lot of staff starting to change into the other agencies or shift over there to provide additional support as the president and his administration continues to shift the funding. On February 3rd, the president signed a

16779 billion minibus package rejecting the proposed $12 billion in cuts that we were anticipating earlier this year. Some of the key funding areas include an additional $217 million in the education discretionary fund, an additional $20 million in title one funding, an additional $20 million in our special education funding, leveled the PEL grants, an additional $85 million in the Head Start, and leveled the 21st century learning funding as well. Some of those items we were expecting major cuts to. Additionally, career and technical education state grants were maintained at $1.44 billion, but those have completely shifted to the Department of Labor. Additionally, the bill establishes additional guardrails to address agency changes in ships. The bill does not stop the inter agency agreements that was explained in the previous slide, but rather adds a new requirement. Agencies must

168provide bi-weekly reports to Congress on the implementations of these agreements. It also managed that the department maintains sufficient staff to fulfill its statutory responsibilities, preventing potential service delays caused by excessive personnel transfers. And the passing of this budget provides future fiscal predictability and prevents suspensions of critical educational services. Our path forward through continuous federal monitoring. We are maintaining boots on the ground to monitor the Department of Education at it as it decentralizes and shifts authority toward inter agency partnerships. Our goal is to pro provide critical information to the district to sustain its first mover advantage in a rapidly changing federal landscape. Through aggressive pursuit of specialized funding, we are leveraging new specialized grant research capacity to identify funding opportunities outside of traditional educational appropriation processes. Our focus has shifted toward securing emerging emerging grants specified

169for workforce development, nutrition, modernization, and infrastructure through leading the state-led transition. And that refers back to President Trump's initial budget recommendations that he came out with in late spring. we provide real-time policy alerts to district leadership, enabling a proactive response to shifting federal standards and inter agency requirements by modeling early adoption of these new department of labor and USDA standards. We aim to serve as a national blueprint for other districts and we are still awaiting additional guidance on some of those pieces. And through strategic district alignment, we have established a direct communication pipeline between our federal partners and the district leadership to ensure immediate operational readiness. Our strategy protects district interests by ensuring every federal change is met with a prepared and strategic response rather than a reactive one. And in closing, board members and

170superintendent Dr. Denise Carlin, I want to leave you with two pivotal takeaways here. First, the district is no longer simply reacting to federal shifts. For the first time, we are leading the charge. By leveraging our DC team's insights, we have shifted to a proactive strategy engaging direct directly with policymakers through the entire legislative life cycle from creation to implementation. Our second win and takeaway from here is our strategic investment on delivering a clear and substantial return on investment. To date, this work has yielded a financial ROI estimated between 4.4 4 million and $19 million for our students, teachers, and community. Thank you for your time, and I'm happy to address any questions or comments. Thank you very much, Miss Tulleahan. Really appreciate the update. as the board knows, we took a step into federal lobbying

171last year. this was a very strategic move by our district. we are, perfectly postured to be in a proactive stance. Thank you for the use of the word. rather than waiting for things to happen to us, we are now at the table. We are now actively contributing to legislation, we are able to get ahead of things. I want to underscore something very important. We talk a lot about teacher and employee retention in this district and how important it is. There were a number of colleagues that I spoke with in my professional organization when those title dollars were under review that pulled the trigger and notified staff that had to come out of schools. pull programs out of schools because of our on the ground intelligence in Washington DC. We did not knee-jerk. We waited with

172guidance from our federal lobbyists. And because of that, we were not disruptive to our employees, to our schools, and to our programs. I know there was a mention about monetary figures in terms of return on investment. I would argue the staff retention and the avoidance of a knee-jerk reaction when it comes to you have a job here, no you don't. that also for me was a big win because we do not want employees being fearful when we don't need to have them in that posture. We need them focusing on the preparation for children returning to school, not worried about, oh my gosh, do I have a job because the title funds are under review. So I would argue the return on investment is equal when we look at dollars saved but also lives that were

173not impacted by our employees. So with that we look forward Thank you chair Ribble. one just thank you obviously for all the information and two I know last month we were given the opportunity to have the conversations with the DC representative from Ballard. I know specifically for my conversation, I had a lot of requests or asks in regards to accessing funds since AI is a huge conversation and everything that's happening out there. being able to look at opportunities to get those dollars for our schools and expansions of our programs. And I know there's a couple notes that she made in conversations saying like there's a lot of opportunity for that to happen. And it's nice to be able to have again that relationship to get those additional dollars to continue to improve our certifications and

174our CTE and these next additional pathways for our students to achieve outside of college. Right? All of those programs cost dollars. We just heard with budget some of those dollars get moved around and you know there's some things that are changing. So being able to have an additional revenue source I can say possibly to get those rant those grants out of DC is very helpful because that's just money on the table then it you know we have an opportunity to grab because it's out there. so I appreciate that and being able to have access to that team to ask the questions and have them follow up on those pieces for our kids to continue to expand and offer programs out there so they can continue to be successful. So, thank you for that. Good, Mr.

175Persons. We definitely need federal lobbyists. Mr. Dribble, you came up with a great idea on the buses with natural gas. So that's not something you go to your state I mean your congressman for or your senator for. You have to go to the right department. So being the smart guy I am, I went to Google and said what federal department does that? Well, it's the DOT and then there's a sub department which is the Federal Transit Administration. I know nobody there. Any of y'all know anybody there a letter? That's not going to do any good. You need a federal lobbyist, you know, but they have lots of grants for low or no low emission grant program. They got grants for buses and bus facilities and eligible applicants or state and local governments and public transit

176agencies. I mean, that's perfect for us. That was a great idea. but none of us can follow through on it. That's why we need a federal lobbyist. So, and thanks for all y'all have done. Lisa, thank you. thank you, Mr. Persons, for that. I'm going to bring up just a little bit regarding because I think it's key because I hadn't thought about it until after the fact. we actually had a federal lobbyist because our other lobbyist was different for the state and then we wound up hiring Ballard for both. And I think it's key to talk about because because they have that rapport where they're working directly to to each other and we were concerned and hired the federal lobbyists first because of all the everything that we were hearing once Trump got elected dismantling

177education and what that what did that mean actually for Lee County? I don't think any of us really had a clue. I think we're still learning things as as things changed still. So I think it was important and key factor to have someone in DC conveying and working closely with our state lobbyist together. I think that the outcome is going to be better than two different firms. And so I just wanted to bring that up because I thought about it many times after the fact and I think that it's important. At first, I wouldn't have thought it was as important, but what was happening in DC really was driving everything that was going to happen in the in our state and for us and what that meant for public education with the dismantling of public

178ed in DC. So, I think it was important and it was a key advantage to to have both firms do both because we really have not had any presence in DC ever in my tenure. And so I was excited to see have that ability in DC and what and it was really more actually more valuable to have someone in DC than ever before with all the with all the changes happening. So I just wanted to bring that up and just thank you for this information and u kudos and I'll be supporting the their renewing their contract. Thank you. Okay, Miss Fischer. Thank you. brings up Miss Juvenelli brings up a good point. So I know this is item H1 tonight. So I know Miss Jordan had talked about pulling the item. If she does not

179pull the item, I wish to pull the item tonight and I'm going to tell the board that I wish to make a motion tonight that we amend the federal lobbying contract to make sure that Dane Eagle is allowed to be part of that and there's an integration on that contract. we now have the same state lobbyist and state lobbying and federal firm and I think it does a disservice to us not having Mr. Eagle who's already on part of the contract being able to work with both entities. This gentleman has served our state for a long time and to the fact has served with off the top of my head 10 to 11 of our congressional federal delegation especially having a relationships with both of our congressmen, Congressman Stewie and Congressman Donald's. So I'm going

180to ask the board tonight can obviously let me know now that I will be making that motion to have an amendment added on the contract to make sure Mr. Eagle is not excluded from the contract. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, hearing none. Great, great job, Miss Tulham. Appreciate hearing from you and all too will be supporting tonight's motion. Okay, moving right along. Next is a district strategic priorities academic update part two presented by Cheryl Neely, Shazer Trent, and Philip Savage. All right. Good afternoon, school board members. Superintendent Carlin. Today we are presenting the academic midyear analysis reflecting our student progress following our state progress monitoring 2 or what most of us call it is PM2. this presentation is a collaborative effort really between school performance academic services and our business intelligence team.

181On the screen you will see your districtwide this is our district-wide school goal. as measured in the state accountability model, the school district of Lee County will become the top performing Big 10 school district in Florida by moving from ninth place to first place by July of 2028. That is our overarching goal that really does help us make decisions as we continue to move forward over the next several years. Our goal for this session are three-fold. to provide an overview of the progress monitoring cycle. Second, to share specific insights and reflections from PM2 data, and finally to outline our regional focus areas for the remainder of the semester. As a reminder, the fast cycle consists of three windows. PM1 establishes our baseline early on in the year, usually August or September. PM2, which just concluded

182in January, serves as our mid-year diagnostic to refine, intervention plans for students who are trending off track. And PM3 in May, that will provide our official results and finalize our, district and school grades. We are starting to shift our culture, moving away from some habits that refer to as bad habits, such as overreacting to end of the year forecasts based off of data that we're receiving in the middle of the year on PM2 or just looking at the raw results and not taking into account the content or the gains that our students learn between now and progress monitoring three. Instead, we are cultivating new habits, identifying outliers and performance to scale success throughout our district, developing targeted intervention plans, using our business intelligence forecast results, and using mid-year data to begin assessing the true impacts

183of any new programs we've implemented or pilots that we've begun. Our philosophy is that consistent growth leads to long-term achievement. While we expect annual growth from every student, we recognize that the power is in a school's ability to develop systems that ensure all students reach proficiency and beyond. At this time, Mr. Savage will pre present PM2 insights and reflections on our student progress towards our district-wide goal as well as insights on the 12 district school grade categories that make up those results. It is important to emphasize here that 10 of the district school grade components are impacted by PM3 and two of those components graduation rate and college career acceleration are the results of last year's senior class. All right. thank you so much Cheryl. Sorry I got a little bit of a cold so

184I apologize if my voice isn't broadcasting as usual. so before we dive into these numbers I wanted to first align on kind of how we're using this. So, as Cheryl had mentioned, PM2 is a diagnostic tool and it's really not a final destination, right? student learning is actually nonlinear. and in that exponential part, we're kind of at an inflection point. and so this midyear forecast can sometimes distract us because it can create kind of a false complacency or undue stress if if the numbers aren't quite where they want them to be. So, it really is an incomplete picture today. So our focus remains on execution over these next three months. So our business intelligence forecasts assume historical growth and you'll see this concept minimum acceptable targets. and those are based on those trends. So our

185mission is not just to meet these goals but ultimately we want to exceed them. but we always kind of ground it in what we expect to happen based on what has historically happened. So this table summarizes the 12 components of our district grade. This compares last year's final results to the current year trajectory. these figures are based on student profiles and the supports that we currently have in place. It's important to note these are not forecasts based on the actual mid-year test scores. Rather, they show where we anticipate landing if we maintain kind of how we've done historically from growth from PM2 to PM3. so and again that's at minimum targets. So at the bottom you'll see our two lag components. Grad rate which is officially in at 90%. And the career and college success

186rate which we expect to receive officially later this month but it will be around 66 67 66 68 somewhere in that ballpark. So now we're going to go through each component. This is the first component. Component one is grade three ELA achievement. While the third grade test is a high stakes milestone, the real story on this slide is what's actually happening in classrooms before students reach that point. So, we've made a significant investment in our kindergarten through 2 grade levels. And as you can see in the data, there is a clear return. We're seeing year-over-year gains between 3 and 7% and even higher in math for those same early learners. So by closing these gaps in these early grades, this will build the strong foundation that will prevent students from arriving at third grade with

187a significant deficit. So our goal is simple. Solve the problem at the root so students will enter the testing year is prepared to succeed. So the second component, this is a more traditional one. This is the ELA achievement rates. so this is one we actually do have some visibility into the state level trends. We don't know exactly how our peer districts performed in P PM2 yet. we'll find that out in probably a month or so. however, looking at our internal growth, the trend is very positive. We saw an 8% increase in students reaching grade level proficiency between PM1 and PM2, which outpaced the great we had last year of only 6%. so even though we started the year behind significantly behind the Big 10 average, we're moving at an accelerated pace compared to our own

188historical performance. the next component, component three, this is ELA learning gains. To keep it simple, the previous slide was about who is already on the grade level. This slide is really measuring the growth of every student regardless of their starting point. While forecasting learning gains midyear is always complex, the trend here is undeniable. Every single grade level band, elementary, middle, and high, is outperforming our historical performance at the same point in time. Specifically, our grades three through 10 are currently tracking towards a 60% gain, which is a 5% jump over last year at this point. So, focus on sustained literacy is critical to our long-term goals. as Cheryl mentioned earlier, sustained growth is really is the is the pathway to the A. and things look to be moving in the right direction. The next component

189is ELA learning gain specifically for the L25. Now, we don't even want to display a forecast for the L25 because the L25 group is really ones that require the most intense and focused support. So, we don't want to have any sense of complacency. this group has really been a top priority for our school-based teams this year. Our schools are now using custom tools to identify exactly which of these students are truly at risk, allowing principles and teachers to see when progress stalls and pivot instruction immediately. so again, while we can't provide a final forecast today as the official L25 group isn't set by the until state testing begins, we are excited by the growth that we're seeing and the precision and intentionality in the intervention strategies. component five, this is math achievement. This is very

190similar to ELA achievement where we it's a it's one you do get a little bit of traditional visibility in. However, unlike ELA, a significant portion of the student achievement in math occurs after the PM2 window when students get exposure to the remaining standards. While we don't know how our peer districts performed for at least another month, our internal growth is very encouraging. We saw a 17% increase in students reaching grade level proficiency, outpacing the 13% we saw in the same window last year. We're moving faster than our own historical performance. However, we remain transparent that the gap between us and the state is still widening. The reality helps explain. So, the next slide that I'll kind of get into will help explain some of the things that we're doing and the proposed changes for next

191year. So, going into math learning gains. So unlike ELA learning gains, the state doesn't provide progress monitoring for algebra algebra 1 or geometry. Also due to accelerated math, trying to forecast performance of the middle grades can be a bit noisy. So based on what we're seeing, the signal from our elementary schools is very clear. U and in our elementary schools, I think shares will talk about some of those things that we're doing. but I said we've we've really invested a lot in in math intervention there. but what we've seen is that it's it's showing growth. This confirms that our increased focus on the math intervention is yielding results. however, it's still premature to assess the middle grades. Right now, we're looking very closely at the various pilots such as EDIA, path to 30 to help

192refine our plan for next year. Component seven is the mathematics learning gain for our lowest 25%. Now, this is the area where our data has led to the most significant shift in our secondary strategy. Historically, our district has diverged from many of the other high-erforming peer districts by not double blocking math, meaning we don't always provide at risk students with a second period of math instruction. We have already begun correcting this structural gap. We are expanding the foundational skills course which you'll see on the screen and also algebra 1A supports to give students the extra time and focused intervention they need to master these more complex standards. This year has been a year of different pilots specifically in that space. and then next year we intent so as I said we intentionally took a phased

193approach of implementation and next year we'll have a strong roll out of these courses for that larger scale adoption in SY 2627 component eight is the science achievement we don't actually have a forecast model for this from a state progress monitoring window because again the these are EOCC courses. so far though the data has shown historically that students who struggle with reading often struggle in biology primarily because the science exam is heavily dependent on complex text. So to one of the things to address this is we are returning back to a two-year sequence for our students who need more literacy support. Last year we are one of the few districts that had all students on a one-year track. However, this year about 45% of our 9th graders are now on this 2-year literacy support path.

194This will give them a longer runway to master both the reading and science content. It is important to be clear because of how the state tracks these scores, we do expect to see a pretty significant one-year boost in these numbers as our as we transition. However, we won't have a full sense of the long-term success of our plan until the full cycle of students complete. Component number nine is the social studies achievement. This is very similar to the way that we're going to look at the science. this combines our seventh grade civics and our US history. This has historically been one of our district's highest areas, so we did not make any substantial changes to the existing plans. However, even with the success, we are applying the lessons we learned in science to this area.

195Just as we did with biology, we are looking at the runway we provide for civics. We are exploring ways to ensure that our middle school students have the same structural support to ensure that they are strong enough from a literacy level to accurately assess their history content. There is no state progress monitoring again for science or social studies exams, but for both of these, our internal metrics have not given us any major cause for concern. Component number 10 is middle school acceleration. this measures the seventh and eighth graders that are passing high school level exams like algebra or biology. Historically, our district often overlooked students who are on the cusp. If a student was just on grade level, we assume they weren't ready for the challenge of algebra. However, this year, we've shifted our philosophy.

196So instead of asking if a student is ready, we're asking how can we support them to be successful. So by providing more math enrichment support rather than just remediation, we're finally capturing on the points we used to leave on the table simply because we didn't schedule students for these opportunities. So while it's still early, the feedback from our pilot support programs has been excellent and we're seeing that our students are capable when given the necessary targeted support. Component number 11 is our grad rate. as discussed at the beginning of this presentation, this is our primary lagging indicator, meaning the data represents the performance of last year's graduating class. We are proud to report that our official graduation rate stands at 90%. This is a significant benchmark for our district, representing years of sustained effort. While

197this 90% is a lockedin win for our current district grade calculation, it serves as the ultimate proof of why the interventions we've discussed today are so vital. Every gain we make in third grade literacy or middle school math is a direct investment in ensuring that the this 90% stays high and that every student who enters our system leaves with the diploma in hand. Our final component number 12 is college and career acceleration. This measures how many of our high school graduates earned a high value credential before leaving us. Whether that's passing an AP exam, earning an industry, or completing a dual enrollment course. This is a metric we have started looking closer as our plan for graduation is becoming more refined like middle school acceleration. We have already identified gaps with certain students and schools

198and where we have not been proactive enough in providing personalized career and college opportunities. These targeted plans are already in place and being executed but we will not be able to see the benefits until next year as this is a lag metric. to wrap up all this data suggests that we are moving in the right direction. In many ways where we have invested our resources we are already seeing those preliminary returns. The plans are in motion and now it is just a matter of our district's ability to properly execute. I am now going to hand it off to Shereice who will talk through what the regional focus areas are for the second semester. Thank you. So in looking at where what our data is and analyzing that now we said what are we going to

199do about it. So we have to have a plan. So that's what I'm going to share with you today. So the first thing I want to talk about is our regional support team adjustments and you'll see some visuals there that just give you an idea of the type of support how we're tracking our support. But in alignment with the district goals for improved student achievement and instructional consistency, regional support teams have recalibrated our mid-year supports based on this PM2 data. Targeted job embedded supports include coaching, collaborative planning, PLC facilitation, and focused assistance for ESSE and ELLL subgroups. Teams are working in partnership with school-based coaches in content and grade level teams to strengthen tier one instruction and close achievement gaps. All support visits and activities, the examples are there, are documented, allowing the district to

200monitor implementation, ensure alignment to priorities, and to evaluate the impact on student outcomes. Another area of focus are our principal data chats and school strategic adjustments. Principal data chats provide a structured opportunity for us to analyze our PM2 data to share high impact strategies and practices and hold ourselves accountable for making instructional adjustments that drive improved student achievement. The data chats focused on performance analysis, goal progression, strength and best practices, current gap analysis, and intervention and action planning. And as a part of that, another focus area is our intervention action plans for targeted students. So this is where we really get down to the student level to see how we can impact student achievement and move it in the right direction. So first is identifying specific students. So which students are off track and how

201are we creating intervention groups? Which are which students are on track and how are we providing acceleration for those particular students? Developing support structures. So what specific instructional strategies and scheduling adjustments are being deployed to meet these needs? I think this is a huge one and this is one where our principles were really able to articulate through our data chats and also through our as we've implemented our regional teams and deployed them and made adjustments to really look at those changes that need to be made and some of them were take were willing to take some rather large risks at this point because they may see the direction of the data and really want to make sure that we're targeting the needs of our students and then how are we monitoring that so we're not

202just putting an action in place plan in place, but what does that look like and how are we monitoring it? So, how are we measuring the effectiveness of these interventions in real time to allow for course corrections? So, we begin with actionable data. Each school identifies specific students. Students are organized into intentional groupings. Action plans are created. It's monitored regularly and adjustments are made as needed. So, how will we know or how will we measure success? And so, here are just some signs that things are moving in a positive direction. And Phil already mentioned a few of these things already, but from PM1 to PM2, the movement that we've had. So, from PM1, we had 23% of schools forecasted at or above targets. And by PM2, we had 48% of schools that were forecasted to

203hit their targets. Also from PM1 to PM2, our average forecasted gap to targets for schools and learning gains went from a minus1 to a plus two in ELA and from a minus 6 to a minus2 in math. And I will say in math that much of that content has not yet been taught. So that's why we see the gaps a little bit in math still. Also, we have data to show increased coaching and support in our schools. So through through December, administrative teams logged over 13,826 walkthroughs, which is six times more than the quantity that we had done last year at this time. So administration and coaches are in classrooms observing so they can see how to provide support. Also, our regional teams logged over 2,750 engagements this year with schools and are regularly supporting

204over 70 tested grade level teams. And finally, we're taking a growth mindset with some changes and adjustments. And again, Phil mentioned some of this as well, but we have 21 schools that are using new pilots that we'll be monitoring to see the impact on student achievement. And 70% of our schools have started adopting at least one of the BSI best practices that were shared this summer. And the BSI practices are the Bureau of School Improvement. They share best practices that they have seen statewide that help increase student achievement. And many of those strategies now have been adopted in our schools. So, as we recap what we've shared today, the progress monitoring overview provided us with a clear and honest picture of where we are. The data does tell a story. One of the strengths is

205to build one of the strengths is to build upon opportunities that we have and then we must address these with urgency. Second, our PM2 insights and reflections allow us to move beyond surface level analysis. Through structured principal data chats, we examined root causes, identified instructional shifts, and ensured alignment between school level decisions and our district expectations. And third, our regional focus areas reflect intentional adjustments. Our support teams have recalibrated based on PM2 results in direct collaboration with school leadership teams. And most importantly, schools have developed specific intervention action plans for identified students with progress monitoring and accountability built in. This is focused work. It's strategic and most importantly, it's student centered. We're not waiting for these end of the year results to respond. We're responding now with clarity, alignment, and urgency. So, our systems are

206in place, our supports are aligned, and our semester 2 is truly about execution and measurable growth. So, thank you for your time and support. And now, I'd like to turn it over to the superintendent for comments and board discussion. Thank you very much to our team this afternoon for your presentation. I want to start out by just giving Mr. Savage a huge shout out. I can remember sitting in schools both as a teacher and as a school leader and having to handcalculate a lot of our results and spending hours and hours and hours doing that and the gift that you have given to schools Mr. Savage is immense. I know you always give compliments to your team but I need to publicly recognize your leadership and what you have done to transform data at the

207school level. And sometimes we talk about data and we forget the faces, the faces of our children. And I want to make sure that we emphasize that if you listen carefully to the presentation, and I know it was a little lengthy, so our apologies, but we wanted to make sure that we surface that for you. Our individual students matter and they matter to you and they matter to us. So that's what we share. When we are working with schools, we're not looking at percentage points. They matter, but we're looking at students. We're looking at children. who's in and who's out. And what I mean by that is who's hitting proficiency, who's making those gains, and who isn't. And what we're noticing with our schools is when that focus is on here's little Denise. This is

208what she's not able to do yet. What's the next next step? We provide that. Our schools are doing this better than ever. I want to commend our regional associate superintendents for being boots on the ground. our regional teams because you're providing real-time support to our schools and that is absolutely critical the work that's happening in planning. I want to give a shout out to Kelly Steedman as well. Handoverhand work and planning in our PLC's so that teachers know here's the benchmarks. Here's the here are the kiddos that are not making it. Here are the students that are and what is it going to take helping teachers plan. And when we have that type of classroom walkthroughs, a focus on data, a focus on children, and what that next step is, we can't miss. And what

209you're seeing is the payoff of all of their hard work. So huge kudos to our schools, our principles, our teachers, to our children who are stepping up in a big way, but also to the leaders that are putting systems in place that make sense and that help to support schools. We talk all the time at the cabinet level. We exist to support schools. Period. That's our only job. So, thank you for doing that. We look forward to your comments and your questions. Board member comments. Melissa, thank you. so I do have to give you kudos. Dr. Harland, 13,800 walkthroughs. How many of that includes her walkthroughs that she's doing and then she's bringing us along to the schools in that number? because I've never experienced that on my tenure and I've been on here a

210while, but I was able to go to several schools with her and to watch the educators in in action because I'm not an educator. So, I am learning right along with the students sometimes in my own way. So, I just want to thank you for that because that was an opportunity that I got to hear from the principles and their, you know, administration to what they're doing to make our students better and to which in in the end is success for this the school this I mean our district. so I as not being an educator, it was very enlightening for me to understand that process and as I've never had that opportunity before. So, I just want to thank you for that. and 13,000 walkthroughs is a lot in a short period of time if

211and our schools are not close by each other. So that's not just you might go to just a couple a day. You're not you're not in schools every day, you know. So it's it's in between everything else. So I think that's kind of amazing actually. this is exciting work. thank you Dr. Savage or well the other Savage. I can't keep y'all straight. I'm sorry, but I you look too much alike. I don't I'll take a doctor. Right. Okay. So, I apologize for that. But just thank you for the work. I had a lot of push back regarding area superintendent and our regional superintendent and I think it was a big a great step and a great change that really has moved the district because it's it allows you to really focus on certain schools instead

212of the whole district. And I and you can start seeing it just in the little works. Now I have a I have a sixth grader that needs math help. How do I get her help? I mean because that's what you're identifying. So my daughter's already been pushing back with me on her. So on that. So I'm I'm going to be asking that. So thank you. Okay. Question. Yeah. M Jordan, thank you again for this presentation. could you please tell me we have 16 coaches throughout for the district that goes out. They're part of this walkthrough that are I don't believe that they are designated. I hear the teacher the school speaking about the coaches that come out and work with them, but there's 16 supposedly that we have within the district under your supervision, I

213assume. And but they're not really designated to any one school. No. So, there are regional support teams. There are there are four of them, one for each region. along with Kelly Steedman's team as well. that's really more transformational work. those schools and those coaches specifically work with our most atrisisk schools risk level three, four and risk level two. And so we each one of us meets with our teams as well as with the academic service team that supports them and we develop the through looking at the PM1 data and prior year data at the beginning of the year. We'll identify which schools we want them to go out to. They will then go and work with those schools. We then look at that data again after PM2 and go okay what adjustments or changes do

214we need to make with who they're working with and in some cases they work with whole grade level teams at a school and in other cases they work with just individual specific teachers because there's certain needs that may be needed at that level as well. I hope that answers your question. Yeah, because I had heard that yesterday. Someone had said that about the risk risk four schools did not have a designated coach. So that's why I was like, well, let me and now I knew this was coming up. So like, let me find out who who are those 16 people. And so thank you for Yeah, the risk level four specifically work with the with the transformational team. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing. Okay. Other comments from the board, Miss Person, you know,

215when Bill, you were in the Mr. Ribble, you were in the corporate world and when the really high ups made their inspections, people were really on their toes. and the superintendent going on all these visits, taking us along with her, which is probably doesn't scare them. But anyway, it's it's amazing because I can see they're prepared. I wouldn't want her saying, "Well, what about this? What about that?" Because they all have their charts ready. They know exactly what's going on. They can tell her which teachers are good. Kim Collins, boy, do you send me a lot of emails inviting me to go on these trips. That's who sends them to all of us. I'm sure. Every time we see one of those, Kim, it's like, "Oh, no, another one. I just got like four today

216out in April and May." I don't I mean, I think, wait, wait, haven't they graduated yet? I mean, I'll probably get them in June and July. I don't know. But, I really do appreciate the organization that all these principles have at their schools when we walk in there. And then the teachers are just as prepared because the principal knows he's got to take her to see them. And they're like, they know exactly what's going on. And being on the board this, you know, going on my fourth year, there was nothing like that. You know, I can say ah, you know, we came off co maybe, you know, then we had Ian maybe, but still this last two years, especially this year, has just been phenomenal. And I know we're going to move right up in

217the charts, but it is about the students. So, thank you for what everybody and the whole teams are doing. Okay, other comments. Okay, I just want to tag tag along to Miss Chievenelli and also Mr. person's comments and Mr. Person said it in the corporate world how it works really driven by the balance scorecard is as we've talked about Dr. Savage many times in strategic planning meetings but when I went out much like yourself when I went into the school the first time with Dr. Crawling. I had not a clue what we were doing, but after an hour of the session, I knew I had a long way to go to catch up on some of the information and some of the acronyms, but the measurements there. And as we know, whatever gets measured gets

218results. And I'm really impressed with the achievement that you've done and leadership and I was always I really was impressed when we first started out with the four regional superintendent just that's how companies organize accountability. And I think you have all the right processes in place and I'm excited about seeing the gains that we're making and I agree with these presentations today that we're tracking the right things and we're going to move the to move the numbers and move up in the charts. So great job. I appreciate it. Okay, moving right along. It takes us to public comment. Attorney Robert Dodic. Thank you, Chair. Schoolboard policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this meeting's agenda. If you completed a public comment card, please provide

219it to staff. Public comment will be held at the podium in the center aisle and front of the room. Please be advised that the board will not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers. Abuse abuse of language defined as swearing, use of profanity, or name calling is prohibited. Speakers who fail to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order. Any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone per board policy 0169.1 and may be removed from the chambers. There will be one warning. Per board policy 0169.1, the time per speaker is 3 minutes. You will find a countdown on the big screens in the front of the room. Once your time has elapsed, the microphone will automatically shut off. Please state your name when you

220approach the microphone. I will call your name. Follow the staff's directions when lining up. Mr. Chair, there are two speakers that wish to address the board at this workshop. The first speaker is Will McCanny. The second speaker is Nette Bird Smith. Go ahead, sir. Do I need to press? No, it's good. Hello, Will Mechanic, town manager, Fort Myers Beach. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I think you can tell how important it is to us always being here through the whole meeting, but I really appreciate sitting through on that. Superintendent Carlin, board members, Mr. Dodig, nice to meet you. I look forward to working with you. Thank you for the opportunity. I just want to say that really thank you for the continued engagement and continued discussion. The collaborative nature of our discussions and

221negotiations has been excellent and I really appreciate that. it continues even to today you know sitting here in the audience with Dr. Savage you know talking about things. So you know although we still feel strongly that you're receiving an incomplete analysis in the Cristaldi report there's important data sets we feel were missing. I want to emphasize nobody in that report spoke to people from Fort Myers Beach the town staff the residents experts in building on the beach. We have plenty. We have plenty on my staff. We have plenty that work in Fort Myers Beach every day. They weren't part of that study. So, I just like you all to consider that when when you go forward. And I appreciate Superintendent Carlin's continued partnership and comments from before about not wanting to move forward rashly with

222demolition of the of the Fort Myers Beach Elementary School and the other p other facilities on the property. And I we really do appreciate that gesture. We hope that continues going forward as you continue to consider these matters. It means a lot to us. Before considering going down the path of demolition, consider that we want a school. I think you all know that. We've made it very clear, but I want to emphasize that again. And we want the property to ensure it remains a school and want to collaborate collaborate with you on possible funding opportunities to continue that down the road. we're committed to making this happen. We want to partner with you whether the school is public or charter. We are working with your staff. We're working with public school experts. We're working with

223charter school subject matter experts, engineers, architects, nonprofits, business leaders, residents, families, and of course the students of Fort Myers Beach Elementary School to ensure that we do this right. We're committed to this. It's really, really important to us. And I know that public education, all education across the district is committed to all of you. I sense that sitting here in the meetings and my meetings with all of you, one-on-one meetings with those of you that I've had. And I just ask you continue that spirit of collaboration with us as we go forward and find the best possible solution for both of us, for the district, for Fort Myers Beach, but most importantly for our students and our families on the beach that we all want to continue that great tradition of Fort Myers Beach Elementary.

224Thank you, Superintendent Carlin. You can lower that. There you go. You probably can hear me anyway. Not a problem with projection here. board superintendent, attorney Dodig, I want to, speak to the review and revision of the student, code of conduct. I'd like in light of a lot of emails that have gone out recently to our students, parents, and teachers, I'd like to encourage the embracing of transparency. That's a big commitment from this district. And I'd like to see that transparency in the emphasis on specific, clear, concise, and lay understandable descriptions for the behaviors that cause fear, disruption, and an endangerment of others. I think we have to take that transparency and be a little more specific and not use such generalized terms. I think it's very important in this time and age and where we

225sit with education right now and I'd like to see you embrace that transparency that is so important and a commitment from the district. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment. That is all your sir. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Now for the good of the order we'll hear from our board members. Mr. Fiser. Thank you Mr. Chair. as I mentioned before, so Chair Persons and Superintendent Connor aware, I will be pulling item H1 tonight, and I'll be asking for I'll be making a motion tonight, Mr. Chair. through Chair Ribble, I'd like to ask Attorney Dodigga a question. what I'm looking to accomplish is to make sure on this contract that Mr. Eagle in no way is excluded from representing us on the federal lobbying side. So I want to ask and to figure out whatever

226best method that would be in order to amend that contract. Okay. So as you stated you would make a motion to amend and then obviously that would go to a vote and then we would vote on the revised contract. The best way to revise the contract as I see it is to include a clause where it already talks about conflicts of interest for the folks in the Fort Meyers office to just simply put with the exception of Mr. Eagle. So that's we're already working on the proposed language as as we speak. Thank you, Mr. Dota. That's all I have. Chair Ribble. Okay, Mr. Vanelli. Okay, I'll be quick. Saturday I attended the inventors fair and I would encourage anyone to go to that if you can. because it's it's interesting. These kids are way way

227ahead of me. Anyways, I can just tell you that. But I just want to read some of the some of the things I judge because that I think it's kind of cute. They're cute and then some of them are just I hope I can I read that what they are called. one was called a Lego claw clawbot and you'll be able to understand what some of them are when I read them. And then racket grip pro flash glove the detangler slayer cork o shield. Now this is high school by the way. This is only 10th and 11th grade. Automated pre-ymptomatic detection of bacterial spot and anti- wait and anthrose intergrating ethylene ultrasonic and electrphysical signals. That was just one by the way. That was one thing. amazing. And then another one was called surgery risk.

228Surgery risk a dynamic risk assessment system and planner for operative and post-operative outcomes in surgical procedure. Another one was called a multimodal model health application for early stroke detection using facial asymmetry and analysis reaction time metrics and speech impairment evaluation. That was amazing. And I could relate because I am of that age that I could use the app to make sure that I'm not having a stroke for the day. it was literally that's what it is. It's an app for the phone to put your I'm like, "Oh, now that I could do I could actually I think I could use that." So, anyways, and then there's another one was called AR Capturing Googles. and it's not goggles, it's Google's. And it something that's already similar out there. But I thought it was interesting cuz he

229was from Argentina and had only been here a year or so and he had it was you attach it to glasses where if you're reading English, it would translate it for you and they could read both and driving and was for the GPS system. He felt the need that it would relate it into the language that he was understanding. It was very interesting. It w I just it was amazing. So, if you can judge, they're always looking for judges every year. I would highly recommend. And if not, then just go by there and it's at was at FGCU and you can visit and during the time and see their their exhibits and it's amazing. Anyways, and then just I will be quick, but Saturday is STEMtastic. So that's Day of Discovery. Everyone's invited. I recommend

230you popping in and checking that out. That's from 10 to 2. And then Sunday is the junior parade and we'll have most of our students, our Lee County students will be in that parade. And then the following Saturday is the grand parade which we have our own Sammy Serriani as the grand marshall and which is very exciting. Unfortunately, he retired this year so we're honoring him and I think that's exciting. but I think it's really honoring the whole Sirani family because they have quite the legacy that they leave this district with. And that's it for me. Thank you. Okay, Miss Jordan. Well, this month has been busy since the last time we were here. So, I'm just going to just share a few things that has that I've taken place with I apologize that I

231missed the Horizon Council. I was at the gardens with the women's legacy funds who actually they donated a three-year grant to us for $140,000 for our students to make sure that they're able to do the healthy living collaboration. and the students, it was raining, it was cold, but the kids did not care. They were out there, they were participating, they were so proud of what they were growing, and it was just really exciting that they could speak on everything. And then we, that was at Horns Marsh. And then we went to Buckingham Exceptional Center and that was even just more joy because you see these kids and they're in their wheelchair, but it doesn't matter. there's nothing that stops them from doing, you know, and feeling and just being excited about what they're participating in

232even with they had given them a drill to drill some things and that was like the most exciting day for them. So that was really good. And then I also participated in the JR inspire which was at Buckingham. And what happens is you have community members who come in and they help the students and the students come in as well from all over the district u and they like our exceptional students and they are Jason's Deli was there. They were showing them how to put a box together for catering and that itself when you're watching this and there they could put that cookie in the bag and you know make sure that box was just right. It was just it was a great day. There was so many of our community well vendors and I

233just really want to thank them for being there and participating with the kids. We spent I did go to Linda Joy Holloway which James Holloway that used to be here. His daughter now is producing little library community libraries and they placed one out at Franklin Park Elementary School this weekend. So if you go by there you can take a book out, replace a book and you see these books little libraries all over the county which I think is really great because it encourages children to read and Thank you, Dr. Carlin. I've been doing many walkthroughs with you and that was as everyone else has spoke spoke about. It was really great. The United Way cookoff, the super soup per bowl was here and that was great because a lot of the staff came in and

234they showed their culinary expertise and I think they made almost like $700 within an hour's time for the kickoff for United Way, which was which was really great. and I'll just share the rest later, but thank you so much. Great, Miss Person. Hey, Jeb. Debbie, you took almost everything, but you forgot the Florida School Boards Association. I do have that. That was later. You go ahead. We went to Tallahassee. Debbie and I were invited by the Florida School Board Association and we met with a lot of legislators. It was a lot of fun. but we also got a lot of policy before them and that was very important this year. several things. One was the hope schools taking going into our schools and things. There's been a lot of guard rails come out that are

235much better now. They're getting what they call rules out there. So that's really good. But I know we met we met with Senator Martin. we met with representative I think her name is Jenna Person's Molica and representative Tiffany Espazito and those were the two main ones from here but I mean I saw all sorts of people up there including Erica Donald's was there and u then other people from other organizations such as several council people and the mayor of Fort Myers, president of FGCU. So, it's it's always a good trip to get up there and get what we need. We have an appropriations before them this year of 2.9 million for safety to improve. So, we're looking forward to that. The budgets are all being worked on now, so we'll know shortly where that goes,

236but I think we're in good shape if we get through. I think the governor sort of likes this. So hopefully it won't veto anything like he does at a lot of the places. And that's all I have for now. Ming, thank you. I'm not going to list all the places I've been. There's a ton of them. But I will say this when I have been out into the classrooms which I've gone to a couple of schools in each zone in the last two weeks the present the presentation right before the public comment that we just had you are I have re I have really witnessed not just papers on a wall which when I worked in the district yes we had PLC's and yes we collected data we talked about it a little they went

237on a board somewhere and you really weren't aren't digging in to to that data and how to show how to move students from one thing to the next. And it is evident in the schools that I have visited at least that this is daily lingo that they are talking about. Teachers are comfortable talking about it. they're incredibly great at explaining it, which tells me that they are they are as hands-on as their students with that data. So, that's my big takeaway from the visits that I've had in the schools. thank you for the reminder, Miss Gioelli. I know how much you love the Edison Festival of Lights and all of the celebrations that go, so I will most definitely pop in a STEMtastics. and then regarding Mr. Fischer's addendum to today's motion, I will be

238in support of that as well. Thank you. Okay, everyone touched on everything? So, I guess one thing I can hit on with with a lot of the school tours and visits that I've done is the amount of like thought and time that they put into their themes each year to make sure that they're relatable, that the kids are going to be excited about it. and how much the teachers kind of dive into those themes and, you know, decorate their classrooms and come up with assignments to kind of follow that process again to keep our kids engaged and excited about learning. and when I when I go in there and I see middle school and they're kind of break up in their groups and they're doing their different subjects. I have one class that was like

239a Stranger Things theme and I was like, "This is great." they're just excited and it like it's just it just makes it fun and school is supposed to be fun. I loved school. It's a great time. Yes, you socialize, but when when learning is fun, you want to be there and you want to show up every day and you love what your teacher's going to do and you're excited about what's going to happen the next day and what they're going to be showing you. so to see just the amount of like thought and love and dedication that our teachers have for our students is just it's wonderful. And you know to those points with you know all of the charts and the things that are happening in schools, I've seen bubble gum bumble gum machines

240and like different things happening and how they're tracking and making it fun to see how they're preparing and kind of working toward their their goals towards the year. And so it's just there's direction, right? and they know what they're working towards and it's just nice to see it in place and them have a plan and have this conversation and everyone's actively rowing in that direction. and I think that's such a positive statement to our superintendent and the work of our regionals and everything else that's happening behind the scenes that we're not seeing. They're moving towards this goal with they're running and it's just awesome. So, thank you for all of that. Thank you for all the hard work. we see it and we're cheering you on. and that's all I got. Thank you. Okay, I'm

241going to I'm going to reserve my comments for tonight because I want to talk I want to report on the FGCU partnership and the reading program we've put together and hopefully Dr. Cuban will come back and get her kudos in our evening session tonight. So hope hang around for the best. Okay, Mr. Dodig, just quickly, I didn't have a chance on January 23rd to thank you all publicly for showing confidence in me to serve as the interim board attorney. It truly is a pleasure to be up here with you and to serve you. So, thank you. That's all. Just very quickly, welcome. I when I first sat down, I said to Attorney Jod, it's nice to see you here. we worked together years ago in HR and we've worked through 20 years. Many years, yes.

242Together. So, it's just nice to welcome a friend up here and appreciate his service. also a very special thank you. we had two of our partners from Fort Myers Beach join us for the entire afternoon. I just want to say a big thank you to Mr. McAnne and also to Dr. Kohler. thank you. We look forward to continued collaboration with you and we're excited about the work ahead. And just a thank you to our board. You know, we talked about gosh, almost a dozen items, over a dozen items today. and we did that in a very efficient and effective manner. I appreciate your good questions. Thank you. We are committed to school safety and we are committed to becoming a school district. And again, we talk about it. It's not about the accolades. It's about

243more children walking across that stage at graduation. That's what it's about for you, for me, and for all of our staff. And just a tremendous amount of appreciation to our team. there's a lot of thought that goes into these presentations, a lot of hard work, and just want to really say thank you not only to you, but also to our schools and our students. So with that, I'll turn it back over to the chair. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Carlin. All right. Just want to remind everyone that we have a student performance tonight at 5:45 follow up at 6:00 with our school board meeting, our evening meeting. And hearing no objection, it the time now is 4:39 and the meeting is adjourned. Good job.